Han had to skip out on Kung Fu class yesterday, due to a scheduling mix-up with other summer programs. When I got home from training, she was feeling down about missing it.
But I brought her something to help:
I wasn’t expecting the 7yr to squee with delight at a book about personal combat.
She was ecstatic, and asked to borrow it for her in-bed reading. As I was about to be in an epic struggle with the 5yr over getting in his bed, I saw no problem with it.
She gave it back this morning and asked me to work out some at-home training regimens for us. So, expect a few essays over time as I delve further into our chosen martial art.
Before that, I have to report in and sling letters. Another 12-15 mile walk, coming right up!
We were gone for four days, and Penelope had to be boarded along with the dogs. I know folks usually let their indoor cats have free reign of the house while they’re away, but this cat is, unfortunately, just too dumb to risk that. as you can see, she is angry that we thought to take care of her.
Don’t look at me like that, cat. You were head-butting the full water bowl earlier.
In the usual furious bit of chaos, we packed up all of our bags and managed to shove luggage for 6 back into the Pilot, thus reaffirming our titles of Tetris-Masters.
It’s time we headed back home!
On the road again…
But along the way, I’ve managed to finish Chapter 1 of the new novel and make inroads into Chapter 2. True to my wish for the story to be a “brick-of-a-book”, it’s sitting at 40-odd pages already.
I’ve made the joke that no matter where I go, no matter how much I intend to relax, ‘adventure’ will always find me. This used to be a reference to the fact that when friends and family have a crisis, they know they can reach out to me.
I wasn’t expecting adventure to find me at the beach, nor for it to be quite as literal.
I get that it’s a gimmick, but really: how often do you expect to walk out on your 27th floor balcony and see a pirate ship?
I’ve argued for years with my Postmasters to let me wear a kilt during the summer months. The going counter to my proposal, aside from it being a nonstandard clothing and against uniform regulations, has been “Swift, do you even know where your kilt is?”
Then my Postmaster got this photo over the weekend.
“Dad,” Han said as she climbed into Sarah’s car and buckled up, “can you outrun the storm?” We had just finished a family dinner at my mother’s home, letting the kids spend time with their Uncle before he heads back to Tennessee. A sudden thunderstorm had rolled in right as we were readying to leave, and the 7yr old knows that of the two cars in the family, mine is the older and riskier to drive in rough weather.
She may have been right to worry.
“Kid, what our name?” I asked. She smiled at the routine question. “We’re Swifts.” “That’s right,” I told her. “When we need to, we can outrun the weather.”
Gotta admit, that was a worrisome drive. Louisiana has an odd quirk with its storm: you can literally see the storm front coming, as the rain falls in a curtain towards you. But my old 4Runner and I made it home, in time to go around the property and see to our myriad animals.
As much as I like to use my evenings for writing, I’ll have to push that to tomorrow. The power might go out and it’s a good opportunity to actually relax and read for a change.
Hello, old friend.
Been a long time since I’ve sat down with a David Weber story. They’re both comforting and make me envious; this was published back when you can drop a 400-page book full of world-building.
It’s been a rather hectic time, readers. Even the past week was jam-packed with crisis after crisis, coupled with the exhaustion brought on by working 10-11 hours days.
But I’m taking a few moments this Sunday, after wishing a Happy Mother’s Day to every mom around me, to write up a brief report.
First and foremost, to those readers I have here that are mothers: my heart goes out to you. You are appreciated and loved, folks.
The past week started off the best way a crisis-leaden should: with two new tires.
My wife’s career is travel-heavy, but the distances are mostly within the state, or maybe just over the border occasionally. Instead of putting miles on the Pilot, which we need for family travel or as a backup, we got a used car meant for work-travel. While I do my best to keep up on its maintenance, I’m afraid I hadn’t looked at the tires in a few weeks.
…there was tread there, like only a month ago…
…yeah, in hindsight that was a bad idea. Sometimes, it doesn’t occur to me just how much travel that little car goes through. But we got two new tires installed, and I’m lining up the next two to come in soon, so I don’t have to worry about that problem for a while. That way, any new problem can get its proper amount of attention. We like to be thoughtful around here.
Along with that, I’ve had the wonderful distraction of a new riding mower! You might be saying that something to handle another chore should be a distraction I would want to avoid, but the riding mower had been updated enough to zoom across the yard, and we have four acres out here.
The redneck in me will always win out, eventually. That mower can drift, folks.
Work had its own crisis, but a beneficial one, at least. We held the NALC Food Drive this week, which if you’re on a city route in the United States, you might have noticed via a brown paper bag in your mailbox. They were for postal customers to fill with canned/dry goods so us letter carriers could collect and deliver to the local food banks.
