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

Writer-y Stuff

I spent most of the day doing writer-y stuff. I had a morning Zoom meeting with my virtual assistant, KM, and we spent an hour exploring new categories for The Seaview and Open For Business and we found what we hope are good ones. After we signed off, I spent at least an hour pausing and putting aside 10 old category ads that were under-performing and then making 8 new category ads using the new categories we found. In the afternoon I did my homework for the Marketing Support Group Zoom I have tomorrow evening. 

Then I tried to get to the bottom of why the font size changed in the last batch of copies of Horizon. I tried chatting with Kindle Direct Publishing but was told I would be bucked up the ladder to a supervisor, stayed on the chat for 20 minutes, and gave up when no one showed up. So I accessed the "community" hoping that another KDP user would have some wisdom for me. I got a couple answers and suspect that uploading the manuscript as a Word document instead of a pdf is the root cause. Maybe I'll have to re-upload it and try again.

I realized this morning that I haven't drawn anything for at least a week so I pulled out Half Hour of Pencil Power and drew this. I'm not sure what it is other than an archway with what he calls marshmallow people peeking out. I can't imagine how he thinks of goofy stuff like this to draw. I think it's mostly aimed at kids.

Today's flower was Hydrangea. I was really intimidated when I saw the picture of it but painting it wasn't so bad. I like the way it turned out. I even like the leaves.

Do you want to know how windy it was today? Look at this picture of a Cardinal and a Mourning Dove on the platform feeder. I took the picture straight and level but the feeder sure isn't level. I don't know how the birds managed to land on a swinging feeder but then fighter pilots land on aircraft carriers and I don't suppose those are flat and level very often.

After supper I knitted the thumb of Alpaca Mitten #4, thereby finishing the last one of two pairs of avocado mittens to go with the two avocado hats I knitted before. I'm done with avocado things for a while even though I have three more skeins of the stuff. Two hats and two pairs of mittens used up almost four skeins of yarn.

While I was drawing I heard and saw three squirrels squabbling over the suet cakes feeder. The one on the feeder growl grunts at the ones waiting underneath on the ground and the ones on the ground chase each other around to see who gets to be next, not that the one on the feeder gives up without a fight.

It felt really good to confer with KM finding new categories. I learned a lot about thinking outside the box to find them and how to use Publisher Rocket (a utility/program that helps find categories and keywords for Amazon use) more fully than I knew how. I used my new PR skills to research new categories for other titles. Some that I used initially are called "ghost" categories which means you can choose them but Amazon doesn't acknowledge them so there are no benefits to using them. I have high hopes that the changes I made today will kick in soon and I'll see an increase in sales. Just a little bit would be outstanding.

It sure was cold today. Cold and sunny and windy. When I went out to top up the birdbath it was -1 degree and the wind was whipping. I elected not to go out any more than I had to which was only to get the mail and throw a banana peel in the garage trash. Loved the sunshine. The cold and wind not so much.

--Barbara

Birdies!

It was so cold today. The birdbath glacier was back in spades. I went out to top it up and then took a picture. You could still see the ice through the fresh water but less than an hour later here's what it looked like. Ice had spread across the top of the new water bending toward the heater. I don't think it got out of the single digits today or, if it did, it topped out at 10 degrees. Filling the birdbath was the only time I went out, except for poking my head out to check for mail.

Despite the cold there were lots of birds today. First up was the Red-bellied Woodpecker. It landed on the round feeder a couple times and used its long beak to peck at the seeds that the shorter-beaked birds can't reach. It looked rather smug.

Then the Downy Woodpecker arrived on the suet cakes. It had to work very hard to get anything to eat. I'm sure that the suet is rock hard. Later on I heard some metallic pounding out there and looked to see the Red-bellied back on the suet cakes just pecking away making the whole feeder shake.

I was surprised to see two Goldfinches on the finch feeder. They haven't been around for weeks. I looked at them for a long time trying to figure out how long it'll be before their feathers start to change to the bright yellow of summer. The closest I could come was months.

