So far, so meh.

The lack of story writing continues. I do have the damn thing open in my Word program right now. It just sits there. Mocking me.

I'm going to explore some of the many tabs I have open on my phone in Chrome.

The Cairo Post: Earliest case of scurvy found in 5800 yr old child skeleton in Egypt

"Excavation work at archaeological site in Egypt’s Aswan have revealed a 5,800 year-old skeletal remains of a one-year-old child strongly believed to  be the world’s earliest case of scurvy..."

 "....The new discovery suggests the diet of people living at the time was poor, despite living in an area that was at the centre of the agricultural revolution, according to the statement." --The Cairo Post, January 23, 2016

What is scurvy, you ask? Or maybe you don't because you know all about scurvy. I don't know you. You could be a scurvy expert. Like...a doctor, specializing in scurvy.

Ohmigod, the Google images for scurvy were so stomach-turning. Just the teeth pictures were bad enough and then there's the anemia and edema. I can't use one of those, here's some kittens instead.

Half guard is the perfect position for the upper
combatant to move into a leg bar submission hold.
The lower combatant may also do an escape into the
backpack hold and apply the rear naked choke.
That's my favorite.

But most people, I would venture to say, only know that scurvy is something sailors get. Or they used to get. Or maybe some still do, I don't know any sailors. Well, I know two people who used to be seamen but they were in the U.S. Navy and I don't think scurvy was a concern.

What precisely is scurvy? I don't know. Let's find out! When sailors have been at sea too long and aren't consuming enough ascorbic acid, commonly known as vitamin C they can develop scurvy. Well, anybody who isn't consuming enough of can get it, but it was very common in the sailors of the 16th to 18th century, because they neglected to stroll on down to the Walgreens and stock up on EmergenC. Perhaps time was a factor, I don't know. My favorite flavor is Acai Berry!

Here we go: Scurvy is caused by insufficient intake of vitamin C. This vitamin is found in found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and a few animal sources, although the plant sources are more easily digestible. We are probably most familiar with the vitamin C in citrus fruits but there is a wide variety of plant sources.

What does vitamin C do inside our bodies? Boosting the immune system is the effect most people are familiar with. There is a high concentration of vitamin C in immune cells. Immune cells are quickly consumed during infections, that's why people are encouraged to increase their intake when they have a cold or the flu.

The blog entry was brought to you by the letter P
 and my need to do some sort of writing today so
I'm not a complete writing slacker.

Vitamin C plays a role in other processes too, like the production of collagen (keeping the skin nice and firm from the inside!) and iron absorption.

I didn't know absorption was spelled with a "p".










In closing, scurvy is gross, eat your fruits and vegetables, practice your leg bar hold, and don't become a sailor in the 16th century. That's just a bad idea.

That's all the tabs we have time for today because I just realized it's almost four p.m. and I don't have dinner planned.

Aargh! Got any rose hips, matey?
Me teeth are comin' loose and I got the trots somethin' fierce!

Breaking up the block, did I bring my sledgehammer?

Here I am at Starbucks. Took forever to just get out of the damn house.

Got here and had to get set up. My computer takes forever to start up from being shut off. I went to the bathroom before I set up. Twenty minutes later I finally get started on this entry to warm up before the story writing...and I think I have to go to the bathroom again.

Self: Um...you think? You're not sure? How can you not be sure whether or not you have to go to the bathroom. WTF?

Myself: Shut the fuck up.

I shouldn't have worn my jeans. That doesn't help. Squishes my bladder.

Also the ten ounces of coffee I managed to drink while waiting for my computer to decide it was ready to type things made it's way through rather quickly.

Christ. Do NOT search for "need to go to the bathroom" images when you're at the Starbucks. I just wanted a squirmy stick figure! Rule 34 strikes again.

The following cartoon is the artistic property of xkcd. It's not about needing to pee. But it does have stick figures.

Intellectual property of xkcd. You should buy one of their books. What if? is a good one, a dear friend gifted it to me.

Now. Crossing my fingers and my toes that this change of venue will work. But first, damn it, I really do have to pee. 

You should probably move back a few feet, don't wanna catch the crazy.

Facebook tells me that on January 20, 2012, I posted this status:

This morning DB said something distinctly ridiculous and then said, "I can't believe I just said that. I'm hanging out with you too much, Mom."

Me-"What?! I'm always telling you to go hang out with your friends! I don't make you hang out with me." 

"Yeah, but now I've caught your crazy. You have your own special brand of crazy and it's like a virus, it's catching." 

And you know how I know that's true? Because I laughed like a hyena and told him that was the bomb. 

I love that Timeline feature. I had forgotten all about this. I wish I'd included what he said. 

Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam...

...guaranteed to blow your mind.

But will it blow my writer's block? 'Cause I'm getting desperate here, people. Maybe some C-4?

This. Not even a whisper. Not even a tiniest of ideas, even for back story.

Finally I thought, "I need a change of scenery. That will probably help." I had planned on Monday to get up to Starbucks and try there.

