lolotehe

Well… here we are, another month down… and not so much in the way of writing to show for it.

The year got off to a rough start. I had started the year a bit aimlessly, not really sure what I wanted to do beyond just trying to plod forward through the plan I’d already created for myself. My inspiration was a little low, but I really wanted to find and recapture some of the “spark” in terms of creative writing. Getting through some of the outlining seemed like the biggest necessity: trying to get some ideas down in enough detail that I’ll be able in the future to jump back into those projects without lamenting that I’ve forgotten too much about them. Also, pushing through the slightly boring outlining seems like a good idea for what to do when I’m not feeling super excited. At least in theory, once I do feel a bit more inspired, then I’ll be able to turn to the actual writing, with all the prep work out of the way.

I wasn’t off to a swimming start in January, but I’d started to at least poke at a few things. Then my appendix died and tried to take me with it, and that pretty much destroyed the rest of January.

Tragically, both January and early February were also marred by grief. Two dear friends of mine, one an in-person friend from the goth scene, and one an online fandom friend here, both passed away. Both were people who were extremely creative in their own ways, whether that was writing music or writing fic. I miss them both terribly.

Still, I had tiny, small hopes that February would get better. Even as it got closer to mid-month, I wasn’t managing much, but I did at least start to feel a bit more interested in the idea of writing, which was an improvement!

And then I got smacked down by a pretty nasty cold (I don’t think it was flu, but it sucked.) That knocked me out for about a week or ten days, and then has lingered. While I should be mostly healed from the appendectomy, I think the illness set me back a little bit. I'm just now getting to about 90% better from the cold, and so I'm hoping I'm getting closer to healthy again.

My goals for February were to:
- Resume working on my WIP outline

…That’s it.

How did that go?

It did not!

I did not work on my WIP at all in February. :(

I did write some, but it was non-fiction writing, mostly writing up reviews of books I read, though I didn’t do as much reading as I’d hoped to, either!

The back to back suck of the first couple months of the year really did pretty much kick my ass. This is partially just an excuse: if I was feeling super excited and motivated, I probably would have pushed through to do more. In the absence of that enthusiasm, I didn’t have it in me to push through the illness and the sadness.

So, uh… maybe this month?

My goals for March:
- Reorient myself in the WIP outline (at this point, it’s been sitting there for a couple months, and I will need to reread the pieces I have to remember where I needed to go from there.)
- Work on the WIP outline (even if it’s just a little bit! I won’t even try to pretend I’m trying to finish it this month! I just want to work on it a little bit!)

I’ve started feeling… ‘wistful’ might be the best word. And a bit restless. I usually refer to it myself as the “biannual transitional season wanderlust.” (I do get it most years during the spring season change and the autumn season change.) It’s a sort of aimless feeling, like I really am longing for… something. I don’t know what it is, but I wish I could attain it! One aspect of it is the desire to do something creative, but sadly it rarely comes with any specific inspiration or idea on what creative thing I want to do. Just… something. It also makes me feel really wistful and nostalgic, ha. Or like I want to pack up and move.

That to say, I do hope that I can turn it to some actual work on the outline.

Although I am again bumping into the time management struggle, and the “what do I put my free time toward” question. I have got to get more reading done, because at this pace, I’ve got some twelve+ years worth of reading on my TBR and I am just not okay with that!

Some koi this week! (Though we saw koi the previous week at the gardens.)

This week was all right. Not too thrilled about it ending in my country starting another global crisis. The days that Alex's knee was non-functional were not great, though while it now still hurts pretty badly, it's at least movable again. I managed to get a few productive things done, though not everything I'd intended to. I did do better on my reading, even though it's still slower than I wish it was. Still no fiction writing. Work went pretty well all week.

Goals for the week:

• I did finish reading Hell Bent
• I read and finished What Stalks the Deep
• I called the hospital about my issues paying
• I called my doctor's office to reschedule my appointment
• I called Nielson to come pick up their equipment
• I did not work on my reading page
• I did not work on my WIP
• I did not finish writing/post my February book reviews
• I did not go get crickets
• I did not clean the frog and toad ponds
• I did put my laundry away
• I took all the ornaments off our Christmas trees, lol
• I set up a new small notebook (the one I take to work and such)

Tracked habits:

• Work - 5/7
• Household Maintenance - 4/7
• Physical Activity - 3/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
• Non-fiction Writing - 2/7 - both over 500 words
• Meta Work - 4/7
• Personal Writing - 5/7
• Other Creative Things - 0/7
• Reading - 7/7 - I finished Hell Bent, read What Stalks the Deep, and some of my ebook side-read
• Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday watched news coverage and game videos; Monday through Wednesday watched game videos; Thursday watched some explore videos; Friday and Saturday had various youtube stuff in the background.
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 5/7

Total words written: 1366 on reviews

With everything that's been going on this year so far, we haven't had many chances to get out and do much.

One of the things that we'd wanted to do was visit one of the temporary exhibits at the Denver Botanic Gardens: their orchid showcase. Then my appendix tried to kill me, and we both pretty much entirely forgot about it. At some point in the second week of February Alex remembered and suggested we try to go sometime, so I looked it up to check how long the exhibit was running... to discover it was only going through Monday the 16th. That narrowed down our options a bit, but luckily we were both feeling well enough to go, and the decidedly un-winter-like weather continued to cooperate with us.

And it was lovely! The orchids were mostly in the "orangery," a stretch of semi-indoor/semi-open space that looks in on the greenhouses and has some citrus trees and such year-round. We spent most of our time there and in the big conservatory, though we did take a walk around the rest of the gardens as well.

The pictures in this post are primarily not of the orchids, and the orchids will get their own post.


We did get to see the koi, which are always a favorite!


The view when you walk in to the main building.

