Thursday This n That

Gah.  I can't believe it's Thursday again already.  Time is just whooshing past so far this year.

I saw on FB this morning that one of my favorite K9 officers from Live PD had to have emergency surgery.  Send whatever positive thoughts you can toward Springfield, MO and K9 Lor.  I also learned that Lor and his officer, Craigmyle retired recently.  I'm sad to see them leave the force, but I'm happy for them.  We need more officers like Craigmyle in the world.

Apparently there's some kind of kerfluffle thing going on over at the RWA.  Someone read something in a historical romance written like 20+ years ago that offended her somehow and took to twitter.  Offended people mobbed, things were said, the cry of 'racist' went up... :yawn:  I read a highlighted snippet of what the dustup was about and couldn't see what the problem was.  I guess I'm not woke enough.  And I don't want to be.

You know, I talk a good game about not caring what other people think, but if I explore it deeply, I find I care more than I should.  Maybe it's being a public personality as a writer and junk.  If I weren't a writer, I wouldn't have cause to care.  :shrug: 

In other non-news, I saw the cutest little girl at Wallyworld yesterday.  She was probably, I dunno, 14-16 months?  I waved at her as I was waiting to access the soups - her mom's cart was in the way - and then she started chattering at me.  And showing me everything she had in the cart - her new sippy cups and her vitamins and some other things.  I was smiling and laughing.  I thanked her for making my day brighter, grabbed my soup, and off I went.  Then I ended up behind them in the checkout - cuz I waved her mom in front of me.  (I had a full cart and she didn't.)  There this little girl was chattering away and I couldn't understand more than one word in four.  She seemed to be getting irritated that I wasn't answering her appropriately.  Finally, I told her 'I'm sorry, hon, but I haven't had to speak toddler in a long, long time'.  I mean, my Kid is 26, so I'm totally out of practice.  That seemed to satisfy her, but I was no longer an interesting person with whom to converse. 

I was telling my mom that I'm just about through with all the honey-dos and I wasn't sure what I'd do when they were all done.  She brought up the blanket I was crocheting for my oldest sister that I never finished.  I still have all of it, but I haven't touched it since Colorado.  So, like 7 years.  Yep, Mom's got a long memory for things left undone.  (And pretty much everything else.)   Unfortunately, I don't have the space to work on blankets here like I did there.  No couch where I can lay things out as I'm working.  Laying it all out on the bed would work, but I did that once in CO and it's a pain in the back.  So, the blanket bits stay in their tub.  For now. 

May I still be as sharp as Mom when I reach 79.

And on that note, I'll leave you to your own devices.  Have an awesome day.  Feel free to leave some this-n-thats on your way.  =o)

Living in the Projects

No.  I'm not talking about government assisted housing.  Even though I don't work (at least not for cashola), we're not even close to the financial straights it would take for us to move into one of those places.

I'm talking about the myriad of little things I'm smack in the middle of.  I do one for a while, move to the next for a while, jump into the next...  So, yeah, I'm living in the projects I've created. 

It's April, so it's Ancestry season.  I'm tracing my tree.  I'm tracing the Hubs' tree.  I even traced my daughter's tree from her sperm donor up (which wasn't easy since there's no one I can ask).

Last month, or maybe the month before, I offered to do some tweaking of my nephew's senior pictures for my mother.  He didn't opt for the retouching.  Hmpfh, boys.  And since I took and retouched Daughter's senior pics, I was the obvious choice for the project.  I got the pics Thursday.  There are only three, and it's not hard, it's just time consuming.

Reseeding the lawn.  It's a yearly thing.  Living out here in the high desert makes keeping even the semblance of a lawn alive a pain - unless you have underground sprinklers, which we don't.  So every year, I pick up a bag of seed and hope for the best.  This year I'm trying a new product from Scott's.  It's the one with the dirt and fertilizer included along with the seeds, so it should be easier.  So far, no baby grasses, but I have hope.

I've also been making short excursions into the countryside.  I've got two goals for this.  Right now the birds are migrating, so I've been trying to see what new birds I can add to my birding lifelist.  And I'm trying to get some quality photographs while I'm out.  Ever since the guy at Cornell argued with me about my sighting of a Western Screech Owl in the area, I'm determined to get photos of the unusual birds that pass through here.  Plus, if any of them turn out really good, I'll print them and frame them. 

Oh yeah, and there's this other thing I'm supposed to be doing.  It's called WRITING.  Remember that stuff?  Yeah.  It keeps trying to make it's way to the top but it just gets shuffled back down again.

We're not even going to talk about the blanket I was supposed to be crocheting for my sister.  The strips are all crocheted.  It just needs to be sewn together and shipped to Michigan.  But it's sitting over there in my crocheting bag.

Of course, there are all the typical day to day things I should be doing as well, but since this is about 'projects', we're just going to forget about those for now.  (Why not, I've been forgetting about them so far. LOL)

And for all that, I still don't feel particularly busy or productive.  Maybe that's because I'm not making writing a priority in all that mess.  :shrug:

What projects are keeping you busy these days?  Anything fun? 

Getting in the Groove

With Daughter's college thing approaching, I've been out of any kind of normal groove for months now.  My writing has fallen by the wayside, as has my querying.  Any shallow attempt at dieting has failed.  Exercise?  Puleeze.  The blanket I was crocheting for my other sister sits in a bag, a quarter done. 

Are you seeing a pattern here? 

Now that orientation is over, I'm trying to get back in the groove.  The kid and I have exercised two days in a row.  I haven't done too too bad at watching what I eat.  (Stupid blueberry muffin attack.)  The writing and the querying are still shelved, but I did pull out my 2010 NaNo novel and start editing it.  And that blanket is getting done - slowly but surely. 

Two days of healthy living doesn't seem like a whole lot, but I'm calling it a win.  Being five chapters into a 35 chapter edit might not seem like much, but when you're red-inking up printed chapters and rewriting as you go, it's a good start.  And even if I'm only getting a strip of crochet done a day, it's more than I was producing before.

For me, it's just a matter of making these things a priority and stop using excuses to get away with being lazy.  (Yes, the college thing - while very important and gray-matter consuming - was an excuse.)  It's all part of getting in the groove.  Toss the excuses and focus on accomplishing something. 

Rah rah rah and all that jazz.

I'm not sure how long this will last.  I've had the best of intentions before and they never lasted more than a few months.  (Usually a few days, but hey, the longest was a few months.)  Cross a few fingers for me.

How are you at getting back in the groove after you slipped out?  Or are you one of those people who never seems to lose their groove?  How do you do that?

Baby Blanket

Heh.  I spent the past hour deciding what pattern I was going to use to make the baby blanket for my future great-niece.  I think I settled on the above.  The dotty squares are actually a multi-colored pastel yarn I found.  Too bad I don't know what the gender is.  This could have pinks or blues in it instead of yellow and green.

And now that's done...

Procrastination be damned.  I must write!  

(But you should see some of the other patterns I came up with.  They're so cute.  I want to go crochet them all now.)

Ahem.  I mean, write.  I want to write now.