Washington Monument, Tidal Basin & Clouds from Hurricane Helene
27 Sep 2024 (my work)
My biggest event, of course, was SMucK-a-Palooza during the last weekend of September. I was really excited about getting to go, and things went fine until the day I was scheduled to fly up. That day, September 26, also went down in history as the date that Hurricane Helene made landfall in the United States*. Due to preparations for that, my flight was delayed by about half an hour. At the time, I simply shrugged; flight delays aren’t unheard-of, after all, and I was originating out of the busiest passenger airport in the world. In fact, I considered myself lucky since the flight ahead of mine was delayed by over two hours.
After I landed at National Airport, I was able to connect with some fellow SPs (as we’re sometimes known) right away and spirits were high. Then, while we were at dinner, I took a sip of my drink and felt something solid hit the side of my mouth. It turned out to be a piece of tooth. But even that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm; there was no pain, so I decided to just call my dentist when I got home.
Forty-eight hours later, I was not only in severe pain, but I also had a fever and couldn’t keep anything down. On Sunday, which was the day I was scheduled to fly back, I instead ended up at an urgent care center. They agreed with me that I had a raging tooth infection and wrote a prescription for a wide-spectrum antibiotic. “And if you really want to fly home, I’ll clear it,” the nurse practitioner told me. “But you’ll regret it as soon as they start pressurizing the cabin.”
I wasn’t up to it, so I instead took the train home Monday evening. As scheduled, it’s thirteen-and-a-half hours from Washington’s Union Station to Atlanta’s Peachtree Station. Due to hurricane damage fouling some of the freight lines, it actually took fifteen. Fortunately, I had a seat pair to myself after Charlottesville, Virginia, and it’s an overnight train. I was able to doze off and on, but I never got all the way to sleep.
Once I was back, of course, I was caught up with recovering. The side effects from the antibiotic were almost as bad as the tooth pain was, and I was on a seven-day dose, so I didn’t get back to feeling normal until well into October.
By then, open enrollment season was in full swing at my paying job, and I was behind on my work due to the unplanned absences. For the first week I was back, when I was still feeling lingering side effects, all I was able to manage was to get up, work, and go to bed. It gradually got better, but the net result was that I didn’t write a single word between September 25 and October 7, and I didn’t get back to my regular writing pace until the weekend retreat on October 25-27.
That said, these two months weren’t complete losses. I finished the English Sonnet Readings class before going to SMucK-a-Palooza, and I’m glad I took it. I also got five vignettes written for Tales from Winter Camp, although to date I’ve only posted two of them. I only missed two weeks of regular blog posting, and I still managed to finish through Chapter 22 (of 37) on Standing in the Dark.
So, while I got off-track, I didn’t stray too far, and I’m calling things a win. That said, I don’t think I’m going to finish Standing in the Dark in 2024. It won’t be for lack of trying, though, and I do think I can hit the first quarter of 2025. I also see no reason I can’t maintain a twice-a-week posting schedule on this blog during November and December.
On September 7, I noted in a blog post that I’m not affiliating myself with NaNoWriMo anymore, but I had still planned to designate November as a focus month for writing. To that end, I’m committing to writing something every single day. I’m not going to worry about specific word counts, because I know my writing habits well enough to know that that will take care of itself if I just get my rear end into my seat. These past couple of months were a detour, not a permanent wrong turn, and I’m already on my way back.
* We were fortunate enough to just have minor (<$1,000) damage. Hurricane Milton bypassed us entirely.