Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Memorial Day Write-a-Thon

Well, two books have been warring in my head for awhile.

This weekend, Garnet and Quella's story muscled its way past Romney and Ivy's 3rd in series as the to be written novel.

I put down 36,525 words in 70 pages, 8 chapters from Saturday morning to Monday night. Dashed off another thousand words at breakfast this morning before going to work.

The motivating shot in the arm to finally get this novel rolling was the idea to make it darker.

Well, here are two dysfunctional families with toxic members in each, two young people traumatized by their toxic family members struggling to find their path through life, who find one another...and then they discover that their namesakes had a brief, incendiary affair over a hundred and forty years ago, and all three of them died (the two ancestors who are the current characters namesakes plus their love child). Dark enough? Hmm...might need to notch the light down a little lower. Oh, did I mention there're ghosts and hints of reincarnation thrown in the mix?

Definitely dark romance.

Definitely dark.

I may need a miner's lamp to keep writing this one!


Sunday, May 20, 2018

Another Week, Another Blur

It seems like it was just Monday, and now here Monday looms again, a mere three hours away.

Work has been so busy that it makes the days run together like wet watercolors. Monday's purples, bleed into Tuesday's reds, that get watered down into Wednesdays blues, swirl into Thursday's oranges, and run into Friday's yellows. The weekend passes in the blink of an eye.

What have I accomplished? I can't answer that. It feels like nothing. I accomplished breathing. That's it.

My brain tells me I must have done more than that. I look around me and see evidence that baking was done, cleaning was completed, laundry was washed, dried, folded and put away. I work all week, I work at home all weekend. I write.

Aha! I wrote. I finally chose a version of a story- Garnet and Quella's story to be exact, that I felt I could work with without having to restart it a twentieth time. It now stands at 55 pages, 28,201 words. Progress is being made.

I really did accomplish something.

Oh, and Kelly came home from her vacation in New Orleans with lots of stories and more pictures. She had a nice time, but her friend's dog died while they were away, which was sad.

Today, I met an artist friend for coffee and croissants and we had an interesting, thought provoking conversation. An hour and a half flew by, and neither of us had been aware that it had rained while we were enjoying ourselves.

It all seems as if only a day has passed, but here I am, about to start another week...I think I need a vacation. Life should not speed by as if I'm on a runaway train barreling down a steep descending track to the little station called End of the Line. I feel like I'm missing something big...

Friday, May 11, 2018

Stowaway Thwarted

We adopted Revere in June 2011, the summer before Kelly's junior year at Worcester Polytech. He quickly realized that when she brought out her back pack, duffle bag, and suitcase it meant that she was heading off to college- and he wanted to go with her! He would crawl into her backpack, climb into her duffle bag, and curl up in a corner of her suitcase and try to hide his white spots and became invisible.

Even after she moved home he would still know when she was preparing to leave for a vacation or a trip to visit friends. The minute the backpack and duffle bag appeared, or the suitcase was brought upstairs from the cellar, he would settle down on top of it or inside of it.

This has been going on for seven years. Revere does not like to see Kelly leave home.

The suitcase came upstairs with the backpack on Wednesday night. The look on the cat's face stated quite clearly that he understood what was happening- Kelly was going away again.

Last night, Revere was in her suitcase as she went about packing, gathering toiletries and other things she wanted to take with her. We both saw him wandering aimlessly around as she hustled about after I got home from a board meeting about ten past eight. While I sat down to have a snack and start writing, Kelly ticked off more items on her list and finished up her packing. We talked about how heavy her suitcase was, if it would meet the plane criteria, no more than 50 pounds. She said it shouldn't weigh all that much since she was going to New Orleans and had packed summer weight clothes and just a spare pair of sneakers.

I was stll writing as she zipped her suitcase shut, then lifted it off the bed, turning it upright and wheeled it to the living room where she could stuff her pajamas into it in the morning. Then she joined me at the table in the kitchen to write in her journal. We talked about the trip, staying safe, what to do in case of food allergy emergency, sights to see, places to go.

About a half hour later, from the living room, John began saying, "Stop picking!" Our cats have been trained not to pick the furniture, but they occasionally pick the carpet, which is also frowned upon. We couldn't hear any picking from the kitchen. He repeated the command. Then we heard him get up off the couch, saying, "Where are you?" I asked what was going on, since we couldn't hear anything. He replied the cat was picking somewhere but it sounded distant, maybe down cellar?

