author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

"So I didn't go work at the farm today," I told my friend. "I'm going easy on my right ankle. Rolled the dang thing during practice yesterday."

"Oh, that sucks."

We were at First Monday Spin-in at Shuttles Spindles and Skeins, which is one of Boulder's two main yarn and fiber shops. I had formed great intentions this weekend to actually get some spinning done. But what with the ankle quasi-injury, I didn't want to pedal a spinning wheel. So I brought my current sock project to knit on.

I removed the ice so my friend could see how puffy and swollen it was. She agreed that, yes, it was definitely visible, especially when compared to my uninjured left ankle.

"Yeah, and what sucks worse? It was not the result of epic roller derby violence. It did not even involve skates. It was just... me, getting tired and klutzy toward the end of a set of sideways tire-jumps. As part of our off-skates fitness/endurance work-out. I just landed, and the ankle rolled over, and so did I."

"Well," my friend mused, "no one has to know. You could tell them you were saving a drowning puppy or a burning kitten."

"Right. I twisted my ankle jumping through tractor tires to save a burning kitten. Which our coach set on fire. To motivate us. Because that's how bad-ass roller derby really is."

...not that anyone would buy it. I mean, there is no chance that WFTDA insurance would cover that kind of exercise. Also, I'm pretty sure our coach's membership in the anti-kitten-burning coalition is up-to-date. Still, it sounds a lot more exciting and heroic than "I landed funny and fell down because I get clumsy when I'm tired," doesn't it? Watch. I'll demonstrate:

"What happened to you?"

"KITTENS. ON FIRE."

*awed silence*

There you go.

Is me. This is why: I'm at the Lindsey Stirling concert. She come back on stage after the exceedingly cute montage of baby Lindsey video. She begins the next song. It turns out to be her Legend of Zelda medley. And I totally tear up. Not even kidding. My throat closes, my eyes prickle, and by the end of the song tears are running freely down my face and I'm burying my face in my husband's shoulder to make them stop. I'm not just a nerd, but a soppy nerd.

Also? Stirling was a whole one year old when the original NES game (in its fancy gold cartridge! and its genius new "save game" feature!) was released in the United States. How is it fair that someone who was only just getting born by the time I was ten years old gets to pull my nostalgia strings that hard? (Yes, I am being irrational. Please feel free to envision me shaking my fist at the damn kids who won't get off my lawn. I do not have a lawn, but I will rent one just so I can enact this drama.)

Anyway.

I was initially surprised to hear she'd be playing the 1st Bank Center. It's kinda big. I still think of her as primarily YouTube famous. I admit this puts me squarely behind the times; nevertheless, last time I saw her perform--last year--it was at the Ogden. Tiny place on Colfax. Something like that. So I thought, "Oh, good for her. She must be getting more popular."

O, hi there, understatement. I hear the 1st Bank Center actually had to rearrange the set-up when they saw how rapidly tickets were selling. They originally had the stage closer to the center of the oval, and had to push it back to open up more floor and seating, or so I'm told. And it still sold out. So I hear.

Unless I am forgetting something, this was my first time going to that venue for something other than roller derby. It's where I saw the WFTDA National Championship that got me hooked on the sport in 2011. In 2013, the Denver Roller Dolls hosted the Colorado Cup there (and my league's A-team stormed through undefeated to take home the trophy). But I'm not sure I've been there for an actual concert before.

Which means that Lindsey Stirling and I sort of have something in common. This was her first time playing there. Not only that, but--this is what she told us, several times during the show--her first time playing an arena-style venue ever. For the most part, it wasn't apparent. The lights and effects felt, I dunno, sufficiently bombastic to fill an arena. Although I did wonder about the strobes at the top of the stage; they were almost painful for where we were sitting, straight back and just right of dead center. It occurred to me they might have been angled for a much smaller venue, one where they'd be aimed safely over the heads of everyone in the house. Other than that, and possibly the lack of live-capture video screens, I would not have guessed. And who needs live-capture video? Most of the time she was silhouetted against the multiple screens she did have, which were showing bright abstract patterns and spacescapes and ice caves. I had no trouble watching her killer dance moves, despite the stage taking up about the same amount of space in my subjective view field as would my laptop screen.

So now I feel like I not only saw a wonderful concert, but I also got to be a small part of history. I was there for a landmark in the ongoing adventures of a musician I admire. Neat!

Now everyone go out and buy yourselves a copy of Shatter Me, OK? Also, this is unbelievably cool and you should watch it. Lindsey Stirling and an a capella ensemble doing pop music coverage. With backup cello. I know, right? You're welcome!

