C.J. Cherryh's Blog

Jane and I celebrate Christmas, and while this has been a rough year for Jane, there is brightness too. We have made new friends and we are getting the house in order.

And a Christmas note on the kitty front: as you know, Jane and I have sis-Lynn’s elderly snowshoe Siamese we have been trying to integrate into our household, with the Bengal and the Scottish Fold, aka Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley (their online pseudonyms)…Tanner is of a fighting disposition, and it has not been easy. But he longs for company. Interspersed with absolute fear of our two. We have tried Feliway, Feliway calming collars, melatonin chews, and yes, hemp oil. We have moved Tanner up from the lonely basement to reside in a round canvas kennel under the Christmas tree, and let him out during the day while our two are asleep in my room. Come evening, out ours come and he goes back into the kennel.

We HAVE made progress—we have gotten Mr. Bingley to sit calmly, even doze on the cat tree about 8 feet from Tanner sitting on the sofa; and we have gotten Mr. Darcy to tolerate him with baleful stares from across the room. We shall not speak of the moment Mr. Bingley popped up on one side of Jane while Tanner was sleeping on the middle console. But there will be set-backs. The real news is, they are not cuddles, but they are beginning to define spaces and rights-of-way, and nobody has bled. Some fur has flown, but nothing serious. We’ve come a long way since April.

So from the felines of the household, Meowwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhissssspityyyyy Christmas!

10

Swamped. Yes. What with the house still under remodel, and the cat situation, and winter coming, and 2 sessions a week in physical therapy (which is working), I just let time get away from me. Writing…did I mention that?

Thank you all for hanging in and hanging on.

The PT has just wiped me out 2 days a week—but the good news is, both of us are improving. Too much office chair sitting had done a number, and when you get (ahem!) a little older, you just can’t afford a bad chair.

I was doing really fairly well when Cat Wars went ballistic under me: Shu’s 16 lbs (like a bowling ball) went under the foot I was setting down and I hit the tile floor, faceplant. PT took care of that, too.

The good news is we have finally gotten Sei to spend a few quiet hours sitting in his cat tree while, 7 feet away, Jane sat with Tanner, both cats quiet and comfy. We did not add Shu to that situation. But if Sei settles, Shu will be less anxious. Shu may be the bully and brains of the pair, but Sei is the arbiter of good will. If Sei is upset, Shu is. That was yesterday.

Jane and I were both limping about and were having difficulty in general, and we are now walking much more freely and my balance is improving—given no cat knocking my foot from under me. We’re almost to the ‘starting an exercise program’ state. But not quite. Both of us had near identical problems, one hip joint with some ‘frozen’ tendons, ie, not responding right, and Jane was worse. But that’s getting (ow!) fixed, after both standard mds and chiropractors had failed. This guy is sports medicine, and he’s good. We got onto him via our former skating coach.

I’m making progress on the Foreigner book, and Jane is working like a trooper on sanding and mudding in the basement remodel, but she is also helping me out by ‘running’ the alternate story line in the Foreigner story: she’s taking Damiri and Cajeiri’s story line, and blocking that out, while I write Bren’s side—the two lines interweave, but in this case are geographically separate, so this makes things easier.

WHat else? We managed to get the garden winterized before the freeze. And we haven’t had the snow this year, so far, which has been helpful. Neither one of us should be shoveling at this stage of PT.

Went out last night to take some presents to our second local pub, which is running a Tree of Sharing for some kindergarten kids in a local youth center—kids asking for things like gloves and hats, mostly; so we tossed in some extras. They’ll take the gifts over today along with a free sack lunch, so I hope it will be a happy time for the kids.

And that’s pretty well where we’ve been, working. Yesterday was sis-Lynn’s birthday, so that was hard for Jane, but she doesn’t give way, just soldiers on through, and we take care of Tanner, which is a promise to Lynn we’ve kept; and so far so good. He’s graduated from the basement to a kennel-cage under one Christmas tree (we have 2 little ones near each other) and spends time out and about while the two others are napping in my room/office/pit…and the yowls of doom have subsided to a much calmer mew. ONe secret has been some kitty-calming stuff that is a treat, and because Tanner won’t eat those, we’ve resorted to pot. Yep. Hemp oil, actually, which is a little different, from a related plant; and after a couple of drops of that, Tanner gets restful sleep (a sleep-deprived cat who is already high strung is a cat in deep distress)—and a rested Tanner is much calmer, so ours are faced with a much quieter kitty, and WWIII seems to be easing. We just keep at it, and yesterday was a good day on that front.

Wishing all of you the best of holidays and goodies and prezzies and times, from Jane and me.

Our knight in carpenter’s guise, Scott, helped us get the two big 10’x10′ canopies furled for the winter and set down to dry. THat’s huge. We let them stay up one winter, and nearly lost the gazebo, as the snow piled up and up. Now we take them down for the winter, having better sense.

It’s going to be rain for most of the week, changing to snow at night, then melting, and raining, and snowing…welcome to the start of a typical Spokane winter.

We are letting the kitty-boys meet and squall at each other, but it is slowly, very slowly, getting less frantic and constant. Tanner instigates most of it by yowling and attacking, but he’s getting the idea that we disapprove of this. Slowly. At least he’s retreating when we yell at him and our cats seem to think we’re on their side, so they de-poof faster. I THINK this is progress.

