Expensive and Annoying

Well, it hadn't happened since 2007, so I suppose it was about time.

Yesterday, I stumbled into the wrong hummus. I've been working on my clean eating, and I had a glorious food week lined up. Fish. Strawberries. Hummus. More veggies than you can shake a stick at. Red wine. Yeah, it was gonna be good.

Yesterday, I ate the hummus and some celery. The hummus comes from a local restaurant, Oasis, and it was kind of spicy, but I eat hummus. I didn't give it a second thought.

Almost immediately I had the kind of reflux attack that makes you think you're having a heart attack. Jabbing chest pains, shortness of breath, tingling around your mouth and nose. I told myself I could manage, but it became clear that I could not manage. So I thought urgent care. They could give me what the docs call a gi cocktail (phenobarbitol, belladona, maalox, and a secret ingredient). Then I realized no urgent care would see me with any chest pains. They had to make sure I wasn't having a, you know, heart attack. And while I was pretty sure I wasn't, I didn't want to bet the bank on it.

I picked up Bryon and off we went on our little 4 hour adventure to St. Luke's emergency room. And yes, my heart is fine. Blood work, EKG, chest x-ray, all fine. But man, that was awful some awful reflux. The burn still lingers.

I'm giving the rest of that hummus away. Also, no more Blue Zone wine. They think that was in part responsible. I'm inclined to agree. I am going to blow the diet a bit until I'm healed up. While I'm trying to eat nutritiously, my esophagus is burned, and I have to eat what goes down. You know, bland stuff. Bread is really good. Soaks that acid right up. Oatmeal. Pudding. Ice cream. Veggies, happily, are pretty inert.

Not the ideal way to blow an evening and a lot of money, but you know, worth it from certain angles. Not many people get to say they've drunk belladonna.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

You May Be a Novelist If…

Thanks to Steve Buchheit for pointing me to Dr. Doyle's Identity Crisis article. BTW, you should read Dr. Doyle if you're not. It's great writing stuff.

Steve says he now knows he's a novelist. There are some people in my general acquaintance who fit this bill naturally. (I'm looking at you, Chris East!)

I know that there are people who can do both. I'm one of them, but I have a very hard time staying within the constraints of one episode. When I wrote, oh, lessee, "O-Taga-San" I could tell you how the mother and father met, why the grandfather ran away. Who cares? It's not essential in the narrative, but I know it. Anyway, I really worked hard at staying on one track in that story.

When I wrote the werewolf novella, I have a whole huge back history for three of the main characters, where they come from and what they want. Who cares in the context of the novella? I didn't work so hard, and things leaked in.

Well, it turns out that people read these things, and they say, hunh. What about this? Or this? I think we need more information. And suddenly I'm into a novel.

As I look over Dr. Doyle's points, I see a lot that's familiar. Subplots, digressions, lots of characters, consequences, expanse. Let's just call this thing a spade. I'm a novelist.

Which I like. I admire all the short story writers of the world. But yeah. I'm cut from a different cloth.

And next writing session, I'm going to go back to plotting my 5 book, 4 generation, 90 year family saga. Book one. And I mean it. I really don't care what happened to Carlo's father. Book one! Only about the Klarions. Not the Borgias!

Oh, damn. I do care.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.