If anyone is still reading this journal...

The reason I haven't posted in forever... 100,262 words!!!

Brief book reviews... ( The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, Frederica & Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer, The Seventh Tower by Garth Nix, Gemma by Noel Streatfield, I am not Esther by Fleur Beale, The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters, The Door in the Air and Other Stories by Margaret Mahy )

I'm trying to buy my terrifically girly princess-adoring niece (who turns 4 in a few weeks) some kind of educational, fun computer game for her birthday. Does anyone have any good ideas?

This is one of the things that has made me happiest this week. 15 of the Arab world's first ladies have got together and are doing something about sexual trafficking, rape and child abuse.

The last week was enormous. I think I got a kick in the pants from the workshop. FOR LO I AM PRODUCTIVITY GIRL!!! ( Read more... )

My course started this week. ( Read more... )

It is to be happy!

Happy, exceedingly joyous, downright fabulous birthday to wonderful turps33 one of the best reasons to LJ in the world.

Most of the time I believe I'm living in one of the best and most just places on Earth. Then something like S92A of the Copyright Act is passed (and will come into effect on 28 February) and I suddenly feel like I'm living somewhere I don't understand or recognise.



Basically, under this law ISPs will be forced to take down internet connections and websites of anyone ACCUSED of copyright infringement. Not people convicted of copyright infringement or even committed for trial after investigation for copyright infringement. Just accused of it. By anyone. Anyone at all.

Although, when it comes into effect, the LWT suggests that it might be good to do a lot of accusing of National Party MPs, big corporate nasties and those who are mean to kittens.

Many people have a better, more erudite and knowledgeable way of discussing this, in particular Creative Freedom and Public Address.

Brief book reviews... ( Larklight & Starcross by Phillip Reeve; Whiskey and Water & Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear; The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi; Nation by Terry Pratchett; The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke; The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman )

I got the course outline for my study yesterday. I'm not quite sure whether to be more terrified or less. Probably more afraid and less worried I think. ( wombling on here... )

The boyo has started creche properly now and he's loving it. In fact he's loving it so much that he doesn't actually nap after morning creche - he just talks in his cot about the teachers and his friends. There's a lot of telling people to put their hats on - we're sun conscious in this country! It's like his brain is screaming for processing time. Or that he just isn't getting quite enough talking in at creche and needs to make up for it afterwards. Because my child? My child can talk a LOT. We realised this when in the car on the way back from Napier he talked to himself for two and a half hours with no input from either of us.

Best phrases this month:
* After it had been explained to him that his Granny couldn't come and play - "Granny an INSIDE toy!"
* "Baby Jess is in BOX" - about his cousin inside her cot/stroller
* "Mama blow BIG nose LOUDLY"
* "Mama was NAKED! Very too NAKED" - announced in a cafe after leaving the swimming pool change rooms


He's also started asking for things that he wants - he asked woolly_socks to "go round and round rock seat with ___". And he's asking questions - "___ will go in little house now?".

He also has a handle on past tense when it relates to things we've driven past or through (particularly the hospital and tunnels) and is beginning to know all the street names around our neck of the woods and how to get home. In fact he has to be the worst backseat driver I've ever driven with.

He's still falling down a lot, unfortunately it's always on his head and nearly always on exactly the same place on his forehead - in fact he could double as a lopsided unicorn if anyone's in need of one. But a very determined unicorn...

Happiest of happy birthdays to erilyn. Hope it's a wonderful day full of very good chocolate, bloody excellent wine and bonus fannish fun.

I just finished my first chapter!!!

Just over 9k and I'll probably slash and burn more than half of it later on. But! FINISHED!

I am listening to The March of the Sinister Ducks in celebration (reading pornography, smoking cigars, ducks, ducks, quack quack) and trying to ignore how many words there still are left to go. The good thing is that I've been very disciplined over the last week and written nearly 3k of what feels like good stuff. Of course, this could just be because I wasn't having to work on expository dialogue (STABBITY-STAB!).

It's strange, I write action like I'm directing a play. So I'm waving my arms around, gesticulating madly and shifting characters around in my head, expressing their emotions through the angle and movement of my limbs. It probably looks like berating the universe or some kind of strange chair-based dance. I guess I'm lucky to be doing this in the straight-jacket-less environment of my living room.

Also, Elgar's Cello Concertos are apparently my preferred writing music at the moment.

Finally a quote from CS Lewis: “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” That's what I want.

But mostly? GLEEEEEE!!!!

In NZ it is very difficult to fire an employee.

I therefore give my hormones their three-hundred-and-seventy-fifth written warning. My uterus is still on probation.

Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and suffer through the debris and abandonment. And at other times it's too late for a rescue...

A few months ago I got very stressed because the boyo wasn't physically affectionate in the same way that my nieces and nephew are. He's been exceedingly cuddly towards his soft toys, but that never transferred to wanting to hug people. This lead to things like me explaining apologetically to my parents that the boyo leaning against their legs was his version of a hug and meant just as much as my nephew flinging himself into their arms.

So the LWT and I have been in serious cuddle training - we cuddle in front of him (such a hardship) and have done lots of explaining about how nice it is to hug people. Training has been helped immensely by his half-sister, who he adores, overtly discovering that people (including me) love the hugs she gives out. From which I deduce that one should never ever underestimate the power of admiration for older women.

It's now been two months of intensive training and cuddles have become more and more de rigeur. To the point where one of the boyo's favourite games is something called Cuddle Tennis. Basically this involves (TM woolly_socks) at least two adults sitting on the floor while he runs between them, cuddling, and announcing at top volume who he is cuddling. "Duddle Mama!" and "Duddle Mim!"

Every now and then there is a "Duddle everybody!"

Today? Today as I was putting him in the car after another very successful and happy day at creche I got a full-on, both arms around my neck, hug and a kiss on the cheek.

My world? It is ROCKED.

Across the Nightingale Floor / Grass for his Pillow / Brilliance of the Moon
by Lian Hearn

( review herein... )

So this is one of those I will actually post something this year, resolution kinda things.

Helloooooo *waves at you all especially the people I've been sadly neglectful of in the last few months while I tried to figure out my life*

2009 is starting off great so far - lots of friends, eleven hours of sleep in the last 24 hours (OMFG!), pohutukawa blossoms everywhere and a small who is gaining exactly one squillion words a day and providing us with excellent combinations of said words - my current favourite being 'hot very too hot' about standing on the concrete in bare feet. All hail the spectacular NZ summer.

Have a picture of said small under our Christmas tree.


And one of him in woolly_socks's sunglasses.


We have such a lovely time together and he's a sweetheart. Cuddle training for the win!

My new year's resolution is to write at least 250 words a day on the original YA fantasy novel I now have plotted. The actual writing is going well so far and, as of mid-Feb, I'll be studying for an advanced diploma in creative writing that should help me gain some local community and support.

As part of that diploma I'll be keeping a diary style thing about my discoveries and thoughts around writing. This will probably include some book reviews as well - mostly of YA fantasy, given that's my usual tipple and what I'm trying to write. At the moment I'm expecting that this LJ will be where that happens, so defriend or filter me at will!

The boyo turns one tomorrow. I've been trying to get my head around it for a couple of days now. Mostly it makes me look at him and then I spend several minutes trying to figure out exactly HOW I can find him quite so cute without actually exploding. Seriously, if he continues to get more and more cute at this kind of exponential rate the world may start to wobble on its axis.

This morning he woke up at about 4.50am and I went in to comfort him. After attempting to go back to sleep with him groaning in distress over the monitor for the next hour I gave up and made his breakfast at about 6am and then picked him up out of his cot. Whereupon he promptly fell asleep on my shoulder, with tears still sliding down his cheeks. So I sat down on the mattress by his bed and held him for the next hour and a half while he slept, thinking back on what we were doing a year ago and how we'd not known who he was.

It seems impossible.

Then the LWT came to find us and the three of us lay on the bed for about ten minutes while he woke up and I marveled at how he'd actually come out of her body.

That seems impossible too.

Just a year ago the LWT was in labour and I didn't think I'd ever be able to forgive the thing that was causing her so much pain. It was scary and awful (in both senses) and I will bless epidurals, sensible midwives, and being a five minute drive from a tertiary hospital that performs caesarian sections forever.

But we have a son who is so definite, so clever, so considering, so full of giggles and smiles. He smells like something that's been in my life forever and it is wonderfully, patently, obviously possible for my heart to expand this much in love.

Probably the thing I'm proudest of at the moment is writing two new stanzas for one of my favourite lullabies, written for my mother to sing to my niece...

The original verses:

Bed is too small for my tired head
Give me a hill topped with trees
Tuck a cloud up under my chin
Lord, blow the moon out please.

Rock me to sleep in a cradle of dreams
Sing me a lullaby of leaves
Tuck a cloud up under my chin
Lord, blow the moon out please.

And the ones I've added:

Sing me to dreamland through dappled starlight
Lulled with a warm hilltop breeze
Tuck a cloud up under my chin
Lord, blow the moon out please.

Gentle my falling asleep with a kiss
Soothe me with night's melodies
Tuck a cloud up under my chin
Lord, blow the moon out please.