Not Birds

I put out half an orange this morning and thought maybe a House Finch would land on it and have a snack. Instead bees came. I don't know if they were coming to the oranges all summer but today was the first time I noticed them. Also a Hummingbird flew around, checking things out, and flew away long before I'd have gotten the camera up and ready. And when I was having breakfast I glanced over my shoulder and there was a Woodpecker on the suet nuggets. It was a lot bigger than a Downy Woodpecker but it looked like it. Maybe it was a Hairy Woodpecker but I didn't have a chance to really look at it or take its picture because it flew away almost as soon as I saw it. Dang it.

 

On my walk this morning I saw where the autumn leaf came from the other day. The big maple tree where the street curves has a big patch of leaves changing color. It can hold on to them for a while. 

 

I spent most of the afternoon figuring out Substack posts for the next four or five weeks. I can schedule them to be sent on Wednesday ahead of time so I don't have to scurry around on Tuesday getting something ready. Besides I wanted to have one scheduled for October 1, the Wednesday of the week I'll be at The Clearing. Don't want to miss a week. (Don't try to read the titles, they're very blurry. I had to use a long exposure to get a shot and didn't hold still enough.)

 

I forgot to get the mail yesterday but got it today and in the mail was a check for a copy of Christmas at Seaview and a note from my friend saying that she enjoyed it. That really made me happy. She asked if she could get a copy from me instead of online and I said of course she could. So I mailed it off. Thanks, RSC! 

 

Today's drawing prompt was Botanical Study so I drew a couple of the mums in my birthday flowers. I didn't outline the petals with fine liner so they're not so visible but there are lots of petals. Lots.

 

Since I finished the Sunset Doublethick Warshrag on Friday I need another project to work on when I get tired of the Iron Pyrite Sock. I decided to knit mittens to go with the llama hat I knitted earlier. I had to go downstairs and wind skeins of yarn into cakes because you can't knit from that big hank of yarn without having a terrible tangle. Then while I watched TV I cast on the first mitten and knitted a few rounds. I like knitting mittens.

 

There was a home football game today and I hoped for a flyover and even saw something on Facebook about the plane that was supposed to fly over. I went outside at noon but no big plane came. Then I checked and found out that the game didn't start until 3:25. I don't know what I was doing then, probably goofing around with stories, so I don't know if a plane flew by or not. I don't remember hearing a loud rumble so maybe the clouds were too low or something. That's the only part of football I like so I'm disappointed. It's a wonder they let me live in this football town, isn't it?

--Barbara 

Yum

Today I made a Layered Veggie Bake for supper that's going to last me for 3 more nights. It's a layer of potato slices, one of zucchini slices, then eggplant slices, sauteed onion & bell pepper, a layer of tomato slices. It gets baked for a while then uncovered, cheese piled on, and baked a little more. It's so good I could have eaten another serving but I didn't.

 

The drawing prompt today was Faces. I used a thicker fine liner and drew a few faces in my sketchbook. The one in the lower left was an attempt to draw a face without looking. Totally unsuccessful.

 

I filled the feeders and this chipmunk came out to clean up the spilled seed. The cool thing was a squirrel arrived shortly after and they had a tussle over who got to eat. For a few second the two rodents were a ball of fur and tails until the chipmunk raced off. It tried coming back but the squirrel lunged at it and drove it away. Nature.

 

I went up to look at a brown speck on the sedum and found a little brown moth and a bunch of bees. The bees were having a field day flying from flower to flower searching for nectar. I assume the moth was looking for nectar too. I don't know what moths eat.

 

The gratitude journal page for today was simple. I liked drawing a tiny veggie for each layer of my baked supper casserole.

 

And I added a few rounds to the Iron Pyrite Sock last night and tonight. I've got a ways to go before time to do the toe decreases but since I finished the warshrag last night I have to find something else to knit before next Friday.

 

I have a confession to make. I turned on the furnace this morning. It got down into the 40s overnight and was 66 in the house when I got up this morning. Too cold to ignore. I know I'm probably a wimp but I hate being cold, especially my hands, so I just turned it on. I had to pile on an extra little blanket last night too. It feels too early for this.

--Barbara 

Win Some, Lose Some

When I got on email this morning I expected to have a reply from the Commonplace Book Club answering my question about why I was paying some Arab-sounding guy instead of the Angela I'd spent the day emailing back and forth to. There was no reply. So I went back on the Commonplace BC's website and right there at the top was a warning that they did not solicit authors to feature their books. That any offers to that effect were fraudulent. Whew. Guess I didn't do enough due diligence on that one. I did on the London one, though, so I think that's okay. I think. God, I hate the way things are today with scammers and hackers under every rock and behind every tree. Can't I just get a break?

