rowyn

Health & Fitness

I finally had gallbladder surgery on March 3rd! This meant I felt much worse from March 3-8 or so, and then started to feel better. By the end of the month, I was more-or-less back to baseline.

I've sometimes wondered if my "takes a nap every day" thing was a sign of excessive fatigue, and I'd had a little hope that I would have more energy after recovering from surgery than I'd had before the first gallbladder attack. That does not seem to have panned out. I'm not entirely sure I have more energy now than I had on February 26 and 27, before surgery, when it had taken me a while to load 9+ boxes of books into the car for two trips to donate books. I'd needed to rest a few times, but I had loaded them. I'd been feeling pretty good.

On the other hand, from February 28-March 2, I mustered basically zero energy for activities related to purging stuff, so...yeah, I'm probably doing better now than before surgery. When your main symptom is fatigue, it's hard to tell how bad the fatigue is.

I did laundry on March 2, including all the bedding, and counted that as exercise, then counted pacing on the phone as exercise on March 8. But I didn't make a real effort to get back to exercise until March 10, when I had the post-surgery follow-up. From the 10th through the 31st, I exercised 17 times, so 19 for the month. Which is pretty good for a month where I had surgery!

My diet has mostly gone back to pre-gallbladder-attacks foods, which means I am once more eating lots of cheese and high-fat snack foods, and almost no vegetables. The one exception is breakfast: I used to make cream of wheat with nutella for breakfast every morning, and now I have yogurt with granola. This is more because I don't have to cook it than out of a belief it is significantly healthier. It's probably a bit healthier, though: no palm oil.

Writing

The Secret Dragon is up 36,526 words: 13,200 words for the month. More than I've written in any other month this year! Progress still feels sluggish but

*waves arms at everything else*

yeah that.

I started a romance soloRPG, "Reincarnated as The Unlovable Villainess." That journal is at 3,328 words, with another 1000 words of notes for it. It's fun but not enough more fun than writing The Secret Dragon, so I've mostly been working on that when I'm in the mood to write fiction.

The Business of Writing

I did a bit more editing on A Game to You early in the month. Then, while recovering from surgery, I read through The Jewel-Strewn Night and decided to edit that instead. I've remained focused on The Jewel-Strewn Night for editing, and it's now in the final proofreading pass before I share it with first readers.

Except most of my first readers haven't finished with Be That Way yet. So I'm likely to finish The Jewel-Strewn Night in April but not share it with first readers until May? Idk. We'll see.

Art

I checked the "draw" box 23 times in March. Most of that time was spent on the cover illustration for Be That Way, which I finished on March 18. I'll probably tweak it a bit when I do the cover layout, but that can wait until I'm done with final edits and know the exact dimmensions of the paper book. (And therefore the exact size for the wrap cover). I worked on three other character portraits for Be That Way in March and finished two; the last one is still in progress.

Reading

I finished one Time Princess spin-off story (the spin-offs are short and have no meaningful choices), "Timeless Love". I got halfway through Feathers of Dawn and then stalled. I haven't quite decided to DNF it yet, tho. Mostly I've been reading big chunks of unfinished manwha and a new unfinished Time Princess story. I checked the habit box for reading on 30 days; probably half for Feathers of Dawn and the rest reading manwha (I don't count reading a single update, but if I read a big batch of episodes, I count that) or Time Princess stories.

Moving Preparations

I did very little in the way of physical preperation, but I made arrangements for a bunch of things. I have movers scheduled for both my stuff and my car, plane tickets for myself and my cat, and a new cat carrier. I also took Lyric to the vet to get her shots updated and also cleared for travel (this last turned out to be unnecessary, because the airline I'm flying on doesn't require a certificate of health from pets on domestic flights. But I had to take her in for shots anyway, so no issue.) And got the vet's recommendation to give her gabapentin before the flight.

This felt like so much while I was doing it, I gotta say. I have my sister-in-law to thank for me getting it done at all, because she went through and called bunch of movers in my area to find the best ones for me, and contacted the transport company I'm using for my car.

On the last day of the month, I also called a nearby thrift shop about what kind of donations they take (basically everything I have to donate), and filled two 25-gallon bags with the clothes from Lut's bureau.

