scribbling damselfly

The deathmarch continues unabated. I have now abandoned all pretence of understanding the rules of grammar or syntax, the meaning of any given word in the english language, and indeed appropriate times to laugh or talk. Apparently you shouldn't indulge either impulse while you're alone. Who knew? Pshaw, I say. Friends and family are beginning to suspect I've written a terribly funny novel. Little do they know it's the laugh of a desperate and mad woman, bemused by the weight of her own words.

To add spice to the mixture, I've been trying to book my flights for the trip away. I've stopped telling people I'm going to Bhutan, and started telling them I'm going to the Himalayas, since even travel agents are looking at me blankly and saying "Where? Where's that?"

Visited the GP to check out what vaccinations I'll need. Health and travel websites list a whole range of fun preventable diseases, such as polio and rabies and malaria and japanese encephalitis. The GP spent most of the consultation telling me I didn't really need to bother with the vaccinations.

Malaria? Oh, there's not really any need for malaria meds. They're such a hassle, you see, and the Himalayas are quite high up. If you head down into any of the valleys … well, maybe just stay up high, won't you?

Polio? Oh, you've probably already had a polio vaccination. No need to bother with another of those.

Rabies? H'm. I understand there is a bit of a street dog problem in Bhutan, and of course it's not just dogs you need to worry about, it's any mammal. So probably no need to worry about a rabies vaccination before you go. Just… if you do get bitten, by anything, do make sure you get the post-exposure rabies vaccination as soon as you get home, won't you? Because it's quite fatal, after all.

Me, boggling: You mean, as opposed to moderately fatal?

Oh, yes, he says, and if you develop a strange fever about six months after returning home, and you can't figure out what it is, do try and remember it might be malaria, and get treatment — because that's moderately fatal.

No wondrous stories of Bangkok to soothe my rattled and overwrought nerves?

Well, I will gladly settle for a lack of terrifying stories. Accordingly, in a frenzy of post-procrastination last-minute panic, I have booked myself a holiday.

In a smidge less than six weeks, I will be tripping the light fantastic to Bhutan. This of course means I have to get on to the issue of travel vaccinations, um, yesterday. Oh, yeah, and renewing my passport.

Extra pressure is not particularly what I needed, right in the last days of the deathmarch, but deadlines without stress are too easily ignored, what ho? Plus, it'll make the holiday aspect of the trip that much more luxurious.

I am even — wait for it — (sort of, almost, nearly entirely) resolved not to take my laptop.

Blogging may get sparse in the next week or so, as the revision deathmarch loometh. I just want to be done with this draft, so I can inflict it on my tortured faithful beta readers and just ignore it, for a little while. My head, she is running dry. I have lost all ability to evaluate a sentence for purty or even for comprehensibility.

In the meantime (because the best way to procrastinate is external stress, don't you know?), I've been thinking about a holiday to Bhutan.

Initially I thought about putting the trip off until October, for a variety of reasons, but recently I began questioning the wisdom of that. If not now, when? The trip is not going to get any cheaper for waiting. Last night I almost signed up, money on the counter. Then I realised that I would have to travel via Bangkok and, for reasons that are lost in the shadows of time and may never have had any foundation anyway, I am terrified of Bangkok. Honestly, it's completely irrational and I don't know why, but there it is.

So: tell me your (wondrous) stories of Bangkok.¹

1. Nasty stories need not apply, except if you really desperately want to warn me away from the city you can say "don't go, 4 srs" — but any further details will only rob me of sleep and equanimity, and we none of us want that because I am quite badly sleep-deprived already today.

Note to self:

Write first. Make the time.

You know this already.

It can be difficult to find a blog post topic when drowning in revisions. For example, the highlight of my recent days (so far as writing goes) is discovering that my character apparently, allegedly, according to what I wrote in the first draft, recovered his posie.

I'm guessing I meant poise, because soldier-types aren't particularly known for their love of posies. And because if I really did mean posie, I don't want to know what that might show about my thought processes.

Yes, as you can see, my life has been all the fun ever of late.

So in lieu of the horror show that is my brain on revisions, lookee: spiders. under the sea!

I'm supposed to be writing. Right this very moment, me and the words, we should be in the groove.

We are not.

My head will not shut up today, and I'm finding focus a little hard to come by. There are changes afoot at the dayjob, and unrest there and among friends and family, and have I mentioned I haven't finished this novel yet? Gah, I say. Life is filling my head with the wrong things for writing.

