I have just joined Bluesky, but it does seem to be very worthy and very focused on the big issues of real life, so I don't know how long I'll last over there.
I'm doing it again already, spreading myself too thin. That's it now. No other sites of social media allowed. I already know I can't keep up with one, let alone two. (Or three, in fact, since my non-writing real life friends and activities are all on Facebook.)
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dreamersdare
Challenge 3:
Make a Top Ten list for your favourite music picks and share what you love about them. This can be in any format - songs, artists, albums, music videos, soundtracks, scores, something else not mentioned here. If it's vaguely related to music, it ticks the box, so go with whatever you like!
This is hard! Like a lot of people I stopped being passionately interested in music some time in my youth (around my 30s, I think.) So a lot of these will be from before that drop-off, when I was heavily into prog rock.
Having said that, I'm starting with one of my favourites from right now. Amanati, who I found through sword dancing and immediately wanted to belly dance to as well. Cretan trance music - Fos by Amanati
Speaking of belly dance music, this lady is my current favourite MENA musician Maro Hereira with Bladi What can I say, it's my trance background coming out again.
I am not a big fan of Western trained opera or choral singers, but I make an exception for the counter-tenor voice, which I think sounds like angels. For example Andreas Scholl - Who may abide the day of His coming?
I quite enjoy bardcore as long as it uses actual instruments rather than synth, and it puts a bit of effort into its language. Hildegard von Blingen with Pumped Up Kicks
This is not really music so much as it is someone talking about ancient music in a way that helps me understand music theory and history. He makes music too but I have to confess to not having listened to that part except for some of his medieval tavern music. Which is infinitely superior to bardcore. Farya Faraji getting heated about the duduk
Okay, now back into the far distant past, during which my second favourite group in all the world was Hawkwind, a band whose musical style my mother described as "music that sounds like you're listening to it through two walls." Hawkwind - The Psychadelic Warlords Disappear in Smoke
My first favourite band in those days was Emerson Lake and Palmer, and despite the intense nostalgia rush I had when I first re-heard the beginning of this album, I have no idea why. God, it's horrible - ELP with Tarkus
Surely this one is still beautiful? I remember Yes as being almost too pretty for my tastes. Close to the Edge by Yes Oh no, I'm not sure I like that either. Thank goodness Hawkwind still holds up.
Basically the only things I'm listening to now are belly dance music and the tracks of fanvids. So here is a fanvid I have singled out because I really love the music: The Future will be Silent - a fanvid by Wyomingnot
And here is a belly dancing track that I particularly like. Ya Hassan by Yassir Jamal
Ooh, ooh! There are leaf buds beginning to uncurl on the medlar tree. I barely got my apricot tree replanted in time because there are buds there too. They're still tightly clenched but they're visible in a sort of lovely plum bronze colour.
Snowdrops and crocuses are carpeting the graveyard of the church in our village. We've nearly made it, folks. These last couple of weeks are the worst, but the end is in sight.
As the title says, The Boat of Small Mysteries is out today :)
You can get it on Amazon here, or everywhere else (Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple etc) over here.
~
When a new disability ruins Emily’s life and family turns her out, she finds herself forced into a nomadic life on a narrowboat. With very little money and even less physical stamina, she doesn’t know if she has it in her to forge a whole new future on her own.
In the idyllic surroundings of the British waterways, as she moves from place to place she encounters a series of small mysteries. Can she solve them and find a new purpose for herself in the process? Or must a missing person remain lost and the case of the body in the lock remain unsolved?
Half cozy mystery and half fond ode to the narrowboat life, ‘The Boat of Small Mysteries,’ is a charming tale of resilience and intuition, sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries, or the gentle adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books.
~
Currently it's out in ebook only. The paperback is in the works but I am waiting for the proof copy to arrive so that I can check that it's ok before I release it.
It's also currently at 0.99c as an early bird discount, but it will be going up from that probably on the first of March - to the heady heights of $2.99
First book in seven years! I am sick with nerves over how it will go. There's a lot to be said for a few years of rest--it's all new to me again.
Well, this is getting real now! The boat of Small Mysteries has both a cover and a blurb:
When a new disability ruins Emily’s life and family turn her out, she finds herself forced into a nomadic life on a narrowboat. With very little money and even less physical stamina, she doesn’t know if she has it in her to forge a whole new future on her own.
