Under the weather for a week. Very little writing done. Might have been the swine flu.

[Valeria Kendall]

We were all semi-sick at our house.

For a week.

But I'm still not giving up on my goal of completing some kind of workable crap draft by next week. I don't care if it seems more and more unrealistic to think this. I'm going to go for it anyway.

Life is all about having goals and being flexible about reaching them.

The person with the most flexibility wins!

It was strange, though, this illness. It was more of a malaise than anything else. At my daughter's middle school, nearly one-third of the kids were out sick on any given day. They had headaches and various other symptoms, which she, in typical middle-school fashion, couldn't be bothered to detail. So I can't be absolutely sure I had what they had.

Still, it seems likely. The fatigue made it hard to move on some days. A bit of nausea, not so much as to be completely overwhelming, but enough to make you mildly miserable. Felt better to lie down, but I'm not one to be able to get novels written like that -- I have to sit at the computer.

We all had some version of it. My daughter had the mildest. My son seemed to have some upper respiratory thing with it. He is still coughing a little.

Today was the first day I felt really good and energetic.

On days when you feel too ill to focus and write, it helps to spend the time reading. If you can stay awake long enough.

After a bit of research, it might have been the flu, possibly even H1N1 swine flu, since there was nausea. If so, it sure was mild! That might be because I have a really strong immune system...and as soon as anyone in our house feels sick, we ozonate some water (bubble it up) and drink it. That immediately starts to klll pathogens. We also use lots of colloidal silver and now I've added stabilized oxygen: Aerobic 07.

It's hard for a virus to survive when you kick it in the pants like that.

Still, it amazes me that we went through a week of swine flu with such mild symptoms. Although the symptoms were debilitating -- I lost about a week of productivity -- they were so mild that I started to think the fatigue and lack of motivation were due to depression. After all, I've been under enormous stress, and with no respiratory symptoms to speak of, was I really sick with anything contagious?

Let me clarify. I didn't have the body aches, chills, or fever. I didn't have respiratory problems. I did have overwhelming (at times) fatigue. And mild nausea. Those were my main symptoms. Then a little headache at the beginning. But it was so easy to think the symptoms were from something else -- the headache, maybe caffeine withdrawal? Nausea -- something I ate. Or a parasite, perhaps. Fatigue? Depression, I began to suspect, after it lasted more than a couple of days. But that didn't feel right, either.

I probably wouldn't have suspected swine flu if it hadn't been for a letter circulated to the parents by the school.

Anyway, back in the office. Two goals for today -- to edit a draft of a nonfiction book so I might see it in print in a week or so, and to do some novel speedwriting.

Gotta make up for lost time!