It must be Tuesday...

So I've been to camp. And now I'm home. Three days early. Oh, my.

I shall tell this tale with headings that really encapsulate the microcosm that each day was. It all started Sunday... *insert flashback music/wavery image here*

HARD DAY'S NIGHT

We worked from noon to midnight setting up for camp. I unloaded ALL THE KAYAKS EVER from the trailers (since I am the kayaking instructor), and set up the lake. Granted, I took some liberties and went for a nice long paddle all alone on the quiet lake, but I swear, the rest of the day was basically an extended exercise in endurance labor. I built six wigwams from plumbing parts, helped set up the kitchen, helped check in all the staffers, and moved seven ancient (and heavy) camp bunk beds into a new cabin after the first one flooded in a huge rain storm, and built the camp store twice (it also blew over in the storm).  By the time I got to bed around 2 am, I was thoroughly pack-muled out.

It was hard work, but essentially uneventful (plus, remember the nice peaceful paddle).

This brings us to MONDAY. I DON'T HAVE ANY FUN-DAY.

Monday morning started out with a bang. One of the counselors woke up having been sick during the night, and didn't want to tell anyone. She kept it secret because the previous night at the counselor meeting, one of the directors announced not to eat too much candy, because candy makes you puke, and pukers get sent home. It's just her funny way of warning the kids off eating too much junk and making themselves sick. Well, this girl went to FUCKING GREAT LENGTHS to hide her illness, not realizing she'd basically contaminated the entire camp with GODFORSAKEN ROTAVIRUS. So we had Typhoid Mary walking around all day, leaving her germity germs of death EVERYWHERE. When we realized she was sick Monday afternoon and sent her home, we were worried, but not too worried. We should have been...

This brings us right up to today: TUESDAY, also known as IN MY TIME OF DYING, and I COMPLETELY OFFERED TO EXORCISE THE CAMP SUNDAY AFTER SOMEONE DIDN"T FEEL WELL, AND THEY BRUSHED IT OFF LIKE I WAS JOKING, AND THEY'RE SORRY ABOUT IT NOW.

The dominos began to fall. We had a few girls get sick by lunch time. Then a few more. By the time my kid succumbed at 7:30 this evening, there were 15 sick girls, and a few more who looked green around the gills. In the span of an hour, we went from a fully functional camp to a CDC quarantine zone. For crying out loud. So we had to shut down camp. I brought my little puker home, and I've been rewarded with not having thrown up, and by having access to the internet. At least until tomorrow night. If they decide to reopen for the final two days of camp, I'll go back, but I think the kid is done.

I taught exactly three kayaking classes. I was supposed to teach fifteen. Oh, well. Maybe next year.

So I'm home, and now I can get back to work, because editing is all but impossible at camp when you're surrounded by 75 girls who all need your attention RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Read a sentence, change some punctuation, THEN HERE'S ANOTHER EMERGENCY HANDLE IT NOW. It's not even worth turning on the computer. So I'm secretly thrilled that my kid's sick. How awful of a human being does that make me?

In fact, the poor thing's curled up on the bathroom floor with a pillow and her kindle. :(

So hopefully the rest of the week is an improvement. I'm done.

Report From The Blanket Fort

I just realized it's been more than a week since I posted anything. I'd feel worse about that if I didn't already feel so awful. I spent the last few days battling the plague, and today took the cake.

I had to go grocery shopping. When you're sick, feeling queasy, and just want to curl up into a ball and die, NOTHING is worse than being surrounded by food. Even the smell of fresh baked bread couldn't help me today. For better or worse, to fend off starvation, someone had to shop. Someone, at least in this household, means me.

I'm not sure I actually bought any nutritionally valid foods (not true, I bought fruits AND vegetables), but I know we won't run out of comfort foods for a good long time to come. Cupcakes, brownie mix, blueberry muffins, Pirate's Booty, pudding, chocolate, ice cream... need I go on? Because I could. I could go on and on.

So even though I felt DISGUSTING, and haven't had an appetite in DAYS, I knew I still had to provide food for my family. I'm sure they'll be able to cobble together a few days' worth of decent meals out of the bizarro conglomeration of food I brought home. At the very least, they won't starve to death before I get well enough to remember how the food pyramid works.

