Do They Know It’s Christmas

I have to write today.

The temperature dropped overnight, and so it’s a bit on the chilly side this morning in the Lost Apartment; it felt rather muggy and humid last night when I retired to bed, so this morning I put on a T-shirt and am now realizing I should head back up and get a sweatshirt. Hang on, I’ll be right back.

Thanks for waiting–that’s much better. The sun in also shining, and I do think I am going to take the day off from the gym again. The shoulder is still sore, and I am worried that–even though it didn’t really bother me on any exercise other than the triceps pushdowns Thursday–doing anything weight-bearing could keep aggravating it, even if I don’t feel it while I am doing the actual exercise, so yeah, probably best to wait and let the strain or whatever the hell it is go away. I may go and do some step exercising–all cardio machines suck balls for me, and while using the step and doing my own little step aerobics routine probably isn’t good for my leg joints, it’s not hurting my shoulder and let’s face it…I need to do some cardio in addition to the weights if I ever want any of this extra weight to go away; lifting weights at this point is clearly not going to be enough to trim off the middle fat this time around…especially if I keep straining or injuring muscles.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But that’s part of getting older, isn’t it? I suppose I should consider myself lucky that my body has managed to hold it together for so long, that it took until I was fifty to injure myself enough to stay out of the gym for a long long time, and that it’s still capable of going to the gym at all. Better my shoulder than my back, after all, and it’s not structural at all; it’s muscle, not joint or cartilage or bone.

Yesterday was kind of a nice, if low energy, day. I finished watching Chapelwaite–more on that later–and did some cleaning around the Lost Apartment as well as did some deep thinking about the book; mindless chores like vacuuming and doing the dishes are really good for that sort of thing– so that was helpful; I know now what changes I need to make to this draft to make it better and I am going to spend today going through those first chapters, which should be enough of a trigger for me to get the next chapters done this week–and I am also going to spend some more time on the chores today as well. So, so close to having everything cleaned up and organized…and I want to finish rereading A Caribbean Mystery today, so I can move on to something else. I have so much to do, and the clock is ticking on the deadlines for so many things….AIEEEEE. But I slept very well last night, and I feel very well rested this morning, and so am hopeful that I will be motivated to get the things done that I need to get done.

And the first thing I need to do is look at the to-do list I made last week at the office and see if any of it got done (doubtful). But I did find some interesting research details yesterday (I looked up Valerie’s house and floor plans; I love that you can find all that stuff on-line; my copy of Lloyd Vogt’s New Orleans Houses is also an incredibly valuable resource), and that’s one of the reasons I want to reconstruct these first seven chapters; I also feel that the heart of the story isn’t well expressed there in my desperation to get as much done as I possibly could as quickly as I could, and the book never really flows–I always get stuck–when the opening isn’t as good as I think it should be. So, that’s my task for today, once I get through my coffee and finish some other chores around here.

The excitement truly never stops.

But there’s a load of laundry tumbling in the dryer; the living room is a disaster area; and of course, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded so I can empty the damned sink. There are piles of papers and folders everywhere here in the kitchen office, and trash everywhere. I hate how I let things slide this way, but yesterday, as I said, was an incredibly low energy day for me; it’s a wonder I got as much done as I did.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.