Category Archives: Personal

Just Stuff, Pictures

How I Work

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Kittys At Work
~ Clicky clicky to make bigger ~

Any work I can do without the use of a computer is done on my bed. I know, I know it’s bad for me, it’s not good for posture, or brain training or whatever, whatever, whatever… but regardless it is how I work. One day, a few weeks ago, I stepped away from my work for a couple minutes and when I came back to it this was the sight that greeted me. Since this is actually fairly typical of my working conditions I couldn’t resist the urge to snap a picture to share.

Allow me to introduce Indiana, Absinthe and Eowyn. Atreyu, our dog, was at my feet when I shot this picture and that’s also usually where he is when I’m working too (on the computer or otherwise).

My life. It ain’t glamorous, but it sure is furry.

Personal, Pictures

Care Bear Crisis

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I interrupt what has been mostly self-promotional posts of late, to bring you something completely unrelated to books or writing, but something I feel a desire to share… my Care Bear Crisis.

You see those pictures there? Those are some of the stuffed animals that make up my Care Bear collection (I also have an Eeyore collection. These are things that sometimes surprise people. They are like “So… you collect Care Bears and Eeyores and you write about acid-tongued rats, giant ants and zombies?”). Jo, Dani and I live in a relatively small house and a couple years ago, in order to make more room for books, I boxed up my Care Bears and put them in storage. I wasn’t ready to sell or give them away, but at the same time I needed shelf space, so it seemed like a good compromise. Last month I decide to unbox them and find new homes for them. Well, most of them. I pulled Bedtime Bear and Swift Heart Rabbit out of the collection and tucked them in between Eeyores on that shelf. I couldn’t part with them.

Bedtime Bear is special to me because I have a complicated relationship with sleep. I love it, but for various reasons I tend to do too little or too much of it, and often at the times I’m not supposed to. Some of my worst recurring nightmares have involved falling asleep at work or struggling to stay awake and alert while doing things. Those probably sound like stupid things to have nightmares about but trust me, they suck. So Bedtime Bear had to stay.

So did Swift Heart. When I was a kid in the 80s and Care Bears were all the rage I really, really wanted one. Really. For one birthday my cousin and best friend Clinton gave me a knock-off Swift Heart Rabbit. He was so pleased to be able to give me that bunny and I loved it fiercely. My younger siblings and I shared a toy box and they didn’t love it in the same way I did. Eventually my bunny lost his ears, but I still loved him. Clinton killed himself when we were both sixteen, and that was as crushing as you can imagine and made the bunny even more precious. Unfortunately when I was about nineteen my dog destroyed that poor stuffy. So when I got myself a real Swift Heart Rabbit… well, you can imagine why I can’t bring myself to part with it.

Still, that left a lot of other stuffed animals that I was looking to re-home. The emails poured in. Care Bears from the 80s are pretty highly collectable (not as much as they used to be before they were all re-released, but still). The first one said “I want Tenderheart and Grumpy” and I looked at Tenderheart and I looked at Grumpy and I thought, “I can’t get rid of Grumpy!” so I emailed that person back and said “Grumpy’s not available, but Tenderheart is.” and he was like “No, I need both.” So they stayed.

Then the next email came in, “I’ll take Birthday Bear and Grumpy.” and I was like “Um…”

Long story made short(er) I couldn’t do it. I think I could have sold my collection as a whole but I couldn’t cannibalize it like that. I did sell a couple bears to a girl who wanted to give them to her collector little sister because, well, she didn’t want Grumpy for one thing LOL And for another, she was giving them to someone who would love them, but mostly I ended up putting Grumpy, Bedtime Bear and Swift Heart Rabbit up on the shelf with my Eeyores and tucking the rest back into storage.

