So, to follow up from last time…

Splinter is still in me, and I’ve only got enough antibiotics to get me through till morning.  Ok, fine…so what do I do?  Well, with no one else to go get me antibiotics, and 10 inches of snow on the ground by morning I had to call CVS.  They were open, thank God, but didn’t know how long that would last.  I told them I was on my way.  I got my walking stick and Day’s as well and took off with multiple layers my wallet and phone and a prayer. 

I only fell once, sliding off a curb I couldn’t see and into the street.  Other than that and crossing the streets, it wasn’t that bad.  (Except the pain in my leg…they hadn’t given me any painkillers for the morning, nice of them wasn’t it?)  Anyway, I get to CVS and discover I’ve lost my phone on the trek.  Great.  But at least now I’m not going to die from an infection.  I take one of the antibiotics right there in the store and one of the painkillers too!

I begin the adventure back to my home, and stop to see if I can find my phone in the snow.  BUT where I fell is turning out to be a very highly traveled area with very little by way of salt/sand and so cars are sliding around the curve like they are funny cars looking for drift!  So, I give up on the phone…and head home.

The weekend passes with me mostly babying the ouchie because I don’t wanna make it worse, then on Tuesday I get an appointment with a plastic surgeon.  I go in and he has to open me twice as wide as the guy in the emergency room…and spends at least 10 minutes looking for the damn thing.  He’s getting frustrated and I’m getting worried when he says, “2 more minutes of this and I’m going to send you to get an ultrasound to find this thing.”

Then he moves and I gasp, I feel something sticking me.  He makes some noises and then all the sudden proclaims, “THIS THING IS HUGE!”  He had pulled a splinter about 2 inches long out of my leg.

Yeah, 2 inches.

Anyway, he leaves the wound open so it will drain and tells me to stay home for the day.  So I do, and I’m glad I did…that injury was in such an odd place that sitting down was painful and I bled through the bandage once.  Then I saw him 2 days later and he told me that it looked great…but he wanted to see me after I got back from Missouri.  Ok, sure, fine…I’m just so happy to have the damn thing out of me that I would have kissed his feet.

I had a close call when I got trapped in Chicago.  I had left my bandages and antibiotic ointment at home, sitting on my couch (where I had put them so I wouldn’t forget them)…and then I actually irritated the wound banging into the arm of the plane seat…AND THEN I got trapped in Chicago for a day.  So now my wound is bleeding a little and sore, and I don’t have anything to put over it.  Great.

Well, the next day when I arrived at my sisters house I was able to clean it up…and she said it looked a little angry.  BUT with a few days of tender loving care it was back on track to healing again.  When I got back from MO, the doc took a look at me and proclaimed me mostly healed and told me he didn’t need to see me anymore.  Woot!

Moral of the story…not all splinters are created equal.  Some are stakes!!!!

I am determined to do this.
Determined.
Day related this story to me about a personal trainer…he said he could tell in the first meeting with “resolutioners” which ones were going to stick with it and which ones weren’t going to make it past March.
If meeting with him was the only exercise they did, AKA he was the one pushing them to get anything done…warning bell!
When he asked them to start keeping a food diary, and they “didn’t have time” or “didn’t want to” or “didn’t see the point” without giving it a chance…warning bell!
Basically, he is looking for people that are taking responsibility for this resolution, not just waiting for him to drag them thorugh it.

Well, it’s that time kids.
Time to take responsibility not just for our physical health, but our writing health as well.
Keep a writing diary…what did you do, how long you did it, anything to track what you are doing. Trust me, later it will pay off (just like the food diary).

And make a schedule for writing and stick to it.
I told you earlier I was going to do something with regards to writing every day. It’s a little ambitious, I know, but writing a blog post…reading about writing…editing…writing…plotting…outlining…drafting…etc. ALL count! This isn’t about doing 8 hours of writing a day. This is about trying to find a way to help me with rule number one.

WE ALL KNOW WHAT RULE #1 IS DON’T WE?

JUST WRITE!

Ok, so what are you doing this new year to boost your writing? To take responsibility for your success? Come on, I wanna know!!!

You can’t beat yourself up so badly you refuse to write…but you can’t let yourself slide so much you forget what you are aiming for.

My brother said it best (talking about our cousins): “Everyone doted on them, and expected them to be something great…but what are they now? Just working stiffs like you and me.”
I don’t want to be a working stiff.
I don’t want to go to conventions as a fan.
I don’t want to fade into the nothing that is the landscape for most of the population.

So this year, I am going to do something with regards to writing every day. Today, working on my blog is my writing. Tomorrow, who knows.