In the idyllic surroundings of the British waterways, as she moves from place to place she encounters a series of small mysteries. Can she solve them and find a new purpose for herself in the process? Or must a missing person remain lost and the case of the body in the lock remain unsolved?
Half cozy mystery and half fond ode to the narrowboat life, ‘The Boat of Small Mysteries,’ is a charming tale of resilience and intuition, sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys BBC Four’s Canal Boat Diaries, or the gentle adventures of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books.
~
It's just going through a final editing pass and then it will be ready to be released. Possibly even as soon as next week.
I genuinely can't remember how I used to do this. But I am very excited and a little nervous at the same time.
It's been so long!
Hurray! I've finished the first (content) edit on my narrowboat novel, The Boat of Small Mysteries, which means that it's definitely been moved into the category of 'book that will get published this year. Probably this month, tbh.'
Just got to go through it a couple times more to pick up anything I missed this time, make it some cover-art and remember how to compile it into a proper novel. (This may take me some time as I've had seven years to forget how it's done.)
It's a short novel at 53K, but that's not bad going from something I planned out as a 30K novella. I always write long, but at least I now am never surprised by it.
Thank you to dreamersdare for creating and hosting this challenge :)
Series I love, from one to ten in no particular order:
Stargate Universe. The first episode I saw of this was episode #4 when they're desperately trying to find lime for the air scrubbers, and I loved that as a premise for an episode. It felt like much 'harder' (more realistic) sci-fi than any Stargate before it. The beating heart of the show, for me, was the Rush/Young relationship. OMG they had tension - what kind of tension is debatable, but they were locked in, wanting to murder each other and yet unable to run the ship without each other. I understood Rush very easily, but I didn't understand Young at all, and so--very like Rush--I soon became obsessed with trying to work him out. Hey presto, now he's one of my favourite characters ever. I actually liked the ending of this, with everyone in their stasis pods continuing to further possible adventures without us. If they were going to end it, I'm glad it got such a good and worthy final episode.
Star Wars. Three movies out of the original six movies obsessed me. Star Wars: A New Hope - I saw it when I was a teenager and it was newly out. I immediately went out and got my hair cut like Han Solo. This was before I discovered fandom, so my fic writing for this was limited to daydreams. Didn't like the next two as much. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, I became obsessed with Qui-Gon Jinn and wrote fanfic in which he was something of a Living Force saint - to the point that everyone else found him inexplicable and annoying. Didn't like the next two at all (no Qui-Gon.) Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I became obsessed with General Hux. He was a second generation villain, the child of a man who's speciality was brainwashing children, and he had essentially grown up in a cult. I found that interesting, back in the days when I still believed that Nazis were not a real world problem. Nowadays I would react differently. Didn't like the next two at all. (Make a freaking plan and tell a coherent story, guys! Sheesh.)
The Master and Commander books by Patrick O'Brian. This is what I went on to after Pirates of the Caribbean. OMG! Such ships! Such an amazing grasp on the history of the Age of Sail. And the social mores. The social observation of Jane Austen with a more accessible humour. Watching Patrick O'Brian play with language is just joyous! "Jack, you have debauched my sloth!" I chuckle through the whole thing, totally immersed and loving every person in it, because PoB has such compassion for all his characters and it's a wonderful thing.
The Discworld - need I say more? Everyone loves the Discworld books which have a similar combination of humour with sharply observed world building and deeper themes. I have a soft spot for The Light Fantastic, if only because everyone recommends to everyone else that new readers should skip it. I think that if you miss out on Rincewind, Twoflower and the Luggage, your life will be a little bit darker.
The Cadfael books by Ellis Peters. I like a good murder mystery and these are good murder mysteries set in the 12th Century, where the detective is a monk whose main job is to be the herbalist in the Abbey of Shrewsbury. Cadfael soon acquires a foil in the shape of the Sherrif, Hugh Berengar, a sly and cunning young man, and the two investigate all sorts of suspicious happenings with great compassion and humanity. The TV series is nowhere near as good, although okay to watch. Somehow they managed to strip all the charm out of it.
The Marcus Didius Falco books by Lindsey Davis. Another great series of murder mystery novels, this time set in 70ad, with a sleuth who starts as a bit of a hard boiled noir detective in Rome, but who meets the love of his life and softens out to become much more of a real person. Another series with fascinating history, good mysteries and surprisingly likeable people.
