At least there is sports...

Hello, all! Happy Olympics to all who celebrate. I hope, if it is something you enjoy, you can use it to have a little break from...*gestures vaguely at everything*

I'm going to divide this entry up into three parts: health, writing, drawing.

Health


Once again I have angered the Tooth Fairy. On Christmas Eve, I was eating a cookie and it had a piece of candy cane stuck to it from another dessert nearby, which I did not notice, and I bit it. It seemed fine at the time, but by the next day, I had some pain in that tooth. Sometimes my shoulders refer into my teeth, and I'd been carrying stuff, and lifting Pax, and crocheting. and I'd helped Mum up off a low chair at my brother and SIL's house, and I thought that maybe I'd hurt it. And it was Christmas, so the dentist was closed anyway. But everything on my left side just really hurt like hell, so I called on the first Monday they were open. I had a fractured filling which he repaired, and we thought that was it, but it was okayish for about a week, then everything erupted again. I am notoriously paranoid about my teeth, so I always doubt if there's a problem or if I'm just being 'sensitive' and I was like 'no, they fixed it, you're being silly', but I finally went in yesterday after a month's worth of pain to check it, and the dentist thinks I have at least an infection if not also a cracked tooth. The tooth already has a root canal, so we're doing antibiotics and hoping that will settle it. If not it will need to be pulled. My third extraction in three years. I try so hard with oral hygiene, but I grind like hell and my molars are feeling it with all the stress we've had over the last few years. I do everything to not grind, but my brain wants to grind and I can't control when I am asleep, and the mouthguard can only do so much. I'm glad at least to have the antibiotics and hopefully help some of the pain. I am a-weary, though.

Writing

I have distracting myself with the adventures of my OCs. I'm trying to go back now and fill in the story, sort out the timeline, which is hard when there is time travel involved. I wish I'd started differently and now to change it, everything else has to shift and move around, so I'm trying to see what I can salvage. It was just meant to be a sort of short story, but then these idiots had to go and be adorable and make me want to write about them ad infinitum. I have a Pinterest board and a freaking family tree for one of them, and it's just...stupid brain hyperfixating. I am having lots of fun, though. I've been trying to improve my prose. I feel like my dialogue is good, and I like to write dialogue, but the in between bits need work and I have trouble with that. In fanfic that isn't as important, I guess, because people know what the setting and characters look like, so you don't need to describe them as much. In original fiction, I have to establish it. I read all these books with beautiful descriptions that flow and sound great and get inspired and sit down to write and it's like 'there is a tree, it is tall and green and has a squirrel in it'. One of my characters narrates pretty well, the other one's voice is a little more matter of fact and he fights me on it. Probably will improve with practice? I hope?

Drawing

I'm still on my drawing kick. Trying to learn to draw faces. I originally started with the grid method which worked, but is kind of like a 'paint by numbers' method, where you can copy a reference well but doesn't teach you to abstract into other poses if you don't have the exact photo or like the pose but want to change the face. So, I've been messing around, watching a lot of tutorials and alternately feeling I'm improving and then hating what I draw. I feel like my faces look like people now, but not necessarily the people I'm aiming to draw. And I'm, of course, trying to draw my characters, so I am now intimately acquainted with the features of my Face Casts for them. Which makes me notice things like that Ben Whishaw has a slightly lazy eye (kind of funny, given I gave Q amblyopia back in the day), and Matt Bomer has a short nose area and/or large forehead area. Also eyes and mouths are hard, just in general. And fuck side profiles.

Anyway, things are otherwise copacetic. We've had a ton of snow, which is not fun with us three invalids around. Getting anywhere feels like I'm preparing to go to Mordor. Pax is loving it though, he's a winter boy, and he's a very good boy who has been so well-behaved while I haven't felt well, letting me rest and being happy and his best self. I've also been doing a bunch of quizzes on Sporcle to keep myself busy. I like memorizing things, so I've been on a kick of trying to learn as many Marvel superheroes as possible and beating my score each time. It's fun, I swear.

Hang in there, enjoy your Olympics, and we'll make it through! Talk to you soon!