No Need to Worry!

"No need to worry! You will always have everything that you need."

This is my fortune. How great is that?

I went out to eat on Friday afternoon with one of the greatest people in the world and this is my fortune. I even ate the cookie to make sure it's true.

Eyeballs

During my bout with the flu, my two youngest kids left this on the kitchen table for me when they left for school. I took a picture and forgot about it until I uploaded my pics yesterday.

Easter Snow

My grandmother always said there had to be an Easter snow, either on Easter or close to it. It rained hard yesterday afternoon and switched over to snow about the time it got dark.
I woke up to this:




Not much snow, just a dusting. And look how beautiful the sky is!


It's only about 50 degrees out now, but the sky has been this unbelievable blue all day; I'm going out for a walk now.

Triathlon cancelled!

The Adventure Pursuit Triathlon has been cancelled!
Ack.
I went over there to look this morning because I hadn't heard anything recently and because I'm going for a run today. The cancellation was posted on March 3rd. There's no explanation, just a short blurb about a mountain bike ride.

What month is it?

Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but it was getting there. I still felt horrible yesterday and PC made me go with him to eat sushi. I didn't want to, but I'm glad I did because after I ate a ping-pong ball sized blob of wasabi and a small mountain of ginger (not to mention the tuna and salmon I ate it with) I did feel better. Not good, but better, which is way more than I've been able to say for two weeks (Two weeks! Yikes!).
I actually went to the gym this morning. I certainly wasn't setting any personal records and I felt like a total weakling, but the important thing is I went and I broke a sweat on purpose (as opposed to all the sweat I've been losing from the flu ague). And right now, post-gym and pre-shower, I think I can see my way clear to being well again! Yay!
I like to think I don't take my health for granted, but being sick for two weeks really puts a different spin on things. My health is constantly on my gratitude list. It's something I think about and something I work for with both exercise and healthy eating; my health is very important to me. But even being consciously grateful, having the (killer) flu for two weeks really had me freaked out. I am very grateful it's just about over and I will continue to remind myself of just how blessed I am to have good health.
Now I have to go rearrange my calendar - which means I have to move the to-do list from the first week of March to this week. Nothing like being 2-3 weeks behind.

What week is it?

On Friday I was feeling better, so I assumed I was getting better.
I was wrong.

What day is it?

The flu got me. Usually I don't get the flu, but this time it got me pretty good. I haven't said anything coherent since Tuesday (have I?) and I'm thinking anything I said Tuesday may be up for debate, too. Maybe today, too, but at least I'm able to maintain a seated position for more than two minutes.
Normally, if I get sick at all, it's a sniffle or sore throat or something irritating but tolerable. This did not fall in that category. This was some bad stuff.
So, being the geek that I am, I checked out the CDC's website for the flu report (did you even know there was such a thing?) and saw that "The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza was above the epidemic threshold for the eighth consecutive week." Go here for summary reports of the last 10 years or so.
I'm getting back to normal. I think.

Cabin Fever & Bio

Perhaps it was the cabin fever (though yesterday I soaked up as much sun as I could, knowing it was going to rain/snow again), but I queried a literary agency about Vultures.
This is the first time I've done it since the whole Amazon ABNA contest and, even though I said I wasn't going to, I think the winter blahs got the best of me and it seemed like a good idea. We'll see....

Anyway, the main point is not the query, but the bio. It's always a challenge to come up with a short, catchy bio (the irony here is that a blogger would have a hard time finding something to say about herself). For this particular query, I wrote a new two-paragraph bio. Usually, I stick with one or, at the most, two sentences, but it was probably the cabin fever and resulting 'screw-it' attitude that pushed me to ramble on. My finger hovered over the 'Send' button as I debated the pros and cons. Finally, the 'screw-it' attitude won when I figured worse-case-scenario would be a total lack of response. (At least I hope that's worst case scenario - I have a long way to go before I establish enough of a reputation even for black-listing. I hope.)

So, here's my new bio (probably short-lived):

"MK Stover is a native West Virginian who finally moved back home. She is a wife, mother, and writer, though not always in that order. Her writing includes small mountains of unsubmitted fiction, a smattering of published non-fiction (though she finds sticking to the facts to be rather confining), ad copy, and small town newspaper columns, articles, and opinions.
Unable to find a decent cup of cappuccino, she and her husband are in the process of converting the first floor of a 118 year old brick building into her hometown’s central site for caffeine consumption and assemblage. The second floor houses her writing studio which is in dire need of organization. Currently, she is working on humorous recollections of her redneck upbringing and feels that her office mess is a symbolic representation of the mental health of her many relatives and, therefore, is a necessary aid to her work-in-progress."


According to Spell Check, 'unsubmitted' is not a word. I use a lot of those not-a-words, so that's not really a concern. What is a concern, though, is that Spell Check's suggestion for correction is 'uncommitted.'
I suppose I should be happy for the 'un.'