The Untamed. This is the rare TV series that I liked more than the book. My first (and still one of the only) Chinese fantasy series. I was blown away by the fact that the storytelling conventions we're used to in Western media are not the same for this, so it was deeply refreshing not to know how it was going to go. There was something I couldn't look away from about all these beautiful, beautifully dressed people yelling at each other in pavilions. Although it took me three watches to figure out who was who, I was entertained the whole time. By then I was hooked enough to become a Jin GuangYao apologist, and that spun me out into writing fanfic. I did try reading the book, but I didn't like the official translation, and my blorbo was barely in it for the first 3 volumes and I was not engaged enough with everything else to carry on reading.
Ted Lasso. OMG, I did not expect to get hooked on a series about football. I hate football, and sports in general. But the comedy and the great big heart of this one sucked me in instantly. I seem to have no defense against the combination of humour and compassion, and I honestly don't want to develop any.
The Expanse. Another rarity - the book series and the TV series are both excellent. Or rather, the TV series is excellent throughout - hard sci-fi, very believable world building, exciting things happening, imperfect characters you learn to love. The book series however becomes excellent starting at book two. Book One reads like the first book, where the author is still working things out, and Horden is a bit of a mary sue in it. He becomes a much more likable character later, when the author isn't trying so desperately to make you love him. It's well worth suffering (a little bit) through the first book to get to the later ones though.
Do I put Murderbot again (because the whole series is great?) Or do I put Babylon 5. Babylon 5, I think, because we cannot one of the best sci-fi series ever. I think I've put my finger on my own taste now, because it was also funny and loving, while still being exciting and full of drama. And Susan Ivanova remains one of the few female characters who hit the same exalted level for me as my male blorbos. She was allowed to be badass, and that meant a lot to me.
I followed a link over to dreamersdare who has created a February 'Stuff I love' challenge to remind us--in this darkest part of the year--that there are still things to enjoy.
And how does this challenge work?
Each week in February, you are challenged to write a themed top ten list, with a focus on different aspects of media.
Week 1 (February 1st-7th): Standalone media (e.g. films, novels, short stories, plays) Week 2 (February 8th-14th): Series (e.g. TV shows, webtoons, comics, web serials) Week 3 (February 15th-21st): Music picks (e.g. bands, artists, songs, music videos) Week 4 (February 22nd-28th): Relationships in our media (e.g. platonic, shippy, familial, canon, fannish)
As it's the 5th of February today, I have a list of standalone media, not listed in order of importance because largely they are all equal in my estimation:
Bladerunner (the original and best.) So atmospheric and dreamy. Went into it expecting to love Harrison Ford's character (because Han Solo was the best,) came out of it with a new blorbo in the shape of Roy Batty, and a new background for the next five years of my life in the shape of that Vangelis music.
Oh blimey, speaking of plays, there was one play that became a hyperfixation for me before I knew the term hyperfixation, and that was an adaptation of Riddley Walker which was on at the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester when I was a student there. I absolutely adored the made-up futuristic dialog of the play--which is set in a post-apocalyptic England that has reverted to savagery. Just gorgeous language - I mean choppy, brutalist, but so new and vital. I would love to see it again some time.
Speaking of old, pre-fandom blorbos, I loved Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence largely because in those days (1980s and before) it was vanishingly rare to get any queer content, and MCML was about the obsessive/destructive attraction between a captive in a Japanese POW camp (played by David Bowie) and his captor (played by Riuichi Sakamoto.) There was lots of yearning! But there was also an amazing soundtrack by Riuichi Sakamoto's band the Yellow Magic Orchestra, and that was another big part of the soundscape of my youth.
Murderbot--All Systems Red. Enough said. Actually no, I do have something to say. I didn't know there was a word for what I was (asexual/agender/aromantic) until I was in my mid 40s. I had never seen or even conceived of anyone like myself, and I fixated hard on robots and also on other queer people. I recognized my community without knowing why I belonged there. Murderbot combines my love of robots with a character who actually gets what it's like to prefer to be what you are. It is the ace representation I didn't know I needed.