I tried self-medicating with bourbon, but that just made me sleepy and supremely unconcerned. Not so helpful.

I haven't bought books in … forever. There were a few dangerous moments when I wondered if I'd ever buy another book again, and I couldn't honestly answer in the affirmative. Which was so mind-boggling a concept I hastily tucked it away so I didn't have to think too hard about it.

One of the main reasons for the drought is because my closest (and pretty much the only major) bookstore was an Angus & Robertson, and after the stockist debacle I've been boycotting A&R.

But! Then a Borders store opened nearby, and oh! I was so excited. A bookstore again. To sweeten the deal, I even had a gift voucher received at Christmas, so it was free book shopping. What more could a girl want?

Worryingly, the drought was hard to break. The first time I ventured in, there was so much choice (and I'd stupidly forgotten just how pricey books are in this country), I could not for the life of me point to a single book in the store and say, yeah, I'd read that. In the end I basically wandered the shelves, lost and desperate, called it a recon mission in a vain attempt to salvage my battered sense of self, and fled.

The good news is, yesterday saw the drought break.

Let's be honest, it was probably inspired by Tess' shinyshiny bookshelves. I'd forgotten how inviting bookshelves can look when they're neat and presentable and full of books you haven't read. Oh me oh my, now I have some fiction in my to-read pile at long last.

The even better news is the gift certificate did not cover the price of all these books. It covered the price of 4 books, with $3.25 left over. So I picked up a fifth book, thinking a $3.25 discount was still a good deal. This book turned out to be $3 more expensive than any of the first four, and fleetingly I considered relinquishing one of those first four for this fifth book. Instead … I picked up a sixth. Because I could.

See? The drought is over.

BRANCH: With this item number, you need a specimen collection point number.
ME: Head Office have told me you can override that with a miscellaneous code.
BRANCH (noises of shock and amazement): No. Oh, no. That's not possible.

*gives up, rings Head Office*

ME: Hello, this is Lab X, I need to know our specimen collection point number.
HEAD OFFICE: Oh. You'll need to contact the lab that did the tests.
ME: We ARE the lab that did the tests.
HEAD OFFICE: Well, you'll need to contact the authority which issues that number.
ME: I am. Medicare issues the number.
HEAD OFFICE: What? No we don't.
ME: I have mail on your letterhead which tells me otherwise. Can you please look up our SPC?
HEAD OFFICE: We don't know it, it's not linked to any of your provider numbers. That's pathology, see, and no one here has anything to do with pathology.
ME (holding my breath to keep from imploding): Who DOES deal with pathology?
HEAD OFFICE: Um. National Office?
ME: Naturally.

NATIONAL OFFICE: Hi, what do you need?
ME: My SCP.
NO: Oh, that's easy. It's linked to your provider number.
ME: Please tell me you're kidding.
NO: Not at all. Plus, there's only ever three numbers an SPC could be, and your lab doesn't qualify for two of them. Plus, one of them's just a miscellaneous code which covers, well, pretty much anything.

ME: *headdesk* Thank you.

Medicare. It's a model of organisational efficiency, innit?

While in Melbourne, I caught up with Andy, who claims he owns the most annoying cat in the world. It's a bold claim. I feel compelled to call him on it. One of his cat's less pleasant habits is sitting on his pillow, by his head, and licking his hair.

This, I agree, sounds particularly annoying.

Imagine my surprise on my first morning home, when my cat plonks himself on my pillow at stupid in the a.m. and (despite never displaying any such tendency in the past two years) promptly starts LICKING AND CHEWING MY HAIR.

Science tells me that a sample of one is not statistically significant, but I think I'm still safe in concluding that it's not Andy's cat whose at fault. Poor Audrey can't help herself. Clearly there is some sort of Macrae field at work, the vestiges of which clung to me on my trip home.

(It is worth noting at this point that the girlcat remained unaffected by the Macrae field. This, I believe, is largely due to the fact that she has discovered the beanbags, and we all know the beanbag snuggle factor overwhelms all other fields. She has not moved for the past twelve hours. At least.)

In other, utterly banal news, I have spent the past hour and a half fixing the laptop, since this evening the firewall spontaneously broke itself. A gazillion restarts later I have finally found my internets again! Why did this not happen on a day when I had plenty of time for writing?

Some days you win, some days the bear does.