More Sprouts!

I looked out the patio door at the top of the retaining wall and there was green up there. So I grabbed the camera and took a little walk up the hill and there they were, daylilies, sprouting away. Hooray!

 

Also the daffodils in the front have really popped up. There's tulips and hyacinths sprouting too. It's lovely to see them all green and happy. We're supposed to have snow on Wednesday but they'll be just fine because they're Spring bulbs and that's what they're used to.

 

The Downy Woodpecker was back on the suet cakes this morning. She's found a good thing and she's sticking to it.

 

I realized that I'd started a drawing book a while back and had four more pictures to draw. It might be my Germanic drive to do things in the correct order, or maybe it's my Virgo perfectionism, but I pulled out the Half Hour of Pencil Power and drew the Bat Car. It's a little light because it's pencil but I think it turned out okay. I like the bat on the side of the car the best.

 

Then I was too tempted and turned to the second Warm-up in Sketchbook Challenge. It said to draw 30 shapes on my paper--squares, rectangles, triangles, or circles--then set a 5 minute timer, and draw something in each box. The time is so that you don't labor over what you draw but hurry through. I finished 27 of them before the timer rang, then I finished the last 3 to complete the task. I drew what looked like a kite in one box and then spent too much time drawing a kite tail in the box below that. I'm convinced that's what slowed me down and kept me from finishing in the allotted time. Like anyone cares.

 

And I had to paint a Peony, just because. It's the next flower in the online class. I think tomorrow it's a bouquet. I'm nervous about that already but I know if I just take it slow and hit pause a lot I can do it. 

It wasn't even dark yet when I drew today's gratitude journal page. I was so grateful for the daylily sprouts that I didn't even mind the bunny hoovering up the fallen birdseed and cracked corn as fast as it could.

 

I worked on the manuscript this afternoon for a couple hours. I meant to try my hand at a new scene but got tangled up looking for a place to slot it in even before I wrote it. Can you say "procrastination"?

The computer fixit guy called to say that Windows 11 was corrupt and they had to scrape the hard drive clean and reload it and everything on there. Did I want them to reload everything that's on there or do it myself? I was tempted to have them do it but then he told me how much it'd cost. I'm doing it myself. I did it when I got the laptop, I can do it again. Happily I bought a pair of very high capacity USB drives that I can download almost all my files onto from this old computer and then upload them onto the newly cleaned one. It'll be a pain and time consuming, but I can do it. Now I just hope that Kindle Create doesn't crash the system again when I load it. Maybe I'll have them load it and try to open it so they can fix it if it breaks the laptop again.

I lay in bed last night convinced that I'm terrible at Amazon Ads, that I don't know how to put categories and keywords on my books so that the Amazon algorithm offers my books to the right readers. Of course the category of my books, contemporary women's fiction, is one of the biggest and not the most popular, like romantasy (romantic fantasy) or sci-fi or romcom, so I'm not writing to market. I have enough trouble thinking up what to write without trying out something new that doesn't come naturally. I am not a fan of nights like that.

Oh, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon installing and setting up a new modem and router that Spectrum sent. Naturally I couldn't do it myself by following the directions so I had to call a representative to help me. He was very patient and led me step by step through the process. Then all of my devices that connect to the internet had tiny little temper tantrums until I gave each one the new address and password. And I couldn't just trash the old modem, I had to take it to the UPS store and have them send it back to Spectrum. For free, fortunately.

--Barbara

I Didn't Expect That

When I opened the shades this morning I didn't expect to see a dusting of snow all over the ground. The birdbath was frozen, which means that the heater has quit working, and there was snow. It's so easy to get spoiled by a few days in the 50s and 60s and then have the temps drop and the white stuff come back. It was a sunny day so the little bit of snow melted but it never got out of the 30s. More of the daffodils and hyacinths down the bed in front of the house are popping up too so I hope it stays a little nice so they feel welcome.

 

I caught a flicker of movement out the patio door and saw a female Downy Woodpecker on the suet cakes. She stayed there for quite a while and then moved over to the round feeder for a spin.

