PT Brainum: Blog

What did you get your wife for your anniversary this year?

Suppositories!

Really?

Yeah! She said wanted a big surprise, and even admitted she never would have guessed. But even better was my present.

What did you get?

She had to pull the stick out to try them, and I hid it when she wasn't looking!

Changes in meds and my mind is clear and creative juices are dripping. Poor Sam, 13 chapters into book 2 and I'm stuck, I know where I'm going. But getting there and making it right have become an issue. It's going to take time and inspiration, but there will eventually be a book 2, I hope.
Meanwhile Koby Roberts has become my new nemesis, 12 chapters in 3 days. The dude wants out of my head. It's also a new style for me, a system novel, if you're familiar with those. I read too many machine translated stupidly long Chinese novels while down and sick over the last year. The new novel is called American With A Chinese System (awacs). Bad Chinese English translating is part of the charm of this one. Even worse. I'm actually learning some Chinese characters. I hope this book doesn't do that to anyone else, Chinese is just wrong on so many levels in my brain. As always, I'll only post if/when completed.
Let me add that system novels are really hard to write, you have to keep track of every point, level, skill, metric, calculation, Etc. I've already had to retcon once to fix a mistake I made because it would change the story too much to rewrite it. It worked great, so making lemonade. So happy to be writing again! 破釜沉舟

Thanks to everyone who's asked how I'm doing. I'm finally getting off the post surgery meds that have been making my brain too mushy to write. All I've managed the last few months is reading more than a hundred books, and writing a few jokes:

There's no law saying that women have to wear bras. Infact there's a lot of wiggle room.

A man goes to visit a psychologist, after getting seated he begins, "Doc you have to help me. Every decision I make I always feel like I could have done better. I constantly worry about the consequences of the choices I've made. I can't even sleep at night as I'm so wrapped up in self doubt and recrimination. How do I stop being my harshest critic?"
The psychologist hummed, as he thought about it a moment, then asked, "Have you considered marriage?"

"How do you like your tea?" She asked
"Like how I like my women." I replied
"Oh?" She asked, arching an eyebrow, "and just how is that?"
"I'm happy with anything in the cup."

The problem with sports metaphors is that if you don't one put it, people just don't understand.

The last time I asked this question there were death threats but I think this is an important question to ask: Guy's, why is it that the wife is the one who get to decides if we are in trouble or not?
I think I'd be much more comfortable with some sort of neutral third party making that decision.
My wife is very good at remembering all the things I might have said or done that were wrong but when I try to do the same for her I just don't seem to be able to do a very good job of it. I know it's not because she's any more perfect than I am, and finally dawned on me, my problem was that I forgave her.
If saying that made you angry, I guess you're not the neutral third party I'm looking for.

As I've mentioned, a number of things have held me back from finishing sams adventure book 2, tentatively titled the helping hand, one of which is recovering from surgery.
There's a little known illness that's considered the anesthesiologist nightmare, where a small previously undiscovered tumor on your adrenal glands sends your blood pressure skyrocketing under anesthesia, fortunately mine only got to 270+ over 150+ before they brought it under control, and continued the procedure. I was unconscious, but everyone else was worried i was going to stroke out on the operating table.
As you can guess, it ended up not being a simple morning surgery, with bed rest at home that afternoon.
The good news is that i sneezed today, for the first time in a week. While this is good because sneezing while recovering from surgery can be really painful, that's not why it is good news.
Backstory: when i was about 3 years old my mom noticed i was starting to sneeze and get congested a lot. I've sneezed basically every day of my life since then, once over 100 times in a single day, and lately an average of 15-20 times per day. No, it's not allergies, but for nearly 40 years that's what it was attributed to. I had acid reflux. A series of unexpected events discovered that high-powered acid reflux medication stopped me from sneezing, as well as stoping me from getting erections, among other terrible side effects that procluded continuing to use them. It took a year of testing to get the insurance to approve the surgery, a nissen fundiplication, where they take my stomach, wrap it around my esophagus, and tie a pretty little bow on it, all to create the equivalent of the p trap under my kitchen sink in my tummy. Amazingly they do this after cutting only 6 tiny holes in my belly, reaching in with chopsticks, or something similar. It keeps the surgeons hands clean.
So that's where I'm at, feeling lucky to be alive. 80% of undiagnosed adrenal tumors discovered during surgery have the patient die from the anesthesia spiking their bp. 50% of all diagnoses of the condition happen post mortem during the autopsy. I'm just, for your sake, glad it's rare, with only 2 people out of every million in the US having it.
Oh, and I went a week without sneezing, so if you're invested in Kleenex stock, better sell it quick, because I'm not using fifty boxes a week anymore.

I've made my first official foray into the world of Amazon, putting up The Hand Bound. Now I just need people to find it, so if you read it, and liked it, please head over to Amazon and leave a review.

The Hand Bound: Sam's Adventure Book One https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B65DWTZL/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_ATWGETH5FKVPVSYWN3ZJ

Thanks!