Writing Wednesday - Writing while sick?

I was going to write about something else for this week's Writing Wednesday, but after spending a day sick in bed I thought I'd write about writing while sick. Do you write while sick, or not? I tried to get up at 5AM and write, but felt so lousy that I was back in bed after only 500 words, and didn't get up again until after 10AM. Yeah, I felt really lousy. However, I was still able to pull my laptop in bed with me after I got up the second time and I did get some work done. It was mostly things like answering e-mail and writing blog posts, but not the heavy duty stuff like fiction writing.

I suppose I could have worked on a story. After all, I felt better after I'd had some sleep. But I also had other work that I knew wouldn't tax my brain quite as much, so I focussed on that instead.

I can write while sick, and will write while sick if I've got a deadline coming up. Among other things, I have a weekly deadline with the podcast, and I can't afford to miss that. Plus, while it may tax my brain to write, it doesn't tax my body that much. If I can sit upright with a laptop and not have to worry about heaving my lunch all over my keyboard, then I can certainly write. It's just a question of whether or not I want to.

Today (which is Tuesday for me, since I tend to write blog posts in advance), my weekly deadline wasn't so pressing, and I had other, lighter work I could do. So I gave myself an easy day, and why not? Most days I'm on the go from 5AM until 10PM. Some days I could use a day in bed.

What do you think? Do you write, create, or work, while you're sick? Or do you take a break?

Move It Mama Monday - I'm Sick!

I have been soooo sick the past week. The cold I picked up right before my trip to Vegas turned into a full-blown sinus infection. I oozed the most disgusting grey-green snot all last week. It was really strange too. I had one day, Wednesday, when I actually felt all right, and I tried to do my normal routine. Then Thursday morning came with a double whammy of leaky sinuses and massive headache and I could barely crawl out of bed. In fact, I believe I declared that day a Blow Off Day and celebrated it accordingly.

I am still not fully recovered - I sound a lot like Donald Duck, I'm so stuffed up - but I am feeling a bit better. But last week, I was led to question the idea of exercising while sick.

If you've never tried the Wii Fit before, it has this little motivational character that looks like the Wii Fit balance board on speed. This cheerful little anthropomorphized tyrant likes to prod users along, urging them to do the Body Test every day, even if you can't find time to exercise. We've had the Wii Fit a month now, and the only days I've missed doing that body test were the days I was in Vegas, and there was just no way possible I could zip across county to do the test (and I sure as hell wasn't carting that thing with me to Vegas!). But otherwise, even when sick and jetlagged, I hopped on the balance board to be weighed and have my balance checked. It was a little discouraging. Wii Fit doesn't care if you're sick and you've decided to starve a fever and stuff your face. However, I realized that if I hopped onto the Wii Fit to do the Body Test, chances where pretty good that I'd stay on at least 10 minutes longer to do the balance games or even a little light cardio (some of the step games are easy enough that even sick, I could do them without getting winded).

I also discovered that just by doing the balance games alone, I could still work up a bit of a sweat. Balancing takes a lot of muscles strength. So I didn't get the full blown workouts I had built myself up to over the last couple of weeks on the Wii Fit, but I did get some exercise in, and that was better than nothing.

Today, I went back to the usual routine - 4 minutes of hula hooping to warm up, 15 minutes of yoga, 20 minutes of cardio, 10 minutes of balance games. The only down side to being sick that I've noticed is that somehow I can no longer do the hula hooping games so well. I'll have to build back up to my original high scores. But I'll get there. And best yet?

I've lost 3 pounds in the last four weeks. Not a huge drop, but a steady one, and if I can keep it up, I'll eventually get back to my ideal weight.

Just in time to get pregnant again ;)

Blow Off Day Again!

I hereby officially declare today to be Blow Off Day. I've been struggling with jet lag, a sinus infection, and finances all week. I thought I had at least two of these things licked yesterday (not the finances, at least not yet), but then the Hubster pulled out a movie rental and said, "Hey, let's watch Iron Man!"

