Drugged

After three days surviving on Nyquil and naps, I begin to get a feeling about what it would be life to live in a nursing home.  I wouldn't like it.

It isn't the drugged state I mind, it is the inability to do anything with my brain.  I am stuck on all writing projects.  Today I meant to work on mty 2013 taxes.  Since I didn't do anything that would require me to wait for W-2 forms this year, yet I know I can expect a sizable refund.  If I get it done early in January, I'll have that refund to take with me when I go to Hawaii.

I know that come spring all of this will be gone.  All that is required is sunshine and enough of a higher temperature to go out on walks.  Meanwhile, I live on Nyquil and stay home.  Our January trip to Illinois has been canceled. Will I have recovered enough for jury duty on the 13th?

So I hang on.  Only 74 more days until the equinox.  Until then, it's California Dreamin' by the Mamas and the Papas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk

Surely 2014 has to improve

Winter Gardening

It's a brutal winter here in Wisconsin with extreme cold.  Add to that a terrible strain of flu.  I am better and I did manage to get out briefly today, but spring is so far away.

To make Wisconsin winters bearable, I garden in the warmth of Mathom House.

I started forcing bulbs on New Year's Day.  I have pots of tulips and daffodils that should show sprouts by mid-February and bloom at the end of that month.

Gary bought a hibiscus shrub in September.  I have it in a big pot and am babying it along until spring when we'll plant it in the front yard.

The Christmas cactus is still blooming and probably will for a month or two yet.  The ckalanchoes plant Gary gave me a couple of years ago is blooming.  I've started two more plants from the original and they've all taken off.

So  I tend my garden and wait for the real spring, only 75 days away.

My readers are joining in the countdown by suggesting summer songs.  Today Gary asked for one of his favorites, "Summer Wine" by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQiDs9tKZv4


Spend part of this winter evening reading Wade Peterson's lastest short story "Secret Identity". at Black Coffee Fiction.  http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com/2014/01/secret-identity.html  This story took me back to my college days.  I had a little dress I wore to various receptions around the campus.  Free food!

So we survive somehow or another.  I am still not well and from time to time, my posts here and in other places come out garbled.  Gary thinks I am trying to write Elvish.

Stick with me.  Sooner or later, I'll recover.

Influenza update

Another day and I am feeling much better.  Overnight, whenever I was awake, I thought about what I needed to do.

Yes, I needed rest and the story of the past three days has been napping.

I also thought that during the holiday season, I had not been eating properly.  I usually keep close watch on my food intake, making sure I am getting proper nutrients.  I was eating cookies, candy and fattening main courses. That had to change.  Today, I had my homemade vegetable soup for lunch. It has a tomato base, which is Vitamin C.  There are carrots (beta carotene) broccoli (a cruciform for Vitamin B6) beans and peas (more Vitamin B).  Tonight, I decided I needed more protein and had a pork sandwich.  

I decided min-afternoon that I needed a lot more Vitamin C so I made a big orange/banana smoothie.

It all must be working because tonight I am fine save for a dull headache, a big improvement over yesterday when I thought bombs were exploding in my brain.

Now I wait to see if Gary gets through without the same flu.  If he does come down with it, I owe him all the tender care I can manage.

Inluenza 2

The last time i was this sick was in th mid-960's when the Hong Kong flue came racing through the Midwest. I found myself crawling on the floor because I was too dizzy to stand up. No internet or cell phones back then so I resorted to a land phone to call one of my boyfriends to come over and help. He never arrived, nor did any of my other friends.

This current flu is much the same but this time I have Gary who made soup, lots of ice water and warm pads for my aching body.  Times certainly have changed though the flu is much the same. 

All I can think of is warm ummer days resting in the sun.  Only 77 days until spring.  Only 43 days until I get on a plane for Hawaii.  I hope the flu is gone by then.

Influenza

I almost never get sick, but I've had the flu enough in my long life to recognize it when it hits.

I woke up this morning at 4:00 knowing I had to scurry down the stairs to reach the bathroom and the toilet. From that point on I was dizzy and oh, so tired.

I didn't really mind getting sick.  It was a perfect excuse to put my feet up and ignore a frigid late December day. We don't go out on New Year's Eve anyhow so we didn't miss anything.  I never saw the point in waking up to a new year with a hangover so I spent my sick day putting the last photos in the scrapbook and setting up the 2014 budget.  We're looking good financially.

