I had a bit of a cough all last week but by Friday evening it was starting to be a bit more. By Saturday morning I was barking like a donkey. And by Sunday afternoon I thought my clacker was shredded. I wasn’t feeling great on Friday either, and I’d been aching the day before. But I carried on regardless and hoped it would go away.
By Monday morning it was starting to ease, but the poet was aching all over…Oh joy. I bet it was something I picked up at the hospital. Full of sick people, these hospitals.
Also, over the weekend a rash of appointments came in via text, taking me to the end of 10 weeks light therapy treatment. Some of the appointments are not at my preferred time, and for some of them I’ll be driving myself, which will mean going much earlier in case I can’t find a parking space very quickly. But we have them in now to the end of the 10 weeks.
We didn’t do a great deal at the weekend. It snowed in a lot of places Thursday night/Friday morning, but not where we are. We had a dusting, and that was it. On Saturday we did our shopping and we dropped in to see the mother-in-law on the way back. During the night it snowed again, but we still didn’t get a big dump of it.
On Sunday we were going to take the campervan for a run, but when the poet went to collect it, the battery was flat. So we went for a run in the car instead, and the poet cut the journey short as I was still barking my head off and he wanted to get me home.
I was dressed up nice and warm in a hand-knitted long-line roll-neck jumper and with my (faux-)fur-lined parka over the top. But the hand-knitted jumper reminded me that I can actually make things that look like they’re supposed to and they’re wearable too. And very nice. So when we got back, the poet went into the studio to record some tracks for the memorial/farewell gig they’re doing (so the others can rehearse, not to play at the gig), I got my knitting bag out and caught up with a bright red Aran jumper I’ve been knitting for years.
It took me a while to get my head back around the pattern. It’s a twisted rib cable that can be done on regular knitting needles, no cable needle required. But I had to remind myself of the stitch-count and how to do the 2 types of increasing and decreasing (the twisted part). It’s a single ribbed panel up the middle of the front, back and sleeves, but I think only the front panel is twisted. The sleeves may be too, but I only have the back done and about 4 inches of the front.
I persevered, and managed a whole 4 rows before putting it away again. Now that I’ve refreshed my memory, it’s something I want to pull out when we’re watching telly.
Over the weekend, out of the blue, an email came in from one of my first Upwork proofreading clients, asking if I’m still doing it and what are my current rates. We had a few exchanges, and it seems he has 3 children’t books ready for proofreading, and another 3 after that. I said I could fit them in between other work as they’re quite short and I did him a deal on the rates too.
Yesterday was apparently Blue Monday. I didn’t know. We didn’t know. But we weren’t blue anyway. Both our football (soccer) teams had won their weekend games in the FA cup and the temperature outside had warmed up considerably. All the bird baths and drinkers were completely thawed, and there was no sign of any snow. I was a bit disappointed about the lack of snow, but nothing to feel blue about here.
We had a good start to the day. The dogs didn’t get us up until 6:30am, but once they’d been out a couple of times and fed, we all slept in until 9am gone. We were up and out after our morning cuppa and at the hospital for my light therapy treatment, but the poet did have to drive around for 10 minutes before finding a parking space. He said that’s the longest it’s taken him, which bodes fairly well for the days when I have to take myself.
The UV nurse was late taking me in, but she did say there’s hardly anything left on my face now, so I’ll have to start wearing a full-face visor soon as I might burn otherwise. She also said everywhere else had ‘flattened out’ nicely, whatever that means. But I can tell the treatment is working, however it looks. The itching has almost stopped entirely and the skin on my face feels softer than it has done for a long time.
Who knew?
It’s an upright suntan thing, pretty much, but I think it’s a different UV light to the ones in the tanning parlours. They did start me off really low because of my tendency to burn. My first exposure was for 9 seconds. Yesterday’s exposure was 40 seconds. It’s all the other faffing around that takes the time.
I paid for the parking and we came home again, managing a couple of hours work before having to go out again for another appointment. I started today’s blog post, then I had to go back to my calendar and rejig all my carefully worked out schedule to fit the new and replacement hospital appointments.
I let the client edit author know I’d sent his book to be set. The client emailed me to acknowledge my invoice, which I thanked her for. And the Upwork client came back to me in agreement to my quote and with thanks. Once I’d done my diary for the week I replied to him.
Next up was revision for Week 3 of the first depth workshop I studied. This entire workshop goes live several times a year and I can join in if I want and send an assignment in for appraisal. The January one has already started, though, and I don’t really have any room in January to write assignments. I will do a live workshop, though. The assignments are great story starters.
I kept nipping back to update the blog post as I went, but after the workshop revision, it was back to paid Patreon work. I wanted to get that intro polished and scheduled for the writing prompts I’ll be sharing this year.
After a few hours of working on this, I realised I needed a bigger intro to the method than just a few lines. I’m actually putting the writing prompts all together into a pair of writers’ guides and then an omnibus. So it will be a bigger project than just a few writing prompts every month. But it needs a 6-part intro, I think, and I don’t think that will work one a week. In the end, I decided to release the 6 parts over the course of a week and then do the writing prompts for January followed by the Take One Idea for January.
If I start it today, the first Wednesday writing prompts should land on Wednesday 21 January. The Take One Idea for January can then come out on Wednesday 28 January. But I ran out of time yesterday so I’ll have to do it today.
At least I don’t have any appointments today…
This post also appears on Patreon.
