Positives...

In an effort to shake off the negativity seemingly all around me, here is my positivity list for today...

1. Being done with taxes. (I do have to write some checks but the main work is done)

2. A warm house. 

3. My dog still hanging in there. Every day she continues to have her spark is precious right now. 

4. The booksigning coming up this weekend. I'm excited and nervous. 

5. The weather is a lot warmer today. 

6. Trying new recipes with That Man and laughing when they don't turn out as good as they looked. Ha! 

7. Spring is coming. 

8. Being excited to write again. 

9. My kids. They're awesome and make me laugh. 

10. That Man. I couldn't ask for better. 

11. Retreat coming up. 

That's good for now. There are many more positives, but my list is likely boring to you. Ha! 

Staying off social media has been a huge help as far as me trying to stay positive. I'm not missing it at all. 

That is all...

Behave! 

Weekend Wrap Up!

Here we are at Sunday evening again. And it's still cold out. 

Hopefully it starts to warm up soon. "They" say it's supposed to by next weekend. We'll see. I'm not holding my breath. Spring is coming, right? 

The people in my house are going stir crazy. Me included. 

Yesterday we ran around getting our errands done and yeah, we did have dinner out, which was nice. But it was so cold it was hard to enjoy the evening to its fullest. If that makes sense. 

Today we've been home all day. Thank goodness. I slept in and woke up to That Man and K4 making breakfast. Lots of coffee. Laundry. And I spent most of the day writing. I'm not saying what I'm working on yet except that it's an older project that needs a rewrite. 

And I've been sneezing all freaking day. 

This week is sort of on the "quiet" list. I hope. I still need to finish taxes and take care of some other admin duties. Ugh. 

Behave! 

Mother Nature is Nuts!

What is this weather hell we're living in? I know I complained about the cold the last time I posted, but Mother Nature has turned it up in a rude and horrid way. What is she thinking? I didn't know we lived in Antarctica! 

We were out earlier. It was horrible. 

So here's a brief Feel Good Friday on Saturday...

1. It was a rough week, but we made it through. We dealt with a lot this week -- sickness, cold, insanity at work, and you know...life in general. 

2. Sleeping in this morning and hopefully the same tomorrow. I did wake up at 5:30am and said hell no. It was too dark and cold. 

3. Maybe figuring out what I'm actually doing with my writing life. 

4. Our evening plans. 

5. Getting the errands done and not freezing to death when we did. 

The bad thing is that I had to give up the book signing in March. I just don't have enough inventory and whatever I have left after the greenhouse signing is (hopefully) spoken for. I did keep a copy of each book for myself. It's a really strange place to be in and I don't like it. 

That's all I have...

Behave! 

Living in the SubZero...

I'm tired of it. 

I know I'm not the only one. My heating bill is going to be so outrageous. But what are the options? Freeze? I think not. But seriously, Mother Nature, please check yourself. We're dying here! 

Yeah. I know. Everyone feels the same way. 

I jumped on social media the other day. I don't think I can do that anymore. Sometimes I hop on and scroll for a few seconds to see what's going on. I rarely post (though I know I should for the author stuff and I probably will post something about the greenhouse signing). My feed was filled with people complaining, being entitled, and talking down to each other in the comments. 

There's already too many negative things going on in the world. We don't need to treat each other like that. I'm not sure what happened to "scrolling by" something you don't like/agree with but it seems to be a thing of the past. So my exposure to it will be very limited or not at all for a while. Maybe forever. 

Also...our grandkids seem to think we have no idea on what is or isn't AI. Which cracks us up. I've taken to sending ridiculously obvious AI pictures to our group chat with an innocent..."this is real, right?" just to continue to stir the pot. They also believe we're woefully technologically impaired. We play along with that one too. At least for now. 

That's all I have...

Behave! 

Weekend Wrap Up

Well...here we are again. Sunday evening. Boo!

My back hurts. Not sure what I did to it. It started yesterday. I'm stretching it and using a heating pad but it's pissing me off. 

