Crapazoids: This is WORSE news than mortar worms!

The other day, after finding out I had freelancing/social opportunities, I returned home to discover that the text of the inspection notices on the walls and most of our doors had been changed. It had gone from a standard “check for bugs, Schmoopie” inspection to a compliance inspection.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Someone must've got caught holding.” Getting caught holding basically means just that—they busted someone with an undeclared gun. Or illegal recreational drugs. That shit gets you evicted and triggers compliance inspections on everyone else.

A compliance inspection is basically a rather invasive inventory of a resident's unit, complete with photos, housekeeping drill, and a subtle check to see if they've broken the non-smoking agreement. It also covers a search for “undeclared residents,” supposed guests who appear to have moved in without a lease agreement.

That shit also gets you evicted.

I spent the day wondering if I had the stamina to get the place up to code, making sure to mention a need to get home while I still had the stamina to whip the joint into shape.

*_*_*

Stepping inside I realize there are only a few bad zones left. The plan: clean to the point of nausea, rest, repeat. Estrogen has done a number on my stamina, and the point of nausea comes rather fast.

Attacked first: top of the fridge. It's straightened...ish. Code, at any rate.

Bath: code when I left to freelance. (HIGH TECH VACUUMS ALARM ME.)

The kitchen workspace is rather alarming. It is being oxygen bleached and once bleached will become the work area for cleaning (rather, organizing the pantry—it's CLEAN, just cluttered).

Except we are beyond the point of nausea and to the point of incredible nausea.

...gotta keep going.
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Posted via m.livejournal.com.

It's over =D Well, sort of.

I’m sitting here on the edge of my bed, glasses off, and half blind. Food is starting to make me feel sick as a dog, but that is because the only caffeine I have taken since validating my word count was the caffeine that woke me up from my ill stupor earlier—a head-cold has had me groggy, sick to my guts, and woozy most of the day. I don’t plan on taking more caffeine besides what’s in my medications and vitamins.

I’m reading a book that I downloaded from the Nook store almost immediately after finishing the validation count. It’s kind of a bookend moment—it’s the second book in the series that was the last thing I read for pleasure before the competition started. (In fact, here’s my review of that one.)

It feels good to be reading again, feeling the squee at the moments where I really notice how many scantily-clad pretty boys there are, the heat of the romance (surprisingly, in a het pairing), and the laugh-out-loud moments that are liberally sprinkled through Heroine Protagonist Rae Wilder’s journey.

I feel so good reading and I stop to think, then, that I hope that my own writing has the same effects on some readers out there. I know that there will invariably be the “I HATED THIS AND DIDN’T EVEN FINISH IT” sorts, but I know that there will be other readers who react as enthusiastically as I am now to this book that I am reading now.

---

I…am going to have one HELL of a time adjusting to the sudden reduction in caffeine intake. I spent most of this November neck-deep in either a bottle of energy drink (most of it Sodastream, half a litre at a time [?!]), an espresso, a restaurant coffee drink, or in a few cases a bottle of caffeine pills, violently throwing my way shoulders through in the long stretch of time that the ink was flying around. Several times I thought that I wouldn’t make it—there wasn’t enough time, there weren’t enough words, there wasn’t enough CAFFEINE—and then, working on a fight scene, validating the count after every few paragraphs…I win.

I make it.

I didn’t want to put my hands to a keyboard for the next few months. I didn’t even want to celebrate my victory—premature as it is, the story isn’t done, not by a long shot—and I didn’t want to look at WORDS.

…then I realized that I could read. I could read for fun.

Like everyone else.

I’m going to resume reading now, probably put together a bottle of plain seltzer because the caffeine withdrawal nausea is HELL right now…but diving into a story that another writer put together, pouring her effort, time, frustrations, and joy into it…I remember why I want to do this in the first place.

I’m going back to my reading, icing my aching head.

I can keep writing AFTER the caffeine withdrawal wears off.