Monday - Sunday, February 6-12, 2023

Writing:
:v: :x: :v: :v: :v: :x: :v: 500 WORDS - total 5/5 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: WORKED ON - total 7/6 days - :v:
Total Writing Time: 10 / 10 hours - :v:

French:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: ACTIVE STUDY - total 7/5 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: EXPOSURE - total 7/7 days - :v:
Total: 3:20 / 3 hours Active Study - :v:

Artwork:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: DID SOME - total 7/5 days - :v:
Total: 3:43 / 3 hours - :v:

Health & Fitness:
:x: :v: :x: :x: :x: :x: :v: W/O w. NORMA
:x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: UPPER BODY STRENGTH - total 0/6 days - :x:
:v: :v: :v: :x: :x: :x: :v: RUNNING - total 20/20 km - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: HIKING - total 24.5 km
:x: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: YOGA - total 6/6 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: MEDITATION - total 7/7 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: COMMUNITY CONNECTION - total 7/7 days - :v:
Total workout: 5 / 5 hours - :v:

Reading:
:x: :v: :v: :x: :v: :v: :v: FICTION - Under Fortunate Stars (Ren Hutchings)
:v: :v: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: NON-FICTION - Envisioning Exoplanets (Michael Carroll)

Streaks:
:v: EXERCISE - 1026 days
:v: FRENCH - 824 days
:v: WRITING - 151 days

Time Management:
:x: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: GOBOT - total 6/6 days - :v:
:v: :v: :x: :x: :v: :v: :v: WORK BEFORE PLAY- total 5/5 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :x: :v: :v: :v: GBOT - total 6/6 days - :v:

I blew off the upper body strength training again last week. I was a little bit strapped for time, and a lot short on the mental energy necessary to force myself to do upper body work. Otherwise, it was a productive week for me overall. I made good progress on my space opera.
 
Monday - Sunday, February 13-19, 2023

Writing:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: WORKED ON - total 7/6 days - :v:
Total Writing Time: 11:38 / 10 hours - :v:

French:
:v: :v: :x: :v: :x: :v: :v: ACTIVE STUDY - total 5/5 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: EXPOSURE - total 7/7 days - :v:
Total: 1:33 / 3 hours Active Study - :x:

Artwork:
:v: :x: :x: :v: :v: :v: :v: DID SOME - total 5/5 days - :v:
Total: 1:50 / 3 hours - :x:

Health & Fitness:
:x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: W/O w. NORMA
:x: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :x: UPPER BODY STRENGTH - total 5/5* days - :v:
:x: :x: :x: :v: :v: :v: :v: RUNNING - total 20/20 km - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: HIKING - total 21 km
:v: :v: :x: :v: :v: :v: :v: YOGA - total 6/6 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: MEDITATION - total 7/7 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: COMMUNITY CONNECTION - total 7/7 days - :v:
Total workout: 4:08 / 5 hours - :x:

Reading:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: FICTION - Under Fortunate Stars (Ren Hutchings)
:x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: NON-FICTION

Streaks:
:v: EXERCISE - 1033 days
:v: FRENCH - 831 days
:v: WRITING - 158 days

Time Management:
:v: :v: :x: :x: :x: :x: :x: GOBOT - total 2/6 days - :x:
:v: :v: :x: :x: :x: :x: :v: WORK BEFORE PLAY- total 3/5 days - :x:
:v: :x: :x: :v: :x: :v: :v: GBOT - total 4/6 days - :x:

Messed up GOBOT and GBOT again last week (in a staying-up-all-night-gaming way not once, but three times!)

Got back on track with my upper body strength training. *It was only five days this week since I'd already done the Monday workouts two weeks ago and decided not to repeat them.

More good progress on my space opera. I have taken the 500 words goal off the table for now (and likely for the next five weeks, although I'm not firm on this time period yet.) I'm doing a lot of worldbuilding, character development, and other series planning work right now, after which I will be outlining the first book. None of this work is served particularly well by forcing myself to write scenes, and writing scenes I don't care about just to hit a wordcount isn't conducive to improving my scene-writing craft. So I'm letting this one go until I'm back in a stage in my writing process in which it will serve me better.

I hit my days per week targets for French, Artwork, and Health & Fitness but not my total hours goals. I was going to push through on Sunday and get caught up, but then a friend messaged me that her dog is dying, and it became more important to correspond with her (and not once again go to bed stupidly late afterward.) So I let the week just be what it was. Today I start with a clean slate, and a commitment to do better.
 
My yard this morning:

icescene.jpg


Everything covered in ice. Thankfully no major branches down from any of our trees, but someone was using a power saw in our neighbourhood extensively, starting at 7AM, so I'm guessing not everyone was as fortunate.

