Sunday Update - 2026 Week 26

 Halfway through the year.  Woot.  It's been a better year so far than a lot of years, even with the Iran thing, so I'm calling it a win.

Writing last week wasn't great, but it was better than the week before, so yay.  I ended up adding 2218 words to Shroudlands #2 (Song of Dream and Dragon?  Dream of Demon and Shroud?  Song of Mage and Shroud? Meh.), putting it at 40970 words total.  I'll try to do better this week.  I really need to stop overthinking it and just get the damn dirty draft done.

Marketing was lame.  FB started the week by being turdy.  And it didn't help that this week sucked for sleeping, which meant I woke up last every damn day, which makes getting those important first-thing-in-the-morning posts impossible.  Anyway, I moved 19 copies of Thicker Than Water.  :sad trombone:  I don't think I'll do any marketing this week.  

Don't ask me about reading.  

In baking news, I made a batch of Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies on Sunday.  We tore through those by Friday.  Yesterday, I tried a different recipe for cookies.  I tried halving the recipe, fucked it up, and ended up with what I'm referring to as Retard Cookies.  They're tasty and we'll eat them, but they're kinda like a cross between a regular cookie and a florentine.  I also made a pizza yesterday and the crust was not right. Not as far off as those cookies, but still.  It must've been brainfart baking day.

On the activity front, I did active things on 4 days - yardwork, cleaning, gardening, groceries.  (And making pizza counts as exercise, so there.)  Weight: 178.4 - yep, lost a pound last week.  Imagine if I could lose a pound a week.  I'd be at my target weight by the end of the year.  Heh, like that'll happen.

Hubs just came in from feeding the deer and informed me that we have 4 fawns down by the pans.  Yay.  I love fawn times.  

Gardening... I harvested Pedro this week.  He produced 6 small potatoes.  (We ate them, sliced thin and sautéed with chicken and mushrooms. Yum.)  I checked the other potato plants and no more potatoes.  Several of those plants got pushed back into the ground in hopes they'll continue to grow.  Fingers crossed.  Nothing else is ready to harvest.  Nothing is blooming at the moment.  I think I need to re-dirt the tomatoes or refeed them.  The peppers and the carrots are doing good, so yay.

My path project is coming along.  I'm about halfway through weeding the front rock path than runs along the flower bed.  Meanwhile, Hubs has been weeding the whole driveway and he's almost done.  He works harder than I do, but then again, he's a dude.  He said he'd finish my project when he gets done with the driveway.  ENABLER!  Anyway, that usually gives me the kick in the ass I need to get 'er done, so expect to see that in my update next week.  

And speaking of that, the day's not getting any cooler.  Time to get dressed, get covered in bug spray, and get digging.  Have a great day and an awesome week.  See y'all soon.  Peace out.

Saturday Snaps

 I totally forgot to put the Trail Cam out this week.  And apparently, I forgot to blog this week, too, so I didn't want to leave this to another day.  Here are some snaps I've taken over the years from various locations.

I call this one 'We Three Squirrels' (taken 1/1/12 in Colorado):

Here's an interesting shot (Colorado 2/19/13) of a hawk and its prey, except the silly, and perhaps young, hawk doesn't notice the prey sitting right behind it:

This is from 2013, too, and it's a shot here if Scarlet and her baby Sammy:

Flash forward to 2018 - the year I hung oranges for the orioles, and wasn't disappointed:

(Every other year I've hung oranges, I didn't get any orioles.  Bummer.)

And with that, I'll let you go.  Here's hoping I get the damn trail camera up this week so you can see new pics.  I hope you still enjoyed the old pics.  Have a great, day.

Oak Mite Bites

 I worked on the rock path next to the front bed yesterday.  I was out there for about an hour.  Right after I came inside, I hopped in the shower and scrubbed.  This morning, I have no less than 8 new oak mite bites.  

Now, if you're not familiar with oak mites, they're not visible to the human eye, so you can't even pay them back for biting you.  Also, they don't so much bite as burrow.  Gross, I know.  Their bites are, perhaps, the itchy bites I've ever had.  Not sure how they compare to poison ivy, since I'm immune to that shit, but from the way Hubs reacts to his bites, they're pretty much on par.  

