Flu is the new black

Is it just me or have you noticed that swine flu is the new go-to excuse for everything?

Can't come, don't want to, didn't finish on time, or forgot something for your kid's school? No worries! Just mention that you've been feeling under the weather and you are officially excused. With all of the paranoia about the H1N1, no one is taking any chances. And I'm hearing it everywhere.

It's official, flu is the new black.

Back in the water

Today Hubs is heading over to Tempe for an open water swim in the lake.

He had a pretty bad experience at his last triathlon. During the swim he got kicked in the face and his goggles flew back over his head. As he was pulling them on someone swam over the top of him and he went under and swallowed some water. He has five triathlon's under his belt, and tons of practice swimming, so it wasn't the first time he had been kicked or swam over, but something about this time felt much worse. Maybe the succession of one event right after the other in a short period of time or just the fact that he was in the middle of the lake at that point. He felt himself start to panic a little and it took a few laps to regain himself. At one point he considered quitting, something he has never done, but he was finally able to pull it together and continue. He was, after all, already out there and the effort to swim back would have probably been almost the same as just going through with it anyway. He told me the whole story and I was surprised to find out that the fear of the water can overtake you unexpectedly, even when you have had some pretty solid success with swimming in the past.

I can relate to that feeling just a little. Keeping my fingers crossed that he has a great swim.

Write Write Sleep Write

As I mentioned a few days back I am participating in National Novel Writing Month, and by the end of the day I will have 10000 words written towards a 50000 word novel. So far it has been going pretty well, but I can feel myself starting to tire out. They say week two is the hardest and I can see why. I did not take an organized approach, so I am more or less writing free form from an idea in my head. Next year, if I do this again, I plan to work from an outline. I did decide to chunk the writing up in such a way that I would have the option to easily break it up into several short stories if I am unable to tie the theme together towards the end.

I have been getting up extra early, and with my other writing (which includes the piece for my class, the real live actual paying assignment, the blog posts for the retail store, this blog, and the permission slips for the field trips that Girlie seems to be taking on a weekly basis at school) I have been going to bed a little later than usual too. So I am surviving on less than optimal sleep which seems to be a reoccurring theme for me.

Reoccurring enough that my story or novel, if I dare to call it that, is based on a series of people all suffering from insomnia. I figure the sleep deprivation will contribute some very authentic writing. Notice how I combine my research and writing into one task. Brilliant, no?

Anyway, the idea is to take these very different people with the same problem, tell their stories individually, and then weave it all together. Oh, and there is a conspiracy theory pandemic thing too because it turns out the government is actually causing the insomnia, but I am going to wait to write that later in the month when I am really good and exhausted, maybe even slightly delirious.

By my estimates, looks like I should hit that part of the story sometime around Thanksgiving week, when we'll be crammed into a hotel room in Georgia after a cross country flight with the kids. Paranoid dark conspiracy sleep deprivation novel? Yep, I think I'm going to nail it.

Not a snowball's chance in...

...well, you know.

So anyway, this is how we do a snowman in Phoenix.

Tired all week with an 80% chance of tired thru the weekend...

I came home feeling a little overwhelmed, so I wrote a new to-do list first thing. Hubs has a ton going on at work and is going to be gone pretty much the entire month, including a marathon week next week that doesn't end until Sunday. He leaves tomorrow and don't ask me where he'll be, because I will tell you not here, and not here means I have to squeeze in everything without a second pair of hands. He is back late enough on Friday for it not to count and then not here again first thing on Monday and that is pretty much how November is looking.

So I will be getting up extra early to get my Nanowrimo writing done and then I will knock out the list around the kids schedule. It seems like a pretty long list, including a real live actual paying writing assignment (woo hoo) and I am already pretty tired. I think I was up at what would be 2 AM Phoenix time to catch an early flight back from Georgia.

So, as I glance at my list, what alarms me is not really the length of it or the relevance of what I have listed, but the frequency with which I will have to refer to it, just to remember what I am doing.

That kind of tired.