Woke up with a bit of a stomachache this morning. I can’t imagine why. _____________ Actually, I’m a little puzzled as why it all hit me so hard last night. It’s not like there was really any new information yesterday–just a surgery date set. We already knew there would be surgery, and soon; there was no doubt about that. I guess somehow it finally got through to my lizard brain, which suddenly must have realized that Oh noes, something bad is happening to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jaylake and people are going to do mean things to him! Aiiieee! Anyway, I feel better this morning. I had weird dreams about needing someone to drive me home to Portland (hmm), then got up and had an excellent yoga practice. Today I need to work out logistics of when I’m leaving my job–looks like my last day will be the 20th, though I’ll still try to keep 12/1 as my “official” end date. Then have to get everything else organized for being gone for a while–orchids tended to, mail, etc. Oh, and must arrange to have my oil changed. And buy tire chains. (And now I am very glad I didn’t buy overpriced airline tickets for Thanksgiving weekend!) And, well, my apartment is gorgeously clean.  Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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My apartment is Very Clean.
-Floors all scrubbed/vacuumed
-Laundry done, folded, put away
-Fern trimmed, all fern fronds vacuumed up
-Toilet cleaned, along with rest of small room
-Shower/tub/sink cleaned, and rest of second small room (Victorian apartment, split bath)
-Surfaces dusted
-Windowsills vacuumed
And, yeah. Finished the potato chips, hit the pistachio ice cream hard, and drank some more of Chaz’ gin too.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Just heard from jaylake…his thoracoscopic surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, November 25th at OHSU in Portland. The day before Thanksgiving. He’ll be in the hospital probably until the weekend. More details to come, but I wanted to get the word out. Alas, this means that OryCon is out for us. But the good news is, all the people coming to town for the con can visit us in the hospital. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Someone else wrote a long and thoughtful post today.
Mom, he’s not kidding about the TMI part (which somehow does not come through when I link it, the cut vanishes…hmmm). You are hereby warned.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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I went to my first writers conference in, it must have been the spring of 2006. The San Francisco Writers Conference. I knew not a soul, not a single soul. But it was in my home town, and it looked like it would be a reasonably good conference, so I thought it would be a smart thing to go to. Well, I hated it. The not-knowing-anyone thing was awful, and the fact that it’s a general con for all kinds of writers–nonfiction and lit fic and self-help and everything–meant that, when you’re standing around introducing yourself to people, and they all tell you what they’re writing, and then you say, “I have a witch novel,” they all look at you like you made a rude noise, or a smelly mess on the carpet. But someone there told me about a con that was better suited to weirdos like me (though they didn’t put it quite that way)–Writers Weekend, in Seattle, a few months later. So I signed up for that, and I thank my lucky stars that I did. In Seattle, I still didn’t know a soul, but I met this nice guy at breakfast. Turned out he was from San Francisco too. He was getting married the next month, so it wasn’t anything like a pickup–but he invited me to join his crit group, pending approval of the other members. That was doctodd , my great good friend and writing buddy/collaborator. His crit group welcomed me in, and they all told me about NaNoWriMo. So that November, I did NaNo and wrote EEL RIVER. And went to the retreat, and met a whole bunch of other cool people, and got invited into a second crit group–the Zombie Club. Slowly, I started to know more writers. I went to a few more cons and retreats and whatnot. Little by little, more of my social life tended to include writers, or be made up entirely of writers. Slowly, bit by little bit, I stopped having to explain what kind of writing I did; or that yes, I have more than one novel; or that no, it’s not a vampire novel. Writers Weekend had a tiny spring retreat in New Jersey that doctodd and I went to. That was the first time that I recognized/remembered/knew people that I had met before, at other cons. That I felt like maybe there was a *community* here, and that I might someday be able to become part of it. (That’s also when I got an agent, who I later parted ways with…but that’s another story.) Then Karen discontinued the Writers Weekend cons and organized a small retreat at Iron Springs, in June of 2008. I already knew at least half the