Today's watercolor subject was Allium. I'm not thrilled with the way whatever that open flower is supposed to be but I like the allium heads.

After supper I drew today's gratitude journal page. I'm always grateful for chocolate ice cream. And sunshine.

Also after supper I sat down and finished the hand of Alpaca Mitten #4. Tomorrow I'll do the thumb and then I'll need a new project. I dug out some bulky and super bulky white alpaca. I'll find a hat pattern I can make with one of them.

In the morning I came in here to get dressed and instead I sat down at the laptop and wrote a whole new chapter of the manuscript. It's not very long but it needs to be a separate thing, I think. I've got a whisper of an idea of something more I can write on it. Maybe tomorrow after I meet with KM to talk about keywords. I looked up the categories I have my books listed in on Publisher Rocket and discovered that many of them are what are called "ghost" categories which means that they're not a place that Amazon recognizes as categories. I don't understand that because Amazon gives you only so many things to choose from. You can't just type in any old thing. Maybe they changed their minds on some of the old ones. I also went on ACX to see my audiobook royalties for 2024 so I can put them on my taxes if there are any. I sold 15 audiobooks last year! I'm amazed! Also thrilled.

--Barbara

Afternoon in an Igloo

I met AJ and his wife KA at Zambaldi this afternoon and we spent a couple hours visiting and drinking a beer (I had a root beer) in an igloo. It was chilly but we each had an electric blanket to keep warm and it was kind of magical when it got dark. Unfortunately it started freezing rain while we were there so the drive home was a bit of a tentative adventure but I made it just fine. No spin-outs or skids. I was glad that I'd salted the top of the driveway this morning when I finished shoveling the 1" of overnight snow.

The squirrels were possessed with madness this morning. Three of them kept chasing each other up the crooks and down the lawn, around and around, until two of them gave up and one took possession of the suet cakes feeder.

Today's flower was Dill Stems. Not really flower-y but also not difficult to paint. I learned that I press too hard on the brush when I'm making dots of paint. I got a lot of practice trying not to do that. Maybe I'll paint them again tomorrow for more practice.

And I forced myself back to the table after I came back here to blog so that I would draw today's gratitude journal page on THE day. I have to get back in the habit. I've been slacking too long.

This evening I finished the latest read-through of the manuscript. I still think there's a gap in the story or there should be more of the story before the thrilling climax. I've got to put my mind to it and see what I come up with. Something more has to happen to Rose, right? Her life can't be all sweetness and light. Oh, and my brother said that he'd downloaded all of my eBooks and has them on his iPad. He hasn't read them yet but he will. That made me feel good.

I was so glad that I put on my thrift store Irish wool sweater this morning. It kept me nice and toasty in the igloo. My feet got a little cold but that was because the floor is the concrete patio. I love this sweater. It's a little too warm to wear every day but on cold days it's the bomb.

--Barbara

Almost Warm-ish

It must have gotten up near freezing today because the sun was shining and the birdbath glacier nearly melted away. I was watching this big flock of Sparrows working hard to empty the round feeder and saw that the ice was nearly out in the birdbath basin. Lots of room for Sparrows and squirrels to get a drink.

There was a constant fluttering battle for perches on the round feeder. The Sparrows were relentless. You can see one bird flying in on the right. He edged another bird off its perch and took it over. They worked hard to fling seed and cracked corn out of the feeder. There was a nice size flock of birds under the feeder reaping the benefit and one lone squirrel nibbling away at it too.

I spent part of the day watching an Ad School video about how to figure out your Return On Investment for your books or series. I'd done it before but didn't really remember how or what so I watched it again and redid the calculations. Using data from last month as he advised was pathetic. Sales were so low and ad spend was higher so my ROI was dismal. Things looked slightly better when I used the lifetime numbers for Royalties, Ad Spend, Profit, and ROI. He said at the end of the video not to do the extra credit homework if your numbers were at 1% or below and that's where I am. *sigh* Maybe the work I'm doing with KM my virtual assistant will help change that. 

