On Monday, Bob and I started Rest in Pink.
I’d done 65,000 words on Lavender’s Blue when he joined in, and the draft we have now of Lavender is just under 120,000 with only some of those from the original 65,000. He coped with joining a book in progress and I’m grateful. But now we’re starting from scratch, although with the same characters and setting, and it’s a blast.
In one week we have 20,000 words of rough draft and a million plot ideas.
Starting new things makes me happy. (See my many WiP crochet projects for evidence.). Finishing makes me even happier.
What made you happy this week?
Happiness is a long weekend. I am so glad to have tomorrow off, even though it will make Tuesday crazy.
“Are the bikers zombies? Asking for a friend.” LOL
Happiness is finishing a few small projects (articles I owe) so I can start on the bigger ones (a book, a workbook, and an oracle deck). Honestly, happiness is making any progress at all after so long feeling like I was spinning my wheels. Right now that progress is still slow, but I’m hoping I’ll get back in the groove.
The gardening is really starting to flourish. I have small pods on my pea plants, more lettuce and spinach than I can eat (although the spinach is already bolting in the heat), and the first few strawberries. It is nice to see your hard work pay off, no matter whether on the page or in the garden.
Also SO happy to see you writing again! And having fun playing with Bob. Ahem. You know what I mean.
The energy / enthusiasm is contagious. 🙂
I read a couple of columns at an open mic. Never having been a performer, I find it fun to…perform my own words. Also, applause is addictive. That is all.
Paddle boarding in the river today will make me happy.
We’ve arrived back savely after a long drive through the night. Dh had decided to head home half a day earlier to avoid the traffic jams of holiday travel (at least half the state is on the way back from Pentecoste school holidays). He was absolutely right! Smooth driving and no stops!
It’s hotter here in southern Germany than at the Adriatic sea.
I’m not looking forward to working – our new office has large windows facing the morning sun an no a/c. Upside: the windows can be opened and we’ve got more space for the air to circulate.
Also, I do have plans for a “curtain” of plants – looking forward to plant shopping!
Sorry, Tammy! This wasn’t meant as a reply but as an ordinary comment.
I figured! No worries. Enjoy your curtain of plants!
Reading that you asked about biker zombies makes me happy.
Also the fact that my floors will be refinished this week makes me happy although I’m not sure how long I will have to stay out of the house because of the fumes is a little concerning.
I’m happy I could contribute to our move even though I hurt my back badly enough that standing, much less lifting, became a problem.
I organised giving things away on gumtree. Harder than it sounds. We ve had 4 people say they will take a pair of wardrobes. One showed up on foot, one in a small car and two made appointments and didn’t show up at all. Tomorrow is Last Day and we still have them (wail) Apart from that I managed to get people to collect about 20 large items, plus many small unlisted things.
You know, advertise a bookshelf, that happens to be waiting next to several open boxes of books that also need new homes. “Oh, and there’s this table full of useful but small things you might want to look over”.
I’m very pleased that they will be used, that we won’t have to throw them away, and that we won’t have to pay to throw them away. I helped!
Also tomorrow is the last day of being responsible for a house I didn’t really like even before the mould. I am so happy to be (almost) done with it.
Isn’t it great to be on the verge of a fresh start?
I remember how hard it was to give things away. When we were gearing up to move from Big Old Apartment to Little Old House, we had LOTS of Big Things that couldn’t come with us. Fortunately, found one couple who wanted almost all of them. We still have the dining set for ten because nobody wanted that. Had to build a deck in the backyard to store it (and haven’t even taken the tarps off for going on two years, gourd knows what’s underneath (aside from a colony of feral cats)).
Mostly it’s hard to believe how much I acquired in 15 years. I moved here with 2 suitcases and 3 boxes. I hope they new place ends up having lots of built-ins because I am seriously disinclined to buy furniture any time soon.
Fresh start, oh yes! Next project: find somewhere to live, in August, during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Whee! It really does feel like Whee! It’ll be a pain, and expensive but I’ll also be in Edinburgh during the festival which sounds amazing
That’s amazing! I have two friends performing in that festival: Kristen Poppe and Mimi Hayes. 🥰
The Edinburgh Festival is amazing, so many shows, so much talent, they literally rent out any room that can seat more then three people, for people to do a show in. However good luck, the city is pretty much just taken over with it and sometimes queues for things can get crazy.
