Grumpy Is Not Just For Bears

I’ve figured it out.  It’s not just my friend being an ass.  It’s not just Bly being away.  It’s not all the other crap, though it all figures in.

The real problem, what’s really wrong with me, or at the heart of it, or making it a ton worse or whatever, is that I’m not writing.  I finished a book.  There’s always depression and let-down after I finish a book.  Always.

And worse, I’m not writing anything else.  For good reasons, I think.  I need to edit something that’s already done and get it out there.  I really do.  And I need to do a bit of world-building.  Taro’s first book can stand on its own, but all the others have stuff running through them, the beginnings of the Major Trouble I’m building towards.  And I need to know a bit more about that Major Trouble before I go on with the others.  So.  Editing and Thought and Major Work directly ahead, my personal life going to hell in a handbasket, post-writum depression, that damned Greed-Fest (as my pagan friend names Christmas, and she’s right) closing fast–no wonder I’m snarling at everything that moves. 

So what am I doing, instead of attacking all that work?  I’m reading old stuff.  Watching the Crapometer.  Miss Snark got nearly 700 entries.  She’s done 130, mine is 242.  I’ll be lucky if the poor woman gets to me by Wednesday.  But I lurk, and refresh the page, and read…

I ran the dishwasher.  Sort of made dinner.  (sort of meaning it was food, but it wasn’t the nutritious stuff I’ve been trying to feed us.)  Snarled at the bird and the dog.  We did get a Christmas tree, and as has become tradition, Hope decorated it herself.  It looks great.  She wants tinsel, but I had to raid the ashtray stash to get a stand for the dumb tree, so I don’t have a dollar for tinsel.  Have to hit the bank again, damn it, there are other things we need…

It’s been years since I watched a Christmas special, but I still have to fight the damn programming that the tree needs to be seven feet tall and full of ornaments that mean something and sparkle and…fuggit.  I got my kid and my writing, I got all I need.  Though it was rather harsh trying to pull Hope away from the eight-foot tree her school-friend’s parents were considering ($200 for something that will last TWO WEEKS!!!)  to look at trees barely as tall as Hope is.

That’s all right, though.  A five-foot tree fits in the backseat of an 88 Corolla with a stuck-shut trunk.  It’s all good.