Wednesday, May 04, 2016

when you're in doubt and when you're in danger

I spent like ten hours staring at screens and doing bona fide work today, and yet I got no actual writing done - ugh. But you've gotta pay the cost to be the boss, right? When I woke up this morning, I should have eaten and made coffee and meditated and showered and done all the other things that make me feel like a normal human. Instead, I went straight to my laptop and wrote emails and took care of business stuff for two hours, which made me feel all bleary-eyed and crazy.

I took a break after that to shower and grab a quick brunch at MyMy, since I didn't feel like cooking breakfast food - but they were out of corned beef hash, and I made the ill-thought-out decision to get their salmon omelette, realizing after I got it that smoked salmon is not something I want for awhile after last week's food poisoning extravaganza. But I ate most of it without feeling too queasy, and the potatoes were super yummy.

Then I went to the grocery store, came home, and started making supper - I wanted to try making carnitas, since I love pulled pork of all kinds, and carnitas is up there with my favorite foods of all time. So I bought a pork shoulder, dug out my crock pot, and tossed the pork in (after rubbing it with salt, pepper, oregano, and cumin) with an onion, a jalapeno, some garlic, and some orange juice. This cooked for six hours, which made me ravenous all afternoon, since the smell was amazing.

But I couldn't eat it, so I worked instead. I spent the whole afternoon updating backmatter and making links to my preorders and dealing with pricing stuff and tweaking blurbs, since I have some promo stuff coming up and that promo stuff will be much more effective if I make these adjustments. Not that I really wanted to spend my day doing that, when I need to be writing (see: the fact that I have a preorder I can no longer change), but this stuff was pretty time-sensitive.

Around five I took a break for awhile to chill out and make some slaw to go with the carnitas. Then, I had a long chat with Terry - we hadn't had a video call in at least a month, so we had a ton to discuss. Happily, I'll see her in NYC in a month, so we don't have to go much longer without a proper catch-up, but this was a good start. Then, I finished making the carnitas - after taking the meat out of the crockpot, I shredded it all (super easy, since it was falling apart), and then I took out what I wanted to eat tonight and fried it briefly so that one side crisped up like a good carnitas should. And I have to say, it was fucking delicious. I didn't love the tortillas I got today, so tomorrow I'll probably just eat carnitas and slaw like a salad, but the carnitas were perfect - super tender, juicy, and a little crispy.

Obviously, I have a ton left over (a 3.5lb pork shoulder is a little too big for me to eat comfortably in one sitting), so I froze half of it since the recipe said it freezes really well, and saved the rest for lunch/dinner for the next few days. And then I probably should have written - but instead, I dealt with more promo type stuff until now.

But I think I'm mostly through with the promo stuff that had to get done immediately, so the focus for the rest of the week (month) is to get the book into shape. We'll see how that goes, but I'm hoping that a real, immutable deadline will help me (without making me any crazier than I already am). Goodnight!

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