Monthly Archives: November 2009

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Three things about lipbalm

1. It gives the boy person friend the quivering feebles.

2. It is best procured from Crazy Rumors, who make delicious tea- and coffee-flavoured ones, and a bunch of other ones that smell like peppermints, bubblegums, icecreams, and citrus fruits. They are silky and nommy.  My very favourite was Plum Apricot Tea Balm from their Brew collection, which they seem to have discontinued, but all the ones I’ve had have been luscious: I am quite the loyal fan. They’re also vegan and cruelty-free, and contain no petroleum products, which I like in a lipbalm, really, sheesh.

3. I have run out.

O dear. I have backup lipbalm, of course; it is New Zealand made and it says Soothing Mint on the front, but it is not the same.

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NaNoWriMo: the difficult second session

The best NaNo writing–inevitably, given that the only requirement is volume of output–tends to happen in large spurts, and spurts, perhaps counter-intuitively, tend to happen in remarkably short periods of time. For both of these reasons, NaNoers are fond of organising write-ins: these combine the benefits of some congenial and usually caffeinated location with the motivational presence of other crazed writers, and they usually result in significant advances in word-count. Betty, therefore, spent a couple of hours in the Borders cafe, writing furiously, alongside an impressively large group of local novelists.

The happy result was an additional two thousand and something words, which brings Betty’s word-count up to the low 7,000s, and is not to be sneezed at. In addition, the plot is now kinda humming, which makes it all so much easier. Onward and upward.

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NaNoWriMo: we have lift-off

The faithless can bite their tongues. Betty had her cushy cable-watching job today, and by the time her client called for assistance, the wordcount was 1,040. True, this should have been achieved by about 2pm on the first of November, but it’s really not that big a deal: delaying like this merely bumps the daily word target up to 2,500. It is perfectly possible to crack out 5,000 on a good day, if you find a cafe with a power-socket. The NaNo founder advocates what are technically called “nuclear weekends”, which involve three sessions a day, forty minutes on, twenty off, until you hit 1,500; this gives you almost 10k in only two days. At that rate, I could finish NaNo with ten days to spare. But we shall see.

By noon, Betty’s wordcount was 1,553. The first day’s official target, 1,667 words, was reached at 12.20 precisely. By 9.30pm, it was 2,800 words. Nothing to worry about.

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Katie Melua is most pleasing on the eardrums

This song plays on cable a lot when Betty is at work (this is the job at which Betty sits a lot and watches cable, readers understand). It is reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’s poetry, in the following way: on first hearing, it struck Betty as being cerebral and poncy to the point of awkwardness. This impression was quite wrong. On repeated listenings, just as it is when one repeatedly reads one of Lewis’s poems — “Love’s as Warm as Tears”, let’s say, or the devastatingly lovely “Footnote to All Prayers” — the piece is revealed to be strikingly simple, sufficiently but not ostentatiously complex, beautifully shaped: and integrated, shaped by its own structure, not decorated or embellished. The best words in the best order, as another poet used to say, and he was right.

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NaNoWriMo: so it begins, sort of

National Novel Writing Month, as readers will know, is the highlight of Betty’s extremely tiny life, at least during November. That is to say, when she isn’t doing something vitally important like sleeping or walking to work, Betty likes to spend valuable stretches of time writing cobbled-together novels for her own amusement and that of — well, nobody else. The first one, readers may recall, was completed during the month that should have seen the completion of her thesis; the second helped to pass the time that should have been spent preparing for her move to the big city. This year’s one, for interest, will interrupt the time devoted to preparing for the final examinations of Betty’s Pilates career, but what the hey.

Trouble is, Betty had other things to do when NaNo kicked off on November 1, and, naturally, most of them are still waiting to be achieved; ones that cannot be put off, like turning up at work and so on, remain a bit of a hindrance. However, on the bright side, Betty did yesterday manage to achieve a word count. It is only 193 as of Day 6, but brave and fearless NaNoers would not even quiver at such a thing. Indeed, Betty’s first NaNo was won five days early, so suck it down; victory is, doubtless, close at hand.

If Betty may borrow a metaphor from the world of first aid, a project like this one, no matter how frozen it may appear, is not dead until it’s warm and dead. So shall it be written. So shall it be done.

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News from the first aid front

Since Betty’s employers have her dispensing glipizide and metformin and lithium carbonate with gay abandon, they deemed it appropriate for her to do a first aid course. Fair enough. It was no flighty three-hour jobbie, either, but a hefty two-day workplace first aid course, which means that Betty is now the hefty workplace first aider (though, as she shares this responsibility with every other employee in the place, it’s not much of an accolade). It’s nice to know, though, that if Betty does run her nice work car into the back of someone, she will be able to get out of the car, triage the situation, and perform minor emergency manoeuvres in her sleep. This will be useful.

A few notes, for the benefit of those who think a cup of tea is the safest answer:

  • DRSABC. That’s doctor’s, so you don’t have to panic wondering how you’ll be able to remember the acronym DRS come the revolution. Doctor’s ABC.
  • The doctor’s part is Danger (switch off the engine, and for pete’s sake chuck a towel on that cup of tea), Response (“hulloo? Anybody home?”), Send for help (and be specific: there are almost as many variations on the emergency numbers in different countries as there are acronyms in the mental health system, and it turns out that mobiles over here should try calling 112 instead of 111, so there you go).
  • The ABC part has been changing with the times. A is for Airway, of course, which means that it pays to pull the bubblegum out of baby’s gullet before you waste time with the crepe bandage; B is for Breathing, which is pretty much held to be compulsory, even in this technological age; and C no longer stands for Circulation, allegedly because finding a pulse is v. difficult when in the heat of the moment. I have always found that a diffident finger in the carotid does the trick, but I bow to the wisdom of the latest research; anyhow, the story goes, if the patient’s respiration has ceased the pulse is not long for this world either, so it pays to get straight into the CPR, which (fortunately for the acronym) also begins with C. So that’s what you do. CPR.

CPR is quite fun, these days. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to remember how fast to do the chest compressions, and even more worried when the manual said to do 100 per minute, which requires complex fractions, but the tutor had a nifty trick: simply bounce away on the sternum to the pace of two chirpy rounds of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. That gives 31 compressions at an appropriate rate; then give two breaths (for no apparent reason; the Americans have given up on them altogether; but chest compressions are jolly hard on the wrists), and repeat until either the paramedics or the patient tells you to stop.

Just in case, each workplace first aid graduate was sent home with Mini-Anne, who has an inflatable torso, a disposable set of lungs, and a pinchable nose; her chest clicks when you do it right. Stay tuned for pics, later.