The three kids on the right are all grown up now. That’s my head on the kid with the brown dress and wearing a ginormous backpack (?) who was visiting and I don’t remember anything about her. I thought it would be hilarious to photoshop my head into all the photos for November but lost interest after this one.
I’ve had this picture scanned and in my main photo folder for months. I can’t remember what the intent was.
This is my room in college in 1985. Normally four people would be in this room and I would have had to confine my stuff to only one of those closet things — what are they called? Armoires?
I don’t think I was always this messy. I think I was crazy busy with school and jobs and social stuff.
Almost all those photos taped to the walls and armoire doors are of Def Leppard.
I have a relatively small list of movies I want to see — movies that won awards or got great reviews.
I can never seem to get to them. Part of the problem is that I rarely sit down to watch TV early enough to finish something before it’s time for bed. Another problem is that I am trying to keep up with the shows I want to see. I finally made it through season 1 of The Crown, which I loved. A third problem is that often the movies I want to see have a heavy subject and after a long day, I don’t want to challenge my brain with deep drama. The final reason is that we pay a fortune for cable and channels and subscriptions and it never fails that the one movie I really want to see, is only available for an additional charge.
This isn’t to show off but I can’t stand seeing the meter at zero.
2434 / 50000 words. 5% done!
Because I live in eternal fear of falling short of the eternal overachiever award that NO ONE cares about, as I have since around 2006, I’m going to post every day for the month of November. Some-to-many of the days may just be a photo and a caption and that’s okay. I’m the overachiever, I make the rules.
And since I’m not happy unless I’m not happy, I’m also going to take a stab at NaNoWriMo for my Book 4 first draft. I’ve tried to do this before and failed spectacularly but why not keep trying to do something that never works? 50,000 words (200 pp) is unlikely but if I aim for that I can probably reach 35,000 (140 pp) which will get me roughly half way.
My reason for thinking this time might be different is that I already know the characters and I know what’s going on in their world. I am on track for a much better outline than I have had before. We’ll see. If I fail you can all call the writing police and have my license revoked.
I probably won’t update this daily unless I really kick ass and want to show off:
0 / 50000 words. 0% done!
The front dahlia has been bursting out with one giant pink beauty after the other. Every time I get out of my car I have to run over and inspect the latest.
I brought all the squash in. I rarely process any before Thanksgiving and back in the day I sometimes waited until January but I noticed a little black spot on one. I learned the hard way not to ignore those. I processed three of them this weekend.
This all went into the freezer.
While I was awake in the middle of the night I had the idea of making a pumpkin pie now and shaving dark chocolate into the blind baked pie crust when it came out of the oven to create a chocolate layer. However, I’m going back to using all my brain cells for writing again so baking projects might be few and far between.
I tried the Milk Bar compost cookies this weekend and had medium results, mostly because I made a huge amateur hour mistake and while I was attempting to dump my sifted dry ingredients into the mix, the mixer part jostled my bowl and a significant quantity of dry ingredients sprayed artfully across me and my kitchen.
I’d already invested all those other ingredients so I kept going. I stuck them in the oven and put the timer at the recommended time rather than a couple minutes early to check — I should know better. My oven has a mind of its own. The cookies came out super crunchy but still yummy enough that I will try again.
The paperback is ready: Sweetheart Braves.
If everyone buys 250 copies, I should finally crack the bestseller list. Don’t let me down!
I’m finally back at it and working on Book 4. I still haven’t figured out my process yet so I’m trying something different. That’s a joke because I have figured out my process. It’s to start strong, flail early, have a major freakout, write in circles with intermittent periods of pulling my hair out and sending almost daily whiny messages to my friend Kira about how I really and truly can’t figure out how to finish it this time. Then I make myself finish it because Lorelei has me on the schedule.
But I want to do it differently this time. With less whining and gnashing. More on that story as it develops.
I’ve been doing my last bits of fall gardening. I bought 90 bulbs online and then found a bin of clearance bulbs at Fred Meyer and bought 30 more. I moaned and groaned but I buried a lug of bulbs last weekend and finished up on Monday night. It’s going to be pretty in March.
I optimistically left 2 tomato plants in the ground, both loaded with green tomatoes. Not much progress. I picked everything today and put it on the window sill. I also had this brilliant idea to buy broad beans to do magic to my soil. Actually it wasn’t my idea, it was in this newsletter that I subscribe to.
The only newsletter that is actually helpful, doesn’t come too often, and contains things I actually want to buy: Territorial Seed Company. It was their idea. I need to send them a note and tell them their marketing team is gold medal champion if they’re getting me to stay subscribed, read every one, and buy stuff.
