Working My Eyeballs to the Bone

That's what I've been doing the last couple days.  Remember that I rashly volunteered to edit the Knitting Guild newsletter?  Well, it's time to pay the piper.  I asserted that I'd have it to them two weeks before the next meeting and that means it's due to be emailed on February 1, which is one week from today.  I started yesterday and worked intermittently in between doing a bunch of other things like going to the chiropractor to get my bones rearranged and meeting an acquaintance who is a poet at a cafe for an afternoon of writing together.  We've been batting around the idea of getting together to write for a couple months and yesterday was the first time.  We did a lot of visiting and talking about writing groups we'd been in before, what we liked and disliked about them, then we wrote for 20 minutes (I took my favorite prompt book along), read what we'd written, then agreed to do it again in a month, spending most of the time next time working on our individual projects.  For now that's enough for both of us, maybe one of these days we'll meet more often but this is a good start.

This morning I had a brainstorm and instead of plunking myself down in front of the computer first thing, I pulled out a big pad of drawing paper I keep on hand for the grandkids and drew 10 rectangles, then planned how I wanted the newsletter laid out.  I used a couple previous ones for ideas and had something useful in a couple hours.  That made my afternoon's work much easier.  Don't get me wrong, it's still a hard slog but having it planned out really speeds things up.  And I am confident that next month it'll be even easier because I'll be able to yoink out the old info and plug in the new.  Some things won't change, like the officers names, the Mission Statement, the meeting location and times, stuff like that, which probably takes up about half of the space.  I enjoyed the day even though my back's kind of hunched and my eyes are

burning a bit.  I'll get the rest done over the weekend and have a day to let it rest before I print out a copy to proofread, and let Durwood do the same, before I email the final copy out on Thursday morning.  I kind of shot my mouth off at the meeting so I can't fail to deliver.
 

 
I gave my eyes and fingers a rest last night and got the second sleeve of the Black & Blue Shrug started.  I'm almost halfway.  Woohoo!

January 25--Kailani Amalia Bernabela.  The little girl in the white eyelet dress stood against the blue wall.  At first I thought she was a trompe-l'oeil painting but then the breeze fluttered her hair and she waved at someone passing by so hard that her whole body swayed.  I looked for someone keeping an eye on her, some adult making sure she was safe, but no one seemed to pay any attention.  I walked nearer and sat on the half-wall of the parking lot next to the blue building.  She looked to be about six-years-old and well cared for.  Who would let a cute little girl run around on an island choked with tourists and swarming with cruise ship passengers?  If she were mine I would keep her safe.  She could be mine if I was quick enough.

Ugh.  I did not know that was going there.  Now I'm going to go see about a little dish of chocolate ice cream as a treat for all my hard work today.  I'm absolutely certain that chocolate ice cream will make my eyes stop burning and my back quit aching.  Don't you think so too?
--Barbara