You're Doing It Wrong

I love Sharpies. I have them all over the house in different colors. I have a bunch at the office. I write most of my notes to myself in big giant Sharpie letters.

No one is sponsoring this post except for me, Sharpie lover.

My middle sized red Sharpie at work dried up and gave me sadness whenever I needed to write in red. I finally put in a supply order and I was doing it via keywords online and the Magnum is the Sharpie that arrived.

I practically need two hands to wield it. I tried it out and got high from the fumes. If the office ever gets held up, I’m going to use them as a weapon. (I got two.)

It is my favorite Sharpie ever.

I am going to be in CA this weekend for fun family stuff. Enjoy your weekend.

These are my broad beans. I wanted to know when to pick them and the directions said when they felt full. Right now they look huge but they feel squishy so I’m going to keep waiting.

If you somehow have missed it so far, Crooked Rock Romance Book 4 is now available everywhere. All links and info here.

This is the berry patch. It was looking completely derelict and I cleaned it up to inspire it to give me berries. It still needs some major TLC. That’s always one of my projects that I intend to do but never seem to get around to. Maybe this year.

Last weekend I was moving some things around in the outside freezer when I found some brownies, helpfully labeled, “normal.” I vaguely remember making a giant pan of brownies at Valentine’s day and freezing some because we couldn’t eat them all. These were so incredibly delicious I almost stuffed the whole container in my face. No nuts, so brace face here could eat them. I can’t remember which recipe I used. It’s nice not to be disappointed by something from the freezer.

Look at Sybil with leaves. I’m going to remove those tags, I just need to carefully label a photo so I can remember which branches are which thing. I found a pear tree with multiple varieties so that may be going in someday too.

Last weekend was my first weekend in about four and a half years that I wasn’t writing a romance novel. I still did a bunch of promo so this is technically my first weekend with zero romance duties. I am going to Nashville with friends. Maybe photos next weekend.

I spent all day doing book related things and promotional things.

The book will be available on May 15. You can pre-order it now at your favorite ebook seller. The paperback should be available by Friday. If you still haven’t read it, you might want to check out the free prequel story about Linda and Arnie. It’s not super important but there’s a little set up that gets paid off in book #4.

All the links can be found here.

Our bathroom mats were disintegrating so I found some nice squishy ones and impulsively bought them.

We liked the squishyness but you could no longer close the bathroom door without actually pulling it shut because it got caught on the rug. It took me less than 24 hours to decide I hated them but–you know me–I’d rather suffer with something I hate than do anything about it. I lasted about a week and then bought new bathroom rugs. The squishy ones went downstairs.

I am enjoying this weekend of not working on a book. It’s hard to resist the feeling that I need to be getting something done.

I’ve been spending my mornings reading in bed which is among my very favorite things to do. Yesterday I finished a New Yorker and two books I had going.

Today I started Babylon’s Ashes (The Expanse, Book 6), which has been sitting on my shelf for over 2 years. I was so lost I had to stop and pull up summaries of the previous books and even reading through those took over an hour. The good thing is that the second I finish, I can read book 7 and then run to the bookstore and buy book 8. Then I have to wait for Book 9 with everyone else.

Yesterday I tried a new recipe for roasting butternut squash that seemed like the temperature was going to be too hot. I was right but I did not know this until after I had created brown, extra-crispy butternut chips. It’s always a hard call with a new recipe. Sometimes the instructions seem off and the food turns out perfect. Other times you have to make a note in your cookbook or toss the recipe, as I did yesterday because it make me mad.

This morning Bob went off to do some stuff and I was under the impression he was returning mid afternoon.

I started a project in the kitchen that involved taking everything out of the utensil drawer and getting rid of the doodads from takeout orders and separating the dessert forks from the regular forks and cleaning everything out. (Yeah, I know, first world problems.)

Bob came home in the middle and it’s too hard if he’s around so I put it all away and took the vacuum cleaner and said, “I’m done organizing for now. I’m going to leave something for next weekend.”

And he practically fell over from laughing so hard.

Quite a few years ago I bought some tulip bulbs that were interesting shaped flowers. I think the bulb is out of gas because now I just get this.

What a weekend.

NCAA Gymnastics Final 8 on Friday and Final 4 yesterday. Timber match yesterday.

Changing over from winter to summer sheets.

Baked two pies for Easter celebration.

Finalized Book 4 and sent it off.

My brain is done for the day, the week and even the year. (Nope, kidding, not the year. I’m already itching to start working on some other projects.)

Hopefully I’ll be up for a more meaningful update next weekend.

I wrote about my bulb buying and planting here. I have been deliriously happy with my blooming flowers. Especially my tulips, so pretty.

I’ve taken numerous photos since they started blooming but didn’t notice that I bumped some dial on the camera and all the photos came out too dark. It took me several tries to figure out the problem so by the time I had it working properly, I was tired of taking pictures of flowers.

Don’t worry, there are at least 80 more. I’ll be posting more eventually. But the flowers were already getting blown out by the time I fixed the camera problem.

Last fall I planted broad beans as a cover crop — maybe this strategy is for people with more garden space? When I started the whole thing I wasn’t clear how it was going to work. I’m ready to put in the garden. The broad beans were still doing their thing.

I yanked up most of them and Billy brought his rototiller over. I won’t have time until after the ms. goes to the editor but I have a pile of seeds sitting here, ready for my half-assed gardening.