Thursday This n That

Facebook is screwing with me again.  Now, it won't let me react to any posts, including my own.  This is the image I screen-captured:

I mean, how ridiculous.  I can post and comment and share, but I can't like, love, or make angwy* face or wow face... turds.  If I didn't need FB to market my books, I'd chuck the whole damn thing.

Finn's walking around the house meowing like he's lost.  Silly cat.  Kira used to do that from time to time, and I never did figure out why.  Oh, the mysteries of the feline brain.

And Hubs just informed me that Finn had jumped up on the bookshelf to get beside the TV and was sitting there like the RCA dog while Sawyer watched from down below.  When I went to investigate, they both ran to the treat cupboard like they hadn't just committed an act of pre-vandalism.  I swear... those boys... bang zoom, to the moon.

I had someone comment on a marketing post for AD this morning, giving me a cover critique like I'd asked for his help.  As if I didn't know what that cover looks like.  I gave the guy what his opinion was worth and blocked him.  If that's a new method to get me to engage so that he can spam me, he's sadly mistaken.  A friend of mine calls that sending them to Blockistan.  Heh.

Have you ever been with a guy/girl who critiques everything you do so you'll never believe you're worth anything and therefore never leave them?  I have.  It's a dick move.  Classic mental abuse.  Don't buy it.  Ever.

So, Monday, it was cold, so Hubs and I went into the woods and worked at clearing out the wet-weather creek so it isn't all junky looking.  Afterwards, we both paid for it.  And I learned something - you never know when you're overdoing it until after you've overdone it.

And on that note, I'll leave you to get on with your day.  Make it a good one.

*I meant to spell it that way.  It's what I call this 😡**.

** Blogger call this 😡 'pouting face', which is just stupid. It's angwy face.

The Deck Garden

Since I just finished moving all the plants back outside, after we had a cold snap and they spent more time inside, I thought I'd talk about my deck garden.  As of right now...

My deck garden:
3 x-large - potatoes
4 large - carrots
2 small cedars, 1 medium cedar (Clyde), 1 large cedar (Cecil)
3 dogwood
6 redbud
1 oak
1 buckthorn
2 hickory
1 black cherry
1 unidentified tree/bush

Plus, I still have 4 green peppers in the spare room that need to go into larger pots and go outside. I'm not even counting the tomatoes because I haven't bought the seedlings yet, but there'll probably be 6 of those. Woot.

The carrots are bursting up out of the soil, so yay. Those will need to be thinned soon. No sign of potatoes yet. If I don't see movement soon, I'll buy more taters and replant.

Of the trees, most of them are showing some signs of life after overwintering in the garage. The ones that aren't showing sings yet are one hickory, one redbud, and one dogwood. Those all might be dead. We'll see. The oak has the cutest, teeny-tiny leaves. If it had cheeks, I'd want to pinch them. (If you weren't already aware that I'm weird, you must be new here.)

The black cherry is actually three tiny trunks that I dug up together and planted together, not knowing what they were. When fall came, the leaves turned a pale peachy pink, which made me think they're black cherry trees. And now with their spring leaves, I'm like 95% certain of the species. Yay. I'll repot those into a bigger container and they'll spend another year being babied before they go into the yard.

Cecil the Cedar is the one I transplanted as an inch-high seedling I found in the garden back in 2021. That means he's probably 5 years old, maybe 6 if I consider he probably started growing in the garden in late 2020. (He had a pot-mate - Cedric - but it died.) Cecil is gorgeous and will go in the yard next month. Clyde was transplanted from where he was growing under the deck. He's kind of retarded, but I love him. He'll go into the woods to thrive there.

One of the redbuds and one of the dogwoods will go in the yard somewhere either this year or next. The rest will be transplanted into the woods. I need to put some out there sooner rather than later because I need their pots for tomatoes. Or I'll just buy more pots and nurture them for another year. I'm goofy that way. I'm trying not to be a helicopter parent to my trees, but after I lost Elmer the Elm to ravenous deer, I'm being more protective of my little trees. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, those are the garden stats right now. I'll post more as things develop. Have a great rest of your day!

Marketing Monday - Project Hermes

So, this morning, it's colder than a witch's nose after being in the mid-70s the day before and I'm not happy about it.  Nevertheless, it's Monday, which means marketing.  Keeping with the whole 'doing the books in order of publication*, here's the fourth book published:

Starting today, get this taut political/medical suspense - PROJECT HERMES - absolutely free! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017Y6G0EW

All thanks, once more, to Silver James, who made me that graphic.  It rocks and so does she.

*This likely won't happen again next week.  The next book in the publication order is the second book in a series and I'd rather wait a bit after the first ones went free before I offer the second ones.

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 10

Well, there's another week shot to hell gone by.  What happened?  :shrug:  Drama llama.

Of course, there was no writing or editing.  Marketing was done, but little movement of books was seen.  I moved 28 free copies of WIOH and got one sale for that after the freebie was over.  I'm still moving some SCIU books, though, so yay.  I've actually sold nearly 15 books this month - regular sales and pages reads - so I can't gripe.

