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March 18, 2014 · 8:57 am

Ouch. A grumble.

I’m a hurtin’ cowgirl this morning. No, I’ve not fallen or anything like that–rather, the family history of aches and pains is catching up with me. The rheumatiz. The arthritis. Overuse syndromes. Tendonitis. Yuck.

There are various causes for the aches and pains. Not fibromyalgia; already ruled out. Myofascial pain syndrome was diagnosed years ago, during another winter of aches like this past one. A past inflamed bursa in one foot now flares up when I’ve been on my feet too long at work. Then there are different overuse syndromes in places ranging from thumbs to shoulders to knees, etc, etc, etc.

No advice needed regarding managing it, please. I’ve been through this dance for many years and I have the management kind of figured out. I can’t take NSAIDS due to the effect on my gut and it’s not bad enough for steroids or other arthritis meds. Acupuncture helps with immediate trauma but not the long-term stuff. I already get body work done, and I’m not willing to spend lots of $$ chasing probable remedies.

Part of the problem is a cascade of fatigue-pain-backing off from stretching/workouts that help manage the pain and fatigue. When I’m tired, I have to back off from doing my stretches (which keep the pain at bay). I end up doing stuff that triggers the overuse syndromes otherwise, and sometimes it happens anyway. The pain keeps me from stretching, and it interferes with sleep. Nasty cycle.

The 80 mile daily round-trip commute doesn’t help things, either. This is the second year that I’ve developed tendonitis in my thumbs that we can attribute to the daily drive. The immediate trigger was something else, but the driving doesn’t help. Ah well, after June 13 it won’t be an issue.

Meanwhile, this spring break, I plan to get back into stretching and working out. I’ll have time to rest, as well as work on the writing and other stuff that needs to get done. Take the time to get this stuff under control and prepare for the last long slog.

I can do this. But man, it sure does ache.

 

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March 13, 2014 · 11:05 pm

Of Writing, Teaching, and An Announcement (at the end)

TL:DR–announcement at the end. I’m evil that way.

So I’m kind of behind on what my writing schedule says I should be doing by now. Some of that has been due to things like, oh, um, work life, other writing projects, reinventing the work life, um, horse rehab life, ski life or rather the lack thereof, real estate craziness, um, reinventing work life yet again, and, and, and…

But most of the delays have been due to the plain and simple fact that I really don’t know what to do with Netwalk’s Children yet. I’m still figuring out why that is, but to a certain degree, the issue comes down to the reality that this book is a crucial point in the Netwalk Sequence. This book hands over the major part of the Sequence to the next generation; from Melanie and Marty to Bess and Alex, Sophie and Don. Plus friends and relatives.

Additionally, it becomes a turning point in the series arc, because Bess ultimately has to directly take on Gizmo. Not only does she defuse an immediate threat but she lays the foundation for further protection against the power that Gizmo represents. She becomes a foundational element in a human-digital fusion which has the potential to affect not just one world but many worlds. Bess transcends worlds…but as of yet, I’ve not gotten a full picture of what that looks like. I have imperfect realizations but they’re far from what I want. Yet.

I do have this image of a young woman with long dark hair, cinnamon skin, and high cheekbones gazing up as golden bytes flow over her, on a blue background. I have some idea of what that event is. But it keeps changing, even as I keep working and writing.

I’ve been ducking this story for nearly a year. There is a completed outline. It’s insufficiently reflective of current canon, and one reason is that I’ve spent the past year writing stories to flesh out the Sequence’s backstory. They’re available for free on the website under the Netwalk Foundations tab. I also have the illustrated trilogy, Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Andrews Ranch. All but the last one are currently available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google Play. I’m working on Andrews Ranch right now and having a lot of fun with it.