That is a really good cause to get behind, and I’m proud to do it, but damn does it involve a lot of legwork. On a 12-mile walking route, extra legwork is…disliked, to put it mildly.
Some 500lb of food, just from my route.
We had a family crisis as well! My son was hit with croup in the middle of the night a couple days ago, and we discovered that croup can still infect children all the way up to six years old, so it’s not just a baby worry. Neither of the kids had croup as babies, so we didn’t know what we were looking at.
We just had our 4yr old son suddenly unable to breathe at 1AM. Understandably, we panicked. I put him in the Pilot and we hit 90mph on the highway to the hospital. He was treated and the croup was knocked out, but we had to stay and monitor him the rest of the night. By the time Saturday (05/13) rolled around, I was clocking in for work on less than two hours of sleep, and I had to collect all of those bags.
The week ended on a high note, as it was also a Main Arc session! As it was also the first session to have a bunch of players attending (adulting sucks, sometimes, but I’m not begrudging them for that), I gave them my full attention and as good a story as I possibly could. They enjoyed the session, and learned plenty of things that will affect their choices in the next session.
Finally, writing! I’ve been hard at work with my sci-fi novel, as well as writing up the next Sidewinder Stories chapter (expect that one ‘soon’) but I’ve been hitting a snag on the sci-fi. I’ve written that first chapter four different times, trying to see what was wrong. Now that I’m on the fifth rewrite, I’ve realized the possible problem: point-of-view.
The sci-fi chapter was originally written from the POV of Mahima Varma, the Empress of the United Stars Empire. The most powerful woman in the Empire, and one perspective I’ve enjoyed writing from, but for the first chapter, she knows too much about what’s going on. That’s not good for the readers to get their world-building details from, so I’ve decided to try a different POV: Ishim Valwa, the Empress’ aide and confidante. His perspective is an interesting one, as I can relay information about interstellar colonization and its drawbacks (Ishim is a human, but is considered an outsider from Imperial society and called a ‘Lost Soul’), as well as show the audience what Mahima Varma is like outside of Imperial trappings. Along with that, a key note I’ve been working on is the ‘space elevator’ idea. It has significance for the Varma dynasty, and will be important in later stories, but I’ve had to work on different locations to write it into.
The best one I’ve found is also the most difficult: Mount Kenya.
This is because for that story, the home of the Empire is in the African continent. Our species started in Ethiopia, so that’s where the Empire’s home is. But a space elevator needs to be at the equator, and Mount Kenya is the best location that is also closest to where the Empire would be based at.
It’s also an actual holy mountain, so I’m reluctant to put a giant facility in it. I’ve written two different versions for that part of the story, but with this fifth rewrite, I think I’ve figured out the best approach. I’ll have to see what the beta readers say about it.
With that, it’s time I got to my chores and visited my mother with flowers. Happy Mother’s Day, folks.
Stay safe out there, readers!
-JB Swift
PS~ For everyone who sat through this whole spiel, a cat picture!
Penelope sleeps the contented sleep of the fat cat on the dog bed.
It’s been a long, long day, readers. Not just for me, but for my son and our cat.
With a setup like that, you just know it’ll be interesting.
I went in to work knowing I was going to be struggling and trying to be done at a decent time. Han was talking about going to Kung Fu training all morning, though I had a feeling she’d be exhausted by then, so I didn’t push. She forgot that it was a half-day at school and she’d be spending the rest of the day with her grandparents, who have a small farm and no end of work needing done. She’d go into that with a will, which is always slightly frustrating.
Note: Figure out how to make cleaning her room seem similar to working in the garden.
What I wasn’t expecting was for my son to have a resurgence of strep throat, so the phone call of a fever and sore throat kicked up my drive to finish the route. There was no one who could drive him for a doctor visit, so I let my bosses know that I had a sick kid to take care of.
12 miles in under 6 hours with mail and parcels. My life is nothing but leg day.
But it was done, and Ben was seen by the doctor. He got a powerful antibiotic shot, which is just as uncomfortable as it sounds. But the boy is a trooper. He cried for a little while, was given a hug, and he went back to being his odd little self, just like his dad. It didn’t take long for the medicine to kick in, which made for a very exhausted 5-yr old who didn’t quite make it to his bed. I carried him the rest of the way.
Kung Fu training was before that, and Sifu has put me into learning Bung Bo (Crushing Step, I think). That’s a Long Form in Seven Star Praying Mantis, and Long Forms are leg-intensive.
And to round out the evening, Penelope needed a bath!
So…much…fury…
I might have to leave this post in Drafts for a couple days, but I’ll get it posted soonest!
Swift's Corner 