Unfortunately, our house is not only surrounded by oaky woods, we have a huge, old, white oak that overhangs most of the front yard.  And, you guessed it, oak mites hang out in oak trees - unless it's windy when they blow out or dry when they drop out on their own.  It's hard to go outside without being exposed to oak mites.

What does one do about the bites?  Well, pretty much every anti-itch thing on the market doesn't cut it.  (I've tried just about all of them over the years.)  In fact, Benadryl gel just makes the itch worse.  The only thing I've found to get rid of the itch is to take a fingernail, dig it into the center of the bite - which sometimes has a little blister in it - and dig it out.  Hurts like a bitch.  Then take a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol - the strongest you can find - and scrub the bite with it.  Stings like a bitch.  THEN take merthiolate and dab some of that on.  Burns like a bitch.  It's pretty much all bitchy, but it's better than the constant, overwhelming itch.  

You may have to repeat the process.  I guess that's probably because the first round didn't actually get the mite out of your skin / kill the mite in your skin.  

Sometimes, I have to wait until the bite is at its itchiest before I do the above or I really will have to repeat the process.  It all depends on how much itch or pain I can stand at any given moment.

Sure, the easiest way to handle an oak mite bite is to stay inside.  I've heard bug spray works, too, but I hate the thought of having to spray myself down every instant I stepped out of the house.  If you can't do those things, you can try my method.  Unfortunately, your mileage may vary, so I make no guarantees.  It's just something you can try to ameliorate the itch.  

Please note that merthiolate quite often leaves a mark, so accept that you might have a scar thing in place of an itch thing.  I have made my peace with that.  

Please also note that oak mite bites seem to be more susceptible to infection.  Pay attention to those things even if you don't use my method.  A simple scratched bite can turn into something nasty in a hurry.  Rubbing alcohol is your friend.  

Now, if you'll pardon me, I've only treated about half the bites I had last night - the ones that wouldn't let me sleep - so I have to go gouge, sting, and burn myself.  

Marketing Monday - Thicker Than Water

Hi.  It's early.  I got like 3 hours of sleep last night due to cats, bug bites, and thunderboomers.  But at least I can get a jump on the marketing thing, so yay. 

Starting today, THICKER THAN WATER is absolutely free. Get this throwback to the old, hard-boiled crime novels of yesteryear before it's too late. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F88QQ2P4

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 25

Okay, so it's Week 25.  Imagine that.  It makes sense, though, since we're about halfway through 2026 and half of 52 is 26.  Look at me, mathing in the morning and junk.

I was a slug this week.  I only wrote once for 909 words.  I could make excuses, but meh.  Marketing also didn't go well, but even so, I moved 57 copies of DE.  People must not read much in the summer because my page reads are way down.  :shrug: I'm halfway between marketing a book this week and not bothering.  Tune in tomorrow to see what the choice ended up being.

No reading.

I made a batch of my Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies this week.  We finished them yesterday.  6 days for 2 people to demolish 35 cookies.  I might make more cookies today - only because I'm tired of paying for cookies.  Then I'll get tired of making cookies and go back to buying them again.  It's a vicious circle.

This past week, I did all sorts of active things.  I sewed the cover for the cat bed I made, took two walks, did stuff with the greenhouse garden, worked in the yard, and went grocery shopping.  I don't think any of that was particularly calorie-burning, though.  (Maybe the yard work.)  Weight: 179.4

I'm not sure if I talked about the cat bed I made a couple weeks.  I took a 'feather' topper for a queen-sized mattress, folded in half, and stuffed into a queen-sized flat sheet that was folded in half and safety pinned.  Well, one evening, Sawyer being Sawyer, discovered the safety pins and decided to attack.  I had to remove them so he wouldn't hurt himself.  The next day, I sat down and sewed the seams where the safety pins had been.  Then Hubs and I wrestled the topper back into it.  It looks good and the cats enjoy it, and now it's safe.

The greenhouse garden is chugging right along.  Still only two tomatoes - both of them ripened and we ate them.  I learned this week that carrots don't like it hot, and it's hot in the greenhouse, so there ya are.  The tops of the carrots are still pretty small and I'm not seeing the shoulders of the carrots yet, so I'm not harvesting, even though that pot has been growing since early March.  The potatoes... same.  The two surviving green peppers from last year that got munched... One is thriving.  The other is pathetic.  The three peppers I rescued from the feed store are doing okay.  Some of the trees are getting big, but I had to give the last rites to two oaks and a hickory.  I don't think pot life is good for those species.  The redbuds in the ground - Randy and Rudy - are trying to live, but critters aren't making it easy for them.

