I procrastinated for a couple days this week, not making my daily writing quota for the NaNoWriMo challenge yesterday and the day before. I spent this entire evening trying to make up for that naughtiness. It has absorbed enough of my focus that I felt like my multi-tasking abilities were deteriorating. I tried to catch up on a couple things from the DVR while I wrote, and I discovered that if I was writing, I was entirely unable to recall a single note sung by last night's Voice contestants. To be able to write from the perspective of a five year old girl who gets creeped out in a spooky old house, I've had to try very hard to put myself back inside my own head and see the world as I might have back then. They say write what you know, so I have spent a lot of time digging through all the hard wired memories of life in my grandmother's house, before school and life changed my perspective. The story isn't a memoir; it is fiction. But it has been a fun trip revisiting a very real past. I paid attention to the sounds of the house, like the creaking of the chains on the porch swing and the musical rattles of the back door. I'm so completely there right now, I can still smell the fibers of the sculptured carpeting (not in a dirty floor way, but in a child sitting on the floor playing way). I'm looking forward to opening up more of the memories, even the ones that scared me senseless as a little girl.
Today was my big evaluation at physical therapy. I've really struggled with getting help for this injury. It's in a spot where a lot of muscles attach, but almost no one ever seems to injure except me. It's nothing anyone else talks about. I didn't hurt my knee, I hurt something just below it. I stumped people I asked for advice. I started feeling defensive, like I had to prove I wasn't making it up. Thankfully the doc had a really good muscle book to refer to when I saw him, and he believed me. And even better he sent me to physical therapy rather than just throwing anti-inflammatory drugs at it. I need to rebuild it and make it stable again, not just take pills and sit on my ass. The PT doc gave me really good exercises and stretches to make it strong and flexible again.
I was standing in the front yard, talking to a friend, when a large flock of grackles flew from one tree to another, down my block. It was harder to get a good picture of them than I expected. I persevered.
No comments:
Post a Comment