attendees there…and that’s where I met jaylake . Talk about a whole ‘nother story. Anyway. Last year at World Fantasy, jaylake introduced me to the many thousands of people he knew. He welcomed me into his social scene, his milieu. It was FANTASTIC, and a little overwhelming. I made sure to take plenty of down time, and writing time, but still, wow. This year, and my life changed…and I started going to LOTS more cons, with jaylake . And meeting lots more people. And seeing them again, every few weeks or months. And adding them as friends on LiveJournal, on Twitter, on Facebook. And the community grew. At WorldCon in Montreal, I knew so many people. We walked into the party bar and were able to choose which table to sit at, because we knew people at every one of them. We had a full schedule, with lunches and dinners and even some breakfasts planned out in advance, because of all the people that needed seeing. Even so, I made sure that I did my yoga in the mornings, and also wrote, before setting out into con-land. Then Foolscap and SteamCon…small cons, fun. Met more people. And now World Fantasy, this last weekend. It was insane. It was ridiculous. It was so much fun. We were so completely overscheduled, 100%, start to finish. There were so many people I knew and wanted to talk to, people from overseas to meet, and not enough time to see them, to even finish a conversation. The same thing happens every time I get married*: there’s all these people to connect with, who have come from so far away, and they’re only going to be here for a short time, and it’s all over too fast, and then they’re gone, and there were more people I didn’t even get to see, though I know they were there. Local people I don’t see enough of, that I kept waving at as I ran by, on my way to somewhere else. I did no yoga. I got no writing done. I didn’t even keep up with my email. I had Such A Wonderful Time. I am still recovering. Yeah. Everything is different now. I love it. _______________
*Only twice, but, still. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Red...........1
Brown.......1
Blue.........4
Yellow......4
Green.......9
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WOW, am I tired. Four days of nonstop partying networking very seriously with drunken overgrown adolescents* industry movers and shakers really takes it out of a person. I’m sorry, I cannot even begin to describe it. I am still trying to process and remember everything. I halfway wish WFC could be a week long–but then I think it would kill me. When I got home this afternoon, I could barely lift my hands to the keyboard to let jaylake know I’d made it safely up the freeway (as he was stranded in the San Jose airport, boo fail). But oh, such a con it was! It is an unspeakable thrill to meet longtime LJ buddies in real life–and to find out that they are even more wonderful than they seemed on the internet. It is even more wonderful to spend day after day with a thousand people who love genre fiction–FANTASY fiction–who don’t think it’s weird or fringe or wrong or needs explaining or defending in any way. Who think about zombies and vampires and witches and unicorns and demons and fae and magicians in new and fascinating ways. Who are always ready to share a drink and some insight, or just a few laughs. Who leave pink codfish candy in your bed, for you to discover in an intimate moment…okay, maybe that part was less wonderful. Even so. It is some kind of special person who will leave pink codfish candy in your bed, don’t you think? And that’s after the flattened squirrel story, and the strawberry surprise. But enough about that. I am home, I am exhausted, and alas, the real world presses upon us. After Thursday, we will know when jaylake ’s surgery will be… I feel like my universe is holding its breath until then. I have four more weeks of the Day Job. I am trying not to worry about too much, especially the things I cannot control. So a weekend of distractions was deeply pleasing. ______________
*And yes, I DO include myself in that horrible slander…why do you think I’m so tired??? Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes yesterday!! It was truly a fun and fantastic day, start to finish.
I’d tell you all about it, but then I’d have to kill you, and I just don’t have time for that. Suffice it to say, it’s really thoughtful of the WFC organizers to have this wonderful con on my birthday every year, I truly appreciate it.
And speaking of the con–I’m off once more. Have a great day, everyone, and happy wordcount to those doing NaNo!
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Best.
Birthday.
Evar.
Yep, it’s not even 9am and that is already true.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Yesterday morning I did my packing and organizing and hunting and gathering, then drove down to San Jose. Got here around 1, tired and stressed and demoralized. An hour with jaylake and that was completely turned around.
