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Well, got the results back and apparently I do not have gestational diabetes. Yay! But blood draw #4 had a slight uptick which left it just outside of parameters, so apparently I do have an increased sensitivity to sugar.

Bwuh?

Whatever. No binge-eating ice cream, got it.

Today I started turning strawberries into jam. Six baskets (half the flat) became eight one-cup jars (strawberry honey thyme jam and strawberry vanilla jam) and two partials that got tucked into the fridge. I still have a few more recipes I want to experiment with (strawberry lemon marmalade looks interesting...), so beyond whatever I make tomorrow, I'll probably get another flat next week and have at.

Next week is also my last writing class before summer break. Which means the potluck party! I'll probably also make something desserty for the party with next week's flat of strawberries, and enjoy dropping the bomb that I won't be back for fall term. And why. To my knowledge, none of my classmates have figured out that my loose clothing hides an increased waistline. And by waiting to tell them at the last class, I'm neatly avoiding them trying to throw me another shower. Which some of them WOULD do. Mean of me? Maybe. But also practical. Certain classmates, much as I love them, would fuss excessively.

Normally I think my classmates in my writing class are relatively intelligent, sane people. Well, with a possible caveat for the one person who takes Fox News seriously.

But tonight, somehow, the topic of colleges putting trigger warnings on works for literature classes came up, and I am AGHAST that at least one of my classmates and the teacher were comparing this to censorship and book banning.

What. The. Merry. Fuck.?!

How the hell does saying "this work contains scenes of rape/incest/racism/ableism/name-your-social-ill-here" equate to changing or removing a single WORD of that work? All it does is warn those people who might be hurt by it that they need to either shore themselves up or have a word with their professor.

To boot, the classmate who was against it blamed the ACLU.

She has been in a wheelchair for years.

I guess the ACLU is only useful when it's putting in wheelchair ramps, not when it's taking care of people's psychological health?

I am just, ARGH, I have no words. Frothing at the mouth at the cruelty and callousness of people I like. You can BELIEVE I argued my point.

Maybe it's because I'm younger (by a generation or two) than these people, and cut my writing teeth on fanfiction and the internet, where warning tags are more notable in their absence than their presence.

But saying "this story contains these things" is NOT censorship. It's not book banning. It's saying what's in the story.

When did common courtesy become oppression?

Back at 100%! Hooray!

The set of books I took in for the gift exchange last night were moderately popular. In our class of nineteen, they got "stolen" twice. The first steal I wasn't surprised by, my "birthday twin" (tho she's several years older than me) Pat, who writes sci-fi. But the second steal was by Eleanor, who writes romances. And that did surprise me.

Today, though, my only set goal was doing a round of some of the local thrift stores to get Squiddle some dressy togs for Saturday, which is when we're booked in for our annual family photo. We succeeded at that, then Skyped my inlaws for a bit, then went out in the backyard for a session on the swingset. And after Squiddle had enough of the swings, while he played about, I fetched out the loppers. I'd earlier seen the city trimming our trees from the park side, and since I thus had to put a few branches into the yard waste bin anyway, I figured why not go for broke, and started tackling the suckers and low-hanging branches. I am about two-thirds done, but need Wonderful Husband to come home and help me squnch down the stuff already in the bin so I can fit the rest in.

And now, while Squiddle's napping, I get to tackle tidying and formulate a strategy for the next week's cooking and cleaning. Did I mention I'm hosting the family Thanksgiving this year? At least six adults plus Squiddle, possibly up to ten adults. One of the maybes being a vegetarian. Anyone have any favorite vegetarian Thanksgiving dishes you can give me a heads-up on?

I have a (hopefully) 24-hour bug. Spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon under three blankets, trying to warm up, and a good portion of yesterday evening trying not to throw up. Feeling better today, but cancelled my dental appointment nonetheless because this morning I wasn't sure if things were going to improve or go south.

Still hoping to make my writing class tonight, though. It's the last class for the term, and our annual holiday book exchange. I'm slightly upping the ante - mine is a bag with seven sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks in it, all ones that are on my bookshelves. Neil Gaiman, Lois McMcaster Bujold, Guy Gavriel Kay. I set myself a spending limit of $10. I love thrift stores.

