It's Monday, which means marketing. It's also the day after the Spring time change, which means I am dragging ass running late. Have mercy on me.
Argh. Time change... I'm later posting this than I thought I was. Derp.
I didn't get much sleep last night. I went to bed at 9 like a good girl, but I couldn't sleep and then Sawyer was being a turd, so I just got up. I finally went back to bed at midnight. Unfortunately, I still laid there. And I had no sooner fallen asleep when I had to pee.
Anyway... Per my current outlook on life, no writing or editing. I did some marketing for AD, but didn't really move many books. Tomorrow WIOH goes on the freebie block. (You might notice that for this 90-day run, so far, the books have been in the order in which they were published. I'm not sure how long I'll continue this, but there it is.)
I'm still reading duMaurier. I'm about halfway through.
Earlier this week, I made raisin walnut quick bread. Yums.
On the activity front, it's been less about burning calories than accomplishing stuff. I did some gardening and some carving, groceries, etc. I haven't weighed myself since last week. I don't expect the number to have changed.
As for carving, all my supplies are here and I'm in the process of teaching myself how to use the tools. I have a big chunk of cedar on the sunporch for that purpose. While I was messing with it, a thin piece came off in my hand, so now I'm carving on that. It's probably 8 inches by 4 inches and maybe a third of an inch thick. It's shape reminded me of feathers, so I'm trying to make that happen. I also might cut the end of the chunk off to make myself a cube of wood and turn that into a sphere. Additionally, my salesman brain got the idea to carve baby bunnies wearing diapers... and now I know that there are places where you can buy diapers to put on rabbits. Anyway, I'm still excited about the hobby, so yay.
On the gardening front, I planted the carrot seeds and the potato chunks. Now we wait. Still no sign from most of the trees that they are, in fact, still alive. :shrug: It's early yet. If they don't make it, I'll use their pots for veggies and other volunteer trees and try again next year. This isn't a short game I'm playin' here. Oh, and I need to move my pepper plants outside. Heh, one of my peppers has a carrot growing in with it. A baby carrot I bought to eat was starting to grow in the fridge. I cut the top off and stuck it into a pot with one of the peppers. It's kinda cute, so I'll keep it.
Anyway, I think that's it for me this morning. Not exactly what you might have stopped here looking for, but I hope my humdrum existence was a little interesting for you.
I've heard a quote from Einstein to the effect that if you can't explain something so that a 5 year old could understand it, then you don't know the thing. :shrug: Sorry, but my brain doesn't work that way. I can know a thing and understand it inside my head, and still not be able to explain it outside my head. Hell, you should hear me just trying to have a random conversation with poor Hubs. I get words wrong - substituting the totally wrong word in a sentence and not even realizing it. I stumble. I stammer. I'm a fucking verbal mess about 80% of the time. (Hubs is very patient or he would've divorced my ass ages ago.)
I'm better on paper. I might be able to explain something to a five year old when it's written down, but then the five year old wouldn't understand it because of his reading level. Even then, though, I still substitute words without knowing it. Sometimes, it's simply substituting one homonym for another. Sometimes it's substituting a synonym. Occasionally, it's an antonym, which really screws up the meaning of a sentence. Every once it a while, my brain throws in a word that isn't any of those and has nothing whatsoever to do with the word I had in mind - which I'm usually positive WAS the word I had in mind until I go back and edit. Then I'm all like 'what the hell do I even mean here?'
Thank goodness for editing. Unfortunately, I can't even what I say once it's out of my mouth. Random people I encounter on the outside world often look at me like I'm a moron. That's okay. I can sometimes sound like a moron. I don't let it get to me anymore. Oh, it used to frustrate the hell out of me, but I made my peace with this brain thing ages ago. For the most part... I still have my days of irritation. Again, all props to Hubs and his patience.
I kind of felt bad for the people I worked with. I never told them about my brain damage. I needed the job and I knew I was able to do the job without too much of a problem. And I was right. Occasionally, though, my co-workers had to contend with my long pauses while my brain searched for the right words, rather than let the wrong words pop out. The good ones got used to it, the not-so-good ones continued to let it bother them. The good co-workers learned that when I finally did resumed talking again, I knew what I was talking about. Of course, all of my issues get worse when I'm hurried or stressed or tired - all of which were functions of my job at the time.
And this is why I don't do debates or confrontation, even online. I get all het up about it and then even my fingers betray me. Nope, not worth it. I'm better just dropping an opinion and walking away. This blog allows me to do that. You don't like my opinions, fine. You can walk away, too. But don't try to debate me or confront me. It won't happen. I'll block you and wander off to do something much more enjoyable - like an at-home root canal.
Anyway, I'm just sayin'. Einstein wasn't always right. ;o)
Hang on a sec... I need more coffee... Okay, I'm back.
My Amazon order was supposed to be delivered yesterday. It was on an Amazon truck, headed this way. We waited. And waited. And when it got dark, we turned the porchlight on. At 9, we finally gave up, turned the light off and went to bed. This morning, Amazon says it's been delayed due to weather. No biggie. We did have one hell of a sploosher. Still, it would've been nice if they'd mentioned the possible delay yesterday afternoon. Sort of a 'hey, it looks like there's a possibility of our vehicle getting either blown off the road or submerged in the deluge, so we're probably not gonna make it' thing. Anyway, now they're predicting delivery on the 7th. Two days? The weather wasn't THAT bad. No swirly-whirlies or anything. :shrug: Yeah, there's nothing important in my order. Carving design stuff mostly. It's the idea that irritates me.
