In preparation for Saga’s birthday today me and Scout made pizza from scratch for the first time in a while yesterday (I have a cake in mind to make for tonight or tomorrow, too). This was meant to lead up to an online pizza party this morning, but unfortunately Saga felt too physically wrecked from the lives earlier in the week and so had to cancel. I’m a little worried about how Saga must be feeling, but glad that he chose to cancel the event instead of pushing himself. Hopefully he still had enough energy (and wasn’t in too much pain) to enjoy his birthday to some degree with family or friends… feel better soon, Saga. ♡
It’s been a very slow day here for me and Scout — intentionally. I did a little tinkering on the laptop in the early morning but then both me and Scout laid down and napped on and off into the afternoon while I did bits of editing on my phone. I had the leftover pizza while watching some more extremely cute episodes of はじめてのつかい and then gave Scout a bath. He actually splashed the water with his paw a little! I have every intention of getting him a floating rubber duckie for future baths to see if he’ll play with it… he’s basically a mischievous little kid.
Scout’s currently sitting next to me, grooming his still-damp fur, but it’s just about time for his allergy medication and his supper, so I’m off to do that.
I hope you have space to relax this weekend, drink plenty of water, and do something you enjoy.
The writing circle meet-up last weekend was just as interesting as the first one that I went to, but for an entirely different reason this time. I didn’t participate all that much during the meet-up proper — the energy was a little different than the last time, where we were all sort of discussing in small groups and having fantastic conversations that spanned a wide array of subjects. The gathering felt somehow a little sour this time. That is, until people slowly left and there were just two of us at the table, the other person having spoken even less than I had during the gathering.
The thing about introverts is we become more talkative and relaxed the smaller the gathering becomes. So I took a chance and asked her if she’d like to sit a little longer to talk some more… and she was happy to. As it turned out, she writes screenplays which is a format I’ve never attempted before, so I had plenty of questions about it and we both got to talk about our WIPs and the differences between our preferred formats. As obvious a thing to say as this is, it’s truly comforting and fun to talk to fellow writers.
We probably would have stayed to chat even longer had an organizer not come up to us in the restaurant we were in and asked us if we were there for a “language exchange” meet-up that was being set up in the area ours had been in. We said no and excused ourselves, paid for our drinks, and parted ways.
On the way home I perused my local comic book shop to admire their wall of Gundam plastic model kits (I refrained from buying one on the spot), and to take a look at some of the newest comics and graphic novels on display (it’s not new, but I still need to get the latest Saga volume), and then I left to take the long way home because the weather was fantastic (warm, but with a cool breeze).
I hadn’t intended to do any shopping at all during my walk, but when I noticed that Nordstrom was in the last couple days of its store closing sale, I couldn’t resist taking a look (a couple weeks before, I’d nabbed a heavily discounted YSL lipstick I’d had my eye on for years) and ended up finding a very comfy pair of leggings along with a holy grail find of two bras in my (specialty petite!) size in a style that I liked. Talk about lucky.
I didn’t have the energy to make anything complicated for supper when I got home, so I made a comfort meal of そうめん (cold noodles) with side dishes of cold tofu and sliced tomatoes. As always I had to fend Scout off several times, as he wanted to either sniff or stick his paw into the noodles, but after that we just relaxed and ate side by side.
I bought great new PS4 games when I was in Japan, but wouldn’t you know it? Instead of playing those, I’ve been hooked on replaying Dragon Age Inquisition instead. I finally cleared the trebuchet battle (without lowering the difficulty, heheh) so I set about exploring Skyhold and clearing up some minor quests before bed. And then woke up in the middle of the night and played some more until I could fall back to sleep.
Before that, though, I made some more notes for the next story, which I expect will be a novella or at most a short novel. Even now I’m still more or less in the outlining phase, but that Sunday, I did start the writing proper, though with a lot of false starts. It’s been in my mind since 2018, so I have bits of writing from that year and 2019 to incorporate in it (or discard if it no longer aligns) which is rather exciting in and of itself. A bit of spring cleaning for the imagination, you might say.
I even added another old art piece to the home page — void/eden from 2018.