This is correct, right? Because I thought caffeine was one of the lower foundation blocks.

I feel the same way about my writing after the last few days. I had a headache so awful I couldn't even wear my glasses. It was pleasant to just let the world go fuzzy and out of focus. It actually hurt to see clearly. Not being able to wear my glasses meant not being able to read anything on the computer, unless I felt like sitting with my face six inches from the screen. I've been mostly off Twitter and the rest of the interwebs for several days now, and all I've been able to do is read on the kindle. I can easily hold that six inches away from my face for long periods of time. :D

I may have indulged in a reading binge, but I haven't been able to write. This saddens me to no end. I love the draft I'm working on, but the scene I'm at is one of those pivotal scenes where everything has to work out exactly right, not just for this novel, but for the other three I've already written in this series, and which take place AFTER this novel. This is the BIG EVENT that defines the rest of my MC's life, and I'd be turning to jelly inside writing it even if I wasn't already feeling quite gelatinous due to the plague.

For anyone who is at all familiar with Running Down the Dragon, I'm writing the events from Thalia's early life that basically define the next 2,000 years for her. So, no pressure there, right? :/

If only I wasn't so unbelievably miserable. I'm going to crawl back inside the Blanket Fort of Infinite Decrepitude, and I'll hopefully see y'all again soon, back in the world of the living. Keep everything cozy out there.

I need a nap, but I'm too guilty to sleep

Yes. I have done the unthinkable. I've sent my child to school sick. I wasn't feeling particularly well this morning, and I thought it was just pre-spring-break blahs on Lulu's part. Now that I'm on the verge of propping my eyelids open with toothpicks just to stay awake, I'm starting to believe I should have kept her home today. She still hasn't called home sick yet, so maybe she is feeling better? I'm certainly not.

I was thinking about lying down, but I feel so awful that Lulu can't that I'm compelled to sit in this chair and work. Ha! I can barely lift my head. I don't need to look at the computer to type, but I would to edit. Can't edit if you can't see the screen. (I apologize if this post is excessively error-riddled, since I'm barely glancing at it while I type.)

I managed about 25 pages of edits last night before I gave up, around midnight. I'm so close to done, I can smell the finish line. And then a quick read-through should finish that up. Then on to the next book. Aah. I have a feeling the main plot of that one is going to change a bit, though. That's the weird thing about setting aside a partial manuscript for a few weeks. I've been thinking about it, and thinking about my characters while editing them again in the previous two novels. I think there's some stuff I need to introduce earlier in the book, and I need to change some of the setup of the "crime" that drives the plot forward. Maybe I've had too long to stew over the details, but then again, stew always tastes better a day after you make it. Great. Now I want stew.

I've already decided to skip chorus tonight. I'm simply too sick to drive. I managed to get to the bank this morning, but I was veering on delirious, so I don't think I'll try that trick again today. Especially not a rush hour on the narrow streets of Downtown Frederick. In my ginormous truck. Parallel parking is beyond my current skill set until I feel better.

I'm off to pretend I'm well enough to be ambulatory, at least for another two hours until Lulu gets home. Maybe we can make stew and collapse on the couch together. At least I won't feel guilty about it anymore.

Better...and not so much

Better, in the sense that I'm making real progress on the revisions for Dragon Hunter. Not so much in the sense that I picked up germs from one (or more) of the snotty little rugrats at our Girl Scout event last night. Every time I'm exposed to strange unfamiliar little kids, I seem to get whatever's going around. So despite the event's extraordinary success, I'm paying the price for it today with fever, chills, aches, and other lovely flu-like symptoms.

Despite the sickitude, the event was a lot of fun. It was a Mardi Gras themed father-daughter dance. I have to say, it's adorable watching a bunch of little girls slow-dance with their daddies. All the standing on their dad's feet while they hobble around the room, so cute! The funniest thing was watching all the little girls teach their dads such things as the Cha Cha Slide and the Macarena, and dads finally getting into it only when YMCA came on.  All the kids seem to know the dance moves, but all the dads managed YMCA, at least. I think they were relieved to finally hear a song they already knew how to participate in correctly.

