Back Again

That male Downy Woodpecker was back again and again today. It landed on the Slinky, took a little ride down and up, then flew over to the round feeder, and finally settled hanging from the bottom of the suet cakes feeder. He's such a determined little guy. He's going to find something to eat somewhere and no bully Sparrow is going to keep him away.

 

Speaking of bullies, this bully squirrel chased away two others that were minding their own business, one on the suet nuggets and the other one on the ground under the round feeder, so it could take possession of the suet nuggets feeder all for itself. It stayed a long time and I heard it growl or grunt whenever another squirrel dared to approach. I assume it was a male but it could have been a female, it was fierce enough.

 

I spent most of the day sitting at the table reading the next Seaview Series manuscript on my Kindle and making a few notes. I'm about a third of the way through and I've found two paragraphs that I'll be cutting out--one because it's already said someplace else and the other is also repeating something said earlier. I'm not that desperate to build up my word count that I have to repeat things.

 

I've gotten into the habit of drawing the previous day's gratitude page in the morning. Today I found four things to include which isn't six but is better than three. Maybe one day I'll get back to doing it on THE day.

 

Spending so much time on the manuscript today almost made me forget to draw but I pulled out my sketchbook and a pen and drew this flower... thing. It reminds me a little of a passionflower but they don't have that thick black line around their petals. So I'm not sure what it is but at least I drew. Oh wait, maybe it's supposed to be a passionfruit. No, the book is called Draw 500 Fabulous Flowers so it wouldn't be a fruit.

 

My assistant and I had a meeting this afternoon and decided we're going to concentrate on figuring out a place to get my audiobooks out in front of more people. She made a FB post last Wednesday about them which I shared to my personal FB page from my author page (which nobody seems to look at). I learned about a couple websites that sell audiobooks that aren't Audible so we're looking into them. The most amazing thing to both of us is that there's no way to advertise my audiobooks on Audible! You'd think there would be because they're part of Amazon, but nope. No ads on Audible. Crazy.

It occurred to me this afternoon that I haven't noticed my local cybersecurity on my new laptop so I called them and they have to load it in so I'll be sitting here in the morning while he gets me all fixed up. I'm so glad that I remembered because I really like the service. They keep an eye on things in real time.

Oh, DD called this afternoon and we had a nice chat. She's getting over Influenza A and has an infection in her salivary glands that's landed her in the hospital with dehydration and needing IV antibiotics. She said this year's flu is BAD and to avoid it at all costs. The nurses told her that they haven't seen it this bad in a long time. DD even got a flu shot and it didn't save her from a week of hell. I wish I could see her but I'm kinda glad I'm far away from the virus that's laid her and her family low.

--Barbara