Unfortunately, the class is also a potluck, and I signed up to make an appetizer. I was planning bacon-wrapped dates... but unless my current sensitivity to cooked-food smells abates in the next couple hours, I may not be able to stomach making anything.

Broke my refrigerator tea jug yesterday, all over the kitchen floor. Right after I'd filled the jug, of course. On the upside, at least it was the plastic jug, not one of the glass ones I actually brew the tea in. And at least the kitchen floor is now much, much cleaner! But this means I'm now putting the glass brewing jug in the fridge, and it just doesn't fit right. Plus it has a slow leak through the spigot. So I guess I'm hitting The Container Store sometime soon and seeing if they still stock the things. Shouldn't've tossed that coupon last week, but I thought to myself, there's nothing we need from there.... Ah well.

Tonight I make my triumphant return to writing class, and have all my prep done for that. I'm debating whether or not to start bellydance class again this weekend. The money for that becomes harder to justify to myself when I don't have an income.

I am, once again, frustrated by my writing class. Seriously, this is like my theme every Wednesday night! I ought to start a drinking game or something. "One drink if Kristin thinks her teacher needs to pay attention." "Two if a classmate fails to actually read the words on the page." Etc.

Tonight's bout of consternation is brought to you by the eternal struggle of "you have too many characters." Which about half my class commented on. Mind, I don't know how many of these comments are add-ons in class and thus basically "me too!"s following the teacher.

The thing is, though, the book I am writing is high fantasy. It's about an international war. It's continuing with both the upstairs and downstairs characters from book one. I have a goddamn game plan, I know where all these plot threads eventually lead, NO I NEED ALL THOSE CHARACTERS. They're not throwaways. Go read Lord of the Rings. Go read Game of Thrones. That's my genre. But no matter how many times I say this, it never seems to sink in.

For whatever reason, genre writing limits my audience. Being a genre reader, I don't get it. I can read mainstream and get it, I can read scifi and get it. It's all good. Similarly, those of my class who get it, GET IT. They realize I'm not writing Waiting For Godot, or a romance novel that only needs two people plus some distractions. But for whatever reason, over half the class has problems with "different genres have different rules and expectations." Now, granted, whenever the time comes, a romance or a mainstream book would probably be easier to sell. But that's not the book I want to write. It's not the book I want to read.

Which leads to me being frustrated by half the feedback I'm getting, and subsequently having long conversations with Wonderful Husband about this series and why I'm writing it and if it's worth it. Sorta. Something along that line, anyway. I am seriously considering whether I should stop submitting this book to the class, and eventually give them something else instead. Even I can only bash my head against a wall so often before ceding to the headache.

Sigh. I don't know. At this point I'm just vomiting words and frustration onto the Internet. I should go to sleep, and tomorrow hopefully I'll find some clarity.

Taking a break from doing my writing class homework, which is editing other students' entries. Tomorrow is my last day at work, and I'm reallyreally hoping my headcold/whatever-it-is will go into remission for just the day, please. (My voice is still going in and out like a radio). But regardless, that means I need to complete this tonight because I won't have a chance tomorrow.

My family all have a love of old houses. My parents live in the 1963 house my grandparents bought when Mom was in high school. I live in a 1955 house three miles north of Disneyland... which opened in 1955. I suspect the urban development to be related. And my sister lives in a 1920s bungalow up in Washington. So when my sister started watching Rehab Addict, a show about restoring old houses, it was not a hard sell for her to get my parents to watch it. And then our mom sold me on it as well. I've been clearing my TiVo'd backlog of it recently and getting a firmer idea of what I want to do to our master bath, and inspiration and confidence for eventually taking out the tile that's still covering 80% of our hardwood floors. And then this blog entry comes up and makes me think I really should have chosen an actual career/job in my life instead of the indifference that is/was Administrative Assistanthood. Ah well. I'm following a few passions now. Mother. Homemaker. Writer. And who knows what may yet be, a few years down the line. Though old houses (meaning older than midcentury) aren't nearly as thick on the ground in Orange County as they are in other areas of the country.

After clearing out the backlog of Rehab Addict, and finishing off the last few new episodes of Defenders of Berk, I've finally returned to season 1 of Grimm. I know I'm wayway behind when I'm fast-forwarding through ads about The Avengers being in theaters soon! Today I watched Cat and Mouse, which delves intriguingly into the background politics of the Wesen world. But my main takeaway is the thought, I just watched the Grimm version of Casablanca. Complete with letters of transit! Though at least they weren't hidden in a piano. And once again Nick makes the right, though not obvious, choice/alignment for himself.