Working in the yard... Well, I had planned to go out and start digging up the rock paths to remove weeds, etc., but Hubs was out picking up sticks left by the last few storms.  I ended up helping him and then I got the idea that it was about time to prune back the cedars, so we did that.  Then we had to go around and pick up all those limbs.  By the time we did all that, I was tired, so the weeding project got put on hold.  We're starting that this morning - me on the paths and Hubs on the driveway.  Gah, the driveway... we haven't hit those weeds in years and it's so bad that you can hardly tell where the driveway is.  It all looks like yard.  None of this will be done in a day.  Tune in next week to hear how well we progressed.

The fawns are coming into the yard more often, but I keep forgetting to put out the trail cam.  Maybe I'll remember today, so I can post pics next Saturday.  

And I think that's about it.  Busy busy... or at least the illusion of busyness.  Have a great week wherever you are.  :hugs:

Thursday This n That - Late Again

After waking up late yesterday, I started this post, then got distracted and called Mom, then went grocery shopping.  Woke up this morning to see I'd never completed nor posted this post.  Derp

I read something last night about carrots - they thrive best between 60 and 70 degrees F.  Oops.  The inside of my greenhouse these days has to be topping 100.  :shrug:  So, they either steam or they get eaten by critters.  I'm letting them steam.  We'll see what happens at harvest time.

Today's bird is a Barred Eagle-Owl.  Weird looking dude.  Possibly stoned.  Could be an extra in Disney's The Sword and the Stone.  

If you're into super-intense crime shows, check out Line of Duty - a UK show about a special group of police officers who investigate police corruption.  It's so intense I sometimes have to take a break in the middle because the villains are PISSING ME OFF.  But it usually works out in the end.

I'm calling the little fox Reynard. (Rey for short.)  It's after a mythological fox figure I reached while writing the Once Upon a Djinn series.  Yes, I am a nerd.

This morning, I read a neat story about a dude who'd just gotten out of prison and was on his way to a job interview when he saw a car accident.  He got off the bus and saved the man who was trapped inside, thus missing his job interview.  Online donations afterward gained him over $50K and three job offers.  As Hubs said, this is what sites like GoFundMe were created for.

I have encouraged Hubs to jump on some type of social media so others can benefit from his sparkling wit, canny insights, and wry humor, but he'd rather douse himself with gasoline and play with sparklers than use social media.  I can't say as I blame him.

While I was out and about yesterday, I stopped at the local store to pick up smokes for Hubs and I.  There was a brand-spanking new cashier there - like first hour of first day new.  I'll call him Jay.  Anyway, I told Jay I needed two cartons of smokes and the types, and he went over to the rack.  After much assistance on my part, he finally located what I needed.  Then he rang everything up and told me the total.  It was about half what it was supposed to be, so I let him know he hadn't rung up both cartons.  After we went through the whole 'first time processing a check' thing, Jay thanked me for being honest.  It's a sad world when pointing out that a cashier hasn't rung up all the items is worth a thanks because honesty is shocking or something.  I'm glad I caught it.  The guy seemed nice and I didn't want him to get fired.  Also, it doesn't help local businesses when they don't get paid for their products.  While my smokes are the cheapest smokes a gal can buy, they aren't cheap in the scheme of things.  Miss ringing up a candy bar?  Eh.  You're out a couple bucks.  Miss a carton of smokes and you're out anywhere from $30 to $80.  After I left, I mused about it being nice if they'd given me an 'honest customer' discount, then I laughed.

Okay, time to get this post posted and let you get on with your day.  Have a great one!

Marketing Monday - Dying Embers

It's Monday, so that must mean Marketing Monday!  :throws confetti:  Today, I'm offering Dying Embers in all its glory.  It's a helluva book.

Starting today, DYING EMBERS is free through Friday. It's a fast-paced story of justice and revenge with a satisfying ending. I hope you all enjoy it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TEQK7OU