Zip Zip Zoom

That's the speed of the lawn mowers. They showed up this afternoon and were only here about 15 minutes. They mowed, trimmed, and blew the trimmings off the patio and driveway. They're fast but I saw the mower take a divot out of the front lawn. It amused me to see him leap off the mower, replace the turf, and stomp it into place.

 

BD, the Greenix pest control nerd (that's what they call themselves in their texts!), came this afternoon too. He found three dead mice in the basement (no wonder it stunk down there) and disposed of them. Then he reset the traps, added more in the workshop area where he thinks they might be nesting, and did another inspection outside. He refilled the bait boxes and stuffed steel wool into another hole he found. There are no pictures.

 

Dad's rose is opening up another flower. It's about half bloomed and looks like a picture of a rose, it's so perfect looking. 

 

Today's drawing prompt was Sweets & Treats. I drew my favorite sweet treat--chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce. Mm.

 

I took another stab at painting sunflowers using KA's notecard as a starting point. I used my best paper and it went a little better. It still buckled a bit but not nearly as much as the cheaper paper. I refuse to use the expensive paper all the time so I guess I'm doomed to be frustrated. Maybe I use too much water.

 

At watercolor class tonight we learned a bunch of special effects, like dripping alcohol on wet paint to make circles like rain on water, salt, pressing plastic wrap onto wet paint and letting it dry, using a natural sponge to apply paint, and blowing bubbles and then dripping paint on the bubbles. I didn't try that last one. Then she told us to paint an abstract painting. She showed us a lot of examples and then gave us some better paper and turned us loose. I painted shapes and then outlined them and drew lines around them and between them with a fine liner pen. It's all right, not my best work, but it'll do. It will not be turned into a card.

 

On my walk yesterday I looked up through the neighbor's tree and saw the sky. Two weeks ago all I saw was green. Now the leaves are changing and falling fast. Other trees are still mostly green but that one's in a hurry to shuck its leaves, I guess. 

 

I got through about 60 more pages of manuscript but didn't find any places to add the bad guys into the good girl's life. I have to do better. I need to focus.

--Barbara 

The First Bird

This Sparrow is the first bird I was able to photograph sitting on the new feeder. A Chickadee was there for a nanosecond, not nearly long enough for the photo, so this Sparrow is deemed first. I'm just glad that it's on the edge and not hiding behind the feeder.

 

Another Sparrow stopped at the suet nuggets for a snack. I've been surprised that the birds and squirrels haven't been gobbling up the suet nuggets lately. Last time I filled the feeders the nuggets feeder was only about half empty. Maybe someone else in the neighborhood has better bird food.

 

I spent a lot of the day working my way through the novel manuscript finding places to insert the antagonists into the protagonists life. I found a few places to put in a bit of dialogue or action. (I got up to page 135 of 307) I'm taking the suggestions of the latest Manuscript Analysis from ProWritingAid one at a time to see if I can't fix places where the story is lacking. That doesn't mean I have to rewrite the whole thing, I just need to weave the two story lines together better. That's what I'll focus on next week at The Clearing.

 

The drawing prompt today was Rubbish. How can a person draw trash? No idea. So I drew my trash bin. It's trash night, thank heavens, because there's a decaying mouse corpse in there that reeks. I'll be glad to have it out of the garage. Now hopefully the pest control guy will find the mouse corpse(s) that's stinking up the basement tomorrow afternoon and take it/them away with him.

 

I drew yesterday's gratitude journal page this afternoon too. I like that it looks like DS and I are talking on a soup can phone. Remember those?

 

After supper and before my walk, I printed off a packing list for TC. I have to start packing tomorrow because I've got a lot of things to do between now and Saturday and don't want to forget anything. 

 

I drove over to DePere (5 miles) for a haircut this morning. Even though she blow dried my hair I suddenly feel little hair schnipples in my shirt neck. Itchy. I kept picking at it while walking up the stop sign and back. I'll be glad to put on a non-hairy shirt tomorrow after my shower.

