Thursday, January 2, 2025

Short stuff!

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.

In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.

Daily Diary, Day 1583:

I had a very quiet New Year’s Eve, followed by a very quiet New Year’s Day, the only real difference between the two days was that yesterday was sunny almost all day, which seems to have done a good job charging up the battery on the hummingbird wind chimes. It is sunny already today and supposed to actually get up to high 60s.

Both days, I got in fifty minutes of walking by doing twenty minutes for morning walk, followed up by fifteen-minute walks before lunch and dinner. I have committed to keeping to this pattern for at least a week before trying to increase the total to sixty minutes.

Meanwhile, both days I faced a new ailment, having woken up on Tuesday morning with a very swollen right elbow. I have no idea the cause, besides noticing when I leaned into my elbow to help turn over Monday night that the elbow felt sore. It is warm to the touch, a bit achy, but no sharp pain or any difficulty moving it. Just swollen. Probably just a new site of arthritis playing up. I have been taking advil and icing, for two days. But with no improvement. So today I switched to voltaren cream directly on the elbow, and I’m going to be better at icing more often.

Today I am also going to limit the amount of typing I do, in case that is part of the problem. I have a large, very heavy book I am starting to read for research, so I will also figure out how to read it without holding it.

If, after a week of this regime, there is no improvement, I will start the process of going to the primary care dr. probably to be told I just need to rest the arm for longer. I am certainly grateful that I am in the research phase, instead of just starting to write, and I am sure I will have figured out how to calm it down before that stage.

Otherwise, today I have my noon zoom meeting and maybe a phone call afterwards, and I will be working to get all my walks in.

The cold has meant very few flowers to see, but the cold snap did bring out a few of the trees in this region whose leaves change color. This is from a couple of weeks ago, when this tree’s color was at its peak.

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