kiwisue

We survived the high of 42C/107F yesterday - thank you, ducted air con - but I wound up with a particularly bad headache that snuck up on me over the course of the day. It was one of those days when I kept wondering why everything was so hard and I couldn't get anything done. Eventually, when the penny finally dropped and I took some painkillers, my first thought was: I can't think straight. I can't write! This is it. I'll never be able to write again.

I will just point out here that I have lived with chronic daily headache and migraine for literally decades - and yet logic still goes out the window every time I get hit with a bad one when it's been a week or two since the last one. The human mind - what can you do? I think I'll try to write something tonight, just to prove to myself that my mind while in the grip of a headache doesn't know what it's talking about.

Today has been much better. The headache has departed and the max temperature today was 'only' 35/95. You can really feel the difference in how less suffocating the air outside feels, even though the poor garden is still baking. It's going to get back up to 40/104 again tomorrow and the day after, though, so we'll see how I go. I'm having my weekly massage tomorrow, which should help stop my upper back from clenching up too much.

One other side effect of the hot weather is that we're only sleeping under a sheet atm, so no real surprise that I was awakened fairly early this morning by my feet being pounced on, not long after D had left for work. When I opened my eyes I was surprised to find that it was Abby, who is seven now, and not Olly, who is not quite ten months old. Then she growled, and I realised she thought my feet moving under the sheet were a moving kitten. Even after six months, she is still DEEPLY offended that Olly exists, and, worse, that he exists in her house.

So I rolled over and went back to sleep, and a while later I got woken up by another pounce. This time it was Olly. He didn't let up, so I had to fold the doona back over to protect my feet. Then, when I'd spoilt his fun, he jumped up to play with the blind cord. At that point I incarcerated him in his bedroom. (Yes, he has his own bedroom with his own special fluffy bed, blanket, litter tray, scratching station, water bowl and overnight snacks, partly because he's spoilt to death, and partly because every time we leave him free overnight, he wreaks havoc on the other pets and the house in general. I guess we're getting off reasonably lightly, though. As a friend pointed out to me, think how much worse he would be if he hadn't been desexed.)

Have some pics:
( Cat pics )

It looks like parts of western Victoria have recorded the state's hottest ever temperature today. Right now, it's 48.9C, or 120F in the old money.

The forecast is for 42C/107F here tomorrow, which will be bad enough. I'm really glad I don't have any appointments until Friday. I'm not planning to budge from the house. I'm worried about fires, though. Where I live is just far enough from bushland that I don't have to worry about them for myself, but god. There were 900 buildings lost and a big chunk of land all burnt out in the heatwave a few weeks ago, when there were dozens of fires burning across Victoria and New South Wales.

How many fires are there going to be in this sort of heat?

(And still we have politicians trying to say that this is normal. I saw one leader of a far right less-and-less-fringe party call climate change 'rubbish' today. I won't dignify her words by attaching her name to them, but if you're Australian I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.)

I've been intending to put together a Heated Rivalry recs post, but I think this one needs its own.

Haydenov Phone Swap by icopythefax is a series of three stories, and the premise is what it says on the tin:

After a mix-up leaves Hayden with the wrong phone for three days, he ends up learning more about Ilya Rozanov and his secret girlfriend, Jane.

The first story, I Like Jane For You, is told from Hayden's POV. Initially, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit that:
1. They would accidentally swap phones in a bar,
2. Neither phone had a passcode,
3. They would wait three days until they could meet up and swap the phones back, and
4. Neither of them saw fit to tell Shane about the phone swap.

HOWEVER, once you just roll with the premise, this story turns out to be an excellent outsider POV fic that is both humorous and heart touching.

