November 14, 2022

Daily Diary, Day 804: This weekend and today played themselves out pretty much as I predicted. Very little writing time. I did work on a scene, introduced the new character, and as a result, over the weekend I got a grand total of 470 words written. Today, I didn’t even get that done. I did put together my monthly promotional newsletter, which took a good hour. This will go out tomorrow. Then I took my walk and did my daily cleaning before my 11 o’clock phone call, which lasted until time for lunch.

Before I even finished my lunch, I started to get a series of texts from my daughter, who is quite ill with the flu, as is her partner, Both are feeling a bit panicked they are feeling so unwell, but when they went to urgent care they discovered they would have to wait until evening to even be seen, so the headed for home, not feeling they could make it. In the middle of these texts, I got a phone call from a local friend, same story, sicker than they have ever been, feeling a bit panicked.

In both cases, I put on my mom hat, tried to be reassuring (of course problem with flu is really not much you can do beyond liquids, rest, small light meals, and maybe some advil or tylanol.)

That got me to my afternoon phone call, which got me to dinner. Now, after a quick text check in with my daughter, time to watch TV.

Tomorrow, however, if all goes well, I will get to my writing, and my daughter and friend will have started to feel a bit better.

I hope all of you are able to avoid the flu and ARI that is going around, because it really sounds brutal. I will leave you with what I saw on my walk today.

Pyracantha, is one of the few plants I know the name of and I associate with fall growing up in Pennsylvania. I love that they are also called firethorn! Today, what I discovered was one house in my neighborhood where someone trained the shrub to grow into a tree! Wikipedia did say it could grow up to 15 feet. First photo is a close up of the red berries and then the tree. (ps substack has now given us the option to put 2 pictures side by side, and that has pleased me considerably.)