 

Today's watercolor is Tulips. They were a quick and easy painting project. I like the long, thin leaves and the reddish pink of the flowers.

Then I looked at the line of drawing books on the shelf and picked out one called Sketchbook Challenge or something like that. It's 100 sketching prompts and I'm hoping to learn to be more confident as I work my way through the book. The first few are what she calls "warm ups" to get your hand and your creative mind cooperating. Number 1 said to draw circles of various sizes on the page, as many or as few as you'd like. It was surprisingly fun.

 

In the afternoon I assembled the tiny owl I crocheted last Friday night. It turned out pretty well. I'm not crazy about the construction with the flap that folds over from the back to the front to form the face of the owl but it's okay. I want to see if I can find a better, less holey way to do a single crochet decrease and try it again.

 

And I even made time to draw a gratitude journal page for today. Had to start a new sketchbook to do it too.

 

 

I thought about not getting dressed today but then I had to go pick up some prescriptions so I kinda had to be more conventionally attired. It feels wildly self-indulgent to stay in my yoga pants and hoodie all day. Not that my clothes are all that different since I'm sitting here in knit pants and a brewery hoodie but I guess it's the principle of the thing.

--Barbara

Two!

Today was the last Market on Military in March and I sold two books. Yay! And I sold one of them to my children's kindergarten teacher. She looked at me and said, "I know you from somewhere." I said, "Uh-huh." She said, "Jackson School." And I said, "Mrs. S!" She even remembered my kids' names. DS said he thought she must be dead because she was so old but I think she's not too much older than me. It was fun to see her--and she bought a book. I meant to take a picture of my books with the new basket of keyrings next to the rack but I forgot. People looked at the keyrings, especially kids, but I told them it was a gift with purchase or that the keyrings were $15 and came with a free book.

 

When I got up this morning it was still mostly dark. When I opened the shade over the bed I looked out and saw the full-ish moon shining bright so I grabbed my phone and took this picture out the front door. It's not the glamour shot of the lunar eclipse but I stayed in bed asleep for that so this plain old moon is what you get.

 

This afternoon I drew this hippo and manatee out of the Chibi book. I didn't want to paint today so I drew. I was invited to a St. Patrick's Day party tonight so I didn't draw a gratitude page.

 

I'm still rattled by the thought that I won't be able to publish my next book when I want to. I'm afraid that the app is corrupt and will crash my computer every time I try to use it. It's driving my crazy--and it's not a long drive.

--Barbara

Side Eye

The Nuthatch visited the round feeder a bunch of times today and almost every time I saw it I tried to take its picture and failed. I got this one picture with almost the whole bird in it but I noticed that you can just see its eye. Like it's giving us the side-eye. It pokes around in the ports looking for a sunflower nut and when it finds one off it goes.

 

A pair of Robins landed in the backyard today too.They were too far apart to get them in the same picture. They're ground feeders so they don't land on any of the feeders. When they landed under the feeders the squirrels and Mourning Doves scattered like the grownups had arrived. Funny. I saw a trio of Canada Geese fly over too but they were going the wrong direction. Silly geese.

 

When I opened the drapes this morning the clouds looked cool so I took their picture. I thought it looked like waves. I did not go out in the middle of the night to see the lunar eclipse.

 

Today's watercolor was a single stem Rose. I took my time and tried to emulate her brush strokes. I didn't do too badly, if I do say so myself.

 

In the morning I drew yesterday's gratitude page. I had to put my crashed computer on there because I was so happy to have this old one to take its place while the new one gets fixed. Unfortunately the fixit guy couldn't fix it remotely this morning so I had to take it into the shop. They said it'll take a couple days, business days that is. So some day next week I should get the news. When I took it in the guy asked if I'd bought it there. I said no but it never occurred to me that I could go there for a new laptop. Next time I'll start there.

 

I crocheted at Friday Night Knitting tonight. I pulled out the white, too big owl bottom I'd crocheted last month and turned the yarn into a tiny owl, talons, and wings. Next I'll attach the parts, add eyes, and stuff it. I've got those safety eyes I bought at Joann but I've also got that card of cool looking buttons I got last weekend at The Clearing bookstore. Hm, what to do?