So we stayed up way too late to watch the first half of Iron Man and I have this to say about the movie. Iron Man is a very good movie, but not good enough for me to stay up late a second night in the row so I can feel wasted on Friday. Don't get me wrong. I really, really enjoyed the movie, but I really, really hate feeling like crap when I've got a mountain of work confronting me.

I tried getting up at 5AM this morning, like I'm supposed to, and I swear I felt body parts drop off of me as I shuffled zombie-like into the bathroom. So I gathered up everything that fell off and piled back into bed. Then I dragged myself out again at 7AM to get the Princess up and going. I managed to launch her out the door with the Hubster by 8AM, and then I went back to bed.

Pixie woke up some time between 8 and 9. I lay dying in my bed while she puttered around in her room. Then at some point I opened my eyes and found her staring at me over the edge of the bed. She cuddled with me for a while, got bored with her mother the corpse, and then ran into my closet, pulled out the clothes I'd left hanging on the door knob, and told me to "GET DRESSED!"

I did not get dressed, but I did get up. Pixie has been fed, and I comforted myself with a veggie eggroll and a hot cup of tea before collapsing back on the couch again. I'm slowly starting to come to life. I think I may have a hot bath, a spin on the Wii Fit to do the body test, and then... Well hell, I don't know. I need to keep going on my finances, getting bank statements entered and pulling together tax info. I need to write a short story. I need to get to work on a cartoon. I've got a to do list a mile long, but the couch is so comfy and I'm so tired. And did I mention I'm oozing green snot?

Yeah, it's Blow Off Day for sure.

Fried But Not Tasty

I'm going on five nights of insomnia now, and it's just about killing me. And I caught the creeping crud from Sam! How does that kid manage to get sick in the summer?!

I'm trying to function normally during the day, but it's damn hard. In addition to taking care of the kids and the house, I'm trying like crazy to get some promotional work done. It's not been easy. The 50th episode of my podcast, Heat Flash, goes up on Friday, and I have yet to toot my horn about that. Will start on that tomorrow, which is the last chance I have before I leave for a wedding in Pennsylvania. Very inconvenient time for someone to get married, right before my big podcasting milestone (grumble, bitch, moan).

Anyway, just letting folks know I'm not dead, just dead tired.

It's That Time Of The Month!

For those of you who have never experienced the joys of having a menstrual cycle (and you know who you are GUYS!), allow me to describe what it's like.

Imagine your uterus has decided to claw it's way out of your body, through your cervix, down your vagina and between your legs, turning you inside out in the process so it can drag your sorry butt down 75 miles of baaaaaaaad highway as it goes for a long, messy stroll.

No, wait. I forget. Those of you who have never experienced the joys of a menstrual cycle (MEN!) don't understand terms like 'uterus' or 'cervix' or 'vagina.' So let me rephrase that in terminology that you will understand...

Imagine that your testicles have decided to crawl up into your body and claw their way out through your urethra and out the tip of your penis, turning your sorry carcass inside out in the process and dragging you behind it down 75 miles of baaaaaaaad highway while your wife nags at you for forgetting to put out the garbage before you went out on this little stroll. That's kind of what it's like. Only it's actually worse. Much, much worse.

God I feel lousy.

Belated Happy Mother's Day

I spent most of the weekend working on this cartoon (hurray, just what I needed - another really fun, really addictive hobby that sucks up a lot of my time...). I had meant to put it up Sunday, but then I got caught up doing the interview for the Balticon Podcast, so I figured I'd post this first thing Monday morning, only then I woke up feeling sick, so...

Here's this past weekend's cartoon!



And yes, that is me, both my kids, and Michael in the picture in the background. Happy Belated Mother's Day.

Just When I Thought It Was Safe - Blergh!

After Sam and I had our bouts with the stomach flu, Michael came home early on Friday and announced he was setting up office in the bathroom. I thought he was just joking. I mean, I knew he meant **he** now had the stomach flu, and therefore would be spending a lot of time in the bathroom, but I didn't realize he was actually going to be **working** in there at the same time.

