It's Great Being Retired

Wanna know why? Because I can spend all day doing one thing, ignoring everything else on my "to-do" list, and enjoying it. Last week when I told the facilitator of my Novel critique group that I'd discovered an age discrepancy in a character from The Seaview who has a much bigger role in The Seaview: Open For Business she recommended that I make a document with names, ages, hair & eye color, and a few other facts. So that's what I've been doing the last few days. Today I also finished going through the sequel taking out a lot of dialogue tags and then I realized that I should have a character list for The Seaview because that might help the audiobook producer. So I took this list, eliminated the characters not in the first book and then skimmed the old manuscript for characters not in the sequel and added them in. Whew.

I saw that some of the tiny bulbs have bloomed out front. This grape hyacinth was standing there looking perfect and I managed to get down to its level and take its picture. It's barely 4" high.

The big hyacinths are blooming too. They're spread out across the front of the house. I could smell their fragrance when I went out to take their picture. Mm, heavenly. No wonder they were one of Dad's favorite flowers.

This regular old daffodil that's yellow with a yellow trumpet is one of the bulbs that I planted nearly 46 years ago the first autumn we lived here when I was enormously pregnant with DS. I'm astounded that a few of those original daffodils are still blooming.

A Mourning Dove took a bath this afternoon. Naturally it had its back turned so all I got was a picture of its back end but I was glad to see a bird taking advantage of the newly clean birdbath even if it was just a goofball of a Mourning Dove. They're so awkward and silly looking.

I did a little drawing once my eyes got tired from staring at a computer screen all day. They're out of Things With Wings. I like the beetle the best, I think.

Today's Gratitude Journal was a pretty easy one. Granted, I spent most of the day sitting in one place so my choices were limited but I managed.

I've been in communication with my audiobook narrator and she can't get the Caribbean accent to her satisfaction so I'm going to have to look for another narrator for The Seaview and Island Dreams. One good thing, she posted about it in her social media and just emailed me that four of her narrator friends are interested in auditioning. I'm disappointed that she can't do it because I've been so happy working with her and loved the way the first two turned out but I appreciate her being honest about it. I hope the other narrators are as easy to work with as she is.

--Barbara