A Tiny Piece of Heaven... Wrapped in a Candy Shell

There has to be a place where you can escape all your problems and still be breathing and above ground. I mean, don't they say "if you can imagine it, you can do it"? So, I can imagine a place like that....

And there has to be enough money to not have to worry about bills or anything. And you're meals will be brought right to your chair on the lanai where you are intently studying the clouds' motions as they move with the sound of the surf. Right?

HEY! I'm a writer! I can make it up.

That's my point. If I can make that up, there has to be a place like that.

I'm depressed. I'm got this ringing in my ears and it is driving me mad, seriously. I'm so tired I could simply lie down right where I stand. Just give me a pillow and a blanket. I suspect they're connected. I don't want to know, so don't tell me. Even if they are there is nothing that can be done, just like everything else I have wrong with me.

I used to look up things to see if I could find out what was wrong and if there was something I could do. I stopped. Knowing became more frightening than not knowing. Now I just want to go away.

I don't know where that place is.  Instead, I'm sitting here eating Peanut M&M's.

That's as close as I can get to heaven right now.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho.... Ho Hum.........

I'm back at work today and just as I suspected, the work was lying exactly where I left it! However, I am not very motivated to deal with it. 

I do not feel .... I don't know what I feel. I'm tired and I want to go back to bed but I slept fine. I got up when the clock went of. I don't hurt especially bad anywhere, just the usual aches that virtually never stop. I'm just tired and that's probably a bad sign. If you get enough sleep you shouldn't be tired. Right?

For breakfast, I ate a bowl of grits. They were hot, soft, and buttery and a lot easier on my stomach than anything else I could think of to eat. Good grits are nearly the consistency mashed potatoes without lumps. Grits should never, ever have lumps, feel sandy, or be watery. They should not be the consistency of Play Doh^(c) either. I can't explain it. I just know how to make them.

For lunch, I'm thinking a salad. I don't know if that is what Carolyn wants but if not, I'll go alone. I am not very good company either anyway. 

Tonight I think Dave has Sarah for a while. Not sure. She's been doing really good with school again and she is in after school care for a couple of hours because her mother went to work.

I am going to try and work on the novel again. I've been working in fits and starts. Mostly arranging things to get a logical sequence of events. I kind of know what that is. I've had to stop reading the stuff too much and just write a synopsis onto the index cards on the cork board so I can sort it by summary.

Graphic Courtesy Google - I'll put one of mine up once I make it.

What I'm doing looks a bit like the graphic to the left. It is the cork board view. One problem I had was that I had not written synopsis notes on the cork board index cards for each scene. I had done it for some but not most.  Incidentally, you create the note cards in that yellow space on the top left of the graphic. It is called Synopsis. Duh. I discovered that not writing as synopsis is actually a handicap. You don't have to do it. It just makes things easier if you do.

How does it make it easier? Well, because my story is a jumbled mess of scenes it makes it hard to know what goes where. I can move sections around easily but I needed an overview. 

There is an outline feature but I was not getting anything helpful when I pulled it up and had no idea how to get it to work. The graphic below is what that looks like when it is created correctly. When I tried to view my outline of the novel to see the sequence of events, the center column, the synopsis section, of that colored area was fairly blank. 

I found that when I did a summary of each scene in the synopsis section, it showed up in two places: on the index card on the cork board AND this synopsis section filled in! This has helped enormously.

Once that is done, I hope I will be able to see where things don't fit and move them. Moving them is as easy as drag and drop. Then, I can rewrite things. 

Now, I've spent a lot of time on this and if you don't use Scrivener, none of that will make sense and today... I just don't have any interest in explaining it. Suffice it to say that the writing program I am using is awesome with lots of bells and whistles. 

Night, Night

I'm calling it a night. I've had soup and sat and watched a couple of Midsomer Murders episodes. Those things are an hour and a half long! That without commercials. Takes forever to get through one. But I do like them. I'm on season 10.

Anyway, I'm going to bed. Stomach is uncertain. Some symptoms have gone but I still don't feel very well. I am hoping that sleep will set everything right. I hope I can sleep. Last night wasn't so good. I rather wish I'd been able to take a nap today but I couldn't seem to get there. Just felt so rotten.

I'm also feeling rather depressed. I don't know why. Could be everything that is going on in my life. Uncertain job, some family issues, and not feeling well... all a recipe for depression. So, I'm off to bed and then work tomorrow. I'm now a day behind again and that's never good.

I was looking at my post count for this year. I have 25 post for 2013. Last year by this time I had about three times that. I always had a goal of one post a day. It has never seemed to work. Things just get in the way. Or I have nothing to say.

So, I'll say good night.

Icky Day, All Day

The weekend was wet and cold and Monday is more of the same. I am home sick today. I don't know what I have...  some sort of stomach virus. I seem to have all the usual ugly symptoms that accompany stomach upset except vomiting. God is good cause that particular symptom never ends well for me. I still feel rather icky. My stomach just doesn't feel very good.

Last night I worked on my WIP a bit. I did some moving of scenes and getting the structure more organized. I actually felt like I accomplished something at one point. It suddenly seemed as if some things were jelling. We'll see. The thing needs a huge rewrite and that terrifies me no end. I'm going to continue to get the random sections from NaNo 2011 woven into it and then see what's missing. I see more writing in my future. I just wish Simon would start his incessant chatter again. I write much better when he just dictates it to me.

I ate scrambled eggs at lunch and some bacon. Well, I was starving by then since I was too sick to eat breakfast. And I felt like my stomach had settled down. However, the eggs didn't set well and I felt worse afterward. In fact, well... never mind. Best not share that bit. Suffice it to say that I could have driven to Florida for free. Must go now. Stomach just doesn't fancy sitting up. I've been lying down most of the day, watching Midsomer Murders. Probably why my writing sounds suspiciously British today. LOL.

Anyway, I'm thinking soup for supper. We'll see. Hope your day has been better than mine.

A Small World

There is no guide on how long grief lasts. I've wondered for over four years now if there were markers, like mile posts along the highway, that would tell me when I was getting close to the point where I won't remember, relive, or feel the death of my husband. Unfortunately, no one appears to have erected such markers. The road is long and I've seen nary a one.

I missed Jerry today.  So, I stopped and bought flowers and took them to the cemetery. I've avoided it for months, felt guilty every time I pass the gates, which is fairly often since they are on a road I travel several times a week. No matter how many times I pass the sadness of it never fades. Oh, I don't fall apart as I once did but honestly, in some ways, this is much worse. I can't explain it. There is a sense of betrayal in it. Imagined, I'm sure, but nonetheless felt. 

As I put the flowers beside his tombstone, I couldn't breath and I couldn't look at the name graven in the white marble. I apologized for being so long in coming and tried to explain  but it is no use. While I know he'd understand, I feel no better. The bands around my chest only tighten and I have to go back to my car where I sit and sob and try to breath and explain why. 

When I see someone walking in my direction, I know it is time to go. No one wants to share this.

And I came home. I don't feel better. I do what I always do. I push it away and try to think about something else. It's a small world, grief. There is nothing else.