In the week since I’ve put a bit more work into a short story that’s been percolating in my brain for a number of months and I finished translations for a few more アリス九號. lyrics (though they still need a bit of editing before I can post them). Though given that I worked yesterday, I’ll be spending a good deal of time, I expect, giving in to Scout’s requests for naps and pets…
Sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon to me 🙂
p.s. I ate yogurt all throughout childhood without any issues, but when I became a teenager, the smell suddenly started making me gag and ever since then I’d been keeping my distance from the stuff. Well, wouldn’t you know it? I recently figured out a way to trick my brain into eating it again! I take plain greek yogurt, slather it in my favourite salsa, and eat it with chips as a replacement for sour cream! Paired with the salsa, as long as I eat it while its still cold, I really can’t smell the difference between it and sour cream. I wonder if I’d be able to eat it with pierogis and green onion…
I’m not sure why I went so long without writing here again, but the most important thing to mention is that The Everyforest is officially complete — was completed May 22nd 2023. The final chapter, In/Out Ad Infinitum, was difficult both on an emotional level and a technical level, to write. It was so difficult to read that I cried while narrating the final section which probably made the recording difficult to listen to, but it was a genuine reaction, so I decided to use that first take anyway.
Finally… the novella is done.
I wanted to give up on writing it so many times, especially during the last few chapters, but I didn’t, and for that, I’m glad. In the time since, I’ve been working on the digital/print version of the book, editing the earlier chapters especially for cohesion, and I plan to have this self-published by the end of the year because quite frankly, an actual publisher would have to be crazy to take on this experimental thing to try to sell it. And my goal is a lot smaller than that: I literally just want this thing to exist.
Anything beyond it simply existing would be exciting though, I grant you.
Reader, if you’re creating something right now and feel alone, feel overwhelmed, or feel like it doesn’t matter — please don’t give up. The process of making it changes something in you and even just that alone gives it intrinsic value… although I do hope you get to share it with people that resonate with it and enjoy the thing you’ve made.
Anyway, if you’re wondering whether I’m already working on a follow-up to the novella, among other shorts, the answer to that is a very emphatic yes. Though I don’t yet know how I’ll be doing the next story (whether I’ll narrate it chapter by chapter or whether I’ll just be writing it and putting it up as one complete volume). I certainly haven’t forgotten about the Context novel (and in fact, the last few chapters of The Everyforest helped shape more of it in ways I hadn’t initially expected), but its plot definitely needs more thought put into it because what I’ve got so far is missing something in the middle.
In short: the plot needs a plumber.
I’ve actually got one in mind.
Oh, but that’s another story altogether…
Though that character would prefer you refer to her as a “shit facilitator,” I have come to understand.
Ahem.
Aside from that I’ve been steadily adding to the Alice9Lives site, recently put up my own 9kumi Interview, and added a couple more translations on the Cryptography page of this site.
It’s just about time for me to get ready to head out for a writers’ meet-up and it’s a sunny day which means I need extra time to slather on some sunscreen first. My anxiety got out of control yesterday afternoon at work and after some very incoherent journaling, a good meal, a small glass of scotch, a bit of gaming, and a lot of fitful sleep… I am finally feeling relatively clearheaded.
I am more than ready for a cup of coffee and some good conversation with my fellows.
At 7000 words and growing, TE10 simply had to be split in two chapters, regardless of how determined I had been to keep the novella at 10 chapters in order to match アリス九號.’s GRACE album. Instead, the 11 chapters represent the fact that GRACE was released in November, as well as reminding me of the lives I went to that same month, experiencing the whole album (most especially Grace and 界) for myself in person. A truly unforgettable experience that influenced the ending of the novella. I got so much inspiration from seeing and hearing the band rock out live, and most especially from seeing Saga play so soulfully and then relax and have a damn good time during classic, high-energy songs.
I’m so glad I went.
In other words: TE10 has now been released, and TE11’s release will follow in the next week or two!
I added some music into this 10th chapter as well, but I’m no songwriter, so it’s very rudimentary; I was just trying to improvise things during the recording and editing out the bits that sounded too rough afterward. Scout was an immense help during the editing process before bed last night: he provided ambient cuteness and kept my pillow warm while I sat at my dressing table and worked!
This project has really tested the limits of my writing abilities and I wanted to give up several times so I’m glad I saw it through. Regardless of what the reception is, writing this helped me process a lot of things that were in my subconscious — that were stuck there — and for that alone, it’s been worth it.
Though I hope that others who come across the novella will be moved by it too, in their own way.