I wonder what all this rain is doing to my newly-planted carrot seeds. Eh, time will tell.
The coffee's not helping yet. I need a smoke. Hang on. Be right back... Okay. Thanks.
Yesterday, the neighbor kid was walking the road by himself. He's like 7, I think. He's a good kid and this is a fairly safe neighborhood, but we were concerned. I wasn't allowed to leave the yard by myself until I was 10. Of course, we did have those boys that got murdered about 10 minutes east of town when I was little. Maybe I worry too much. It's the grandmother genes I will never use poking their heads out, most likely.
Of course, after that, the episodes of the crime shows we wanted to watch seemed to be all about kids - one was cops tracking a pedophile ring, another one had a guy who'd murdered a kid. We settled on an episode of Harry Wild that only featured teens peripherally and none of them got hurt. Then we watched a true-disaster show.
I had planned on making my first cuts into woods yesterday, but it was so damn gloomy out that the light sucked out on the sunporch where I wanted to carve. Oh, well. The wood's not going anywhere.
Okay, I think that's it for me. Anything you want to add?
Okay, so maybe I went a little crazypants, but I'm jumping into this woodcarving thing with both feet. I bought the books and I bought the tools. I've ordered the stuff* I'll need for designing what I will eventually carve - charcoal pencils, tracing paper, carbon paper. All in all, I've spent about $135 on this so far. Thank goodness I don't need to buy wood.
I already have several pieces of fine wood set aside. I have the dogwood and the lilac pieces, loads of cedar, and some smaller black cherry set aside. There's a persimmon tree that needs to be dug out of one of our wood piles, which I'll do today. Years ago**, I also set aside a few pieces of unidentified wood that I hope will make excellent walking sticks. Oh, and there's the beaver wood I've collected. I kinda know what I'm going to do with the beaver wood, even if I don't know exactly what kind of wood each of the pieces are.
If all of this works out, I will start selling pieces. That is obviously down the road. I don't expect to start cranking out saleable goods immediately. Hell, I'm half-afraid I won't turn out anything that doesn't look like crap... ever.
There's also the distinct possibility that I will be limited by my already crappy hands. Man, they're hurting this morning and I didn't even do anything to irritate them. (Other than typing this post. Blerg.) How I'll handle using them to push sharp metal through wood remains to be seen.
But I'm gonna try.
All I know right now is that I'm excited about doing this and that's a good feeling. It's been a while since I was this excited about any endeavor. (Probably like 11 years... which is how long it's been since I started my self-publishing journey.)
I guess the big hope is that I'll bleed some of my visual creativity onto the wood. I used to be really into creating art. Hell, I took 4 years of art classes in HS and one in college. I ought to be able to do something, even after all these years.
Not sure if I'll continue to detail my carving journey here, or create another blog. :shrug: Time will tell. Wish me luck.
*All ordered stuff is due to be here by Saturday, so I have plenty of time to start practicing carving before I get into design.
** which tells you how long I've been thinking about doing this.
Since DE did so well last week, I thought I'd try marketing Accidental Death. First book... second book... :shrug: Anyway, there ya are...
I hope you enjoy it.
Well, we're bombing the hell out of Iran. Yay. The Ayatollah is dead. Also yay. We're hitting military targets, those fuckers are hitting civilian targets. Not so yay and also proof that what we're doing needs to be done to completion and not half-assed like the Gulf War. The good people of Persia are happy we're doing what we're doing. Anyone not happy can go pound sand. But they better do it fast before we turn it into glass. Glass up your ass. :gigglesnort:
Anyway, my life...
No writing or editing. I'm not sure when I'll do that again, but I'm not calling it quits, so the blog title stays. I did some marketing, which for some reason took off like a rocket and garnered me some sales. I finished February with 17.16 books sold for $29.76. Not big money, but better than a sharp stick, so I'm happy. And I've already got page reads this morning so my March dashboard doesn't look like a ghost town. I'm not sure which book I'll pimp tomorrow, so stay tuned.
I read two books on wood carving this week. One on whittling and the other a more comprehensive volume. I'm also slowly making my way through The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne duMaurier.
No baking.
Activity... It was a busy week for me. I did something active 5 out of 7 days. Early in the week, when it was still cool, I worked in the woods. Other days, I did cleaning projects. One day I did gardening. I surprised myself by actually discovering visible biceps. Woot, I have muscles again! Unfortunately, I also ate like a horse this week, so... Weight: 177.2 =op
My wood carving hobby is getting exciting. Like I said, I read two books about it, and since my tools arrived on Friday, I can now get started learning by doing - which is my preferred way to learn anyway.
As for gardening, I moved all my baby trees outside. I also filled pots with dirt and I'm ready to plant carrot seeds. I'll be ready to plant potatoes once I cut my starter spuds into quarters, dry those cut edges, and buy more dirt. All things in their own time, I guess. I'll also be planting tomatoes once the local store starts carrying seedlings. Oh, and I have three green pepper plants that made it through the winter in my spare room, so those'll be going into pots and outside once the weather is guaranteed to not turn to freezing.
All in all, life is pretty good here. I'm busy-busy, even if it's not writing related, and I'm okay with that. (Not super-okay, otherwise, I wouldn't feel the need to go on and on about it, but okay enough for now.)
How are things in your world?