Then to cheer myself up a bit I did today's watercolor. The flower is Stock which I've heard of but didn't know what it was supposed to look like. We painted a very soft, smooshy version of a flower stalk. It's so pale that it was hard to get it to show up in the picture but I like it. I like the way she had us add other colors to the wet flower shapes to make them look more real and I just like the whole pastel look of it. And I'm loving the brush washer I got from DD and her family for Christmas. It's so easy to clean my brushes in the little pool of clean water and scrub the brush against the ridges on the edges. It's a very cool gadget.

In the afternoon I went over to DS's house to have Christmas with his family. We had a lovely time exchanging gifts. DS and DIL1 were happy to get their annual gift of Mt. Meru Fair Trade coffee from Tanzania. I'm so glad that they like it. I'd rather give them something consumable than stuff that will hang around forever. My knitted items were well received. Here's LC's Hermione's Everyday Mitts. She took them out of the gift box, put them on, and kept them on. That made all the complicated knitting worthwhile.

Here's OJ's Gryffindor Beanie. It's just a bit roomy but it fits and he likes it. He wore it for a while, took it off when he got too warm, and then put it back on. They both liked the Harry Potter Lego sets and the set of all of the HP movies so they can watch when they want without having to pay for them. It was a Harry Potter Christmas! There were also books because there always have to be books.

I got a Barnes & Noble gift card which I am anxious to get over there and spend. I'm hoping I can find some drawing or painting or knitting books. I also got this nice jar from LC. I commented that I didn't know what I'd put in it and she suggested Dum Dum suckers. They fit just fine. I know two grandchildren who are fans of Dum Dums.

On my way home from their house I stopped at the grocery and spent more than I thought I would. I suppose I should have expected it since I needed toothpaste and toilet paper, both not cheap in bulk, and I stocked up on more Lean Cuisine meals but they were on sale. I'm just grateful that Durwood was such a careful investor and financial guy. He taught me a lot, mostly against my will.

--Barbara

A Dusting of Snow

We got a little snow overnight. Nothing too serious, just enough so that the cold pavement is snow-covered. I don't know if it's slippery because I didn't go out driving today. I only went out to top up the birdbath and the patio wasn't slippery.

The female Cardinal came to the platform feeder today. Usually she's pretty good about sharing the feeder with other birds but she had it all to herself. The birds were late today. It was lunchtime when she arrived and I don't think the Sparrow horde came at all. The squirrels fought over the suet nuggets feeder, chasing each other down from the crook and around the snowy yard but they all look pretty much alike so I couldn't tell which one won.

Today's flower was an Agapanthus or African Lily, aka Lily of the Nile. I was nervous when I saw the picture that I wouldn't be able to paint it but I didn't do too badly. She didn't make it look just like the picture, just made a suggestion of the flower not a portrait. That I could do.

And for the second day in a row I drew a gratitude journal page after supper. The most fun item is the brush washer. It's very handy and it does a good job of cleaning my brushes. Thanks, DD & family!

At Friday Night Knitting I started and finished the thumb gusset on Alpaca Mitten #4 and got going on the hand. I'm not quite halfway up the hand but my fingers got tired so I slacked off toward the end of the Zoom. I might finish it this weekend. Then I'll have to go downstairs to find more alpaca yarn to knit up. I'm determined to knit down the bin full of alpaca and llama yarn down there.

 

One year ago today I was in the ER being told that I was checking into the hospital for blood transfusions because my hemoglobin (red blood cells) was dangerously low. I'd been feeling pretty crappy all year before that so I went to see a cardiologist and he ordered a chest x-ray and blood test and that's when the problem was discovered. I have something called G.A.V.E. which stands for Gastric Antral Vascular Ectasia. Basically there are (or were) capillaries in my stomach that seep blood. I've had two procedures to cauterize them and so far my hemoglobin is staying in the normal range. I have it checked every 3 months and so far, so good. I was amazed how much better I felt almost immediately after I received the blood. I just hope we don't have a blizzard in three days like we did last January when I couldn't leave the hospital because the weather was so bad. It's supposed to snow on Sunday but just a few inches so, whew.

--Barbara