Thankful

On Monday, DH wasn't able to go into work due to the strong pain in his left foot. Since that's the foot where his gout flares, we figured that might be it. It wasn't. The usual meds weren't working, so Tuesday was twelve hours in the ER. Mostly waiting, as one might expect. Still not the record holder. (For those counting, that's still thirteen hours with my dad.) At the end, the diagnosis was Achilles Tendonitis, which wasn't treatable in the ER, but we were referred to an orthopedist we needed to see the next day.

Which we did. DH was told to stay off his foot and on some good pain medication. He took the meds but the crutches are still propped in the corner of the bedroom where I put them when we got home. He prefers his shillelegh, which was my grandfather's and then my father's and now his. Tuesday afternoon was DH at home getting some rest and housemate and I driving to unknown territory to get a topical painkiller from a holistic pharmacy. Headed back home, completely exhausted. DH had been up and about while we were gone, which I probably should have seen coming. I know this guy.

While nobody likes Achilles Tendonitis, I'm thankful that's all it was. I'm thankful that DH was able to decide, halfway through the cooking process, that he was going to take over anyway so I could do the last minute tidying and arranging of seating. I'm thankful that DH wasn't in respiratory distress. That his kidneys weren't failing and that we could use the dinosaur spit, as DH termed the topical painkiller, instead of the oral remedy that would have put him at risk for more kidney trouble. I'm thankful that he's able to get around with the shilleleagh and should be cleared to go back to work in a few days. I'm thankful we had the best Thanksgiving ever and, after a wonderful dinner, were able to flop in our comfy chairs and trade battle stories of horrible Thanksgivings past with our guests.

I'm also exhausted. I'm thankful I could be there for DH, but caregiving can rip absolutely every resource out of a person. Glad to do it, glad to rest from it and replenish. We weren't able to do Black Friday this year, and I know for a fact I'm not going to win NaNo this year. Because the Christmas ornaments my family has put up since before I was even born are in the back of the storage unit in another state, we have to get all new for this year, and I really wanted the traditional ones. Won't mind buying new shiny, pretty things, but I miss the cardboard Christmas tree I made in preschool.

DH says he has to admit the dinosaur sit works better than he thought it would, and he's looking forward to getting back to work soon. It's funny looking at getting back to normal when the new normal hasn't been fully formed yet. We still don't know-know anybody in the region, are still finding our way around, but we're home, DH's ER visit was not of the life threatening sort, and I'm thankful for that.


Photo courtesy of Samuraiantiqueworld

No, I was not playing chess

When I was a teen, and I had an important school paper to write, I had to sit in the antique chair in the front hall and wasn't allowed to move from it until I had the draft done. I'm not sure if that chair made it when we moved things out of my dad's house, but it's not that particular physical chair that's the important part.

Needless to say, I haven't managed to completely distance myself from my own posterior, and the variety of chairs and corners of floor on which it has been parked probably do not bear numbering. Today (well, yesterday, to be honest; I didn't take pictures of where I sat today) I'm parked in the coffee shop again, in what has come to be my regular time for NaNoing. I would say for writing, but that happens in other places as well, as evidenced by the Moleskines that I keep filling, but we're talking NaNo stuff here.

Ask me on any given day how NaNo is going, and you're likely to get a different answer. From yesterday's really good session to today's wanting to curl in a ball and sob for an hour, venting to a nonwriter friend (who is writer-friendly) and then dragging my battered writerly ego back to the keyboard to see what more I can eke out, because if I don't tell this story, nobody else will. This NaNo has, so far, beaten me up more than the others. Today, for example, I had a casualty, ripping a secondary character whom I really like out of the story because everything else having to do with him had been deep-sixed and the things went better if my heroine did what this guy would be doing in this, basically his lone scene left in this version.

Still behind on count, but there's still a lot of November left in which to get things current. It's not always easy, but if the butt is in a chair and the fingers are on the keyboard and my head in the story, then one figurative foot in front of the other. I've done NaNo excited and prepared, trepidatious and only semiprepared, and this year, it's not so much a feeling as a determination. Maybe moving and family colds and all of the rest took up everything else. Whatever the cause, this year's NaNo sessions feel a lot like those papers and the chair in the front hallway.

In both cases, this puppy's got to get done, and nobody is going to do it but me, so onward.

Enthusiastic and Enthralling, said the barista

The barista who served me said his words for the day are "enthusiastic" and "enthralled." He told me he was enthusiastically enthralled to serve me tea, and I replied that I was about to enthusiastically write something enthralling.

This, I should note is not it. Well, probably not. If my ramblings (and random photo from our street) enthrall, then that's serendepity. Which may or may not end up being a word of the day tomorrow.


I'm behind on my NaNo count, the good side of that being that I now know that I did need to reoutline. The bad side is that I am behind on my NaNo count and that makes me crabby. I do not recommend moving to a different state during NaNo or the weeks immediately prior, or during a presidential election. Especially if it's A) the move from two different levels of hell, B) includes more than one anxiety attack, and C) two incidents of Martian Death Cold, one with an upgrade that includes the need to wash down walls and purchase a new bucket.

The new writing schedule hasn't yet solidified, but I am writing daily, making sure that family knows those two hours a day at the coffee shop are *mine* and if the office door is closed, that means I am busy. End of story. Which will go a long way to getting to the ends of stories. I don't expect I'm going to get to the end of an entire novel during NaNo, but fifty thousand words in? Yes, I can do that. Won't be perfect, but it will be written.

I'll be honest, there are, and have been for a while, days when I don't think I can write my own name, when it feels like I'm floundering and it wouldn't matter if I gave up. Thing is, I can't. I've tried to not write. It didn't stick and it made me miserable. Better by far to keep going, even when it's rough. These characters and their lives and worlds and all of that stuff is in my head and it has to get out, even when real life has other ideas. Besides, there is no really good idea section of Barnes and Noble. It's all finished books.

Which is why it's butt in chair and fingers on keyboard and filling notebooks and one foot in front of the other on and on until The End are the last words on the page. That won't happen today, but the pages I write today are that many pages more than if I'd done nothing at all. There will be a schedule in place at some point, but that's not my main concern. So, off to fill some pages. Tomorrow, there will be more.