Power was out from around 1AM until 11AM. I didn't know until I awoke at 6AM to a very cold, very dark house. Father was in a bad mood from his bed topper not working for all of that time. Mother was in a bad mood due to being cold and having to use her cell phone (which she doesn't know how to use) and my father being demanding with her. Shelby was in a bad mood because the backup sump pump kept going off and she's not used to that sound (which is louder than the electric pump) and because I was working in the living room (because we have a wood-burning fireplace in there, and I'd built a fire) and not in my room where I belong. And I was in a bad mood due to my mother taking her bad mood out on me. (My mother was at least appreciative of the fire and said so. Which is unusual. Usually it's my father who asks me to build a fire, and my mother complains that she doesn't want one.)

Everyone is happy now that the hydro is back on. Hopefully it will stay that way! Temp is rising in the BM (currently we have a "freezing drizzle" weather advisory!) but a 10-hour power outage is usually indicative of a problem larger than just the BM, and I gather other areas in southern Ontario were hit worse than we were, so we'll see.

In other news: our dishwasher is finally fixed, and the back door is (hopefully) being fixed (again) today. (I'm not holding my breath. But it could happen.)
 
Monday - Sunday, February 20-26, 2023

Writing:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: WORKED ON - total 7/6 days - :v:
Total Writing Time: 15:15 / 10 hours - :v:

French:
:v: :v: :x: :v: :x: :v: :v: ACTIVE STUDY - total 5/5 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: EXPOSURE - total 7/7 days - :v:
Total: 2 / 3 hours Active Study - :x:

Artwork:
:v: :x: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: DID SOME - total 6/5 days - :v:
Total: 3 / 3 hours - :v:

Health & Fitness:
:x: :v: :x: :v: :v: :v: :v: W/O w. NORMA
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :x: UPPER BODY STRENGTH - total 6/6 days - :v:
:v: :v: :x: :x: :x: :v: :v: RUNNING - total 20/20 km - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: HIKING - total 24 km
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: YOGA - total 7/6 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: MEDITATION - total 7/7 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: COMMUNITY CONNECTION - total 7/7 days - :v:
Total workout: 4:36 / 5 hours - :x:

Reading:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :x: :v: :v: FICTION - Under Fortunate Stars (Ren Hutchings), A Werecoyote on Tinder (Daisy Goudan)
:x: :x: :x: :x: :v: :x: :v: NON-FICTION - The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)

Streaks:
:v: EXERCISE - 1040 days
:v: FRENCH - 838 days
:v: WRITING - 165 days

Time Management:
:x: :v: :v: :v: :x: :v: :v: GOBOT - total 5/6 days - :x:
:v: :v: :x: :v: :v: :v: :v: WORK BEFORE PLAY- total 6/5 days - :v:
:v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: :v: GBOT - total 7/6 days - :v:

A better week on the productivity front And a mushroom:

mushroom.jpg
 
I am so sorry its so hard losing a family member

Monsters Inc Hug GIF
 
Definitely not the best paper for coloured pencils. And my technique is still rudimentary. And I really need to remove sheets from pads before drawing on them, because I have a heavy hand and a tendency to make indentations on the sheet below the one I'm working on! Trudy's nose turned out pretty good though!

A happy memory of a fun adventure on the beach at Rondeau.

Trudy-beach.jpg
 
This month is apparently "Inundate Laura With Horrifically-Bad, Unsolicited Advice Month." This has ranged from the relatively innocuous "Assume Laura has the same problems and needs as me because we have shared some similar experiences, so hound her repeatedly to pursue the same path as I am doing, even though she has told me repeatedly she does not want or need that path," to the tried and true: "Don't quit your day job, there's no money in writing," (this from a person who then went on to blame me for having been victimized by other people's illegal behaviour and suggest I waste a crap-tonne of my time trying to seek compensation now for the fallout of said illegal behaviour--a completely useless endeavour since the statute of limitations on the crimes committed against me has long since run out, and also an endeavour which I chose not to pursue when I could have done so because I'm not an idiot: I investigated my legal options at the time and concluded pursuing the matters further would not have been in my best interests), to one person who actually mapped out an entire life plan for me--literally from now until the end of my days--which included me giving up on absolutely everything I have told this person many times over is important to me and instead doing things and accepting situations which I have told this person, again many times over, that I HATE, that would absolutely ensure I grow old miserable and in poverty.

This sort of nonsense gets tiresome after a while. Its disheartening too, because I fancy myself to be quite a good communicator. Yet for some reason, when I say or write, "I may need to secure a new housing situation soon," people are interpreting that as, "Please explain to me how I have screwed up my life and lecture me on all the steps you imagine I should take to fix what you imagine my problems to be."

