I have hit that stage of con prep where I am either ready or so totally unready that I have no hope of achieving readiness, and have thrown in the towel. As I cannot ever quite distinguish the two, we’re calling it good.
Today I slung mulch, and am now trying to beat my way through the jungle of my in-box, preparing to go out and continue the editing slog through Bread Wizard. I’m 150 pages in, out of 250. It’s slow going. I’ve tacked on six or seven thousand words. Some parts I have definitely fixed and improved, other things I’m flailing in the dark hoping that I have thrown enough words at it to fix it. This is why we have editors. I am slathering on the word-spackle, trying to patch a hole, and she’s gonna come through with a putty knife and smooth it out so that it doesn’t look like a giant crusted wall-tumor.
Metaphors. Let me show you them.
I will have one leather mask at the con, but not in the art show. It’s not actually wearable unless you have a weird head and very small eyes—playing with the leather got away from me—so it’ll be at the table. I’d be happy to sell it as wall art, but I want to be able to explain in person that it’s not a wearable object. (It’s a rockhopper penguin, and has cool swirly head bits.)
Blue-gray gnatcatchers raised a brood in the yard. Never saw the nest, but there’s four of them bopping through the sideyard now, and two of them are rather more klutzy than normal for gnatcatchers. We also had a crop of white-breasted nuthatches and the inevitable Carolina chickadees. (Nothing compares to a just-fledged Carolina chickadee for “If I flap hard enough, maybe I won’t fall out of the sky!” shenanigans.) There’s a pair of blue jays coming in from somewhere to drink from the nano-wetland, but I don’t know if they’re an item or have a brood somewhere.
I am looking forward to AC, but I’m also looking forward to it being DONE. Then I get all of July and half of August to do nothing but Dragonbreath art and writing, get back in my routine, and get away from the vague Upcoming Con On The Horizon anxiety. I love cons, I enjoy them when I’m THERE, but knowing they’re coming stresses me out.
