I don’t really experience TGIF since “retiring” from teaching. Friday is a day like Saturday or the fifth of July. My work is writing and despite not paying at all well, I answer to no one but me.* Weekends are vacations that allow me more  physical time with Rob, but we are in touch throughout his workday and he comes home for lunch, when we don’t meet for lunch in town, so I can’t say I am deprived of his company by the work week the way some couples are.

This week has been disorganized. We are out of the tent trailer and all crammed into the master bedroom as that is stripped and most of the new sub-floor is down. The lack of curtains has been a bit of an issue. Being a month away from Summer Solstice means that the days are lengthening. Dusk falls at just a bit before eleven at night and the sun is up again in all its brilliance by 5:30 in the morning. Even so, Baby has not woken with it as was her wont. She is so like her father, needing pitch darkness in order to fall asleep and stay asleep. I never had room darkening shades before Will. I enjoyed being waked by the sun. Not so my vampiric late husband and our child of darkness.

Rob is up with the dawn and I need to start doing that too. I have decided to change up the writing schedule and work on fiction for an hour in the early morning and consider anything else that comes my way through the day gravy. Life just has a way of derailing writing and until there is a nanny or housekeeper or personal assistant at least to help out, I have decided that I will simply go with the flow. Writing will be done in the morning. Getting up early never hurt me when I was teaching and it won’t hurt me now.

A quick update on Nephew1. Do you remember the story I told about his mother last June during our visit to Iowa? She arrived at the house one day in a tizzy because LawnMowerMan had apparently had a stroke which turned out on further examination by a real doctor to be sciatica. Nephew1 is his mother’s son.

Yes, he does have a serious medical condition. His asthma is not to be taken lightly and he and his father were doing just that. This led the first doctor who saw him to read him the riot act and outline the very dire consequences of not following one’s asthma protocol. Death is a very real outcome for severe asthmatics as is lung damage. Nephew1 only heard about 20% of what he was told beyond the “you could die” and the fact that at fifteen he deems himself too old to allow his grandmother – the responsible adult – to accompany him in to see the doctor – led to the misunderstanding and worry on the part of me, my mom and DNOS.

Nephew is still unwell but he is now getting the attention he needs and is taking his asthma seriously.

However, a new situation cropped up unexpectedly yesterday afternoon. I called my mother and found her prepping for a lower GI. In case you have never had one, it’s similar to prep for a colonoscopy but is a series of x-rays. Why? Well, I was perplexed. She’d had a colonoscopy shortly after Dad died and was given the standard “see you in five or six years”. She was not told that a deformity was discovered that impeded a full scoping and she would need follow-up in 6 months.

Yes, she was a bit disturbed and planned on having words with her doctor today. I would have had more than words. I don’t trust doctors anymore. I went through hell trying to convince doctors that Will was physically rather than mentally ill. I had similar problems with my own health about 8 months after Will died when everyone was content to write off my stomach issues as “grief” rather than the non-functioning gall bladder that it was.

Mom was calm. She said she’d call today though I will probably not wait and call her first, but I feel too far away again.

The weather has finally taken a summery turn. I got my zombie story mailed off last weekend and am nearly done with the companion story. There is probably a full novel in there but not now. I joined Authonomy last night. It’s a place to post novels in progress and get feedback from other writers, editors and even agents. I will let you know when I have a draft of Night Dogs and my memoir up. Give me a month or so. I am also thinking about applying for sessional work in the college of education at the U of Alberta. Anthony Trollope’s advice to writers was to always a have a day job. He work for the post office his whole life despite being a successful writer, so he must have a reason for such advice, eh?

The pen name? Christie from Christopher, which is a family name. My great-grandfather, Crazy Christie, is the beginning of the chain that has included, among others, one of his sons, a couple grandsons (it was Dad’s middle name) and a few great-grandsons. And then Cox, because it is my name. The one I started out with a long time ago when I first decided I was a writer but didn’t realize how much of a writer I really was.

Christie Cox. That’s my fiction pen name. I’ll get a link up to my writer’s site soon.

Enjoy the last weekend of May. I plan to.

*And that is not always a good thing but it’s a post for another day.