Another bit of amusement: after the dance, we were cleaning up the room, and couldn't figure out how to capture all the escaped balloons that clung to the ceiling in one corner of the room. The school's custodian had the solution. He had a huge long pole with a knife taped to one end of it. The poor balloons saw that pointy stick coming their way and cowered together above the stage. They found no safety in numbers. The balloon popping game was one of the most entertaining parts of the night.

You cannot escape my pointy stick, rogue balloon

It's amazing, because two weekends ago I camped with a kid who had a bad case of strep throat, and came home fine. Last weekend I spent hours at a cookie booth sale in the freezing cold damp wind with tons of strangers, and came home fine. I figured I was immune to the current round of raging infectious blergs, but I was clearly wrong.

I'm not feeling very well, so I went looking for a photo that would make me smile. How about a happy potato chip?

Because I needed cheering up today

So since I can't do anything else but sit here on my tuchus feeling icky, I've got no excuse for leaving my ms unrevised. And now I hope my head is clear enough to actually do the work. We'll see. It was clear enough to write this blog, so hopefully I'll manage the "real" writing just as well. Then again, I did include a picture of a smiling potato chip. WTF? We're getting to the part of the story where the agent had a lot more advice for me, so I hope I'm lucid enough to implement her suggestions in a coherent way. It remains to be seen.

As for everything else I'm supposed to be doing, it can all wait until I'm well enough to cross the room without stopping for a nap. As long as I'm sitting down, I think I can manage.

Let's test that theory. To the word mines!

The Icks

So I've spent the past day and a half with a case of the rampaging icks. Tim had it on Saturday, and passed it along to me so I wouldn't feel left out, I guess. I had the dizzies, I couldn't eat, and I could barely sit up. I squished down in the Comfy Chair and did my best to reread/edit, but I didn't get anywhere until about 9 pm last night. I finally started to feel better, but of course by then I had to get some sleep or I'd be sick again today. I finally packed it in around 10:45 and eventually did get some rest.

I spent a good portion of the day watching TV. I have no idea what I watched, other than the movie Local Hero, which was on yesterday morning. I have no idea what was on the rest of the day, since I could barely hold my head up to watch. But I do love Local Hero. If you like Scotland at all, it's a beautiful movie with a lot of oddball characters. And an injured rabbit, as well.

Tim made me tea, which at least gave me enough caffeine to focus on reading, but it didn't do much for my stomach. Hopefully today will be better. There's nothing on the TV right now, so at least I'm not distracted, other than by the Pretty Internets.

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to work. I've only got about 50 more pages to read today, and then format the book for the kindle so Tim can read it. Yay!

I'm kind of hoping to get a nap at some point today, but I doubt it'll happen. And we didn't deliver a single box of cookies all weekend, which means they're all still down in my office calling my name. SHUT UP YOU SUGARY DELIGHTS!!!

On another food note, the cat is still a pastrami addict. I actually ran over him this morning because I didn't realize he was wrapped around my ankles while I made Lulu's lunch. Poor thing. He's going to give himself a kitty coronary if he keeps eating like that. Not because he actually got any pastrami, but because I scared the crap out of him when I moved my feet, and he skittered and scampered out of the kitchen like he was on fire.

I've been trying to cobble together the synopsis on this read-through, taking notes as I go along. That's probably my LEAST favorite part of writing a novel. It reminds me of having to do book reports when I was in elementary school, only worse. At least a book report wanted you to leave the ending out, enticing the reader to read the book for himself. Not so in a synopsis. They also want all major plot twists and turns, and they want it in 2-5 pages (sometimes even less!). HEY! THAT'S WHY I WROTE A 300 PAGE BOOK!!! It took 300 pages to describe all those plot twists so they made sense, but a synopsis doesn't have to make sense, really. It just has to show the main characters going through the story.

You have to leave out minor characters, the HOW, and often the WHY. It makes for really crappy reading, but it serves its purpose: showing what happens throughout the book in just a few pages. You don't go into any kind of detail, but throw in just enough for the synopsis to sound like a coherent plot. IT IS HARD!

So there you go, my synopsis complaint. Anyone out there actually like to write synopses? I'd like to hear about it.

And that's all for today. Or at least for now.

Words: 98,294
Pages: 314
Edit Reread Page: 251