Stargate (the movie.) Ancient Egyptians in space? What more do you need. I have a strong love for things that are alien to my own experience, so obviously I was primed to love the villains in this, and that was only cemented by the fact that Ra was so beautiful, Anubis was so handsome, and they had that (Hollywood thinks it's villainous) homoerotic tension between them. Chef's kiss.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. I'm sure I've talked about this one before. Gorgeous language. Representation of a whole planet where the people are asexual like 90% of the time. Obviously the narrator thinks this is weird, but Genly Ai is a moron, and Therem Harth Rem ir Estraven was a childhood blorbo who I still hug to my heart today.
Pirates of the Caribbean (the first movie only.) The movie that launched a thousand fics, and accidentally also launched my professional writing career. I deeply loved Commodore Norrington and as a result I began to research the Age of Sail in 18th Century England. And as a result of that I wrote my first book and got it published. The later movies spoiled this franchise for me but I owe it so much.
Lord of the Rings (the book.) Shaped my life. Taught me my morality. Formed my writerly voice and taught me how to describe things. I can't over-emphasise how much this is a load bearing pillar of my personality.
The Time Bandits. Another one from my youth. Some of God's dwarven helpers steal the map to all the holes in creation and use them to travel in time stealing valuable things. By accident they also drag a young boy from his bedroom and drag him through time and mythology in a series of whacky adventures. Apart from the truly amazing best giant ever, the thing that stuck with me with this one was the depiction of ancient Greece, which turned it back into a proper ancient culture to me, as opposed to the usual Hollywood depictions.
Forerunner Foray by Andre Norton I mentioned my enchantment with things that are alien to me, and this is so alien. It was formative in shaping what I hope for from science fiction, even though what it actually deals with is being possessed by ancient things and cultures. I just love the weird things.
So, every time I sign up to do a solo, there's a place on the form for my dancer's pseudonym, and every time it makes me think 'should I have a dance name?' and 'if I should, what should it be?
I don't feel happy about just awarding myself an Arabic name, so these are the three choices I've managed to come up with:
Ursula Ogg - after Ursula the octopus villain, and Nanny Ogg the witch. I'll be honest, the main driver for choosing either of these names is that I'm fat. Nanny Ogg is my favorite Discworld witch, but I feel no connection to the idea of witchery in general, and if I was to choose a favorite villain, Ursula wouldn't be on that list at all. So basically I just chose this because they were two cool people who were also fat.
AElfgifu - means 'Elf-gift' and is my favourite Anglo-Saxon name. I am Anglo-Saxon myself so this would be a safe cultural bet.
Athalia - means 'God is exalted' and is a Biblical name. I would like for my name to exalt God, and there's a long tradition among Christians to grab names out of the Bible, so if it's cultural appropriation, it's a long standing one.
Now I've put them all down I think Ursula is off the table and I just need some help choosing between AElfgifu and Athalia.
I feel more of a personal connection to AElfgifu through my years of Anglo-Saxon re-enactment, but I might need to give pronunciation tips with it, which would be a faff. (It's pronounced 'Alfg-aye-vuh')
On the other hand Athalia would be a new start, it doesn't require an Old English primer to pronounce, and of all the names it's the only one that made my heart leap a little.
What do you think? Athalia? Something else entirely?
(There's a lady I follow on Tumblr who is of a similar build to me and her dance name is Ursa Major, which I think is fantastic.)
Plateaued on the diet, mainly because I gave blood on Thursday and just ate everything in the house that evening because I felt wobbly and in need of food. I imagine that not being able to go out cycling because of rain/because I was banned from heavy exercise by the blood transfusion service also contributed.
Cycling is not looking good this week either as it continues to rain. I'll have to do the exercises attached to the diet instead, and at least I can pick the weightlifting back up, although it doesn't help that I am going to give evidence in my son's autism assessment on Wednesday - which is normally a weightlifting day. I guess that means this week weightlifting is Tuesday and Friday instead.
Life gets in the way of all our goals, and this is normal. Just have to do my best and hope it is better than nothing.
I have at least replanted the baby apricot tree out of the pot it was in and into the raised bed where it will have a chance to stretch its roots and grow a bit better.
Now to go and get the shopping for the week, come back and clean the kitchen, make lunch (and dinner?), then hopefully there will be time to edit another chapter on the narrowboat novel before it's time to eat the dinner and go to belly dance class.
A slight disadvantage to this belly dance thing is that I don't seem to enjoy much Egyptian music. I wish I knew where my Monday teacher gets her music from because I generally love her selection but I can't seem to find stuff I like by looking for it on my own. And I'm sure she has spent years building up her catalogue.