The new chapter 10, which I chose to name Birth of a Language, makes reference to my 2018 poem Mitosis, expounds on a 2017 short story I wrote under a different penname, and fills in some background for the novel I’m working on. The new chapter 11, retaining its original name In/Out Ad Infinitum, is where everything… ends? begins? returns?
A couple evenings ago, Stephany and I met up again in order to attend another concert at the NAC. Last time we’d gone to see a concert that featured Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (and a disco ball out in the main hall afterwards, to our delight), and this time we were out to see a concert featuring Bryan Cheng, a cellist from our hometown of Ottawa.
This time, we had plenty of time before the concert was to start so we decided to go chat over milkshakes beforehand. We got our wires crossed right off the bat though, when I wasn’t clear enough with one of my texts, and so I went to the mall to meet her and she went right to the the milkshake bar. Luckily, we realized the mix-up quickly and I power walked my way to meet her where she’d already saved us the best seat in the house.
Not only is the name For God Shakes a great pun, the milkshakes were also pretty damn good. We talked about work a little, and then finished up our shakes over anecdotes about our cats because Scout and Marcel are always zooming around and getting up to silliness.
In this case, said silliness was getting their humans so distracted with talking about them that said humans had to dash out of the shop or risk being late for the concert! So off we went as quickly as we could, stopping only for a moment to laugh about the fact that we’d both worn cuffed pants and boots that were very similar in style. Our power walking didn’t quite cut it, though, and we arrived just a minute too late to go in. We had to stand outside the doors and watch the first piece in the concert from a screen before they would let us in.
Then, when they did let us in, we arrived at our seats but were perplexed when we found that they were already occupied. A pair of elderly ladies, thinking that they would remain vacant, chose to move into them but upon seeing our confused and/or frantic looks explained and moved without us even having to ask. I was thankful for that because I’d just about entered anxiety-mode and begun wondering if I’d read the map wrong and gone to the wrong side of the room! Crisis averted. We hurriedly settled into our seats and then Bryan Cheng and the conductor readied themselves and launched into the second piece.
The piece was brought to life beautifully by the orchestra and the cello had such a soft, warm sound. After that piece, the conductor left the stage and Bryan Cheng regaled the audience of his hometown with an unusual and lovely piece on the cello that would probably normally be meant for a fiddle. He also gave us all a good chuckle by demonstrating a “chop” on the cello (he very dramatically rapped the strings on the bridge once with his hand before starting the piece).
This bit of levity (followed by much applause and cheering afterwards) led into the intermission and Stephany and I got to talking about Japanese studies and using the Japanese language. She told me a little about what the most advanced Japanese course offered in the city was like, and I told her about the kanji studying app I was back to using after half a year away from it (Kanji Study — it’s incredibly versatile for self-directed study especially… I used it before taking the N2). I also told her that the JLPT is now offered in our city (and that we no longer need to travel to Toronto for it).
…I still intend to achieve N1 certification, even if it takes me a couple tries.
But I digress.
The orchestra returned to the stage, the lights dimmed, and once more they drew us into an incredible piece of music that was filled with so much energy and dramatic high points. I normally get lulled into a doze partway through classical concerts because they’re so relaxing, but this music had me awake from start to finish! Despite the fact that we missed the first piece of the night, it was a gorgeous concert and we both had a good evening taking it all in… which is not to mention how enjoyable it was to catch up too!
On the way back to the train, we got to talking about the last piece and what we’d each imagined, and it was so interesting that while we both got the same energetic impression of the music, we both imagined different scenery: Stephany imagined a stormy sea and running through a forest, while I imagined huge snowdrifts and powdery snow blowing up and away in the wind.
One year ago today, I met Scout and brought him home with me.
The rescue estimated that he was about four years old and so gave him an estimated birth date in March, based on when they’d rescued him. But because I adopted him just a month later, I decided I might as well celebrate both dates at once. As a five-year-old, Scout is far more relaxed living in the apartment than he was for the first few months that I had him.
He’s decided that he doesn’t mind taking baths (but hates drying off), that mirrors are interesting, that both coffee and bananas smell yucky, that it’s bedtime as soon as his human cuddles under the the duvet in bed, that breakfast is at precisely 6am (…but that it’s fun to try to wake his human up an hour before that), that the food dance does make food tastier, that he can see his human coming home from work if he patiently scouts the sidewalk from the windowsills, and that going to the vet is nothing to worry about because he gets to come home afterwards.
