The end of January began a month-plus illness that pretty much ate February for lunch…I was calling it “The Cough That Never Dies” because I’d think I was better and then spend 20 minutes coughing until I almost passed out.\u00a0 However, good stuff also came in February.\u00a0 After the fairly dire predictions about Tigger (that he would very likely never be riding sound physically, and my observation that he might well never be riding sound mentally, after whacking his head on the ground as part of the October disaster), my trainer found a rideable, calm, small horse for me.\u00a0 Also, right before the illness knocked me flat (and no, it wasn’t the Corona virus but one that had been going around since mid-December) we had signed a contract to get a solar power setup on our place.\u00a0 The new horse arrived here (it had been with my trainer for a couple of weeks and I’d ridden him up there both in the ring and outside, up the street and into a field and back) the day before the installation of the solar system, when we had four trucks and at least nine men working…on top of the barn, in the back yard digging a trench, on the side of the house installing new electrical boxes and so on.<\/p>\n
Last week, the week before my birthday,\u00a0 the new horse decided that it would be OK to “accidentally” knock me over and run over me *and nothing broke*.\u00a0\u00a0 I do have three (remaining, one faded) very striking bruises…one side of me hit the ground, and the other side caught a couple of hoof “scrapes” (wasn’t stepped on, but Rags’ jumping technique over prostrate humans needs improvement.)\u00a0 I’m fine, just sore in places.\u00a0\u00a0 I have acquired\u00a0 a handful of Tough Old Lady points by being run over by a horse without any bones (or even skin) broken at the age of 75.\u00a0 (The skin was saved by its being a cold day so I had three layers on.)<\/p>\n
And NewBook is now comfortably over 47,500 words, after the hiatus of the weeks I was sick or juggling the other stuff.\u00a0\u00a0 What else is going on in the book?\u00a0\u00a0 The current twins (between 12 and 13)\u00a0 are intelligent, curious, inventive, and very lucky they’ve got Cousin Ky in charge of them now.\u00a0\u00a0 She’s getting them the help they need, as well as experiences they haven’t been allowed before.\u00a0\u00a0 Helen’s also getting better.\u00a0\u00a0 Stella’s off in Cascadia running that end of Vatta Inc. Something’s rotten in SeaForce, which goes back to well before this book.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually Ky and Rafe will take the twins into space on the ship they haven’t bought yet, but it may be in the book after this.\u00a0 Or quite late in this one.<\/p>\n
Oh, and I have a supernumerary phantom hand that shows up sometimes (weird feeling) which I hope is not<\/em> caused by any of the things mentioned when you look up supernumerary phantom limbs on Google (strokes, brain lesions of various types).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Though given the number of concussions, maybe it’s that.\u00a0 It was more convincing when it first showed up, but now I usually recognize it as soon as it “appears.” (It appears as a sensation of my hand holding something, located where neither of my real hands is…I can’t see it, or hear it…just think “I need to put that down” (what it feels like I’m holding) and then realize neither the “thing” being held nor that hand is real.\u00a0\u00a0 So of course in some story someone’s got to have a supernumerary phantom limb because now I know what it’s like.<\/p>\n The solar system is producing kilowatt hours of juice that we can’t use until a couple more inspectors show up: we have an app that shows the production, and a map of the panels with how much *each* is contributing.\u00a0 When the system’s finally got everyone’s clearance the app will also show how much is being used by us and how much is going onto the grid, but that part doesn’t show yet.\u00a0 In the meantime, a succession of cloudy days proves it can produce some even then, which is heartening.\u00a0\u00a0 But the inspectors want to see the system working hard, so they don’t come when the forecast is for clouds or rain or it looks too dark to them.<\/p>\n And that’s where we are: older, probably not that much wiser, but still enjoying life and learning new stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The end of January began a month-plus illness that pretty much ate February for lunch…I was calling it “The Cough That Never Dies” because I’d think I was better and then spend 20 minutes coughing until I almost passed out.\u00a0 However, good stuff also came in February.\u00a0 After the fairly dire predictions about Tigger (that Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,10,5],"tags":[17,7,6],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","category-vatta","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life","tag-vatta-universe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}