Where Did it Go?

The next prompt for NaPoWriMo over at Poetry Thursday is "misplaced". There are a couple of things I seem to have misplaced. Firstly, I seem to ahve misplaced the weekend. Only a moment ago it was just starting and now it's Sunday night already.

Actually, I know where most of Sunday went. Which brings me to the second thing I misplaced. I seem to have misplaced my brain. Today I went orienteering. It didn't start too well when I took a wrong turn on the way to the event. I stopped to check my street map, which I couldn't find. That did lead to some good when I looked under the seat and instead of the map found a pair of sunglasses belonging to another orienteer, who I had given a lift to a previous event. At least I was able to return them. The reason I couldn't find the street map, I found later on, was because it was on the floor of the car beneath my gear bag. Why I didn't look there I'm not quite sure.

When I got to the event I purchased a map, chose a course, signed up for a start time and headed for the start. My time was called, I went to copy the controls from the master map and realised I had forgotten to collect a set of control descriptions. So I had to go back to get them, and choose another start time. That led to a half hour delay because there were a lot of competitors queuing up.

Eventually I got out on the course, and I didn't do very well. I won't describe all the mistakes I made. I wasn't very pleased though after a long struggle up a hill covered with very long grass between the fifth and the sixth control, to realise that if I had chosen a different route I could have had a very easy run most of the way over a neatly mowed field. Then there were the controls where I was confused, looking for controls with letters on them instead of numbers. Actually, the letters were on the map but the numbers were on the controls. So I found the right control but went right past it thinking it was the wrong one.

All in all, once I had actually started, after all the delays, it took me nearly two hours to finish a 3.5 km course. Given that it was physically difficult, with a lot of ups and downs and some very tangly vegetation, that's still a long time even for me. I almost decided not to finish, but I'm glad that I continued. A year ago I would have been exhausted after being out for that length of time, now at least I was not too stiff at the end, and even managed to run on the flat part between the last few controls.

Still, if anyone knows where my brain went, I'd like it back.

After the orienteering I dropped in at my daughter's for a while as she keeps "open house" on a Sunday afternoon. Then later on she came around for dinner. I posted my poem for the previous prompt, and that was about it. I haven't even done the dishes yet. (I guess they will still be there in the morning).

NaPoWriMo has been eating my spare time. There are a couple of things I wanted to post about. Firstly, Deb at Red Shoe Ramblings (see the side bar, my brain is too fried to do many linky things tonight) nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award. Thanks, Deb! I meant to spend part of the weekend putting the button in the side bar, and choosing five more blogs to pass the honour on to (since that's the way it works). It will have to wait. Wednesday is a public holiday here, so maybe I'll manage it then.

The other thing I wanted to write about was the Ten Zen Seconds blog tour. I'm going to be a host in early May. Eric Maisel has come up with this very interesting idea to promote his book - he is visiting a different blog every day for about seven weeks, and answering questions about the book and the concept of Ten Zen Seconds. I'll write more about it later in the week, for now, you can visit his site and learn more here. (The first link is to the front page of the site, and the second link is to the dates for the blog tour). I've nearly finished the book and it seems like a very useful technique for centering yourself when doing creative work, or any work for that matter.

Now, I'm off to bed. Maybe my brain will pop back in my head while I sleep.