But the second story, Do Not Text Jane, oh MAN. It's the same sequence of events as in I Like Jane For You, but told from Ilya's POV, and it is a fantastic character study of Ilya. As well as explaining WHY he didn't tell Shane about the phone swap, it also shows just how much he loves and misses and thinks about Shane ALL THE TIME, as well as his more general loneliness and need for some proper friends. (It's probably not too much of a spoiler to say that he ends up with some, though the number remains debatable in the third story. Don't worry, it will make sense once you get there.)

SO YES, then there's the third story, Please Be Normal About This, set a couple of years later:

After the events of I Like Jane For You, the public reacts to Rozanov and Pike as secret friends. Conveyed through text threads, social media, and news articles.

Okay, so this is hardly the first story in this sort of format that I've read in this fandom, but it's the only one I've read multiple times. Samirant and I read it together in chat and kept exchanging quotes as we went. It's so clever, and utterly hilarious. Ilya's media statement in Chapter 2 in particular is one for the ages, but it's truly one of those stories that if I tried to quote all my favourite lines I'd be pretty much quoting the whole story.

I have a tag on tumblr called Read This - and yes, yes you should.

I've fallen behind with fandom snowflake this week. I'll have to see if I can catch up tonight. Oh well, it's meant to be a relaxed challenge, so it won't really matter to anyone except me if I finish it or not.

While I've been not doing snowflake, I HAVE been reading quite a bit of Heated Rivalry fic lately. It's been quite a while since I last just sat down and read a bunch of fic for a single fandom. It's been nice to just immerse myself like that. Not sure if I'll write anything. Even apart from all the hockey stuff, it's a very (North) American canon, and I haven't written for a fandom like that in a really long time. But maybe. We'll see. I do have the kernel of an idea. Maybe. Perhaps. If I have the strength, I'll do a recs post, at least.

(I did manage to write a three sentence fic for threesentenceficathon today. I might write a few more if the mood strikes.)

One funny thing. I just left kudos on a HR fic, and noticed that half a dozen names along from mine was an old friend who hasn't had time for fandom for the last few years until very recently. Looks like we have a fandom in common again, for the first time in... fifteen years? More? I'm laughing at the way I found out, though, particularly given the sheer quantity of kudos a lot of the fics in this fandom get. What are the odds that we should leave kudos on the same fic at almost the same time? I guess we must have both followed the same rec, but STILL.

Meanwhile, the weather is being pretty brutal here. The other week, we had the most intense heatwave since the Black Summer six years ago, but this week's heatwave is going to be worse. It got to about 37 (98F) today, which felt like walking into an oven whenever I opened the front door, and it's going to be similarly hot for the next few days, but they're forecasting 43 (109F) for Wednesday. I'm super glad I don't have any appointments that day. I'm just going to batten down the hatches and stay in my nice, cool air-conditioned house until the temperature finally drops. It will be one of those days when it might still be around 30 at midnight, though, so I think the dog's chances of getting a walk that day are basically nil.

I still haven't made it to the beach this summer, mostly because of the weather. Every weekend it seems to be either a heatwave or else a post-heatwave storm, neither of which makes for fun travelling to the beach or being at the beach conditions. There were also four shark attacks in 48 hours along the coast last weekend, including one in Sydney Harbour. That NEVER happens, so everyone is a bit freaked out. The attacks occurred in the aftermath of a big storm, when a lot of storm water was washed into the sea and stirred it all up, though. That attracts bait fish, and the bait fish attract sharks - plus climate change has made the water temperature warmer, which means that the sharks hang around in the area for longer. I grew up a five minute walk from the beach, and my dad taught us from an early age that murky water is sharky water, so there's no way I would have gone swimming in those conditions. But it's clear that not everyone knows that rule. It might be time for the authorities to add a "don't go swimming in murky water" warning to the usual summer slip, slop slap (slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat) campaign.

I'm flying up to the Deep North in a few weeks to visit my mother, so maybe I'll get a chance for a swim while I'm there. She lives right on the coast, which makes it a lot easier than trying to have a day at the beach from here.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

In which I ramble on about how I write...

( My creative process )