 

Tomorrow is another Market on Military so I'm going to sign off and hit the hay. My alarm will ring too early. It'll be the first time I'll have keychains to give away with a book purchase. Fingers crossed.

--Barbara

Crash

I tried to open Kindle Create on my new computer to work in my latest manuscript that I thought was ready to be published and not only would the program/app not open, it also crashed my computer. I called the fixit people, they ran a couple scans and said it was okay, they tried it again and now my computer won't load or do anything. (I'm on my old one. Thank god I kept it.) I have an appointment with the fixit guy in the morning so hopefully he can remotely fix whatever's broken. AND I'll have to figure out a way to publish my book on March 31st because the program/app won't work on this machine. Gah!

 

I can tell it isn't spring yet because there were two Juncos in the backyard this morning. I tried to get them both in this shot but you couldn't really see either of them so I cropped the frame down so that you can see this one. The other one was hiding in the grass.

 

Dealing with computer problems took up quite a bit of my day. It started out well. I had a meeting with KM, my virtual assistant in the morning and we cooked up some plans for launching my new book. After that is when everything crashed. Then I had some errands to run, cookies to deliver, bananas to buy.

 

After that I pulled out my watercolors and painted leaves. This is the first sheet of leaves. They don't look too bad. I like the ginko leaf in the lower left.

 

This is the second sheet. My first branch of leaves and yellow berries didn't leave enough space for the other branches she had us paint so I just crammed them in where I found a little room. I kind of like the pale green branch in the upper left that spreads across the top.

 

I ordered copies of my books so that I have enough on hand just in case I sell a lot on Saturday or any day. KM suggested that I might offer to do book clubs on my website. Wouldn't that be cool? So I decided to take a new picture of my books because I noticed on the picture I posted last night that two of the covers have changed since I took that one. This is how my books look now and the 2 The Seaview Series books are next to each other instead of far apart. 

Here's another Zambaldi picture. When I visited DS the other day he was clearing the grain out of the mash tun. There's a scraper in there that scoops the wet stuff and shoves it out the bottom of the big tank and it falls into these huge barrels. The grain is soaking wet and very heavy. He moves it with a dolly and a farmer comes to pick it up and feeds it to his pigs. Saves DS from having to pay to dispose of it.

 

That's all I've got. My brain is churning about my crashed computer and unresponsive app. How am I going to get that next book published without the app? I don't know.

--Barbara

Seems Like Spring Lately

Birds are swarming around the feeders. This trio of Starlings chased other birds away from the suet nuggets this morning. I think of them as the neighborhood brats who bully the other birds and swoop down to gobble up the goodies.

 

This House Finch's pink color is much more vivid than it has been. Usually there's a pair of them but today this guy was on his own.

 

And a Downy Woodpecker female landed on the adirondack chair, then moved to the platform feeder, finally settling on the suet nuggets for a snack. It's about two months too early for it to really be spring around here. We can have a whale of a blizzard in April and have even had snow at the beginning of May. I'm not putting my boots away just yet. I remember the first year we lived in Green Bay, Mom washed our snowpants and put all of the winter stuff away when it turned warm at the end of March. The other neighborhood ladies just laughed because there was plenty of winter left to endure. She learned her lesson.

 

Today's watercolor is a couple wreaths. They're really just circles of leaves with some berries and little sprigs of dots that I don't know what they're supposed to represent. I have another video class by the same artist that I'll dig into next. At least I have all of the stuff she recommends.

 

Oh! The coolest thing happened this afternoon. After two dentist appointments in one day (ugh) I drove out to my friend KW's apartment to deliver her Girl Scout cookies. She was sitting by the concierge desk in the lobby of the building and she asked me when my next book would be published. The concierge, a woman of a certain age, asked about my books so I gave her and the other lady there a bookmark. The concierge looked at it, I described each one, and she said, "I'll take one of each." !!! So I toddled out to the car, got one of each title out of the box, and carried them back in to pick up my check. Holy moly! And she ordered 3 boxes of Girl Scout cookies that I'll deliver tomorrow. That is totally worth the gas to go back out there!

