Day 2 of NaNo

I felt a little better today than I did yesterday. The swelling has gone on the left hand side of my face and as of this evening, the right hand side is on its way down. I rested lots today and as a consquence missed out on a BBQ next door, but that meant the house was quiet and I could get some sleep!

I didn't get a chance to mention yesterday the awesome cream of chicken soup that Dave made for me - which was finished off tonight. I didn't realise how much I would miss meat and how grateful I would be that someone else would cook for me. Sadly I missed out on Moroccan lamb and a hot chickpea salad for dinner. Rather than torture myself, I took Dylan off to bed and read Monsters Inc instead.

I've cancelled the Women's Wisdom Circle for tomorrow because for once in my life I'm being sensible. If tomorrow goes like the last couple of days - I don't start to feel like I am capable of any other than sleep until about 3pm in the afternoon. While I'm slowly feeling my energy and my resilence building, I don't want to destroy it by pushing myself. What I find most amusing about all of this - is that the site of the tooth extraction is honestly the least of my worries - they are both healing well and offering up little pain.

As long as I manage to keep pace with my NaNo word total (currently standing at 4066 words) and keep healing .. that's all I'm really worried about.

November is here

Well it has arrived. Just like the sun comes up in the morning, and the moon rises in the evening, after October comes November.

The last few days have been challenging from me - since having my wisdom teeth removed. I struggled both on Thursday and Friday to be able to sleep and then last night, against probably my better judgement, I went out to a Halloween Party. Granted we left early (9:30pm). Today it has been like hitting a wall. I did finally catch up on some sleep, but have felt and been physically shakey all day. Thankfully Dave is cooking me some cream of chicken soup for dinner tonight. The body can only go so far on custard, jelly, yoghurt and scrambled eggs. While I may not know my limits, my body definitely does.

My face has swollen more than it has done since I had it done - I've got a fantastically assymetrical face from one side being more swollen than the other. My jaw is hurting from being clasped while writing and well being a little stressed out from the surgery.

In amongst all that wisdom teeth merde - yes NaNo has started. I decided I'd travel along with main character Shet on her journey from Earth to outerspace, and from no memories to the reclaimation of her memories. The project has been tentatively named "Blue Melissae" but we'll see what happens with it. After month of struggling to try and understand and create an alternate version of Brisbane - sat down this afternoon and there it was. I've been reading Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" and I think that's helped me to see a way in which to conceptualise a world, just a little removed from our own.

I've already killed off one character - Dr Pietersen of Paul's "Salvage the good times" podcasts (I did get permission to use Dr Pietersen- however I never intended to kill him off - that was a complete accident and totally unexpected - don't know what Paul will think about that!)

I wont be publishing all of my NaNo project here. However, if you are interested, you can find the whole blow by blow (including the ??? in places where I'm not quite sure what to say!) at Blue Melissae. I'd love to have you all along for the ride - especially this time around with me playing in a totally foreign genre.

Happy November, Happy NaNo .. and may the good times roll!



Cartoon from Toothpaste for Dinner

Sans Deux

As I write this I am recovering from surgery - that was about eight hours ago. My tongue, bottom lip and chin are still numb, but thankfully there is no pain at the site of the extractions (sounds so awfully clinical doesn't it?)

I've decided to go with limited pain relief. Because I am allergic to codeine, I'm taking of all bloody things - Naprogesic, which for those who aren't in the know, is marketed specifically for period pain and associated malaise. So I've given myself the goal of four tablets in the next 24 hours and that's it. The surgeon informed me that limited use of pain medication in the beginning actually meant that you used less in the long term, than holding off until the pain was unbearable!

I'm taking regular doses of arnica for the swelling and the bruising, and have been told that the swelling will peak in about two days time. The surgeon (the ever so lovely Dr Walker - and who EVER heard me say a nice thing about a doctor AND a surgeon!) also told me that there are people who get almost no swelling - I'm angling to be in that subsection of the population. As additional support - regular doses of collodial silica to aid with the healing (and perhaps save my hair and skin from the worst effects of the general anaesthetic) and also olive leaf extact to ward off the potential for any infections.

Dr Walker was incredibly supportive of my non use of pain medication antibiotics - giving me all the information that I needed to make informed decisions about their use and what signs to watch for that would indicate infection. I'm hoping to be looking bloody wonderful next Friday when I go back to him and give him the run down on all the natural remedies I've been using.

And no ... I'm not including a lovely photo of myself post op. You can use your own imaginations. I will however say that Annie should watch out should she ever need to be picked up from an operation ... the first thing she did was make me laugh, which is a weird and almost wrong facial function when you are totally numb. At least it made me feel better.

There's also movement (only in my head at the moment) towards one particular project, but I will hold off until the 1st to unveil it ... and I'm definitely, almost, positively sure that I will blog each day's work. I'm feeling as though I need the support of comments and feedback from folk to help me over the line this year in a totally foreign genre.