A pox on lips

Someone told me once that I could write two books a month and I told him he was out of his mind. A book in two weeks is doable, but writing a book every two weeks is a lot of pressure, which doesn't mean I haven't done it. I have. The book I just sold I wrote in two weeks and the book I wrote in August I wrote in about two weeks. I've also moved past 50,000 words in NaNoWriMo and I'm not finished with the book, but it has been almost two weeks since I started and that's with working full time, reading, reviewing and doing a little editing. You'd be wrong to think I have no life. I have a life and it's full of work and writing and the occasional movie while I'm checking email and writing replies. It's call multi-tasking and I am a practitioner.

So here I sit with a bowl of oatmeal warming my insides while I try to keep the outside warm under the faux mink blanket my mother gave me last year writing a little something for LJ while I try to figure out how I'm going to get out of typing reports today and hoping that when I sit down at the other computer I will get no work to type. Plays havoc with my pay and I end up working weekends and nights to catch up, but sometimes a girl needs a day off -- in succession with several other days off.

I do find, however, that when I sit down and get past the first word or two in a story or book the rest takes care of itself by taking me out of myself and into the world of the book. Even if I only write a chapter or two a day, it's enough to carry me through the whole story. I don't, as Meg Cabot said in her NaNo email this week, cheat with other stories. I do have the odd idea on occasion and jot down quick notes on something that sparks an interest from what I see, hear and read, but when I'm working on a book I am totally committed. It's a little like being married or in a relationship with someone and happening to notice a guy or gal (depending on your preference) that passes by. S/he is cute or interesting or interestingly cute but they can't compare with the person sitting next to or across from you. Looking isn't cheating and neither is jotting down a note to remind me later that another story could be warming up in the wings when I'm through with the current story. Everyone needs a momentary distraction; I certainly do or I get stale, but a book every two weeks is something else again. I need a little downtime between books.

This weekend (tomorrow) I will have some much needed downtime with a certain handsome and roguish fella who is coming by in the afternoon. Maybe this weekend he won't show up a half hour early and catch me in my comfy cleaning clothes with the ripped t-shirt that bares strategic parts of my breasts and bra. Arrive early or unannounced and there's no telling what I might be wearing -- or almost wearing. I'm not complaining and he didn't either. He said he likes my shirt as much as I do, but I think it's time to go to the hobby store and buy some embroidery thread to patch up this shirt. A satin stitched outline of the flower would help reinforce the fabric and save what's left of the flower painted on the front while making it prettier. The holes would be closed, but I might consider leaving a few of them open, just enough to be provocative without being Madonna. Tasteful and sexy, not bold and wanton. Wouldn't want to make it too easy or too obvious. A glimpse of stocking, so to speak, not a full frontal assault.

I was worried earlier this week that a cold sore would seriously dampen the festivities tomorrow, but my cache of essential oils saved me yet again. Before the cold sore turned my lip into Martha's Vineyard during a winter storm I opened the little blisters and applied tea tree oil. The next day the swelling was a little bigger, but subsided during the day until there was a little more blister and a minor bump on the right side of my upper lip where I usually get my every five-year outbreak. This morning the swelling is all gone and the cold sore dried up. I'll keep applying tea tree oil until tomorrow so that it will be completely gone. It's the fastest outbreak and cure I've ever had.

While talking with a friend about the pox on my lip, she said neither she nor her husband ever got cold sores. They haven't had chicken pox either. Hmmm, I thought. Must be a connection there somewhere. So, now it's time for the questions.

Have you ever had chicken pox? Do you get cold sores?

FYI: There is a difference between cold sores and chancre sores. Cold sores occur on the skin and chancre (canker) sores occur inside the mouth in the soft tissues.

That is all. Disperse.