We’ve had fifteen inches of rain in the last 30 days.\u00a0 More than half an average year’s rainfall.\u00a0 Five and a half of it in the previous 48 hours, running through the barn aisle into the dirt-floored horse stalls and loafing area. \u00a0 Extraordinary rain starting last fall with a deluge and flash flood…so we have gorgeous wildflowers\u00a0 and water running for weeks at a time across the near meadow.\u00a0\u00a0 My new horse is great except for the continuing physical problems; she spent a month at the vet’s getting started on fixing one of them, a deep-seated chronic hoof infection causing repeated abscesses.\u00a0 The vet tells me the X-ray evidence and what he saw cutting on the sole of her hoof is that it’s been going on for years.\u00a0\u00a0 We won’t know if she can possibly recover until her hoof grows out completely, which may be in September, but maybe not since she can’t go out to be worked on wet ground–and working a horse is what stimulates hoof growth. However,\u00a0 her abscess hasn’t recurred since March 25, when she came home from the vet clinic, and it’s been 4 full weeks since she came off the antibiotic.\u00a0\u00a0 After she came home, I was told I could ride her–should ride her–every day if possible, but most days it hasn’t been.\u00a0 So almost every time I get on her is a re-start.\u00a0 She’s got a great feel, when she calms down from “You’re going to get on me AGAIN?\u00a0 I thought you gave that up forever!” and jigging a lot.\u00a0\u00a0 But we make progress in other ways.\u00a0\u00a0 I do what I can in the barn, though today…what a mess.\u00a0 And it’s cloudy and there’s not a drying wind.\u00a0\u00a0 If not for the need to keep her bad hoof dry and clean (it’s always in a medicated wrap, inside a hoof boot, but water and mud can go over the top of the hoof boot if deep enough–hence restrictions)\u00a0 I could be out shlooping through the mud with her.<\/p>\n
And meanwhile, some Paksworld news.\u00a0 The audio book of DEEDS OF HONOR will be starting production soon; I’m at the stage of communicating with the voice actor about pronunciations and such.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’ll be working on that today….and\u00a0 until it’s done.<\/p>\n
I went to my first HS reunion ever (56th for those who’ve been going regularly) and that was very interesting.\u00a0 I’m glad I went, though I was sick (caught a cold probably Easter Sunday, and was still in medias res<\/em> on the Saturday after) and recognized only two people right off the bat.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both I’d known in elementary school, and one before that.\u00a0 It’s unusual for me to recognize people after a break–my lousy face recognition processor–so a relief to instantly know *that* had to be who it was.<\/p>\n It’s become obvious in the last year and almost-three-months since the concussion that it’s going to take a lot longer for some of the symptoms to resolve, if they do.\u00a0 The remaining difficulties are typical of post-concussion problems–but overlap with typical age-related problems.\u00a0\u00a0 All very depressing, if you dwell on them, and I’m trying not to, though a writer having difficulties with language *at all* raises the anxiety level.\u00a0 When typing, I make mistakes of a type I never used to make, thinking one word and typing another.\u00a0 Plain typos I’ve always made–reversing letters, leaving one out.\u00a0 But these are true cognitive (not fingering) mistakes.\u00a0 Grrr.\u00a0 I see them when I re-read a Facebook post or a tweet, but it’s annoying and scary both.\u00a0\u00a0 Fiction doesn’t hold together yet–the plot-daemon, that faithful assistant, seems to wake up only in spurts, and since I’ve never outlined\u00a0 (teachers TOLD me I should always outline)\u00a0 when I lose the scent or the tracks or whatever it is that has always led me onward…I sit there staring at the page with no idea at all what to do.\u00a0 Yet in reading fiction, I’m back to my old speed and analytical ability (I’m plowing through Cherryh’s Foreigner series again, in which I’d missed a few books over the years, and holding the first sixteen books (so far) in my head and finding the connections, the foreshadowing, the ways she’s held this huge and complex and multi-layered series together.)\u00a0 But I’m more easily distracted by real-world things, both good and not-so, when I try to forge ahead on either of the two projects begun and not really advancing.<\/p>\n But I intend to keep trying, while also working on general health issues (now better, not done yet, though) and pushing the envelope as much as possible.\u00a0\u00a0 The stories are in there somewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We’ve had fifteen inches of rain in the last 30 days.\u00a0 More than half an average year’s rainfall.\u00a0 Five and a half of it in the previous 48 hours, running through the barn aisle into the dirt-floored horse stalls and loafing area. \u00a0 Extraordinary rain starting last fall with a deluge and flash flood…so we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,103,105,53],"tags":[112,31,107],"class_list":["post-2777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiobooks","category-collections","category-deeds-of-honor","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-book-business","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2778,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions\/2778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}