The whole writing world hasn’t been just Netwalk Sequence, though. I’ve also rewritten a couple of stories and managed copy edits for a short story and a novella. I have two short stories coming out so far this year, one in the inaugural edition of Fantasy Scroll Magazine and the other in Trust and Treachery (Dark Quest Books, April). My novella, Seeking Shelter at the End of the World, comes out from eTreasures Publishing in June. I’ve not exactly been idle.

But I am feeling tired. I do have projects to write. It’s just…getting to them in the face of the Day Jobbe.

Which leads to…Life In General.

I signed the final paperwork today. I am not renewing my teaching contract. After ten years, I’m not going to be going back to school in August.

This isn’t really new news. I’ve mentioned this in comments, and emails, and etc. It’s more of a matter of being tired, and tired of driving 80 miles a day, and tired of having to break off from a story because the clock says it’s time, damn it, and tired of being tired. Teaching, even part-time, is a physically difficult job. You are on your feet constantly, usually on tile-covered cement slabs. As a middle school teacher, you deal daily with the drama and agonies of early adolescence, and have to do so with a measure of equanimity and unflappability.  February and March are their own peculiar hells, and I’ve been experiencing those hells in a rather excruciating slo-mo this year.

I’m done with formal k-12 teaching for the moment. I want to leave while there are moments I still enjoy and savor. But I need to go. There are too many days when I hurt. Too many days when I am angry about what modern education has become. My ten years of teaching manages to span the effect of No Child Left Behind, and the taste is bitter in my mouth. No, better to choose the time, and go when I feel best. This year is a good time, not just for me, but for my memories of the place I have worked in and loved so dearly. I can make good memories with leaving this year–so it is time.

Doesn’t mean I won’t be a teacher of some sort or another. Even thinking about possibilities of some sort of teaching work that doesn’t involve a daily commute perks me up. I like tutorial work, and I’m a darn good remedial writing teacher. Heck, I like teaching writing, period.

But it’s time for me to move on from the daily classroom grind. What that will look like in a couple of years, five more years, ten more years–who knows? I get ideas all the time.

Where I go from here, whether that becomes Portland, Enterprise, or somewhere else–who knows. It’s a new adventure. The Next Adventure.

Onward.

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February 16, 2014 · 8:37 am

Musings on a Sunday morning…writing, skiing, horse

I’ve not been blogging a lot lately. Some of that is due to life circumstances–busyness, active work on creating some new options, surviving at the day job, horse stuff–and some of that is due to actual writing.

Well, maybe not so much of that this month. But there have been revisions and wrangling with software for e-publishing things, as well as thinking and planning for marketing work. I also have two side nonfiction projects that are in a development stage–mostly memoirish things that require regular notetaking.

Winter has also been somewhat delayed until the past week. We went skiing yesterday, and for the first time, it actually looked like winter ski season at Timberline. The Cascade snowpack has been at 49% of what it should be; that should change significantly due to the storms of the past week and the upcoming storms next week. Yesterday’s ski session was good, but I’m definitely noticing a mental hangover from last year’s crash and the difficult time with boots. I’m skiing more cautiously and tentatively. I asked the husband about it and he noted the difference. However, with this last bout of snowfall, I think I can make it worth my while to now plan to get in at least one day of skiing during the week–just getting time on the slope will get me past this phase.

The good news is that the Dalbello boots and I are finally clicking. They’re a stiff and tough boot to break in, but breaking in is finally happening. One reason for my tentative skiing is that I’m learning these boots. They are a very sensitive and reactive boot, so I have to ski with a firmer touch. Yesterday’s deep Cascade concrete–heavy, wet snow piling up steadily–also called for a more upright, backward balance to keep my tips from digging in and tripping me, and it was the first time I’d skied this boot in these conditions. On the other hand, the conditions also led to a rather cool moment where I pointed my skis straight down an ungroomed slope (last 200 yards of the Mile, transiting over from Norman), rocked back a little bit, and just bounced down the slope as if I were sledding on the skis, no turns. The boots floated nicely with my feet, good and stable, with solid support. I maybe saw my tips every few bounces–about a good six inch depth in places. That was definitely a “whee!” moment.

