So, remember way back, a month and a half ago, when I proudly announced that I was determined to finish the second draft of Search and Rescue by the end of March (or possibly the end of April), and that I’d update on my progress every week?

Yeah. So.

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, Real Life got in the way.

First of all, only two days after my youngest sister’s birthday dinner (during which all of us toasted the idea that with any luck, 2024 would be a healthier year than 2023), my mother fell down putting out recycling and broke her hip. Back to the Halifax Infirmary (where she spent all of spring and most of summer 2023 with a different issue) she went.

Now, there’s a reason why she built a 1-storey house right next to my middle sister’s, on said sister’s property, which is that it makes it a lot easier for everyone if she has issues with stuff happening. (Like the broken hip.) However, my sister has a job, and her kids are occupied with school during the day. And the Monday after the broken hip occurred, we were due to have a massive snowstorm… so I went over on Sunday, and stayed over for the sake of the cats. (I get worried about them, currently don’t have any of my own – long unpleasant story – and my sister and one of her kids are both allergic, so can’t spend a lot of time with them.)

So, looking after the cats (which wasn’t hard) and subconscious stress over Mom’s hip (which was pinned in place, not replaced) – though luckily, most of the nasty (non-)survival statistics regarding elderly folk with broken hips involve people with some form of dementia, which Mom doesn’t have – meant that pretty much no writing was getting done.

Then, a day or two after she got home, I ended up with a nasty case of the flu (or a cold that for two days involved chills and feverish elements) thanks to the fact that younger teenage males tend to be germ factories, and I’m only really just starting to get over most of the symptoms (exhaustion, coughing, and stuffed up sinuses). I’m still getting a full night’s sleep (thanks to Ricola cough drops and Tylenol sinus!) and then napping for 2-1/2 to 4 hours in the afternoon. None of which is conducive to getting writing done. (Editing, maybe, but I’m almost at the point where writing is supposed to happen, and Chps. 9-13 need extensive re-writing, as did Chps. 3-8.)

So… the latter half of January and all of February has been a wash when it comes to Search and Rescue. I am going to do my best to get started with the writing in March, but it’s looking more and more as though finishing the re-write of Search and Rescue will be my Camp NaNoWriMo April 2024 project.

Which is, at least, not a bad thing, and still ensures that I finish the re-write in the first half of the year.

So, c’mon, 2024 – let’s get the momentum going again!