There is nothing better than work when it’s going well. Well, there’s nothing better if you’re talking about work, which we are.
So today working on Lavender’s Blue, I am Peter Venkman: “I love this plan. I’m excited to be a part of it. Let’s do it.”
We’re getting close to the end now, and things are starting to fall into place. This book is dense, lots of layers plots and subplots, two main plots (romance and mystery), tons of characters, motifs, I’m loving it. Which, as we all know after the Nita debacle, does not mean anybody else will love it. The best thing about this is that I’m not alone in the book, Bob keeps asking questions that make me think, we go back and forth on ideas, and then we celebrate together (ignore my typos):
Nothing but good times ahead.
How did you get excited about work this week?
I worked at the retirement hobby, which gave me joy. Today I harvested four chilis and one tomato, and you would think I had gathered the entire bounty of the North Forty. Also, my purple chili plants have actually begun fruiting, so there are more items to add to the cornucopia. Not to mention lettuce and green onions – oops – I mentioned them. And basil and dill and rosemary and thyme.
I transferred CDs to DVD cases. I still have seven empties. I transferred music and audiobooks. Music CDs are resistant to this, but there are ways.
How does that song go?
“How ya gonna keep ’em
Down on the farm
After they’ve seen the farm?”
Though I THINK it’s “after they’ve seen Paree?”
I Binged it. Or Googled it with Bing. It was Judy Garland and Paree (Paris).
I finished ripping all my CDs to the Music directory, including the Tom Clancy Audiobook (4 CDs). All those CDs are in the Goodwill box, now. Less clutter. Copied the Music directory to a compact card. Another project bites the dust (on of the albums was Queens Greatest Hits I/II/III)
I wouldn’t go as far as ‘excited’, but I think my new game plan of getting through the day job as fast as possible is promising. I posted the proofs this morning, and asked for another job towards the end of the month. Now I need to finish planting and sowing in both gardens, including the containers, make a new, better cat fence, since I’ve just had to chase a cat out for the third time and I do not want this garden to become a cat toilet like my London one did, and sort out the garden shed – as well as preparing to replace the one on the allotment.
Also need to give the house a serious clean – soon, because a friend’s just invited herself for the weekend.
I’m feeling a bit pressed.
I can’t say I’m excited about work, but I did start singing lessons yesterday.
Yay! Singing is fun, challenging, and eventually addictive in the best way. When I started lessons I admit would sometimes become so frustrated I would feel terrible. Once I got my body in gear (all the synchronicities required for healthy production) singing would raise my spirits and keep me balanced.
I am beginning to suspect that my proper work is actually the seventh circle of hell, so I am not in any way excited about going back tomorrow. What I am excited about is the jumper I’m knitting for my friend’s greyhound. I have finished up to the chest gusset and am about to learn how to do short row shaping, whatever that is.
My fuzzy brain interpreted that to mean that your proper work was knitting the seventh circle of hell. On circular needles, I wonder?
Then she lays it out on the floor and it portals her workplace there …trying to imagine a greyhound with horns, but can’t they’re too sleek and the retired ones are too pitiful for dark powers
Greyhounds’ dark powers are in the strength of their charm.
This is truth. She is unspeakably adorable.
I’ve been digging in my sewing room and I keep finding cool stuff! My group is aiming to finish UFOs this summer and we had to declare our intentions by Memorial Day (and be done by Halloween – so we can all celebrate). I found five quilts in various states of un-doneness, so I’ll be working on those. Some just need borders to make a final quilt top, while others need considerably more help. I also found a couple of tops that should be quilted and be done. I’ve scheduled time on the longarm so I’ll work on two of those.
I also felt well enough to actually sew, so I’ve done some quilting and I finished putting the Macaw quilt together. (It wasn’t technically a UFO, since I never stopped working on it)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CeQ7uOVuQiP/
It will have to wait its turn before it gets quilted, but I’ve been feeling like I’ve got some good steam built up to work on these. Nothing but good times ahead!
Meanwhile, my garden is switching to summer mode. The gardenia has started blooming, as has the passion flower.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CeOIMvwOCvn/
What a beautiful quilting, so intricate and intriguing.
Good Lord! that’s gorgeous, Nancy! Glad you’re feeling better and have enough energy to create more beauty in the world.
What a beautiful design!
That is just beautiful!
That belongs on a wall, not a bed.
That quilt is absolutely stunning
Okay that is art
I am lethargic. I think it is the heat. But I finally settled on a theme for a small summer collection for Etsy. I am brainstorming Metamorphosis, so that gives me something to play with.
You mean Ovid’s Metamorphosis? Or Kafka’s? That should be interesting either way…
PS – I keep forgetting to ask you – where in Pennsylvania do you live? Close to Philadelphia?
I’m excited because–fingers crossed–I’ll be picking up the new puppy this weekend. Little Nameless was supposed to come home this past weekend, but her ear and the tooth of a litter-mate had an unfortunate connection that required a few stitches, so we had to wait for that to be resolved.
