It’s Sunday and I’m sick and I don’t like it. I slept until after 5:00 am, and the cat was wanting her breakfast and almost tripped me as I staggered toward the kitchen to start the coffee. It’s ten degrees below zero outside with a wind chill of minus twenty-five. I dressed warmly and went out, because the horses need me even if I am complaining about a runny nose and a cough and a chest that being squeezed in a vise. After feeding the horses and cleaning the barn and checking their water, I’m back inside. We had pancakes for breakfast with coffee and oranges and for me, drugs. I’m lying in a cocoon of throws and comforters on the couch, remembering that I’m working on deadline for next month’s magazine and not wanting to do anything about it right now. The cat has moved three times to keep up with the sunbeam crawling across the oriental rug, and now she’s moving toward her afternoon place on the other couch. How is a person supposed to sleep with all this coughing going on? If I felt a little better I might post a message on Book Country telling the members to read Holy Writ, a personal history by Mary Norris in the current edition of The New Yorker, which is mostly about commas, and which I liked very much and which let me forget for a little while how sick I am.  

I had a fall, pushed through it on the first part of the day but by midafternoon was in a lot of pain, big bruises here and there, scrapes, exhausted, shaky.  Faceplanted in the bed, covered with multiple blankets because I could not get warm enough.  Couldn't sleep--too much pain.  Finally fell asleep after midnight.  Lost the next day to alternate periods asleep in bed and wobbling up to get more water and visit the small tiled room.  Tried to think about the book, but couldn't focus much except on one character, so thought about him.  Why had he done what he did?  Why was he about to do something else?   I dozed off, woke again, thought more.  Too sluggish to filter ideas when they came swimming slowly along as time passed, so looked them all over carefully rather than dismissing anything.  His character came clearer and clearer, every waking period.  Well then, why hadn't this other character caught on by now?  Tried to focus on that one, who had seriously misunderstood character A, and as a result might end up dead and so might others.  What was in B's background that allowed clear (now clear, to me) signs of future trouble to go unnoticed?  Went back to sleep.  Woke up again.   Injured hand hurt too much to knit-and-think, hurt even to hold book and read, so I was stuck in my own head, but couldn't write (hint: do not injure your dominant hand, your dominant leg's knee, and your non-dominant leg's hip.  It's very boring...)  Sleep brought up interesting dreams, not always about the characters.  Sometimes about editors, which is scary.  Imagining what Editor would suggest.  Putting it against the characters & story & trying to imagine what if I changed this?  What if A were not a good person who made a serious error but a genuine bone deep rotter?  No.  He's not.  What if B's surgery a few years ago came undone because of whatever?  No.  B's been growing and changing appropriately through several previous books, and that particular change won't work here.  On the third morning I woke up clear-headed (still hurting some, but not nearly as much and not feeling unbalanced and sick) only to find piles of "clerical" work that needed to be done before I could dive into the ms.