Things I have to do in April:

Take care of payment for movers
Talk to realtor about selling the house
Shut off the utilities to the house, unless the realtor advocates leaving them on for a while? I actually might need to leave them on because the gas furnace has an electric start, so if I want the furnace to run to keep the pipes from freezing, I need both (freezing is unlikely in mid-April but still). Oh, and the sump pump is electric and the backup sump pump is water-based so...yeah. I don't want to turn off water/gas/electric until the house sells. I'll unplug everything instead. Still need to turn off the fiber, though. Also need to find out if Google Fiber will want their equipment returned to them.
Talk to my mom about anything else I might not be thinking of.

My parents have bought, moved, and sold so many houses just in my lifetime. I think they've owned four different houses in the time I've lived in this one, and four more between when I was born and when I bought this house. I've never sold a house before and I haven't moved in 22 years. I hired movers the last time I moved, too, but that time was local so it was simpler. Though I'm actually moving much less this time, since I'm not moving Lut's things or most of the furniture. The reclining loveseat, the painting desk, the desk chair, and one bookcase are the only big awkward pieces that I'm bringing with me. Everything else is either small or folding. Anyway, my mom is an expert on moving and selling houses so I should consult her.

I have some other prep things that I'd like to -- mostly donate or throw away more stuff -- but if that doesn't get done, oh well. House is selling as-is. It will be worth less because of this but meh. My house was always a place to live and not an investment.

Goal Scorecard

Have gallbladder removed: done! Rest in peace, gallbladder.
Recover from gallbladder surgery: done!
Call parents a few times: done! I talked to them four times in March, even.
Pay March Bills: I forgot to put this on the goal list but did NOT forget to do it. So victory!

March Stretch Goals Completed

Talk to vet about traveling with Lyric and see what they recommend: done!
Contact moving compan(ies). Figure out date for moving: done!
Get plane tickets for move (including whatever ticket Lyric needs): done!
Track what I read: I didn't finish anything in March but technically I'm still tracking it!
Exercise: 19 times, pretty good for a surgery month (even if my bar for what consitutes "exercise" was very low)
Write some of The Secret Dragon: 13,200 words!
Edit: Made good progress on The Jewel-Strewn Night and got a little done on A Game to You
Play a romance soloRPG: Done! Though I haven't played very much of it.
Work on cover art or book illustrations: I did both! Cover and one book illo is done and the other two book illos are mostly done.
Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed: Pretty sure I missed some days, but I covered the 5th through the 31st, at least. Good enough.

April Goals

Move to provide care for my parents
Cancel Google Fiber & return equipment if necessary
Contact realtor about selling house
Pay April bills

I know I'm gonna do more than those four, but those four are the big ones that I must do in April, and moving is super-stressful even when you can afford to pay for all the things to make it easier.

April Stretch Goals:

Call Ting to cancel second cellphone line
Finish initial edits on The Jewel-Strewn Night
Write some of The Secret Dragon
Play more of romance soloRPG
Finish illustrations for Be That Way
Exercise 15+ times
Track what I read
Make progress clearing out stuff I no longer want
Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed
Ask Bookbub for a Featured Deal and run another ad campaign for a book
Get backmatter updated for whatever book I promote

Pick an old picture to redraw

Health & Fitness

Overall health for most of February was Not Great. After feeling mostly-okay on the 1st and 2nd, I felt much worse again on the 3rd. For probably half of the month I was having regular but minor pain, and for basically all of February I had high levels of fatigue: taking multiple naps every day and too tired for much if any exercise. I started setting the bar for "have exercised" very low, including at one point "finished filling one (1) bag of trash in the basement and carried it out to the trash cart." Because if that's all I have energy for, I might as well count it.

I reached this extremely low bar 17 times in February, so hey, that was something.

Eating habits were not bad, in the sense of "I generally managed to eat enough food." My appetite started to recover towards the end of the month. I have continued to avoid eating more than tiny quantities of my usual high-fat snack foods (ice cream, brownies, hot chocolate).

I'm having my gallbladder removed on March 3, so I expect to feel much worse for several days and then hopefully I will gradually feel better at after that. The surgeon said most people have a few weeks of digestive turmoil after gallbladder surgery and then everything goes back to normal, but some people have long-term issues, especially with eating lots of fatty food at once. No telling which I'll be.

Writing

Work on The Secret Dragon continues slowly. Book was at 23,325 words at the end of the month, so 8,560 new words in February. Still haven't started another soloRPG. Maybe this month?