As I have mentioned, I am a vehement introvert with a distressing inability to tune irritations out. Thus the photo included here is probably the happiest thing I have seen all day.

Which is actually saying quite a lot. Today, John and I are spending our work day at Impact Hub: Boulder, and we've seen a lot to be happy about. We'd been meaning to drop in for some time now, as part of our long-term quest to try all the different co-working environments in the Boulder area. Today turned out to be that day.

Things I am enjoying about the space include: Unlimited free access to tea, coffee and espresso. Loose-leaf tea infusers. A faucet dispensing near-boiling water. Plenty of electrical outlets within reach of any desk, table, or countertop. No standing on chairs required. Lots of natural light despite being below ground level. A handful of "phone booths" where one can take phone calls or Skype sessions. (John's in there attending a tele-meeting for work as I write this.) And just about everything on the South Side, including the fact that it exists. The sign in the included photo says,

This space is for individuals who want to work in a quiet environment.

We encourage conversations and collaborative work to be held on our North Side to respect those who are working quietly in this space.

Much as I love the community at Fuse, I am always conscious there of the absence of any space designated "quiet," any etiquette resembling "respect those who are working quietly." There is a sense that, by virtue of my choosing to work there, I am signaling my willingness to be saturated in community interactions all day long. Part of it is pragmatic: there is currently too little open working space at the Riverside to be divided into a collaboration zone and a quiet zone. But part of it is simply the clear preference of the community for a working space that's always in Mode: Social OK, Go Go Go!

It's not that there are signs at Fuse saying "Now entering EXTROVERT ZONE! You have been warned!" The problem is, there's no particular etiquette governing the shared working space at all. There is no deliberate attempt to set the tone. Thus the tone winds up being set by the loudest voices. The people who are the most accommodating find themselves obliged to accommodate those who fail to accommodate others. And if one person asks another person to modify their behavior in any way, the asker may well be seen as having violated the community standard for not holding each other to community standards... which standard is clearly expressed by the deliberate lack of explicit community standards.

That's what's so refreshing about Impact Hub (and Boulder Digital Arts, come to think of it). There is a social expectation concerning noise versus quiet, and where each goes, and that expectation is spelled out in no uncertain terms. A community member asking another for quiet--"Oh, hey, maybe we should take this conversation around to the North Side"--isn't being some thin-skinned special snowflake trying to impose their expectations on others; they're just reminding each other of the rules of engagement that we've all agreed to.

Well, that's the theory, anyway.

I know that my yardstick for evaluating a co-working space is somewhat skewed from that of others. I'm not primarily here for networking, collaboration, or community events. I'm here mainly so I can spend my work day in an office environment that's quiet but not entirely isolated. I came to drink tea and to write. And while it's nice to be able to raise my head, look around, and connect with others, I want to do that on my own terms. I want to decide when to engage and, more criticically, when to disengage. It's a relief to find a co-working environment that appears likely to enable that.

I'll probably purchase a "Connect" membership for June. That's $25/month in order to get half-off the per-day drop-in rate. Meanwhile, we'll keep dropping in at Fuse now and again as well, mostly on those days when we can afford to be pleasantly distracted from our work. Figuring out which days those are requires my becoming more consciously aware of where I am on my personal "Extrovert-Introvert-Total Misanthrope" scale on a day-to-day basis. Which seems like something I generally need to do anyway, so, OK.

Tape! The adhesive kind, not the analog recording medium. It was all over my weekend. That is, if "weekend" means "Saturday through Tuesday," which it does because I say so. I had an unusual amount of significant correspondence with adhesive tape this weekend.

Yes, these are the things I think about when I think, "What shall I blog about tonight?" What shall I blog about tonight? Oh, I know--how about that moment last night when I was all, "Hey, this is funny, I'm doing the same thing now I was doing Saturday and Sunday, only on a much smaller scale. Tape has, briefly, taken over my life."

Look, it goes with having the writer-brain. Writer-brain is constantly going, "Ooh, lookit! Lookit this, too! Lookit that!" Only it doesn't just notice stuff that legitimately has a story in it. It notices everything. Which is not entirely a problem, understand; it's much less of a problem than being in the habit of rejecting potential ideas and then wondering why you can't think of anything to write about. But sometimes there really isn't a story there. You just have to say, "That's nice, writer-brain. Yes, that is a very interesting connection. What a good job you did noticing it." Then you pat it on the head, *pat pat pat,* and you hand it a cookie, and you hope the next time it goes "Ooh, lookit!" it'll be something you can actually write about.

