Hi. Did you miss me?
I've been.....No, I don't have writer's block. I wish. I'm still writing a lot but I'm trying to send my energy somewhere it doesn't want to go, editing. All the while I'm editing or procrastinating editing, ideas and lines crowd into my mind asking to be laid down on the page. So, I've been missing from here. It's nice here usually, but I've been gone. Sorry about that. I miss you, all fourteen of you.
Editing sucks. Did you know that? It's easy to start new stuff, hard to edit it to make it bind together into a family of words that feel like a book. I have nine books in progress. The truth is that I have nine books that are almost completely written but I need to finish cleaning them up. That's pathetic, isn't it?
I need a deadline, and I'm not talking about the day I realize I'm going to die and crap, my poor books are going to molder into dust and never find their way into the light of day. Not that kind of deadline.
Okay, I once promised I wouldn't spend much time writing about writing, but here I am, breaking that wall and dragging you into my boring office where I'm sure you don't want to stand around looking over my shoulder.
It's nicer in our story room where we are surrounded by books and stories, Tiffany lights, cozy arm chairs where no one asks you to sit up straight or keep your feet off. And there's a fireplace that never has to be stoked and never, not once, bothers anyone's asthma.
Nick is sick again and I've stopped burning my candle at my desk in fear of aggravating his breathing. He's usually low on the scale of asthma sufferers, but when he catches a virus like this one, it blows up into coughing fits, sore ribs, appointments with his specialists, excuses for school which are never thoroughly understood, and fearful nights watching my boy struggle to breathe all the while jittering uncontrollably because of the high doses of steroids the doctors have put him on to keep his airways open.
There's a balance between his heart rate standing at 125 for a few hours and constricted airways dropping his oxygen saturation to the lower 90% range that makes Mike and I feel like we're emergency room staff. Mike is the one who's good at it, thorough, even when he's sleep-deprived. I get exhausted in the night and fear I'll make a fatal mistake like giving Nick medicine too soon and loading his heart beyond its capacity. Before Mike goes to bed, I write down the time Nick can have the next dose of what and the things I need to check before I give it to him. Last night at 2:00am, Nick sat for another twenty minutes and breathed in the steroids though his nebulizer. He's also on prednisone, and inhaled long-acting steroids. Finally, at 2:45, his breathing eased and he fell into a fitful sleep.His snoring sounded like a bear growling.
He's breathing through so much gunk. I took a video of him last night and Mike thought it was funny, said he was snorkeling. But it's a very dark kind of humor, listening to your child literally drown in his own snot.
So, I'm letting myself take a break from editing for a few days because it's just not easy staying up all night and acting normal during the day. It's impossible to act normal most days anyway.
Thank you for listening, jb
I've been.....No, I don't have writer's block. I wish. I'm still writing a lot but I'm trying to send my energy somewhere it doesn't want to go, editing. All the while I'm editing or procrastinating editing, ideas and lines crowd into my mind asking to be laid down on the page. So, I've been missing from here. It's nice here usually, but I've been gone. Sorry about that. I miss you, all fourteen of you.
Editing sucks. Did you know that? It's easy to start new stuff, hard to edit it to make it bind together into a family of words that feel like a book. I have nine books in progress. The truth is that I have nine books that are almost completely written but I need to finish cleaning them up. That's pathetic, isn't it?
I need a deadline, and I'm not talking about the day I realize I'm going to die and crap, my poor books are going to molder into dust and never find their way into the light of day. Not that kind of deadline.
Okay, I once promised I wouldn't spend much time writing about writing, but here I am, breaking that wall and dragging you into my boring office where I'm sure you don't want to stand around looking over my shoulder.
It's nicer in our story room where we are surrounded by books and stories, Tiffany lights, cozy arm chairs where no one asks you to sit up straight or keep your feet off. And there's a fireplace that never has to be stoked and never, not once, bothers anyone's asthma.
Nick is sick again and I've stopped burning my candle at my desk in fear of aggravating his breathing. He's usually low on the scale of asthma sufferers, but when he catches a virus like this one, it blows up into coughing fits, sore ribs, appointments with his specialists, excuses for school which are never thoroughly understood, and fearful nights watching my boy struggle to breathe all the while jittering uncontrollably because of the high doses of steroids the doctors have put him on to keep his airways open.
There's a balance between his heart rate standing at 125 for a few hours and constricted airways dropping his oxygen saturation to the lower 90% range that makes Mike and I feel like we're emergency room staff. Mike is the one who's good at it, thorough, even when he's sleep-deprived. I get exhausted in the night and fear I'll make a fatal mistake like giving Nick medicine too soon and loading his heart beyond its capacity. Before Mike goes to bed, I write down the time Nick can have the next dose of what and the things I need to check before I give it to him. Last night at 2:00am, Nick sat for another twenty minutes and breathed in the steroids though his nebulizer. He's also on prednisone, and inhaled long-acting steroids. Finally, at 2:45, his breathing eased and he fell into a fitful sleep.His snoring sounded like a bear growling.
He's breathing through so much gunk. I took a video of him last night and Mike thought it was funny, said he was snorkeling. But it's a very dark kind of humor, listening to your child literally drown in his own snot.
So, I'm letting myself take a break from editing for a few days because it's just not easy staying up all night and acting normal during the day. It's impossible to act normal most days anyway.
Thank you for listening, jb
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