A Brief Interlude (#23)

Not really sure why I picked this one.
I don't have the urge to find a new image.

For the past eight days, I have been sick. A steady fever of a hundred degrees. Aches and chills across the first few days. Sore throat and coughing fits throughout the nights. Until last night, I barely totaled four hours of sleep in any of those previous ones. Tests on Friday morning cleared me of COVID, Strep, and the flu. So, the doctor sent me home with a powerful antibiotic (I am so looking forward to some of the possible side effects), an inhaler (my first time with one, and it seems to have helped a lot with the coughing), and a steroid (I am going to pass on that one and its side effects). And I can say honestly, forty-eight hours later, and a complete night of sleep, I feel a lot better.

So much so, I spent the second half of the day at my eldest daughter's last dance competition of the season. Of course, what has not improved was my hearing and speech. Like the plastic bench beneath my butt, I am sure both were hard and grating. However, I coughed perhaps once or twice, and that was from walking outside in the cold air. Did not blow my nose once. Finally, I left the event tired, not exhausted. 

There is still enough energy in me to write this post. What I lack is something worthwhile to talk about. Since I skipped last week's blogging, I decided to make an attempt. 

A few posts back, I discussed my obsession with documentaries. One about a woman and her family's life in an area near the Arctic Circle inspired a marathon of viewing. I ended up trudging through a World War I series, and blitzing through one about World War II. Somewhere in there was a trilogy about wildlife in Scandinavia's Arctic regions. And now I am hiking through a program that follows several groups of people living remotely near Alaska's Arctic Circle.

Something about those cold, wilderness regions and how people and animals survive it, along with stories of wholesale slaughter and destruction, that has me watching more tv in the past few weeks then I have probably all of last year.

Time watching televisions shows is time I could be spending on reading. Something I spent so little of while I was sick. Yes, I find it difficult to read while I am ill. But, in the past, my symptoms rarely lasted more than two days. Three at the most. This round was rough. However, I am happy to say, at one point, I cracked open I book, and found myself reading at least three or four chapters in a sitting. And it was a work of fiction. That was in the middle of last week, and I have not returned to it since.

Yet, now that I am feeling much better, I hope to revisit it as early as tomorrow. If I can get through it, I can move on to other titles. Maybe I will even write about it. But one step at a time.

Speaking of writing, I cannot recall the last time I journaled. Perhaps two weeks ago? That would make it my longest drought. Not blogging, I can excuse. Writing fiction has been an ongoing struggle. But journaling was always my anchor connecting me to that elusive habit. Or a fall back position whenever I advanced two far into no-man's land. A way to keep sane.

And I severed the rope, and I am adrift, or crawling from one bombed-out crater to another. 

[Okay, so I cannot decide on which metaphor to follow. The first ties back to the Alaskan videos, the second to those trench warfare films. I should choose clarity over cleverness.] 

Yet... yet... writing this post has me thinking. Okay, not always a good thing, especially when I overthink. But this time it may pay off. A week of illness followed by a day in which I endured a public event without suffering exhaustion (physical, emotional, etc.), and here I am typing away a post I had no intention of producing. That is something.

In addition, the beginning of March starts in the middle of this upcoming week. That means spring is around the corner. A whole months of planning and starting gardening projects. There is a metaphor somewhere in there. One I can apply to writing. 

Not sure what it is.

And this post is getting long. 

So, I am going to wrap it up.

My goal tomorrow morning, is journal. And maybe read a chapter.

I just have to do it before I start the laundry, clean the kitchen, go grocery shopping, bake some brownies...

[Shit, I forgot about the brownies!]