Here you obviously can see a lot of orchids on display around the water feature. (I'm fond of the ones in the tentacle-y hanging pots.)

Nineteen more pictures from the gardens:

There was also some decoration for Lunar New Year.

We went into the conservatory, which I always love walking around. Give me all the indoor rainforest.


So many pods on the cocoa tree!


A cute hidden spray of flowers.


I am very charmed by these leaves that all but vacuum seal themselves to the tree they're growing on. They look like little scales.


Dart frog!


These little flowers were pretty and cute, and on closer inspection, each little flower had a teeny tiny ant on it! The image does not really convey how TINY these little ants were. Smaller than typical little black sugar ants. TINY. Getting little nectar drinks.


I think insects are cute, so this ant taking a step from one flower to another was extremely adorable, imo.


An interesting flower.

After this, it was down to the orangery.

The Denver Botanic Gardens has a very extensive bonsai collection, which is very cool. Most of them are off-display for the season (and will be outside for the summer.)


This one is on display inside, so it can be seen blooming. A bougainvillea! (Been in training as a bonsai for over 25 years, now!)


Carnivorous plant terrariums, my beloved. A Venus flytrap.


A random non-orchid. Look at this furry cactus flower!

The main feature of the orangery was the orchids, so most of those will be in the next post. After this, we headed outside to do a quick wander around the rest of the gardens.


It felt a little too soon for the hyacinths to be pushing their way up. Usually we don't see those until March...

The fish weren't too sad about the warm weather!


One of my favorite koi in the pond: this white-gold one with the extra fancy fins.


The fancy yellow-gold one is Alex's favorite. But so many cool and pretty koi!


This one makes me laugh. The yellow one was so excited at the potential for food that it lifted that little orange one out of the water on its head entirely!


They're so pretty.

I really like the extra-fancy finned fish, though there are fairly few of them in the pond. It's often just been the silvery white one and the bright yellow one. This year, we were excited to see a few younger ones with the same extra-long fins:


This one is very cute already, and will be lovely when it grows up more.


Snowdrops!


Too early for peonies to be trying to get in on anything!

It was a really beautiful day to be out! I'm glad we had the chance to go before the exhibit shut down. The orchids themselves were gorgeous, and pics of them will be in a different post!

Happy year of the horse! Lunar new year was on Tuesday the 17th. This sticker is a Prezwalski horse by artist Featherbone.

This week was kind of a drag. The week started with the extremely sad news about my friend spikedluv passing away. While she'd passed away a couple weeks ago, I didn't learn about it until Sunday, and I very much miss her presence. I'm still sick, and at this point I'm just tired of it dragging on! I'm coughing a lot, and I'm tired, and I'm going through kleenex way faster than I'd like. Otherwise I feel mostly okay, but I'm just so tired of it, ha. Alex and I did have a lovely day on Monday, visiting the botanic gardens, but everything else was pretty blah. I did push through to get a lot done on Saturday, which sort of felt like it redeemed the do-nothing of the rest of the week, but I still did very little writing and am frustrated by how slow reading has been.

Goals for the week:

• I did not finish reading Hell Bent, though I did read some almost every night
• I did work on reviews
• We did pet-sit for mom and Taylor
• We went to the botanic gardens as a bit of a belated Valentine's day
• I did not make my phone calls
• I did not work on my reading page
• I did not work on my WIP outline
• I did water my plants. My poor plants.

Tracked habits:

• Work - 5/7
• Household Maintenance - 5/7
• Physical Activity - 3/7
• Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
• Non-fiction Writing - 1/7 - over 1000 words
• Meta Work - 2/7
• Personal Writing - 4/7
• Other Creative Things - 1/7
• Reading - 7/7 - mostly I read Hell Bent, though I read a bit of my ebook; Alex and I read some of The Luminous Dead
• Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday we watched the Olympics, and I fell asleep watching youtube; Monday we also watched some youtube; Tuesday we watched some Olympic figure skating, some news coverage, and later a review; Wednesday we watched some news and storm chasing, and then some game playthroughs; Thursday we watched more Olympic figure skating and ski mountaineering (which seems horrible, lol); Friday watched a gaming livestream and some Olympics; Saturday had some Olympics in the background.
• Video Games - 0/7
• Social Interaction - 3/7

Total words written: 1221 on reviews

It's been a little bit. Have some pics of some creatures.


Bella yearns for apples.

(From back when I was trying to slowly work up to more solid food, ha.)

Pictures of Bella, Berry Mad, Guava Splash, Ripley, and Jaspurr:

Bella watches the Westminster Dog Show.

(The American Kennel Club does not recognize the American Pit Bull Terrier as a breed, which is why Bella does her FastCAT and other titles under the "All American Dog" category. American Staffordshire Terrier is the closest to her breed.)


Majestic.


Cozy.


Berry Mad has turned her entire pond into her personal mud puddle.


Guava Splash!


Watching you.


Ripley the garter snake!


Ripley says :P


And Jaspurr! No one will out-comfy him.

In unrelated news, I did not dodge the cough. :( I hoped I was in the clear, because Alex was coughing by day three or four. After a week, I figured I was safe... but day nine? I think? brought the cough, which has only gotten worse today.

But in surgery recovery, the scabs and all their accompanying glue are finally gone! Incision sites are still quite tender, but seem to be healing up really well. I've had occasional twinges in my lower right abdomen (where my appendix was), but very slight and pretty infrequent, so nothing I'm too worried about.

Right now I really just wish the cold and accompanying cough would go away! I thought I was on the mend on Thursday, when I woke up still sick, but feeling much better than previous days... but alas, it was a false alarm, and I was back to crappy yesterday and today, but with extra cough! It's been kicking my ass, and I've been struggling to do much of anything the last several days. I'll try to get caught back up here as soon as I can.