Anyway, Saturday we hosted a roller derby bout. And our home bout venue, the Boulder County Fairgrounds Exhibit Hall, is not a roller derby venue until we make it one. It doesn't have a track marked out. It doesn't even have a safe skating surface. So every time we host a bout, we bring our skating surface with us (it's these blue tiles that fit together like a sort of ornery Lego). Then we clean it, and then we mark the track on it. This involves "At least 385' of rope, rope light or boundary-making material" and enough tape to stick it to the floor in two concentric ovals, more or less. (More is here. Less, you already got.) The best tape is wide, brightly colored, stretchy, and resists getting shredded when you skate over it. It smells like spray paint when you tug it off the roll. And it needs to come up off the floor easily, hopefully all in one piece rather than splintering, because you're going to have to rip it all up when the bout is over so you can reassemble it in your practice location the next day.

So that's what I did for about two hours each of Saturday and Sunday, as part of a hefty team of fellow skaters and officials from our league. It's a lot of work, but it goes quickly with many hands on the job. And the reward is, you get to skate on it when you're done.

Now, Tuesday night involved painting. We came back to finish the job we started last week in the Nexus, by painting the crown molding gold. And that involved more tape. Blue masking tape, to be precise. It was not as difficult as last week's masking job with its fiddly tight spaces (we already did the door jambs years ago, thank goodness), but it still had its challenges. For the bottom edge of the molding, we used a special roll of whose actual blue tape was fairly narrow but that had about three feet of plastic film attached. That stuff is fantastic for peace of mind while you're painting, but I find it a little nerve-wracking to place because I have to do the whole job with one unbroken piece. I get worried that I'll drop the roll, or that the tape will drift off the desired line and I won't be able to correct it without, I dunno, wrinkling it or something. We did the top edge with a wider blue tape that was just blue tape, so I could use my preferred method of ripping off pieces four to six inches long and placing them in a long overlap. So that was OK, but where I was placing them was on popcorn ceiling. Awkward.

Annnnd just to make it a trifecta, yesterday I had to rip open an envelope I'd already sealed to flip over the "return bottom portion with your payment" so that the address would actually show through the window. Roller derby tape, blue masking tape, and now scotch tape. Whee.

Anyway, it was while I was placing the blue tape with film attached that writer-brain sat up and went, "Hey! So, this is kind of like what you did Saturday and Sunday! Only smaller. Isn't that neat?"

Yes, writer-brain. That's very neat. Have a cookie.

"No, but, there's totally a story in that. The main character, they're sort of like a janitor, see? Only instead of a janitor's huge ring of keys, they have every kind of adhesive tape imaginable hanging off their tool belt and stored in the closet. And sometimes they have to use the tape in weird and unorthodox ways. To save the day, see?"

That's... very imaginative. Why don't you go outside and play?

(Although I just might throw tomorrow's freewriting session at it and see what happens.)

I'm finally beginning to peck away at the third scene of "Caroline's Wake." It is an entirely different order of difficult than the previous scene was. I believe that in a previous blog post I might have optimistically suggested that it would be easy? Ha! Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-HA. It is not easy. It is not even within shouting distance of easy.

The problem is pacing and revelation. Also character development that feels natural but happens over a frightingly short space of text. This is the scene where We Find Out Important Things. The problem is, these Important Things are not things that the character revealing them is likely to reveal ever. So I have to make it believable that he'd blurt this shit out and expect the POV character to find it acceptable.

I do not consider "Well, he's really, really drunk" to be sufficient reason for him to spill the beans. They are very important beans. They are beans of devastation. They are the sort of beans you don't ever, ever cook for company.

On the other hand, one only has to page back through some Captain Awkward posts (with particular attention to this one) to realize that, out in the wide and very real world, there are men who will say absolutely ridiculous things, things that are multiple levels of wrong and bad and ew, and somehow expect these things to evoke appreciation and attraction or at the very least acceptance from the women they're trying to seduce. I can't count the number of times a man (or a woman!) has told me an appallingly sexist joke, and has then been flabbergasted and offended that, far from finding the joke funny, I experienced it as a rhetorically vicious attack upon my own self and person. Or men who unconsciously assume that the women they're trying to seduce have no wants or needs that fail to intersect conveniently with their (the men's) own desires. So I guess "He's really drunk, and he's also That Guy" can be enough of a reason, if executed correctly.

Except, if I didn't know better, there's plenty Captain Awkward examples I wouldn't find believable either.

Argh.

So this will be the week I pick at it here, and pick at it there, and freewrite on it, and make lists about it, and experiment with pacing, and just up and splat some truly awful dialog onto the page. And then chip away at the "marble" thus created until what's left is a believable and emotionally satisfying scene that climaxes the story.