Then we went down to the bar and immediately jumped into the fray. The plan was to have a quiet drink with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, but "quiet" and "the bar at WFC" are mutually exclusive concepts.
I am not even going to attempt to list the names and/or LJ handles of everyone we saw and hung out with, except to note that it was an enormous thrill to finally meet desperance in person. (And his great good friend moshui .) (And, of course, la_marquise_de_ .)
General hanging out and drinking and frivolity ensued, and eventually, a gang of about 30 of us descended upon the Johnny Rockets for dinner. Afterwards, we repaired back to (yes!) the bar.
It went like that. And what shall happen today? Golly, I have no idea! :-)
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Well, despite all the busy, I’ve been feeling rather more isolated these last two days than is probably good for me. It’s nobody’s fault–just, lots going on, accidents of timing, etc. But now it stops: I’m heading down to San Jose as soon as I can get everything done here, where I will find jaylake, of course, and all sorts of lovely distractions. As jaylake says, see some, all, or none of you there! Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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I’m back at the Day Jobbe today for just one day before heading off to World Fantasy tomorrow. I can’t decide if this is crazy or not. I’ve been swamped with little (and not so little) urgent things that have kept me busy all day, so I guess that’s good. Unless they are *so* urgent that Boss Lady would have done them herself, if I’d simply stayed away till after WFC… Because there’s certainly plenty I could do at home. I sort of unpacked, but haven’t repacked. I have shopping to do, my apartment is a shambles, there’s green and moldy things in the fridge, etc. But, oh well. jaylake is even busier than I am, and we’re both trying to keep ourselves surrounded by people until we’re together again tomorrow. He’s been more successful at that than I have–I’d hoped to see the_ogre last night, but by the time he was done with WFC stuff, it was way too late to get together, and I was exhausted. So instead I talked on the phone to Mark for a long time, and stayed up way too late. But he’s someone who understands about random unfair suffering–heck, he wrote a whole book about it–so he was good to talk to. Then of course, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Stayed in bed, finally dozed off right before the alarm at 5:30…thought about skipping yoga, but decided I’d feel better if I went. I think that’s the right decision. But I am sure tired now. Lunch today with Notorious G, and tonight I’m going out to see Jonathan Lethem interviewed at a City Arts and Lectures event, and dinner before, with Clark Kent. Then tomorrow–packing, shopping, and drive to San Jose. So, that’s me today: keeping busy. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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1. Travel Update.
I am home, back in the Witchnest, after a day of such travel win that I’m almost a-feared to talk about it. So, I will just take it as payback for all those travel fail days. Briefly: tillyjane fetched me to the airport–no traffic. Got there crazy early, so I had a nice sit-down breakfast. Went through security–was the only one in line. Still early, and only a dozen or so people at the gate, but the plane was already there. We boarded right on time. The flight was way undersold; by the time we took off (early) the last 15 or so rows were completely empty. I had my whole row to myself. We landed early, and got off the plane superfast, since there were so few of us. The long-term parking bus was just pulling up when I got to the sidewalk. The Witchmobile conveyed me to the Witchnest without incident, even down to the parking–which, okay, isn’t rockstar, but it is a half a block away, so I’m going to call that a win. Then I realized I’d forgotten to get my mail on the way home. It’s a nice hilly walk over there, though, so I decided to make exercise out of it. (Helps that it’s a nice day here.) And now I am back from that…and thinking about how to write about It All. 2. It All.