That didn't happen. I did write that day, but it wasn't at Starbucks and it wasn't my story. It was journaling. I had some dreams the night before that seemed significant. That needed to be worked through. I thought they might be about my block. I decided they sort of were, from the standpoint that I'm having an extreme unrelated brain distraction that all my usual tricks aren't fixing. It just keeps roaring through my mind like an endless bullet train, every car filled with the same thing. Except being on a straight line track, it's circling me. My characters are on the other side. I can't get to them and they can't get to me.

Neither dream was about a train. But actually the second dream may be related. I was being circled by cobra, trapped. Just before the end of the dream it struck with gaping fangs, it was inches from my hand. In that blurry millionth of a second before it hit I knew many things (which I put into my journal but don't care to include here). I woke up just before the fangs sank into my hand. I just thought of that because I just came up with that train analogy.

I'm writing. I've been typing this entry for over half an hour. It's just not my story.

Some writing is better than no writing,
Keeping the habit, hearing those keys firing like bullets.
It does improve my mood.

Monday was journaling. Tuesday was a scheduled appointment which took a fair part of the afternoon, but I had the morning and I was just there as support and driver. I could've made notes. I even had my notebooks. No excuse there. Today I'm going to have lunch with my son, that's an hour drive there and back and then make dinner and then go to MA class. At least I'm doing this blog entry for today.

Thursday. Tomorrow is another day. This too shall pass and let's hope tomorrow kicks it into gear.

Cake...instead of other stuff.

Getting really tired of writing about the same two things.

Those two things are insomnia and writer's block. Because it's all I have right now.

It seems they are all I can write about. And I'm really tired of having them and of having them be the only thing I can be productive about. It's not really productivity if it's FUCKING BORING.

How about I tell you that I remember to take back the Redbox DVDs on time! Yay! I won't be charged an extra day for Pixels. Because fuck that. Don't look at me like that! It wasn't my idea. And I did not watch it.

I also remembered to buy the waxing strips I wanted. Go me!

Tomorrow I have to call the prescription insurance company and...well, deal with them. The story for that is boring.

I wish I had some cake.

I wish.

Chocolate.

Maple Pecan.

Red Velvet Cherry.

The type isn't as nearly as important as the quantity. There'd better be lots of it.

Insomnia can lead you to read books. I didn't sleep at all last night.

At the Massage Envy where I used to work, we had a break room. In this break room was a small collection of books and magazines. Most of the books were reference materials, pertaining to things massage therapists might need to look up, the better to formulate a treatment plan for their client.

Also, there was this book. "The End of Eve" - A Memoir by Ariel Gore. It showed up on the break room table one day, nobody knew who left it there. It was published in 2014. But I don't remember precisely when it showed up on the table. Our break room table was not that big, so the book got stuffed in with the reference books. 

Not this Eve.

Nobody ever did anything with it. It just sat there in the break room, hanging out with the reference books. A few times over the year and a some months it sat there, I considered reading it and picked it up and read (and reread) that it was about a the last days of a slightly crazy woman dying from cancer. Okay, more than slightly crazy. The author, her daughter, doesn't really go into the rest of her mother's life in great detail. 

So I would remember that I didn't want to read this book and I'd put it down again, back with the pathology reference book and the trigger point chart. On my last day of work there, at the Massage Envy in Algonquin (in November 2015) I just appropriated the book and took it home with me.

The book itself, as just a book, is slightly intriguing. It has a sticker on it. It says "in lieu of galley". I don't know what that means. It's also been read by someone, because it has sporadic underlining. But the underlining doesn't seem to have any reason behind it. The underlined bits don't really seem connected to each other and don't appear significant in any way to me. But I guess they must have been to who ever read this first.

Ah. I looked up "in lieu of galley". If you submit a book for review somewhere and send the actual finished book instead of a bound manuscript or a galley proof, you put that sticker on it. 

There's an inscription in the front. It's difficult to read, the handwriting looks rushed. It sort of looks like it says, "Dear June - Jan. 28 or feb 11 rebs!" with an unreadable scribble of a name (I'm assuming) below that. I have no idea what that means. I don't think the name is the author. The first letter of the name looks the same as the "D" in what I think is "Dear".

It was an interesting book, not a hefty read. But odd, very odd. I'm not reviewing the book. I'm not coherent enough to do that, given my insomnia of the past few days and my raging writers block. Also, I'm not really sure how to review books in the manner that people who know how to do these things do these things. I'm also not good at synopsisizing or summarizing or anything that needs to be concise yet informative.

  ___________________________________________________

I still have fucking writer's block and I'm damn sick of it. It's making me crazy. I miss my characters but they won't come out and play with me.

Copyright Sathis Ragavendran

Baltic Amber Cognac Necklace

These two things will make more sense later. Trust me.

I'm going to the Friday morning MA class. Hopefully that will wear me out enough to sleep. Also, I just need more than two classes a week if I'm going to show any improvement. I was supposed to be on call for the chiropractor on Fridays, but he hasn't texted me or called me in over a month. I'm not sure if I even work there anymore. I'm going to have to deal with that soon because I'll need my 1099 for filing our taxes and also I have some supplies there that I paid for.