The other thing I noticed yesterday was that there were definitely moments when, with less experience and a softer boot, I would have gone down. Nonetheless, I’m happy to figure out that these boots really do work, and what I need is just many days on them to get myself in tune with the Dalbellos. I think I have spring skiing plans….

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And then there was après-ski with Mocha. We have to scale back on our work–she’s tweaking something and coming up sore, as in okay at the start of the work but sore as we stop (all walk work, either long line or bareback, happens in long line mostly). I suspect it’s either the weight of the shoe, or breakover from the foot growth. I’ve also been using side reins set for a snug collected frame when ground driving, and I think that’s another factor. So we’re going to back off of the more collected and elaborate work, and go with looser side reins.

A greater concern is that I’ve been watching her hock movement as we ground drive, and I’m really not thrilled with what I am seeing. Much contemplation here.

Anyway, onward with the day.

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October 26, 2013 · 6:11 am

Crazy October

Wasn’t it just a few days ago that Mocha and I were at the horse show? It’s been close to a month now, and it seems like that whole time has just spun by.

Part of that has involved a welcome uptick in Day Jobbe activity–primarily extra duty diagnostic assessment at the high school. I’ve spotted former students, chatted with colleagues, and mentally noted some patterns that you don’t normally notice when you’re just testing your own caseload kids. Even before, when I had to do a flurry of testing, that involved younger kids with fairly similar backgrounds. At the high school, I’m seeing kids from different programs than mine, and the things I notice are interesting.

One pattern that I keep coming back to is that I am seeing how a lack of grammar knowledge is not just a composition issue but is also a comprehension issue. I’m chewing on that thought pretty heavily. Key element: it’s dang hard to pick out the main idea in a sentence or paragraph when a reader consistently confuses prepositional phrases describing the main idea with the main idea itself. Just sayin’.

Anyway, there’s some other stuff going on involving the Day Jobbe that I can’t talk about at the moment, and it’s tied into personal life stuff. Potential positives all around, but…can’t talk too much yet.

Writing is in a shambles at the moment. Between testing and wrestling with our new student database program to produce not just grades but IEPs for three students just before conferences, I’ve not had a lot of mental energy for writing. Some of the other stuff going on has interfered as well. It’s frustrating but very real. However, during conferences today I did get some words down. Not a lot, but…Becoming Solo really does need focus and attention. I have to do a LOT of writing, and soon, to meet deadline. But now that that first big set of IEPs is over except for paperwork corrections, and conferences are over and I’ve figured out the new gradebook (for now), things should stabilize. Maybe.

Conferences. Things started going south the day before when kids came up to me practically in tears because they were flunking my class. And these were my A students.

What the ?!#@?!?

I quickly figured out that the damn student management database software had blown up again. Luckily, a bit of wrestling with it straightened things out, and I learned a piece of valuable information. All I’ve gotta say, though, is that if a database designer DOESN’T MEAN to have the main page of a grade book to produce reliable grade calculations, then turn off the capacity to enter grades in that screen. Period. I know enough about databases to know it’s doable.

In any case, I fixed the gradebook, printed out progress reports, and started my parent meetings with abject, heartfelt apologies to student and parent; explained the circumstances, apologized again, and handed the corrected grade over. Several kids were facing grounding over that damn gradebook screwup, and I feel horrible about it.

As it were, I had one of my biggest turnouts ever for conferences. But it was tiring and difficult, with intense meeting time mixed with dead time (we were in the gym rather than in our rooms). But running to 8 pm on Thursday, then getting back up the Mountain for more meetings by 8 am was tiring. Still, I feel like it was a productive set of conferences.

But dang, I’m tired. And October is almost over. Where did it go?

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September 26, 2013 · 3:52 pm

A plethora of posts to write–quick hits–teacher politics, horse politics, and a fun reflection on writing with kids

As usual, life’s gotten busy and I have things to write about which just ain’t happenin’ as individual posts at the moment.