The therapy sessions are working well for Jane and for me. I started with a constant limp and a lot of pain, both of which are far less frequent. Most times I can actually hit a decent stride. Jane’s condition is worse, and takes longer, but the pain is diminishing.

We are slowly putting up Christmas, and it will be a little ‘less’ decor than usual: so much of the stuff is in the basement piled way deep in boxes, as we have had to move things to accommodate the work down there. Scott is redoing the basement so we have a craft area, an exercise area, and a library. And guest accommodations, at need. There is still a lot of stuff to get rid of. But where we have remodeled is wonderful: everything has a place and returns to it. THis is wonderful. When I cook, I know exactly where every knife is, each having a slot, and everything is an easy reach, the dishes get washed and the whole thing just functions beautifully.

May the craft room be similar.

Meanwhile we are trying to help our former coach, Joan, who had foot surgery, get to her sessions with the same therapist. She lives within easy drive of us, and we are going, we think, to go over to get her in her car, and then come get her out of it when she gets back. She can’t lift her push-thingie out of the car while standing on one foot, strange to say.

Anyway, we are grey and rainy today, not a bad thing. And I am working away on Divergence, which is the novel that follows the one that’s in production now, and of course January 8th, Alliance RIsing comes out. I wrote all the Alliance Union books so they can, with a few exceptions (Heavy Time/Hellburner) be read in any order. But this comes at the very beginning of everything that follows, howzzat for an explanation.

And arranging it so that you cannot become a member of this site except by writing a letter to me. My addy can be found herein. But every time I toss off five RU hucksters, I get 10 in their place. I can easily add someone, or un-add them. But I’m of a mind just to remove the signup page from view and put in an instruction to write to me, which you have to do to be here anyway.

though it will get up to 50 at the end of next week, but not for long, I suspect.

I swear people will NOT slow down on our street: it’s 30 for a reason: and we have had about 3 wrecks at our corner, one up the street, one up the other street, and today—yep, after the slick spots had all melted, some pickup truck apparently managed to shove an SUV off the road and onto the side of someone’s lawn. Make that 6 for the count. I confess to edging the speed up a bit myself, but traffic has gotten heavier with all the construction in town and I’m knocking it right back down to legal for all the string of cars behind me: they may cuss about ‘slow’ Priuses, but, guys, I know the house across the street has repaired that stone wall three times so far, guy up the street has lost a fence, we’ve had a FedEx truck, big one, in the bushes, and a sedan upside down. The weather’s getting worse now. So swear at me all you like, but we’ll all get to my driveway in one piece. After that, you’re on your own.

…is helping, because I was able to get out and wind up hoses for the oncoming winter, get the raccoon-scarers packed away, get the abused new lily out of the lotus pond and into deeper water for the winter in the big pond, get the outside faucets shut down and emptied, and get about pretty ably.

I’ll have these treatments at the rate of two a week, and I’m set up for 12 of them. Got a new doc—I’ve had two docs retire on me and one move, so I’ve got to break in a new one. He got one of my prescriptions that has to be name brand as a generic, and I have to get on the phone and get that straightened out. Honestly, if at all financially possible, a name brand is pretty important on thyroid meds, because the variance allowed in the strength of a generic often is too wide for the tiny amount of the actual prescription, ie, it’s so wide it can overdo or underdo, and in something like that—my now-retired doc wanted no substitutions.

SO, well, doing pretty well. No cat fight yet, just a lot of air karate and bluster.

The basement remodel is underway.

Someday we will be able to reach things that stacks of boxes have cut off.We are able to reach the Christmas stuff. But we do have a lot of stuff stacked in what were the aisles of the storage area.

our very own wizard…fixed it on his way to church. Poof! We have a page again.

I’m about to purge the whole list of applicants, most of whom are Russian bots, but—if you’re real and want in, all you have to do is drop me an e-mail (addy is available on this page) and tell me you’re not a bot and say hi. Not a real strenuous membership chore, eh? Even if you get a letter saying you’re out I can still fish you out of the pile and validate your membership if you just send me that letter.

And after several bouts, we have discovered Sentry ‘calming collars,’ which offer some promise. They are loaded with Feliway-stuff. At least Tanner is less hysterical about his basement steps howl-a-thon, and the other two seem to be quieter in disposition. Unfortunately, not so playful in the evening, but we figure the collars are good for 30 days, and if we can use that low-level energy to get the 3 to meet without killing each other, we can let the collars wear down.

Also our friend Scott is going to be taking on the basement re-finishing, floor, ceiling, and a couple of closets, and that means he’s going to be going to and fro up those stairs, and Tanner is bound to get loose if we don’t confine him in the library, which is too small for his tastes.

So we will see.

The book said prune in fall or spring, and spring didn’t work. So this time I’m trimming in fall, and cutting it back until it looks like an Angry Orchard poster.

It gave us 2 good apples. But it’s right near our Japanese maple, it’s an espaliered apple and should be kept under control, so we hope ultimately to limb-up the taller maple to let them co-exist. If not, it’s curtains for the apple, which is up against the fence, anyway.

This is strenuous work, but I now have proper short loppers for the job and we are early enough to get the compost-trash to hold the branches I cut.

Whew!

Put the winter cover on the koi pond, and will shut down the pumps when it threatens freezing. We’re around the 36’s at night.

Quiet today. No howling from Tanner, which has been nearly constant for 4 months. Maybe we’re going to win this. I hope the poor fellow is not depressed.