My name is Rhonda, and I’m not a hoarder I swear. I just have a bit of a Care Bear problem…

A to Z Challenge, Consequence, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, Personal, Shadows, Twixt, W1S1

Looking Back at 2012

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Rearview -- Photo by Rhonda ParrishIt’s that time of year again, when I look back at the goals I set the year before and create new ones for the year to come. These are not resolutions, I was sorely tempted to begin and end my yearly goals in the middle of summer just to get away from the R word, but it turns out that my desire to be lazy outweighs my desire to be contrary 😉 So here we go, how did I do on reaching my 2012 goals?

For 2012 I wanted to address not just writing, but also editing and schoolwork so I broke my goals up into four categories: Health (because that affects every part of my life), School, Writing and Editing. My specific goals for 2012 were:

Health:

  • Continue to eat healthy. In my case that is a low-sodium pescatarian diet.

I’m going to call this one successful (hence the bolding ;)) though there is definitely room for debate. I eat when I’m emotional and it’s been an emotional freaking year, but overall, I’m pleased with how I’ve done, not least of all because this year I was able to recognize when I was eating for reasons other than hunger. It’s a small step, but at least it’s in the right direction.

  • No drinking energy drinks

Um, I did pretty well with this at first, and I’m not drinking them now, but there was a period when my sister and niece were staying with us and also when my mom died that I used energy drinks as a crutch to get through the day without napping. Understandable, I think, but it means I didn’t reach this goal.

  • Remember soft drinks are a ‘sometimes food’ (Thanks Cookie Monster)

Erm… yeah. I started out strong on this one but as I write this blog there is a Diet Dr. Pepper sitting within reach on my desk so… yeah. Goal not accomplished.

  • Workout at least five times a week

This I was good at for most of the year. I was working out six days a week and was making Danica do it with me. We did some 30 Day Shred stuff, Couch to 5k (before I screwed up my ankle. Again) and were only a couple weeks away from completing the P90x Lean program when my Mom died. It sounds like an excuse, but when she died my world sort of tipped upside down and I am still struggling to get back into the workout habit. It will definitely be on the goal list for 2013. I’m calling this goal accomplished though because I did very well.

  • Lose 40lbs

Not even close. This has been SUPER frustrating for me because I felt like I was working really hard and the scale just wasn’t moving the way it was meant to. (I say that in the past tense because I sort of fell off the ‘working hard’ wagon in November and December.)

School: I think this year is going to be more writing and editing-centric so my school goal is optional, depending on time and stress.

  • Finish one, or, if I’m feeling super energetic, two more courses toward my degree

I didn’t do any courses toward my degree in 2012. I intend to change that up for 2013.

Writing:

  • Write the first draft of Consequence

Didn’t happen. I don’t have a great excuse as to why it didn’t happen, I just got distracted.

  • Participate in the monthly version of Write 1 Sub 1. I have a habit of writing ‘cast-off’ poetry for things like this when I become overwhelmed. That’s not acceptable here. Poetry only counts if it is in a complete and publishable form that I’m proud of. Same goes for stories.

Thank gawd for W1S1. Without it my writing productivity would have been even lower than it already was. I was successful in doing the monthly version of W1S1 and I look forward to doing a modified weekly version in 2013.

  • Figure out what to do with Shadows and my zombie poetry and get to work on doing it. This can mean looking for an agent, a publisher or any number of other things. I can’t be specific until I’ve made a decision

Done and done. Shadows has been shelved for the time being. I keep having ideas on how I can improve it and feeling the temptation to pull it out and revise it again but so far I’ve resisted. I think I need to move on for now. I’ll come back to Shadows someday, but not anytime soon. As for the zombie poetry, I’ve also figured out what I’m going to do with it… I just haven’t actually got it done yet. I will definitely be including that in my goals for 2013. The zombie poetry project is stalled temporarily while I wait on something I need from someone else, but soon… soon…

