Sunday Update - 2026 Week 20

Here we are again at another week.  Let's see what happened.

I wrote.  I still don't want to talk about it much.  Suffice it to say, I wrote 4 nights in a row and ended up with around 2800 new words, all on one WIP, so there ya go.  I'm not celebrating, in case this is an anomaly.  The hardest part about writing after so many months away is retraining my fingers to type as much as I want for as long as I want.  Derp.

I marketed.  A little.  Blink moved a whole 17 copies.  Woot.  Not sure what this week will bring.  I'm at the end of a 90 day KDP reup, so this week might be a little iffy.

Reading still isn't a thing, but I made a little progress with Rudy.

In baking news, yesterday, Hubs made me a cake from scratch - yellow cake, chocolate frosting with a layer of strawberry jam in the middle.  Yum.  It's not the prettiest thing, but it's been more than 20 years since he made a cake, so I'm not harshing him too much about it.  He was going to make the frosting, too, but after the cake wouldn't come out of the pan and ended up kinda roached, he left the frosting to me.  Hey, it tastes good and he tried, so that's all that matters.

On the activity front, I wasn't.  I did some garden stuff and I went shopping.  Meh.  Didn't bother weighing myself.  Weight: Fat.

The trail cam has been fun.  See yesterday's post.  The new mower is awesome.  So's the new greenhouse.  Shopping for the win.  Woot.

The garden is growing right along in the greenhouse.  I have one little grape tomato growing and one little Early Girl tomato.  The green peppers are trying to come back from getting munched, as are the black cherry and the persimmon.

Yesterday, I cut my hair.  Short.  It was bugging me, so off it went.  It looks pretty cute, if I do say so myself.  No, there aren't any pics.

Speaking of cake... Today is our anniversary.  22 years.  Go, us!  And tomorrow's my birthday.  56 years.  Go, me!  (Yes, people shouldn't leave important dates lying around the internet, but we make sure we never use those dates in any security questions or passwords, so there ya are.)  We aren't doing anything for either.  We don't give each other cards or gifts anymore.  I think that stuff stopped about 15 years ago.  We're happy with each other and celebrate each other every day, so no prezzies are necessary.

And that's it for me today.  What's been up with you lately?

Saturday Trail Cam Fun

 Hello again.  I don't know how you feel about it, but this trail cam stuff is fun.  

Anyway, here I am, checking out the placement of the camera...

This one shows pretty much all of the regular deer visitors to the feeding area:

I call this one "Is that a camera?"

You might not be able to see this guy.  He's doing such a good job of hiding behind a tree:

Another instance of 'is that a camera?' but this time it's Scout - son of Sissy and Lumpy's grandbuck.  He's such a good boy, but he got deer snot on my camera.

And from last night, I got a a good one of two raccoons.  If you blow it up, you can see one watching something in the distance while the other one is crouched behind him playing 'Stealth Raccoon'.  

I've also gotten some snaps of opossums, but none of them worth sharing.  Oh, and I got this shot...

...but I have no clue what it is.  I'm speculating that it's an opossum, but for laughs, I'm calling it a chupacabra.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing some snaps from the trail camera.  Like I said, I know I'M having fun.  

Thursday This n That

 I'm having fun with my trail camera.  Look for pics on Saturday.

I'm writing again. No, I don't want to talk about it.  Just saying it here makes me nervous that I'll ruin it and make the inspiration run away and hide.  Shhh... be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm hunting word-bits.

Two of my tomato plants have a tiny tomato each.  Since one of them is a grape tomato plant, I'm not hopeful I'll get anything close to sated off that one tomato.  Itty-bitty it is and itty-bitty it shall stay.  The other plant is my Early Girl, and that one should get sizable enough to slice and put on a sandwich at least.

There's every possibility that my greenhouse could double as a sauna in the off-months.  Man, it gets toasty warm and damp in there.  

Some days, I get really tired of seeing liars out there in the world.  It's even worse knowing that peoplle buy the shinola they're selling.  The IDF has trained dogs to rape innocent civilians??  Really.  And people believe that shit.  Derp.  Morons.

Oh, I forgot... you're not allowed to use the word rape online anymore.  If you do use it, they harsh your reach on social media.  Can't use kill or murder anymore either, and assassination is flat out.  Bah.  I'm a writer.  I'll use whatever words I see fit, and if that retards my reach, then so be it.  My reach wasn't that great to begin with.  Whatevs.

"Life is hard.  It's harder when you're stupid." - John Wayne  (It's attributed to him, so I'm going with it.)  I do love John Wayne.  

I watched a true-crime show out of Australia the other day and a serial killer, who was convicted of murdering three women only got 21-28 years.  The earliest date he could get out was 2017, which would make the latest date 2024.  So, unless he was killed in prison, he's out and on the streets of AU again.  Sorry, ladies.  I'd say arm yourself, but I don't think you can down there anymore.  Good luck and godspeed.

And on that note, I should probably get my buns in gear and do something constructive this morning.  Have a great day, wherever you are.  :hugs:

Marketing Monday - Blink of an I

 Okay, so after a week of no marketing and thus no sales, I decided I needed to get off my ever-widening ass and get back to work.  So here goes...

Starting today, BLINK OF AN I is free.  (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.)  Get your copy of this fast-paced, meaty dystopian view of the future before time runs out.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079X142G2

It's a large book and there's lots going on.  I almost wrote this as three books, but I hate it when people do that to a single book, so I just left it large.  I mean, it's told in three parts - in the city, out of the city, back to save the city - and it flows well.  I hope you take a chance on it and enjoy the journey.  (And the happy ending, because I hate books without happy endings.)

