is it wednesday

I'm going to make this post super-short, because I am exhausted and have nothing to report on my goals anyway.

Monday night, my mom was admitted to the hospital with atrial fib. She had a similar episode four years ago and after a night in the hospital on IV meds, her heart went back into a normal rhythm. The vast majority of patients with atrial fib are put on anti-coagulation drugs, but at Mom's age among other factors, she is not a candidate for those meds.

Well, this time around, her heart did not go back into a normal rhythm. Her doctor (who is the one I work for and I have total one thousand per cent faith in him) sent her home today, having increased one of her drugs, one that slows down her heart rate.

If you don't know about atrial fibrillation, you can look it up on-line. It is actually fairly common.

This is how I see a normal heart. Make a fist and clench and un-clench it. That's about the size of your heart and how it acts when it beats. My mom's heart on the other hand, because it has been beating for over 89 years and has had a bunch of surgeries on it, is more like a half-pound of raw hamburger. You can shape it all you want with your hands, but it just isn't going to do a lot on its own. Sometimes I think the heart meds that Mom is on are the only things prodding her heart along. That and the fact that she is a bull-headed German.

Anyway, some how this is no longer super short. So, between still working eight plus hours a day, I have run over to see Mom before, after and in between during the day. Good thing she was just down the hall from me. But this is why I don't know what day it is.

I was going to post a picture of the building I work in - the clinic and hospital building - but I found this picture first. It's the doc I've worked for the last 16 years with one of our medical students, from four years ago. Oh, and I had bought him that tie too, many years ago.

gravy

First of all, my poison ivy is pretty much cleared up. There is still on spot on my left elbow, which spontaneously starts to itch at random times. If I ignore it, the itch goes away. If I start to scratch it, I can’t hardly stop until I practically have it bleeding. This eruption of itching is getting less and less each day though.

Since it is the end of the month, and we are two-thirds of the way through with this Round, let me revisit my goals from the beginning of the Round. As usual, green highlights are accomplished, yellow highlights have been worked on and red type is a failure.

Writing –

1)  My novel

a. Do one more edit, typing up an outline for each chapter as I go. Spend one hour a day on it. Finished.

b. Spend three hours per week working on a pitch for publishers and agents. Have maybe averaged one hour a week for the last few weeks.

c. Decide on a title. These were the contenders, with the winner highlighted:

The Way Home

Finding the Way Home

Where the Sky Meets the Sand

When Family Happens

Returning Home

Family Matters Most

A Mother Like That

2)  Blog twice a week here. Have done that most weeks

3)  Blog three times a week on the Dino Chronicles. Almost every week.  

Reading –

1)  Finish reading three books - “Little Bee”, “More Than a Story” and “My Maassai Life”. Finished “Maasai Life”, but don’t even know where the other two books are. Oops. Right now I am reading “War Brides”, so need to finish that yet and one other book, currently undetermined.   

2)  Read three ROW blog posts twice a week. Usually.  

REACHING –

1)  Update my website once a month. This is a big NO..

2)  Submit three pieces. Ha! I can solidly announce that this goal is on-track. I submitted a piece on 8-11, which was already rejected. This week I submitted another piece and have already heard back from the publisher that they received it and it is in the running. So, one more piece in the month of September, and I am there. Now, just so something gets accepted.

3)  Once a week post something promoting my books or myself on each of my social media. Hmm? Really cannot count the piddling I have done on social media.

Personal –

1) Physical

a) Lose ten pounds. Have lost five, so not quite on track, but not a failure either.

b) Stop eating junk food and stop snacking between meals. Pretty tough to measure and that’s all I’m going to say.

                      c) Work out more faithfully

1- Exercise four mornings a week -  close

2- Lift weights and/or run four nights a week – not too close

2)  Spiritual

a)  Read my Bible every night – maybe an average of three times a week

b)  Read a devotion every day – probably averaging four times a week

NONPROFIT –

1)  Start planning our next trip. Yes, but my daughter has been working on this harder than I have. She has a meeting scheduled for next weekend and six or eight people she has met plan on coming to it to get more information.

2)  Sign up for the fall round of craft shows as fundraisers. This one is so close that I have to count it. The form is filled out; I just have to get it in the mail Monday morning.

So what have I got to do in the coming month? To make it short and sweet: 

1)      Finish the query/proposal for “Where the Sky Meets the Sand”.

2)      Choose a publisher for it (there are three in the running right now).

