I woke this morning and my fever was gone. Still have the cough, but I think I have turned the corner on this thing, thank goodness. No more rubber legs. Now, after having written that, I feel a touch paranoid, remembering what this disease used to be, and how it struck people down. I remember watching the body count day and after day with the haunting feeling that I would add to it.

Those days I stayed home and wrestled with a dark depression: How COULD I survive? How dared I? Over a million people in the US alone? My SIL lost two of her best friends to it. An old friend from grade school lost her son. And a dear friend from high school lost her brother, right after he had started to improve.

I'm trying hard to say what I want and need to say. To all those people who say, oh I had it, it wasn't that bad, I say, not that bad for YOU. But it's the nature of this beast to be opportunistic. It searches out the weakness in people. It lives in our blood. It's a freaking vampire, is what it is. We need to not forget all the people who were lost. We can celebrate that we're still standing, yes, but let's not dance on their graves, shall we not?

And I raise a heartfelt middle finger to those who don't believe COVID killed that many people. I was told once, oh, it's just people dying and them saying it was COVID. Well, um, yeah, IT WAS, IN FACT, "them" saying that. It amazes me that there are still doubters. Or, as one guy told me, that's a hundred year sort of thing, referring to the last pandemic. Like he hadn't or couldn't do the math and see that it had been, gosh, 100 years. Well, duh. Hello. I remember reading about the Spanish Fls pandemic as a kid in horror.

Thank heavens for science. For the vaccines. I know the one I had two months ago is helping because I can feel my body shaking this off like a dog shakes off water. Do anyone of us realize how lucky we are? We are not dying, not like we once did. Damn.

I feel so fortunate to still be here.

Friends with a Native family and they celebrate T-Day because they love the food. I told them I celebrate my family on that day, not the pilgrims, and they said they do the same. Hey! We're still here! It's a tad universal, the feast day that celebrates in this way. It makes me happy.

I'll be making my fudge to bring along to my oldest son's house. It's damn good fudge. I cheat and use marshmallow cream to make it silky. But still—damn fine fudge.

Getting it to soft-ball consistency is the hard part. I remember my mother showing me how to tell if it was there or not: A drop in a warm cup of water, and you studied that drop, and it was supposed to look like a little, well, soft ball. You tilted the cup so it would roll around. I studied it, and would say, now? And mom would laugh and say, not yet.

Now I go by the little mud pots that form on the surface as the sugar and butter and cream boil. Once I see a certain look, I know I have five minutes, then it'll be right. I tried to show it to Levi, and he kept saying now? And I said, of course, not yet.

Levi is one of my sons, a chef. He lives in Phoenix now. He moved down a year ago. We miss him terribly. I hope he figured out the recipe for this year. I'll send it to him again, just in case. And here's the thing—if you go by the candy thermometer your fudge will be grainy and hard. Don't ask me why. It needs that five minutes.

Not yet. I can hear my mom's voice. I miss Levi. I miss François. But we celebrate what we have.

I hate the damned thing. I love it dearly. I can't seem to finish it, and I'm stuck. It's the middle. I have the beginning and, I think, the end, but the middle? All that struggle trying to get from here to there—I am overwhelmed. But I need to finish it. I HAVE to finish it. I have put it off for years, and I don't want to do that anymore.

The problem is it's not an A-Z timeline. It wanders around. It is working that way, or so people tell me. So the middle—how do I continue that winding but somehow get to where I need to go?

OMG I think I need an outline. I hate outlines. But here's the thing; I have tons of chapters written. I just need to go through them and tease out the parts that work, blend them together with the rest of the novel. Yeah. THAT'S all. But it needs to be done.

Any advice is welcome. I have tried working from point A to Z, I have tried a random approach. Part of my problem is I get scared. Yep. It's a dark little novel, starts that way and doesn't let up much. So the subject matter is daunting. And the idea of actually finishing it scares me, and I have no idea why. But there it is, living in my head, larger than life. I haven't worked on it in over a year, and instead took a break from fiction to write poetry, which I love, but...

I need to get this done. It's haunting me, and it needs to be put to rest.