 

Once my head settled back on my neck from somewhere up in the clouds I spent the rest of the afternoon working on a list of keywords for Spies Don't Retire. It makes sense for me to do this work ahead of time, not wait until I'm publishing the book before figuring them out. The yellow highlighted ones are the ones I picked to use first. I looked up categories too but didn't have as much luck with them. There just don't seem to be many categories that my books fit into. It's frustrating.

 

After supper I drew a gratitude journal page for today. I've slacked off drawing pages so this morning I did one for yesterday and one for today in the evening.

 

One of my dental appointments today was a regular cleaning but the first one was to see about an adjustment to my sleep apnea appliance. For a few weeks after I got it, it seemed to be just fine and worked like a charm, but then a couple weeks ago my right jaw muscles started to hurt. They didn't only hurt when I was wearing it but when I wasn't wearing it too. I did everything the dentist said to do, wore my AM aligner that was supposed to put things back in place but that didn't help. So I went in today, he adjusted the appliance, and made something that looks like a retainer that I'm supposed to wear at night for two weeks and then start wearing the appliance again and call him a week after that. I'll just be glad when I can sleep all night without jaw pain waking me up. I found out that my regular dentist also makes sleep apnea appliances but his name isn't on the list I got from the sleep center. He said he thought he'd try to get on the list. I told him I thought that was a good idea.

Between dental appointments I went to Fleet Farm for a 25# bag of mixed cracked corn and birdseed. Then afterward I went to Family Pet Center for a 40# bag of their fancier birdseed. Happily all of the snow has melted and the ground is hard so I could drive around to the patio and didn't have to haul those heavy bags through the house to the cans on the patio. So much easier!

--Barbara

More Green!

There's a second patch of sprouts out front. This one is less protected but no less green and springy looking. It makes me happy to look down and see those little clusters of green leaves bravely peeking out. I keep waiting for the crocuses to bloom. I know the rabbits will eat them right away but I still like seeing them even if it's just for a minute.

 

I knew that the squirrels would find out I filled the suet nuggets feeder yesterday and they did. This one spent so much time on there that it jumped down for a drink before going back for more. Another squirrel, the acrobatic one, spent time on the cob corn, denuding one of the cobs while dangling from its back legs and curling up to nibble one kernel at a time.

 

A Downy Woodpecker female visited the suet cakes for a little nibble now that they're full too. She stayed for a while and made quite a divot in the cake.

 

After a quick lunch I went down to Zambaldi to visit DS. He was brewing a new hazy IPA and trying a new hops technique. He explained it but I didn't retain much of the information. Here he's pouring the hops in to let them steep which I guess is a different way of adding them. And I got a taste of the new smoked beer he made. I liked it. It was smoky and smooth and kind of sweet. If I drank beer, I might drink that. Maybe.

 

It was a good thing I taped two pieces of watercolor paper to my plexiglass board because I painted trees bigger than I should have. I like the way the trunk looks on the tree on the left but the one on the right is supposed to be a tree in fog and I don't see it. It just looks too pale to me.

 

Then we painted another foggy tree, I don't know why, and after that an autumn tree which I think turned out okay. She has much bigger paper than I have so she can paint all of the trees on one page. Or maybe she painted the first three on one page and the last one on a new page. Anyway, my paper is smaller or I paint bigger so I used two sheets. None of that matters. I'm sure you don't care.

 

I had a critique Zoom this morning with cda. She had lots of good comments for me. I can't wait to get the submission back with her notes so I can fix things up and move on.

That was pretty much my day. I got to do the afternoon school run so I saw LC and OJ for a few minutes. I really like seeing them even for a little while. I also got my Girl Scout cookie order today. Most of them went right down into the freezer but I did open a package of Lemonades. Mm, they're so good and lemony.

--Barbara 

Green!

I went out to get the mail today and look what I saw--sprouts! That's right, the daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths nearest the front door in the most protected corner are poking their noses up to greet the outside air. Hooray!

 

This Starling landed on the finch feeder and couldn't figure out how to get its big self scrunched down enough to peck at any of the ports so it flapped away.