 

A Sparrow landed on the suet nuggets this morning. You can see how empty the feeder is. I decided not to fill the feeders today. Partly because I don't want to put fresh nuggets in the feeder until it's empty and partly because it was so windy that the safflower seed would be blown or shaken out of the swinging platform feeder.

 

The drawing prompt today was Work. I decided to draw the only place I work these days--my desk. I didn't come back here to copy it, I drew it from memory. It's less messy than it is in real life. I like the way it turned out. 

 

In the afternoon, I braved the gale and went outside to cut rhubarb to make a batch of sauce to put on my yogurt tomorrow. No, I won't be putting it all on, just a bit of it, but I'm looking forward to it. It's so much better than tart cherries or blueberries thawed in the microwave and put on there.

 

I decided to try painting the purple mums in my birthday bouquet. This is not my best effort. 

 

After supper I drew a gratitude journal page. I got to do the afternoon school run today. I love doing it. Getting to spend even those few minutes with them really brightens my day.

 

Tonight at Friday Night Knitting I finished the Sunset Doublethick Cloth. I didn't make it 8" long because that just seems too long and the pattern says that the cloth is a square. Well, the way I make it it's only 6" wide so I make it 7" long which fits over a hand perfectly. This is not a dish cloth really, it's more of a washcloth, or a warshrag like my grandmother used to say.

 

Tomorrow is Saturday (I said that to prove I know what day it is.) and it's supposed to be almost as chilly as it was today--62 degrees to today's 56 degrees--but maybe not as windy. Today's wind was sharp and blew like it really meant it. I got up in the middle of the night to grab a little flannel blanket to put over me in bed. My cotton sheet and cotton blanket just weren't cutting it. It's a little chilly in the house but I refuse to turn on the furnace just yet. Heck, the air conditioner was running a few days ago. Crazy.

--Barbara 

Noooooo!

Look at what I saw on my way home from my walk--an autumn leaf. I wasn't ready to see a fallen leaf that's red and yellow just yet. Fortunately it was alone.

 

I was going to fill the bird feeders this morning but this squirrel was working so hard on emptying the suet nuggets that I didn't want to disturb it. I'll fill the feeders tomorrow. Or maybe Saturday.

 

This morning I was looking at my birthday flowers and noticed that some of them have an interesting center that's a lovely shade of green so I decided to try my hand at painting them. It turned out okay. I'm not thrilled with the background color I chose. It's too close to the color of the flowers. Live and learn.

 

I spent at least an hour on Fiverr which is a website where you can get a cover design. It also has artists who will illustrate a children's book. I've always wanted to publish Dodger & Betsey, this week's Substack post, as a children's book and never found an illustrator. I have to do more research, it can be very expensive, but it's a possibility. Worth looking into.

Then I was looking in my Junk email folder for something and noticed that last week I got emails from a couple book clubs through my website email. I shot them back to my Inbox and read them. One is from London, England and wants to feature The Seaview in their newsletter to members. Yes, please! I looked them up online and watched an interview with the woman who sent the email so I know it's not from a scammer. We've been emailing back and forth all afternoon and I have secured a place in their September 15th publication.

The other book club seems to be in Baltimore, if what I found on the web is right, and they want to offer Christmas at Seaview to their members in November. Okay then! I emailed back and forth with her and that one too offers a lot of exposure to readers I'd never reach otherwise.

There was another email from a woman asking about Christmas at Seaview and it sounded like she was an interested reader wanting to know if it was in Kindle Unlimited. I emailed her back but it turns out she wants to sell herself as an advertising advisor. No thanks. 

I was on school pickup duty this afternoon and then I went to the farmers market to get more Roma tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers and potatoes. (I might have gotten some cookies too. They're hard to resist.) I want to make a layered veggie bake I invented years ago and needed ingredients. I got a Vidalia onion at the store yesterday and have a zucchini I got from a friend that needs cooking. It's the end of the summer, everybody's got too much zucchini. I'll make the veggie bake over the weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

Do you realize that tomorrow's Friday already? Wasn't yesterday Monday? No wait, that's three days ago. These holiday weeks really goof me up. 

--Barbara 

A Flock

In big bird news, I just happened to walk into the kitchen and glance out the patio door to see the flock of turkeys coming through. I almost missed them but was able to squeeze a view of them between the door jamb and the patio umbrella. I didn't count them but there had to be at least a dozen. I love seeing them.

 

In smaller bird news, a Downy Woodpecker flew in, took a short ride on a Slinky, and then had a snack at the suet cakes. I took a shot of it on the Slinky but managed to snap it just as the bird flapped its wings to fly to the feeder so it's all blurry. Dang it.

