Ow . . . Just ow.

My heads is still spinning after all of the things that happened.  My brain has this weird time issue right now.  Monday feels both like it was yesterday and a thousand years ago because of everything.  I’d do a daily split up here, but events get repetitive and mangled at some point.

Most of my time was spent proctoring AP Exams at work.  This was a lot and took up most of the day.  You would think I could outline or do some writing while the kids silently took their tests.  Nope.  I couldn’t let myself get that engrossed in another activity because I had to watch what was going on.  None of the kids that I had were the cheating types and I’d seen all of them at some point to know I could trust them.  Still, I had to watch for a variety of situations in case they happened.  Exhausting.  Next week will be one day of proctoring and then back to the old schedule.

Writing has definitely taken a hit, but mostly due to me not having anything ready for drafting.  I’m still toiling away at the ‘Slumberlord’ outlines.  Think I got 2 done already and I should be finishing a 3rd today.  That leaves me with 2-3 to go and then I can decide on the next step.  Do I Need to Use a Dragon? is still in limbo too, but I might have an artist by mid-summer.  Wait . . . I need to jump back to ‘Slumberlord’ for a bit:

Darwin’s series had 8 volumes and then I had another trilogy that takes place 10 years after the last volume.  The problem is that I’m not sure he can shoulder a trilogy or that the story itself can be stretched that far.  It’s about more Slumberlords appearing, the Dreamscape, a feud between Slumberlord families, and an ancient threat that he has to deal with.  I’m wondering if I can condense this into a single book.  Maybe even cut out the feuding families since Darwin is proving to not have any ability or interest in politics of any kind.  So, I’m struggling with this and getting very close to when I have to make a decision.

Parenting has been minimal because my son was with his mom.  Schedules might change soon, which means less or maybe more writing time.  I’m happy because things will be easier on him and I get to be more involved in his schooling for the final month of the school year.  I sense that he’s getting as burnt out as I am, so we could both use the long break.  I got ‘Pokemon Snap’ for the Nintendo Switch too, which I promised not to start without him.  Funny how it’s a present to me, but he calls the shots.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to a change back to normalcy for us here.

Anything else?  I’m working on a jigsaw puzzle that is missing pieces.  I want to finish it and send a picture to the company to see if they can send me what I need.  This will also tell me if there are more missing than I realize.  Makes it pretty tough to finish.  Lots of colors and the guide poster is rather small, so it’s difficult.  Hoping that I can make a puzzle post after this one, a space one, and a Boris Vallejo puzzle I found.  Yes, that last one has bikini armor since I think him and his wife practically perfected that style of fantasy art.

Even though I had Thursday off, I didn’t do much.  My stomach has been killing me all week, which is an IBS issue.  Stress, weather changing, not enough water, and stress really set the issue off.  Thursday helped me get some of the problem handled, but I’m going to be out of it for a few more days.  Yeah, this is gross.  I’ll stop.

I’ve been watching ‘Hunter x Hunter’, which is a long anime for the most part.  This is after I finished ‘Rosario + Vampire’, which was kind of a let down in the second season.  I finished it to get it done.  ‘HxH’ is fun and I found all 148 episodes on HBO Max instead of 70-something like on Netflix.  Looking forward to hitting the point I’ve never seen, which shouldn’t take long.  Actually, I had to take a break because I binged ‘Castlevania Season 4’ and started watching ‘Invincible’.  I should finish the latter today, so I might write up a post about both tomorrow.  They’re both violent animated adaptations of works with one being from a video game and the other a comic.  It was sad to see ‘Castlevania’ end, so I hope they jump to another era of Dracula-battling.

Oh, I was trying to gather strange writing terms to make July posts around.  I’ve got Plot Armor, Canon (Real vs Head), Idiot Plot, and a week on Eucatastrophe.  Trying to find more, but I’m having trouble.  All I find are really niche ones that hit a specific story or the ultra common ones like trope and cliche.

Goals of the week:

1. Time with son.
2. Finish 2, if not all, of the Slumberlord outlines.
3. Work, of course.
4. Puzzle time.
5. Finish the poems for June/early July.  Got 6 more to go.
6. Get a list of odd writing terms for July
7. Time with family
8. Finish ‘Invincible’ and write a post about it.
9. Biking.  I really need to make this a more common thing.