No, I Didn't Go Out

Now that I think of it I actually did and in my yoga pants, hoodie, and Crocs to pour hot water on the birdbath to fill it up so the heater worked better. Not really very smart but I was only out for a minute so it wasn't so bad. It was a balmy -2 degrees.

An hour later the hot water had cooled to the point that the water farthest from the heater had started refreezing. When it's this cold I'm lucky to keep half of the water liquid.

The first little brave bird to arrive this morning was a Sparrow. It huddled there pecking at the seed and trying to stay as fluffed up as possible. Soon it was joined by the rest of the flock and they were much more active than the scout was.

Later in the day a Downy Woodpecker landed on the suet cakes and had to work hard to get anything from those frozen solid cakes of fat and seeds. To be honest I was surprised to see any birds today but I guess everybody's gotta eat.

I spent most of the day working on the Kindle edit of the third Seaview Series manuscript so it wasn't until just before I came back here that I pulled out my sketchbook and drew these two flowers. They remind me of pansies but angular, not soft.

Then I drew a gratitude journal page for today. I was grateful for the sunny day even though it was so blamed cold. I'll need to go to the grocery tomorrow for bananas and grapes and a few other things so I'll be braving the cold but it's supposed to rocket up to 19 degrees tomorrow. Still cold but not bitter cold.

I had an hour's meeting with KM my online assistant. We went over her suggested new designs for my business card and bookmark, the changes she made to my author Facebook page, and discussed changing my Instagram page a little. She's very good at knowing what looks good and ways to promote my brand. My brand, to me that sounds like I'm really full of myself but what else can I call making my name stand out? She's going to find out what I have to do to get my books distributed by a company not Amazon. That will reduce my royalties from Amazon but may give me more scope for advertising and getting into bookstores and making a bigger presence online. At least that's the hope. And she's going to make a graphic I can post advertising my audiobooks. I'd really like to sell a few of those.

Like I said I spent hours finishing the manuscript edit and making the corrections and changes on here so that the manuscript is as good as I can make it for now. I'll keep working to make it better and keep submitting pieces to my critique group. They're a big help.

--Barbara