Happy yesterday was getting my new birdbath situation established and finishing chapter 7 of the new WIP.
This morning, happy was accomplishing a major sorting-out and tidying-up of the cupboard over my closet. I have more stuff queued to give away, yet more stuff queued to throw away, and there is now room in the cupboard for my suitcase (which had been parked on the floor of my closet for 4 years).
The rest of today, happy will be writing, writing, writing.
Finishing a couple of ebook compilations made me happy.
Finishing the useful life of the fan over my head in the bed nook did not. I’d stopped it to remove accumulated dust from the housing. (Fans do that.) When I plugged it back in, it seized up. Dead. So I replaced it with the 4″ fan on the wall by the AC and disassembled the dead fan for spare parts I’ll never use. That made me… less unhappy.
We’ve had storms the past week. Momentary power interruptions, no sustained outages, but such an interruption interferes with the controls on my gardens. Now they are coming on at odd hours and turning off at even odder times. I’m going to have to be up at 4 AM to get them all back in the diurnal rhythm I want for them.
Meantime, I found a big sweet pepper on one of my plants in the ranches. I’d given up on sweet peppers, settling for all those hot chili peppers instead. And my green onion crop has bounced back from the last pruning. Hydroponics is my happy place. 🙂
I planted salad greens on Monday and they are already sprouting. I usually have poor luck with spinach but I’ve got a bumper crop this year and am enjoying fresh spinach salads for lunches. I picked up a carload of seedlings for community garden I work with and spent a couple of hours tidying them up so they will be ready for the new gardeners. My little green house is jammed packed but we’ve had several nights below 10 C so I didn’t want to risk losing any of them.
I took a bouquet of flowers to a friend who had broken her ankle and she texted me later to say that her doctor had just advised that her bones aren’t healing properly, but the flowers cheered her up. My part-time job on a flower farm always makes me happy, but being able to share gorgeous flowers with my friends and family is an added bonus.
Took my son out to get his dad a gift for Father’s Day. Short outing but I enjoyed chatting with him and watching him put together a gift box of items he thought his dad would like. He’s almost 21 and has his own life, so I treasure the times we spend together.
I’m certain that spinach can be grown hydroponically. I’m not certain it can be grown in the small indoor units I use. I’ve checked Click & Grow and AeroGarden for Spinach seed pods – no go. I’ll have to investigate more. Spinach salads sounds good.
I’m on vacation! I’m staying 2.5 hours away in a beach town with a friend I haven’t seen since prepandemic and another one visiting from England. It’s very lovely here and so far nobody’s sick either (has to be said).
I’m enjoying my annual reunion with my two closest friends from university. We’re in Halifax, and the hills are spectacular – crammed with surprises such as grey stone farms and mills and woods and fields. Spent yesterday at Saltaire, and enjoyed the Hockneys at Salts Mill. Today was Hebden Bridge, which had a market as well as interesting shops, plus a great walk through woods by a mill stream.
I had dinner with one of my sons and his family. My eldest grandson came home for the weekend from Colorado because he was so sad his other grandmother died this week. It was nice to see him and know he is doing OK at his internship this summer. I found some organic non-THC CBD-CBG-CBN capsules for sleep that are wonderful! I am finally getting enough sleep without taking an NSAID before bed! I also have a CBD lotion to put on the aches that works really well. I highly recommend Lazarus Naturals in Portland, Oregon. Sorry about all the initialisms.
Happiness, for today, is sunshine and tolerable temps, a fantastic cup of coffee, and listening to my dog lose his damn mind because he’s a Yorkie and apparently that’s what they do. 🙂
Happiness is feeling better. I’m on the mend from Covid. Seven days isolated from the family. So far no one else is sick. Crossing fingers they all stay healthy.
What will make me happy today will be finishing some things for a change. Last night I made a to-do list for today that actually looks like I won’t put it off. I still haven’t exercised for PT tomorrow, but we’ll see what happens after I get back from the grocery store. Today is the last day before the heat returns so I plan to enjoy the sunshine while I can.
I am also enjoying the fact that Mollie fixed my slot on the mailing list so that I am reminded to get here before all the conversation is over.