Sunday Update - 2026 Week Something or Other

First off, Happy Mother's Day to those who are moms or have moms.  My furbabies are unimpressed by the holiday, as is my human baby.  I'll call my own mom in a while.

Not much is going on in my little portion of the world.  I'm still stuck in what basically amounts to neutral.

The gardening is going okay.  I planted some more carrots this week and I fertilized everything using used coffee grounds.  One heaping spoonful per plant.  Then I watered everything.  One of my munched green peppers has itty-bitty leaves, so it's trying to live.  My black cherry and persimmon trees are showing signs of life.  Also, I picked more nettles to refresh my 'weed tea'.  In about 10 days, I'll use it to fertilize the plants again.  (I saw a video saying potted tomatoes need to be fertilized every ten days, so I'm going with that.)

If you missed yesterday's post, I set up my game camera and have started taking pics.  Except I messed with a setting somewhere and last night's trial was a bust.  No night pics at all.  Derp.  The worst thing about this camera so far is the lack of instructions.  And no, the company's website doesn't help.  At all.  Derp.  I'll fuss with it later.  Anyway, here's me feeding the deer this morning.  

Yes, I look fat and old.  No, I don't really care.  Like Popeye, I am what I am.

Early in the week, Hubs and I mowed the lawn.  I love the new mower.  It's so light and so easy to start.  Yay.  I got in some other activity this week, too, but not really anything specific.  I doubt any of it had any effect on my EWA.  Earlier in the week, I weighed myself, so... Weight: 177.8

We've been seeing foxes in the yard.  At first, I thought it was one fox, but over the past week, I've gotten better looks at them all.  From my estimation, we have three young foxes and one older fox.  Or rather, 3 that are about 2/3 size and one full size.  One of the little ones has a white patch on its side, another has a dark patch, and the third is uniform in its grizzled gray/red.  So yay.  I hope they stick around.  They're good for eating vermins.  I do hope they don't eat the baby raccoon.  Then again, I hope the coyotes don't eat them.  Nature's a bitch sometimes.

Other than that, not much going on around here.  I need to get off the net call my mom and wish her a Happy Mother's Day.  Later, Hubs will call his mom.  All is well.  Have a great day, wherever you are.  

Saturday Trail Cam Snaps

 I finally set up my trail cam yesterday.  I tried putting it a couple places, just as a test.  Here's from the morning:

It's not a super-quality photo, but it does what we need it to do, which is snap pics of critters.  There are a couple squirrels there, a bluejay, and a dove.

Here's one from the afternoon:

That's a pileated woodpecker hanging on the suet.  (The rest of that bunch of photos was pretty much Hubs going back and forth because he was cleaning the gutters... hence the ladder.)

And finally, here's a night shot.  This one was taken after we went to bed.

Baby Raccoon!  Yay!  I also got some primo shots of a neighbor driving home for the night, because between the light in the upper right corner and the tree where the raccoon sits is a road.

The camera itself isn't a top of the line model.  It only cost like $50, so I wasn't expecting super great things from it.  I'm pleased with the photo quality, which is the most important part.  It's not a wifi enabled model, so I have to actually plug the thing into my computer to download photos, and there are some hiccups with that.  Still I give it 4 stars.  Well worth the money.

=o)

Thursday This n That

 I'm late, but not as late as I was last week, so that's progress, right? 

I woke up later than usual today and somewhere between the bathroom and my first cup of coffee, a thought occurred to me... IT'S THURSDAY!  And panic ensued because 1) I hadn't sent in my timesheet for the week and 2) I hadn't done the spreadsheet I received yesterday which needed to be done so it could go on the timesheet so I could get paid for it this week.  Needless to say, I got my cup of coffee, had a quick smoke, and got to work.  I got it all finished before 7am (which is 8am office time and when my sis gets in and starts doing payroll) and finally took a sip of my coffee.  It was cold by then, but hey, I got 'er done.  

Nothing like a bit of panic first thing to really wake a gal up.

I'm a bit sore today from wrestling the feather topper thing into its newly-created pillowcase.  Derp.

Since I didn't do any marketing this week, I'm sitting at 38c in earnings.  3c in page reads and one 35c sale of Dying Embers.  Woot.  Go me.  This shows me that I really need to get off my ass next week.  

We have a little fox who's been hanging around the general area lately.  We see it just about every day now.  It's super cute.  It's probably from last year's litter.  Awww.  I'm happy to have foxes around the house.  They eat destructive critters and I'm rooting for it to eat that blasted packrat, which is probably the reason why all my lilies recently got munched.  (Probably since I moved all the deck plants out of munching range.)

Living in the woods is awesome, but it does have its downsides.  One being critters munching my plants.  Another is that once the leaves fill out with leaves, we don't really see much in the way of stars at night or rainbows during the day.  :shrug:  It's a tradeoff.

I keep forgetting to set up my game camera.  Derp.  Maybe today I'll remember.  We'll see if I make it from doing this to doing that without the TV getting in the way.

Speaking of the TV, I'm convinced that Roku is evil.  There are so many awesome things to watch that I get distracted by it easily.  I sit down to eat breakfast and watch one show, and the next thing I know, it's bedtime and I've wasted the whole damn day.  I really need to start policing that.  And I will, right after I eat breakfast and watch my one show.  XoP.

I had a thought the other night that I would get back to wood carving and start my own like Etsy store or something and I would call it XoP Designs.  (If you don't know what XoP is, turn your head sideways and look at it again.  It's the old way of doing a face with squinty eyes, a little round nose, and a mouth with the tongue sticking out.)

And on that note, I should probably go be productive or something.  I really need to tend my garden, clean the house, cut my hair, and sequester myself in a room until I edit or write something.  (For the record, I am NOT ready to retire from writing.  I may not be doing it but retiring isn't in the plans either.)

Peace out.