In the meantime, I’ve been trying to puppy-proof the house a bit and remove hazards from the yard. I’ve been dog-less and cat-less for the last year or two, so it will be nice to have another living body in the house.
Oooooh, a puppy!! I’m so jealous, and happy for you.
Might I suggest getting one of those extendable magnet thingys and going over every square millimeter of your home looking for metal. Hannah seems to have a magnet in her mouth and finds things everywhere. She ran into my sewing room for 0.4 seconds and came out with a pin in her mouth, which I successfully removed. I’d spent 10 minutes looking for it when I dropped it and couldn’t find it. She went right to it.
Oh, PUPPY.
Pictures, please.
I decided finally to get help on putting a website together and had a good prelim Zoom meeting about it with a designer a friend used for hers. I’ve played on my own with blogs in the past, never for very long, but this seems like the right time. I’ve begun putting plants in pots and prettying up the patio area, another thing that could have been done weeks ago. I’m finishing some work-that-pays. And cleaning the kitchen.
I’ve spent the last week(s) getting the house and the outside ready for summer. I believe I mentioned I installed a duvet. By which I mean a bidet…still quite proud.
So now it’s time for desk work and earning again.
I must be doing something right because yesterday I brought up stairs two bins of winter clothes and brought down two of the same of summer clothes, weeding as I went. So now there is a full bag to take to Goodwill or Savers if only I can stay out of it. What started this project was the heat of 86 degrees the day before yesterday and the AC’s not in the windows yet.
This morning I was looking out the kitchen window and realized some plants had migrated themselves from the back of the rock garden to front and center of the same. Those plants had been surrounding the tree for many years and I know I shouldn’t be surprised because they do move about. What I have to do before winter is replant some alliums. After twenty years they’re dying out and they are so pretty when the wave in the breeze.
So nice to hear how well your book is going Jenny. I can’t wait to buy it!
The bedroom floor is in final stage of repair after 2 false starts. My house is a mess but who cares.
Such a relief.
Has anyone else suddenly stopped getting emails notifying them of blog posts? I haven’t gotten one since last Thursday. Boo.
My garden is finally 99% in (I’ve been playing catch-up since I got back from my trip) and we’re finally getting real rain after weeks of way too dry. So now I get to work on writing again. I actually came up with my first new idea for a novel in years, other than the cozies, and wrote up a 15 page summary to send to my agent. Who knows if she’ll like it, but it felt good to be back in creative mode again after so long of struggling. Now I’ll be diving into the nonfiction (oracle deck and a book) I owe Llewellyn, and I’m looking forward to it. Which makes a hell of a change.
I forgot to say anything, but yes that stopped. Mollie and I have a meeting on Tuesday to talk about the blog, but we went over 10,000 e-mails and the cost of that went up. We’re trying to figure out what to do about the blog in the future, so for right now, those aren’t going out.
SORRY!
For what it’s worth I don’t need an email.
I’ll try and remember to come check. But I suck at remembering things. How about a Patreon for blog folks to contribute to the costs? I’d be happy to pay a few bucks a month for Jenny content and my Argh peeps.
She’s coming out here on Tuesday and we’ll be talking about this. We may decide to put the e-mails back, but what we really need to do is look at the blog and website and see where we want to go in the future. The blog stays, but right now it’s a community thing more than a business thing. If I’m going to start publishing again, then it becomes a business expense and part of the PR, but for right now, it’s just us chatting, which I value highly, the blog is not going anywhere, but which I’m not interested in investing a lot of money in.
The only think I can think of on your end is calendar notifications. Put Good Book Thursday in your calendar and it’ll tell you when it’s Thursday.
The other thing you can talk to Mollie about is getting rid of the folks who haven’t opened an email in over 6 months. My newsletter subscribers were going to hit a (not very large) number that was going to raise the cost of sending it out, and my VA just deleted a bunch of people who clearly never read them.
I’ll tell her. Thank you!
I think I got notified, but since I deleted all my “old” email (if I read it and don’t need a “paper” trail, it’s old), I can’t check. Already flushed the trash.
I often delete those on sight. By the time I get the email, I’ve read the blog and maybe posted. The subject is enough.
What did I enjoy doing? Back at the Board of Elections waiting around for the recount to begin. Pissing contest between Oz and McCormick for the Republican Senate spot on the ballot is still gong on. I hope they resolve it all by late September.
Otherwise, I have caught up on all of the cleaning and yeardwork. This weekend I’ll get caught up on the cooking. That means baking Pixie dog treats.
Or not resolve it and let Fetterman take the seat :-). That’s my wishful thinking, YMMV, of course.
