Ugh. Long day, brain tired.
I woke up far too early this morning, read some romance web comics, then went out for yoga and a walk. I think it was one of those times where you wake yourself out of something that feels like it’s going to be a nightmare but I don’t remember what, only thinking, “Nope” and being wide awake.
Yesterday I’d been trying to power through a scene with the last part of this conference workshop session one of the characters is teaching–I wanted to include a fair mini-mystery inside the class but I was getting frustrated with it–so I had one of the characters check up on another character watching the class and flirt with them while he was there. AHHHH it was refreshing, just from a writing point of view. Also, the incoming character takes one look at the mystery, solves it, and is like, “Do NOT give people ideas,” which helps set the stage for something else I’ve been half-assed considering for later. Subconscious is a go on that one, I suppose. We’ll see what comes out.
At any rate, the romance comics I read this morning used the same trick: difficult moments often get romance breaks, or romance flashbacks, or romance turning points–a relationship goes completely south (often due to stupid misunderstandings, but okay) while the character’s internal emotions shifts and they feel close to the other person in a way they didn’t before. One of the more explicit ones I’m reading had such a moment this week and it was like when the feral cat scratches someone deeply but eats the food snatched from that same hand without running away. CUTE.
Yoga: the character from yesterday (Marina) kept messing around with my chest area to get me to hold myself differently (chin up tits out), but that’s gonna take some time.
The walk took me down into a new street that went past what was probably a government-established apartment complex project. It was terrible. The rez is (or at least the one I remember was) terrible, but this is a whole different kind of terrible. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like it. It was blocks and blocks of painted cinderblock-y walled apartment buildings behind iron fencing, in poor but not awful condition. Hundreds and hundreds of identical units without personality or relief. It looked like a prison, only orange instead of gray. Ugh. I can’t explain how much I hated it. I got hit on going past it, but it was a fairly low-level predator type surrounded by people who might not have backed him, so I blew it off. I didn’t get followed. My character Marina was in Fuck Around and Find Out mode with me, which might have had something to do with both getting hit on and not getting followed. I don’t think damaging someone’s nutsack is ever far from her mind. She gets flustered, but over completely different shit.
The rest of the area was worse: trash everywhere, condemned buildings, closed-up shops, chain-link fences everywhere. It was frankly a relief to see graffiti tags–as very nearly the only sign of non-commercial activity–but most of them had been painted over. The ones that were present were quickly painted, full of curves, names, like saying, “I was here, a living creature with a sense of personal identity that has not yet been crushed completely.”
I get that many people get all het up about any and all laws being broken (except the ones that they, personally, find convenient to break) but WOW don’t bring it here. I’m a good person but not a lawful one and admonitions will fall on deaf ears.
I got a chunk of writing done this morning after I got back, then bogged down in ADD stuff caused by rationing meds while trying to adult. Eventually, I went out to get groceries got stuck in traffic in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. (I didn’t need many groceries and I wanted treats.) So I sat and seat-danced in the car until the rest of my idiot yt tribe figured out how to park. Five minutes later…
It turns out, if your daughter who loves spicy food asks for chips, then Trader Joe’s is not the place to go for chips, but they DID have apple cider donuts. The guy at the register seemed like he had gone into robot mode, so I did this thing I’ve learned how to do that’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl adjacent and let his robotic mode pass through me. It doesn’t really involve doing anything different, just an attitude shift, but it feels like it pulls stress off people. Anyway, I did that, and he suddenly blurted out that I REALLY needed to microwave the donuts for ten seconds before eating them, and [insert intent superhero look] IT WOULD MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
Came back, burned through most of the chapter I was stuck on with breaks for food and reading another manga with Ray, then winding down and doing dishes and writing this.
Oh, and I figured out how to take selfies by showing my palm to the camera. I should probably get a mini tripod at some point, though, because the phone Does Not Like to stay put.