Perhaps that's the answer - spend years combing through music I don't really like much and by the time I've built up a library of my own I'll probably have learned to appreciate it better anyway.
Challenge #12
Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!
Thank you to all the people on my reading list, and to mistressofmuses in particular who comment so often on my posts and makes me feel like a real person.
And a special thanks to ysabetwordsmith for doing all the work she does to keep my section of DW full of interesting things.
Tonight I committed myself to dancing my solo to Fos by Amanati at Shimmyfest in June. I performed it just before Christmas to an audience of women from my belly dance class and it had a remarkable reaction:
For everyone else the audience made encouraging noises and clapped along at the fast bits. For me it was absolute silence. They did clap afterward, but I really wasn't sure if it was a success or an abject failure.
Today, however, the instructor mentioned that Shimmyfest was looking for soloists, so I asked her if Fos would be appropriate and she said Yes in tones that actually suggested enthusiasm, so I told her I would do it.
She also asked me if I had thought about costuming, which suggested to me that she did not think what I had been wearing at Christmas was adequate, even though I made the skirt myself out of translucent, watery-like material. I guess the t-shirt over the top was not very professional.
Fortunately at that same hafla there had been a lady selling her old dresses just to get them out of her house, and I picked up something more professional looking from her for £25. Unfortunately, I have been dieting since then and have lost a stone and a half (21lb), so the dress may need some taking in. I won't know what shape I'll be until much closer to the date.
Still, time to drag the choreography back out and start practicing again before I forget it all :)
Thought I would do this one because I thought it would (a) be difficult and (b) be good for me.
LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF.
I am not malicious. I don't wish harm on anyone and I don't understand the appeal of revenge. I'm like a little mouse who just wishes everyone could get along. Most of my fic is based on the tenant 'if these people had just been treated decently in the first place, they would not have become villains.' I do understand the necessity to stand up against evil, with force if necessary, but even now it makes me sad that it should ever come to that.
At the same time I am naturally protective. I will put myself between people and those trying to hurt them, and I will be violent about it if necessary. (It never has been necessary so far.) But boy do I have an icy fury in me if I see someone being mistreated. Something in me just takes over and I gain all the courage I normally don't have. I do not feel bad about this despite (1.) because they didn't have to be jerks, so you know, FAFO.
I was very self conscious and shy as a child, and I still am really but I have learned not to let that get in the way of doing things I think I will enjoy. I'm 60 and very fat, and clumsy/ungainly. I sometimes feel utterly ridiculous among the belly dancers, but I love to dance, so I'm dancing. And dancing involves going out in front of audiences and putting on a performance, so I make myself look like I'm confident and I go out there and put on a performance - and I love it. I'm pleased that I can set that aside and do the things I want to do anyway.
| unicorns | octopus | enemies to friends | magic | cozy |
| music | prehistory | world building | dancing | love |
| disability | ancient humans | FREE SPACE | sewing | spaceships |
| mercy | magic school | deep sea | dragons | narrowboats |
| elves | grace | tolkien | ecology | trees |
So, I've started brainstorming a cozy fantasy and am discovering that I have many questions about the genre. Chiefly worldbuilding. So far all the cozy fantasies I've read (a grand total of two of them) seem to be set in generic Dungeons and Dragons world.
I wonder if a lot of the appeal is in the safety and familiarity of that setting. Do you think it matters if I try to do something vaguely inspired by Ancient Babylon?
Knowing myself, I know that I am going to want to know where they get their water from, how they cook, who makes the laws and how they're enforced, what the basic theology is, why exactly the 'evil' forces are evil etc. And I will want that to be something other than standard D&D, because that's half the fun of fantasy.
Do you think a slightly more intricate focus on worldbuilding will turn the end product into something that isn't cozy enough?
I will want a little bit of peril, but I think I can keep that down to the level set in Legends and Lattes, the touchstone of cozy.
But I'm also not planning on including a romance. I had enough romance writing in the ten years of writing m/m, and that part of my writing soul is still recoiling in dread when I think about going back. (I hope to go back eventually but I'm so not there yet.)
Is it possible to be 'cozy' while just concentrating on one woman's failing out of wizard school and finding a new career in a fantasy hot country very loosely based on ancient Babylon?
My narrowboat novel has a similar issue of being one woman's rediscovery of herself while on a river journey and resolutely refusing to be in a romance (even though one is offered.)