3)      Send out that query/proposal (some publishers want a query and some a proposal).

4)      In my spare time, start writing the next novel, working title “The Noviatate”.

5)      And the rest is gravy which will fill in the cracks of my days and nights. 

I didn't have any pictures of gravy, so supper cooking on the stove when we were camping earlier this month will have to do. 

what's leprosy look like anyway?

When I posted here on Wednesday, I was having even more problems than I wrote about. Somehow a week and a half ago, I was inflicted with a poison ivy outbreak. I say it that way because I know I have a patch of poison ivy in my woods and I traipse past it on a regular basis. Contrary to what most people believe, not everyone reacts to the poison ivy plant. I got the itchy painful miserable oozy rash only one other time and even though I eradicated that particle plant from the edge of my yard, I can’t kill every green three-leafed plant I run across. And it’s been more than ten years since that first exposure. Who knew I would still react. 

The spots on my leg and ankle weren’t bad and the one on my arm, if I didn’t touch it, was fine. But if I gave into the itch and just rubbed it for a second, I couldn’t stop myself. I could still deal with that, though, knowing it would clear up on its own.

And then a spot broke out on the bottom of my foot, between my toes. Are you kidding me? My doctor said he could call in some steroids for me, but because I am a stubborn kraut, I told him that I could still tough this out.

As I type this, it is true, I did tough it out and can say with complete confidence that I am on the mend. My toes look icky, but who sees them anyway? The blemish on my arm is still fairly unsightly, but I can ignore it and don’t really care if people who see it think I have leprosy.

Anyway, all of this means, that even though I could still type, with my foot in a bucket of hot water, coz that’s the only thing that made it feel better, I just didn’t accomplish much this week.

I do need to mention that all the other stress I’ve been putting myself under is what caused the snag in my immune system which allowed the invasion of the poison. When your immune system lets its guard down is when you become infected with various stuff like this.

So what did I do this week, besides whine?

Writing –

1) Novel – Where the Sky Meets the Sand

a. Finish this edit, typing up an outline for each chapter as I go.  DONE a few weeks ago, but I am leaving this here.

b. Spend three hours working on a pitch for the publisher I have in my sights. No.

2) Novel – The Novitiate (working title only)

a. Start it! It feels like I haven’t, but I did set up the template and copied and pasted into it an article which I need to totally revise as the opening scene. So, I guess I can go yellow.  

2) Blog twice a week here. Yes

3) Blog three times on the Dino Chronicles. Yes.

Reading –

      1)      “The Power of God’s Names”, the book we are reading in Tuesday morning bible study. Yes, I’ve worked on it, not quite finished with this chapter, but almost.

      2)      “War Brides” Read some every day. It’s a good story, but hard to follow, too many characters which for some reason I can’t keep straight. I think part of it is the POV. I never know whose head I’m in. This is educational though when dealing with my own novel, right?

      3)      Read three ROW blog posts twice a week. Done.

REACHING –

1) Update my website once a month. Haven’t done it yet.  
2) Submit one flash fiction piece.  YES! And as already reported, it has been rejected already.

3) Post something promoting my books or myself on each of my social media. No, not really.  

Personal –

1) Physical

a. Exercise four mornings a week. Only twice.  

b. Lift weights and/or run four nights a week. No, not at all on the running, as I should avoid further poison ivy exposure until I am healed, and only once lifting weights.   

2) Spiritual

a. Read my Bible every night. I read it about three times.  

b. Read a devotion every day.  I read one four nights, I think

NONPROFIT –

      1)      Work on scheduling our fall planning meeting. Is set for Sunday, September 4.

      2)      Contact people who have previously expressed interest in going to Kenya with us and see if they are ready to go on our next trip. Though I have sent information to one perspective candidate, my daughter has been all over this. She has three or four new people coming to the meeting.

      3)      Update the duties of our officers and chairmen. My daughter and I worked on this for about four hours Friday afternoon. We got a little punch-drunk by then, so I told her we needed to take a break.  

  

With my latest infliction, I am not beating myself up about my progress over the past week. I think I actually did okay. 

How about you? What has brought you to a stand-still this summer? Or have you powered through any maladies you have been struck with? 

falling off the track, or not

It is so amazing to me how easily one falls off the track.

After Sunday’s post I was feeling pretty pumped. I even had an okay day at work on Monday and nearly half of the day on Tuesday, until around 11:50 am. Multiple things went awry over the next couple hours and soured my mood. I dealt with things as best I could, sharing my feelings quietly with the co-workers involved. But I still came home bummed out.

