A thousand words a day...

Day in, and day out. It takes awhile to get into a groove like that. Or so I would imagine, being as I've never done it. What I HAVE done for the past two months, though, is *averaged* 1k a day. With all the times I fought with outlines and characters and churned out practically nothing but spit for several days in a row, I'm really excited about that. In fact, if I actually had my numbers here in front of me, I'd figure out what that averaged to over the days I wrote. Today it took about 2500 to bag that k-a-day prize!

I even got done early enough to finish the new pricing guide at the store. I still have inventory to do this week as well, but...I'll get to it.

Today was Jim's last day at his job. He now has two weeks off before he starts his new job. It's gonna be odd. For starters, we'll be fighting over our one and only truck for two weeks! (He had a company truck.) We went out for ribs to celebrate. If we're celebrating, why do I have a stress headache? Bleh. I hope it goes away soon.

You'll be glad to know...

that the guard now has a name. Hereinafter he shall be known as Chiioke. I gave in this morning and re-did the outline (again). It's something like its fourth incarnation, and there are some serious holes coming in the climatic scenes. I know who all has to play the game for those scenes, and what the result must be, but I'm not sure at the moment how we'll maneuver through them. For now, though, I have enough to get me through about the next 20K or so, so I'm running with that. Between the revised outline and today's words, I'm up over 2K for the day, and that will be Good Enough. Without the revised outline, I'd still be staring at the opening lines, though. I need to know what the purpose of the scene is before I have an idea of how to play it through, and with no viable outline, I wasn't sure.

The best part was making a several paragraph summary of the second Shann & Taafa book, which will have the working title of *Children of Sacrifice*. It has places for the x, Juumat, to get his come-uppance, for the border guard, Chiioke, to prove which side of the fence he now resides on, for Shann's former in-laws to come hunting his child. Oh, yes (I rub my hands together with glee), so many many things to look forward to.

a GREAT weekend

We had a wonderful weekend away. A couple on our worship team had been in touch with the church they used to attend before they moved here two years ago, and their church invited our team to come over this weekend (four hour drive one way). We got away late morning on Saturday, traveling with Jim's sister, whose husband wasn't able to make it (he's not on the team exactly, but he had hoped to come along). The pastor there had arranged billets for the various team members, and the three of us stayed with an older couple who *retired* off the farm 25 years ago. Lest you (correctly) think that must make them fairly old, the gentleman did tell us that his mother is still alive in a local nursing home, at the age of 99! Anyway the Johnsons made us a fabulous dinner, and then we met the rest of our team at the church to set up sound equipment and run through the set. It took more than just me to figure out how to turn their sound system ON, but once the appropriate switches had been located, things went a little smoother! Because of the time zone change, our bodies thought church started at 9:30 this morning, which was a bit challenging, especially as Mrs. Johnson thought that an appropriate breakfast would be pancakes, bacon AND eggs (at 7). Jim almost never eats breakfast at all, but he plowed gallantly through some of it anyway (being as there was coffee...)

We had set up 23 songs on powerpoint including a wide range of music from country style gospel to older hymns to a lot of more contemporary worship songs. It was absolutely fabulous; the people there really enjoyed it and sang along when they knew them (most of the time). It was very refreshing.

The weather was hot, and sis's car does not have air conditioning, so we were a little wilted by the time we got home tonight! But...we'd do it again in a heartbeat. :)

Last night when I was having trouble sleeping in a strange bed, I thought of some great plot twists for Book 2 in Shann and Taafa's universe. Some things that will probably happen will not be very nice. I have to figure out a realistic timeline and see if I can get book 2 pretty much done while Taafa is still pregnant. There's a lot of distance involved on donkey-back, so I'm not sure it's all feasible. I was eventually able to turn the tap off in my brain and get a bit of sleep, though, so I'll just keep these thoughts stewing on a back burner. They mesh nicely with my earlier glimpses (yes the border-guard-without-a-name and Juumat-the-nasty-x will show up again), so I may have something worth pursuing. But not yet. I have a lot of things to do before I'm ready for another first draft. I'll see if it has gelled into anything before Nano, and maybe I'll start it then.

One of those weeks

I've been a bad blogger again. It has been one of those weeks. The day off for the long weekend on Monday, two days of great word count, and then--SPLAT!! Someone near to me is going through some tough times, and *being there* has taken a lot of time. It's way more important than writing, though.

Today, when I theoretically could have gotten back into my story, I found myself shanghaied once again by the border guard who showed up in my novel last week, uninvited. With the help of my writing buddies, I figured out that he has already played his major role in this novel, no matter how insistent he seems to be. Finally I sent him packing and told him he could audition later for book two. I got some smoldering looks from him, but he trudged off eventually. (Hey, I know I have a good imagination, it's part of what makes me a writer!) Now I'm trying to sort out what of the other plot issues that have ambushed me in the past couple of weeks actually relate to THIS story. The good news is that I'm building a multi-story universe here, the hard part is figuring out what goes with what.