I don’t think I could make up the following story if I tried…seriously.

I was at dinner with some friends the night a record breaking snowstorm was supposed to hit. We had planned to head home an hour before it was supposed to hit. We thought, we’d have plenty of time and there would be no challenge to our getting snug in our little warm bungalow. That was BEFORE I stood up to go to the restroom.

It was at that time a 2 inch needle-like splinter from the table embedded itself into my thigh. After the trip to the bathroom to inspect the wound, I thought I might be able to get it free if I had tweezers. So I made my way home…no problem (‘cept for the panic). We get there, and I get in the bathroom with tweezers and realize, I can’t see it…I can’t feel it…and I have no business mucking around with it trying to get it out.

After some discussion, Day and I hop back in the car to head down to the ER. On our way down we end up on a road that is slick as snot. I run into the embankment on the side of the road (pretty hard) as my tail end swings out toward oncoming traffic. Thankfully I stopped before I hit anyone, and the car behind me got stopped. BUT the car coming up the other side of the road got stuck and began spinning its wheels and the idiot behind him came right up on his tailpipe…I was watching this in my mirrors getting more and more scared at the situation by the minute. I told Day to hang on, and I forced my little car up onto the dirt embankment and straightened myself out. From there I just bumped down the hill till I got to the bottom…but that was just the beginning of our trip. I got to watch a man bury the nose of his car in a fence, I got to spin my way up a hill, I got to watch as a man spun out, and generally I felt like my heart was going to pound out of my chest.

We finally got to the entrance of the hospital, and that’s when I realized the entrance to the ER was 3/4th of the way down a hill…and we had to turn right to get into the drive. I got almost to the entrance and slammed into the curb. I was able to straighten out again though…but there was no making that turn. I slid into the drive and into the far side of the entrance. I kept going though, I had an ambulance behind me and I was almost there. I got up the hill and slid into a space.

Then comes the ER. We get in, and they send me up to Express Care where the person on duty numbs me up and cuts me open but can’t find the splinter. ARGH! He pokes and prods for a while…he asks me if I can find it, and while I can FEEL it under my skin I can’t feel it sticking out. Ok, so he cleans it out, gives me a tetanus shot, 2 antibiotics (enough to see me through till morning), 3 prescriptions to fill (but nowhere to fill them at this time of night), and a referral to a plastic surgeon on Monday or Tuesday.

At 12:45 or 1am (not sure exactly when it was but it was before 2) Day and I walk out of the ER…now this whole time I’m worried about getting home, because of all the trouble we had getting TO the ER. We get in the parking lot and there is about an inch of fine powder on the ground. I tell Day that I think we can make it, so we get in the car.

I CREEP up to Georgia Ave and take it as far as I can, it’s not great…I can’t see the lanes anymore and I don’t want to drive too fast. I’ve got my flashers on and I’m keeping distance between me and the guy in front of me. That does not mean I’m not terrified…I AM. Still, we were able to get home safely and into the house. BUT I’ve still got this THING stuck in me.

TO BE CONTINUED…

So I’ve been thinking about reading lately.

Thinking about how little of it I have done this year.

Around 30 books and the year is almost done, last year I did 50 easily and wrote a novel as well.

So what happened?

I’m not sure. I do know this was an especially hard year for me and mine, with a lot of losses and fears and sadness. But I don’t think I can blame it all on that. It has been exceptionally busy this year too, with projects and new jobs and such. But nope, not that either.

I think I just fell out of love with reading for a while. I think for once, instead of reading on my own I wanted to be read to, entertained, amused. I wanted something that was going to be bright and flashy and brainless and feed me my entertainment one lovin’ spoonful at a time. I think I just wanted to turn off for a while, probably because of the craptastic year (and because that is what I do when stress hits, I put my head in the sand).

Not gonna pass a judgement, not gonna say it was bad or good. Just noting it for future reference.

Interesting thing though, was what got me thinking about this in the first place.

I read a book. After a long time gone, I read a book…I read it in a little over 24 hours. Granted it was short, but not THAT short. More so, it was painful. It was the kind of story that makes you bleed for the pleasure of reading it. The book was Push by Sapphire.

It is about a young abused girl taking the reins of her life in her own hands, or at least beginning to. The glimmer of hope it ends on is tremulous at best. If you look too hard at it the light might just fade away but it is there, and I love this book for that. For not taking the Cinderella ending, for not tying up all the loose ends, for leaving us…not wanting more…but uncertain, unsettled, but with hope. Yeah, with hope.

Anyway, this is a little shout out to books that break the funk, that pull you back in, that make you gulp them down in one sitting. Push is one of mine. What is one of yours?