Then I opened my email. That didn’t help at all! I already heard back from the market where I had submitted my piece of flash fiction and it was already rejected. It is always nice to hear back – the worst is submitting something and waiting months to hear anything on it. But, really? Five days?

I then went on the ROW80 website and read (for the first time) Eden’s post from Monday. Wow. I know why I didn’t read it the day before. I was meant to read it last night, when I once again, for the hundredth time, just wanted to throw in the towel.

Funny. At work yesterday afternoon, I don’t remember how we got talking about it, but I mentioned my other blog, the Dino Chronicles, and told my co-workers that my last post was written by my dog, Dino, and that I thought it was rather cute. Someone asked me, “so you like to write?” I answered that I loved to write and it is all I’ve ever wanted to do and that I wouldn’t be working at the clinic right now if I could make money writing.

Shoot me for not coming up with the proper transition, but I’m just going to say, I don’t think I really fell off the track after all.

Hope everyone is having a good week, or at least is able to mix the bad with the good and realize, hey, everything’s going to turn out the way it is supposed to. 

(The only picture of tracks that I took on our recent vacation.) 

happiness

Okay, let’s get right to it. What did I do last week?

(Accomplished goals are highlighted in green, worked on are in yellow and didn’t work on it at all are written in red.)

Writing –

1) My novel

a. Finish this edit, typing up an outline for each chapter as I go.  DONE! YEAH!

b. Spend three hours working on a pitch for the publisher I have in my sights. I didn’t technically work on this, but since I further researched some publishers, I’m going to count that.

2) Blog twice a week here. Yes

3) Blog three times on the Dino Chronicles. Yes. I finished reposting the blogs I wrote about my first trip to Kenya, so this week I will start sharing about my recent camping trip.   

Reading –

1) I started reading the book that my Tuesday morning Bible Study is studying. “The Power of God’s Names”. I didn’t know He had so many names. All these Hebrew words, or at least I imagine they are Hebrew, the author never actually says that. Things like Elohim and Adonai. I think this book is going to be a challenge to say the least. I’ve also been reading “War Brides” as my escape reading.    

2) Read three ROW blog posts twice a week. Done.

REACHING –

1) Update my website once a month. Haven’t done it yet.  
2) Submit one flash fiction piece.  YES! Another YEAH! I submitted my short story “The Beginning of October” to Online Flash Fiction.

3) Post something promoting my books or myself on each of my social media. No, not really.  

Personal –

1) Physical

a. Exercise four mornings a week. Yes, four times.

b. Lift weights and/or run four nights a week. No, only twice.

2) Spiritual

a. Read my Bible every night. I think I read it maybe three times.  

b. Read a devotion every day.  I think I read one four or five nights.

3) Camping trip

            a. Finish editing the some-300 pictures which I took. YES

            b. Finish journaling about the trip. YES

NONPROFIT –

      1)      Work on scheduling our fall planning meeting. We have a tentative date. Just wish people would get back to us. If a different date works better for everyone, we can reschedule. Instead people will be like, I was busy that day, but they don’t tell anybody until after the meeting. Duh. I know that is just their excuse for why they couldn’t make it, but why can’t people just be honest.

      2)      Contact people who have previously expressed interest in going to Kenya with us and see if they are ready to go on our next trip. I sent information to one person who said she would like to go, and my daughter has been in contact with a couple.  

Holy cow, Batman, that is an incredible amount of green! I’m as happy with this as Dino was when we went camping. 

What next? I think just keep working on this list, all except editing the novel. Of course, that means it may be time to start writing the next one, the one that has been in the back of my mind for 41 years! 

How about you? We are halfway through this Round. Are you halfway through your goals? 

another ramble and a fear

I will never understand how it is possible that Wednesday comes around this quickly. I seem to never be able to get anything done on Monday and Tuesday, and then – boom – I am supposed to post an update on my weekly progress. As you may have guessed from that opening, I haven’t gotten much done yet this week.

It doesn’t look like I have worked on my novel at all. I have blogged on schedule and done okay on my reading, am almost caught up on our Tuesday Bible Study book. Have also done okay on the exercise, though I’ve still been eating too much, thus, haven’t lost any weight.