And then he was calling Kelly into the living room, telling her that she had better open her suitcase. She hauled it away from the wall, laid it flat on the floor, unzipped it, flipped the top open, and out stepped a somewhat disgruntled Revere! She had zipped him up inside, lugged him to the other room without realizing that 20 pounds of weight in her bag was due to there being a cat in there!

What had helped John figure out where Revere was is that he saw the front of the suitcase bulging out as Revere moved around inside it, anxious to get out. I imagine it got warm in there!

Stowaway status was thwarted by his deciding that he wanted out of the suitcase.

All I can say is, he was lucky she didn't pack her summer pajamas and just make due with a t-shirt and pair of shorts for one night. I can't begin to imagine what would have happened to the poor cat if she had hauled her suitcase out to the car so she could just leave for work in the morning. He's not a loud cat. He could have been unconscious by morning from lack of air. It would have been a traumatic find in Louisiana if John hadn't heard the cat picking, trying to get out- otherwise, we would have noticed he was missing because he sleeps with me every night, but that would have been nearly three hours later, and he does have a few hiding places. I have gone to bed without seeing him around in the past.

We'll have to wait and see if he jumps in her suitcase when she gets home, or if he's finally learned a lesson from his misadventure!

Tonight, with Kelly on her way to Louisiana, Revere and Riley Beans got a few new toys to distract them from her not being home.


Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Frustration

My life has been full of frustrations since March 30th when I came down with in upper respiratory infection that persisted for three weeks, cleared up for my birthday in mid-April, but then another health issue flared up leaving me limping around and having difficulty with stairs, and now allergy season has arrived which pretty much means  have to stay inside since I live in the woods where I am allergic to the pollen of every tree out there.

I need a nice hypoallergenic bubble to roll around in.

I need to feel better because there is a lot of stuff buzzing through my head, a lot of things I need to write, a lot of things I'd like to do.

Having a chronic illness is not easy. Eleven years ago I thought nothing of jumping in the car to spend an entire day hiking the fields at Brimfield antiquing. Gradually I've lost my ability to walk n uneven surfaces. I can walk n flat level places, like roads and sidewalks, but once  hit grass or dirt my feet began to ache, and the uneven surfaces stress my tendons and joints causing them to hurt. I can no longer enjoy walking on the beach because I cannot walk through dry sand. I can no longer go hiking in the woods- something I just to do just walking out the back door and taking the cat along for a hike across the brook and along the trails.

I feel like I once lived in a beautiful sphere, but that sphere is constantly shrinking. It's still beautiful and has so much to offer, but my rebellious auto-immune system is drawing the circle of things I can do in closer and closer. It hurts to cross the circle into the bigger part of the sphere where all the things I used to enjoy and love doing reside.

Sometimes just running to the store can be a major chore- because n top of the achy joints and tendons, the headaches, stiffness and generalized malaise there is like a heavy gray blanket of fatigue shrouding me. I no longer feel vibrant and alive. I feel grounded and sad, deeply disappointed.

I am envious of people who can weave in and out of pedestrian traffic on sidewalks, in crowded corridors...my joints no longer move that fluidly. It wrenches me to see people run. I used to be able to run. Now, if I come home at night or even during the day I have to make sure there are no large wild animals in the yard or else I'm toast. It's frightening to lose mobility and flexibility. It's disappointing and frustrating to have mental or brain fog, especially when writing has always come so easily for me but over the past year or two it has become more difficult to focus and find the words I want. I am editing and rewriting more than I ever have in my life because I end up throwing out filler words to take the place of the ones  really want to use but can't find at the moment- and then, when I have a good day, I have to go and find those fillers and replace them with the better words I  couldn't remember.

I can't help wondering if this is what Azheimer's is like...you feel like you, but at the same time you know that this is far less you than you know yourself to be. I have to remind myself that Steven Hawkins did amazing things while locked up inside his body. I can build worlds and populate them and pull out story threads...I just can't go out and live my own life the way I want to and do all the things I want to do.

My most bitter regret is not going off and exploring more of the country while I was able to do it. Now, it seems impossible, overwhelming. I am a lively passenger trapped in a tortoise-paced vehicle.

Every day I have to cope and adjust to new limitations. There used to be remissions, but I haven't had one of those in a couple years...my life has been laced through with stress overload all that time, ad while the stress has abated somewhat, I just don't know if this run amok auto immune system will settle down and allow me a respite.

That is my frustration poured into a nutshell.

And now I'm going to go write because, even though I want to tell the continuation of Romney and Ivy's story, once again Garnet and Quella are pushing through and trying to tell their story again. We'll see where this version goes...