  • Either finish a first draft of Hollow Children or a transcription of Twixt

Hmm… I don’t know whether or to call this accomplished or not. Technically I didn’t do either of those things so I guess it’s not accomplished, however… instead of transcribing Twixt (I wrote the first draft long hand and so needed to type it up) I started doing the How to Revise Your Novel course using it as the project I was working on. What I discovered in the process of taking that course and doing the exercises was that Twixt, as it was written, was fatally flawed so I didn’t transcribe it. I didn’t begin working on a new draft either because it wasn’t until the end of November that I figured out what exactly I’d done wrong and how to fix it. Interestingly enough, that is also true of Hollow Children. I was hopelessly stalled on it until the end of November when I had an epiphany and figured out how to fix it. So there’s that…

  • Revise the whack of ‘mostly finished’ short stories sitting in my Dropbox and start looking for homes for them

I did manage to do this… and then I participated in the Whittaker Prize (see below) and added a bunch more ‘mostly finished’ short stories to my Dropbox to work on. Wheee!

  • NaNoWriMo is optional. So is NovPad.

I participated in NaNoWriMo and was successful despite restarting several times and switching projects three times. I attempted NovPad but was far less successful. The good thing about NovPad, as my friend Beth pointed out to me is that the prompts are always there. So I’ll keep working through them. Just like I did last year (see below). Ya know, it seems I’m not really very good at this NovPad thing LoL

  • Participate in the Whittaker Prize again this year, but in only one category, not both.

I participated in the short story section of the Whittaker Prize this year and ended up placing 10th overall with a final score, after six rounds, of 453. I… don’t know how that compares to how I’ve done in previous years but I feel really good about the work I produced for the Whittakers this year. In fact, one of my stories even tied for first on one of the rounds O_o That had never happened before LOL

  • Finish writing poems for all the 2011 Novpad prompts

Done. One of these years I may actually finish writing poems for all the NovPad prompts in November. One day…

Editing:

  • Implement the new payment system for Niteblade

Done. And best of all, it seems to be working. I haven’t finished all the totals for Niteblade’s sales for 2012 but I strongly suspect that when I do we’ll find that we had our best year yet. Yay!

  • Run a fundraiser and increase promotion in order to move out of the red

Done. We raised $108.78 to help pay our writers and artist.

  • Super Sekkrit Projekt w CJD (not Niteblade-related)

I’ve done what I can on this project and it’s now in other people’s hands. I’ve got my fingers crossed that something will come of it, but right now I have to wait and see.

Also? I blogged every week. Whoot!

You know, looking back, I’m actually super impressed with myself. I didn’t accomplish everything I set out to do, but overall I did pretty damn good. Even without factoring in all the challenges I had to overcome (because really, though this year feels like it was exceptionally bad for that, every year comes with its own set of obstacles, right?). Maybe I’m getting better at this whole goal setting thing LOL

In addition to the goals I set for myself, 2012 had a few other highlights for me as well. A few, just off the top of my head are:

I am seriously looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer 🙂

ETA: Edited to reflect the fact I’ve only read the first book in The Song of Ice and Fire series.

Personal, Stream of Consciousness, Thoughts

EVEC

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Edmonton Emergency Veterinarian's ClinicI’d meant to spend some time this afternoon working on a blog post that was looking back at the year, at what I’d accomplished, what goals I had achieved and which I hadn’t, that sort of thing. But then, life got in the way. Again.

We had to take our cat, Indiana to the kitty emergency room. Again. I think today’s trip was the fifth we’ve made to the EVEC with him. Five. Five exhausting, stressful, traumatic and expensive trips to the animal hospital in about as many weeks. It is unfun and complicated by the fact we don’t own a car so all these trips are made via cab or bus. It’s been frustrating and, did I mention stressful? And I have begun to feel pretty sorry for, not just Indy, but us, too. When I think about it, though, we are pretty lucky, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

It was four hours tonight between the time we left our home with Indiana and the time we arrived back home again. Four hours. Three of which were spent in the waiting room at the Edmonton Veterinarian’s Emergency Clinic. During those three hours I watched three families leave with tear-streaked cheeks and empty animal carriers. Three families who were going to be missing a furry member. And that is not counting the people who were leaving living animals behind for treatment or observation.