 

There were about six suet nuggets left in the feeder and this squirrel was determined to eat them. The new feeder has a solid bottom so the last few nuggets are more difficult to nibble on. They must roll away. After lunch I filled all the feeders so there should be plenty of takers tomorrow.

 

It wasn't until I was done painting that I realized I'd painted the same leaves last week. Oh well, it was good practice.

 

The drawing for today was a soccer ball and golf ball out of Drawing Cute. The soccer ball is incomplete because the author got frustrated and scribbled it out. I followed her lead except for the scribbling.

 

Look what came in the mail today. It's the fast food/diner food keychain/backpack clips to be given to people who buy Better Than Mom's. I really like them, they're colorful and squishy. I think I'll tell people who ask if they can buy one that they're $15 but they come with a free book!

 

I spent quite a bit of the afternoon going through the Manuscript Analysis from ProWritingAid piece by piece. I made some of the suggested changes and dismissed a lot more, maybe half and half. Reading through it really made me feel good about it being ready to publish and I'm impressed at how accurate A.I. can be. There are a few clinkers in there but overall it's pretty darned good. 

My baby brother, AJ, flew into town this afternoon and came over to my place for a visit then we went out to supper to a place we've gone to since we were kids, Kroll's. We had cheeseburgers and I added to the cheese load with an order of deep fried cheese curds. It was nice to have a meal together and catch up.

 

--Barbara

I Have Too Many Clocks

When I got home from my weekend at The Clearing this afternoon it took me a good half hour to go around and change the time on all of my clocks--two in the living room, five in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one in the guest room, and three in my bedroom. Oh, I almost forgot, one in the car. Like I said, too many clocks.

I had a fabulous time with writing friends new and old this weekend. There were just five of us and we had hours with nothing to do but write. It was luxurious. I know, I know, I live alone and am retired so I can write all day if I want to but there's something about being at The Clearing with a group of like-minded women that gets my creative juices flowing. These pages spread out on the bed are what I wrote over the last four days. Most of them are small scenes to insert in places in the larger manuscript, most a single page, but one is three pages. I feel good about it.

 

The other day when I was leaving my cabin I surprised a deer that was by the bird and squirrel seed but it ran off before I could take its picture. This morning I was sitting in the Lodge eating my breakfast and looked out to see one, two, three deer! It took me a minute to remember to try for a picture but I managed a couple shots before they tiptoed away. There are two in this picture, one on either side of the window frame.

 

I am the designated fire builder when we're at a retreat at The Clearing. The maintenance guy, BB, brought me a carton of kindling and we all carried split logs up the stairs to the fireplace. This was the first fire I built on Thursday afternoon. The Friday afternoon fire was a great one, the Saturday one never really got started. Oh well, can't win 'em all. I have to say I'm reluctant to put my last shirt down the chute to be washed. It smells faintly of wood smoke. I like it.

 

On Friday afternoon it was my turn to be critiqued. I'd printed out pages of the beginning of my next novel at home, read them aloud to them, and got comments. I haven't looked at the copies with the written comments on them yet. I'll do that one day this week. But they all said they liked it.

 

Friday morning I went over to the Jensen Center where the office and bookstore is and bought a pair of earrings (RED!) and a card of handmade buttons. When I saw the buttons I imagined them as the eyes of crocheted creatures. Couldn't pass them up.

 

At 11 o'clock this morning we got on Zoom along with nearly 20 other women who had been taught, coached, and encouraged by JB of Redbird Studios to tell her what an impact she's had on our writing lives. It was wonderful to see faces I haven't seen in years, hear their voices, and memories. 

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day today. When I got home it was 60 degrees (SIXTY!) so I opened the windows to let real air into the house. There was a soft breeze moving the curtain here by my desk that made me so happy I had to take its picture. It's supposed to be even warmer tomorrow and then cool down into the mid-40s but two weeks ago I'd have killed for mid-40s so I'm not going to complain.

 

I figure that's enough about my wonderful weekend. I feel so lucky that I can do this and am invited to go along.

--Barbara