We've been home all weekend which is rare and good. It's been a while. Yesterday we cleaned out closets and drawers, dusted, and rehung the tapestry that fell down in our room. Getting rid of things and making space feels awesome. Today was deep cleaning the fridge and ice machine, washing sheets, and other odd chores. 

We talked a lot about my writing and how I have been feeling and I know what I'm doing now. I'm writing a story I started last summer. It's what feels right and it's been going well. I went through the pages I had yesterday and have added several thousand words so far today. So yeah... that's good. 

I'll be at the garden center on Valentine's Day for my favorite book signing. I have limited stock so if there's something you want, now's the time to get it. If I come away from this with books left, I'll be at a signing next month. But that's going to be it for a while since I'm an orphan with no publisher currently. 

And that's all I have.

Behave!

Feel Good Friday!

What an excessively long week! We made it to Friday though!

Let's hit the list:

1. The snow was beautiful and I loved having a "snow day" (even if it was Sunday) and the subsequent "working from home snow day". But now... now all the snow is a pain in the butt. Ha! We didn't shovel the whole way out because of the ice and plow piles. It's fine. It'll melt enough (eventually) to not matter. Well, maybe it won't melt since we're living in sub-zero world. I'm over the cold weather. So much. 

Tuesday showed up with a giant freaking cold for me. I stayed home from the day job and slept literally all day. It's slowly improving, though I'm not close to being 100% yet. My head kills and the draining is annoying. (this is not numbered because it's not anything even closely related to feel good)

2. Barring any emergencies, we have a nothing weekend for the first time in a long time. Every time we think we're going to have one, something happens. This just means that we'll tackle some of the things on the list that we haven't had time for, but that's fine. 

3. Sleeping in. I really hope it happens. 

4. Hoping to get some writing in. I still have no idea what I'm working on. It'll happen at some point. It's frustrating.

That's all I have!

Behave! 

Snowmaggedon! Working From Home!

It was nice to wake up about 10 minutes before I had to log in. That's the longest I slept in all weekend. Oy. 

That Man had some issues getting logged in, but we finally overcame. Now our dining room table is a work space. He has way more "physical" things spread out. I have a tiny pile, but our work is very different. 

The cats are a mess. Our female cat wants to be in the middle of the papers and is generally being a pest. The boys are watching the birds from the dining room window. And the dog is just happy we're home. She's curled up at our feet under the table. 

Now we have to shovel. Well, shovel and work. The two upstairs will be helping as soon as they get up and moving. We're not in a rush. They'll be the first ones to leave in the morning, so we technically have all day. Traffic is so quiet. 

That's about it...

Behave! 

Snowmaggedon!

It's still coming down. Only now it's a freezing rain, sleet, snow mix. 

It's so quiet and beautiful outside! 

You can hear the little birds talking to each other. And the squirrels making their little noises. We had to put more bird seed out since they emptied the feeder between yesterday and today. It's amazing when there's no traffic noise!

Mainly we've been cooking/eating today. Made homemade boston cream donuts this morning. Not too bad, but will need tweaking if I'm going to do it again. It's K4's boy's birthday today. We did steak and eggs for breakfast. Well, the rest of them did. I just did steak and mushrooms since I didn't feel like eggs. Warmed up homemade white pizza for lunch. And a milkshake. We're having lasagna for dinner and then banana splits in lieu of cake. 

Then a nap, which was lovely. Now I'm going to see what kind of writing nonsense I can get into until K4 decides to start making the birthday dinner. IDK if she'll need my help or not, but I'll be available to bother her at least. Ha! 

No word on tomorrow's work schedule yet, but it's pretty obvious we'll be working from home. 

That is all. I hope you're staying warm and dry if you're involved in this storm and cold. The forecast definitely doesn't look good for the next 10 days. 

Behave! 

The Eve of Snowmaggedon!

Well, here we are... waiting for the snow...

So many unknowns with this storm. 

But we're ready. I guess. We'll see?

