Made It!

My goal this afternoon was to edit out those last 51 words from Ham and Honey, the chapter from Better Than Mom's that I've turned into a short story to submit it to a contest. I did it--and then some! I read it aloud after I finished and the story still hangs together, I think. I was hoping that I could read it at the writer's group meeting I'm going to on Tuesday but it's 10 minutes long and they've got a 5 minute limit. I think I'll ask a writing friend if I can email it to them and have them give me a little critique. The submission deadline is November 8 so I have a little time.

I was surprised and amazed to see a Stella d'Oro lily blooming up on the retaining wall this morning. We've had some really frosty nights lately, it was only 30 degrees at 8:30 this morning. Brr. So it was very special to see a flower still blooming. Good thing it had its day because in the morning the landscapers are coming to do fall clean-up and that means they'll cut everything back to the ground so bye bye flowers.

The next thing in Sketching was to draw an old TV with a caricature of a newscaster on it. Then I decided to try my hand at drawing OJ. It's not nearly as handsome as he is in real life but I tried.

I went down to the library this morning to sort books and was faced with tables full of boxes and bags of books. I did what I could in a hour but I barely made a dent. The boxes in the back along the walls are the already sorted books, the bags and boxes in the foreground are the ones that need sorting.

After supper I knitted on the Ara Cashmere Cap 3 and got about halfway to the crown decreases.

I spent a couple hours out blowing and raking leaves this afternoon. The battery of the leaf blower doesn't last long enough to get the job done so I do it in stages. I've got the batteries plugged into the charger and will do more tomorrow. I'll eventually get done, it'll just take me a few days. *shrug*

I didn't find anything to toss today, not at home anyway. I tossed a lot of musty books at the library and few not suitable for public consumption. Ish.

And I stared at a blank screen for an hour or so before I just jumped in and wrote something that's terrible and won't make it into Better Than Mom's but I'm determined to keep plugging away because next Tuesday is November 1 and that's the first day of NaNoWriMo so I need to be ready to write my little fingers to the bone. 1,667 words a day, a good 5 pages of writing and that's no mean feat, especially when you have no clue what you're going to write.

--Barbara