Thursday
I had a really bad start to the day on Thursday. A pain in my side woke me up at around 2:30am and it took some time to get comfortable and fall back to sleep. I didn’t disturb any of the dogs, although I did ask them very quietly if they wanted out. The poet carried on snoring the whole time, but he was tired after a long drive home earlier in the day.
At about 5:30am, the spaniel woke me up. But he wouldn’t go out. I don’t know why. It wasn’t raining or anything. But he just stood there on the step looking out at the night and then up at me as if to say: ‘What do you want me to do?’ We went back to bed and I quietly asked the puppy if he wanted out. He completely ignored me.
Ten minutes later, the puppy woke me up wanting to go out. Contrary little…At least he came back in quite quickly. At about 7am, he was up again. But he didn’t want out, he wanted his breakfast. It’s getting earlier and earlier. So I put my foot down and said no, and put him in the garden. Where he stayed and stayed and stayed. Sometimes just sitting on the grass looking at me, sometimes chewing on a stick.
I got him back to bed but within 30 minutes he was up again, and this time I refused to get up. Then the poet stirred and, on auto pilot, went to feed them both. They came back to bed again, but the puppy wouldn’t settle. He wanted to play or be a little shit or something. So the poet got up with him and left me and the spaniel grumbling in bed.
When I woke up again, I thought it was something like five-past-eleven. I could see the hands on the clock. But actually it wasn’t yet 9am. The spaniel was fast asleep at the end of the bed but there was no sign of the other two. I found them in the living room in front of a roaring fire and the puppy being a proper little annoying twat.
My eyes didn’t want to wake up, but I had to get dressed because the roofer was coming, although he at least had the decency to say he’d be here at 10am. By the time he got here, it was almost 11am, and the poet did the meet and greet. The poet did the general chit-chat with the guy for the rest of the day too, in between playing with the dogs and attending quite a few Teams meetings on his laptop.
First job of the day was Thursday’s blog post. Again, I already had it all written up I just had to choose a graphic and then share it everywhere, which I did.
The rest of the dates work from the previous day took the best part of the rest of the day. It really is a time-consuming job and not one that’s conducive to when you’re also already feeling very tired. But I did it, and I selected 40 throwaway writing ideas to write up as writing prompts for the two premium sites, Medium and Patreon. I chose the graphic, then submitted it to a publication on Medium and posted it to Patreon. Then I made the sharing graphics and shared the Patreon one at least everywhere, making sure to say it’s a premium paid-for article.
The article took an entire day to research, write, illustrate, format and post. I have no qualms whatsoever making it a premium article, but I did consider adding free ‘friend’ links to the introductory articles on Medium to encourage people to perhaps join. It was but a fleeting thought…
I did a quick proofread of the short story I revised the day before, but it was really late and very dark and I’d had enough by then. So everything else got left to be squeezed in where I could. I started today’s blog post and had a quick look at the Friday wrap-up post and called it a day.
Friday
We had a slow start on Friday. I thought my hospital appointment was at 11am, but it was at 12 noon, which gave us an extra hour of morning. No use really to me because, as most of you know, I don’t work well when the day is split anyway. In fact, it would have been better for me to have the 11am appointment so that my brain thought I had the entire afternoon to work. But it was a noon appointment, which meant I couldn’t settle to anything solid in the morning, and I didn’t pick the baton up very well for the afternoon either.
Before we went, the poet had 4 Teams calls to attend. It was 3, but they threw in an extra one as well. While he did that, I did things like feed the dogs, play with the dogs, clean up after the dogs (the spaniel is a machine!), clean the mud off the dogs before they came back in, feed the birds, empty the bins, empty the dishwasher, and make copious cups of tea (for me) and coffee (for him).
The nurse told me I could continue with the treatment after the initial 10 weeks if I thought it would be any use. I told her that the 3 mornings every week were starting to have a detrimental affect on my work, and she said we could go down to twice a week instead of thrice a week.
The hospital was very busy on Friday, with queues for everything, including trying to get out of the car park.
The only thing I managed on Friday afternoon was workshop work. I thought about submitting the story I’d been finalising for the 31 January deadline, but decided it could be so much better than what it was. Marcie Craig did hardly anything to solve the mystery and it felt a bit rushed at the end. I’d sooner put it to one side and spend some more time with it before sending it on its merry way.
And that was Friday. Weekend update to follow tomorrow.
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