Scout still has a bit of a wild streak in him, but he’s a people-cat and loves spending time with me and meeting other humans. It took us several months to bond after the adoption, but I feel so lucky that he eventually chose me the way that I chose him.
I also feel lucky that, despite all his rambunctious energy, when it’s time for me to sit and write or develop or get my creative juices flowing, Scout is usually quite happy to quiet down and take a nap next to me.
A little while back, Scout found a new way to get me up in the morning for breakfast: by burrowing under my pillow so that I would have no choice but to sit up.
Cute and clever, right?
Well, this morning Scout decided to up his game and got even craftier.
He decided to burrow himself into the damn pillowcase.
When I sat up and saw what he’d done, I burst out laughing.
Once again (to Scout’s delight) I stayed home from work, as I was still positive yesterday evening and still positive this evening too; I have only a bit of a cough now but with any luck, I’ll be negative by tomorrow morning. That being said, I took full advantage of the fact that I was feeling better to do more writing and cleaning up today — and getting a few hundred words on the page yesterday was such a relief.
Leaving my phone in the other room on silent was too.
It was just me and the page, my imagination, a jumble of words.
Scout kept walking back and forth over the keyboard for the first twenty minutes of my attempt at writing yesterday (while I spluttered and laughed in despair), but seemed to understand, eventually, that he should just let me focus, and went to lie down and relax, still in sight. It was an afternoon, like many, in which we shared a companionable silence.
So far today I only managed a few sentences before I had to go lie down and take a nap and when I woke up decided to start preparing a bunch of loads of laundry (which I won’t be able to go out and do until I’m negative) and do more cleaning and vacuuming to try and make this place feel less stuffy. While I was rummaging through things in a drawer, Scout decided to lounge on the v-kei magazine piles and ended up looking like a fluffy little dragon guarding his hoarde of gold.
I’m starting to feel a little better today and am hoping to be able to go back into work tomorrow (or Thursday, at worst). In the meantime, a little writing, a little cleaning, and a bit of cuddling with Scout are the only truly pressing items on my to-do list.
Speaking of which, I have a new writing set-up in the kitchen: a laptop disconnected from the internet on my kitchen table so that when I go sit there just to write it feels almost like being in a little café. Scout even settles in to the reading chair behind me to keep me company while I work (instead of taking a nap in his lookout). Back in the early days of university I used to do the bulk of my writing on a desktop disconnected from the internet so I thought I’d bring my old writing method back and see how it felt. It does rather curb my tendency to obsessively rifle through a thesaurus to find words stuck on the tip of my tongue. Scout is meowing at me. Time to write.
I’m at the tail-end of the Easter long weekend and boy do I ever have an update.
For starters, I’ve been sick all weekend.
I started feeling under the weather when I got home Thursday (after someone had come into work feeling sick and not bothered to mask or cover their mouth while coughing and sneezing — to their credit, they did choose to go home early), which turned into feeling sick on Friday and though I tested negative for covid that evening, I woke up the next morning knowing I definitely wouldn’t be going in for the Saturday shift I’d agreed to lead earlier that week. I told my manager exactly that and explained to my Saturday-shift coworker what flow to follow for her tasks that day, then I contacted my brother to ask him if he could find someone else to visit Pearl this weekend (thankfully, someone else was available), and finally, I crawled into a blanket cocoon with a box of tissues.
Later, I learned that a third member of my team had gotten sick and tested positive for covid and so I tested again.
Sure enough, the second test came back positive.
I’m just thankful that these symptoms don’t feel much worse than a bad cold, and that I decided to take precautions and isolate even when I thought I might just have a garden-variety cold. This means I’m going to have a lot of cleaning and disinfecting to do over the next couple of days as my symptoms clear and I prepare to rejoin the outside world.
Scout and I have been resting and watching Pose together (we just started season 2), and I have been drinking and snacking voraciously since I got sick!
But let’s back up. This isn’t the biggest thing that’s happened in the past week.
That… was Tuesday morning.
As usual, Scout tried to nudge me up out of bed for breakfast after I dared to press the snooze button, and I complied, still only half-awake. We went into the kitchen, I grabbed one of the new cans of food I’d bought for him to try and peeled off the lid… and stared.