I cleared up a lot of the issues but by the time mid-afternoon on a Friday comes along, my writing voice has already left for the weekend. Well, so be it. There's pricing that needs doing in the store anyway. I might as well earn my keep occasionally. The story can keep stewing for a few more days.

For the record...

This is what a lawn looks like in 23 days of wet weather!

Our hayfield! 
You can see that it's almost more than the mower can handle!

Had a good canning day yesterday. In the evening it stopped raining long enough for me to get an hour or so of dead-heading the lilac bush in. Still more to go on that, too, but it will have to wait. Now that we can finally deal with the lawn, it takes priority. It's not finished, either. We ran out of daylight. But the main yards are done; just the extended yard needs doing yet. Tomorrow, with luck...

I had a good writing day today, just over 2K. I discovered that if you feed a pregnant girl mutton curry first thing in the morning, she's likely to upchuck. In the bathtub, in this case. I discovered other things, too, but that might already be more than you wanted to know!

New Christian Celebration IV

If you've been following the previous celebrations, you might want to check out this month's rendition of it. It's hosted by Chris Mikesell, so hang onto your hat. And maybe your lunch.

Happy Birthday to me...

As expected, we've had a very wet weekend here, and so my lawn continues to grow unchecked. I'm sincerely hoping it'll NOT rain for a couple more hours so hubby can borrow the lawn mower from work and get our minor hay field under control. I hope the thing has a bagger.

Being as this is most definitely NOT being a yard work kind of weekend, I've been canning soup again. Saturday was all about split pea soup and chicken veg barley. Today I've got about five gallons of beef broth ready to go for various kinds of beef based soup. There will be some borscht for sure. Yes, I realize that traditional borscht is vegetarian, but we like ours with beef. What can I say?

One of the reasons for a big push on canning soups now (besides the weather) is that my hubby has a new job starting in mid-June, and he's going to be away from home quite a lot more. Over the summer, anyway, he plans to stay in our camper on the days he'll be away from home. He'll be working as a mechanic in an open pit coal mine, four twelve hour shifts, then four days home. We're thinking he'll have quite a lot more time at home than he's been getting at his local job (with the tons of overtime) plus a reasonable increase in pay. The downside of course is the four days away, but we think we have plans that will work for it. When the rubber meets the road, we'll no doubt have to do some further juggling.

Ah, yes. I had a birthday (number 46) yesterday. My in-laws had us over for supper, and Jim baked my birthday cake(s) - chocolate chip cake with a butterscotch filling and chocolate chip glaze. One of my family favorites. (Yes, from scratch. What else?) We were 16 people for cake in the evening, and it was fun to have family and friends gathered around.

Being as today is Victoria Day, a holiday in Canada, we're off today as well, then it's back to the salt mines tomorrow. Jim still has a couple of weeks at his old job before taking a couple weeks off. We hope to get to Vancouver Island to see our kids for a few days before he starts the new job. Many changes upcoming.

It's Friday again...

Amazing how that happens. I fear that the re-re-outline is going to need to be dealt with rather soon on this novel, though. I wound up freewriting for a bit this morning to even see far enough in advance to start the next chapter. Although it is still somewhat dim, at least I think I have found the direction. All in all, I did get enough words to claim myself a 5K marathon winner for these two days. With a margin of an extra 31 words! lol

It's pouring rain again, the wrong part for the lawnmower came, and I have the next three days off work. An interesting combination. I'm thinking we should just put the cows out on the lawn, and that would take care of all of our problems. Hey, we've done it before, other years, and they don't wreck...much. The bull likes to scratch his back on the lilac bush, though. Pruned it pretty good that time. Naw, I think I'll pass. Jim thinks he can borrow the one from the shop over the weekend, so I'll get to try out a new set of wheels. WooHoo. It'll stop raining sometime, don't you think?

And about writing...

Wednesday was one of those frustrating non-writing days. I SO hate when that happens. I'm a moderator over at Forward Motion and one of the boards I help to oversee is the Young Writers' Scene. This section is private, and can only be accessed by kids under 18 (and their trusty moderators) upon approval. It was my day to learn how to grant access. Yikes. I came so close to crashing my work computer it wasn't funny. One of the areas I had to go is the FM database, which includes all 7000 plus members. My computer is OLD. It did not like it there at all. I tried to back out, and it took a half hour for the window to close. Yes, thirty minutes. I'm not making that up. By then I had the kind of headache that comes complete with a twitchy eyelid. (And I did manage to grant the kid access to the boards later on, on my home computer. Yes, faster computer, slower connection (dial-up) IS faster than slower computer, faster connection (cable). In case you wondered.)

The afternoon got taken up with crit group stuff that needed doing, and with trying to get the headache to subside to a dull roar. When it began behaving, I got a crit done.

