Wow - two weeks. More than two weeks. And what have I been up to for more than two weeks?

I have been working on the book, as promised, despite the lack of excerpt testimony. I've spent a fair amount of time solving structural problems, and also slashing out the weak bits (and wouldn't that be fun excerpting: "Here is a passage so irredeemably bad I declared it unfixable and cut it altogether - enjoy!").

I've also been run ragged by my job, and here I must bite my tongue, and hold my tongue bitten for reasons that will be revealed in a happier future, say around the equinox.

So it's been a productive two weeks, buoyant in their way, up until this weekend. This weekend I went camping, and although I had a very good time, three things happened which are making it torment to ride around in flesh and bone:

1. Mosquito bites, and lots of 'em, so not really one thing but fourteen: eight on my legs, one on my forehead, three on my back (one at the level of apparently every waistband I own except for whatever I was wearing on Saturday), one on my arm, two if you count the lower knuckle of an index finger as "arm". This last is by far the most tormenting. I can only suppose that what I thought was a can of Off was actually the mosquito equivalent of MSG. Or spray-on nacho cheese. Or something.

2. Back pain like I've never experienced before. As in doubling over when I try to stand / walk / sit / cross my legs, and then doubling over again (quadrupling over?) because it hurts to double over. As in having to use my wisdom tooth extraction stash of Vicodin for actual pain management, which is all kinds of unfair, dammit. As in alternating heat and cold packs every fifteen minutes. As in going to the doctor tomorrow, aware that nothing she prescribes will change the fact that apparently I've reached the age where I can't just, you know, pick things up. Sheesh.

3. A scratch inside my left eyelid, acquired in a moment of particularly stupid eye-rubbing. I don't remember thinking to myself, "Say, some coarse and highly irritating dust has blown into my eye, so clearly the thing to do is rub vigorously so that sore, burning sensation can go on for 36 48 hours." But that is in fact what I did.

On the bright side, only one of these thing tends to be ascendence at any given time, so, um, hooray.