Yesterday I went out to the suburbs to help make centerpieces for my S & BIL’s 50th Anniversary Party. As always, part of the supplies arrived broken and I broke a frame or 2, but we did manage to assemble enough centerpieces to give us the bare minimum. We also found out that the Post Office ate at least 3 of the invitations. One of the was to my BIL’s sister and that must have been extremely awkward. I’m sure she must have wondered why her siblings were invited and not her family. I had offered to mail the last batch of invitations on my way home last month, but my sister didn’t want to risk the notoriously bad mail service from the Post Office in my neighborhood, so she mailed them all from the same suburb where the party will be held. And at least 4 invitations never arrived. Remember when Louis DeJoy (postmaster appointed by Trump) promised that regular mail would take 1 day longer, but still arrive? The worst part (for me) is that one couple I particularly wanted to see didn’t get an invitation until my sister handed them one yesterday and have both made other plans for that afternoon. Carol is hosting some friends on the annual Garden Walk and I am tempted to wish for rain on that day as our party will be indoors.
My happies are being productive. More things I could still do, of course, but so far this weekend, I have dusted the living room, gotten groceries, swept out the garage, gone out to lunch, bought a few flowers, planted the flowers plus 45 minutes of much needed yard work, DH replaced the broken hose I couldn’t get off the tap for me, so I also WATERED the new flowers, made cookies for Saturday night guests, got up Sunday and walked a mile and a half, watered again, made some great muffins, made deviled eggs, 1.5 loads of laundry done, email done, and tidied up the kitchen, so I get to boast! and go back to reading and eating fun things that I made.
Currently, happiness is solitude. Last weekend I went to a children’s book conference in Canberra, and am still recovering from being around so many people for two and a half days. So – quiet house, no visitors, and getting back to my WIP. All good.
I just got home from a long weekend in Vermont where a group of us helped a friend celebrate a milestone birthday. We stayed at an air B and B and had a wonderful time. There were great conversations, good food, a lot of laughter, a hike in the woods and a swim in the pond.
Tomorrow my daughter and I fly off to Indianapolis so she can see the specialist for her rare disorder (although clearly not as rare as Gin’s). Her specialist used to work in Baltimore which is one flight from here. Indianapolis requires connecting. I’m anxious because there have been so many reports of airline flights being canceled.
But we have tickets to the Indianapolis Zoo and a nice place to eat dinner on Tuesday evening. It is going to be tons of fun to have two whole nights away with my daughter.
Happy is the lavender is blooming and smells wonderful. The roses passed their first big bloom but now will bloom in bits all summer. The butterfly bush is blooming. Three different kinds of lilies are blooming. The daylilies are blooming although of course as soon as I mentioned my spray here someone came and ate all the blooms off one of the freshly sprayed plants.
And DH and DS seem to be recovering from Covid and so far I don’t have it.
Happiness lately is time off work. I was off Monday through Friday last week. Worked Saturday. Working tonight. Then off Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I feel serene again.
Also happy to have the groceries in. I have to go put them away but the hard part is over.
It’s raining heavily here and my daughter who usually cooks doesn’t feel well. Decided we deserved potato soup. Picked it up from Outback Steakhouse on the way home from grocery pickup. Viola supper is done.
Going to end my evening binge watching Elementary which I love just as much this time around.
Happy!
Happiness is a Juneteenth picnic with lovely weather (except for the wind).
A friend returned a book I lent her just before Covid. She’s been trying to get it back to me ever since and finally put it in her car thinking we’d connect eventually. And we did today. I’m taking it as a sign that the worst of Covid is over.
Less hectic week coming up. That’s happiness.
I am happy that today two friends from out of state whom I’ve not seen since before the pandemic sat on my patio and enjoyed the lunch I made with me. It made me happy to plan and shop for food, to cook food, and to eat it with them. And I have leftovers.
Also had lunch this week with two other friends who’ve had the decency to remain in the area.
Aren’t leftovers the best!
I was happy that our local family of crows showed up JUST as I was going out with a tray of chicken innards (for some reason there were two hearts in this particular chicken, which made it even better. Five raw meat mouthfuls for five crows to skedaddle off with! And they were so happy! Usually we manage nothing more delicious than a few chicken nuggets, so apparently this was a Good Corvid Day, which is a good day in my books too.
Completing the latest logic puzzle makes me happy, and I did that after sweating blood over it for days.
Watching the January 6 Committee hearings makes me very happy, and I look forward to two more sessions this coming week.
Haven’t had a chance to watch the hearings but if the content makes you happy – that makes me happy, too! I think we are of a similar mind regarding the hopeful outcome of those hearings!
