Sunday Soapbox Called On Account of Illness

Not sure what it is. It started out as my son's croup but now we all have it. It's pretty miserable.

Also, the story link I put up once is about to disappear so I can market them. Last chance to read them here. I'll be taking it down tomorrow.

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Soapbox Sunday: Entertaining Yourself

*Steps on soapbox*

It occurs to me that one reason I'm not a "fun" person is that I have no trouble whatsoever entertaining myself. At any given time, I can happily watch a movie, read a book or a manga, revise existing work, write on one of no less than half a dozen novels, write a short story, play with children, work on jewelry, embroidery or crocheting. I can play a video game (thanks to my husband's tutelage). Or I could blog or read on-line or troll through Wikipedia or sing or, sadly, do some of the many chores and stuff that I have to do. Or work out.

But, when it comes to being a social director, I suck. I've never arranged for the entertainment of others and I've no skill with it when I have. I don't party, I don't know what people like to do in groups and I have no idea how to entertain someone else.

For the past week, my husband and I have been effectively trapped together with the two youngest children as the flu ravaged our good natures and made trips to break up the monotony prohibitively exhausting. I'll be the first to say that makes things challenging in the best of circumstances. Last week, I managed to drag my ravaged body to my husband's brother's wedding to sing and hung out with the baby as Lee and my other two children wandered through the Renaissance Fair. Somehow, that translated in my husband's mind to indulging "me" (???). Since my husband's reaction to illness (he started getting sick on Tuesday) is to sleep 12-18 hours a day, I've been largely on my own watching the two kids. Fortunately, my kids are pretty easy to take care of, but, since I was also trying to take advantage of my down time to finish the revision of my novel, it was somewhat challenging. And, it can be exhausting, when you're already quite ill, to be the de facto one to get up with the kids and make them breakfast and lunch and dinner and entertain them and make sure they stay out of trouble and play with them and, and, and...

At the end of the week, I was finally feeling better, had actually finished my revision, had an exciting new idea in mind for writing and was told by my husband (who is also recovering) this was "my" weekend. Yay, I might think, I can leave the kids to the hubby and dive into my writing. Except, apparently, "my" weekend means I need to get up with the kids and can only wake my husband once I've figured out what "we" can do for entertainment. Then, if we get back from "our" entertainment and I want to write, he gets to go back to sleep from boredom. We, in fact, haven't had a conversation this weekend where he hasn't reminded me how bored he was (that's aside from the fact I bought him two expensive video games at his request last week, owns several times his weight in legos and has reminded me, repeatedly, that he hasn't seen a movie he's desperate to see because I don't care enough to see it to try to find a babysitter and he doesn't want to see it by himself.)

If there's one thing I hate, it's looking forward to going back to work.

*Steps off soapbox*

Note, in all fairness, I managed to write nearly 7000 words on my new novel this weekend mostly because I work well under adverse conditions, but it's really leavened my enjoyment.

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