And I Was Out In It

Still bitter cold today but I got the opportunity to go out to lunch with two of my favorite people so I bundled up and went. I even wore a hat. I had the biggest patty melt in captivity. I didn't even have room to finish my little cup of coleslaw or the handful of chips. I didn't have supper either. They had burgers and fries and made them go away.

While I was still struggling to open the frozen-shut patio door this morning so I could top up the birdbath a Downy Woodpecker showed up and spent some time hammering at the rock hard suet cake. It managed to break off a shard and gulp it down. I don't know how the birds survive in this weather. You can see how fluffed up the woodpecker is. It wasn't until late afternoon that I got the door open so I could pour a little water into the tiny space in the birdbath that wasn't all ice.

Before I left for lunch I pulled out Half Hour of Pencil Power and drew what he calls the Marvelous Mermaid. I don't know if it's marvelous but the hair was a challenge to draw and to figure out what went over and under, which lines to erase and which ones to leave in place.

I knitted on a dishcloth this afternoon but left it in the car and I'm NOT going out into the deep freeze that is the garage to get it so I can take a picture of it. Nope, not going out there tonight.

Also this afternoon I wrestled with running the Disc Cleaner and Disc Defragmenter on the laptop in hopes that cleaning the computer's brain would let me download Kindle Create and it would run. Didn't work. My next step will be contacting Kindle Direct Publishing and asking for help. There's gotta be something wrong with the program. It used to work and now it doesn't. I'm a little steamed.

DS texted and said he's resurrecting our mid-winter Chinese New Year celebration that I used to have. I can't wait. I'll fold origami envelopes to put lucky money in and research everybody's Chinese Zodiac animal just for fun. He said they'll get takeout so no one will be chained to a wok for hours that day. Good plan.

--Barbara

Even Colder!

Even though it never got above 0 degrees today the wildlife was still around. First thing I noticed this squirrel up on the suet nuggets feeder even though you can see that there are hardly any nuggets left in there. It was working hard to get bites of whatever shreds of nuggets were there.

The Red-Bellied Woodpecker came too, joining a few Sparrows on the round feeder. The Red-bellied is big enough that when three Sparrows join it, the outside of the feeder slides down and partially covers the feeding ports because of all the bird weight. I wish it would land on the sunny side of the feeder but, no, it has to land on the shady side. Actually by the time it showed up, there was no sunny side.

I had my critique Zoom this morning and got a lot of good comments that I quickly went over, including most of them in the story. I'm so lucky to have good critiquers to help me make my story better. Then I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon finishing going through Horizon so that I could turn it into a PDF and then upload it to Kindle Create to republish it in its intended form. Unfortunately the Kindle Create program wouldn't open. In fact, it locked up the whole computer with the effort to open so I had to call the computer fixit guy to find out what to do to make it stop. I uninstalled the program and reinstalled it but that didn't help. It locked up again. I don't know what I'll do next because I'll want to use it to upload the next installment of The Seaview Series when it's ready. I love computers.

Today's flower was Dahlia. It was fun and easy to paint all its petals. The stem and leaves are made up because she used a bouquet as her model and there weren't any visible leaves.

While I watched Antiques Roadshow and Maine Cabin Masters tonight I knitted on the Baby Alpacas Hat. I'm holding two strands together and on the last round I was nearly finished with the second half when I realized that I'd dropped one strand at the beginning of the half so I had to tink (knit backwards) it back almost to the start and gather up the dropped strand. Once I finished that I quit for the night.

I was supposed to have a haircut tomorrow but my stylist called to say we had to reschedule to next Monday. Maybe it'll be warmer then. It's only supposed to get up to 0 again tomorrow and I have things I need to go out and do so I'll be bundled up to the eyes. It's so cold they cancelled school tomorrow. I'm glad. I hate the thought of kids having to walk to school or ride the bus in that frigid weather. Maybe I'll break out my long johns.

--Barbara

Oh, Myrtle Mae, It's Cold!