This evening in the 20 minutes before dinner time I was in the dirt with a hand trowel, shoving broad beans in.
I wanted to get things done today because the rains are coming. This is the flower part of the garden and it still looks pretty. There’s lots of work to do on this side yet but I’ll wait until the cold and rain shrivels everything.
When we go to Orleans we go I5 to Grants Pass and in good weather cut over to Cave Junction and a couple of dinky little roads before we hop over Grayback to Happy Camp. In the interim spot between Cave Junction and Grayback, a big truck loaded down with portable toilets came up behind me. No matter how fast I drove or how narrow the road got, he remained no less than three car lengths behind me.
Normally I just get out of the way but I was already driving above the speed limit and: it was a truck with portable toilets! It was like a PeeWee Herman movie with me shrieking as I drove faster and faster and portable toilets loomed up behind me.
He finally pulled off to go a different direction.
During my visit I picked buckets and buckets of grapes. We got a bunch of apples and huckleberries. Mom and I went to get some pears. I am not especially comfortable on tall ladders or any ladders, to be honest. Mom wanted me to scamper up to the top for the prize pears on the top of the tree. I climbed about halfway and balked as the ladder bowed in the breeze.
Mom said: MOVE! I’ll do it.
So I let her climb up there and helpfully stood back and took photos in case I got something that would make a good viral clip. Don’t worry, she’s fine.
Isn’t this bear poo an interesting cylinder shape?
On the drive home I saw a small RV pulled over by a state trooper. The driver was dressed like Davy Crockett complete with full buckskins and raccoon tail cap. My sister said there might have been a mountain man festival in the area which would explain the fast-driving portable toilet truck, too.
This is my pumpkin crop with the blue hubbard and a butternut.
STILL NO PAPERBACK. ARGH. Amazon is killing me. They have everything but haven’t approved it.
Quick update in case anyone is checking here: Sweetheart Braves paperback is still not available.
Giant online retailer told me they shipped the proof last week. It’s not here. Since I’m leaving town tomorrow I’m certain it will show up then. I won’t have time to review and click the magic button until I return next week.
I didn’t even read this book, someone told me about Swedish death cleaning and I took the idea, as I interpreted it, and spent a day going to town on our own clutter situation.
I didn’t do a dramatic job but I had a bunch of kitchen items from my mother-in-law’s kitchen (Yeah, yeah, I know, but these are items that I actually want, really good old school Pyrex and Corningware. They don’t make it as good anymore. If you need some good Pyrex, let me know. I can fix you up) and no place to put them. While I was in the mood for decluttering I did the same in a couple of other areas of the house — sheesh, decluttering is exhausting and so much work for such a small reward. But the small reward was one entire carload of stuff away. I’ll take it.
I’m inspired to take care of some other piles of stuff that don’t bring me joy but I need more time to go through it. I started Book #4 so my attention has been redirected.
I got rid of things using various methods: giving them to people who need them, Goodwill, Friends of the Library, going to the clothing reseller, and listing them for free on Nextdoor. It’s been quite an eye opener that stuff I have that I thought was super amazing, in great condition, and would be in high demand from a person looking for free stuff, did not get even the tiniest eye blink of interest. Oh my, and I also had a big wake up moment when the too-cool-for-school clerk at the clothing reseller gave me her best look of over-polite disdain and slid my items back across the counter.
I’m a woman now.
Book 4 still isn’t available in paperback. SORRY! I received notice that Giant Online Retailer shipped my proof last week. I need to make sure it looks right before I release it into the world.
Going to Orleans next weekend. Coming soon: this year’s squash crop.
I started yanking stuff out before I took a photo and had to run back in and grab the camera.
I am putting the garden to bed earlier than usual this year. The tomatoes have been completely underwhelming and I’m tired of watering. I did a little homework and I’m trying a cover crop again this year and more soil conditioning/fertilizing methods. It’s still a work in progress. I’ve been trying to get out there all afternoon but there’s always one more thing to take care of.
I get up a little after five so my bedtime is a little after nine.
My body completely rebels when I try to go to bed before nine. Even if it’s just a few minutes. Sometimes after a long week, a girl is tired. I could not keep my eyes open one more minute and had read the same page in my book about 10 times so at 8:50 I said, good enough, and turned out the light and conked out immediately. Woke up, wide awake at 2am. Flopped around for at least 2 hours. The rule is always to tough it out until 9.
Last week I read an article, it might have been about the new Apple watch. I’m not interested in the watch I was just skimming various news sources and came across this in passing. I saw a remark that the medical tracker was good at recognizing AFib and I swear what my brain processed was that this medical tracker could recognize lies, as in: a fib. I thought that was going to be a very interesting device.
