It’s been a whirlwind around here as the clock keeps moving forward. Thirty-six weeks since the accident and I’m still counting.

Therapy’s helping, but slowly. Feeling’s starting to come back to the fingers of my left hand. My strength is coming back even faster — just in time for snow shoveling season!

Being concussed is, quite frankly, a total pain in the ass. I liked it better when I didn’t know I was concussed and was just living my life, full-speed ahead. To go from full speed to a crawl has been the hardest part, although the isolation is hard, too. Remember your chronically ill friends, folks, and try to keep the support coming. Sometimes, the longer things drag out, the more they need you. I’m learning this one through experience.

Since I was cleared almost two months ago to wear contacts, I piggybacked an appointment for my son to have his eyes checked with an appointment of my own for a valid prescription for contacts. The little computer they made me stare at said my prescription has gotten better and the tech asked if my strongest glasses were too strong, but then she had me read the eye chart and yep, the doctors were right when they said the cataract would make my vision worse, not better.

I see the surgeon in another month, and we’ll see what he says. On the one hand, I want my retina as healed as possible before we tackle the cataract. But on the other, I’d like the surgeries behind me. I’m eager to get on with living, not healing.

This surprises no one.

What will probably surprise all of you is that my September editing calendar is now completely booked. Depending on work, therapy (once a week, I have three hours of therapy, between the pinched nerve and the concussion work), kids, and life, it might spill into October, which is hard for impatient clients. But it’s super for me. And it’s not just that dates are booked, either. It’s that manuscripts are here, all files open on my desktop, ready and waiting for me. This is job security, man.

I have missed this. Having manuscripts waiting, being in demand.

This is what happens when you are good at what you do.

So keep it coming. Keep counting with me; I’ll be fully healed one day (maybe) and on to something hopefully with less risk and even more personal fulfillment. If you can consider anything about the past thirty-six weeks to be in any way personally fulfilling.

The car saga dragged out for a few days. It was a dead battery, an easy (and thankfully cheap) fix.

But, of course, you can’t disconnect a battery in a car like mine without it affecting the radio. Ever seen me try to drive without the radio on? Yeah, not pretty. And no, I can’t hook my phone into it and play it that way, either. For one, the entire thing wasn’t working, including the clock. For another, those hookups were put into the model year after I bought my car.

So a fruitless call to the dealer and then a very helpful call to Acura later, the radio was up and working. Of course, none of the presets had saved. But the XM came back on immediately, which I hadn’t expected to be so easy.

The car died on Sunday. Last night, I set the final radio station. Four days later.

I’m not the only one around here who’s prepared. I don’t know if it’s my announcement of an upcoming rate hike or just that time of year or all my clients are hitting the same spot in their writing cycle or what, but January and February are now completely booked. Which means that for the first time in over a year, I’m scheduling 12 weeks out.

Twelve weeks! That’s crazy!

But I am SO not arguing.

After all, I have the costs of the car to pay off. And windows to replace before I turn into a Susan-cicle. (My joke with my contractor: That’s not cool. No, it’s frozen!)

But best of all, I can not stress for a little bit. I’ve got work, and I love to work.

It’s all good, right? Well, temporarily. Until something breaks, or until March arrives. March, historically, is my absolute slowest month, for some reason I haven’t been able to figure out yet. As in: so far behind the other months, I’d have to edit twelve different projects (SO not happening, although with my crack subcontractor corps?) to bring March up to the level of every other month of the year. Really weird.

The upshot of all this? I’ve got the car mess straightened out, and affordably, too. My calendar is full. My rates are still going up for anything booked after January 1. And I get up every day, so damn grateful for the best, most creative, inventive, hardest-working clients out there.