FROM HOME TO HOME

Well, the Poet boarded an airplane for Egypt an hour ago, and I am sitting in the airport (where there is free wi-fi) before my flight back to DC. We will be away from each other for a month.

The repeat question of the past two weeks has been, "why aren't you going to Cairo with him?" For now, a trip to Egypt would be too much, much too much. At last check planes across the country did me in, so traveling for 24 hours, to get somewhere full of automobile exhaust and people smoking in every indoor location would be too much for me. There may be a trip in the future, however, one that features a few short days in Cairo and more time in a less poluted part of Egypt. That is feeling more a more possible as time passes.

I have had a morning of good signs. First, I woke realizing that I had failed to take all my bedtime supplements last night, the ones that get me to sleep. I had slept through the night just fine without them!

After the injection and seeing the Poet off, I headed to the gym, where I jumped on the beloved stair climbing machine at the gym and stayed on it for half an hour, going at 80 steps per minute the whole time, with the exception of a couple minutes of "sprints" at 100 steps per minute. Less than a month ago, 60 steps per minute was my maximum speed.

I still long for the day when I will be able to dance again. It was January of 2009 that I had to stop dancing due to Lyme-related tendonitis. It has been a long, painstaking 11 months, with much of my time eaten up by myofascial release and physical therapy appointments. But the past two weeks I have been able to walk up the hill to my house without my calves spasming.

(True confessions: I have spent a good 10 months going up the hill backwards so as not to aggravate my tendonitis. Who is the neighborhood crazy lady? Moi.)

So I head back to DC feeling closer and closer to signing up for another dance class, and closer the end of Lyme Disease. Again, the hope is cautious, but it is real.

GOALS FOR THE MONTH

Over the past week the Poet and I have been talking about my writing. For the past 18 months I have been happy with piecemeal projects, as my energy and schedule (at the mercy of naps and doctors appointments) would allow. This has meant a book-length project from a few years ago is still on the shelf, blogging is sporadic, and short-stories get started, even completed, but rarely polished. Still, writing anything is progress at all!

This month I will have no appointments, so I will have large stretches of free time. What else should I do but write? The Poet knows I have been wanting to get back to my young adult's fanstasy novel, but he made a different suggestion: write something easier.

His idea was another novel, which I rejected flat out. Not another project, while I have so many others half-completed! Besides, he was really suggesting I write the type of novel that he wants to write. (Advice is always biased!) Mulling it over we agreed the fanstasy novel is still too big a project for me right now, but a memoir would be a realistic goal.

So I head to DC with the promise to myself that I will write 3-4 pages per day of a memoir.
Writing about myself is not my first choice, but it is much easier to write about material I don't have to make up. And I would like the satisfaction of taking on a larger project, perhaps one that I can take a little more lightly than fiction.

The plane is boarding. I'll post this now. (Thank you Google for free wi-fi at the airport!)