Sadly we have been spending a fair amount of time at the Veterinarian’s Emergency Clinic so I know that this was an especially busy and sad period for them, but still, we’re lucky. We still have Indy with us. What’s more, we’re lucky that the Edmonton Veterinarian’s Emergency Clinic exists, and that there are people who are willing to work there. I would not be. I couldn’t do it. They are not like an ordinary veterinarian who sees our pets for check-ups and shots from 9-5. The people who work at this clinic only see animals when they are in crisis. When there is an emergency. And they are open 24/7 365 days a year. That is awesome. They are awesome.

So, I’m not writing a blog today looking back on a year of writing and life, but about a clinic staffed by awesome people. They have saved Indy’s life a couple times already and while I would very much like to never have to see them again, I feel a whole lot better knowing that they are there just in case we need them. Again. I couldn’t do what they do, but I’m so very glad that they can.

<3

 

Just Stuff, Personal, Thoughts

Dear Santa

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Last year I wrote a letter to Santa on my blog and I thought it was a lot of fun, so have decided to make it an annual tradition. I am not writing this to request anyone buy these items for me, this isn’t that sort of wishlist. It’s just meant to be fun.

Dear Santa,

This year has sucked. Not everything about it, of course, but overall it’s been pretty tough so surely I can be forgiven for the times I wasn’t ‘good’? I mean, even when I was bad it was usually only to myself. That ought to count for something, right? With that in mind, this year for Giftmas I would like the following:Diana Baby camera from Lomography

  • Pretty much any of the cameras from the Lomography website. Really. I’d be happy with any of them. That being said though, I do especially have my eye on the Diana Baby 110 camera with the 24mm lens. So far I haven’t been able to get my IR filter to play nicely with my DSLR so if you were to couple that with some IR film I would think you were the most awesomest bearded dude evar.
  • It’s really quite scandalous that as the publisher of an e-zine I don’t have an e-reader yet. That, coupled with my insomnia has inspired me to add a Kobo Glo to my wishlist. This, despite the missing w on the word glow. I picked the Kobo because it is only an e-reader. It’s not a camera, browser, game console, etc. etc. I don’t want to be more plugged in to online or play more games, I just want to be able to read a book in bed without waking up Jo.
  • I kinda want to spit in a test tube. No, really.
  • As you know, Santa, I am in the process of refinishing our dining room table which is a family heirloom. I would very much like to find chairs that fit it. Since we’re using an unusual color of stain I will give bonus points if the chairs are unstained, so I don’t have to sand them before I stain them to match the table. Not that I’m lazy or anything you understand…
  • Lastly, Santa, do you remember last year when I asked you for “some baseboards and riser thingers for my bathroom and kitchen. If we don’t finish them up soon they are just going to blend into the background and we’ll never get them done.” Well I could still use those baseboards and riser thingers.

Thank you Santa.

Love,

Rhonda

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite performers performing one of my favourite Christmas songs ever (even if it does make me cry these days):

<3

Just Stuff, Personal, Stream of Consciousness

Faster Than The Speed of Life

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Indiana Jones ParrishFor the most part I have a fantastic life. I’m relatively healthy, I have friends and family who love me (and who I love), I’m able to spend my days doing what I love (writing and editing) and, ya know, overall things are pretty good. They aren’t perfect, of course, but they are pretty good. But it always seems like just when I’d really like a nice, quiet period in my life the most something happens to make sure I don’t get it.

My mom dying last month was… traumatic, to say the least. It was pretty sudden — she was doing well, and then suddenly she very much wasn’t. I’ve been working to come to terms with her loss and with all the circumstances around it, and I’ve been doing pretty well. I was down, of course, but grief is a funny thing — it comes at you in waves. I was able to get things done, still, to lead a more or less “normal” life. I kept busy, which helped, and thought “Hey, you know what would be a great idea? I’ll do NaNoWriMo and NovPad and get the December issue of Niteblade ready. No problem.”

