Sunday Update - 2025 Week 50

Two weeks left of 2025.  Hmm.  

I didn't do much writing this week.  I had one really good day where I whipped out 1300-ish words.  Then things happened and I couldn't pick up the thread again and excuses-excuses.  

No marketing.  As a result, no sales.  Zip, zilch, nada, bubkus.  I'll try and change that this week, but I'm pretty bummed about my chances.

I read some more of that Stellar Ranger novel.  It's still pretty good.

I did a boatload of baking.  3 batches of cookies and a batch of pretzel turtles were made.  I made devil's food cake cookies with peppermint bark kisses, yellow cake mix cookies with regular kisses, and coconut rum cookies.

Let's not talk about activity.  I did one day in the woods and then nada.  And due to that, we won't talk about weight either, eh?  It ain't good.

Christmas shopping was done - online only.  I ordered Mom's and MIL's prezzies.  MIL's was delivered Friday and Mom's will be delivered today.  Early, I know.  Damn Amazon efficiency.  But I'd rather have them show early than wait to shop and have the stuff I want for them to not be in stock.  I also ordered books for the kids next door.  Those will be here tomorrow.  Then I'll wrap them - because I bought wrapping paper for the first time in 13 years.  I also bought tissue paper, which I used to wrap one of my art pieces.  I hung it back on the wall and am using it to display Christmas cards we receive.  So far, it only has two cards on it, but it's pretty anyway.  I'll unwrap the print after the new year.  

In case you missed this, here's my other Christmas decorations...

That's Sawyer down front on the comforter I put on top of my new chest.

Other than that, it's been pretty blah here.  Hubs has been sawing away in the woods.  I've been a toad.  Today it's too cold to do much of anything outside, which is just as well because I have spreadsheets for 2026 that need to be done.  Ah well.  As my brother used to say 'Big whoppin' wee'.

What's been up in your lives this week?

Thursday This n That

 I have a 20 pound cat in my lap.  (Okay, he's probably closer to 18.  I'm rounding up.)  It's hard to type with a large cat in your lap, so bear with me.  And all mistakes are his fault.

I spent part of yesterday ordering Christmas prezzies, because like the nimrod I am, I forgot.  I still have to order for the Moms.  Their presents are picked out, but I didn't have the heart to add another charge to my account that day.  I'll do it today.  

Part of what I ordered was for the kids next door.  I've never bought them prezzies before.  I just wanted to.  They're good kids.  They're each getting a book and I found awesome books for under $10 each, so yay.  I hope they don't already have what I ordered for them.  And no, I don't get prezzies for my own kid anymore.  She's 32.  She can get her own prezzies.  She gets a card, like everyone else.  Maybe if I was rich, but I'm not, so there ya are.

I also ordered a book for myself.  I bet you're like super-surprised there.  What you might find surprising... or not as the case may be... is the book I ordered is on woodworking.  Yes, I have been talking about maybe starting my hand at woodworking for a while now.  The book might help with that.  Oh, and I got a book for the both of us on art - famous art masterpieces in a coffee table book.  Ho-ho-ho.

Speaking of Christmas, if you haven't seen the movie Fatman yet, you should probably do that.  It stars Mel Gibson as Kris Kringle (aka Santa) and a bratty, mean kid hires an assassin because Santa didn't bring him what he wanted.  And the hitman has something against Santa anyway.  This version of Santa is totally badass.  It's kinda gory there for a bit, but that's the kind of movie it is - an action flick for our times.

"No, Sawyer, you can't have my coffee, and get your tail out of my face."  For the longest time, I wished that Sawyer would be a lap cat.  I got my wish.  LOL

Okay, that's about it out of me right now.  I need more coffee.  :wanders off:

There's Work to be Done

 Hubs and I have been working in the woods, as you probably know if you've been here long enough.  Why not?  It's cold enough to fend off the ticks and the snakes.  Plus, it's awesome exercise that doesn't bore the hell out of me.  

Anyway, I took some pics of what exactly needs to be cleaned up out there, to give y'all an idea of what I'm talking about...

I call this one 'Crap to Clean Up':

Loads of downed cedar trees, limbs, and branches throughout that.  And this is the black cherry tree that fell back in May of 2024:

The main trunk on the left is still standing.  It's about 10 feet tall and the rest of it stretches away from there.  Here's the other end of it:

Then there's the sycamore that fell over about 3-4 months before the black cherry:

What you can't really see is the root ball behind me, which stand about 6-7 feet.  And the trunk on that sucker is about 2 feet across.  It's a monster.  Here's where the top is laying:

All that needs to be cleared out, plus the crap not pictured - fallen limbs and smaller trees, etc. - so we can walk around on our property.  I'm not sure how much we'll get done before it gets too warm to go in the woods again, but we'll do our best.  

