This n That Thursday

I'm still in a writing funk - which has spread to marketing, editing, and talking to other people about writing.

I saw a hummingbird yesterday!

I also spent most of yesterday preparing the bathroom for painting.  Total caulk and spackle extravaganza.  And the discovery that the boobshits who owned this house had used a rather long nail to put up the towel bar hardware.  (Something like this.)  Once I got that pulled out and had dented the damn drywall, I found what I thought was another nail in the wall behind the hardware.  I couldn't pull it, so I called in a man.  Hubs finally got it pulled.  It wasn't a nail.  It was a really long screw someone had cut the head off of.  (Sorta like this.)  After which the wall was a freakin' mess.  AND, while I was prepping the surface for drywall repair, I found that they'd tried to repair it once before - with CAULK.  Ugh.  Anyway, I got the holes repaired and everything that's supposed to have spackle or drywall repair has that, and everywhere that's supposed to have caulk has caulk. 

Time for a PSA, Please, please, please, for the sake of all you hold holy, don't use caulk to repair holes in drywall or plaster.  Spackle is cheap.  It comes in a squeezie tube or a little bucket, and it's so much easier to work with before and after.  Once caulk dries, it turns into something like rubber and it sticks to everything.  You can't sand it, and you can't remove it without tearing a big hole in the wall.

Today, I will be sanding (because the repaired area looked like it was spackled by a child), and I will be taping.  I hope to get to painting shortly thereafter.  The walls will be Cappuccino Foam and the moldings / cabinets will be Soft Wool.  Off white on off white.  And now I feel like Shelby in Steel Magnolias. "My colors are Blush and Bashful." ;o)

Of course, now I want to paint all the rooms in the house.  Seriously.  Everything needs a fresh coat.  To which Hubs says "When you have a paintbrush in your hand, everything looks like it needs painting."  He so funny.

There are also several other spots that need drywall repair...

Ah, the joys of home ownership.  ;o)

What's on your 'this n that' tap today?

Sunday Update - Week 15

Okay, so it's Week 15.  Week 3 times 5. Week 30 divided by 2.  Whatever.  Here we are again.

I finished this edit pass on Fertile Ground yesterday and sent it off to the Awesome Wonderful Editor.  She'll have it back to me by the 1st. 

I have the cover done.  It follows the same general feeling of Dying Embers now.  Yay.  I'll show it off in my newsletter at the end of this month.  Have you subscribed to the newsletter yet?  There'll be a snippet of the book in there, too. 

Since I was pretty much all about getting Fertile Ground done, I don't have much else to report.

Oh, I saw a bald eagle on Friday!  I thought they'd all already gone north, but nope.  There's still at least one around here. 

This week, I will get back to work on my bathroom.  Tomorrow, I'll finish patching and caulking. I'll probably also start taping things off.  Haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do about the damn mirror.  The bathroom has a huge mirror covering most of one wall from the counter to the light bar, and all the whatchamadoodles that hold it to the wall are clear, so I have to paint behind them without getting paint on them or without trying to move that whole big sheet of glass.  (Because moving the mirror will definitely result in mirror breakage.  I know me.)  I'm thinking I'll remove one thingie and paint behind it, wait for it to dry, move another thingie, etc.  Or maybe move every other thingie and paint behind all those so I don't have to wait so much.  We'll see.  If you hear the sound of shattering glass, my idea didn't go so well.  ;o)

And that's about it for me today.  How's things with you?

This n That Thursday

I finished the line edits for Fertile Ground last night.

I also figured out some basic ways to address the things in my editor's letter.  This occurred right before I fell asleep for my nap, so I promptly forgot them. 

I take a nap every day. 

Some days I am unprepared to face humanity.  Yesterday was one of those days.

I identified the big tree off the backyard.  It's another black cherry.  I think the reason I was unable to identify it before was 1) all its leaves are at least 20 feet off the ground, 2) I hadn't noticed it blooming or fruiting in past years.  I think the gnarly vine growing up it had prevented the poor thing from living up to its potential because this year it is very obviously blooming.  (If you remember, I spent some major time last year eradicating vines.)  The blooming made identification way easier. 

Hubs and I cleaned the grill the other day.  Inside, next to the propane tank, sat a gray tree frog.  I rescued it and put it in with my irises.  It spent most of the day over there, happily clinging to the broad flat leaves or hiding near the fat bulbs. 

The world has gone pretty much batshit nuts.  Which is probably why I am unprepared to face humanity some days.  And why I spend a lot of time talking about nature and hiding in my hermit hole.

I have ants on my peonies!  If you've ever had peonies, you understand why I am excited about this.  If you haven't, peonies won't bloom without ants to help by eating the bud covering.  No ants last year = buds but no blooms.  Here's hoping my pretty peonies give me loads of pretty flowers this year.  Lord knows I have enough buds.

What's up with you today?

Sunday Update - Week 14

Welcome to your regularly scheduled Sunday Update.  On Sunday and everything. 

Okay, so I gave myself a good talking to on Wednesday over on Outside the Box.  That didn't work.  So, I bitch-slapped myself mentally during the wee hours of Saturday morning.  That seemed to do the trick and I am back on track with editing Fertile Ground.  As of last night, I have 180 pages left to edit - after I edited 50 yesterday.  If I can get through 50 pages of edits a day, I will turn this in on time.  Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but I can do this.  If I stop frittering away my time with other stuff.