To start with, David Gilmour (NOT the Pink Floyd musician but the writer and lit prof) doesn’t like teaching about women writers. There’s dozens of excellent rants around the web about his sexism, but I’ve got an additional reaction which seriously provokes my ire–the assumption on his part that teaching is all about being able to present material smoothly and effectively (his assertion that “I’m a natural teacher” where he goes on to state that his experience speaking on camera gives him Magic Teacher Juju).

Um. Erm. HULK SMASH NOW?!

There’s significantly more to being a good teacher than whether you can deliver a brilliant presentation. If that’s your only tool, then you’re a good lecturer. That’s different from being a good teacher. A good teacher can develop the sort of connection with his or her students that allows the teacher to quickly ascertain student understanding on the fly, diagnose what is/isn’t working, and modify both presentation and individual/small group instruction (which may or may not include the lecture) IN PROCESS to facilitate learning. You can be a brilliant lecturer but a crappy teacher.

Additionally, that conflating of lecture and the art and science of teaching is symptomatic of the sort of mentality that pervades much of the current educational deformist movements in the US public education system at the moment, usually mouthed by those who haven’t set foot in a classroom since they left it as students. Yes, you have to be able to know your subject and communicate what you know to students. But–you have to be able to diagnose when learning runs off of the rails and figure out how to fix it–fast. That sort of understanding doesn’t come from book larnin’, folks–it comes from practice, observation, and more practice.

My sense from both the linked interview and Gilmour’s own statements, plus additional commentary from students, is that he may be a brilliant lecturer, but at least half of his students aren’t necessarily learning (and can we guess which gender that is?). I don’t care whether he’s at a university or in the k-12 system–that’s not the mark of an effective or natural teacher. ‘Nuff said.

Next item. Mark Arbello, the San Diego horse trainer who killed a horse in training by using a tie-around method of bitting up. From what I’ve read so far, there are so many things wrong with how he executed that particular method that it isn’t even funny. I have seen this tool used effectively with a limited subset of hard-case rehab horses whose next stop was the auction if they didn’t turn around, but Arbello did Every. Damn. Thing. Wrong. Shanked bit, not a snaffle (for the non-horsey, a shanked bit puts leverage pressure on the horse’s head in a very painful way if used for this purpose and can lead to the type of reaction which caused this lovely mare’s death). Cranked tight and hard (nope). Tied the horse up instead of letting the horse move on their own. Unsupervised. Grrr.

For the record, I don’t use this tool. I know how to use it, but I don’t. I prefer a side rein method, loosely adjusted so that the horse practices moving in balance but is figuring it out for themselves–and the horse is supervised so that if it causes anxiety instead of the desired result, the human can quickly intervene to prevent a blowup.

Of course, there are plenty of folks out there condemning both techniques with a broad brush and insisting that the way they use side reins is the Only True Way. Sigh. Horse politics are too damn much like health care politics these days, everyone’s waxing opinionated with closed minds. ‘Nuff said with that grumble.

And last of all, for those who are still reading, I’m having some fun times working on a vocabulary story with my intervention class students. I’m not fond of the drill and kill method of vocabulary development where you make kids look up lots of words in the dictionary and write them down, plus use the word in a sentence. A little bit of this work to teach how to use the dictionary is useful, but that’s what you use it for. For vocabulary development, they’ve got to use the words and understand their meaning. I’ve graded enough half-ass-done dictionary vocabulary exercises with poorly written sentences that I don’t like to do that method.

Instead, I want kids to use the words in a way that helps them understand the meaning of these words–ergo, vocabulary pictionary, vocabulary charades, and what I’m doing now–the vocabulary story.  This is a new thing, but basically, I created three categories–event, personality, scene–and had the kids classify the vocabulary words accordingly. Boy, was that ever a knock-down, drag-out argument in some cases, but the kids came up with good justification for that placement. Then, yesterday, we started creating characters, settings, and the first beginnings of plot.