The man actually took a phone in there and his laptop, set them on the edge of the tub, and listened in on a teleconference while he puked his guts up in the toilet. Of course, he kept the phone on mute except for when he needed to answer a question, but my god. Working AND puking at the same time? I was so sick on Valentine's Day I couldn't roll over in bed without puking, so I put Sam (my work) in her crib for two hours just so she would stop climbing on me and I wouldn't end up puking on her. She cried the whole time, but hey, she didn't need **my** lunch all in **her** hair. And I didn't get out of bed until late the next morning. But Michael was actually doing this teleconference, answering questions and everything. That's commitment for you. Commitment to an asylum!

Cassie came down with the stomach flu the next day, just as Michael was recovering. Actually, she ran into our bedroom at 3AM saying, "Mommy, my tummy hurts! Blergh!" I got her to a bathroom just in time. She spent the rest of the night vomiting and tossing and turning. I had to put her in our room on an air mattress and keep a bucket on hand. Every fifteen minutes, I had to hold it for her so she could heave into it. She seemed much better later that day, and waaaaaaay better on Sunday (yesterday). So much better that Michael fed her a cheese sandwich and grapes and all sorts of goodies.

All of which she promptly projectile vomited across the dining room at dinner last night.

I swear, it looked like someone turned on a fire hose inside that kid. She covered the entire table. We had to take everything off and wash it. Michael made the mistake of thinking the silverware in the dishwasher was actually clean and put it back in the silverware drawer, only to find out that no, that was stuff I had just taken off the table and it had some puke on it. So we had to wash ALL the silverware. And we had to throw out everyone's dinner. Not that it was the greatest dinner I've ever made (new recipe didn't quite work out as I had hoped) but we've all been sick so we're all starving right now. Ah, throwing out the egg rolls was the worst part. I didn't even get to finish mine.

So now Cassie is in bed again today, on a very strict, very simple diet. Her 5th birthday is tomorrow, and I do not want her to get sick again. I've got party planning and shopping to do and Michael leaves town tomorrow, so her being sick another day would a) be a sucky way to celebrate her birthday, and b) really screw up the party preparation. Plus it would kill yet another work day for me, and I've lost a week already to this damned flu.

Here's hoping everyone keeps their dinner down tonight, because last night was the scariest vomit I've ever seen and I don't want to see it again anytime soon!

Blergh!

Yea Verily, I Have Been Puked Upon

Sam came down with the stomach flu on Tuesday. I had no idea she was sick until we pulled into the preschool parking lot to pick up Cassie. Before I could get her out of the car seat, Sam started vomiting. That kid ate a lot of grapes for lunch.

So Sam puked all over the car seat and herself. Took me fifteen minutes to clean her up enough to go into the preschool and get Cassie. Thankfully, I had a change of clothes and a lot of wipes in the diaper bag. When we got home, she puked again, right outside the front door. She got herself, the sidewalk, and me. I kept dancing around as she puked going, "Not on mommy's suede shoes, please!" After that, it was puke off and on all evening. I spent most of the evening on the couch wearing a bath towel so Sam could lean over and puke on me as needed. Once we got past the first three pukes, she quit bringing up sour milk and grapes and just brought up a lot of spit and bile. Poor kid.

Sam is mostly recovered today, except for the occasional messy diaper (yick!). But wouldn't you know it, I spent most of yesterday in bed with... you guessed it, the stomach flu. The first signs hit me around 5AM when I got up to do some work on the podcast. Then I had some more tummy rumblings around 8AM. Decided to forgo the exercise and went shopping instead for Valentine's Day gifts. By noon, I was home puking in the bucket. So much for Valentine's Day.

I swear that's like the fourth holiday in a row that I've spend sick in bed. I hope I don't come down with anything really nasty for my birthday next week.

Blergh!

So I Fell Off The Blogosphere...

I'm not even sure if I'll get this entry written and posted, but I've been gone for more than two months, and I thought I should explain.
Hell with that. Explaining takes too long. Let me sum up.
My folks visited for the week of Halloween. Cassie refused to wear the Hermione Granger costume Grandma bought. Sam refused to wear anything.