We'll burn what we can and stack the rest.  The piles make good critter habitat.  Here's the most recent pile:

We have several of these on our original property and this is the third we've put on the new piece.  Bunnies and chipmunks really love these.  Birds, too.  And, unfortunately, the occasional skunk.  LOL, it's all good.  

Anyway, doing this makes me happy.  I love being in the woods.  

Getting Healthier

I follow a dude on FB who's something of a conservative pundit.  Good guy.  Anyway, I saw where he'd posted about his weight loss journey.  From April to now, he went from 217 to 170 - all by eating healthier and exercising.  Way to go, dude.

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about my weight loss journey.  There isn't one.  I don't care if I lose weight.  I do, however, want to be a healthier human being.  Cuz, let's face it, I ain't gettin' any younger and the old parts are starting to notice that their warranty has expired.

Every Sunday for the past whatever, I've tried to post about my activity level and with that, I put my weight.  Yeah, yeah, a lady is supposed to talk about her weight.  I think that's a silly taboo.  I'm not ashamed of being 177-ish pounds.  It is what it is.  (Ladies also aren't supposed to mention their age.  I'm 55.  I'm such a rebel.)

Time out... I was just searching to see what my ideal weight would be for my age.  Freakin' idjits have made it so you now have to calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI) and age doesn't factor into it (except whether you're a child (under 20) or an adult (over 20) which is stupid in my opinion).  Anyway, a person who's 5'7 and 177 pounds has a BMI of 27.72 according to the Forbes BMI calculator - and that means I'm 'overweight'.  Which is actually better than the last time I checked one of those and it told me I was obese.  According to them a healthy weight is between 118 and 159.  I tried another place that calculated using height and actual age to find my ideal weight (it came out in kilograms... damn metric people... which I then had to convert to pounds).  According to this place, my ideal weight is 138.

Okay... my ideal weight when I was 25 was 135, so I'm not sure what the hell they're talking about.  Oh, and I'm probably carrying around 10 pounds of boob which skews things.  Maybe I should delete 10 pounds so I can see what the rest of my body should weigh.  Me minus 10 pounds of boob is 167, which is only 8 pounds over what Forbes consider within healthy parameters.  I'm okay with that.

Actually, this wasn't supposed to be about weight, but I fell down that rabbit hole, so you get to enjoy reading about it.  

The point I was trying to make is that in order for ME to feel healthier, I need to up my activity level - regardless of calories and make-up of calories (you know... carbs versus proteins, and all that rot.)  I learned this about myself ages ago.  If I sit around, I end up feeling like shit.  My hips hurt, my legs hurt, walking to the mailbox makes me tired.  That's no way to live.  

When I'm a good girl, I do something active every day and that makes me feel better.  And for me, feel better = healthier.  When I'm a bad girl, I sit on my ass all day and feel like shit.  Simple stuff in my life, really.  

Right now, I'm getting more active.  It's cooler, for one thing, which means I can get out in the woods again.  I love woods work better than any other activity.  I'm sawing limbs and throwing logs.  I'm tramping over uneven terrain - uphill, downhill, sideways - over rocks and logs while maintaining my balance.  It all uses a lot of different muscle groups and gets the heart a-pumpin'.

I spent 6.25 hours in the woods last week, and I'm feeling pretty good.  Oh, sure, everything aches today, but thems good aches.  Joints feel better, heart feels better.  Better is good.

Now, I just need to find the gumption to be active when it's not fun.  (Outdoors = fun. Indoors = not fun.)  It's all a balance.

How are you feeling?  How's the balance in your life?  

Sunday Update - 2025 Week 49

I'm having a tough time with the concept that there are only three weeks left to 2025.  Where did November go???  Ack.  Okay, it's true, but yah.  Anyway...

The writing went pretty well last week.  I wrote 4 out of 7 days and ended up with about 4000 more words, which put DN3 over 40K.  Woot.  It's all coming together.  

The marketing?  Not so well.  Still, I moved 41 copies of CU, which is better than nothing.  Still no $$$ for December yet.  Which is depressing.  I'm not sure what I'll do this week, or if I'll even do anything. Not selling gets pretty depressing.  Tune in tomorrow for the answer.  If there's a Marketing Monday post, I did it.  If not, then nope.

I'm working my way through reading Stellar Ranger - a SF/Crime/Western mashup.  It's pretty interesting.