And now my dillydallying is done. Changing the baby, and then back to red ink work.

Tuesday night Squiddle slept the whole night through for the first time ever! Midnight to eight a.m.! Alas, he did not repeat this venture last night. Tuesday evening he also thought Wonderful Husband and I sitting down to dinner was the funniest thing ever. He did not stop laughing for at least five minutes. Seriously. ^_^;;

Last night, my writing class started up again. Wonderful Husband and Squiddle came with me for the beginning of class so that my classmates and teacher could coo over the cute baby. Which they did. Me having been away for the last term, I got given the first slot, so I got read in class, and the submission was generally agreed to have been one of my stronger ones. Yay! But once I got home, I found that Squiddle had not been happy about being sans mommy for the evening, and had been taking it out on his daddy. Ah well. Squiddle will just have to get used to hanging out with daddy one night a week, because I'm not giving up my entire life in favor of mommydom.

And, today is Squiddle's four-month birthday! In celebration, we took him to meet his new doctor, who I think we quite like. The baby's pretty much on track for where he should be developmentally, and physically at the 90th percentile for his age. He weighs in at 18 pounds even, and is now 25 inches long. He also got his next set of vaccinations today, which he definitely didn't like, but his dislike of them was less than his dislike of the last set. At least in volume, anyway.

But for now the baby is sleeping, the laundry is chugging away in the washer, and I am going to put down my current book (The Story Of My Life, by Helen Keller) and edit my next ten pages to turn into class next week.

Today was kind of a slow day. Wonderful Husband finally seems to be on the mend (*knocks on wood*), which, yay! Because he actually has to go in to the office tomorrow to conduct an interview. Which is sufficiently late in the day that I'll be taking Squiddle to my writing class with me and WH will be picking him up from there. Which works well since my classmates wanted me to bring him in again anyway.

My ten pages got re-edited today, as did the summary sheet. Tomorrow, photocopy shop! We made stirfry for dinner, and I baked lots of oatmeal raisin cookies, a good portion of which are to go into class with me tomorrow night. The kitchen is clean and set up for breakfast. Now to change Squiddle into a sleep'n'play, swaddle him, nurse him to sleep, tuck him into the bassinet, and sneak his undies into the washing machine before turning in myself.

The college website was still broken (though again in a new and different way) this morning, so I hied over to the campus and registered in person. (My class starts on Wednesday, so I was no longer willing to wait on them fixing the site.)

Got petrol in my car, booked said car in for its tuneup on Friday, finished the ironing, and booked Squiddle in to see his new doctor and get his four-month shots on Thursday.

All I have "left" to do on my list for the day is edit the next ten pages, plus a "the story up 'til now" cover page, of Queen's Choice for the aforementioned writing class. Why do I have the suspicion this will be more arduous than all the rest put together?

EDIT: Editing done. Yay! Bedtime now.

Baked the sourdough bread today, it came out quite well. Got about half of the ironing done, and finished today's every-other-day wash/dry of Squiddle's undies. I also made lemon pudding cakes for dessert at my parents'... my mother and I thought they were too sweet, while Wonderful Husband thought they were just right. What's that saying about you can't please all the people...? :)

Right in the middle of baking, of course, while Wonderful Husband (still not 100% recovered from sickness) was napping, Squiddle had an MSE. He managed to go all over his diaper, diaper cover, onesie, leg, sock, my sleeve while I carried him to the changing table, and the high chair cover, straps, and buckles. Boy is DETERMINED!

Tried again to register for my writing class. Today the whole school website is down. I am unsure which direction this is progress in, but if I can't do it online tomorrow morning, I'll resort to going there in person and waiting in line to do it.

I have a list of reasons my writing class teacher frustrates me. (Yes, I know I've ranted about her here before.) But high on the list is the fact that she just doesn't pay attention. At least not to my submissions.

"Who is this character?" "It just said, Maralys, in the paragraph above this one." "Oh." Grr....

Honestly, when it gets to the point that she reaches one of her own notes for a correction and says, "Oh, well now that I've read it, that makes sense," I just want to throw something at her.