As nervous as we were, as anxious, as ready for anything–we weren’t ready for the oncologist to walk in and say, “Well, the results were interesting.” You do not want to be “interesting” to an oncologist. You want to be very, VERY boring to an oncologist. You want the oncologist to say, Go, get out of my office, never darken my door again! Why were you pretending to have cancer? Fie! Begone! “Interesting”? Not so much. But it *is* interesting, of course. There we were, all freaked out about colon cancer, about recurring polyps, last May. But whoops! What’s this in the liver? Then we were all freaked out about cancer in the liver. jaylake, never a big drinker, stopped drinking alcohol altogether. The weird little lung spot–even the doctors didn’t seem all that interested in it, especially after hearing about jaylake’s childhood in the tropics. So there we are, ready for the worst…and she walks in and calls it “interesting.” There was no reasonable (noncancerous) explanation for the liver spot…except now it’s gone. But the lung spot? “Interesting.” I don’t do well with surprises, with deeply unexpected things. I’m slow to adjust, to take in the new information, to let my lizard brain gnaw on it and figure out what it means. Then I do, after a while, and then I can handle it. I’m much better today: we have a diagnosis, something reasonably definitive (though of course there are still questions–is it metastasized colon cancer, or a novel lung cancer?). We have an action plan, though no dates yet–just, “Soon.” There will be things to do, hands to hold, hospitals to sit in, logistics to take care of. I can do that stuff: I’m good with that stuff. So is it wrong to be feeling some kind of relief here? It is relief from the anxiety of the unknown, at least. But it’s also deeply unfair, and that really hit me last night. I went all the way to the bottom of the wallowing well–”This isn’t fair, I just found you, don’t leave me, you’re too young, why is this happening,” etc etc. jaylake held me and listened to all of that and comforted me and did all the right things. Then I felt guilty, because, as I said before, this isn’t about me. Except it is, too; it’s just mostly about him. He’s at the center of it, and he will not be able to be taking care of me so much as this goes forward. I’ll be taking care of him, as will his huge and incredible network of loved ones. And many of them will be taking care of me as well. This is the part that bowls me over: the network. Never in my life have I been a part of such a deep and rich circle, so many people, who care so much. It says a lot for jaylake that he is loved like this–and that I have been welcomed so thoroughly into the circle, even though I haven’t been here that long. We hadn’t even met when he had his first round of this last year. Okay, I’m getting maudlin here. I just want to say, thank you all for listening, for being there, for offering help, for loving jaylake. For accepting me as a part of his life. For continuing to offer support, which we will both need as these “excellent cancer adventures” move forward. For everything. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Well, it’s never what you expect. I don’t have anything coherent or intelligent to say, so I will just post a link where Jay explains what we know so far. Sigh. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Waiting, just waiting.
Not being very productive.
But hey–now I can cross blogging off the list!
More later, you can be certain of it.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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I was going to title this post “Ahh…Home.” Till I realized….um, I’m not home. I am back from a con in a different city, to a house where I sleep a lot of nights, and I have some stuff here, and it’s full of jaylake and Jayness, but…yeah, I’m still in Portland. I’ll leave the interpretation of *that* to the reader. Anyway–yes: Ahh–back from Seattle and SteamCon, which was filled with such utter gorgeous fantasticness that I cannot even tell you. There are pictures floating around the intarwebs, including on jaylake’s LJ, but they barely scratch the surface of the depth of the costumery there. *Really* impressive. I saw a bunch of old friends and made some cool new friends, did a lot of BarCon, and basically the time went very fast. Now we return to reality, briefly but dramatically: oncology consult tomorrow afternoon. Then I am back to SF for an hour or two, and then off to San Jose for World Fantasy. Sooner or later, perhaps, there will be time to stop and think. Maybe. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Wow, the costumes here! What a gorgeous con! jaylake and I sat in the corner of the bar last night for an hour or more, which had a big window overlooking a staircase leading down to registration and the pool. It looked like a crazed alternative-reality Victorian garden party. I cannot even begin to describe it… But the good news is that the setting led to a discussion this morning about steampunk in general and the story I’m currently writing in particular, and that in turn led to one of those gorgeous AHA! moments, and I now know what the story is and where it’s going. (I’m only 1,000 words into it, and luckily not *all* of them are going to have to be junked…) Alas, I have to go wander around in corset and boots and pearls and braids and velvet and lace and leather now, so I won’t likely get back to writing till Monday…but, the idea rests firmly in my head. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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But…since this is my journal, here is where it *is* about me. So, yesterday was a hard day. I know it was much harder for jaylake than it was for me (and if you haven’t read his update, hop on over and do so, ’cause I’m not going to rewrite it all here…as if I could do the story any justice!), but…there was enough not-easy to go around. The part about having to leave the room while they were jabbing at him with needles…that’s a funny thing I get. It’s not squeamishness about blood, per se; I’m female, and, um, the female of our species gets plenty of close familiarity with blood by the time she’s a teenager. It’s more of an empathy issue, where I cannot stand to see the person I love in pain. I’d have much rather all that jabbing and poking have been done on *me*, frankly. Not that I like pain–I’m actually quite a wuss about pain, I have a very low threshold for it–but it’s worse to watch it being inflicted upon someone I care deeply about. I get this with public speaking, too. Which, as everyone knows, it’s hard to imagine something more ridiculous than jaylake with stagefright, being uncomfortable speaking before an audience…but, seeing him on stage, it makes me a little nervous. As if it’s me, with my own deep and irrational fear that you’re all looking at me and I’ve got nothing to say. For the important parts of the caring-supporting-partner role, I’ve got that down, no problem. I can be attentive and alert and rational in the scary consultations, and take notes, and ask questions, and hold it all together. When the darkness and the Fear swamps him, I can hold him and let him cry and tell him that we’re in this together, not to worry, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere… Even for the general optimism and positive thinking, that’s just my nature: we’ll beat this, whatever it turns out to be. Bring it on. It doesn’t scare me. Funny, that. The prospect of chemo, of holding his hair while he’s sick, of all the assorted medical uglinesses of that–I can visualize it, and, while I sure wouldn’t love it, it doesn’t frighten me, doesn’t knock me over. But seeing a stern woman jab at his arm and say, “Oh, that’s not good”–I have to leave the room, and to do so so obviously that the nice nurse comes out and asks if I’m all right. ________________ So, now we wait till Monday. jaylake is much calmer today–busy now with work stuff, but we both slept like crazy last night, and all the drama and angst of yesterday is behind us. I know we’ll both be getting increasingly nervous up until Monday at 2pm–after all, we won’t *know* anything till then, and that’s what this is all about–but for now, whew. And SteamCon will be totally fun. After the hospital, and a very late lunch, and some errands, we ducked into a fantastic thrift store yesterday where I found a long leather trenchcoat for $16. $16! And a couple of other cool things. Retail therapy FTW! And no sales tax. I love Oregon. _________________ It was very nice to spend so much time with tillyjane . Though we agreed that just about anywhere other than a hospital would have been better; next time, we will try hiking. And amid all the chatting, we did get a lot of reading done–I made a lot of progress on The Book of Joby, which is cool because I’ll get to hang out with the author this weekend. And that’s always more fun if you’ve actually read their work. _________________ So that’s the news of the headspace of the witch. Now, to shower, repack, and get ready to drive 200 miles in the rain… Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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It went like this.
Whilst our hero was napping,tillyjane and I rode the funicular tram* up and down, which was a small adventure its own self.  But further reporting shall have to wait, as we are off for the_child ’s birthday dinner!
____________
*I stand corrected. But "funicular " was much more fun to say. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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…though you know it’s bad news when just *getting* to the freeway uses up all of the copious slack time in your schedule. Very, very failish traffic in the city; some traffic on the freeway; almost no long-term parking in the covered garage; long but not insane security line; and then, and then, and then…I get through, minutes before boarding, check the monitors, and…WTF? INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL? My flight from SFO to Portland is leaving from the INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL??? Yep. So I hightail it over there…fortunately, the flight attendants must have also not gotten the memo, they are late too. Eventually they showed up, we boarded, and here I am. As a reward for all that, the flight was not full, and the seat next to me was empty. Yay! And I am reading a wonderful book–The Book of Joby by Mark Ferrari. And best of all, jaylake was waiting for me just outside security, though we’d thought it likely I’d have to take a taxi. And now, we keep waiting. But at least we’re waiting in the same place now. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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awake
busy
indescribable
impressed
contemplative
exhausted
blank