Today and tomorrow are the days I have to work during this vacation… but only for a few hours each day. And with the time difference, I have most of the day before I have to get on the phone. I did all today’s work from a cell phone, which is kind of amazing. All I needed was WiFi. After tomorrow it is back to vacation. My boss has ordered me not to work next week, so I’m not going to work next week. Woohoo!
The most interesting (?) thing I’m working on is still being Power of Care for my friend with a brain issue, and who has aphasia as a result. He continues to believe his Vietnamese ex girlfriend-ish has poisoned him and wants us to find down someone who is Vietnamese and understands what local substances might have been used to poison him. (Where would one post for such a resource??) At the same time, he also would like me to convince his ex to come back to Canada and be his paid companion until he dies. He’s still competent to make decisions but that’s not the same as being rational. Anyway, I’ve firmly refused to do either of these things but even refusal…takes time.
{hugs}
thank you!
Sorry your friend is going through a rough time. However if you are curious just put Vietnam herbs toxic, into google and read what comes up
My Horrendously Worky June aka Day Job is Hell has officially started; I just signed off from work, 2 hours late. Sigh.
Aside from day job, I finished writing the novel-in-progress over the weekend. Have (I think) one small tweak to make to last chapter before I beg for a beta reader. 🙂 And have done some pre-marketing for the June title. And have set up some June sales to promote at QRI and RRR. And … cleaned up some weeds.
Post fall and physical therapy session, my knees and hips are doing fine, but my back gives me about a minute on my feet before it begins complaining and then escalating, so I’ve been working out how to accomplish what I can in one-minute-standing alternating with sitting (when the back re-sets after about a minute). My wonderful physical therapist had MAJOR surgery mid-May and will let me know when he’s allowed back to work, but until then, it’s coddle the back.
However, THE LARAN GAMBIT has been proof-read and is being copy-edited and we have the cover art and are working through advance stuff. Apparently D2D used to have Google Play as an option, but doesn’t now.
Probably the most productive day at work in a while! My brain just suddenly decided to go back to its old self and actually want to focus and work. I don’t know what funk I was in, but it was BAD, and I don’t know what I can do to prevent it from happening again. It was literally like a flip switched between yesterday and today. Eff if I know why… but I’m a little scared of it coming back. (As I write this, could be, you know, pandemic, politics, climate, war… maybe something got to me….)
In addition to a productive work day, I got through 2 loads of laundry, dishes, watering the plants and just got back from the gym. Action packed!
My grandpa made it through a VERY tenuous surgery, much happiness! Not Sunday, but y’all get an early show!
And now, dinner and considering the remainder of the evening. I need to make another batch of Neem oil – TWO infected plants and im ready to give up.
Nice brain, give it lots of water and sleep as a reward
Haha it gets lot of water… with additives? And sleep. Psh! Who sleeps…. >.>
(I need to adult better and sleep. I love it, but I love being awake not working, too….)
That quilt is simply gorgeous.
If one cannot sleep is surely hypnotized by the beautiful design.
Son in Warsaw, Poland, isn’t having many refugees stay over at his place anymore; in fact, many Ukrainian refugees are returning to Ukraine. After all, if they don’t have relatives in Western Europe or Canada and if their families are in western Ukraine (not eastern), they figure they have more future in going home, cleaning up the rubble, and rebuilding.
My new backpack is helping lessen my back pain. Only took me 50 years of dragging a heavy pocketbook (usually a big bag) around to figure out the problem.
Seeing friends again and going out means I’m slightly less paranoid than I’ve become over months (years) of bad national and international news. I don’t like being exposed to the “Let’s Go Brandon” world, but I can enjoy staying behind a mask in retaliation.
This week I reorganized my gardening stuff, my gift wrapping stuff, and my crafting stuff, and I filed all the papers into their folders or 3-ring binders. I did that because I’m stuck — I’m not researching the 12th century right now. I need to get back to an all-consuming focus. Or at least a good book. But it’s nice to have things picked up.
I worked very, very hard last night at keeping my mouth shut when one of the guys Paul is friendly with came over to let his dog meet Hannah. She’s a lovely, very gracile Belgian Malinois who is pretty much the same size as Hannah, and they had a great time playing. He is a loud mouth, know it all who doesn’t know a tiny fraction of what he thinks he knows (he’s a “horse guy” but thinks they run Arabians not Thoroughbreds at the Kentucky Derby, called Secretariat a she and said his brother was the one who put “her” down. I suppose it’s possible he has a much older brother who was a large animal vet in Kentucky in 1989 but I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it), so I just chuckled and smiled and watched the dogs run.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure the majority of folks here would have loved Nita right along with you, and still will love her some day when she finally emerges from the (self?)-publishing chrysalis.
May I just say Wow!, and Thank You! for getting all these out in one email. I was a going to go online today and figure out what happened. I missed you but was having my own drama around replacing a washer and getting some medical news I did not like. Also, I made a new friend who loves to email and lives half the country away. You are appreciated, and you are the greatest, and so are all the nutty people who take the time to post on here.