--Barbara 

In Between Raindrops

It was foggy when I got up this morning and it had rained overnight. The night creatures and early (well, earlier than me) risers had done a good job getting rid of the spilled birdseed from the great squirrel caper. This chipmunk fiercely defended its rights to the pile of seed, driving off squirrels, Sparrows, and one loud Bluejay.

 

Once I was dressed, I went out to the shed and dug around looking for a bird feeder that would suffice. I didn't find the one I thought was there but I found this one. It'll do just fine. The perches are sensitive to too much weight and close the feeding ports when, say, a squirrel would get on them. It'll take a while for the birds to figure out that there are seeds in the newfangled thing but I can be patient. It holds a lot more seed than the one that the squirrel broke yesterday. Just as I started to fill it rain started to fall so I had to use the can lid to keep the rain out of the bag of birdseed. It's prone to getting moldy on the bottom already because I don't use it up fast enough, I don't want to add to the moisture in there.

 

I spent a lot of time today figuring out what piece of my manuscript to print out copies to take along to The Clearing when I go ON SATURDAY. I chose the beginning of a chapter that has all of the main characters in it so the writers will get slightly acquainted with them. It's gotta be so hard to critique something that's seven pages out of three hundred, part of a much longer, more complicated story. I appreciate all of the comments.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Street Scene but I didn't have one to look at so I scrolled back in my photo gallery on my phone and chose the stone building I stayed in at watercolor class in the spring. It's kind of on a street. Okay, it's on the path from the parking lot to the main campus which is kind of like a street. Without cars.

 

 I was surprised to see a Downy Woodpecker on the suet nuggets since I haven't seen one in a while. By the time I got the camera up it had flown over to the finch feeder. I like this shot because it's leaning over from the perch to peck at another opening because it's too tall to sit on the perch and peck at the one right above it.

 

After supper I knitted a few rounds in the Llama Mitten #1. I was unhappily surprised to find a knot in the yarn so I had to untie it and pick up the new yarn. Now I'll have two more ends to weave in and in the middle of the mitten hand. I slipped it on to gauge how much more I need to knit before starting the top decreases and it's a couple inches. I won't take it with me to The Clearing because I won't have time to knit. We usually meet back in the classroom to play games and chat after supper.

 

That was my exciting day. Nothing big or momentous, just a normal overcast day, but it is the first day of autumn so that's something. I'm trying to figure out what clothes to pack. I'll be two hours north and on a peninsula between Lake Michigan and the bay of Green Bay. I'm thinking layers.

--Barbara 

Not My Favorite Trick

You know, I was amused by that tricky squirrel for the last few days until I realized that it broke the birdfeeder with all its leaping. I noticed this afternoon that no seed was falling out of the feeder and no birds had come to empty it. Turns out the squirrel's trick broke one of the springs that held the outer covering of it so it was always closed. There was no way to fix it so I dumped it out and threw the feeder into the trash. I might have a less squirrel-proof feeder in the shed that I can use to dispense the rest of the 40# bag of birdseed I just bought a couple weeks ago. I don't want to have to buy a new feeder but I will if I have to.

 

The mums are blooming. The copper ones are forging into the lead. They aren't red but I do love their color and the profusion of tiny flowers on the mound of leaves.

 

This tiny gold mum is about as big as my thumbnail and I don't have long nails. It's one of only two open buds on the plant and it's barely big enough to be seen.

 

I tried to paint the outer space sky again. This time on my best paper. That didn't help. It still buckled and the paint slumped into the gullies and made a big splodge on the paper. I'm giving up.

Most of the day I spent doing a couple small loads of laundry (I had some stains I didn't want to set in) and while that was sloshing around I worked on trying to put the antagonist of my novel manuscript earlier in the story and more in the protagonist's way. I only added little things but Lucia's more aware of the really bad guy and finds letters from the sorta bad guy and they're more aware of her. It's a start. I had a manuscript analysis done on ProWritingAid last week and that's one of the "concerns" that showed up. There are more, this is just the first one I'm tackling. Guess I know what I'll be doing up at The Clearing next week. I also figured out a piece of the novel to make copies of to take for critique up there. I'll get that printed out this week too.

 

The drawing prompt today was Something Made of Glass. I wasn't in the mood to draw again today so I sketched the patio door. Meh.

