cinderberry

I'm going to process the contents of my head out loud, and then give this links to those of my friends who ask "how are you doing?"

I've spent the last week staying with my mother and looking after her. It's been the only thing I've done all week, other than bits of reading and writing here and there. After my father's passing - and particularly in the last 8 months or so - Mum has declined to the point where she can no longer walk. Speaking is difficult for her, and she frequently forgets words. She is lucid, and very sad.

Things I can do for her include hiring a pair of carers who look after her in shifts of several days at a time. When I'm not sick, I can visit and take over for a few days. I have been doing these things.

Things I cannot do include moving back to Ukraine to be a full-time carer, or somehow contriving to move Mum to the UK for me to do the same. Why I can't do this? Well, there's the objective fact that due to my mental health issues I'm a flaky and inadequate carer; this week is costing me, and it's going to take some careful compartmentalisation not to collapse in a heap as soon as I'm back in the UK. And then there's the ugly fact that I enjoy having my life, friends and work and joy, and I just don't want to give it up to be a carer.

The guilt weasels rampaging through my head are dismissing the last issue as completely irrelevant. I've spent a full third of my life - all of my adult life - in the UK, but my guilt weasels are thoroughly Ukrainian.

Two sets of cultural norms are doing battle for my soul right now. To be Ukrainian is to care for your old folk, to keep them comfortable in their own home, or if you've been lucky enough to move out, well, you move them in with you. It's a stage of everyone's life: older generations grow old and infirm, and you care for them as well as you can, and that's your duty, and that's what you're going to do. No questions, no choices, no care homes, no nonsense like "but I'm sick" or "I'm poor" or "what about my job". You care for your elderly. You're allowed a life of your own, just make sure to fit it around Mum or Granny.

In the UK, where I've grown to maturity, it seems entirely acceptable for children to build a life separate from their parents, and to keep it when their parents grow infirm. Thus, retirement apartments. Thus, care homes. You might not want to use them, but if your mother spends her last years in a nursing home, you're not, culturally, a monster. Outsourcing care doesn't signify a complete destruction of your immortal soul.

According to my Ukrainian head weasels, my soul is in peril, and possibly, by now, completely lost, because I don't want to give up my life to care for my mother.

But I just don't. I don't. I don't. I will work to keep her comfortable and cater to her whims, I won't take on a full-time job to make sure I can take off for a visit at a drop of a hat, but I won't drop everything and everyone to move back in. I want my life.

Somehow, I need to find peace with the fact that I'm a monster.

I tried watching "Watchmen" last night. The keyword, obviously, being "tried", because I got about half-way only by a feat of willpower, and then I ran out even of that, and gave the hell up.

I've heard so much good stuff about the film, that I'm still feeling like I must be missing an Experience that better people can all share, but mugs like me will never get.

I like that the "costumed heroes" fail at superhero powers and have names. I liked big, blue, naked Billy Crudup.

I completely failed to care that the people who were killed, were killed. By extension, I didn't care who was doing the killing. Nor did I care whether the others would survive. You see how the film may not have worked for me? It was basically such a blank experience, I might have got more out of reading the synopsis on IMDB.

That said, I can't get rid of the feeling that not liking it was My Fault. For being Not Cool Enough.

Ah, well.

So yes, we've finally got our act together and joined the gym in the new place. (New place? We've been living here for a year! It doesn't feel that long. Anyway.)

It's in a new municipal sports centre, so the swimming pool is often closed for schools and such, and is a screaming, splashing nightmare in the school holidays. But that doesn't bother me that much, because I'm not really a swimming sort of person, except on holiday somewhere sunny. The gym itself is new and shiny, which is cool. Crucially, it has all the machines I like to use, so I don't feel like my work-outs are missing something.

What it doesn't have is free parking after 8am, so I either have to be there by 6.30 to get out before parking wardens come swooping in, or I have to walk.

I like walking, and don't mind walking *there*, but after a good work-out my bones turn to liquid, and the only way I can make it back up the hill is by stopping in town for coffee and a muffin. Do you see how this may be a flaw in the exercise plan?

I'm surprised by how much I care about this election. Maybe it's knowing that, for the first time ever, my vote counted, and was counted: unequivocally and honestly.

My feelings about this aren't changed even by the huge majority the Tories have in my constituency. I like looking at the result on the BBC website, at its coloured ribbons and numbers. I like saying hello to my vote, right there, sitting among the others.

I find myself spending several hours a day glued to the BBC News channel. Watching the news happen.

What do I understand of politics? As in art, I know what I like and what I don't, though not necessarily why. LibDems: like. Tories: do not like. LibDem/Tory love-in... is better than being shafted with a cactus, or than having an outright Tory majority, but not by much. At least, being shafted with a cactus is unlikely to last for five years.

Clegg: like. Cameron: creepy. Proportional representation: like. Alternative vote: meh. Vince Cable: like. George Osborne: heaven help us.

Clegg's tie at the press conference: like, like.

The first verdict has come in on "Open". P. reckons it's a story, not a sequence of scenes, though he feels the character's change is expressed too subtly. That's OK, I can work with that.

However, he's worried that the story may not make as much sense to somebody who doesn't know me inside and out, like he does. I see his point. But where, if you please, am I supposed to find a beta-reader who doesn't know me inside and out?

I say, does anybody fancy critting a 3K-word piece of sci-fi?

(Comments screened.)

"Consent" is now called "Open", and has an ending. I think. Anyway, it's off to the first readers.

I'm not sure it's even a short story. It could be just a series of scenes. It makes perfect sense to me, but I don't know if it will to anyone else. It almost certainly won't make any sense to A., who never ever reads sci-fi; she struggled with "Riding Unicorns", which is as straightforward as it gets. But she's an awesome proof-reader.

I so want this story to work; it Means Things to me.

Last night at about 1am I had an "I'm bereft of talent, and this story will never stop sucking" moment. I got over it by 2am, mainly because I realised that, being a first draft, it was doomed to suck. If I hadn't thought it sucked, it would only mean I had delusions of grandeur.

Although it still needs a final scene, I've gone back and line-edited it, gave the evil baddie who isn't some depth, painted the walls, that sort of thing. It sucks less now. Once I've written the ending, I won't be quite so ashamed to send it to my beloved first readers.

It's my first sci-fi, as well, though the "sci" bit could be replaced with magic without too much damage to the plot. Clarke's Third Law strikes again.

I've spent the last couple of weeks writing a sci-fi story under the draft title "Consent".

Two days ago I finally realised what the story is about. Well. Good thing this didn't happen after I finished it.

I'm slightly concerned that after 3 years as a staff writer for a blog with the stardard story length of about 1500 words, I've trained myself to think that 1500 words is how long my short stories should be. Writing short has always been the easiest for me, because I tend towards minimalism.

Some stories need to be longer, though. "Riding Unicorns" is about 3K, and "Consent" wants to be about that as well. The internal editor, meanwhile, is screaming at me to stop being so bloody verbose, because my super-grand clever idea can be wrapped in a neat 1500-word package, and to think otherwise is giving the idea too much credit.

That internal editor wants her nose punched.

Oh, this made me giggle...