YAY! A long weekend here in Canada as we celebrate Thanksgiving.  It’s difficult though, when I feel this way, to find things to be grateful for and yet I can look into my heart and find things.

I’m grateful that my home was not damaged in the blaze next door a month ago today.  I’m grateful that I have my refuge and all of its contents, unharmed.  I can’t help think of all that could have been lost–every novel I’ve ever written and, even more so, my programs.  It’s all on my laptop and in my basement!  To have to redesign all that would be beyond words.

But the sleep I’ve lost since and the migraines I’ve been getting mask what I feel grateful for. Demolition work started on Thursday before my alarm went off!  That makes it even harder!

But I’m trying to work my way back.  Through the noise, through the fatigue and the pain I’m trying.  There’s always something that gets in my way; that pushes back and I’m getting tired of fighting!  Friday I was feeling somewhat normal for the first time in weeks.  We went to the symphony, which was fabulous, I had a really good sleep and then yesterday was an absolute disaster.  A day that I was supposed to have mostly to myself to do laundry and just putter got taken away.  The carpet pulled from beneath my feet!

FRUSTRATING!!!

So I find myself, once more, on extremely uneven ground.  Teetering, uncertain which way I’m going to tip.  I woke this morning with another migraine–probably because I didn’t even have time to stop and have a glass of water yesterday!  So I need it gone in the next couple of hours because my brother and I are going to take our kids (my not so little kid!) Oktoberfesting!!  I figure it’s something to do and the kids should love it.  I always loved going.  Trying to waltz and polka while everyone around you doesn’t have a clue how to do it and they’re too drunk to figure it out.  Then there’s the Bird Dance… we’ll see if I can do it after all these years and with a bum knee!

What does all of this have to do with writing?  It doesn’t really!  Yet it does.  I signed up for NaNoWriMo again this past week and I’m looking forward to it.  I’m looking forward to being able to, hopefully, sit at the keyboard and find a story deep in the recesses of my brain to put onto the page.  To write another book.  I’m also hoping that both my sorrows and my triumphs and joys will make it in to the book.

Where ever it is we travel, we always take away something.  Sometimes it’s the richness of the setting, other times it’s something that somebody said or did that just has to find its way into our work.  People shouldn’t be fall down drunk this afternoon but hopefully there will be a few tiny happenings that will stick in my mind!