California Visit

I visited my family the week before last and got to hang out with my cousin and her beautiful baby for the second time since he was born. They live in England, so she’s a major badass for traveling with him to see all of us, (although in my biased opinion he’s also an uncommonly well-behaved baby.)

I’ve been working on my general aversion to flight so I can visit more often, even though I still love the drive. Driving involves four days of travel total, which does mean less overall family time. Flying makes me nauseated and stressed, but it gets me there in time for a lot more tea with my grandma, shit-talking with my siblings, and cuddles with the baby when he’s there.

The November Pokemon Go community day fell during my trip, so I also dragged my dad and my sister around downtown Mountain View with me to catch shiny pink monkeys. It was a nice chance to get some extra walking in and take some pictures. The Castro Street area is quite pretty.

My dad and sister, who were kind enough to be seen in public playing Pokemon with me.

White rhododendrons (I think?) that are planted all around Pioneer Park

Blue flowers of some sort that looked really nice against that clear California sky

Succulent flowers are pretty wild

Sweet peas and lavender

A Quick Visit and Some Very Cute Chickens

I visited my family in California this week and had a nice time. My grandma is almost ninety one, and has been losing some of her memory, so I’m trying to spend more time down there. Her memories are important, and I want to take some of them on when I can.

That means flying, which I’m generally not a fan of, but it’s more efficient than spending the better part of four days driving down to the Bay Area and back. Seeing my family is worth it, though, and having my ADHD under better control means that getting to flights on time and handling the bustle of a chaotic airport is less intimidating than it used to be. It also makes it easier to plan ahead to take my anti-nausea meds in time, because, oh boy, does flying play merry havoc with my inner ear.

While I was there, I also got my meet the newest batch of miniature chickens in my friend’s backyard farm. They’re only about a week old, or they were when I met them, but they’re also seramas, a breed of chicken that don’t typically get much bigger than large pigeons as adults. Their babies are impossibly tiny and adorable.

A little sketch of one of her hens watching over the babies while they practiced their very important pecking skills.

One of the serama mamas giving me a good eyeballing for being near the chicks. Her hens tend to sit on their eggs in pairs, so the chicks always have two mamas to watch over them.

This chick seemed mostly okay with being held. They’re so soft!

The yellow chick had some rather loud objections to me holding her, so I returned her to her little family pretty quickly. She’s still totally my favorite of this clutch.

I Honestly Can’t Think of a Title For This

I’ve been a brain-foggy pile of useless since I got home from my trip. I think the disruption to my sleep schedule and somewhat questionable food choices kinda caught up with me really hard. Wasn’t breathing so well at night, and wasn’t sleeping sensible lengths of time, so I tried to compensate with sleep meds that left me incredibly spaced out and weird the next day. So, lesson learned, I guess. I’ll be even more careful about all of that next time I travel, and I guess I need to not use those over the counter sleep aids too much if I want my brain to work the next day for anything other than zoning out to educational dinosaur videos on youtube and then wondering where the hell the past six hours went and why I’m still in my pajamas. It’s a little funny in retrospect, but getting into a shower and then into outside clothes generally shouldn’t use up absolutely all of my mental energy for a given day.

Really makes you wonder why sleep isn’t just a wee bit easier, given how it’s essential for survival and stuff. I know literally everything about modern life fucks with our natural biological rhythms, but come on.

I say this while typing on a white screen at past-my-bedtime o’clock, of course.

Some gorgeous deep pink geraniums a friend gave me because she’s super nice. They rode in my front seat all the way home from California. I thought I didn’t like geraniums because I was used to those eye-scaldingly red ones that smell super weird when you break their leaves, but I was wrong.

Road Trip and a Stop at the Herloom Festival

I’m visiting my family in California, and was lucky enough to be around just in time to hit up the big heirloom festival with a friend. I met some rare sheep and some intensely fancy chickens, and ate yummy foods. It was a good day.

Writing days this past week: 1

I’m Visiting the Warm Southern Lands

I’ve been driving for about two days straight and just got to my dad’s place this evening. After some recuperative tea and chatter with my siblings, I realized that I had forgotten to write the post. Then, I kept chattering, and remembered again and forgot again many times. It is now about 3am, because this is what I do to myself.

Here are some highlights from Friday’s drive. Sadly, I have no pictures of the minor snowstorm I drove through around Mt. Shasta, but it was exciting.

Almost a New Year

The stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is odd. It’s too short to settle back into normalcy and too long for the holiday feelings to stay fresh. I’m writing this post on a break as I drive home from Christmas with my family, and it’s been a nice quiet trip. I love road tripping by myself (well, myself and the pups) because I can take the time to really enjoy the scenery and go for little walks in new places. I especially like having that alone time around this time of year, because it’s a convenient pausing point to consider where I am now, where I was last year, and where I’m trying to get.

I’ve decided that I’m going to start posting the days I’ve worked each week at the bottom of my blog posts. Knowing that people actually might notice if I skip a blog post has helped me stay on track, and I feel like I have a handle on regular posting now. It’s not big deal, but the little boost of self awareness will hopefully help me keep from letting too many non-working days slip by when I get sad, hazy, and generally frazzled. Blog posts won’t count toward the number of writing days, just work on my fiction. I’m aiming for five days a week, since I do still have to write posts and do other types of work. I’m not gonna get down on myself if I fall behind, but I need to develop my self-discipline, and that seems like a solid goal for this year. 

That’s as close as I’m coming to a New Year’s resolution this time around. 2017 has been a thing. I’d say I’m glad to see it go, but who knows what the next year is going to bring. It’s daunting, but new life always springs up from destruction and decay.

Writing days this past week: 0 (A bit of an embarrassing start, but I’m glad to have spent this time focusing on my family and friends.)

Weekend Trip

I’m in San Diego at the moment for my sister in law’s wedding. I’ve only been down here a couple of times before, for the big reptile show they have. Now I get to see some other parts of the area, which is cool. We’re staying at a pretty hotel full of ponds, waterfalls, koi, and cute mandarin ducks. I’m hoping to experience a little more of the beach, but I can see it from the hotel grounds.

I got a mini tour of the UCSD campus from my little sister on Thursday. We saw a cute baby bunny, and then we collected a bunch of snacks, made tea, and binge-watched Miss Congeniality, a spectacularly awful mutant shark movie, and Practical Magic. All in all, a very well spent evening.

Our new lagomorph friend. He was a bit shy.

I had some interesting conversations in Lyfts getting to and from her school. One driver was an older gentleman who explained the publishing industry, the world in general, and my own book to me. He had no writing or publishing experience, but they’re always so helpful, these guys. The other was quite nice and he told me that Istanbul is on a major fault line and has tons of earthquakes, which I didn’t know before. From a fellow passenger, I got an extensive update about the damage the fires in the north have been doing to his friends’ pot farms, and specifically the massive amounts of money hidden in the walls of one of their homes, which has now burned down.

Flying makes me super sick, and Dramamine makes me sleepy, so I didn’t get any work done on the way here. I’m gonna have to play catch up after I finish this post.

Frost on the airplane window.

Airport art is always so cool.