 

I spent time this morning trying to figure out how to make the new Xumo streaming box remote work. Thank heavens I kept the little cheat sheet that came with it. That tells me some things but I can't figure out how to search for shows I want to record except by scrolling through the guide day by day and hour by hour. I can't find a "search" command anywhere. Also it won't let me save things forever, only for 9 months. Before I had a few shows and movies I'd saved to watch over and over and now that's not available to me. This is an improvement?

 

In the morning I took a quick jaunt to the closest grocery store and was happy to find they had lemon Jello so I bought some. I was so grateful that I put it on my gratitude journal page along with getting some crafting stuff and working on the manuscript. 

 

I took a walk after supper. I wasn't in the mood for that either but I did it. On Saturday I leave for The Clearing for a week and need to be able to comfortably walk to class and around campus. I'll manage but I'm too sedentary. Everything I like to do best requires me to sit down--writing, drawing, painting, knitting, reading/listening to audiobooks--all done sitting down. Not laundry, though. Oh, speaking of laundry, there has to be a dead mouse downstairs somewhere because it stinks down there. I texted the pest control people and got a bounce back message telling me to contact them during business hours. I want to make sure the pest guy comes in on Wednesday to find it because it really stinks and I want it gone. I'm paying him to find it and remove it. I'm not doing it. So there.

--Barbara 

And It Didn't Rain

I had an excellent day at Harvest Fest in Sturgeon Bay sitting in the tent outside of OtherWorlds Books & More. I sold five books to customers and nine books to the store to replenish their shelves and stock my new title, Christmas at Seaview. I drove through a little rain on the way to Sturgeon Bay and it didn't look promising but the rain held off, it wasn't windy, and there was even a little sunshine. A great day!

 

This morning I managed to snap a photo of the trick squirrel hanging onto the round feeder for dear life trying it's darnedest to make seed come out of the ports. Too bad it's too heavy and pulls the ports shut so none comes out. It went back to leaping off the chair back and kicking the feeder, making it swing, and knocking seed out of the ports.

 

Also before I drove away I pulled out the Sketchbook book and drew today's prompt which was Something Made of Wood. I was too focused on making sure I had everything I needed so I just copied a few of the clothespins she had on the page. I didn't even take the time to color them in. But at least I drew.

 

When I got home I was inspired to update the "elevator pitches" for all of my titles. An elevator pitch is a 1-2 minute description of a title that you could give in the short time of an elevator ride. Then in looking up the descriptions on the sales pages of my titles there was one that was the original, terrible, not easy reading version. So I spent a couple hours this evening revamping it and changing it on both versions of the book in Kindle Direct Publishing. In a few days Amazon will manage to change the description on the sales page so it's the way I want it to read. Unfortunately that's the one book I didn't upload a GetCovers cover for it and the blurb on the back cover can't be changed because they did it at the editing/publishing service I used for that one. Love the cover, don't like that I can't change the text on it. 

 

I got too involved in rewriting that book description to draw a gratitude journal page for today but I didn't post the one I drew last night so I'm posting that one instead. I hope you don't mind.

 

It's raining now! It was thundering a few minutes ago and now I hear rain falling. I'm glad it waited until tonight to rain. I was so afraid that we would get rained out in the tent on the street in Sturgeon Bay. I was thinking about having my bags, etc. on the street when it was raining and thought they'd all get sopping wet. But it didn't. Whew. 

--Barbara 

Flying Squirrel

One of the squirrels has a new trick. Yesterday I watched it cling to the round feeder trying to get seed to spill out so it could drop to the ground to eat it up. Today it had a new trick. It would climb up onto the back of one of the patio chairs and then leap across to the round feeder, knocking into it, and making seed fall on the ground. It must have done it fifty times that I saw today. I assume it spent most of the day perfecting its leap. Sorry this is so blurry. I had to be ready and then quick press the shutter button. There's probably an "action shot" setting but I don't know it and didn't think of it until just now.

 

I spent most of the afternoon working on a short story. It might be finished. I emailed it to cda for critique on Monday. We'll see what she has to say about it then.