Wow. Can we say buy-in? And, as we discussed how to incorporate various elements of the words into a story (conundrum, assonance, inference are just some of the vocabulary words), I noticed that the kids started talking authoritatively about the meaning of the words, and when I’d throw out a question about how we could craft a character to reflect those words, they got it.

Cool.

Though I’ve gotta say, the stories may well turn out to be this rather bizarre mishmash of Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, and some very, very odd cartoons. But all in good fun. After all, how often do I get to work with pink unicorn ninjas in a moldy candy cane forest? Nonetheless, the kids are excited and engaged–which is really, really good.

 

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September 19, 2013 · 4:16 pm

On time travel and oooh them awful girl cooties

So Charlie Stross appears to have committed one of those “oh no headdesk no no” moments when he asserted that there’s a dearth of female time travelers in SF, going on to claim that it’s harder for women to exercise the sort of agency a time traveler could/should enjoy in older, potentially more sexually repressive societies.

Ahem (Marge Piercy, Woman at the Edge of Time for starters, cough-cough).

While there’s been some most excellent counters to his assertions from various excellent women writers, I want to throw my two cents in as well, based on my own knowledge of local and regional history in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Right off the bat, I’ll confess to an occasional fascination for the tales of women adventurers in the Old West of North America (okay, maybe I’ll give Stross a pass on these, simply because that’s a regional focus and he may not know of them). Not all of them were cross-dressing as male, though there are some absolutely incredible stories about women who lived their lives out as remote cowboys, only to be outed upon severe injury or death. Some were spouses or female companions to males–Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spaulding are two who come quickly to mind, along with Sacajawea and Marie Dorion.

But there were plenty-many other women in the Old West who went out along with the boys and held their own. Some, like Elinore Pruitt Stewart, were simply trying to make a living. We know about Elinore because of her entertaining published letters, but she and her sister ranchwomen had no qualms about loading up wagons and horses and going out on their own for camping and fishing expeditions, either with or without the men.

Elinore wasn’t the only one, though. Looking at my shelf of memoirs and diaries of settler women, I find Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker, Phoebe Goodell Judson, Agnes Morley Cleaveland, Harriet Fish Backus, and others. If you add in the Victorian adventure travelers, there’s Isabella Bird as well as a host of others. Dee Brown, Janet Robertson and others.

Granted, these are all frontier colonial women, in a specific setting and we won’t go into the issues which arise therein (except to point out that Native women also had similar bold and adventuring women–we just don’t hear those stories). But if I can think of these histories of real, actual women on just one continent, of women who weren’t necessarily madonnas, teachers or prostitutes, then who’s to say that a time-traveling woman with appropriate research couldn’t have found a way to fit into these societies?

Hmm. Methinks I have a twinkling of a story idea here.

That is, after I write the Big Post-Apocalyptic story with strong female leads who don’t defer to Big Male Macho Boy Sex Fantasies (otherwise known as my oh no John Barnes no moment).

Yeah. Let’s just say I’m a grumpy and disgusted crone at the moment.

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September 16, 2013 · 4:16 pm

Well, that was a weekend

Those of you who know me personally are aware that I don’t have a lot of tolerance for high temperatures, especially humid high temps. I’ve done a lot of what’s recommended to help, but the bottom line is still this–I’m a lousy candidate for muggy, warm survival situations. Give me snow and ice any day instead, or else dry heat with cool evening temps. Hydration, electrolytes–no matter what, all of that is temporary. At some point, I succumb to the effects of heat exhaustion if I go through too many days of high heat without any cool relief. Come the big global warming, you’ll find me as high up on a mountainside as I can stand to be, probably seeking the last glacier for relief. If climate change turns to global cooling instead, I’ll be a happy girl.

