I love this town.  I feel sheltered and blessed, even as I curse the thirty-years-behind infrastructure.  There are 200,000 people in the city limits, give or take a few.  I think a good third, if not better, of the entire state's population lives in the Treasure Valley.  Yet, despite the number of people, a girl can be a total space cadet and leave her purse in the shopping cart, and not realize it until she gets home.  Then 10-15 minutes later, retrieve said purse, complete, unharmed, with all keys, wallet contents, and checkbook present.  No one had bothered it until the cart-collection boy discovered it, even though they had ample opportunity.

Like I said, I love this town.

Further updates on the travails of the intrepid Man.  He's still in a lot of pain, but he is healing quite nicely according to the in-home care nurses.  His back to work date has been tentatively scheduled for mid-December.  Who knows? My coping beans might last until then. 

Onto the writing.  I have finished Chapter 21 and am in the midst of Chapter 22, hip deep, thank you.  I'm not happy with Chapter 21, at least not with the ending, but I had to call a halt to it somewhere for the sake of my own sanity.  What started as 8 pages and me thinking it was done, became 18-20 pages and me not happy.  On second glance, I agree with my critique partners: it was incomplete.  Doesn't matter; I wanted to be finished and moving on before this. 

Chapter 22, section 1, is suffering the same bloat.  I know I need to wrap up the book, but holy bat boobies, I think my writing has lapsed into circular logic.  I have one more section to write for Chap 22, and then onto 23, the afterword, the set up for the next book.  Once finished, I will put it in front of the Moxie 4, do the edits they suggest, and hopefully embark on my trip through Editing Hell by Dec. 1st. 

Wow.  Almost 2 years for this first draft of Null and Void.  (Still far better than the 10 years for the first book, Moni, Moni.)  Soon, I will have to plot and start on the second book in the Voidwalker trilogy, which I will likely start in the middle of editing Null and Void. Dang it, I don't even have a title for the next book.  I have one for the third, Magnetic Mage, no idea for the second.  Then there are the short stories I want to complete and submit, and the other books to write, like my detective trilogy and the epic fantasy trilogy, which are also vying for space on my docket. 

So many ideas, so little time.  See?  If I don't write everyday, it leaves my brain free to go off on tangents and formulate ideas.  Great for the idea pipeline, but pretty soon those ideas might clog up the works.  I have to get them on paper before I lose them forever to the black hole of Calcutta I call a memory.  Even if I only write the skeleton of the idea down, it takes time, and its a distract....ooo, shiny!  New ideas are the shiny new toy you are so eager to play with you let the other toys languish for a while.  When trying to write a book. the oooo, shiny factor of a new idea causes problems.  Better than the alternative of complete writer's block, I suppose.  I'll take the proffered shiny toy over a lump of coal any day. 

Enough delaying tactics.  Time to get busy playing with the old toy.

But getting out of the hospital sucked.

The Man's surgery went better than expected, according to his doctor.  What a relief!  The Man was up & around within a few hours of surgery, and actually pretty chipper, though that last was probably the good drugs talking.  He said the food & room service were pretty good, too.  That happened on Wednesday, Oct 21.

The Man was supposed to be released on the 22nd before noon.  I spent the evening of the 21st getting the family room upstairs ready for The Man's extended recovery and didn't get to bed until midnight.  I was told to be at the hospital by 7am because the doctor usually did his rounds in the early mornings before his first surgeries.  So I get to the hospital by 7am.  The Man wakes up with a case of hiccups that continues throughout the day.  The nurses only give us the silly home remedies to try to stop them, none of which worked for more than five minutes. 

By noon, the discharge paperwork was done, and we were still waiting on the doctor.  At 330pm, I go home for a few hours.  I come back around 6pm.  Still no doctor. At 730pm, the on-call doctor finally released my husband from the hospital...over the phone.  By 830pm, we were on the road, rushed because we had to hit our pharmacy before it closed at 9pm.  9pm, we walk through our own door  Thank God the on-call doctor perscribed a medication to stop the hiccups.  And the freaking RNs didn't know about said medication?  Excuse me?!? 

Worse, I had lined up one of our friends to help me get The Man home and up the stairs.  That friend was on hold all day just like us.  Unlike us, our friends at least had something productive to do while he waited...like giving a new job with one of his friend's new company a test-drive.  Good for him.  Still sucks that he had to wait all day, though.

After all of the work and $ to get the upstairs room set up for The Man, he slept there one night.  The next day, we dismantled the sleeping arrangement because we discovered that The Man could navigate the stairs just fine, thank you, and he wanted to sleep in his own bed.  Understandable, and great news.  However, crisis and major stress time was over,so I had a melt down. 

For some reason, I fixated on the time we'd wasted in stressing about getting the room set up which in the end, The Man didn't need.  Further, because of said wasted time, I did not get any writing done.  To use my friend Ro's phrase, I was all out of coping beans, the jar of which was not only empty, but sported an IOU note, too.  The Man did his manly thing and talked me down.  Saturday was a wash.

Sunday found me back at the computer, trying desperately to finish chapter 21.  I thought I finished it, but my Moxie partners have requested that I actually finish it rather than cutting it off.  *sigh*.  That is today's project.  After that, I think I have the wrap up and the afterword (next book set up) to finish, and then I am off to plot the next one, and work on the second draft of the first.    WOOT