My day was spent napping, reading mysteries and watching re-runs on television.  My sweet Gary waited on me, making Jello for my upset stomach, bringing me ice water, cleaning the house and keeping quiet while I slept.  My ensemble for the day was the bathrobe he bought me for Christmas.

When I was awake, I sat in my comfortable lounge chair with sunlight streaming through the window.  Sunshine is the best healer of all. I feel much better now.  Surely I will start 2014 feeling much better.

It is 78 days until spring. Today's summer song is really Jimmy Buffet's birthday song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaKqwvGa6Bw  Because all that New Year's Day marks is "another trip around the sun."

Goals and Lists

I'm a compulsive list maker as anyone who reads this blog knows.  Part of it is, I suppose, an obsessive compulsive disorder, though if something works, is it a disorder?  I want to see how things fit together and make them fit, if I can.

With so many interests (storytelling, writing, traveling, camping, music, family, politics,cooking, and Gary), the only way I can fit the continuing jigsaw puzzle together is through lists.

The ending of one year and the beginning of another is the time I get everything in sync.

I started this morning with an updated five year plan. It is not exactly the five year plan the Soviet communists proposed from WWII through much of the rest of the 20th Century.  Gary often points out that the Soviet five year plans didn't work but I wonder about that.  Certainly some parts must have been productive.  I don't expect everything in mine to work out but enough does to make it worth doing.

This is where I want to be by 2018:
....Fifteen more books written.  Since I managed four this year, I think three a year for five years is close to realistic.
... Trips to Hawaii and three other states, finishing out my travels to all 50 states.
... Trips to Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Costa Rico, Kenya and South Africa.
... Learning something news is always important. I plan on taking Spanish and poetry classes.
... Moving from Seymour to Ashland and starting a new life there.
... Finishing my imaginary walk around the world.  Surely 4,000 miles in five years is possible. I am currently approaching Paris

And those are my broad plans. The next thing is to cut them down to workable chunks.

I made out a list of 2014 goals.
Five books.   I will finish Going Down From Gairloch.  It is almost done with the exception of two or three troublesome chapters.  I will re-edit my mystery and write a sequel during NaNoWriMo in November. Wade, Betty and I continue our daily short stories at Black Coffee Fiction.
http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  It is still popular, as a matter of fact today we received our 20,000th "hit".  We expect to have our third collection in print by October.  Wade and I now have enough stories for a separate collection of Christmas stories.  Finally, I want to finish a rough draft of my non-fiction book Jake Dog and the Four Cats. 

But that is still too big a chunk, so I now break 2014 into months.
My January 2014 goals are to re-do the Glen Valley mystery e-book, correcting some errors and to work on two of the four remaining Gairloch chapters.  I must also write two short stories.  I will also set up some venues for the summer reading program.  That is plenty because in January I may be serving on a jury.  Gary and I also must spend a week in Illinois working on the farm house.

Finally, there are daily goals. Each morning I have a list of things to do.  Some will be easy, like making out a grocery list, and some more difficult like writing out this post.  Tomorrow are more end of the year tasks: finishing the 2014 scrapbook, clearing off the bulletin board, setting up a tax file, working out the 2014 budgets (both mine and Gary's), emptying filing cabinets of excess paper, organizing the top of my desk, making a pot of split pea soup, and putting out the garbage.

Good thing the days are getting longer.  It is now 79 days to the spring equinox.  

And It's Over ....

Today we hosted Gary's family for a late Christmas party.  Food was good, conversation was good, and they reminisced along with slides his family had taken over the years.  Gary has translated them to CDs now, and we could see people now passed into dust.

Gary did the narration, but somewhere, they will have to figure a way to title those photos because after Gary, who will know?

So we wind up Christmas the way we've lived through it, remembering, remembering, remembering.

Now we turn from the past to the future as we make our 2014 plans.  Over the next three days I will be getting dates on the calendar, organizing tours, planning new writing projects, getting tickets for Hawaii in February, working out budgets, setting up my taxes for my accountant, clearing my desk, and setting out my goals.

Much of this will work its way into this blog through January 1.

Christmas memories are set aside for another years.

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And only 80 days until spring.  Hurry, hurry! Summer is coming.  The Drifters describe it so well in "Under the Boardwalk."  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyzCccndc2w

Readers are starting to give me their own favorites now.

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And only three days to get 25 more "hits" at our short story blog:  Black Coffee Fiction. Take a look.
http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Wade, Betty and I work hard to bring you these stories.  Let us know what you think of them.