These are, I think, the fruits of romance burnout, but they certainly don't make either book more typical of their kind.
I didn't realize I'd been writing it on and off for a year, but I hope to finish my cozy narrowboat mystery either this week or the next. All that remains is the wrap up.
I've been kind of writing it around MDZS, which is why it's taken so long. I didn't mean to write anything for MDZS and the next thing I knew I had 80k words or whatnot, but it's meant that the cozy had to take the back foot.
Now, however, I'm closing in on the end of the first draft, and I see that I have in fact got a finished book on my hands.
Only the first draft, of course. It needs a little while to rest before I can begin a first major edit - fitting the journey to the waterways, remembering everyone's names and the names of their boats, and settling on the final form of the quarrel between Susan and Emily.
In that resting time, I'm going to continue the world-building and plotting on the cozy Fantasy I will be writing next, with the plan to start a first draft of that before I go back to editing The Boat of Small Mysteries.
Thanks to my 7+ years of writer's block, I've realized that I stall out, badly, when I come to the end of a writing project and have nothing else to move on to. So this time I'm attempting to close the gap between one book and the next until there is a seamless transition between them.
I would like to touch wood and say that my long period of being unable to write is over. I need to mind the gap rather than falling into it. Wish me luck!
Maybe I should make a note of what I read, so they don't all blur into one.
Recently (in the last two weeks):
Grandmother's Secrets by Rosina-Fawzia al Rawi
(1) is a novella in the Rivers of London series about Isaac Newton's line of British official government wizards. Starring Thomas Nightingale in a rare trip abroad to visit 1920s New York and hunt down the maker of an enchanted saxophone.
Very Bertie Wooster dancing the Charleston in a gay club, and it's the novella that reveals Nightingale to be asexual. A rare win for the aces :)
(2) is a children's book in which a young wizard whose only gift is for working with dough is forced to find out exactly what she can do with it when her kingdom is in peril.
It's very well written - the plot escalates smoothly and it keeps you reading without being too busy or hectic. The prose is powerful but doesn't intrude. I enjoyed it but didn't really connect emotionally.
(3) follows a slow and unworldly (third, spare, novice nun) princess as she makes/finds allies in a quest to rescue her sister from the sister's husband. He is the prince of a neighbouring, much more powerful kingdom, and having murdered their elder sister is now abusing the middle sister.
I enjoyed this one much more for its blend of realistic dynastic politics and weird wizardly powers. I liked the characters more too, and they combined with the excellent workmanship of the author in a way I almost had feels about. (Not quite - my feels don't get engaged much any more, sadly.)
(4) A dead man turns up inside a hermetically sealed house run by a powerful AI, and a detective goes inside the house to try to solve the murder. This turns out to be a mistake. I enjoyed Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace) so I thought I might enjoy this too.
I am finding it haunting, and I appreciate her attempts to construct intelligences that are not human, but this one feels a bit like there is no plot, just an experience. And it's not a particularly pleasant experience. Rose House is not a particularly likeable character, even if its murder was in self defense. (Or was it?)
(5) A non-fiction book, partially a treatise on the origin of belly dancing and partially an autobiography.
I appreciated this as coming from within the culture where raqs sharqi originated, and it is a beautiful memoir of the author growing up with the dance. It was interesting to think of it as a private, indoors thing done by the women of the household chiefly for each other
So, yesterday I started on Casey Johnstone's Couch to Barbell program, in the hopes that weightlifting would prove beneficial to my fibromyalgia and back pain.
It seemed like not very much exercise. 14 minutes worth with mandatory rest periods between each set. Stage One follow-along video
But today I am wiped out. Absolutely flattened. Admittedly I did go to belly dancing while my legs were still like jelly, but I don't think belly dancing is the culprit.
I'm telling myself that the fact that my legs are so sore must mean that it is in fact doing something, and I could definitely do with stronger legs, so onward! I'm on a mandatory rest day today, but she hardly needed to tell me, I'm not fit to do anything today even if I wanted to.
Yesterday I also made over a £10 second hand denim jacket on the model of some gorgeous £60 ones I saw at a festival. Shout out to my local haberdashery for carrying some interesting fabrics for £9 per half metre. I'm pleased with this:
I could only do that because yesterday it was cool enough to go in the conservatory where the sewing machine is. Today is not, so I'm not sure what I can achieve today. Maybe some writing?
chiming