It's so cold. When I left to meet friends at Zambaldi this afternoon the car thermometer said it was 19 in the garage. Not too too bad. When I got into the car to come home the thermometer said it was 4 degrees. Eesh. That's cold. And there was a breeze. The patio door was frozen shut when I tried to go out to top up the birdbath this morning so I left the drapes open and turned the furnace up a bit because there's a vent right in front of the patio door so I figured that would help. Something worked because I was able to get the door open a little while later to go pour a little water in. You can kind of see the top of the heater is exposed in this picture. It was cool when I pour the room temperature water in because the ice crackled and cracked when the "warm" water hit it. It didn't take long for the water I added to freeze but I saw a couple birds getting a drink right by the heater so I'll keep adding water.

Lots of birds today, too. First thing I was lucky to see the Red-bellied Woodpecker land on the round feeder and was fast enough to grab the camera before the rotation slowed down and it disappeared behind the feeder.

Then the Downy Woodpecker showed up to peck away at the rock-hard suet cakes. You know when the temp's in the single digits that stuff has got to be almost impossible to eat from. The squirrels have almost totally emptied the suet nuggets feeder. They fight over who gets to eat up there and no birds have a chance.

The Cardinal showed up too and even posed in the sunlight so I could see his regal redness. He shooed away a couple House Finches so that he had the feeder all to himself. The Mourning Doves make room quickly when he shows up.

When I threw my dirty clothes down the chute they didn't go far, a clear indication that I needed to do laundry. So I went down and sorted the chuteful of dirties and got started. The last load is in the dryer now and it's one I don't have to go down and hang up when it's done. I'll go down and take it out tomorrow. While I was waiting for the loads to wash and dry I drew gratitude journal pages for Friday, Saturday, and today but I'm only posting today's.

Today's flower was a Pincushion Protea. Once again it wasn't as hard to paint as I feared. I still press a little too hard on my brush when I'm trying to paint thin lines but I'm getting better. If I get really frustrated I reach for a smaller brush and keep going.

This morning while watching CBS Sunday Morning, I cast on a hat using both skeins of chunky baby alpaca holding two strands together. They're still not as thick as the super bulky I used for the last hat but it'll be a small kid's hat. Kids need hats too and they might as well have really soft ones.

I had a nice visit with B&TD at Zambaldi this afternoon. We caught up on what we're all up too and what my kids and grandkids are up to too. B&T are a couple we used to dive with and went to Bonaire with once or twice. None of us dive anymore but we agreed that we should have been in Bonaire this afternoon instead of freezing our butts off in Green Bay.

There's no mail tomorrow, is there? It's Martin Luther King Jr. day and I'm sure the banks and the post office are closed. Naturally I put a birthday card out to be mailed today and now it's going to be belated. Oh well, at least I managed to get it out before the day. It's the thought that counts, right?

I've got my critique group tomorrow morning. It's on Zoom so we don't have to go out in the even more freezing weather. It's only supposed to get to 2 degrees as a high tomorrow with a low of -15. On Tuesday the high is predicted to be zero. I'll be staying home.

--Barbara

Wings

I took a picture of a Mourning Dove on the platform feeder this morning. Or was it afternoon? Anyway, when I downloaded it to crop it I saw a brown blur in the lower part of the frame. I cropped that and found a little brown bird, maybe a Sparrow, maybe a House Finch, flying up to the feeder. It made me so happy that I'm sharing it with you. I don't know why I like it so much, I just do.

Today was a Market day. It was cold but sunny. I wonder if the cold kept people away because we all struggled to sell books. Even the cheese guy next to us had slow times and he's usually jammed. JB sold two and the rest of us each sold one. People stopped and listened to our sales pitches, looked at the books, and then promised to come back. They never did. I had a hard time being outgoing today. Don't know why.

After lunch I wasn't feeling very energetic so I sat back here and worked through almost 100 pages of Horizon. I could do that because CP told me last night that I could use Find and Replace in Word to eliminate most of the second spaces instead of having to tackle them one at a time forever. That meant that there were whole sections of the manuscript that didn't have any corrections needed. What a relief. Oh, and eliminating that second space after punctuation marks reduced the manuscript by two whole pages!

