Sunday Update - 2026 Week 22

Here we are again at another Sunday.  It's the last day of May, which is my favorite month, but all good things must come to an end, eh?

Writing went well this week.  I wrote every day Monday-Friday and added 4758 words to my manuscript.  I think I'm finally in a place where I can tell you what I'm working on... :drumroll: The next book in the Shroudlands series.  It's up to 32240 words now, so yay.  I'm not laying out a whole shit-ton of words each day, but it's enough.  No clue when it'll be finished.  The point here is that I am writing again.  And once I get comfortable with being a writer again, I might finally get back to editing Duke Noble #3.  

Marketing occurred.  Not a lot of it, but it happened.  I moved 29 copies of Early Grave and someone bought a copy of Fertile Ground, so yay me.  May wasn't the best month this year, but it was better than nothing.

Reading... don't ask.  Despite my reading slump, I bought 8 new-to-me books last week, because I am a book-buying addict.  I picked up some NF books we didn't have and a Ken Follett I haven't read before.  Woot.

On the activity front, I wasn't too awfully active, but I did get some stuff done.  I vacuumed and dusted the whole house - 1700 sq ft worth - so go me.  I also did some gardening stuff.  And yesterday, we took a walk.  Weight: 178.6 - which isn't as low as I'd like, but better than I feared it would be when I stepped on the scale.

As for gardening, we planted two of my redbud trees in the ground - Randy and Rudy.  By the next morning, Randy was gone.  I haven't checked Rudy today but I am not holding out hope for his continued survival.  (Yes, I could surround him with wire, but if a critter REALLY wants to eat him, they'll get to him no matter what I do.)  Inside the greenhouse, everything seems to be thriving.  I need to repot some green peppers, now that I have two vacant bigger pots.  I still only have two tomatoes, but there's hope.  The potatoes have taken over.  

In exciting news, we've seen the first fawns of the year!  Brand new, still wet off the factory floor, baby deer.  New deer are so tiny!  (Of course.  They have a small door to go through when they first enter the world, so that have to be tiny.)  They grow fast, though, so we've already seen one that's less tiny.  Some of the deer were still pregnant as of last night, so there's more to come.  

I think that's it for me today.  Other things happened, but nothing of note.  Have a great day out there and a wonderful week.  :hugs:

Saturday Trail Cam Snaps

 First off, I did not have the trail cam out when something ate one of the redbud trees we planted yesterday.  It also wasn't out when the mama deer brought her brand new, teeny-tiny baby past the house this morning.  I swear, I'd need like 5-6 different cameras to catch everything.  

Anyway...

Here's another version of "Is that a camera?":

And here's a shot that's a bit blurry, but it gives an excellent view of a doe's pregnant belly:

This is Mr. Possum:

And Rocky Raccoon:

And a turkey:

Finally, here's the money shot I've been waiting for - a little fox!

Tune in next week to see if I catch any fawns on the Trail Cam!

Thursday This n That - Late Again

I blame Monday's government holiday for making me forget about yesterday's post.  I even had it started and everything.  Derp.  Anyway...

I think I might've figured out FB and their damn bots.  It's all about those banned words I've mentioned before.  If I use the words 'killed/kill' or 'murder/murderer', it's more likely to slap me with a content warning and tell me I'm a spammer.  Fuckers.  I'm talking about a MURDER mystery where people get KILLED and there's a KILLER on the loose.  I've already told FB their bots are insane, but since it's only bots reading the complaints, I doubt it'll get anywhere.  I'm not going to hide those words, but I may have to reword some stuff for future marketing.  Turds.

It's been raining here for about 24 hours.  Okay, Mother Nature, that's enough.  Thank you.  Go drip for a while at Mom's house.  Her plants need watering and if you do it, it means my sis doesn't have to.  

Copied from my FB post yesterday: "Hubs and I were out on the sun porch having a smoke, when we heard a fawn bleating. Actually, the dang thing sounded like it was shouting "MOM! MO-OM!" at full volume. Within seconds, a doe comes charging up the hill hell-bent for leather and ready to fight, with another doe close behind her. She stops just inside the neighbor's backyard and a fawn runs up. He (it had to be a buck fawn making that much of a fuss) immediately starts nursing like nothing much was going on. She allowed it for a couple minutes and then wandering off down the hill again, with him trailing along behind her."

I hate when FB changes my font and I can't figure out how to make it stop, other than inserting new paragraphs and moving the changed text up so unweirded paragraphs drop below it.  Frankly, it's a pain.  On the other hand, the font adds interest.  