We were out earlier. B had a soccer game. Which was epic. He scored three goals, including a headshot. We ran into friends there. Their son plays a league above B (though we played them last summer and our boys beat them pretty solid). It was nice to catch up a little though. 

Then we decided to hit the store. (I knew we would) It was fine though. Busy, but not insane and there were plenty of milk, bread, eggs, and toilet paper. Actually I don't know if that's true because I didn't look at that stuff. Instead I got ice cream, whipped cream, my favorite coffee creamer, and cheese--which was the only thing we were out of. Ha! 

K4 was out and about today and sent me a pic of the mega stores parking lot. Whoa. It was packed. 

So now we wait. The snow blower is ready. The shovels are out. It's so freaking cold though and it's supposed to stay like that for the foreseeable future. I hate that part. 

My plan is to spend as much time as possible writing tomorrow. But we'll see. It's possible we'll have guests if power goes out. Plus, I have no idea what I'm writing yet. I spent some time writing out an idea I had, but I don't know if it'll go anywhere. It's more of a "backstory" kind of thing anyway. But I'm getting there. 

That is all...

Behave! 

Feel Good Friday!

It's about time! This has been a long week! 

I'm trying to rally up the positives, so let's just get to the list!

1. SNOW in the forecast. How much is anyone's guess at this point, but they're saying "significant". I'm all about that. 

2. Plans for our snow day that include food and relaxation. 

3. We have done our store run and "should" be good. I have a feeling we're going to realize we either forgot something or decide we need something we didn't get though. But oh well. We'll brave the "bread, eggs, and milk" crowd if we have to. 

4. Getting to do two awesome critiques this week. My friends are awesome storytellers and writers. It's actually quite humbling to be in their company. Especially when I currently feel like a hack. 

5. Having the ability to work from home restored. It had been shut down when we had a slight system compromise. With the weather coming, the bosses made sure everyone had the ability again, which is awesome. 

6. The potential for my brain to decide to be creative again this weekend. It's there...shimmering just under the surface. I can feel it. 

7. Definitely sleeping in on both days this weekend. After a rough week where we thought our bed heater was doomed, our temperature is back where it's supposed to be. (It somehow got turned down...we think it might have been when the dog leaked pee on our bed and we ended up stripping the bed at 5am, but who knows?)

8. 34 days until Retreat! 

And that's it! 

Behave! 

Off Rails...

So January has become one big calendar page of stress and nonsense. Almost three weeks into this new year and I already want to write it off and start over.

I'm so off my game writing-wise. I thought I had the "best" idea, but it fizzled out a few thousand words in. Then I had another "great" idea and it said "nope" about 800 words in. So...fine. Right now I'm critiquing for friends in the hope that my brain starts sparking again. 

I did get a small "what if" sizzle this morning which was exciting. We'll see if it goes away or if it becomes something I can work with. 

I have retreat coming up in 38 days. I'm so excited to go even though I have no idea what I'll be doing. 

And that's it... Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on and it's really affecting me, but now we're at the point where there's not much I can do about any of it beyond what I've already done, so... It's time to let it go. (we all know how hard that is)

We soldier on...

Behave! 

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know it's the third. It's been the new year for 3 days. 

We didn't think we were going to make it to midnight on New Years Eve. We somehow did and were then in bed at 12:02. I know, we're such party animals! Ha! 

We did have some excellent pork & sauerkraut and a pretty chill New Years day. Yesterday we practiced our relaxation skills and it was lovely. We slept in and did very little for the first time in forever. Well, the washing machine was torn apart and the new pump motor was ordered. We took naps and had an easy dinner with minimal clean up. 

Today was a grocery store run, writing, and dismantling Christmas. The tree is down and put away. Most of the porch decorations have been stored away. The snowman are still out, but they're allowed to be for a few months. 

So far we've managed to avoid the sickness, but one of our coworkers came in very sick on Wednesday. We avoided him, so hopefully...

One more day off before the day job insanity of January. Inventory and end year stuff will be crazy. 

And that's all I have. I started a new project and I'm picking my way through setting up the story. So far so good. 

Behave!