I need a break. And I need to learn to laugh at this shit instead of getting upset by it. So I am soliciting your help, dear Bees. I hereby invite you to participate in Inundate Laura With Horrifically-Bad, Unsolicited Advice Month. Go ahead and hit me with your best shot. (This is a bit of a cheat, since I am technically soliciting the advice with this invitation. So you will need to make your advice so ridiculously bad that even I will not have been able to anticipate how bad it is.) There will be a prize for the Horifically-Bad Advice that makes me laugh the hardest.
 
Oh je, I'm sorry! That really sucks :hug:
But if you're asking... You should shave your hair and dye it blue and start a punk rock band with your dogs! It'll change your life! :LOL:
 
This is why I don't really like people.:cool: There are so many books out currently about how not to give a *** about the opinions of others. No surprising, hey?
Unless unsolicited Life Advice comes from people who are blissfully happy and successful in every way that they have ever hoped to be and have achieved their complete potential, turn it back on them.
"There's no money in writing."
"How do you know? Have you ever written a book? Just because you have failed to achieve your potential and live up to your dreams, don't try to bring me down. I realise I exemplify to a degree how you have wasted your life and potential and that makes you feel bad because you have never had the courage I have - live with it."
And that is solicited (and sincere) advice!
 
Anek said:
You should shave your hair and dye it blue and start a punk rock band with your dogs! It'll change your life! :LOL:
Click to expand...
Excellent idea, @Anek ! Shaving my hair off first will make it much easier to dye it. But then what to do with the blue hair that's no longer attached to my head? Make a wig for Shelby? Or I could weave it into a fancy fringe, like on a flapper dress, and fasten it to her collar! Our band name will be "Blue-Haired Shelby and the Rainbow Dragon." For our first hit single I'm thinking of something along the lines of:

🎵 Don't you go give me no bad advice 🎵
🎵 I know you're trying but it just ain't nice 🎵
🎵 I'm sorry my life doesn't fit with your plans 🎵
🎵 Hell, no, I'm not! Bad advice be damned! 🎵
 
@TopNotch successful people are often the worst! Far too many of them fantasize that their success was solely the product of their own efforts--not propped up at all by having been gifted with more advantages in life than other, less successful (in their minds) people.

Ye ol' "don't quit your day job" school of discouraging writing advice is often touted by published writers--including those who are making good livings from their writing! The source does not matter. We are all individuals. We all have different advantages, different challenges, and different goals in life. No one who is not me can possibly know whether or not pursuing my writing full-time is a good idea for me or not. I don't pretend to know all the answers for myself either. But I am the sole person with the responsibility for making life decisions for me. And I think you're correct in that unsolicited advice generally says a lot more about the person giving it than the person it's directed to.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon said:
Thank you @Tileenah -- though I think the earplugs bit might actually be good advice! The rest was suitably horrific (and disturbingly close to the truth of what at least a couple of people think I should have done with my life.)
Click to expand...
Yes it was too horrific for my own taste and I ended up deleting it thinking "oh no, people might actually have told her this and it's not funny at all" :corner:
 
:hug:

I shall have to think on my best bad advice. Only advice I've gotten recently was along the lines of "don't get your *ahem* caught in the zipper of your jeans because it *&%#ing hurts" which seemed to me to be sound advice but not particularly useful to me.

i also find the warnings written on the bottom of the box that say "do not turn this item upside down" to be inordinately helpful.
 
NancyTree said:
I have been thinking about what (funny) very bad advise I could give you, but my mind is blank. So I'll go with the very worst advise ever: no advise at all... I'm sorry...
Click to expand...
That is definitely not the worst advice!

I will keep the contest open through the weekend, in case anyone else wants to try their hand at bad advice.
 
Hello friends!

I am still here. Still plugging away at things. Things have been stressful (including one particularly ugly incident in my far-less-than-ideal housing situation) but I am surviving thus far. And I have two happy things coming up at the end of next week. So I'm looking forward to that. I will write more later. But I wanted to pop in this morning to announce that the winner of the Inundate Laura With Horrifically-Bad, Unsolicited Advice contest is @Anek !

Anek's shaved-head, blue-haired, dog-punk-rock band advice has won her a copy of my novelette Anne & Mary on the Hyperspace Seas in which our protagonist is just trying to get on with her life in the face of other people's really bad advice (amongst other obstacles).

Anne+MaryCover-H800.png

@Anek if you PM my your email address and your preferred ebook format (.mobi, .epub or, if neither of those work for you, I can likely do .pdf) I will send you your prize.
 
Thank you @PetiteSheWolf & @Anek :happy:

The first stressful thing turned out to be not terribly bad. At my most recent dental checkup I received the news I have feared at every dental checkup for the past four and a half decades: I had a cavity. Two, my dentist thought.

