The way our schedule works out, M spends weekdays and weeknights with Tiptoe, and I take the weekends.  I had thought, when we were devising the schedule, to make the best of my time here, and burn truckloads of fiction.  It’s not happening though.  There’s no downtime here at the hospital; it always feels like you’re doing something, even when you’re not.  It’s exhausting– the worry, combined with the unnatural setting, combined with the dynamic of other patients’ pain, combined with everything…I’m not having an easy time of it, in terms of getting my novel revision done.

We share our room with another family’s little girl; whoever is sleeping over there is snoring right now.  I’m sitting here awake at 3:30 am, listening to some stranger snore.  They’ve left their television on all day, and all night.  All day Friday, and all day yesterday, the nurses left a classical music station turned on in her area, which of course bled over into ours.  I like classical music (much more than the innane infomercial that’s playing right now), but how many times can one station repeat Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons?

I think I just need to work harder at getting the writing done.  I mean, after all, I get most of my writing done in strangers’ cars; this shouldn’t be that big a deal…