Bobble heads. Sigh. One would think, in light of various time zone changes across the entire world that it is not unreasonable, or particularly arduous to check which time zone a person might occupy before phoning them. I happen to live near the Rocky Mountains. Those are very large slabs of granite usually covered with snow on the top. They are quite rigid in place, do not move location and the area they occupy is know as Mountain Time as distinct from Pacific Time, when a person may eventually bump into the ocean. Most persons, possessing more than a microbe of grey matter, are au fait with the minor factiod that going west means an earlier time. I am therefore monumentally unimpressed with being woken at dark-o-clock for some piffling update because someone wanted to tell me he was the new office manager. I guess this says a lot for competence.
Good Books.
What do I enjoy? Something that so totally suspends my ability to disbelieve that I feel for the characters. Make me laugh or cry, feel fury, or compassion. If I am in that place, I am enjoying myself and I know I have a good book. Make me care and you have made me a fan.
Devoid of these excellent attributes, then I will start to glaze over and probably not finish the book. An author who cares about his or her work will be experiencing these emotions as they write. This comes through, loud and clear.
Diet is working!
My pants don’t fit anymore, as in falling down. O-O. Still, this is a good thing. The diet is working really well for me and cutting out the starchy foods has made me feel a lot better. I am not hungry, or irritable and I am also not terrible active, yet the weight is falling by the day. Getting on the scales in the morning is now a joyful experience.
Yes, I am supplementing with vitamins. I take selenium, zinc and probiotic capsules. I am also drinking watered down grapefruit juice for vitamin C and eating fruit. I find I really like the coconut Silk as a milk substitute in my coffee, but it is becoming more difficult to get. Still, there is one store in the nearest city stocking it. Yay. Cheese is a protein, so fine in moderation and full of calcium. Oh, and I am allowed one square of dark chocholate a day if I feel the need. I am not a chocholate fan, so this doesn’t really bother me, but some might find this important. On a roll, here.
No calorie counting, or portion control. No special little frozen dinners, shakes or ‘health’ bars. It is a modified Atkins diet/thyroid diet, basically cutting out all processed food. I am also cooking with virgin olive oil, so I suppose there is a tad of the Mediterranean diet in there, too. I honestly expected to gain a few pounds this morning, after a supper of steamed asparagus and a baseball steak, especially after I cheated and put gravy on the steak, but no, I was down two pounds this morning. I admit I couldn’t eat it all. It was too much and I always stop when I start to feel full.
I have hated clothes shopping for a while and now I find I am beginning to look forward to getting something that doesn’t make me look like a zeppelin. Not that I was ever huge, but it is all about body image and I hated mine. My heaviest was 185lbs. Yuk, yuk, yukkity yuk, yuk. I had gotten to the state where I was eating so little that my capacity was possibly less than a child’s needs. Obviously, something wasn’t right, as the weight was totally undeserved. Here speaks a person who doesn’t much care for chocolate and candy, cookies or desserts. Nor did I browse on unsuitable things like potato chips. I don’t and never have snacked. I think it is all about finding the right diet that is also healthy.
My goal is to look darn good by the time my new book, Shadow Over Avalon, goes live on Halloween. I hope to have dropped thirty pounds by then. This is looking doable.
Very happy camper!
Wordbuidling.
Someone recently said writing fantasy was easy. Let’s nix this notion right now. In the process of coming up with Darkspire Reaches I created a whole new planet and a variety of very distinct races to populate it. How? Creating fantasy isn’t as simple as calling a bunny a flubbit, or some other strange name. A bunny is still a bunny and recognizable as such to any reasonable and sane person, to misquote Mark Twain.
A new world has to be just a tad off kilter, but still easy to visualize for the reader. Still thinking this is easy to do? A world must have weather patterns and this means a north and a south pole. A world entirely constructed of tropical rain forest would never be possible in nature. Why is this important? When I read a book I need to be able to suspend my disbelief. If this does not happen, I am questioning everything else. A world is therefore built from the bedrock upwards.
This is just one book, Darkspire Reaches. Shadow Over Avalon explores a whole new world, complete with rules and structure. If anyone else would like to tell me this is easy, they are inviting a fat lip.
Women? Bubble heads?
Why, oh why are women relegated to subservient roles in history. It doesn’t matter which continent, the result is the same. Could it possible be that a woman always knows her child is her own, while her partner is left hoping his progeny is the product of his efforts? Is this insecurity the reason why women must be strictly supervised? Many religions endorse this belief, elevating men and downgrading women. Why were we classed as air heads? So unfair.
Women pick their partners and most of them stay loyal. Men? A different story. There is the old adage about people accusing other people of their own short-failings, intent on exonerating themselves. I wonder how many women have died because of this?
Diet is working like a dream!
I am a very happy camper with the scales showing a downward trend each day. Not for me the calorie counting and the portion weighing, or the bought diet food. Because I am hypothyroid, I needed something else and I found it with a modified Atkins diet. No processed food and this includes bread, pasta, wheat flour and rice, along with beans of the seed variety. I have also excluded milk, going on to a coconut Silk alternative. It works just great in coffee and I am debarred from cereal anyhow, because all of that is processed and contains hidden sugars. Who wouldn’t like to start the day with eggs and Canadian bacon? Oh yum.
I am supplementing with zinc, selenium and probiotic tablets. Grapefruit juice gives me vitamin C and I water it down to give the correct pH balance. Green vegetables accompany every protein dish, although not potatoes, as they are a starch. I can have a selection of fruit and nuts and, if I so desire, one square of dark chocolate a day. Nuts, particularly almonds make for great snacks.
The weight is falling off and I am feeling a lot healthier. This is working and I am not feeling the slightest bit starved. I am now actually eating more than I did before as crazy as this sounds. Note, because of the ongoing struggle with my thyroid condition, I have a very reduced capacity in any case. This might not be the diet for everyone, but it is the diet for me. I is a getting into shape again. YAY!
Research.
So I was doing research for a potential new book and looking into pagan practices. Obviously, this entails witches. What suddenly side-swiped me was the reports from the Salem witch trials amongst others.
Bear in mind paganism is the old religion, pre-dating Christianity. Now consider the format for those trials was a belief that the devil motivated these girls and women. The devil wasn’t part of the pre-Christian religion. This is entirely a Christian concept. By extrapolation, these girls and women were found guilty of deliberately going against their own religion as a form of rebellion. Based on this, I can see why every one of them has since been found innocent of misdoing. Much of this was sparked by greed over possessions, as well as a misguided belief in the supernatural.
Real pagans don’t subscribe to the belief in a devil, which is a Christian notion on the afterlife, or want to do mischief to others. This beggars the question of how many innocent women were killed because of misguided notions? Research on Morgan le Fay leads to the inevitable conclusion that she was the whipping girl for a misogynist monk, bent on discrediting her because she was a priestess in the old religion. At that time, Christianity was still battling with pagan beliefs and trampling down all of them. Women were not to have positions of power in this world. They were mere eye candy, without a mind. Ergo, a strong woman of antiquity must have been a very evil woman to fit in with this new concept.
This is not pie in the sky hypothesis, or wishful thinking on my part. I have delved into the ancient Welsh texts on the legends of that time. It is fascinating to see how history was rewritten to fit with the then modern beliefs. I wonder how much of this philosophy went into the subsequent witch hunts? Anyhow, research for my project is continuing.