Hello, this week. You are daunting. Nevertheless, you and I must come to terms. So let's get on with it.

Monday is farm day, and today was doubly a Monday. (This in contrast to those for whom today, being a federal holiday, was more of a second Sunday.) Today I worked at not one but two farms. I know someone (through roller derby, naturally) who has a special farm project she's hoping to rock out this week with the help of her friends, and my usual Monday schedule put me in her neighborhood in time for a solid afternoon's work.

Things done:

• Finally finished thinning that tray of woodland tobacco seedlings. (Yes, McCauley Family Farms grows tobacco. Four or five varieties, in fact. It's kind of an ongoing experiment. They grow a little of everything.) The dang stuff was coming up like moss. Narrowing them down to three plants per cell was like topiary sculpture in miniature. Well, I guess it was literally topiary sculpture in miniature, given a loose definition of topiary.
• Prepared some trays of wintered-over herbs and decoratives for transplant: feverfew, lovage, sea oats (a kind of grass), thyme, and... something else I forget now. Each wooden tray was set to soak in a tub of fertilizer solution which was strongly redolent of fish. I fear I got a good deal of it on me when I tried to help it along by splashing the liquid up and over the edge of the tray. Then we took the trays out and hacked up the undifferentiated soil-and-root mat into discrete chunks ready for transplant. Which meant more contact with the fishy smelling fertilizer solution. The thyme smelled nice, though.
• Planted the herbs thus prepared and covered their beds with mulch.
• Pounded fence posts into the area that will become my friend's new pig run, the old one having been washed away by September's flood. Lay out the wire panels that will make the actual fence. Also got to meet all the livestock. She raises pigs and rabbits with varying emphasis on livestock shows and meat. I got to meet the cats and dogs too. One of the dogs is a Great Dane who greeted me through the open window of my car before I'd even parked, let alone killed the engine. Great Danes are tall.

I came home with a dozen eggs, freshly laid today, bought at McCauley's, and a three pound frozen rabbit my friend surprised me with after we wrapped up the afternoon's work with the pig run. After a bit of recipe research and a grocery run, the rabbit will probably go in the crock pot. My friend recommends pot pie.

I got home around 4:30 PM and had my usual post-farm self-indulgent extended hot soak in the tub, where I did some writing, did some reading, and did some serious scrubbing. Nevertheless, I'm still catching whiffs of that fishy fertilizer. I can't seem to trace it to anything obvious, like my hair or my fingernails. It's just... lingering. I may be imagining it.

Terribly strained farm-to-writing metaphor of the day: Inspiration comes from the unlikeliest places, some of which aren't pretty. The process of story "composting" and idea "fertilizing" is not always sweet-smelling. You know that quote about having to go into the dark places? Sometimes you have to go into the stinky places, too.

So... there ya go.

But today I have Good Reasons. Most of them have to do with bout preparation. Y'know--the cleaning of the bearings and the scrubbing of the wheels and the sewing of new velcro onto the wristguard straps 'cause the original velcro teeth got wonky? And the watching of the opposing team's most recent bout, and the taking of copious, verbose notes that I'm pretty sure I will never reread? So that's OK.

And now John and I am listening to Matt Braunger records and giggling.

Could be worse.

And then there are the days when you do everything right and you still can't do anything right. You get up on time and off to a good start but you can't seem to take advantage of it because you just feel incurably tired and grumpy and incapable, and everything looks more worthwhile than the work at hand. And even roller derby scrimmage leaves you feeling dispirited and unhappy with yourself for all the things you could have done right but didn't.

I swear, I think that good days only galvanize that little saboteur in my head. "Oh, you think you're a worthwhile human being who can actually get things done? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED."

Well, little saboteur, you may have won round two, but this game will go to best out of three, and I'm on to you. You and me, pistols at dawn.

Or at least at 8:00 AM.

Today I am all about libraries. I have one book checked out from the Boulder Public Library (Riggs, Ransom, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children), several from the Longmont Public Library (including the Riggs sequel, Hollow City), a couple of paperbacks bought for 50 cents each off the Longmont "Friends of the Library" book sale shelf (Cornelia Funke's Inkheart and Tamora Pierce's Magic Steps), and three more books I'm requesting holds for so I can pick them up at the brand new NoBo (North Boulder) Corner Library and hopefully read them in time to cast an informed vote for the Best Novel Hugo (the Stross, Leckie, and Grant. No, I have no interest in Larry "Sad Puppy" Correia or The Wheel Of Time: A Novel In 14 Parts. But thanks for asking!).

Me and libraries. We're like this, y'all. I wuv me some library.