Then life stepped up and said “Nu-uh. No you don’t.”

We have three cats. They are all awesome and all very different from one another. Indiana, Eowyn and Absinthe. Indiana is the cuddly one, Eowyn is the proud/bitchy one and Absinthe is the shit-disturber. On Friday we had to rush Indiana (you can see him in these pictures) to the animal hospital because he had an obstruction in his urethra. He was diagnosed with FLUTD (Feline lower urinary tract disease), admitted and catheterized under sedation. Before they performed the procedure they asked if we wanted to visit him to say goodbye. I couldn’t. Just the idea of visiting someone I loved in a hospital again after my Mom… I just couldn’t do it.

On Saturday, the hospital called to say there had been a complication in removing the catheter and Indy was going to require surgery to get it out. We consented to that. Very late on Sunday night he was released and we brought him home. When we went to pick him up at the animal hospital they brought him out in his (huge) cat carrier. I knelt down to see him and stuck my fingers through the bars. He rushed over from the back of the carrier and tried to bonk me through the bars, and when that didn’t work he just rubbed against my fingers as best he could with his cone of shame on. It made me cry. Jo and the receptionist pretended not to notice, because they are awesome.

Now he’s home, but the stress doesn’t stop. There’s money stress because stays in the animal hospital and emergency surgery are not cheap. We’re lucky in that we were able to pay for this without too much hardship, but if it becomes a recurring thing that may not remain true. What’s more, the urinary tract obstruction he had does tend to be a recurring thing, and if it happens and it’s not caught in time, it will kill him. Straight up. So we have to watch and make sure he’s not straining to pee or showing any of the other signs of obstruction. Indiana Jones Parrish

But wait, there’s more! He has three medications to take; pain killers, antibiotics and antispasmodics. Happily Jo is all over keeping track of and dispensing that as it would break my brain. Seriously.

Indy also has a cone of shame on, and he can’t quite figure out how to eat or drink normally with it, so we are essentially hand-feeding him (or had been. We’ve recently decided to take the cone off when we are able to supervise him to make sure he’s not licking his incision, and hopefully he’ll feed himself). He’s not eating as much as we’d like (I think partly because of the cone and partly because he doesn’t like his new, expensive, prescription food). But he seems to be in good spirits and has lots of energy (in between painkiller doses, anyway), so I’m tentatively optimistic.

This is more than a little stressful on our other animals too. The other cats have to switch over to the same diet as Indy and they aren’t fans. Neither of them is eating as much as they should be. We can’t really feed them prescription kibble (which I think will help as they will be able to eat when they want, not just at mealtimes) at least until Indiana is out of his cone of shame (middle of next week) and able to drink enough water to make dry food a viable option for him. Even Tre’s (our dog) eating has to be altered because we can’t let him have hard food sitting in his bowl because Indy will steal it, eat it and obstruct again.

I freaking suck at ‘wait and see’ and this is one big-ass case of ‘wait and see’.

I’m not handling it very well. I’m the sort of stressed/depressed right now where all I want to do is sleep. That really isn’t good for NaNoWriMo, November Poem-a-Day, Niteblade, or, ya know, life.

I’m doing the best I can though, and I’m still writing. Not as much as I should be, and I’ve switched NaNo novels again to something that requires a little less thought than Hollow Children, but I’m writing. If Jay Lake can write through all the crap he’s been dealing with over the past five years, and all my friends on Team Thalia can write through the curve balls and hardships life throws their way, then I can write through this.

And besides, when I’m writing, when I’m actually in the middle of the action, then all this just goes away for a little bit. It’s only for a few minutes at a time, but I’ll take it. Oh yes, yes I will.

ETA: I spent the afternoon working on catching up on my NaNo project and I’m currently only about 2,500 words behind. Yay!