I spent part of last week prepping my bathroom for painting.  Spackled holes, took down pictures, removed that ghastly and useless shelf above my window, spackled some more, bought paint and more spackle, began to think about caulking...  STOP.  My bathroom is now a shambles and will remain that way until I finish this editing pass.  I'm leaving it all right where it is so I can stare at the mess I made every time I go in there.  I believe it's irritating the crap out of Hubs - even though he hasn't said anything - but I need to do this the way I'm doing this.  The sooner I finish MY WORK, the sooner I can have a nice bathroom again.

I spent part of last week getting the spare bedroom ready to be a guestroom because the Kid might be visiting in May.  I bought a new bed, and sheets, and moved stuff so when the furniture arrives I can just put it in there.  There's some patching work that needs to be done in there, too.  I was getting ready to wash the walls... STOP.  I have 6 weeks to get that done.  I only have 7 days to finish this editing pass.  The room will be ready when she gets here, but not this week.

Hubs is refurbishing the deck.  He bought nice new boards to replace the crappy ones and painted all those yesterday.  I offered to help him paint the railings... STOP.  He knows I have work to do, so he turned me down. 

The iris beds are looking awesome.  I just thinned them last summer and they're already looking ready to thin again.  Plus, I still have bulbs in a bucket, looking for a home.  We decided to put them along the south wall of the garage.  All we have to do is dig up about a foot wide patch... STOP.  I told Hubs that was a great idea, but not this week.  (See?  I'm getting better at this.)

My daily activity routine suffered this past week.  Scattered focus will do that to a gal.  I really only exercised twice and took a walk one day.  I got back on track yesterday.  This will not be a stop because I need this.  I feel better when I do something active like dancing rather than sitting on my arse all day.

What do you have to update this week? 

This n That Thursday

Today's picture in my bird-a-day calendar is an Atlantic Puffin.  Which is kinda cool.  I prefer everyday birds, but this is good.  The only birds I'm really not fond of are parrots.  Long story, but my parrot dislike probably has its roots in living with a man who owned a parrot.  Three years of hell - from the man, not the parrot (although the parrot did his share).  So, no, I don't like parrots.  Lovebirds are okay.

There were storms in the area again yesterday.  We got like an inch and half of rain in a couple hours.  Whoosh.  But the worst of it missed us entirely.  Again.  There was a band of it northwest of us and another southeast of us, but the whole storm was running northeast.  Sorry about it hitting people in Tulsa, though.  That sucks.

Here's a picture of my front garden:

See the pretty tulips?  Well, this is the only place they exist anymore.  Something came along and bit the heads off of every one of them but the dark orange one nearest the house.  I should've known better than to move tulips out to the edge of the bed.  I'm blaming deer.  Might've been a rabbit.  Whatever it was ate a couple and then spit the others onto the lawn.  At least it left my peonies alone.  And my mums.  Deer resistant plants.  I need to have all deer resistant plants.

I need to put my hummingbird feeder back up for the season.

That's all I got.  What's the this-n-that for you today?

Sunday Update - Week 13 (Tuesday Edition)

Ack.  How did it get to be Tuesday?  Where did Monday go?  Ugh. Okay, since Sunday was Easter, I shifted the Sunday Update to today.  Which I think derailed my schedule.  Or my brain.  Neither is a hard thing to do.

What happened last week?  Well, I was a toad.  I didn't touch my editing work.  I didn't do any new words.  I did some marketing stuff, but that's an ongoing thing, and I didn't do much.

Accidental Death was free Friday and Saturday.  I got about 800 downloads, which netted me 4 new Goodreads ratings, but no reviews.  And residual no sales or page reads so far.  :shrug:

I spent a lot of time cleaning.  The office is super tidy.  I vacuumed the floor, including under all the furniture I could move by myself and along the baseboards.  I dusted everything.  I still need to file that big stack of stuff sitting on top of my printer.  And I need to shred that pile of printed pages.  But for me, this is clean.  I also deep cleaned my bathroom.  I'll spare you the gory details there.  As I said on Thursday, editing is a sure way to make certain I have a clean house.  Clean house = editing avoidance.

I read Dracula for the first time.  As good as I expected it to be.  I mean, it's a classic.  It wouldn't have become a classic if it didn't have something that drew readers in.  (Let's not talk about my dislike for Jane Austen, shall we?)

Easter was quiet.  I made a ham.  We now have loads of leftover ham.

Other than that, not much going on over here.  What have you been up to?

Hoppy Bunny Day!

Happy Easter, Everyone!  In celebration, I'd like to share a little bunny story...

Long ago in Michigan, I hired some people to come mow my tragically overgrown lawn.  In the process, they uncovered what they thought were a nest of moles.  I went out to see what they were talking about and found a nest of bunnies.  So, I picked all the bunnies up - because their nest was clearly wrecked - and put them in a shoebox until the mowers were finished. 

Then I took them back outside and rebuilt a nest for them in the same location,

Put them all back inside,

put a large cardboard box with a mama bunny sized doorhole cut into it over the top, and left them alone.

I watched it to make sure the mama came back, and sure enough, she did.

Then I really left them alone until I stopped seeing the mom around the yard. (Mom bunnies stop taking care of their babies pretty early.  I watched to make sure I didn't see her for a few days, and I made sure the babies were eating on their own.)

Now, because I was getting ready to move and because I lived in a populated area where rabbits are likely to either become roadkill or petfood, I decided to move them out to the country where I grew up.  I took the baby bunnies who were now capable of caring for themselves and placed them in a laundry basket.  (Not an easy task with hyper-active baby bunnies, lemme tell ya.)

I drove them out to where I grew up.  I released them into a field that would always and forever be a field, right near where the family dog was buried. 

I hope they lived long lives and made loads of baby bunnies with the local rabbits.  And I like to imagine that our old dog's ghost spent many happy hours chasing them through the long grass.

Happy Bunny Day, Everyone!