I realize she's a senior citizen. I realize she does not read or write my genre, and thus has no knowledge of its vocabulary and conventions. But when she doesn't even respect my writing enough to bother parsing what the words mean, I get a wee bit testy.

Of course, I was also cringing when she was talking about one of my fellow student's family history (sorta memoirish?) submission tonight. Particularly the part where she was talking about one of the people in it as a character, and I had read ahead to find out the "character" in question is my classmate's grandmother.... There is a certain discretion and respect one should be able to expect when talking about kin. Even when they're framed in written words.

Got reviewed in class tonight, pretty much all goods and greats. Sadly, everyone already knew what an incubus was. Or at least nobody asked. Because I would have loved to give that explanation in class! But at least I did get a slight head-skritch about the new character being the daughter of an incubus and a sugar maple. (Though in general my classmates loved her.)

I have a line prepared for anyone who ever asks about the mechanics of that conception. It is a simple, slightly snarky one-word answer that I think is brilliant. Thus, I will never ever get asked the question. "Knothole." Alas....

(Why the incubus wanted to, that one remains a mystery to me.)

I think I may have finally figured out this writing thing. This week's ten page submission to my writing class came off as pretty close to perfect, by all reviewers. So, yay! This is in contrast to one of my newer classmates, whose entry I reading aloud to

hoshikage and Wonderful Husband. Let us just say, mass hilarity ensued. Very purple prose, worse than me at my very worst. Also a lot of "wait, that sentence doesn't make any sense."

So, in summation, ego-stoking has been achieved this week. And

hoshikage and I went to see Rise of the Guardians at the cheapie theater tonight, so now she has seen it and also loves it. And I have seen it... five times now. I'm going to go for at least six, since Wonderful Husband is interested in seeing it again (a rarity!) now that it's $2. Though

hoshikage and I actually went for a 3D showing, which at this theater costs a whole $4. Totally bank-breaking. :)

And, filed under "the universe trying to piss me off," Michael Bay is apparently going to work with Megan Fox for the Ninja Turtles film. What, they couldn't work together for DotM and consequently gave the film about HALF of its long, long list of sins by introducing Carly as a piss-poor Mikaela replacement, but the two of them can work together again to ruin another of my childhood loves? I have not got the words for this. I really, really don't.

Maralys actually remembered what she said last week and those of us who hadn't double-submitted got reviewed first. AND I got pretty solid reviews on this entry, just a word change suggestion here or there. I skimmed a few of the copies I got back and was amused by the one asking why I was even in this class. Yay for an approaching-pro-quality ten pages?

Then I came home and turned in my two Costume College class proposals. I usually do three, but I got nuthin' for number three this year. Just my usual hand embroidery class, and making last year's felt-and-rickrack-flowers demo into a workshop. We'll see if the College ends up choosing to offer either.

Both of these make a pretty good cap to what's been a remarkably hectic week. For some reason, we are REALLY busy at work. And given I work in the funerary industry, we generally don't have a "busy season." Plus we met with our lender to see about modifying our mortgage, and I have a dental checkup in the morning. In preparation for which, I really should be going to bed now....

Things that irk me: in the writing class, we're supposed to have a max of seven submissions each week. And you're supposed to wait a week after your last submission before doing your next. So when I get to class and see nine submissions on the board, four of whom submitted last week (all longtime students who should know better), and Maralys carelessly tells me to add my submission onto the list too? Well, I'm a bit ticked off at Maralys for not enforcing her own rules, and MORE than a bit dubious about her word that she'll bump my submission (I have not submitted at all yet this term) ahead of everyone who did double-submissions. Trust me, by next week she'll have forgotten ALL about that little pie-crust promise....

Things that do not irk me: finding the RotG screenplay available for download. Gleaning nifty bits like Jamie is supposed to be 8 (the artbook flat-out says 10, which is what I've been, and shall continue, going with). Sophie is indeed supposed to be 2! I guessed right. But Jack's unnamed sister was supposed to be 4. Um, no. She does not look or act 4. I'll stick with my habit of making her 10, same as Jamie. It makes the Jamie/Sophie Jack/Jack's sister age difference the same, which symmetry pleases my feral fanficcer hindbrain. OTOH, apparently the Thaddeus Burgess statue was supposed to have the correct 1680s date on it for Burgess' founding, not the 1780s one which contradicts the "300 years later" text in the film....