I swear, the most expensive time of year for me is not November and December, it's early spring. This is the time of year when many tax payments hit, as well as my annual insurance premiums. And then there's all the summer spending. Today I paid for my summer vacation with the kids. We're going to Legoland, Sea World, and the San Diego Zoo. And I'm doing camp registrations as well. 2 weeks of a preschool-like camp for Ethan, plus a mini-sports camp where he'll learn baseball, soccer and tennis. Drama camp and chess camp for Sean, plus I'm trying to line up something physical, like a YMCA-style camp. I'm considering piano and martial arts for both of them.

Almost all that stuff has to be paid for now. The summer months will be inexpensive months--because all the big stuff was paid for in March.

Recovery is going slowly. I thought I'd be doing better than this, a week after the surgery, because I thought that's how long it took me to recover from the appendectomy. I wasn't blogging 4 years ago, but I sent regular emails to family and friends, so I looked up the emails I sent at that time. 13 days after the surgery, I wrote, "Now almost all the pain is gone and I'm sleeping fine." Apparently my memory's not so good; it took me two+ weeks to recover, not one.

I'm well enough now to get around and manage the household, but I still have a lot of pain, and it gets worse as the day progresses. For every hour or so on my feet, or sitting at the computer, I need to spend an hour either lying down, or sitting on the couch with my feet up (the feet up part is crucial). And I'm still napping for an hour or two in the afternoon. I could take Percocet for the pain--I have tons of it left from what the doctor prescribed--but it messes with my head so badly I think I prefer the pain. I do take Perc at night, because the incision sites require that I sleep on my back, which hurts my back. I take the Perc so I'm not constantly awakened by back pain and my body screaming at me, "sleep on your side, idiot!"

Another oddity--I have little interest in food. If you know me well, you know how out of character that is. I love to eat, especially food I cook myself. But right now I'm mildly nauseous all the time, and while I do eat, I'm never truly enthusiastic about it. I know that will fix itself in time.

Writing, housework, errands and cooking are all getting short shrift. But I'm watching lots of "West Wing" episodes! I settled on "The West Wing" as something to watch while I rest, because it's complex enough to interest me but has nothing in it that will frighten the kids. No violence, just people in offices talking. No sexual content either. Also, it is my favorite TV show ever, and an example of fantastic writing. If I can't write myself, might as well soak up someone else's work.

Though I can't write at the computer much, I'm writing plenty in my head. I'm considering writing a completely new opening to Finneas Trapp (that is, a new chapter 1). This is a bit risky, because the chapter 1 I have now generally gets good feedback and is liked by many readers. But I think the story gets dramatically better in chapter 2, and I want to see if I can get to the good stuff faster, and set up the twists better. What I'll probably do is write this alternative chapter 1 and post the first thousand words of it on the OWW along with the first thousand of the original chapter 1, and ask reviewers which they think is better (specifically, which makes them most interested in reading further).