The story of today is as follows:

1. Woke at six.  Finished revising the C/T Void scene at the end of TSV.  Let it sit to gel with intent to post it to Fiction Press later in the day.
2. Got Anna to school, then stopped by hospital to enjoy complimentary employee & family breakfast.  Picked up change for garage sale at bank.  Home by 9.
3. Looked at scene again, decided still not ready.
4. Set up garage sale.  Worked carefully, saving hard lifting and awkward stuff for others as I've been having One Of My Spells the past few days, and my left hip and both legs are very, very angry.  
5. Said good-bye to Dan and finished setting up sale with his parents as he went to work.
6. Started sale one hour early.
7. Rain begins shortly fifteen minutes after official opening.
8. Devise tarp/plastic sheeting protective system for sale items, which works as the rain is just sprinkles.  The rain comes and goes for two hours, meaning that I am constantly lifting, moving shift, and rearranging stuff to get it under, then out of tarps.  Rearranging things, too, as more room is made by selling things. (yay)  Probably doing a bit too much lifting, but I do it anyway.
9. Send Tom (father-in-law) to pick up Anna and take her to horse lessons.
10. Fifteen minutes after Tom leaves (Nina and I are now alone), Dan calls and warns, "there's a shitload of rain coming your way."  By the time I hang up the phone, it's already begun.
11. Nina and I run like madwomen dumping clothes, shoes, toys, electronics--everything--into bins and hauling them onto the porch.  Rain is pouring down.  We have to take our glasses off because they're so useless.  Books.  Shoes.  Full, overfull bins.  
12. My hip begins to scream.  The rain keeps pouring, so I apologize to hip and then abuse the fuck out of it.
13. Finish rescuing sale.  Change clothes.  Sit and stare at wall.
14. Pass out on couch.
15. Go to dinner with Tom & Nina and Anna, which they pay for.  We thank them, hug them, and send them home.
16. Take hot, hot bath.  
17. Take many, many pills.  Use Biofreeze.  Heating pad.  Ice pack.  
18. Plead with various deities to OH MY FUCKING GOD MAKE THIS PAIN STOP PLEASE NOW OH GOD SHIT FUCK.
19. Pass out on couch, with The Scarlet Pimpernel on in the background.  Fire in fireplace.
20. Leg is throbbing, hip seems to be bearing knives.  Feet aren't so hot, either.
21. Dan gets home, and is very frustrated he wasn't able to be home to help.
22. Take even more pills, hoping they make me pass out or at least make me high, because tomorrow we get to set it up and do it again.  At seven AM.  And it's now a huge fucking mess from being put away, quite literally, wet.
23. Think, fleetingly of the scene, then give up all hope.  Sorry, Norway and Oz.  You can't get the end of Charles until tomorrow night at least.
24. Good night.

 Today is apparently unfocus day.  I can seem to commit to nothing and have been stopping and starting things left and right, and getting none of the things done that I feel intellectually I should be doing.

Part of this is a preoccupation with my health, specifically the status of my muscles.  I've felt discomfort in my shoulders for well over a month, and in the past few days this has spread to my legs, feet, and glutes.  My hands have added themselves to the mix today.  I'm perplexed over it because it's not an ache like flu, not strain, and not soreness; more than anything, it's a tightness, and in an interesting twist, it improves when I exercise or use a menthol-like cream/rub/patch--it doesn't go away long term, but while my blood is pumping through, it's good.  My feet especially are often very cold, and sometimes my legs tingle.  What it feels like to me is that I am not circulating properly.  I don't know how to verify that, however, and I don't know what to do about it.

I will, eventually, head to the doctor, but right now they'd just give me a muscle relaxant, and I don't want one.  I'm going first to a new massage therapist (new to me, not new in practice) who apparently combines my regular LMT's practice with my energy therapist's techniques with some magic tricks of her own; she also sounds fantastically educated, and I'm very excited.  I will head to the traditional doctors if this and some renewed exercise regimens don't resolve it, but we'll see.

I just wish I had an exercise bike.  I have a treadmill, but our basement is too short and the treadmill stinks.  Will have to save my pennies.  I swear that would help.  God, if Christmas hadn't killed our savings . . . .

Anyway.  That is me.  Not getting anything done and aching in strange ways.  And the story muses have been successful in their evil work, because now I am chasing them, not them chasing me, which I know is the way they like it.

I am making Christmas cookies this weekend COME HELL OR HIGH WATER.  I just want this made perfectly clear.  

 I just did another 30 minute session.  Another coming at 8.

It's like there's this great story there, and it's going to be amazing, later.  But right now it's like I'm writing it with pig shit on the side of a barn.  There isn't punctuation.  Sometimes I don't capitalize.  The writing SUCKS.  I mean, it is barely any of it salvageable.  Garbage end to end.  The content, when you can sort for it, is amazing.  It's still driving and doing what it wants.  But it's like I'm coming along drunk.  I feel like I've been stretched too far.  The story is fine.  But me, I suck.  I suck so, so bad.

But I want an end.  I mean, the rest of it is largely shit, too, so why should the end be better?  I can already see how in December January I can sort through the events and make it make more sense, get the whiteboard on and the postits and sort it out, and  . . . .

Or I could go drown myself because I'm SO DAMN TIRED.

I feel like I felt at the point where I was when I had to write everything to The Magnetic Fields during the last days of TWA draft one.  Except there I was mentally and emotionally spent, and now I'm just blitzed out.  I'm the puppet who just wants to nap.  There's this incredible stuff coming out, but I'm so, "whatever, give me a remote."  

I would resent this and say I'm going to stop and pick it up later, but I am LITERALLY less than six thousand words from the end.  Or so.  I mean, JESUS.  I wrote twice that for words on Saturday. Which is of course part of the reason I'm so tired.

Essential to this, I can tell, is going to be the music.  I have a series of plalylists I rotate through, but Ronan Hardiman is saving my soul. particularly his Anthem album.

I swear to God, when this is over, though, I am playing nothing but Kylie for a week.  Which will wake up Sam and his story.

*headdesk.*

Oh, god, in ten minutes I have to do it again.

 Brain.  Dead.

Book stalled, because I have fallen and cannot pick myself back up again.  

I'm so close to the end, right here at the dark moment, the big buildup to it--and I just. Can't.  Part of it is I am so cold I can't stand it.  House is at 67, but I have on a heavy wool sweater (not the grey, Caryle--HEAVIER), a blanket, two socks, and slippers AND a heater under the blanket, and I'm still feeling like my legs are cold.  I need a massage.  But I just can't bring myself to spend the $70 to get it.  I just can't.  I have too many Christmas presents I want to buy.  Ibuprofen is also not going to increase my circulation.  Gahr.

I just want to zone.  But as soon as I do, I'm antsy because I want to write.  Do not understand this threshhold here.  I don't think it's a matter of needing to rest; I've done that.  I just get more tired.  

There must be something here I don't want to see.  Which is scary, because I've already seen plenty.  

Oh, FUCK.  Just drew this three card spread.

Translation: I'm trying to keep myself distance and balanced, which has me blind and up on a parapet, disconnected.  I need to sally forth like a fool, unprepared and poorly protected, my heart on my sleeve.  What's waiting?  Well, check the shadow on the wall.  The 10 of Wands in that deck is nicknamed, "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

FANTASTIC.

Right.  So that's some biofreeze on my shoudlers, some IB just because, a second blanket on my legs, and a short of courage.  Literally: it's a flower essence.

 Anytime  you want to turn on now would be just fine.  

And as long as I'm speaking to parts of my body: legs?  Feet?  WTF is up with this being frozen business?  It is not that cold in the house!