Getting Some Bounce Back

I finally got the pictures of me on my mini-tramp off the camera. Along with 200 some pics of our mobile home park and the surrounding area that were taken between late October and early December. The idea I had in early October when planning for NaNo was to get a bunch of pics of the park and surrounding area to put into a slide show which I could use as inspiration and aid in description for my NaNo novel, Mobile Hopes, which is set in a mobile home park.

As with so many of my great plans I'm getting it done late. It really might have helped NaNo go smoother if I'd gotten that slide show put together or at least gotten the pictures into a folder I could browse. Getting the pics off the camera today was one of the tasks counting towards my commitment to stay engaged with this year's NaNo novel.
These pictures were taken the afternoon of December 7th as Ed and I were leaving on another walk around the park for the purpose of getting more pictures. It was that evening I had the first hint of the sore throat that took all the bounce out of me for the next two weeks. I was blissfully unaware of it yet. I'm wearing the scarf that way to protect me from Ed's cigarette smoke. Well, and also because I hadn't put my public face on before leaving the house. It was already 4pm and we would have lost the light for picture taking if I'd taken the time for it.
The day Ed took these pictures I had just started daily work on the tramp again a few days before and was still feeling unsteady. Hence the need to keep reaching out to touch the handle of the BBQ. Ed bought me the tramp in mid October and I worked with it daily--often several times a day--for a full month before getting clobbered with that virus in mid November that also nearly clobbered my hopes of winning Nano.

The tramp can be credited with saving my NaNo win and possibly the novel itself. As I mentioned more than once in Friday Forays in Fiction posts and elsewhere, it was while working out on the tramp that I first clearly 'heard' the voice of one of my characters and in the process discovered the method of letting each character ramble which generated word count much faster than writing typical scenes.

So, I just started daily work on the tramp again yesterday. 'Work' on the tramp after being set back by a virus amounts to little more than standing on it without falling and some gentle swaying side to side with maybe a few experimental lifting of one foot at a time off the surface while keeping a hand near something to grab hold of just in case.

It is hard for me to believe and discouraging to remember that around November 10th I was lifting both knees to the level of my hips without hanging onto anything and keeping an aerobic pace for 30 straight minutes with five to ten minutes of warm up and cool down on either side.

Getting on the tramp again yesterday and today, getting those pics off the camera and then preparing these three for posting, starting a novel yesterday, going Christmas shopping yesterday, completing several small sorting and organizing chores left from last Wednesday's major room reorganizing--these among other accomplishments in the last 48 to 72 hours is a sign I'm getting my bounce back. Just in time for Christmas.