Heat problems happened this past Friday. The temps hit the mid-90s on Wednesday, even on the Mountain, followed by two days where it was almost as hot. And muggy. Even worse in my south-facing classroom, where I couldn’t really open my door because of the noise and distraction from younger kids at recess for most of the afternoon.

Wednesday and Thursday were survivable, though the warnings from the ol’ bod started popping up on Friday morning with roiling gut, achy muscles, and general fatigue. But on Friday afternoon, as the room temps climbed toward 80+ degrees, I was struggling. I opened the door as soon as I could, but even that gave me and the kids little relief. I was simply grateful that my classes weren’t larger.

Still, I felt awful as I left work. I’d planned to go to the barn and ride Mocha, but realized that might not be too good an idea. I went home, self-medicated for the body aches with a couple of drinks after a good dinner…and ended up hurling it all back up. Fairly predictable, and it’s something that has happened in the past, even without the alcohol. It didn’t help that the house was hot because we’d had a contractor in to repair some dry wall, so the house had to be open to air out the smell while the mud dried. Even with ice packs on my neck I felt miserable and sick.

Saturday was pretty much a lost cause. I slept until noon, drank water mixed with sugar and salt to help my gut absorb it, but it wasn’t until 4 pm–about 24 hours after leaving that hot, muggy room–that I started feeling remotely human. Shortly after that I started writing, and got in about 1500 words. By Sunday I was sufficiently recovered, though tired, enough to clean up the room that had gone through dry wall repairs and move everything back, plus do lesson planning and write a little bit.

At least this is probably it for hot weather around here this year. Next spring, even if it is hot, won’t be so bad because of the angle of the sun. It’s only horrible in the fall (thank you so much Nasty Past Administrator who had the trees that blocked that sun cut down).

(And for those of you who’d offer advice, suggest ice pack head coverings, ice pack bandannas and the like–nope. All forbidden by dress codes for students which means I can’t do them either. And fans get subject to other issues of accessibility plus they don’t do that much for air movement. This is just a kvetching post, not a solicitation for advice.)

It wasn’t a completely lost weekend, for which I am grateful. Needless to say, I’m welcoming the coolness and wet today. It’ll still take a few days for the system to completely be happy post-heat, but like my rescue chrysanthemums that kept springing bigger and bigger the more I watered them this weekend, I’m coming back from the heat.

Winter is coming–and I’m one who’s looking forward to it.

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July 18, 2013 · 9:57 am

OCF and other stuff

I really have to either block out time for blogging or else spend time writing posts that get published some time after I’ve written them. Sigh.  Just a busy life at the moment.

Anyway. Last weekend we went to Oregon Country Fair and stayed at our favorite campground nearby. Well, okay, about three quarters of a mile or so by foot from our campsite to the front gates. We are part of a larger group that we just sort of fell into our first year camping in the very back end of the site. It’s a congenial place to hang out and our accustomed spot in the campground is pretty private. We usually camp in the trees with our door facing away from the main trail.

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One of the things about Fair is a lot of wry little visual jokes and word puns, as well as lovely decorations. This year, one of the campers decorated the little trail leading from the campground to the road.

 

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Fair is about a lot of things. There’s music, and entertainment, including some really amazing acrobatic work. This year the acrobatic performances were just plain stunning. There’s also food, and crafts, and other fun stuff. I put aside a small budget for shopping at two of my favorite clothing vendors, Organic Attire and Intertwined Designs. I don’t buy a lot, but I buy something every year, especially from Organic Attire because I love their cotton clothing and their designs. I love Intertwined Designs’s capri pants because they’re the first capri that actually looks good on me and they’re quite durable! I now have three pairs….anyway, both vendors feature good quality, durable, organically produced clothing.

But the food…Country Fair is a safe place for me to find food I can eat with my allergies. And, this year, at a neighboring campground, I discovered a food vendor who makes gluten-free crepes! So for two mornings I had a chocolate gluten-free crepe for breakfast. Yum. I have not had crepes for YEARS due to my allergies.

