When You Have Nothing to Say...

...say nothing.

That's how I've been the last few days. I spent Thursday through Sunday in Oklahoma City, helping Lynda babysit our grandsons while their dad and mom were at ministers and mates retreat. Lynda had been there for two weeks already, and I joined the party. The babysitting went very well. I hadn't seen the boys since May. Ephraim is four, and he remembered me with no problem. Ezra is just 1 1/2, and I'm not sure he remembered me. But he and I had a great time. I wound up putting him to bed all three nights and for a couple of naps. Obviously during this time I wasn't concerned with writing or developing ideas, for this blog of for anything. What limited reading I did was in some Civil War documents.

I drove home Sunday afternoon/evening, arriving at 7:00 p.m., my mind fully immersed in radio football coverage. I had a scheduled blog post for Sunday, so I knew I didn't need to write anything here until Tuesday. I mainly read and rested in the quiet house Sunday evening.

Back at work Monday, I wasn't as productive as I could be. My concentration was off. I wasn't sure why. At home Monday evening I suddenly and quickly developed a cold. Normally these things come on me slowly, over a period of about three days. This one happened in three hours. It wasn't allergies. So being sub par, I did less that evening than I hoped for. I worked on my current novel, China Tour, writing about 1,000 words in the next chapter, but didn't even think of this or my other blog.

Then yesterday I came to work. I felt amazingly good compared to Monday. The cold, it seemed, might be a very mild one that I got over quickly. I functioned reasonably well at work on Tuesday. On the noon hour I picked up more or less where I was with the novel and added 900 words. Of course, that meant I had it in two files on two different computers, with a merge in the future. But at least I felt good during the day and into the evening. I worked some more on the book in the evening, adding another 500+ words to the scene I wrote at work, thus making for three discontinuous blocks of text waiting to be merged. But, I felt no motivation to blog.

So here it is Wednesday morning. I'm at work, in my own quiet time before I start the work day. I'm feeling a little worse today, so maybe the cold isn't as mild as I first thought. We'll see if some daytime cold pills do the trick. I'll probably leave the office a bit early, go home and make a big pot of chicken soup, for me and for Lynda's return tonight.

But I still have nothing to say on this blog. No ideas have come, except to do this play-by-play of the last seven days. China Tour is almost at 5,000 words, and seems to be coming together well, though I'm moving along in scenes with less words than I anticipated. I'll give more details of that on my other blog. Meanwhile, I still can't think of anything to write for this blog. My last post, on politics, resulted in some interest, so maybe I'll see if I can develop a pre-election post or two. Otherwise, I need to develop some blog ideas.