No reading.

No baking.

Very little carving.

I did some cleaning and some garden work, so 4 out of 7 days had some activity.  I didn't weigh myself.

In garden news, I have tiny carrot seedlings in all four pots.  I'll thin those when they get a little bigger.  Nothing's happening in the potato pots, except for the ravages of a squirrel that decided it wanted to dig around.  Little bastard.  I've treated all those pots with chili powder and no more forays from Mr. Squirrel since.  It also looks like a majority of my baby trees have signs of leave buds.  Some of them even have leaves!  Everything needs to go in the garage today, though, because we're getting a freeze starting today.  

In other garden news, I've cleared the dead leaves out of 4 beds now.  Only five more beds to go.  The beds should be fine in the freeze.  

Other than that, we've been in the clutches of family drama again.  I can't give the details because they're not my details to give.  Needless to say, though, it's been all-encompassing and there's been very little room in my brain for anything else.  

A couple of days there, I did get out of the house and hit the thrift store for a little retail therapy.  The first time, I didn't buy anything.  The next day, I went back for a couple things I'd seen, since I'd had time to think about them.  Item 1: I got a handmade wood cabinet with shelves and a door for $10.  The door's hinges were wonky, though.  I tried to fix it, but in the end just removed the door.  Now it's a nice shelving unit. The other thing I got was a pair of stackable shelving units ($15 for both).  They're not high enough to put books in, so I gave them to Hubs for the garage.  Woot. I also picked up a cute painting of birds and birdhouses.  The painting is on wood and it was only $1, so yay.  I had intended to buy this neat kitchen island thing, but in the end, I didn't think it would fit in my car.  

Once the shelving unit was cleaned and polished, I put it in the living room and shifted books onto it from the full office shelves.  Then I shifted books around in the office.  I have room on my shelves again!  It was getting pretty close to me needing to thin my library out, so yay.  (I hate thinning my library.)  

On the upside, it seems like the family drama is finally actually over and all is well again, so we can get back to using our brains for something other than that.  Woot.  I actually have been feeling like I need to write, so maybe next week you'll get to see something about that.  I'm not promising anything, though.

Anyway, that's it for me.  Have a great day wherever you are.  :hugs:

Thursday This n That - The Saga of the Recliner

Okay, so Hubs' recliner... well, both of our recliners... are going on 13 years old and frankly, they've seen better days.  But Hubs' chair has always been a little iffy in the seat.  Well, his springs started popping ages ago and the last time I vacuumed underneath it, I saw he only had one unbroken spring left.  I sat in it the other day and felt like I was falling through to the floor.

So, I got this idea to use strapping to replace the springs.  It was actually pretty inspired, if I do say so myself.  I ordered the strapping from Amazon - 2" heavy-duty nylon strapping in brown.  A 10-yard roll of it costs like $14.  Yesterday afternoon, Hubs reminded me that it was here and we were going to do something with it.  We flipped the chair and surveyed the problem.  

I had initially thought we could just go in there with the bolt cutters, snip off the broken springs, and then nail in lengths of strapping.  Well... It ended up being more complicated than that.  We wound up removing the entire apparatus of the rocking/reclining part of the chair.  Once that was off, yeah, it was pretty easy to cut the springs off and put the strapping on.  Then we had to put it all back together.  Which was not easy.  The whole thing took about 3 hours.  I hurt.  Hubs hurts.  But it's done.  And I curse the day Ashley, and all those who assembled these chairs, were born.

We discovered an interesting thing when we started taking the chair apart.  There are way more holes for bolts than there are actual bolts.  And the bottom part of the assembly is held on with only two wood screws.  I mean, it made taking the thing apart easier, sure, but all told, the entire assembly only had two wood screws in the bottom and four bolts in the top.  One would think there would be more.  Hell, they used two bolts just to put on the lever than makes the chair recline, for pitysakes.  Sheesh.  

We are NOT tackling my recliner any time soon.  It's only got one popped spring, so it's still viable as a sitting apparatus.  On the upside, we now know how to do it and the length we'll need to cut strips of strapping to (and the # of straps we'll need).  

The cats, who were locked in the office the whole time, were not amused.

Marketing Monday - Wish in One Hand

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.

Starting today, the thrilling, snarky, paranormal suspense - WISH IN ONE HAND - is absolutely free. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.) Get your copy now! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013RVEF0Y

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 9

 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.

Einstein Wasn't Always Right

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)

Thursday This n That

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?

Crazypants for the Carving Thing

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.

Marketing Monday - Accidental Death

Since DE did so well last week, I thought I'd try marketing Accidental Death.  First book... second book... :shrug:  Anyway, there ya are...

Murder doesn't happen here. Starting today, ACCIDENTAL DEATH is free. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.) Get your copy of this small-town, noir mystery today! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XM6VJ9U

I hope you enjoy it.  

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 8

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?