In baking news, I made another cheesecake - and I'm done with that for a while.  I also made a vat of Turkey Noodle Soup and another vat of chili.  I meant to make corn bread to go with the chili, but it didn't happen.  :shrug:

On the activity front, I was active every day but one.  Loads of woods-work and one day was groceries.  Unfortunately, today was the first time I weighed myself since before Thanksgiving and I'm up 3 pounds over the last weigh-in.  :shrug:  Maybe I was up 5 pounds and lost two in the woods.  In that case, yay.  Maybe yay?  Weight: 177.8.  

Speaking of woods work... Most of what I was doing out there was cleaning the areas around the big dead cherry to prep for chainsaw work and clearing the new property line.  Then Hubs and I took a line from one end of the property to the other and he tapped in stakes with pretty pink ribbon, so we know where we are when we're in the woods.  I took pics, but I haven't downloaded them yet.  The woods are still an unholy mess, but progress has begun.  Hubs took the chainsaw out on its maiden voyage yesterday, and for this, I christened it.  Our chainsaw is now named Buzz.

As for critters, we saw a bald eagle over our property.  Yay.  And Lumpy is still alive as of yesterday... not sure if yay is appropriate there.  She's pretty damn skinny, and her coat looks like shit, but she doesn't appear to be suffering, so I'm torn.  Not that there's anything we can do about it except wish for either a speedy recovery or a gentle end.  Speaking of ends, I found a deer skull, pelvis, long bone, and one vertebrae in the woods yesterday.  Not Lumpy.  They've all been out there a while and they seem small enough to be a 4-6 month fawn.  Nature's a bitch sometimes.

I can't think of anything else I did this week.  I'm lucky I could think of all the above with as sore as I am right now.  Throwing logs and walking around on lumpy, heavily-inclined hillsides is not for the faint of heart.  I think I need an Aspercreme bath and an Aleve drip.

How was your week?

Thursday This n That

I sometimes wonder what the people who gossip to me say about me when I'm not around.  I don't care.  I'm just curious.

Yesterday, I saw a coyote.  I was driving down the highway and it was standing in a field.  It actually looked quite majestic.  Coyotes are always the rangy, scaggy things they're portrayed to be, ya know.

It was an outstanding coyote.  It was out standing in a field.  ROFL

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers... Their bellies aren't really all that yellow and they don't actually suck sap, they lick it.  But vaguely-yellowish bellied saplicker doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

There's nothing quite like waking up in the morning, wandering toward the bathroom, and stepping in cat puke.  Thankfully, I stepped in the smallest bit.  After I turned the lights on, there were several piles.  Not sure which cat urped all over the kitchen, but thankfully, he didn't urp on the carpet.

I keep receiving emails from scammers, trying to get me to buy their services for books that aren't even mine.  This morning alone, they wanted me to hire them to promote something called After Midnight and something else called Hurricane Secrets.  ROFL... what boobs.

And now I seem to be out of things to this-n-that.  Feel free to drop your own.  And have a great day!

Lumberjackin'

Yesterday, I was out in the woods, clearing piles of deadfall, etc. in preparation for the chainsaw work.  There's a lot of crap out there on the new property.  We've had several large trees fall over in the last few years and they're just laying there, clogging up the paths and generally retarding progress.  So, we bought a chainsaw to deal with them.

Except in order to get to them and work, we need to clear away all the limbs and sticks and little bushes.  We also need to clear all that crap so we can chart the property line.  The black cherry tree's upper branches are right across the line.  And there's a cedar fallen across the lower part of the line.  Plus there's a stand of spicebushes down there.  It's a mess.

In the middle, we have a huge sycamore that fell over during the storm of May 2024.  That definitely needs to be chopped up.  Walking around it to get from the top of the property to the bottom is a pain in the ass.

So, yeah, chainsaw.  

Now, I'm not an idiot.  Hubs will be working the chainsaw and I will be staying the hell out of the way.  I like my appendages and he's more skilled at that stuff anyway.  But if he's doing all the chainsaw, I'll be contributing by giving him access and then helping drag the logs up the hill.  That's why I bought the sled.  

What's any of this have to do with writing?  Not much.  Well, except for the fact that all the work I did yesterday made for really ouchie hands today.  Typing this is a symphony of ouch.  I need a bucket of Aspercreme and a pound of Aleve.

Still, it's stuff that's gotta be done and we're not getting any younger.  (Okay, it doesn't HAVE TO be done.  I want it done, so I'm doing it.  It'll be so pretty when we're finished.)  Chop it up, drag it up, stack it.  Plus, it's good exercise and it gets me out of the house.  Fresh air and all that.  And eventually, all that wood will be used to heat the house.