The other thing about camping at Fair is that it is safe, friendly, and pretty doggone relaxing. After setting up camp on Thursday, we just plain hung out, visited with folks, walked around admiring the other camp decorations, and read/wrote (DH read, I wrote). We went into Fair on Friday, saw the performances we wanted to see, ate lots of good food, visited my favorite gluten-free cupcake booth, and I did my clothing shopping. Saturday, we hung out around camp and red/wrote, then went to Fair late to see some performances and eat dinner.

We didn’t go into Fair on Sunday but took our time packing, had more crepes, and said our farewells. That I-5 drive was foremost on our minds so we made sure we got out on the freeway fairly early and avoided traffic until about Aurora, when we bailed off of 5 and onto 99E.

Wow. What a short summary for such a fun time. I did sell some books and did some promos. And I wrote. But, most of all, I relaxed. One nice thing about our campground is the solar showers. Big solar showers. We went to the showers about midday and, in spite of lines to get in, still had lots of comfortably warm water to shower.

The campground had its own entertainment, with bands playing at night, fire spinners, and drum circles. Individual camps had smaller bands, and our camp features a nighttime movie show.

All in all, a good, relaxing time. But now we have to wait another year for it to happen again. Sigh.

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July 8, 2013 · 6:18 pm

So that was a long weekend

Besides going to the Blues Festival, I managed to write 7200 words on a short piece–one of the Netwalk Foundations segments. It will be going up next week. And now I absolutely have to stop writing long pieces for what’s supposed to be a short snippet worldbuilding promo, not full-on short stories. Period. I’ll do that after the last Daughters piece.

Still, I managed to get some good ideas in place for what the conflict will be in what was Netwalking Mars and will now be Netwalking Space. Because, well, pacing doesn’t work for Mars, but the Moon and space stations and near-earth-orbit asteroids and killer drone satellites from God-Knows-What’s-Out-There do work. Boy howdy, do they ever work. I also figured some things out about Netwalk’s Children, but those pieces still need to come together. These long stories at least are serving a function–they’re helping me work on some of the main story concepts, while writing scenes that probably won’t be in any of the books, but are turning points nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Blues Festival was a lot of pleasant music, and I managed to pull off some exobrain stuff that actually works. I found a bus tracker app for my iPhone which worked right nicely for what we needed it to do. Then I was able to use my iPhone as a personal hotspot, write on my tablet (with detachable keyboard), and upload the day’s work to Dropbox, come home, download it on the main computer, and work some more. Worked smooth as can be. Yeehaw.

Plus I also figured out the Facebook app on my iPhone, and read everything I’ve downloaded in my Kindle. Okay, that took less time than I thought it would. I can see that if I ever get a job again where I can commute by bus, my e-book reading investments will go up. Not that such a thing is ever likely to happen (big sigh). Not unless I can find something that isn’t a teaching job, I think, and right now any job prospect looks pretty damn dim. I still want to get away from the 80+ mile commute, but based on the results of the last teacher hiring season–bleh. So not happening this year. Or next year, really, because I just don’t see the employment and economic situation improving. Bleh, bleh, bleh. Let’s just say that job world is a pit of despair and leave things at that.

At least on the horse front everything is going reasonably well. Miss Mocha has taken to nickering at me when I go out to ride her nearly every day. Her coat shines like it should this year. Now, if I could only fix those damn brittle hooves without resorting to yucky nasty soaks. It’s not that the hoof wall is particularly dry, it’s that the wall is thin, whether she’s barefoot or shod. At least when she’s barefoot she builds up a thicker sole and is less ouchy than she is in shoes (seriously, horse? Ouching across gravel with shoes on? Really?). She gets a biotin supplement (Trifecta) but we still have cracks and chips up the wazoo, mustang roll or no mustang roll, shoes or no shoes.