You can look around on YouTube for full-length video of them, or there are a number of sources for podcasts of them.
All I can say is that if Liz Cheney ran for any office that I was qualified to vote for, I would vote for her.
And did it strike anyone else that Mike Pence’s heroism was largely generated by the insight and intelligence of his general counsel, Greg Jacob? I was mesmerized by every sentence that man spoke in describing the events around Trump’s pressure on the VP to negate the 2020 election certification.
I’ve appreciated having one person be the main MC each time, instead of the mad five-minutes for me, five-minutes for you, and five-minutes for flame-throwing that we’re so used to. Rea;;u like the format.
Watched my youngest granddaughter win 2nd overall for the three day equestrian competition.
Two things made me happy this week.
Yesterday, I happened upon the national dog agility contest being broadcast on TV. I was mesmerized – the little dogs were so speedy, while the bigger dogs were more deliberate. And the ears – especially in the weaving wands portion – so fun to watch them fly. I couldn’t tear myself away!
And Saturday I had my regular weekly call with my dad – and he was smiling a genuine smile! He’s had some health issues over the past six months, but he’s starting to feel better, and I could just tell. (A pacemaker can make a difference, just saying) I’m looking forward to seeing that smile in person this week.
One of my cats adores watching dog shows of any type, so we watch whenever we find them. 🙂
A pacemaker can make an almost instant difference! Years ago, I shared an office with a guy whose cousin was suddenly hospitalized. He was pretty panicky about any kind of cardiac surgery, but absolutely astonished when once the pacemaker was in, she was ready to bounce out of bed and start climbing flagpoles! But once the pacemaker stabilizes the heartbeat . . . .
When I went hospital back in ’17, one of the things they did was increase my pacemaker from 40 to 60 beats per minute. Until then, it was in my chest for the defibrillator function, not the pacemaker, per se. HUGE difference.
I finished weeding my share of the traffic island in front of our house and replanting some dead lavender plants. The traffic island, when we moved in, was known as dog-poop park and the city had turned off the water so most of the trees and grass and plantings had died. Fast forward about 12 years, about 10 yards of topsoil, thousands of dollars in plants and tons of work by the neighbors, a new bioswale by the city at one end of it, a new sprinkler system put in by the city and we have a small (1/3 of a block?) park that daily see about 20 kids and parents and bicyclists (they use it as a rest stop).
One of the neighbors in attempting to start a butterfly garden in an area we have had trouble keeping the plants growing. My suggestion is that we need to work a bunch of compost into the area or at least top dress with it. Some of the shrubs are beginning to grow. So far we haven’t done it.
Anyway, I am so happy that I finally have the weeding and replanting done. It has rained and rained here. And I still have the furnace on.. Usually I turn it off the first of May. Last year at this time, we had a week of 100 F days including several over a 110.
Now I can finish cleaning up my own yard. OH. My plants in my new raised bed I put in last Monday are sprouting! And my new raspberry patch I put in the raised bed at the other side of the house are covered with newly forming berries. I see good food in my future.
I have another happy. Last week I made chili. I mentioned all the veggies I’d bought that went into it. It was… very healthy.
This week I made chilier chili. More sweet peppers. More red onions (but no Vidalias). Less bok choy, because I threw in all I had which was in Ranch Two. I threw in tiny tomatoes – store bought and all the harvest from Ranch Four. Honestly, there were more veggies, to the point of nearly overflowing my biggest frying pan. 102.5 ounces of chili. The only bad thing was the 80% lean ground beef instead of 93%.
I have to shop. I need more sweet peppers, more jalapenos, maybe some Serranos, some leeks and scallions and garlic and green onions and white onions and cherry tomatoes and pearl onions and corn and green beans and maybe peas and carrots… I’m going to borrow the dotter’s kitchen and her Texas Skillet. Oh, and it’ll be 93% lean ground beef and maybe ground pork and possibly ground turkey. I have plenty of habanero powder to raise the heat. I’ll call it the Chiliest Chili.
For today, I just ate a bowl (8 ounces) of the chilier chili on brown rice. I am happy!
Happiness is a new puppy. I’ve never had a dog before due to allergies but this one is a good breed for people with allergies and she’s making my son very happy.
Happiness is the winter solstice tonight. It’s only going to get colder, but the light will come back, and that makes such a difference to my moods. I managed to get all my fruit trees repotted ahead of time, so from here on they can focus on growing for the next season, and that made me very happy too.