 

Personal, Published

This and That

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Danica -- photograph by Rhonda ParrishIt’s Danica’s birthday today 🙂 She is now fifteen. Fifteen! Dude. That breaks my brain a little bit. For real.

I am the proudest mother in the world. Danica is a kind, intelligent, creative young lady who is made of win. Her art is anime-esque and often takes a bit of a dark bent, but so far it hasn’t disturbed me too much 😉 I’m looking forward to seeing her illustrate my work someday.

She loves her computer (many of her friends are in there!), but she’s also happy to sit down with a good book. She adores vampires, zombies, ghosts and ghoulies. She actually likes torture-porn movies (like the Saw series, which me no likee) but also gushes about how cute Pikachu is, and does Caramelldansen at random times:

And yes, she does look that cute when she dances it. And yes, she does sing the words. And no, I have no idea what they mean. She could be saying all sorts of bad things and I’d never know. Of course, that’s just not her style 🙂

Happy Birthday Dani!

I think Dani is made of awesome, which is one reason I chose October 5th as the day I wanted to contribute to the 3hundredand65 graphic novel. What they are doing is creating a graphic novel one tweet and one day at a time. Everyday someone (it could be you!) writes a tweet to continue the story and then David Kirkwood illustrates it. They are trying to raise money and awareness for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

I won’t lie, the story completely lost me more than once as it writhed its way from one plot twist to another, but then I began to feel like I was begining to get a grip on what was happening. Thank gawd. It would have sucked to have to pass on the oppourtunity to be a part of this project because I was confused. But I didn’t have to. I got to add my tweet.

For those of you who are already following the 3hundredand65 story, I will explain a little bit about why I wrote what I did. We’re getting near the end of the story now and so we need to start tying up some of the loose ends. With that in mind I wanted to bring at least one more of the old characters back into the action with Tink now. Slowly gathering people back together. Though I would most have liked to have written something about Big Lad (because, c’mon, how awesome is he?) way back in the spring Cope was given a five day deadline to atone for his sins. Time being maleable as it is in this story, I’m not actually sure how many days have gone by, but I don’t feel like he’s done much atoning yet so…

Of course there is the problem that Cope and Lad went inside all time… time still passes if you’re in it, right? Or… if you’re inside time are you outside of it? Or… Oh yeah, my head is starting to hurt again.

By leaving Cope’s face disembodied I’m hoping to leave things open to the next writer to decide if the Tinks are imagining him, seeing his reflection or some other, cooler, possibility. I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes.

If you’re a writer they are still accepting sign-ups from people who want to contribute to the story. If you’re just a reader or a fan of art, it’s definitely worth checking out too. And if you can afford to, consider making a monetary contribution because, Fuck Cancer.

 

 

Personal, Thoughts

Fuck Cancer

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He Loves Me Not - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishMy mom has been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. She is trying to stay positive and so am I but my success varies from moment to moment. Sometimes I do very well, but I can fall apart in the blink of an eye. That means my blogging, writing, emailing etc. may be sporadic and random for a little while. I’ll also be canceling my trip to the World Fantasy Convention. I know you’ll understand.

Kindness is one thing that seems to make me crumble right now, so if I take a very long time to reply to your comments, it’s a safe bet that’s why.

Also, while I am an atheist my mother is not. If you are someone who believes in prayer I’m sure she would very much like to be included in yours.

This is tough.

Fuck cancer.

 

Pictures, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Kids

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Yesterday I was helping someone with a crisis* and it left me too exhausted to do anything more than breathe. So, this week’s Tuesday blog is being posted on a Wednesday 🙂

I’m going to share two pictures of kids. I took these at a recent family get-together at my parent’s house. These are my youngest niece and nephew, Jayde and Dominick.

Click on the pictures to see them as they are intended. WordPress crops them however they need to in order to make them fit.

*It’s not my story to tell so I won’t, but things are looking up.