This year it’s pretty bad, but I keep wondering about the weird coat from last summer/fall and how it may have impacted her hoof growth. Still haven’t figured out why that weird coat growth happened, but nonetheless, despite no changes in husbandry, no changes in health, she had a hair coat that just didn’t grow in right last fall and winter. I keep looking at her hooves and I swear I can see the difference about an inch down with better, firmer hoof wall. I suppose that means we’ll have a few more months or so of dealing with that hoof wall.

Anyway, we’re having good works right now. Back in the curb, my thumb’s healed up so I can manage the neck rein like I should. I’m watching now for the first signs that we’ll need hock injections. So far, just the beginning hint that the time might come in August, but nothing for certain yet.

And that’s it for today.

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July 4, 2013 · 9:17 am

Busy, busy days.

Do I have any other sort of days? Sometimes I wonder. In any case, three weeks into summer break and I am busy taking online classes, riding Mocha almost every day, doing projects around the house, and writing. The heat of the past few days has sidelined me but that’s the usual state of affairs, especially when we have this rapid transition from cool to hot. Needless to say, I’m a typical west-side Pacific Northwest girl. I know that when I start struggling, the smartest thing is to go flat and read. So I have been. Problem is also that the heat causes my gut to make sad noises at me and go into random spasm modes. Not fun at all!

Today starts the Waterfront Blues Festival, which is one of DH’s favorite events. He’s already down there waiting to get in early and snag a shady place to sit. Because I struggle so much with the heat, I come down later in the day and join him. This year I’m hoping to be able to coordinate smartphone and tablet so I can do some writing work using Dropbox. We’ll see how that goes. Worst case scenario, I get stuck with writing longhand. Not that big a deal either–after I file down my nails today. I’ve already broken one, damn it.

I’m grappling with some of the issues coming up in Netwalk’s Children. I have several murky things I want to address–the nature of parental influence and control, the effect of prenatal and immediate postnatal virtual exposures (one symptom is a tendency toward extreme sensory overloads which create meltdowns that look a lot like autism), just what the hell Gizmo is and what its goal ultimately will be, matriarchal concerns across generations, matriarchal dynastic behaviors…oh yeah, this book has some interesting potential. Any book at this stage of development is full of potential, but this one in particular has me contemplating some big issues–and how to make it a whopping good story. We will be seeing Bess making a huge mistake which has monstrous consequences that will alienate her from her grandmother Diana (but will have the effect of endearing her to her great-grandmother, the Netwalker Sarah). We’ll see a more human side of Andrew (so far we’ve really only seen him fail). But the biggest piece is that we’re looking at the third/fourth generations to interact with Gizmo and the consequences thereof–not just to the humans but to Gizmo itself.

And space. Bess functions well in space, she adapts well to it and her children will be even more so.

So yeah. Good stuff ahead.

Mocha has also gotten into the regular work mode. I’ve been riding her in the bareback pad with a snaffle during these hot days (well, and also waiting for the farrier to trim her hooves, I don’t like working her in complex fast stuff when her feet get too long. Too easy to torque joints that way). She chuckles at me when I walk in the barn door and is right there ready to go out, even with fresh alfalfa in her manger. There’s been some interesting adventures in bareback pad world, including a moment where the cinch came off and I only discovered that because the pad was sliding back underneath me (a strange feeling when the pad is sliding but you are not). We’ve been working on spins, extension and collection at walk and trot, and I’m slowly working my way up to rollbacks and flying changes. So far Mocha’s let me know SHE doesn’t think I’m ready, mainly by doing simple changes and trotting the first steps of the rollback rather than her usual fast stop, whirl and run. In this case I’m respecting her choice, but we are revisiting it under saddle because I don’t want these behaviors to become habits.

The routines of summer. I still need to work on losing five pounds. I need to get more fit for skiing this winter. I went into skiing with poor fitness and hip problems last year, and it made the season not fun. This will not happen this coming season, not if I can help it!

The fourth of July really is the beginning of summer, at least summer in my world. What are other people doing for summer this year?

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