I've been working like crazy on my podcast, Heat Flash. Several of the stories have shown up on the ERWA's story galleries, so I know the writing is good. I wonder if the podcast is good too.
Sam, Cassie and I keep giving each other some sort of near-lethal upper-respiratory infection. I'm on antibiotics right now, and am so fed up with being sick I'm just blowing off the whole week. I'm doing the work I have to do, but have opted to skip going to karate and the gym and doing anything else. Did I mention that I have a pinched nerve in my neck as well?

I've decided getting up at 4AM in the morning is not feasible at this time. Yeah, I get a lot of work done, but it's almost like being in an entirely different time zone from the rest of the family. Nobody else wakes up that early, and nobody else goes to bed as early as I need to in order to get up the next morning. So I haven't been seeing Michael at all. Plus, with being sick so much, I've gotten out of the habit. I'm resetting my clock for a more reasonable time, still letting me get up early enough to work on the podcast before the kids wake up, but not so early that I might as well be in Englad, you know?

Michael cleaned the office over the garage, which means there's now room enough for both of us in there. It looks very nice, and I am actually considering moving back in. The biggest problem I have with it though is that my computer in there runs on Windows 2000, and some of my software doesn't work on an OS that old. So I need to update my OS. Plus, that computer doesn't have a DVD drive, which means it can't read any of the disks I've stored all my old files on. Michael is toying with the idea of building me a new computer. He bought a $100 case for $10 the other night. I only hope he doesn't junk up the office again in the process. That would kind of defeat the purpose, you see.

Sam is running, playing, laughing, giggling, and dancing all the time. She climbs on everything, including the coffee table, and gets into everything, like Michael's papers in the roll top desk. The roll top broke, with the top half disappearing into the back of the desk. We keep the bottom half down, but Sam has figured out how to pull out the chair, climb onto it, and reach over the remaining roll top to get Michael's papers. Not good. Kid's too damn clever for her own good.

Cassie is growing like a weed. In fact, I'd almost say she's freakishly tall. She's doing pretty good in preschool, and in karate class too. She keeps begging me to get her sparring gear so she can join the Power Kids class. So guess what she's getting for Christmas? Don't tell her though. I'm having a hard time imagining my freakishly tall four-year-old sparring with the older kids. My baby's growing up so fast!

John turned 40 the other day. Ha ha! You're older than dirt John! I just had to say that.

And I've got a ton of work to do. E-book covers, podcasting, stories to write, a book to outline, an image to finish up for a contest. Baby is screaming right now, so I'll wrap this up.

Hope I don't fall off the blogosphere again.

The Mad Month Of June In Review

Usually, when I don't post much, it means there's so much going on I don't have time to sit down and breathe, let alone blog. This past month has been just such a case. So to quote Innago Montoya, "Let me explain... No, no that would take too long. Let me sum up..."

2 June - Sam's first birthday.

9 June - Michael's birthday (all I gave him was a CD because...)

9 June - the same day as Michael's birthday is also the deadline for the Erotica Readers and Writers Association theme week this month. And the theme was speculative fiction erotica, and there's no way in hell I'm missing that particular theme (they liked my story, by the way, and will be publishing it on their website next month. More details later). Of course, the writing came in the midst of...

24 April to present - picked up some actual paying work that is eating up all my free time!

15 June - Cassie's first karate belt test. She was so cute! Hiya! Pictures later, I promise.

17 June - Father's day. Michael got a picnic, my Dad got nothing, nadda, zip (see note above about having paying work which eats up all my free time).

19 June - our 14th wedding anniversary. I spent the evening at home feeding dinner to the kids. Michael spent the evening at the dojo getting ready for...

21 June - our 2nd degree black belt test! Which left us so exhausted that we barely made it to...

23 June - our next door neighbor's wedding, which was followed by...

24 June - Sam and Cassie come down with a cold.

25 June - I come down with a cold. One of my cats is also very, very ill, so I take him to the vet. Now I have to keep him in the garage and feed him food with crushed up pills in it six times a day, which is a lot of work, but it beats cleaning up cat diarrhea six off the carpet six times a day.