I’m also going to go completely off subject here, as I have another issue that I need to come up with some answers to. I have some kind of arthritis. I know, I work in a medical clinic, so I should get this diagnosed and treated properly, except that I’ve never seen any of my patients get much relief from conventional treatment, no matter what kind of arthritis they have.

My hands and fingers ache so bad all the time that sometimes I can hardly do my job – pumping up the blood cuff or shooting off the cover of temperature probe. I keep switching my mouse from my right to my left hand so that neither one gets too tired. Typing doesn’t hurt yet, but I am afraid that day is coming as well. And I don’t know what to do about it.

Glucosamine Chondroitin and Fish Oil haven’t helped. I’ve tried different lotions and potions, but besides not working, I’ve got aches and pains all over my body and submerging myself in something doesn’t seem the answer. The orthopedic doctor I talked to a while back said I should take ibuprofen twice a day, every day, to help with the inflammation. Which does not seem like a long term solution, as eventually that is going to eat up my stomach.

I’ve looked up stuff on-line, but haven’t found anything promising. They mostly say this or that will offer relief from the pain, which would be great, but what is going to stop the progress of the disease?

What really causes me to panic is looking at my mom’s hands. She has got rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, gouty arthritis, and supposedly two other kinds of arthritis, which she has no names for. Her hands and fingers are gnarled messes. The end joints on most of her fingers are completely gone, so that the tips of her fingers just wobble. I know this because she can’t cut her own fingernails, so I have to do it and frankly it is disgusting.

I talked to our physical therapist today about my fears and he said, “yup, that’s what you have to look forward to.” No! Shoot me now!

I need to get past this, I realize. Anything could happen in the next 30 years before I am my mom’s age. And I’ve certainly rambled long enough.

I will get back on track tomorrow, and wrap up my week long goals by Sunday. I promise.    

My mom with my kids at Christmas 2014. That was 18 months ago and look at her hands then. They've only gotten worse. 

back from camping

Hubby, Dino and I returned from our camping trip early Friday afternoon. I spent the rest of the day Friday and all day yesterday unpacking, washing clothes, cleaning the camper, repacking, etc. It makes me wonder if the five days and four nights that we were actually camping was worth it. But it doesn’t take much for me to say, heck yes. I’m ready to go again. Hence, the repacking of the camper. Unfortunately, looking at the calendar and our schedules, I believe that Hubby is correct in wanting to lock the camper up for the year. I am going to hold out hope, however, that we can get just one more two day trip in. We’ll see.

All that being said, with all that relaxation all week, I didn’t quite finish my one and only writing goal for the week. I wanted to finish another edit of the last 14 chapters of my novel, “Where the Sky Meets the Sand”. I only got through nine and thought about powering through those last few chapters today before posting this update, but I didn’t want to rush it.

Which leaves me with a ridiculous amount of work to do this week. My big, secret goal (not such a secret once I post this though) by the end of August is to send my novel off to a publisher. The penalty for not achieving this goal is that I am going to get a part-time, second paying job.

Here’s what I will get done this week, because I have to:

Writing –

1) My novel

a. Finish this edit, typing up an outline for each chapter as I go.  

b. Spend three hours working on a pitch for the publisher I have in my sights.

2) Blog twice a week here.

3) Blog three times on the Dino Chronicles. This week I am still reposting the blogs I wrote about my first trip to Kenya. Not quite as much work as writing them from scratch, but still a commitment.  

Reading –

1) I finished reading “My Maasai Life”. Need to start reading the book that my Tuesday morning Bible Study started three weeks ago. Not behind on that at all, am I?  

2) Read three ROW blog posts twice a week.

REACHING –

1) Update my website once a month, but I don’t think this will be the week to do it.
2) Submit one flash fiction piece.  

3) Post something promoting my books or myself on each of my social media.

Personal –

1) Physical

a. Exercise four mornings a week.

b. Lift weights and/or run four nights a week.

2) Spiritual

a. Read my Bible every night, or at least read in the book that my Bible Study group is reading (I probably should at least find that book somewhere on my night stand and find out its title, huh?).

b. Read a devotion every day.  

3) Camping trip

            a. Finish editing the some-300 pictures which I took.

            b. Finish journaling about the trip

NONPROFIT –

      1)      Work on scheduling our fall planning meeting

      2)      Contact people who have previously expressed interest in going to Kenya with us and see if they are ready to go on our next trip.

Sounds good, right? I can do this!

How about you? We must be almost half-way through this Round already. Are you finding success, pushing yourself harder or ready to hang it up?