Part of me is like "8500 words? This is so slow. I'll never finish writing it at this rate." And the rest of me goes "please bear in mind everything else going on and chill."

Oh, right. Everything else is going on too.

The Business of Writing

I finished initial edits on Be That Way and sent it to first readers. At least one person finished commenting on it (because they told me) but I am following my usual policy of not looking so I don't get neurotic about it. I told first readers they had until May because between gallbladder and moving plans, I doubted I'd get back to it any sooner than that.

I started initial edits of A Game to You, more so that I could check the "edit" box on my habit tracker than because I think I will finish editing it in 2025.

Art

I did some drawing in February: portraits of Caliper and Raeku from Be That Way, random drawings of ocean and a rose, and some miscellaneous hand sketches. I checked the "draw" box 14 times; I generally didn't push to finish pictures in a single day.

Reading

I finished first-reading Tuftears' Timecrossed Engineer, and went back to reading The Spellshop. After I finished that, I read Jaycee Jarvis's Taxing Courtship. Also read a graphic novel, If You'll Have Me by Eunnie. I started reading Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads on February 28; haven't gotten very far in it yet.

I opened a Storygraph account to see if that'd help with tracking. I am not enamored of it yet but I guess I like it marginally better than Bookwyrm? It does some things that annoy me -- like when I mark a book as read, it defaults to "no date" for when I started or finished and I have to manually adjust it 3 weeks later when I notice (and no longer remember when I started or finished). But maybe I'll get used to it. It might be better about the date behavior if I mark books as "currently reading" before I mark them as "read", idk. It does use the current date as the default "start date" when I mark a book as currently reading (which I had to fix for The Cloud Roads because I changed the status on the 27th but didn't start reading until the 28th, but at least it was close.)

Three books and one graphic novel in a month is not a tremendous amount of reading by my childhood standards (I was a book-a-day reader before I went to college). But it is evidence of Reading Regularly: good enough. I checked the habit box for "read" 26 times in February. Yay!

Moving Preparations

I filled the trash cart every week in February with unwanted things that I didn't think anyone else would want as a donation. I have failed to do this for tomorrow, mostly from lack of energy. I will also fail to do this next week, because I'll be recovering from surgery and also not supposed to lift much weight at one time. (I am allowed to pick up my cat, though, so that's good. Not that she likes being picked up much so I rarely do, but it's the principle of the thing.)

However, this week I accomplished the much more important task of donating all the books. 19 tubs of books. I'm keeping some books but I donated the vast majority to a used bookstore.

I have a bunch of other stuff I'd like to donate -- all Lut's clothing, for one category -- but made zero progress on that.

I need to call movers and buy plane tickets and figure out cat and car transportation. (My plan is to pay someone to move the car, while the cat will fly with me. But I should see if I can get good drugs for Lyric for the trip because she hates even short car rides. And also I don't know the exact logistics for these things.)

Goal Scorecard

Finish initial edits for Be That Way: done!
Contact primary care physician if I haven't heard from specialist by 2/7: Yes I did have to follow up, and yes I did. SUCCESS.
Contact at least one (1) place about donations. Of anything.: I contacted TWO places! Because the first used bookstore I tried didn't have space for all the books I have to donate. The second one did, which is why I stopped at two.
Finish reading Timecrossed Engineer: Done!
Call parents a few times: Three times! Yeah, that's about as good as it gets. On the bright side, I will be living with them soon and will no longer need to use the phone to contact them. So that'll be nice. Phones should be seen and not heard.

February Stretch Goals completed

Write some of The Secret Dragon: 8500 words!
Made progress on clearing out stuff I no longer want
Track what I read: I even got a Storygraph account!
Got a HIDA scan and scheduled gallbladder surgery: okay so this wasn't a stretch goal, but these were important things and they count.

March Goals

Have gallbladder removed
Recover from gallbladder surgery
Call parents a few times

Yeah that's gonna be it for the Actual Goals. Everything else will have to be a stretch goal. Surgery recovery is supposed to be "one week to recover, one month before you can lift heavy things," so in theory I should have around 3 weeks where I can do things like write/draw/edit/sort out logistics for move. But in the spirit of being gentle with myself, I will not count on it.

March Stretch Goals