Nicholas Valiarde, organic solvents, wallpaper: wild weekend

I seem to have let the whole weekend pass by without an entry. I was online now and then. Don't know that I left any comments or anything either. I wasn't incommunicado, I just wasn't thinking in an LJ kind of way.

I called in on Friday, intending to do something about the itchy eyes—I wasn't going to scrape through another day like Thursday—but then, I couldn't get a doctor's appointment on short notice, and you know, nothing at home irritated my eyes at all, so I had no symptoms to show, and what would they do for me? I'd show up next month sometime and blink at them and they'd tell me there was nothing wrong with me and also I was fat, so I'm really not interested.

So instead I set to work on cleaning out the last of the junk in my room so I could begin stripping the wallpaper. I also finished taping the windows so I could paint them, in the living room, and put what I hoped was the last coat of paint on the last bit of trim that hadn't been painted (around the front door).

I also reread the entire most recent draft of Barbarians_Novel in hopes of seeing where to edit to make a more final cut of it. And I did all the laundry in the house, which was a lot. And I made a batch of chili from entirely homegrown vegetables except for a can of beans.

On one of my trips to hang up clothing to dry and pick tomatoes, I noticed that the mail had arrived. Also there was a package. I picked up the package. What was it? A book. Oh yes, I had ordered a hardback copy of The Wizard Hunters (and a paperback copy of The Gate of Gods) so I'd have a full set of hardbacks, and could turn my paperback copies into loaners. Hurrah! So I opened up the package, thinking it would be my hardback of Wizard Hunters, and lo! It was not! It was my copy of Death of the Necromancer, which I had not yet read and had to buy used because it's out of print. (Bastards.)

Well, there went the rest of the day.
You know what?
Oh. My. God. ( a brief ramble in which I reveal, somewhat embarrassingly, how much I fucking love damaged heroes )

Nicholas still isn't hotter than Ilias, but you know, where Ilias is a bit of a car crash, Nicholas is a train wreck with two trains and a tractor trailer and a hot air balloon full of dynamite.
I have to say, I'm just glad that I don't have the same taste in men in real life as I do in fiction. I'd be dead by now.
Poor Madeline.
Anyway.

I eventually recovered myself, and we finished the living room, except that the trim on the windows could probably use another coat or two or a goddamn zillion because that damn paint is so dark it shows every flaw. Bleh. ( How To Remove Wallpaper From Plaster: Go Totally Buck Wild With A Mop And Putty Knife )

Ug, I've gone on a long time. I should point out that I'm hung over something awful today. ( A Brief Lesson In Fun Applied Chemistry: Organic Solvents! )

Bleh. Welcome back to work, girlie! You're a moron. Aspirin, coffee, and a generous handful of animal crackers, and I've now been at work nearly an hour and am just starting to figure out what exactly it is that I do here.

But, my bedroom will be amazing.
And I managed to scrape far too much time this weekend to write thoroughly self-indulgent Nicholas/Madeline fanfic. Just what the world needed!! Unfortunately, it's not really any good. But. I keep telling myself, this is all getting me back into writing, I've been away so long and need the warm-up.
Christ, I can't explain what's so hot about Nicholas. But all y'all angst-ficcers, if you like really tightly-wound self-controlled fundamentally-damaged characters, he is a fucking treasure trove.

Sorry, I am very foul-mouthed when hung over. I don't imagine most people will make it all the way through this, so I am not bothering to edit myself. Fucky fucky fucky fuck! There goes the spam-filter! Snap.

And oh—Z stole some Powersolo mp3s from their website. I will be doing a music post. This must be shared. One of their albums is called "A Bag Of Drugs Up My Ass". It is entirely not like you'd expect it to sound.

I think this entry may set records for number of cuts and yet remaining length on the page. I do apologize, I am not at my best this morning. This should be entertaining to come back and read sometime after lunch.

diesel buff

I am feeling suddenly ill, which is OK as I have a moment to pause and sit. I made a salad with fresh cucumbers and store-bought lettuce and feta, and cooked some frozen tortellini with store-bought sauce for dinner. Good for me. I have chopped up more homemade cukes and have yogurt draining to make tzatziki, too. which is why it sucks that i feel oogy now.
I suppose dinner, good as it was, didn't agree. Maybe I'll feel better in a minute.
I've just peeled off a panel and a half of wallpaper using nothing but boiling water, a sponge, and a putty knife. I am huge and manly.
At the moment Z is edging the one painted wall, in preparation for my putting on the third coat of paint.

I was totally useless almost all day at work. I really, really, really want to not leave the house much, and sink deep into a writing phase. I haven't done that in a while. In '03 or '04 I spent like six weeks writing 100 hours a week and while I didn't produce anything salable, and was generally miserable in my life, I still look back on that sometimes and think, Christ, what bliss that was. If only I'd known how to write properly, and hadn't squandered it. I haven't had the nerve to be unemployed again, because that was such a bust in terms of producing anything salable. But I had never finished a novel, at that point. I hadn't even really finished a story. I'd been writing ten years or so, but that's not the same. And I learned so much-- but my friends and family all still think I lay around doing nothing, because I never produced anything I could really show them.

Ungh. I hate everything, at the moment. Even the wonderful renovations we're doing, that on a particular level I'm so happy with. They'll look so great, and we'll have such a wonderful home when it's done. But it's time I can't spend writing.
I can't really even enjoy the hour I get here and there. I want more. I want to just sink into it for three or four hours at a time. I want it so badly.

I can't have it, and that's that-- almost no one in the world gets that. Even professional writers often don't get that. But it would be so great.

It's not even that I have a specific story that wants to come out. I have many. I just want to immerse myself in one of them and do it.

Ungh. I didn't sit down to write about that, I sat down to write about how great the painting is going. Hopefully tonight we'll get the back wall entirely done, and can start its trim. Once the trim has a couple of coats, we can assemble the bed. Then we can have the mattress delivered. I want to schedule the delivery by the end of the month. We don't have to take it by then, I just want it scheduled. I would prefer to get as much done before then as possible, because I think it'll be impossible to work on the opposite wall with the bed in place. But still.

We're so macho. We're getting so much done.
Guh.