I almost skipped painting today but watched the video and decided to give it a whirl. It's Carnations. They have lots of petals. I like the way they turned out but I like the one on the right the best. I think it conveys "carnation" better than the other one.

This evening I watched a couple episodes of Northern Exposure on Netflix while finishing the Wheat Hat. I only had three rounds left to knit so I did those and then I wove in the tails. That last is my least favorite knitting task and one I'm not very good at but I managed to get them hidden pretty well. It's easy when the yarn is wool because wool sticks to itself but wool blends (which this yarn is) don't do that.

Right now it's 12 degrees falling to -3 overnight and then rocketing up to 6 tomorrow. I'm meeting some diving friends at Zambaldi tomorrow afternoon and I'm looking forward to seeing them. I am not looking forward to freezing on the way there and back. But it was my idea so I can't back out, not that I really want to. I'll bundle up.

--Barbara

They Found It

I filled the feeders yesterday afternoon and the wildlife found it today. First to arrive (that I saw) was this squirrel. It was diligently gnawing away at the suet nuggets. It couldn't have been the first because when it dropped to the ground I could see that about a quarter of the nuggets were already gone. Gluttons!

Then the Sparrows showed up at the round feeder. There were four birds on the feeder when I reached for the camera but by the time I had it up and ready there were only two left on the perches. But there were a bunch of them on the ground pecking at the seed and cracked corn that had been tossed out of the feeder.

I'm so much better at drawing a gratitude journal page in the morning that I'm going to post yesterday's page that I did today. I don't know why I can't seem to get myself to the table to draw and color it in at night. It doesn't take very long. Maybe I need the small psychic distance from the day's happenings?

Oh, man, I was nervous when I saw today's flower. It's Chrysanthemum. There are a lot of petals on them and I wasn't at all sure I could do it but I tried and it didn't turn out too badly. I'm getting better at leaves too.

I went back to Dr. Seuss's Book of Animals and drew this frog. I didn't know that frogs have hairs on their butts but this one does. There's an expression "as fine as frog's hair" which means extremely delicate or thin since frogs don't actually have hair.

Tonight at Friday Night Knitting I made it almost to the top of the super bulky hat I cast on last night. I started with Oatmeal colored yarn, added in the short piece of off-white yarn of the same thickness when I ran out of that, and then kept going with the pale, grayish Wheat colored yarn. I'll have some of the Wheat left over and a small clump of Oatmeal left when I finish. I'll think of something to do with it.

I had a cardiologist appointment today. I didn't know why since there's nothing wrong with my heart or my cardiovascular system. This was the Nurse Practitioner of the cardiologist I saw last January who ordered the blood test that saved me from dying of anemia. Nothing to do with my heart. I answered no to all her questions about shortness of breath and palpitations. Yes to being able to do what I want to do without chest pain. My blood pressure and pulse were normal. I was wasting her time and mine and my $40 copay. I did not make a followup appointment. It did make me comb my hair and put on earrings so there's that.

I got through another 40 pages of Horizon in between appointment and Zooms. And at knitting CP reminded me to use the Find and Replace function in Word to adjust all of the two spaces after sentences down to one space instead of going through the manuscript a page at time, one sentence at a time. Now I have 63 corrections to make instead of 3368. Ahhhh.

--Barbara

Stretch

I glanced out to see this squirrel working very hard to finish off the small hunk of suet cakes this morning. While I watched it broke off a small piece, held it in its front paws, and stretched out to eat it. Then it curled back up to get another bite. Impressive abs!

Today's flower was a Rose. I was nervous about painting it but after watching the video once, I got brave and dived right in. It wasn't so hard after all.

After lunch I went out and filled up all of the bird feeders. I hadn't seen a bird and only that one squirrel all day, not that I was watching all the time, but it seemed like time to fill the feeders once the suet was gone. They'll all come back in a day or two.

While I was out there I noticed that the birdbath glacier was melting back. It got up to about 36 degrees this afternoon so the ice didn't stand a chance. I'm sure the warm-ish water around the heater helped. It's supposed to hit 40 tomorrow and then 20 on Saturday and only get colder from there. Oh goodie.

