Venturing Outside

I now understand all the people who've "complained" to me about losing sleep because they started reading one of my books before they went to bed and ended up staying up all night reading. I've been reading one of my own books while I've been too zonked with the cold to focus on anything else (and while I'm too zonked to try to mentally edit or revise it), and last night I caught myself playing the "just one more chapter" game. I finally convinced myself to turn out the light and go to sleep by reminding myself that I wrote the book, so I knew how it ended (though I didn't remember exactly what happened next) and I could put it down and go to sleep.

I've also realized that in spite of my claims of being spontaneous, I really am a creature of habit. I seem to have lost the stopwatch I use to time my writing sessions and keep myself honest about really working instead of saying I'm working during a block of time while I'm really getting sidetracked during a tea break. It's got to be somewhere in the house, but I was pretty migratory last week, so there's no telling where it is now. I spent way too much time yesterday searching for it because I couldn't seem to get to work without it. I ended up downloading a stopwatch app to my phone. That might actually be a good thing because it means I'll have my phone with me when I'm working instead of it hiding at the bottom of my purse. The trick will be whether I hear it ring. I finally settled on the main theme from Star Wars as my ringtone because I can hear it and I still seem to have a Pavlovian response to that music so if I hear it, it gets my attention. However, I like using John Williams scores as background music for writing, which means there's a chance that my phone will ring while I'm listening to Star Wars music -- like the way I always seemed to be walking by a bank of pay phones when my phone rang while I was using an old-fashioned telephone ring sound as my ringtone, so I always assumed it was the pay phones and not my phone ringing.

After our brief reprieve, the cold weather and ice will return tomorrow, so I have to venture out this afternoon to run errands that may become impossible later in the week. Between the ice and the cold (the illness kind), my winter hibernation tendencies are being rather catered to. I wasn't so bad this winter until recently, since I had enough stuff going on that required leaving the house that I didn't get a chance to fall into that mode. But if I go a long time without leaving the house, that makes it harder to leave the house, and for more than a week, either the weather's been too bad to go out or I haven't felt like it. I can manage a quick library/bank/post office/Target run, but I don't think I'm up to ballet tonight. I'd manage about two plies before having to take a break, and that's if I could even get that far without having to run for a tissue. Then tomorrow it's very likely that choir will be cancelled again due to weather. I had planned to get my new computer last week while I was between projects, but the weather got in the way of that, and the combination of illness and weather make it unlikely this week because I'd like to be able to think. I probably ought to do some research to decide what I might really need instead of just going with my instincts to take the cheapest possible option.

For now, though, I need to get out the crowbar and pry myself out of the house so I can restock on tissue supplies.