 

We had a little thunderstorm this morning around 7 o'clock. Then a little later on it rained again and I tried to get a picture of the birdbath because the drops were big enough that they made a bubble on top of the water. That didn't work so all you get is raindrops on the water. Happily it didn't rain for too long so I was able to take a walk before lunch and then go get bread, bananas, and grapes at the grocery stores. ALDI has the kind of bread I like but Meijer has better bananas, etc. so I go there too.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Famous Landmark. I had a hard time thinking of a local landmark and then I thought of Lambeau Field where the Packers play. It's right in my old neighborhood, kind of in the middle of everything on the west side of Green Bay. Years ago, I went up to a Mobil station on the corner across the street from the stadium to visit with a friend who worked there most mornings and tourists, having just come off the highway, would stop at the station to ask how to get to Lambeau and she'd turn around and point across the street. The look on their faces was priceless. (It was pre-GPS.) I'm not a football fan but it was all I could think of to draw.

 

I'm going to post yesterday's drawing again because I worked on it more this afternoon. I outlined everything with a black fine liner and finished coloring in the background. SO much better. Now I like it even more.

 

And I managed to make myself draw a gratitude journal page for today on today. 

 

This morning, even before I showered etc., I sat here and went through the last 25 Amazon Ads to make sure I had paused all of the "book" and "ebooks" keywords in them. Then in the afternoon I worked some on a couple short stories after I read through all of the emails that I've been skipping the last few days. I get too many emails some days. Don't we all?

--Barbara 

Not Much

That's what I did today--not much. I spent too much time scrolling on Facebook for no reason I can discover. I read posts on the Ad School FB page and commented on a few of them. Then I turned to the Campaign Manager on my Amazon Ads page and got busy removing "book" from the keyword ads. It was interesting to see that "book" got a lot of Impressions but very few Clicks and no Sales so it was a distraction. I also went into Better Than Mom's and Horizon ads to look for "book" and to remove "romance" because although there is romance in the books they don't match the expectations of Romance book readers. And I just discovered that I've got 25 more ads to search through because only 50 were on the page and I have 75 ads. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow.

 

I drew a gratitude page for yesterday this morning. I was mostly grateful for the calls and visits from my kids and grandkids for my birthday. It made all the mom-ing and meemaw-ing I do worthwhile.

 

Once I got finished going through ads this afternoon I looked up today's drawing prompt which was Famous Painting. Not having any famous paintings lying around the house I dug out a book from The Art Institute in Chicago and found a Picasso I liked. I ran out of time coloring it so the background didn't get filled in but I'm not unhappy with the way it turned out.

 

Tonight was the Writers' Guild meeting. I didn't take anything to read but enjoyed hearing some of the others read and hearing the comments people offered.

I'll try to do better tomorrow. Maybe do some writing. Maybe see a nice looking bird.

--Barbara 

Happy Labor Day! Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is both a national holiday and a personal one. Today I'm 74 which is a much bigger number some days than others. Most of the time I don't feel my age but lately I do, probably because of my injured knee. 

 

I got presents from DD today. It's watercolor paints in pans and a pack of sheets of watercolor paper. I've heard of the paints. I think in one of the online painting classes I took the teacher mentioned that she likes this brand of paints. There are round sheets of watercolor paper in addition to squares and rectangles. Painting on the circles should be interesting. I'm trying to figure out how I'll tape the paper to the plexiglass board so it stays flat and stays in place.

 

As soon as I could I taped a piece of the paper to a board and tried out the paints. I painted a sunflower. It isn't bad.

 

The drawing prompt today was Woods, Trees & Forests so I drew a tree. Trees are hard for me so I'm kind of satisfied with this one.

 

DS and his family invited me over for chicken fajitas, Mexican rice, and corn on the cob. There was chocolate pie for dessert. Every bite was delicious. The kids made cards for me and they got me a bouquet of mums. Aren't they pretty?

 

I saw a bigger bird on the birdbath this morning and wasn't sure what kind of bird it was. Then it turned around and I saw that it was a juvenile Robin. You can tell because of its speckled breast.

 

And the lawn mowers came today. That surprised me, not only because they were just here five days ago, but also because it's a holiday. Again they were quick and thorough.

 

I spent most of the afternoon going into my Amazon Ads and turning off "book" as a keyword. I learned in my coaching session a couple weeks ago that "book" is too broad a search term so it doesn't position my ad in front of the right people. Makes sense. So I downloaded this Search Terms Report and scrolled down to see which ads had "book" as a search term, then I went into each ad and turned the term off. I got a lot done but will probably look through it again tomorrow to make sure I've got them all paused.

 

And that's it for my exciting holiday/birthday. I took a little walk again. It seems like I'm getting more winded the more I do it rather than getting better at it. I'll keep walking and hope things change.

--Barbara