The trail camera is awesome, but all those pics are filling my harddrive.  I mean, one night I got like 350 pics.  The next, it was like 650 pics.  At 1-3 megs each, those things fill my 'puter up fast.  Yesterday, I went through deleting, which, if you know me, you know I can't stand deleting pics even when they're blurry.  Anyway, I did it, and I'll have to continue to do it or face the very real reality of running out of space.  

Running out of space on a computer harddrive... I'm one of the old souls who maxed her computer out regularly, so I had to go through on a regular basis and delete shit.  It was either wipe it out of existence or move it to floppies.  And since my deletion anxiety stems from back then, you can imagine I had a LOT of floppies.  (3.5s aren't really floppy.  I remember the real floppies.)

Anyway, I have a lot of pics and some of them are pretty cool, so tune in tomorrow for that.  If I remember...

Peace out.

Monday Marketing on a Tuesday

Because yesterday was a solemn holiday and I didn't do any marketing, here's my Monday Marketing post on a Tuesday.  Tada!  

This week, Early Grave is up for grabs.  We'll see if FB allows me to do much of anything this week or whether I'm going to need to rethink my marketing strategy.  Anyway...

Now through Friday, EARLY GRAVE is free! (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.) Grab your copy of this twisty suspense today. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CGYBSST

Memorial Monday

I know I usually market on Monday, and I could today, too, but it's Memorial Day and it just doesn't feel right to be out there pimping books on this day.  

Enjoy your day today and try to take a moment to remember why you're able to celebrate any holiday - the men and women who gave their lives to keep America free.

And while he didn't give his life for his country, here's my dad when he was serving in the USAF.  

Thanks, Dad.

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 21

 Good morning.  I'm not quite up to speed this morning.  I think it's Week 21.  :shrug:  Anyway, here goes...

I wrote stuff this week.  I managed four days in a row, but then I fell off the wagon and didn't write for three days.  Blerg.  I did get 3437 words out, so I'm not kicking myself.  Not hard anyway.  I'll write tonight if I have to stay up late doing it.  (No, I still have to write at night.  My creativity doesn't wake up until after 5pm. It sucks, but there it is.)  As of now, my WIP is up to about 27500 words.  For the record, this is a book I started writing 4 years ago (almost to the day* as it turned out).  I got to 20378 words before I stopped.

Marketing was pretty much a bust this week.  FB cracked down on me and I was only able to make one or two posts a day before it shut me down.  Bastards.  I did manage to move 25 copies of Natural Causes... which is kind of pitiful.  Not sure what I'll do this coming week.  

Not much reading occurred.

It was a slightly active week this week.  Mostly, I messed with the gardens.  I also did some cleaning and shopping stuffs.  I didn't bother to weigh myself.  Who needs that kind of negativity?  ;o)

The gardens are doing well.  Everything in the greenhouse seems to be thriving.  I gave them all a healthy drink of nettle tea a couple days ago, which I guess they like.  It's supposedly full of nutrients.  Stinks to high heaven, but nobody ever promised homemade plant food would smell good.  I have two little tomatoes and plenty of tomato flowers, so yay.  The carrots in pot #1 are getting taller.  Carrot pots #2 & #3 need thinning again.  The potato plants are HUGE.  Pedro is a monster.  I just hope they're growing tubers underneath all that greenery.

The foxes are back.  I watched one for quite a few minutes yesterday.  It was a little fox and I think it was practicing hunting.  It said there, staring into the grass beside the neighbor's driveway and tilting its head back and forth like it was hearing something yummy.  Then it got bored and trotted away.  

I chatted with a neighbor who told me they had a fawn in their yard the other day.  I'm totally jealous.  But still, it means the fawning has begun, so yay.  Not sure which doe is post-pregnant yet.  It's not Sissy - she's still fat pregnant.  Fingers crossed that soon I'll have baby deers on my trail cam.

It was my annibirfsary week.  We ate a boatload of cake.  Other than that, not much celebrating happened.  I mean, kisses and snuggles and all the good things that come with being with the one you love for 22 of your 56 years, but no prezzies or singing.

 Other than that, not much going on around here.  What's going on around there?

*I started writing the book on 5/13/22 - wrote words for about a month and gave up.  I picked the book back up again on 5/12/26.  I didn't plan that.  It was just the book that called to me.

Saturday Trail Cam Snaps

Ack!  I meant to post this way earlier... like this morning... but I got distracted, which is the story of my life.  Anyway...

