Paper and ink

I’m keeping up my daily writing habit, but for the last few days, I’ve been using a notebook and pen rather than a keyboard and a screen. The flow is different. It’s a nice change, but a temporary change, because I can’t sustain legible handwriting for any length of time. 

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I don’t even know what I’ll do with the pages that I’m writing by hand - I suppose I could transcribe them here. But I probably won’t. I’ll just see how long it takes me to fill that notebook, and then I’ll put it away and probably never pick it up again. I save all of my old notebooks and very seldom refer to them again. 

Saving those notebooks is probably a waste of space, but writing by hand is definitely not a waste of time. Words come to me quite easily when I have a pen in my hand, and the physical act of scratching that pen across the paper is oddly therapeutic. My brain is making connections, and my powers of concentration are improving a tiny bit. And it’s just fun. Notebooks are among my favorite things on earth, and it’s nice to use them for their intended purpose and not just as decorative objects. Plus if I write in a notebook every day, I’ll go through notebooks even faster, giving me a perfectly valid and legitimate reason to shop for more notebooks. 

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It’s Saturday morning now. The sun is shining and my husband is cutting the grass and I’m sitting here typing on my keyboard. I would not characterize what I am doing right now as writing, but it’s words on a page, at least. That’s all I have today. 

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Later in the day, I filled several notebook pages with whatever was in my head at the moment. I don’t even remember. I’m very depressed, and I don’t have much to say. That won’t stop me from writing (and at considerable length) but I don’t expect anything that I write in the next few days to be worth reading. 

Why am I depressed? Oh who knows. It’s recurring depression combined with the change of season combined with empty nest syndrome combined with exhaustion combined with all of this (gesturing wildly at everything). Even when I’m doing something, I feel like I can’t get off the couch. It’s a figurative couch, but I’m glued to it, even when I’m in motion. 

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My poor mother-in-law had a migraine last night, and the pain was so bad that she was in tears. My husband was working and my sister-in-law was out with her kids and I was home doing not much of anything so I changed out of the pajamas that I had just changed into, and I drove over to her house. She was in the kitchen, standing over the sink, so I got her to lie down and I put a cool compress over her forehead and eyes. I held her hand in the darkened room and got her to breathe deeply. After 15 minutes, she was well enough to sit up again. I got her some ibuprofen and water. My sister-in-law came a bit later, with more ibuprofen (she was running low) and some melatonin to help her sleep and some Gatorade. After some Gatorade and another cool compress and some quiet time, my MIL felt much better and she ordered us to go home. I’m glad we were able to help. The headache would have gone away on its own, but the presence of two people who love her - the fact that we showed up - made it bearable. And I felt much better too. It’s nice to be needed. 

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I have a lot of ideas now. There are lots of words in my head demanding to get out in front of the reading public, but they’re not quite ready. I’ll get my notebook and my Bic 4-color pen, and I’ll see what happens, and I’ll report back later.