I also get writing done at libraries, it would appear. And also at lunch. And also early enough in the morning that I'm still squinting. And sometimes even late at night after derby, in between mouthfuls of "hey, this is carbs too, right? So it's OK if I eat it? How about this?" (Did you know that a suggested serving of Haribo "Happy Cola" contains 3 grams of protein and 30 grams carbohydrates? That totally makes it a derby recovery snack.)

I am not sure exactly how today went better than yesterday in terms of Getting The Work Done, or honestly why I'm sure it did go better than yesterday. Seems like I did about the same amount of writing tasks and had the same amount of interruptions keeping me from them. But I feel a lot better about today than yesterday.

I'm not sure the answer is roller derby, since I was feeling pretty good about the day well before I went to practice. But it didn't hurt. Had a fantastic last team practice before the bout (y'all are gonna come watch us play Saturday, right?). We did a ton of drills that reminded us of all the awesome and absurdly effective tools that we've got in our toolbox. Also, it was New Recruit Night. Knowing that a handful of potential new derby skaters on the couches in the corner were watching us practice, it kind of put me in happy cheerful show-off mode. I want those gals to go home saying, "I got to watch the Bombshells practice! It was amazing! I want to learn how to do all the fantastic things they were doing!"

Definitely, roller derby helped. And going to Longmont early to visit the library, check out books, and write for another hour, that helped too. Also the bit about not having the painting project hanging over my head all day, that was nice.

But I think what really set the tone was--surprise!--getting up on time. Last night's hypothesis was, "In case of not enough time, add hours." So I did. I added about two of 'em. I got out of bed when John did (he has a daily 8:30 AM telemeeting with his geographically diverse coworkers) rather than sleeping in. And dang if I didn't use those hours for all sorts of shit. Grocery run, McGuckin's (hardware and housewares) run, going out to lunch with John and taking our time in leisurely conversation before settling down to our respective work-a-day tasks, taking my Wednesday volunteer reading at an unhurried pace and playing Puzzle Pirates while I recorded it... And, um, writing. I think I really will hit the 5-hour mark today. It's amazing how adding two more hours in the morning can add stretch to the whole day!

Note to self: Sleeping late is almost never as rewarding as adding two more hours to my morning is. Can we do more of this? I want to do more of this.

Tonight there was progress towards our goal to Paint All The Unpainted Bits. We completed what conceivably was and will be the most difficult part of the project, ever: The Nexus.

That's what I'm going to call it. It's that squarish piece of the house, three of whose walls are doors into bedrooms or the bathroom, and whose fourth side is partially enclosed by the short end of the living room closet. Where that wall ends is the opening into the living room. In most homes, the passageway that functions as a place to keep all the bedroom doors would be called a "hallway." In this home, it's just not big enough. So I'm going to call it The Nexus.

Because it is a Nexus and not a hallway, there is not a lot of room between the various doors. Masking off the doorjambs was a titchy business. Painting in between the doorjambs was even titchier, especially when we got down to the floor. This is what made it the most difficult, nastiest, least enjoyable part of the house painting project.

I recommend always starting with the worst part of any particular task. I painting the tiny, detail-oriented, brain-melting bits that required the little hand brush first. That way I could finish on the high note of "Yayyyyy! Free of corners! No more fiddly bits! Paint roller! Wheeeeee!" Always try to finish on a high note. If nothing else, it makes it easier to bring oneself to start the next similar project.

As for writing... well. I started with such good intentions! And then somehow my half-hour email break turned into hours of taking care of every piece of household administration and maintenance imaginable.

Around 2:00 I finally broke away for lunch, over which I managed about 40 minutes working on "Caroline's Wake." Those 40 minutes were spent converting the first scene from past tense to present tense, then whittling away at the first two scenes with a meticulousness that, even in the midst of doing it, I recognized as avoidance behavior. Editing existing draft in order to avoid writing more first draft. I suppose I rationalized it as "I'll continue working on this after lunch." But I did not. Other things snapped up my attention and monopolized my sense of obligation.

Moral of the story? There are several:

1. Get up earlier so that there's time in a day to absorb set-backs like these.
2. Set a timer when email-and-housework break begins. Go back to writing when the timer goes off. If tasks remain, rejoice! Take a second email-and-housework break later. Time it, too.
3. Sometimes the purpose of Tuesday is simply to teach lessons by which Wednesday may profit.

Also, that 40-minute revision was by no means wasted time. It was a damn fine revision. I expect when I finally start drafting the third scene (tomorrow! For reals!), it will be all the better for having a more solid first and second scene to emerge from.