I took the camera down during the day and then I keep forgetting to put it back out.  To my dismay, as soon as I took the camera down, the foxes started showing up again.  Grrr.

Anyway, here are some shots I got from earlier in the week: 

Rocky Raccoon on my porch, snacking on suet crumbs.

A closeup shot of three generations...

On the left is Sissy. Next to her is her son, Scout.  The butt in the background behind Scout is Lumpy - Sissy's mom.

I'm not sure who this is, but she's pretty interested in the camera.

I hope to have more pics next Saturday, so tune in next time.

Thursday This n That

 FB is screwing with me again.  I get maybe one... two posts before they slap me for 'spamming'.  Turds.  And there's a spot where you can complain, but it says right on the window that it doesn't do anything to change their minds.  It's just for training purposes or some such nonsense.  Blarg.  

I'm writing again, which is a good thing.  Unfortunately, writing again means wrist pain again, which isn't such a good thing.  Yay for Blue Emu.

The foxes seem to disappear when I put the trail cam up.  I only see them when it's not out there taking pictures.  Camera shy little buggers.

Pizza is awesome.

So's coffee.

The weather is pissing me off.  A couple days ago, it was so hot I couldn't stand myself.  This morning, I had to put on socks, sweats, and a sweater because I'm chilly.  Make up your damn mind, Mother Nature.

I saw a cute thing online yesterday.  Down in Texas, someone with a door cam got photos of an armadillo playing with their dog's tennis ball.  Cute!  Generally, armadillos are cute, if somewhat stupid.  They have baby armadillos at the wildlife rescue I follow on FB.  Again, cute!  Did you know that every member of each armadillo litter is genetically identical to its litter mates?  

Nature is awesome, too.

Of course, nature's also a bitch sometimes.  

And with that, it's time for me to go call Mom.  Have a great day everyone!  :hugs:

Marketing Monday - Natural Causes

Today's book offering is Natural Causes (Dennis Haggarty Mystery #2).  It can be read without the first one, but it's even better with it.  (And ACCIDENTAL DEATH is pretty cheap.) Jus' sayin'.

Starting today, NATURAL CAUSES is absolutely free. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.) Get this 'big city cop in a small town' murder mystery today! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y44BXTM

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.

Bright Ideas?

 Me and my bright ideas... We had a 'feather' topper on our bed, but we hated it, so it's been sitting in the spare room. We also have the flat sheet to a set of flannel sheets where the fitted sheet was roached years ago. Bright idea? Use the flannel sheet to make a 'pillowcase' for the feather topper and turn it into a cat bed.

I thought I'd pin it and then sew it. No pins. I could've sworn I had a box of pins leftover from my previous sewing adventures. Nope. I had safety pins, though, so off I started.

The cats, being cats, were deeply interested in my goings-on such that I had to shut them out of the bedroom where I was working. Meowing insued. I let them back in and Finn decided he wanted to sleep in the middle of my work. Sawyer, seeing that I was distracted by Finn, proceeded to stick his head in my coffee cup and slurp away. They were promptly kicked back out of the bedroom and I ignored the caterwauling.

I get the whole thing safety pinned, flip it right-side out, and try to stuff the feather monster into its new home. A half-hour of wrestling later, it was in there. It ain't pretty and it's incredibly lumpy, but it's done. (For now. I may actually sew it later.)

Finn loves it. It jumped into the middle and laid there like he finally had a bed worthy of his royalship.

I'm Tired

There won't be any marketing this week.  I'm tired.  Hell, you might even say I was depressed. (From a writing perspective.  I don't feel depressed otherwise.)  Thinking about writing, or my lack thereof, makes me sad.  

I try to be all Positive Polly, but the act only stretches so far.  

So, I spend my days doing everything/anything that doesn't remind me of my unfinished novels and my stillborn ideas.  Which is probably why I don't spend a boatload of time blogging or visiting blogs lately.  Marketing is about the only writerly thing I can manage, and the only reason for that is seeing the zeroes on my KDP Dashboard makes me more depressed. 

It's like the writer part of me is curled up in the fetal position over there in the corner.  I keep saying I'll get over this, but I'm not sure if I can.  I'd like to think I'm not done with writing, that 18 books isn't the final total of my life's work, but I don't really know.  

I have a book sitting in the spare room that's done being written.  It's DONE.  All it needs is editing, but I can't bring myself to finish editing it.  Well, editing, proofreading, cover creation, getting it set for publishing... :shudder:  So I'm stuck in this weird place where I can't make myself finish it.

