Hubby was oh so kind to make sure to share..... his cold.....
Friday, when I normally would have the house to myself, due to Hubby being out with his friends playing their weekly game, was a writing wash for me. None of them wanted to play the format of Magic that was being hosted at the local gaming store - as I mentioned last week - and so we all got together to watch a movie instead. It was a fun time, but an unproductive one.
And Friday was my last healthy day.
I woke up Saturday with a non-stop running nose and a wicked pressure headache. Popped some meds, which ended up doing nothing really, and headed in to work. Since my normal Sunday Solitude was also a wash due to being scheduled for the overnight, I was planning on spending the day writing, sleeping, and trying to kick this cold before it got as bad as Hubby's.
While I was mildly successful in preventing it from getting as bad as my husband's, this cold still majorly kicked my butt all week. I only survived work via travel packets of tissues, a near-endless supply of non-medicated throat drops, and my shifts only being 4hrs long. When I wasn't working I was huddled in bed; mostly sleeping.
Hubby stepped up and did the chores around the house, but he's still getting over the tail end of his cold, and so said chores were sort of a minimum: laundry, do the dishes needed for that meal, take out trash, etc.
The self-imposed bed rest did allow me to finish my second book of the year, but I only managed to get it done by the end of February by the grace of the Leap Day. I was about five chapters away on the 28th.
My brain hasn't really been functional enough to write anything creatively, though. I've tried. It's been keeping me about seven attempts and two days each to respond to anything in the X-Future game. This Sunday was supposed to be the first adventure of my first campaign DMing, and not only did I cancel due to exhaustion and illness, but throughout this week I've been trying to figure out a pre-written adventure that was part of the D&D Starter Kit I bought nearly a decade ago. My mind can't even unfog enough to think of a simple dungeon for the players to run through.
I skipped out on my bi-weekly local writing group meeting on Tuesday as well. I was still too sick to really leave the house unless I really needed to - e.g. work - I didn't want to infect any of those ladies, and I didn't have anything to share anyway.
The closest I got to working on my next chapter is a very vague outline. As I mentioned last week, I'm attempting to gather up a bunch of "too short to be a solo-chapter" roleplays to add to the chapter where Chayse is training Lia; to beef it up a bit. I have two others I can use. Neither are crucial for over-all plot, and I was originally going to breeze past them, but it does show that there's more characters at the institute than just Chayse, Nix, Lia, and Annika. Also, it adds some fun character development. Actually transferring this outline to narration? My brain fogs up again. Man, I need this cold to go away!
I have been trying to stay creative. I did mention that I've attempted to stay active on the forum. Just because I'm ill doesn't mean the new players should be deterred from playing due to my inability to interact with them. So, I attempt. It takes a while, and it's not the most exciting posts, but it gives them something to respond to at least.
I've also been grinding through getting this first adventure ready for Sunday. No clue if I'll follow through, though. Yet again I was scheduled to help with the overnight - something I'm NOT happy with, but think of the money.... - and one of the players may have already had something scheduled.
Right! I forgot to mention. One of Hubby's friends Goob watched the movie with us on Friday, and we were talking about the D&D stuff. He's mildly interested in playing, but - much like the rest of us - hasn't had a consistent-enough playgroup to really get into it. So, Saturday, when I should have been resting, writing, or at least planning the first dungeon, was instead spent helping him - and later Spink - build his character. Between the two of them, this was an all-day event. Spink didn't go home until close to midnight, and Hubby and I had work at 3am. Not much rest to nip my cold in the bud.
Anyway, Goob has a pseudo-prior commitment for this weekend that he's still not sure he's going to follow through on. If not, then we'll D&D if I'm not on death's door from working the overnight again. If he does to with the prior commitment, we may still play, but bring him in a little later. Only problem there is making up the experience gap from him missing the first game. Third option is to not actually start playing until Hubby and I come home from our PA trip mid-March. That gives me another two weeks plus change to figure out a dungeon. It might be best.
I have been trying to doctor the "boxed adventure" I got from the starter kit so that it's mildly original, and fit the party a bit better. Trying to come up with my own NPC dialogue and character motives for the quest-giver as well as the monsters the players will come across. Make the whole thing seem more organic than "you all randomly decided to join together to go into this dungeon and fetch this thing for the local baron." That counts as creative writing, right?
The true embarrassment is that Ali Luke draws at random among Writers’ Huddle members that check-in weekly during the challenges. Even if you didn't hit your goal, if you checked-in you were still eligible to win the weekly prize.
Guess who won last week?
I know, if I felt so bad about being rewarded for slacker behavior - as I teased Ali about - than maybe I should have purposely delayed my check-in until after she announced the winner. I was too sick-fog-induced to think of that at the time. I had hoped that maybe I could have used it as a motivator to kick some writing butt this week, but my illness has just held me back more than my chaotic schedule last week did.
Hubby's off at work. I'm home most of the day. I'm hoping that will result in SOMETHING productive. We'll see. At worst, I can try to use my bedridden-ness to get started on my March book: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish", the next book in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. This will probably be my "book I once abandoned" selection for the reading challenge. Once again, here's a reminder of the list for any who wish to participate:
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| Challenge presented by Modern Mrs. Darcy |
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