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I’ve been sick this week. A double infection; sinus and middle ear. I hadn’t had a middle ear infection for almost twenty years, but I remembered the feeling. It’s like having a storm tossed ship inside your own head. Your own little private motion sickness experience, like some kind of vomitous ride inside your head. God, it was awful. Antibiotics are a wonderful thing.
Yesterday was the first day back to work for me since doing twenty pages on Monday the ninth. Twenty pages, then next day so sick I couldn’t stand up without help. But yesterday, Friday, I went back to work in the afternoon. I still wasn’t a hundred percent so my concentration wasn’t up to snuff. Any noise seemed to interrupt me, so I went to my new office in the still unfinished addition. My office only needs lights, shutters for the skylights, and drapes for the windows. It was done enough for government work, as they say. Jon had set up a small desk in the office and worked on the script days ago. We’ve both discovered that some days we need more privacy to not be distracted. This need was one of the things that prompted the building of the new offices. When I asked, why he’d put the desk in my office, and not his own, his reply, “You have more windows.” No lights, windows are important if you want to see what you’re doing. But Friday, I used the desk. It is light weight and I was able with Jon’s help to move it so that an entire bank of windows was my view. It started to snow in the afternoon, and it seemed to energize me. I’d forgotten how much I like to work when it snows. That whole hibernating inside warm, while the world is cold, I think. Truthfully, I don’t know why, but something about that swirling snow just made me want to work. I didn’t argue, but I did find that I needed the extra quiet. So off to the new office, and God, it was quiet. That empty office building after hours quiet. It was great. The snow, the silence, and me rereading the first hundred or so pages of Merry 5. Truthfully, the twenty pages on Monday had been the new Anita book, not Merry, but it was Merry that I needed to reread. I’d tried to just take up where I left off, but it had been too long since I read it over. I read, edited, then was done for the day. Tired. But I made notes for, and outlined the next three hundred or so pages of the book. I had my map.
Today, my ex-husband called saying his new wife’s sister had called. They were coming to town, and bringing their little girls. He wanted to know if it would be possible for Trinity to join them on a trip to the Science Center to see the Titanic exhibit. I knew she wanted to see it, and that Jon and I weren’t going to be doing anything that fun today. I’m still not well, and Jon made a breakthrough yesterday on a scene in the script that he was finding it difficult to take from the book and convey in script format. Since we’d both made progress we wanted to do at least a little work today to keep the momentum going. (Jon taught me how to relax a little and play more. I’ve taught him how to work harder. Not sure it’s a fair trade, but there it is.) Jon actually suggested working before I did. But only after we’d gotten our girl off to her visit to the Science Center. I hear her now, so I’ve got to go. I got six pages new of Merry done today. I’m tired. I had ambitions about working on Anita after I’d done all I could on Merry, but I’m done for the day. Even if the kiddo hadn’t come home. So I made progress. I’ll find out if Jon did, and I’m going to take the dogs down and see how Trinity enjoyed the exhibit.