In Recovery

I'm still in recovery from last weekend's Read-a-thon. I slept from 11PM Sunday until noon Monday. Except for thirty minutes or so around 8:30 AM when I renewed library books online just before Ed left for work as he was running past the library first. I had thought I was up for the day but I felt cranky and said as much and that I didn't feel like being awake yet. "Then don't be." Ed said. After he left I tried to start a new novel. I read three pages before giving in to sleep. I woke at noon into the heat of an afternoon that was well on its way to the high nineties.

Added to the distress from the heat was that from the smoke from the California fires. The nearest one at a place called Happy Camp is over fifty miles south as the crow flies but the smoke lays like a blanket over our valley, smarting the eyes, tickling and stinging the throat, making breathing something you have to think about, Sinus headache and dizziness, pain behind the eyeballs, fatigue are all attributable to the effects of the smoke.

In spite of the smoke though, it was more comfortable sitting outdoors in the evening then inside what amounts to a tin box that has been sitting in the sun for twelve hours. So Ed and I sat with Merlin in the back yard until almost nine Monday evening. I would have stayed longer but Ed had to work today and I didn't want to stay out there by myself.

Once Ed was settled to sleep, I threw together a poem for Poetry Train that was very little more than a long whine about the smoke. I spent longer looking for a graphic to go with it than I did writing it. As soon as it was posted I lay down with a novel and tried to read. This time I managed about twenty pages I think. I turned out the light before 1AM. And slept until noon. Again waking into the heat and smoke and this time humidity was added to the mix. Several times today the sky teased us with sprinkles. So light and few you could count the drops that hit your bare skin.

Again this evening Ed and Merlin and I hung out in the yard and on the front porch. But since Ed doesn't work tomorrow, we didn't come in until 11PM. During the time I was outside, I managed to read over a 100 pages and after Ed went to bed, Merlin and I sat in front of the fans in the living room where I read another 100 pages in just over two hours. So in just under five hours, I read as many pages as I read in the entire 24 hours of the Read-a-thon! 230 odd. Of course the book was large print and the plot was less complex and the prose was less dense and less poetic. All of this matters when it comes to speed of turning pages. And that was why I had planned to dedicate the Read-a-thon to just such lighter and easier reading. But I chose not to set aside the novel I had started ten days previous and not advanced more than 136 pages in that time.

Besides sleep, I had a few other neglected things to attend to in the aftermath of the Read-a-thon. Email inboxes for one. I spent some time on that this afternoon. Also various tasks with various files including spell-checking and editing, organizing links, reviewing todos. Tomorrow I MUST do laundry and I have to get two loads out of the dryer by 1PM so Ed is going to be calling me before 9AM. So I better be getting some sleep.

I'm cheating a bit with this post. I opened the blogger platform shortly after 11PM Tuesday before I headed out to the living room to read. It is now almost 4AM. The heat coming off the keyboard is bearable now but still unpleasant. I was hoping to get this posted and then start putting together my TT for tomorrow. But I think I'm ready to lay down. I've promised Ed the use of the laptop for most of tomorrow from late morning through the dinner hour probably. So I'm thinking that it is time for another one of those silly book title/author combos for TT. I don't want to have to think or work too hard at it this week.