When I was drawing the butterfly out of Dr. Seuss's Book of Animals yesterday I kept looking at the owl in the tree that was on the page too. I decided to give it a whirl. I like the panic eyes. I don't think owls really stare out like that but I like the way it looks kind of crazy.

This evening after supper I sat down to watch Jeopardy! (got the Final wrong as did all of the contestants) and then Tea with the Dames on Amazon Prime. It's four British Dames--Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, and someone named Eileen I've never heard of--sitting around talking about acting and actors. It's a pretty free-flowing conversation with a lot of clips of their past roles. I enjoyed it. While I watched I worked on the hat that I cast on last night. I finished the last 2 rounds of ribbing for the brim and started knitting around and around for the body of the hat. It needs to be 5 1/2" long before I start the crown decreases. I just hope I have enough yarn. I've got another small clump of the same color and two other clumps of the same yarn in other "natural" colors. We'll say it's color-blocked.

I spent a couple hours in the afternoon going over another 50 pages of Horizon taking out that second after-sentence space and defending my sentences and dialogue tags. I got another email from KDP asking for order numbers, book ID numbers, and photographic proof of the problems. That meant going through my Amazon orders to figure out when the change occurred and how many books are involved. I'm so glad that I know how to access my orders on Amazon, that made it easy.

I slept wrong on my left shoulder last night and have a very sore muscle inside of my left shoulder blade. It hurts when I turn my head to the left and when I reach forward with my left hand. I don't understand. Every night I sleep on that shoulder first and, then after I get up to pee, I turn onto my right shoulder. What was different last night? I skipped doing yoga this morning because it hurt so much but I'll give it a try tomorrow. Maybe it'll help. And if it hurts more, I'll stop. Stupid old age.

--Barbara

More Writer-y Stuff

I'm still chasing after the reason that Horizon's font size got changed. I got a couple emails from people in the KDP community with some useful suggestions. I also got an email from KDP asking for information so I have that avenue open. It came clear to me that I need to change the manuscript to a PDF and then upload it to KDP so that the font won't be able to be changed. When I pulled up the manuscript my ProWritingAid program kicked in and advised me that I needed to fix all of the spaces after sentences from two to one. Do you know how many sentences are in 325 pages? A lot. A real lot. I got through 108 pages today. I won't do that many tomorrow because my mouse hand would probably fall off or seize up. Anyway, here's what I mostly looked at today--a laptop screen with a manuscript page on it. Riveting.

The birdbath glacier is still going strong. I sneak out there every morning as soon as I get up to top it up so the heater doesn't burn out. There's just a little pond of open water around the heater but it's supposed to warm up into the 30s the next couple days so maybe that will change, until temperatures plummet again over the weekend. It IS winter. I have to keep telling myself that.

I took a break in the middle of the afternoon to draw this picture of a Seussian butterfly. It's on the title page of Dr. Seuss's Book of Animals. I was going to page through to find something to draw but the butterfly caught my eye and I went for it. It's pretty small but I like the way it turned out.

The other thing I did this afternoon as a break from redoing Horizon was fill my refillable Keurig pods. I ordered more of them a couple weeks ago so now I have 11 of them so I'm not refilling them twice a week. I have tiny little coffee filters that fit in the pods so all I throw away are coffee grounds and the filter, not one of those little plastic cups every day. It's less of a pain to fill them now that I have more.

I tried starting a hat tonight with some alpaca yarn that Ravelry says is super bulky but I cast on the required number of stitches, knitted a couple rounds, and it looked like a hat for a baby or maybe a toddler. Not what I was going for. Obviously the yarn is mismarked. So I pulled out the needles and went downstairs to troll through the yarn bins for a super bulky yarn. I found a couple kinds, brought them upstairs, and cast on with some Lion Brand Thick & Quick. This will not be a soft or fancy heirloom hat but it'll be warm for someone. Maybe over the weekend I'll wind up some more alpaca skeins so I'm ready when this hat is finished.

And that's it. I slept late today and spent a lot of the morning in my pajamas working on Horizon. I'm determined to get it fixed up and republished so that it's right. Take that, Amazon.

--Barbara