 

Today's drawing prompt was TV & Film. I was stuck for what to draw but then I thought about my favorite movie, Rear Window. So I drew Jimmy Stewart in his cast and wheelchair looking out his window with binoculars. An awful drawing but such a good movie.

 

Look at all these fallen leaves! There are colored leaves on the trees but all the leaves on the street are brown. Why? I have no idea but they're crunchy when I walk through them.

 

After writing I taped a piece of watercolor paper to a plexiglass board and drew a circle on it to make another color wheel. This time I used different red, yellow, and blue paints and got a very different wheel. It's much duller and more muted than when we used bright primary colors at class on Wednesday night.

 

I knitted a lot of mitten hand tonight. First I slid the thumb stitches on a holder that looks like a big safety pin, then I cast on one stitch and started knitting around and around and around. I have to knit to four inches and then I'll measure to make sure it's long enough before starting the top decreases.

 

Here's one more picture of Dad's latest rose before I sign off. I have to get moving in the morning because I've got that book event in Sturgeon Bay and I have to be here at 12:30 which means I'll leave the house around 11:00 so I'm there in plenty of time. These days I'm very slow in the mornings so I have to make a concerted effort to get ready without goofing off too much. I've already decided what I'll wear so I won't have to stand staring into my closet.

--Barbara 

It's Not Citrus

But it's still Jello. This week I have cherry Jello for a bedtime snack. Sugar-free, of course. Usually I like citrus flavors the best but cherry is good too. Not black cherry, just plain cherry. I forgot to look for lemon when I was in the other grocery store to pick up a prescription last week. Maybe I'll make a special trip tomorrow. It's not far.

 

I caught a few Sparrows at the birdbath this morning. Two were settled on the rim and one was flying in. I kind of love capturing birds in flight even if they're all brown and blurry.

 

Last night at watercolor class the teacher showed us a shade card she made with all of the paints in her palette. She encouraged us to do the same, so this afternoon I marked off a piece of watercolor paper into rectangles, spritzed down my paints to get them juicy, and got busy doing my homework. She also suggested we make more color wheels with the other shades of red, yellow, and blue in our palettes. I haven't done that but might take a stab at it this weekend. 

 

The other mums in front of the house are starting to catch up to the purple ones. These are the coppery ones (I confess they're my favorites) and there are a zillion tiny buds opening.

 

The gold ones aren't far behind. They've got buds but only a couple of ones where you can see the color of the petals.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Kings & Queens, so I pulled out the Tarot deck again and sorted out another pair of royalty. This time it's the King and Queen of Pentacles. The cards have a black background which makes them stand out better but I couldn't face all that coloring around the center picture so I left it white. Imagine it's black, if you'd like.

 

When I got home this afternoon I went out and filled the feeders. The chipmunk was the first arrival and made short work of the bit of seed I spilled when I filled the round feeder. While I was painting the shade card I heard something out in back and looked up to see a squirrel hanging onto the bottom of the round feeder for dear life and trying its darnedest to get up to the ports. On the second or third try I realized that it was knocking out seed with all its gyrations and then dropping down to the ground to clean up what fell. Not so foolish after all. I'm thinking about stopping feeding the birds when I run out of birdseed, etc. Since I'm paying to have the rodent population cut down or eliminated it isn't smart of me to keep putting out food that attracts them, is it? No.

 

There are two big trees on the curve of my street that have lots of leaves changing colors. I have to figure out how to clean the camera lens on my phone so the pictures are clearer and don't look so foggy.

 

On my way home from getting my teeth cleaned this morning, I stopped to visit DS at Zambaldi. He was brewing Meatball Man amber and started sanitizing this big silver tank to pump it into when it was done cooking. He uses a lot of water in the brewing process. One of the dentists popped into the exam room to say that he'd done a Brewer for a Day at Zambaldi on Monday and had a blast. It's so great to hear and see the excitement and enjoyment on his face. Also I sold a book to the other dentist. Good thing I have them in my car and can take credit cards with my phone.

 

I got to do the after school run again today. I love doing it. It gives me a chance to see LC and OJ for a few minutes and hear about their days and get some hugs. Always fun.

--Barbara