The can was smaller than usual and its lid thicker than usual, and I’d misjudged my strength in opening it, causing the lid to slip and slice the back of my hand open. It welled with blood immediately and my head went blank for a second; then I brought my hand over to the sink to try and wash the blood off which just made more well up. I tried using a napkin to stop the bleeding but that didn’t work, and I was feeling woozy, lightheaded as though I were about to fall. I kept telling Scout, “it’s gonna be okay” and reminding myself over and over under my breath, “don’t panic, stay calm.”
The next part is a little jumbled in my head, but here are the basics. Shakily, I grabbed a kitchen towel and wrapped my hand in that, pressing it to my chest in the hopes that the pressure would help. The wooziness got to me though and I fell awkwardly onto the floor, at which point I started to get a little scared. I was able to get back up, though, and (kind of comically) took out a spoon to try and get Scout’s meal out into his bowl.
It just felt like I had to make sure he had food before I fully focused on getting my wound taken care of.
I’m pretty sure I let myself fall to the floor again against the wall after I gave him his food, trying to think of what to do. The wooziness wasn’t going away and I was the only human in the apartment, so I did the only thing that made sense to me: I called 911.
I know. Even though it was a very deep cut, it was still just a cut, and I probably would have been okay to get myself to the hospital with my hand wrapped in the towel, but I truly didn’t know if I was going to faint completely or not, and I didn’t yet know how bad the cut was, so 911 seemed safest.
I was so out of it when I called I actually told the operator I was a year younger than I actually am. They were very kind and to the point, and I gingerly went out into the main hall sit and wait, unlocking the door for the EMTs. I rang them into the bulding, and then they got me to sit in the bathroom so they could assess my hand. They explained that I would need a tetanus booster as well as stitches, but that thankfully the wound hadn’t been deep enough to cut muscle and hadn’t nicked any nerves either.
I was so lucky!!
I thanked them for applying gauze to the wound and bandaging my hand and, having given me the all-clear otherwise, I also turned down their offer to be driven to the hospital by them in an ambulance. Having been patched up, and my body no longer in shock from the sudden wound, I was okay to get to the hospital myself — it only made sense that they should go back to being on standby to help someone else.
All of this happened well before my shift at work so I sent an email to tell my manager that I would not be in for obvious reasons (lol), those reasons being that I had to go to the hospital and get sewn up, and thus began the next leg of my adventure that day.
I charged my phone, gave Scout some extra food, packed some books (to avoid using up my phone battery), very carefully got dressed, put on my coat, then headed to the bus stop to make my way directly to the hospital. It was actually a nice sunny day above zero, the bus was relatively empty, and I arrived at the emergency room without any issues.
The estimated wait time when I arrived was 12 hours, but I thankfully got seen in less than 5, and though the process of getting sewn up was not fun (lol), the nurses and the doctor were all really kind throughout the intake process and procedure itself — three stitches on the back of my hand, between my thumb and forefinger.
I went home, cleaned up the floors and counters in the kitchen (I’d spattered quite a bit of blood), reassured Scout that everything was okay, and then had to face my newfound fear of opening cat food cans. There was no getting around that, though. I had to do it. So to make it feel safer, I fished a little cardboard box out of my recycling and surrounded the cat with it to protect my hand. Now I use it all the time.
As a little celebration after safely feeding Scout, I ordered myself a pizza :3
I went back into work the next day; thankfully, I’m doing a lot of training and quality assurance for my team’s work now, all of which I could still do mostly one-handed for the first two days. We ended up having a freezing rainstorm, and again, I was incredibly lucky that the weather the day before had been so good!
Now I’m sick though. haha!
I shower and do all my cleaning with a bandage and glove on, and so far the wound seems to be healing well. I am so, so eager to do a thorough spring cleaning (and disinfection) once this illness blows over!
In other good news, Saga made a full recovery from the flu, and ALICE NINE. are back to rocking out on their tour. Saga feels “better than before” [ apparently ]! And that selfie is the cutest, the sweetest…!
( I’m glad! I was worried about you! :)♡ )
I finally saw the setlists they’ve been playing while on tour and they are amazing. The last tour was really focused on GRACE, but this one is really integrating the songs from GRACE into setlists that celebrate all their eras. So proud of them, and can definitely understand how filled with passion each live must be!
Anyway, it’s still cold here in Ottawa, but we’re getting more and more sunny days, the Canada geese recently returned, and I’m starting to see buds on trees, so spring is just around the corner.
