Sunshine!

 
 

It was sunny today all day.  Sunny but windy and cold.  Brr.

So I stayed inside and worked on a manuscript.  This one's scenes are all out of chronological order and some are repeated later and... well, I did a lot of cutting and pasting, then reading more and juggling things around.  Pretty soon I'll have it in an order that I like and then I'll resend it to the Kindle and read through with my little notebook at hand to make notes about where more scenes need to be and what they might say.



On Monday while waiting for my dough to rise I came in here, went on Amazon, and found a couple more "... Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" books--Healthy Bread and Pizza & Flatbread--for a whole lot less than the cover prices.  The Healthy Breads one came today.  I paid $6 for it with $6 shipping, not bad for a book with a $32.99 cover price.  I'll be paging through to find a recipe to make when I've eaten my half of the spent grains breads.  I've already looked at the pictures, of course.

Speaking of looking at things, I looked out the window in the nick of time to catch tonight's sunset.  I could look at this sky for a long time, the colors are breathtaking, but I have to stand in the open doorway and it's too cold.  I do wish that the streetlight pole wasn't smack dab in the middle of my shot most of the time.  Oh well. When the pole fell down a few years ago the public service guys hurried right over and put up a new one, so I guess we have to have it.  If we want lights and heat and stuff like that.  Which I do.



Tonight at Friday Night Knitting I cast on and knitted on March Preemie Hat #1.  I was going to call it February Preemie Hat #6 but there's only one more day of February left so I thought I'd get a jump on the March hats.




28 February--Barbara Malcolm, Three Cheers for Murder. 

He opened the door to an all-white room.  Thick carpeting covered the floor.  A large bed was covered by a canopy and draped with fabric and heaped with pillows.  A small door off to the right led to her dressing room.

 The walls of the dressing room were a delicate shell pink with a coral glaze.  The floor was covered with white silk carpeting. The long right side of the room and the wall opposite the door were filled floor to ceiling with white closets for all Kimmy’s clothing, racks for her shoes and special drawers for her lingerie and sweaters.  The space above had places for all her hats.  All the hangers were white satin filled with lilac potpourri.  There were also custom cupboards for her accessories and costume jewelry.  Her “real” jewelry rested in the safe in the library downstairs.  On the left-hand wall was Kimmy’s dressing table, well-lit and holding all her makeup, fragrances and skin care items.  In the left corner of the room in front of a window sat an old chair covered in worn fabric with a soft, fuzzy throw over it, a matching ottoman, a small table holding a lamp and a few brand new books,  a well-thumbed photo album and Kimmy’s diary.    Cecilia noticed that a lot of the books are about fitness training and some books are piled on a pink bag with a large “K” visible on the edge.

“Dwayne, where did Kimmy buy her books?” Cecilia asked.

Dwayne chuckled, “Kimmy was so frustrated that she couldn’t figure out how to order them on the computer.  No matter how many times I led her through it she just didn’t get it.  She was irritated that she had to order them from Marlene at Kitty’s Korner.  She always said how much she hated, um, I mean, disliked Marlene ever since they were kids.  Marlene’s mom was their cheerleading coach and the three girls spent a lot of time at Kitty’s place.  Marlene wasn’t one of “the girls” you know.  She’s always been frumpy and a real bookworm.  Not Kimmy’s type at all.  Anyway, I guess she ordered books from Marlene out of loyalty to Kitty, but she wasn’t really happy about it.”

Cecilia let her gaze fall on the dressing table on her left.  Arranged on her dressing table are framed photos of her past.  “The Y’s” are well represented, Kimmy and Dwayne at their wedding looking rather stunned, Kimmy with her parents and sister on Christmas when she was about six, “the Y’s” and their husbands at various locations and charity events, Kimmy after winning the club tennis and golf tournaments, and a photo of Dwayne standing next to his plane and laughing.  This last photo looks like it has been crumpled up and smoothed out.  She picked it up and showed it to Det. Archibald.

“These are lovely photos, Dwayne.  This one of you by your plane is especially good of you.”

He took the frame from her hands.  “Yeah, this was Kimmy’s favorite.  For a while.  You can see she’d thrown it away.  That was after the first time she discovered one of my little indiscretions.  I guess she got it out of the trash later and replaced it in the frame.”

“Thank you, Mr. Neal, for your cooperation.  Here’s my card.  Call me if you think of anything further.  We’ll see ourselves out.”

Archibald took Cecilia’s arm and escorted her from the room.  At the door she looked back at Dwayne.  He stood seemingly rooted to the spot, staring at the framed photo in his hand.  Lost to the world.  Thinking of his life?  His dead wife?

Tomorrow is Leap Day!  Tomorrow the calendar gets right for the year.  After this year things slip a bit every year until the next year divisible by four rolls around and we have another Leap Day.  Who figured this stuff out?  Can we put the same brains on the Daylight Savings Time question?  You know that I don't like DST, that it's annoying and a waste of time (heh, waste of "time") so I'd like some big brained person to talk some sense into the people who keep making me change the clocks twice a year.  End of rant.
--Barbara