I'm going to class. It's at nine am I think and it's a two hour class. That should work.

_________________________________________________

Or perhaps not. I was sitting here, having a snack before class so I wouldn't faint and I'm crashing. I doubt I'd be able to get up to the dojo without having to pull over. No class for me.

That's BETTER! Duran Duran - Hungry Like The Wolf

Turn on the car to leave for martial arts class, what's on the radio? Hungry Like the Wolf, baby. Works for me. BUT...our instructor decided we needed to do a shit load of calisthenics instead of kickboxing rounds. I didn't get to punch anyone. I was a little mean to him about it after class, I feel bad about that. He's just doing his job. He's a kid, hasn't even graduated from college yet. Yes, he's plenty qualified to teach the class. It's a family owned place and he's been taking various martial arts since he was four.

Seriously, Fee. Ya gotta go.

Fiona Apple is stuck in my head.

Specifically one line, none of the rest of it is relevant. To me at least.

"Heaven help me for the way I am..."

Out. You're too slow to run to.

Sense? You want me to make that? And I do that...how?

Wishing I had a heavy bag. No punching of anything for two weeks has me crazy.

I'm currently blaming my two weeks of writer's block on the holidays. Because fuck those things. I don't even celebrate the damn things myself, but there were gatherings that needed to be attended and it took a lot out of me.

I know how lame that sounds. Trust me, I know.

Today is whining day.

So my martial arts studio was closed for two weeks for the holiday. Turns out not getting to punch people twice a week is detrimental to my mental well-being. I knew this in the back of my head, but this past few weeks really drove it home.

I have a green belt test in possibly twelve weeks. I had a nice training plan set up and then the holidays happened and I got sick. Actually now it's more like eleven weeks. I wonder, if I ask nicely, if my instructor will let me wait an extra cycle. That would give me another six weeks.

I just now connected my illness lasting over a week (Normally two days, three max. I'm a quick healer.) to the holidays.

Makes sense. Christ, they aren't even that bad. I don't have any toxic relatives.  They just require a lot of socialization and that is very hard on me, being a 200% introvert with social anxiety and a permanent case of the awkwards coupled with my "I'm over forty, I'm running out of fucks to give, you don't get any," syndrome.

Leaving my regular job is still playing havoc with my brain as well. I was hoping it wouldn't but it has.

It'll pass. It'll pass. This too shall pass. It always has before.

It only FEELS like forever.

I really hope we have second class tonight. We don't always have it. Depends on which instructor is there.

The image search for catharsis was too chaotic. I couldn't choose. 

The image search for sense was, surprisingly, sort of dull.
Except for one picture. Which I'm not sure about using.
The image search for pummel turned up this.

Second class is where the shit gets real. Second class is where I get to pummel the boys. Yeah, the boys pummel me too. Good, clean, violent fun.

None of them are over thirty, so they're all boys to me. Even the one that made the police force last year. 'Course I don't call them that, but I can't help thinking it. I call them all "sir". Or "gentlemen" for collective address.

Just because it's fun.

This entry is going nowhere. Yeah, I'm typing, but I don't feel I'm accomplishing anything. Not even the catharsis I'm seeking. Sometimes if I type long enough, genius rears it's head. Genius is giving me a pass today. I don't even get the courtesy of a single deuce. I'm just being ignored.

Damn, I really want a cigarette. Or a drink. No drink before class. No drink after class either. Water and bed. 

Becalmed

After the fevered activity of months and months, my people are taking a break. It may have to do with my illness. I have a plain old cold, or some such. Not even a very bad one. It's only enough for me to feel exhausted, but not enough symptoms for me to feel justified being exhausted.

That makes no sense whatsoever, does it? I'm too tired to explain it.

Anyway, the characters that had taken over my brain have now left me with an echoing cavern. Nothing is coming to me. It's like...those scenes of abandoned ships or places. With things lying around, meals and tasks interrupted as if they will be returned to any moment.

This is more terrifying than when they won't leave me alone.

I'm afraid they won't come back. I've tried to amuse myself by playing with the games they left lying around, but it's like I suddenly don't understand or remember the rules, even though I made them.

Trying to think of a description of my mental state, I came up with the phrase "the doldrums".

Before looking it up, I vaguely knew the definition. A period of slow or no activity. It has a connotation of calm because it's maritime origin refers to an area near the equator, where the calmness of the wind and water would have lead to little to no activity for ships with sails. Calm in this case being a less than desired state.

This area also gives birth to hurricanes.

So there's hope. This picture manages to convey all I'm feeling at this very moment. Sadness, fear, tension, and the possibility of very, very shortly coming into a period of fever work.

Fever work is the best.

The Doldrums is also a band.

Doldrums: Electrowerkz, London – live review

I can't figure out who the picture belongs to, so I'm crediting the reviewer: Keith Goldhanger.