Week 6: Quarantine Chronicles (& a CC3 Excerpt!)
Wow. Has it really been 6 weeks since Quarantine began?
In some ways, it’s crawled by as it’s become our current normal, and in other ways, it’s flown.
We've certainly settled into a routine around here, and we’ve been blessed to remain healthy—with one exception.
Our routine:
I am a firm believer that routine can help you thrive, especially when you have kids.
I get my kids up every morning around the same time (7:30 at the moment), and put them to bed depending on how naps went, but no later than an hour past normal bedtime. We had a scare last week where my two-year-old daughter pretended like she was ready to drop naps for a few days. (I am NOT ready for that to happen.) So we adjusted her bedtime to about an hour later, and now she’s back to napping 2-3 hours. It’s wonderful. ;-)
Every day we eat breakfast once my daughter is up, and then on weekdays, we immediately do my son’s schoolwork for about an hour. When my son is finished, we spend the rest of the morning playing, building marble tracks, coloring, creating, or reading. Then it’s nap time slash quiet time, where the two-year-old sleeps in her room, and the six-year-old either plays quietly in the living room, rarely takes a nap if he didn’t sleep well for a few days in a row, or he does a quiet time in his room where he can play with anything he wants by himself.
Evenings after nap end up with a lot of outdoor time, playing in the remains of the snow, icy mud puddles, dirt, and lots of nature walks. We usually end the day by watching the news, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune. And after that, if the kids have been good, they pick something to watch. Real exciting stuff, huh?
Quarantine life has become a routine of its own, and I'm grateful for that.
Back before quarantine, we used to go into town every single morning. For me, it was a way to escape the monotony of entertaining kids alone at home. Usually if we stayed home, they would argue and fight, and I just couldn’t take it! But now I feel like we’ve got a better handle on it. And it helps to have schoolwork and the outdoors to distract them.
Soon my husband will be required to go back to work, and we'll see how this works with him back to work. The kids have been alternating between getting along and being at each other's throats, so that's been fun.
This week…
Honestly, this was one of the worst weeks we've had.
I mentioned above that we’ve been mostly healthy. Well, let me explain what I meant…
On Monday, I made a pot of chili. By Tuesday morning, my husband was feeling bad. By midday, I was feeling off. By early afternoon, I was puking my guts out.
Food poisoning.
It's been years since I last had it. And it's still as awful as it was then.
Really, I'm grateful that it wasn't COVID-19. After all, half the time I was sick with chills, vomiting, stomach cramps, and body aches and pains, I was thinking of how people with the coronavirus endure two weeks of this without relief and with much worse symptoms.
So in reality, in comparison to so many people right now, my week was great. But for me, compared to my other weeks, it was a rough one. My husband was an absolute rock star though, taking care of the kids because his symptoms were less severe than mine. (I couldn't get out of bed for more than a few minutes without vomiting that evening.)
Thankfully, by Wednesday night, we were back to normal.
Writing update:
I've been working on three projects this week.
I know, I know. I should be working on just one: Canens #3. But I'm also co-writing a project with a fellow author, and it's my turn to dig in. And then I got this magnificent brain wave about a new project this month that I wanted to work on...and so I've been chipping away at that too.
Yes, I have a problem.
I really want to focus on one project at a time, but I just have so many ideas, and I'm afraid that I'll lose the ideas and the opportunity if I don't write them now. So, I start them. And maybe I finish, maybe I don't, but usually if I know what the end is, I end up finishing them at some point.
Word counts:
CC3: 10,609
PP: 1,500
Blogs: 2,013
Total: 14,122
A Canens Chronicles #3 excerpt:
“Now, there are…rules about Great Fae interfering in human lives,” I begin. "And it's best if you figure those rules out right now, because expecting her to do too much for us is going to be foolish."
The table has gone absolutely silent, and I can tell that they're either checked out or hanging on my every word as though their lives depend on it. And they do, and I think they're realizing that now.
"The Great Fae that has resided in Nubilus for many years has shared several things with me over the past month. And it's critical that we treat her as our greatest ally during this war."
"You keep saying 'war,' Princess," the general remarks coldly. "You don't know what a war is. You don't know how to fight or what it will even look like. I've fought in battles, and it's not a romantic thing to fight for a cause. It's evil. War is best avoided at all costs, Your Highness. All costs."
"Even the cost of your king?" I snap at him, trying to keep my cool and losing. My palms itch. "You would sacrifice your king for peace? Your country? Your family? Because that is what she will take. You're a fool to think that I don't understand the costs of war. People will die. I have no doubts about that. But more people will die if she wins. And it won't be all at once, and it may not be brutal and bloody like war. But she will infiltrate this kingdom and the remainder, if we don't fight her. She will sneak into your houses in the dead of night, she will enchant people to fight on her behalf. She will kill those who stand up to her mercilessly and cruelly, making them an example for all who defy her orders. She will become the very epitome of evil. She will ally herself with evil forces and steal magic from other beings until she holds all the magic in the Seven Kingdoms."
I don't even know if what I'm saying is true, or even if it will happen, but this table needs to be shocked into their senses. They must realize that now is the time to fight, not cower and hide.
"You have maintained peace with other countries by avoiding confrontations and marriages with Heia. But there is no time for that now. Your first order of business must be to send emissaries to the other kingdoms and enlist their help in fighting Blanche. The next step must be to send out an edict asking for all who possess the ability to cast magic to report to you and vow to fight the evil in Blanche. Only if we ally together, only through fighting her magic with our own magic, can we defeat Blanche.
"You're asking the impossible," a quiet, soft voice says from behind me.
I turn to see Queen Ada staring at me with disappointment in her voice. There is pain in her features, for she lost her husband, and I can see the grief there, and I can read how it has broken her.
"It is impossible to fight this evil.”
I search her face. Then, against my better judgment, I slowly release a bit of magic in her direction. Since Blanche's visit to the palace, there has been tendrils of magic left behind, and I can feel them everywhere I go. A little touch of evil here, another stroke of it there, like a painter who left traces of paint behind after not cleaning her brush well enough.
And I've pulled my magic back within me, trying to conserve it, but also trying to avoid feeling her. Now, I push it out to Ada, feeling for that trace of Blanche, and I nearly collapse at what Blanche left behind. There is corruption in Ada. There is corruption of the worst kind.
She didn't simply kill Ada's husband, the King of Ardor, she set in motion a plan to destroy Ardor from the inside out. From inside Ada and out.