27 June - my cold is now a sinus infection. I am so dead tired...

And that is a quick review of the month of June in the Madden household. Now you know everything, so go to bed!

Its Blow Off Day Again, I Think.

I can't quite decide if today is Blow Off Day or not. Both Sam and I have been sick for the past few days, nothing serious like the flu, but I’ve got this nagging cold with hideous sinus pressure that’s been beating away at my skull, and it just refuses to let up. It’s not a nasty beating some like having your butt kicked by Bruce Lee. It's more like having a three-year-old pound at your head with a whiffle bat for about five or six hours on end. It's annoying and it's frustrating and you really can't get it to stop no matter how many times you try to take away the bat. Plus I’ve got a back ache, sharp needle-like pain digging into my spine every time I bend over or straighten up, and sometimes they shoot all the way up into my neck. I know it's my lymph nodes all swollen from fighting this minor measly infection. It’s just enough to make me feel miserable and sap all my motivation to do anything. I haven’t sat at the computer the last two days because I just don't feel like it. I’ve been nursing Sam lying down in bed. If I'm lucky, she'll settle down, latch on and just suck the rest of my life out of me. If I'm not, she’ll curl up next to me, latch on and then beat me to death with her tiny little fists and feet, all while chewing on my nipple. Every now and then she'll break off and give me this big gummy grin as if to say, “Gee Mommy. Isn't this fun?” Of course she's got a trail of slime coming out of both nostrils. I’ve never seen anything look so disgusting and so cute at the same time. Maybe this is where the term disgustingly cute comes from.

It's Thursday, which means at 11:30 I should be heading out the door to karate class, but honestly, I really don't feel like it. I can't decide if this is because I feel bad or if it's because I just plain feel lazy. I felt that way when I woke up this morning I got up at 5:15. I woke up not to the sound of my alarm clock but by the sound of a cat taking a dump in my hallway. Fritti is still dying, four weeks after I predicted he would be gone. I swear I have never seen a cat take so long to kick the bucket. And if he passes away with in the next week, it may not be because of any illness, but because I finally got fed up with him taking a dump all over the house and I'd throttled his scrawny little neck. Don’t get me wrong. I love my cat. He's been my constant companion for 15 years and I used to refer to him as my boyfriend any time Michael was out of town. For a cat, he has that boyfriend kind of look - the orange tiger striped randy tom - but man is he killing me. So far today, I’ve cleaned up four piles of diarrhea, not poop but diarrhea, and it smells so bad you’d think the apocalypse is coming.

After thinking about all this suddenly I'm not surprised that I'm tired. So far this morning I’ve nursed Sam twice, gotten Cassie up and dressed, fed both children breakfast (which is a feat in and of itself), cleaned up after Fritti, made my bed, folded a load of laundry, started another load, and now I'm in my dining room with a bucket of water and wood soap getting ready to scrub down my dining room table, which has recently been painted in apples and blueberries thanks to Sam. She thinks it’s fun to smear her food all over herself and then leave her impression all over the dining room. I'm not kidding when I say I can see her lip prints on the finish. Again, disgustingly cute.

Sam's asleep right now. If she wakes up before 11:30, I guess I’ll throw on my gi and go to karate. If she doesn’t, I will take it as a sign that I was meant to stay home today. Honestly, the only reason I even care about getting the karate is because I know in about two months I’m going to have to test for second degree black belt. If it weren't for that, it would be Blow Off Day for sure. Anyway, I’ve got to clean apples and blueberries off my dining room table now. Have fun today. I know I won’t.

How I Spent Valentine’s Day

Yeah, I know I’m reporting on this a few days late, but Valentine’s Day was just so overwhelming this year.

For Valentine’s Day, I got: kisses from my kids; a flash memory card and chocolate from Michael; and the stomach flu from God only knows where. That last gift was something I just had to share, so I gave it to Michael. Cass had it the weekend before, and I think Sam has it now. Bleah.