Maybe it's fear of failure.  Maybe it's being tired of pushing books out there into the world to crickets.  Maybe doing this for myself isn't enough anymore.... maybe it never was enough.  I dunno.

From time to time, I still think about writing, so there's still hope.  Although, some days, I'm inclined to agree with Gena Showalter's take on Hope - it was always the worst of the evils in Pandora's box.

Anyway, sorry to be a bummer on a Tuesday morning.  On a happier note, my greenhouse is doing it's job and protecting the plants.  Yay.  I wish I had a greenhouse to keep my writer self warm and happy and thriving -  a greenhouse for the soul, so to speak.  

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 18

Well hello there.  It's Sunday.  It's morning.  It's time for an update.  This week was a busy one for me and I am understandably both tired and sore.

I spent a lot of time this week on the deck garden.  Last Sunday, due to critter carnage, I moved the entire garden worth of pots inside.  About half of the pots went into the garage and the other half went into the sunroom.  The potato pots are huge, so we're talking probably 30-40 pounds each, but I did it. (Hubs' back is toast right now, so I've been doing stuff myself rather than have him lift and carry.)  I also thinned the carrots.  

My new greenhouse arrived.  It's a beaut.  Not a large enclosure at roughly 5x5x6.5, but large enough.  Hubs helped me put that sucker together on Friday and I populated it with all the plants that can handle full sun.  Not that the deck gets a whole lot of full sun, but enough that it would probably kill my redbuds.  Then to further discourage the critter, I put blocks all the way around it - each block sitting on the edge of the plastic greenhouse cover.  This will also give the greenhouse some stability in the wind, so yay.  The three mornings since I put the greenhouse together have been carnage free, so yay to that, too.  (I haven't taken any pics yet, so if you want to see the greenhouse I bought, click the link.  It's still on sale as of this morning, if you want one, too.)

When I ordered the greenhouse, I also ordered a game camera.  That arrived on Friday, but I haven't put it out yet.  I did set it up and managed to take several pictures of my hands.  It's not the wifi kind, so I'll have to take it down and plug it into the computer if I want to see the pics, but I'm okay with that.  

I've been feeding the deer all week, so Hubs can rest his back.  The deer are getting fat pregnant.  I always feel so bad for them, waddling around the yard.  Judging by the size of their bellies, they might drop fawns earlier this year.  We'll see.

Friday, I went grocery shopping.  Wallyworld was a zoo.  Anyway, while I was there, they had a bunch of beef marked down, so I ended up getting a London Broil.  I'd never cooked one of those, but it was cheap and cheap beef is hard to find.  I took half of that and threw it in the crockpot with spaghetti sauce and mushrooms, and we had my version of steak pizziola last night for dinner.  Yummers.

I did some marketing this week.  Not a huge amount of books moved, but eh, it's better than nothing.  The start of a new month makes my KDP dashboard look so depressing with it zeroes across the board.  Having numbers there, even if they're small, helps.  Not sure what will be on the Marketing Monday rota tomorrow.

And since I started this over an hour ago and it's been sitting here forgotten as I scroll through X and FB, I think I'm probably done.  Have a great day and a wonderful week.  :hugs:

Thursday This n That (delayed)

ACK!  I started this post yesterday morning and never finished it.  Derp. Here's what I said then...

I made pizza last night and now my hands are killing me.  It was totally worth it.

Yesterday, my new greenhouse arrived.  I'll work on putting it together today, I think.  We'll see if the hands allow it.  Then we'll see if it works to foil the critter's plans.  Our new mower arrived, too.  That's Hubs' job.  We'll help each other if we need it.

We're going on 22 years married.  For the most part, the us part has been pretty easy.  That's what happens when you're with the right person.  Yay.

And now for the stuff I didn't write yesterday morning...

I did put the greenhouse up, put blocks around the base to hold it down and keep critters out, and populated it with plants.  This morning, no signs the critter has been back, but it's early yet.

No sign of the marauding mouse from the other night.  

Hubs put together the mower and mowed a little to see if he had the height settings right.  It works like a dream.  Yay.

Gah, Sawyer's being really annoying this morning.  This is an especially bad morning for him to be a turd, as I am really sore from the activities of yesterday.  Putting together the greenhouse was pretty easy, except for being on my feet for so long, and then the moving of all those pots, and the sweeping beforehand. 

I really should go grocery shopping today, except the aforementioned soreness is making me really not want to go.

Bitchbitchbitchbitch.  Why yes, I would like some cheese...

What's on your this-n-that list today?