I'm so confused!

I baked cookies! They are delicious.

Here's how my cooking experiments turned out:

Shredded carrots lightly fried up with ginger, sweet chili sauce and some cream and served with chorizo: good. There was something a little lacking, though. Maybe I should have used fresh ginger instead of dry. Maybe I should have added something more. I will work on it.

Shrimp salad with turnips: meh. Not because shrimp and turnips isn't a smashing combination, because it is. But with "salad", I mean the kind that has a mayonnaise-and-sour cream base, and it tasted bland despite the addition of tabasco and sriracha, up until I finally got the kick I needed by adding lemon juice. Problem was that I couldn't taste the turnips after that. So maybe I should just shred turnips over a regular salad with shrimp on it? There must be a way!

Fennel- and pear salad: good! Just a little bit dry, because I just added the fennel and pear to spinach.  I love the fennel-pear combination, though. It's light and fresh. I just need to think of some kind of dressing that won't overpower it.

Ground beef fried up with peanuts, peas and sourcream (with sweet chili sauce and sriracha added for kick) : heck yes! Too bad it's not my idea, though - My dad used to make it.

Tilapia baked with tomatoes, onions, tarragon and cream: good, but I think my hubby wanted a little more flavor to it. I come from the land of bland food, I'm afraid.

Potatoes and onions fried up with dijon mustard and served with roast beef: YES! Sometimes it doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

-----

I'm trying to start another fic, but don't know what to write about. I do know that I want it to be a continuation of The Quiet House, exploring where their relationship goes after that, but I can't have it be just about their relationship or I will bore myself writing it (I'm not sure why, but there's quite a gap between what I like to read and what I like to write). There needs to be a plot, I'm afraid. And I'm kind of no good at plot.

It is done. I have earned cheesecake.

Title: The Quiet House
Characters: Arthur, Eames, a few OCs.
Genre: Gen, Drama, Angst
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Word Count: 8504
Warnings: Death of a parent. Someone has a stroke. Also, some violence.
Summary: Arthur has a very good reason to be back in his hometown. He has a very good reason for inviting Eames there, too. Probably.
Author's Note: Post-Inception. A friendship fic, disguised as a background fic for Arthur.


( The Quiet House. )

Today I frown upon Hallmark.com, where you can no longer buy individual e-cards for 99 cents. Instead, you HAVE to buy a subscription for $12 or stick with the few, crappy freebies. "Only $1 a month!" they hoot. Great if you actually tend to send more than 12 e-cards per year. A COMPLETE RIPOFF if you don't. *waves fist* I wanted to send my dad a Hoops & Yoyo card.:(


Had a bit of a nervous breakdown the other day, inspired by a leak in the garage ("leak" might not be the word, actually - water is welling up from this...thing sticking out of the floor, whenever it rains heavily), complete with wailing and crying and clinging to hubby while saying melodramatic things. A little odd, but then the thunder broke out and it all became clear. I am so in touch with nature that I always get cranky during thunderstorms. Special, huh?
Maybe that's why I don't find this soothing at all.


Anyway, the fic. It's...*sigh*...almost done. The question is how long it's going to keep being "almost done". I keep finding faults with it. The prose is just MORPHING before my eyes, reading as awkward one moment and flowing the next. I change one detail and then realize that just rendered another scene, or piece of dialogue, implausible. I'm not sure when to describe and when to just hint. This is why I so rarely write or draw or do anything creative, OK? I never get to the point when I can say "It's done" and just put it out there. Even after my hubby's beta round, I keep finding errors or things that seem like errors and they all sting. God.
The devil's in the details, I guess. Maybe I should just put it out there and edit it afterwards, if needed. Maybe? That's the perk of the Internet, after all.

Well! The cold was false alarm, but I cuddled up in my shell anyway, because there's just not much going on at the moment. Oh, except that I was called to take a test re: that place I applied for a job at and if I didn't flunk too bad, they'll call me up for an interview. I don't know if I'd look forward to working there - the place seems kind of stiff - but it would be more money, and it's always all about money.

My hubby will look over my fic. This freaks me out a little, because while it's gen and I've tried not to make it very schmoopy, it's still...fangirl material and he's a guy with a guy-ish point of view and while he's promised not to snicker even on the inside, some reactions just can't be helped. But I've reached a point where I CAN'T proceed with the fic until I have someone else's input, so it must happen.

I would have thought that, at this age, I would have been more secure and confident in myself, steady as a rock and completely comfortable with who I am and what I do. But I almost feel more insecure now than I was as a teenager. It's baffling.

...those moments when you realize that the thing you've been writing, plotting and fussing over for ages is actually complete and utter shit?

Know what word I just wrote? FIN.

Know what that means? A heck of a lot of editing, but also: the story is pretty much DONE.

*screams mindlessly*

I am very happy to have managed to work both corpses and cookies into the epilogue.

It might be time for bed.

Oh yeah. Also: I applied for a second job.

So, I don't know how it ended up 4:15AM here, but it happened. I guess it's time to wrap up.

Fic status: Not done. The raw bulk of it is down, but heavy editing is still required on the finale, lighter editing on the rest. I'm worried about my uneducated ESL prose. Fic now has a title, though: "The Quiet House". Nifty?

Need to go to bed.

I'm writing! I'm writing like a crazy person! I'm having coffee and I'm WRITING. *happytear*

I have been cranky and tired and thus stayed away, but today is my day off and we just bought a Christmas tree!<333 Lugged it home in the rain and everything!

Work has been hectic, but I haven't minded TOO much, because they have been kind enough to keep me off the register. By giving me the most nightmarish section to recover every night, naturally, but still - I'll take stressful recovery over stressful cashiering any day, thank you.
Yesterday, there was a girl walking around crying at work. It was hard to tell what age she was - she looked like early teens, but carried herself like someone younger. Had I been any shade of decent human being, I would have asked what was wrong, if she was  looking for someone, etc, but I was stressed and instead I just got annoyed and avoided her. Go Christmas spirit.

The fic...I...just...I...I don't know! It needs to be simplified, I think. It grew too many heads. This is an awful lot of effort for something that will probably be read by five people at most, but I can't help but enjoy the process, as much as I sulk and want to tear my hair out about it.

Today was Lucia Day in Sweden. It's very strange, because it's a Catholic tradition celebrating an Italian saint and IIRC, Sweden is not very Catholic, nor terribly Italian. I think it's just an excuse to light up the darkness a bit, fire hazard notwithstanding. Oh, and to humiliate boys by putting them in white dresses and silly hats. *points and laughs*
Pretty much every town, school, church (yes, even the non-Catholic ones!) and congregation of note has their own Lucia with accompanying "train". Sweden's official Lucia is voted for by the public - it's basically a beauty contest - and the winner gets the honor of walking and standing stiffly for an hour or so, with a crown of fire on her head. Why is it always girls who have to go through stuff like that?

Now: cheese sandwich and writing.

My fic! It's morphing into two stories! It's a monster! So I need to connect them, right? And I know the pure logistics of how, but the two stories have completely different tones! Gah!
Besides, I hate my prose. It feels clunky and pedestrian.

Bob struck again last night! I'm too tired to talk about it, but I will later! Christmas is killing us all!

I just finished the raw bones of my fic's fight scene - the most dreaded part. Not really looking forward to editing it and do research and try to get it to actually make sense, not to mention read well. Ew.