I had previously had three teeth filled when I was a child. My dentist at that time shot me up with so much novocaine my nose was numb, my chin was numb, and my ear was numb. But I still felt his drill! My childhood experiences with fillings were so horrible that to this day the sound of a drill sets my nerves on edge. And I'm not even confident that I needed any of those fillings at the time. The method my then-dentist used for supposedly detecting fillings is not used anymore because it results in a large number of false-positives--especially in teeth shaped like mine! Of course I did not know this back then. I was a little kid. Too little to stand up for myself. And my mother wanted me punished for eating Hallowe'en candy. So I got the fillings.

Jump to nine years later, and a different dentist told then teen-aged me that I needed three more fillings. Of course, due to the trauma of my childhood fillings, I was none too keen to have this happen. Also, I had good reason not to trust that dentist. And I had learned to stand up for myself by then. So I convinced my father to let me go to a different dentist for a second opinion. The second dentist said it was "a judgement call" but he agreed not to drill my teeth. He thought pit and fissure sealant would be enough. So I had the pit and fissure sealant done on all my remaining intact molars and, until last week, none of those teeth were ever drilled. Clearly my instincts had been correct and the dentist I distrusted has been wrong!

Jump forward another 36 years and I was sitting in my current dentist's chair, receiving last month's bad news.

I mostly like my current dentist. She's friendly and compassionate and kind. And I believe she is competent. She wants my money rather more than I want to part with it. I've had to have a couple of conversations with her related to that. And I referred to her as "the dentist" for eight years because she didn't offer me her name in all that time, and I am not a fan of the class system which underpins the use of titles. But she earned her DDS in 2015, graduating top of her class. She's up-to-date on current dentistry practices, and she knows her stuff. I certainly trust her methods more so than I did those of my childhood and teen-aged dentists. But two fillings? I was not ready to hear that!

So we talked. She offered me her first name that day, for the first time. This makes it much easier for me to talk to her now. I asked her about pit and fissure sealant. She doesn't often do it on adults, but agreed that I'm a special case who could still benefit from it. She told me she would not feel comfortable doing it on one of the teeth she had recommended for filling, however. The issue with the second tooth is minor, and she agreed to try just sealing that one. But the one tooth she was fairly confident was cavitated. Sealant would not stop the decay if that was the case, but she would no longer be able to see what was going on with the tooth as the sealant she uses is opaque. She then told me she would not be offended if I got a second opinion.

I cannot afford a second opinion. And I didn't have the reasons to distrust my current dentist that I had for the previous one. So I agreed to the one filling and sealant for everything else. Then I waited in terror for D-day to arrive.

I was seriously stressed over the prospect of having a tooth drilled again. My dentist told me the freezing agents they have now are better than what they used 45 years ago. She also said she was not into torture and that if the freezing didn't work for me we would try sedation. I hoped she was right about the newer freezing agents, because I wasn't too keen on plan B.

When Drilling Day arrived I dug out my CD walkman, thinking I could put headphones on and listen to music during the procedure that makes me feel strong and confident and capable of conquering my greatest challenges. But I didn't want to risk developing the same negative reaction to my favourite music as I have to the sound of drills. So I ended up leaving my music at home and listening to the looped "spa music" they put on in the dentist's office for me.

Anyhow... after all of that: the new freezing agent worked for me! I didn't feel the drill at all. Of course, I could still hear the drill. That was by far the worst part of the experience.

Afterward, I talked to my dentist about my hated electric toothbrush. All of her hygienists recommend them. Strongly. I resisted for years but finally caved to pressure from my hygienist. But I hate the thing. The sound and the vibration both remind me of a drill. I used to be religious about brushing my teeth twice a day. But since I got the electric I have only been brushing my teeth once a day, because I just could not make myself do it more often than that. And when I go to bed stupidly late at night, the reason is often because I have been procrastinating from brushing my teeth! Also: I do not have a very big mouth. I have many times hit my top teeth with the hard, plastic, vibrating backside of the brush while brushing my lower teeth. And I have to keep my mouth open so wide to use the electric I have to brush my teeth with my head tilted far back to avoid drooling toothpaste all over myself. Which gives me a sore neck. I was actually brushing my teeth with one hand on the back of my head, to support its weight, and with my eyes closed because the angle at which I had to have my head tilted would otherwise have me starting directly into my bathroom lights.

"Is the electric toothbrush really hugely better than a manual one?" I asked her.

"It's not hugely better," she told me. "Most people do get a better clean with an electric, because they just don't brush their teeth properly with a manual brush. But you're so conscientious about your dental hygiene, you were probably doing just as good of a job with a manual brush. And you're definitely better off to use a manual brush twice a day than an electric only once a day!"

So at the end of the day:
  1. I survived the filling!
  2. My dentist finally shared her first name with me.
  3. I am back to brushing my teeth twice a day with my nice, friendly, manual toothbrush.
  4. I am sleeping better and on a more regular schedule. (Other than this past weekend--but that was due to the other stressful thing.)
 
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