Wednesday evening's is our worship team night, and last night was an extra amount of fun. A couple in our group moved here two years ago from a community about four hours away, and their former church has asked our team to come and lead their worship service on May 29. They have pretty much given us free run of the service, and so last night was song picking time. We know a lot of songs. We LIKE a lot of songs. There were six of us with opinions! We got it narrowed down to 21, but it was a lot of work. But it was also a lot of fun. No recurrence of that nasty headache, just a wonderful evening with like-minded friends.

So today the goal was words. And words I got, just not as many as I'd hoped. There was just enough traffic through the store to get rather distracting. The story has moved forward by another 2K, and pushed through an awkward transition in time and space. (Can you say *revision*?. Tomorrow it will be back to the fun stuff. I've got great things in store for my characters for the next few chapters, and they're even going to like some of the things that happen. It's time for them to regroup for the last leg of the adventure. Happy days are here again.

Except for the Canadian government. Do you want to hear about that? So many of you were amused by BC politics the other day that I'll just say we're apparently keeping our federal minority government for a little bit longer, criminal charges pending and all. The house speaker had to break the tie in the vote to NOT bring the parliament down today. Very close. Whether its a good thing or a bad thing depends on one's viewpoint. Governments with criminal investigations on them are a bad thing, though. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that. But the repercussions of it crashing right now were also not good, from a Quebec separatism point of view. But the opposition also couldn't morally let things slide. Maybe, in the end, this was the best result. But I'm not quite convinced.

Way too funny

I nipped this off of Tambo's blog and just thought it was way too funny to NOT share with all of you:

Oh, wait. First we must have a commercial. Tambo is Tamara Siler Jones, whose forensic fantasy Ghosts in the Snow came out last November I think. It's doing very well.

Okay, then, here's what I nipped from her blog:
Rules of Writing

From Scribes - link from Death by Absurdity

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
33. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Provincial Politics

I find politics mildly amusing. We had an election here in BC yesterday, and although we still have the same government we had before, it has changed drastically. A little education for the non-Canadians in our midst. If you want to start a political party in BC, you can. You can call it anything. You can run candidates in as many of the ridings as you can finagle. You can call it The Marijuana Party, or you can call it the Sex Party. (Yes, those both exist. One's main platform is the legalization of pot, and the other one--I don't want to know.) Needless to say, only two or three parties get any amount of significant votes. Three parties (to my knowledge, don't correct me if I'm wrong) ran a candidate in every riding.

Four years ago we British Columbians decided to oust our scandal ridden government, and we did it with a vengeance. Out of the 79 available seats, the *other party* took 77. Even those of us who voted for them (and remember, there were a lot of us!) were a little dismayed. The Liberal government headed by Gordon Campbell had no one to counsel against them. The former governing party, the NDP (New Democratic Party), didn't even come out of the 2001 election with official party status. So GC began to balance budgets. He broke promises to unions. He cut massively in health care and education and absolutely everywhere else he thought he could get away with it. And get away with it he did, because as loud as those two NDP gals were, they were only two voices in a flood of Liberal. A lot of people have been pretty choked about the way he ran roughshod over the people of his province. But you know what? BC is on a better financial footing. The economy is more stable. That also says something.

Yesterday Gordon Campbell walked off with 46 seats. Quite a drop from 77, but still enough to form a majority government. The NDP rebounded with 33. (A lot of folks thought they had dropped completely off the radar, and gone the way of former BC parties such as Social Credit and Conservative, who have both formed governments in BC in the past two decades and now no longer exist. At all.) This is probably a very good thing for BC. A one-sided government with that much power is just a scary thing.

Locally, we have returned to the NDP fold, to no one's huge surprise. Our new MLA (member of the legislative assembly) is also our old one; he has represented our area well in years gone by (just not the last four!). In fact, Jim regularly works on the guy's farm equipment. ** asked Jim if he was getting his vote, and Jim said, "No, I'm sorry to say. I'm voting for the other guy because of your party's stand on particular issues. It's a matter of conscience. But still, I hope you win."

That about sums it up. It's a little sad, but it's true. Don't even get me started on the fiasco that is currently the status of Canada's federal government. It's just too embarrassing.

Better today, thanks

Nearly 2K today, and that crazy chapter is completed. The one with the scandal in it that I knew nothing about until I'd typed half of it. The one with the guard who has no name but has more stinkin' backstory than the main characters do. THAT chapter. Yes, the chapter that changes the course of the remainder of the book once again. I'll put off re-re-outlining for as long as I can, but I see that Taafa is going to have to resolve things with Juumat in a more thorough way than I imagined earlier. I just didn't think the dude was that important before. But he and the unnamed guard were in trouble together back then, and it has to come back to haunt him. It has to. I just don't know how yet. Drat.

In happier news, it was quieter at work today and I had my words in by mid afternoon and so I got a lot of my files downloaded from my gmail account. Yay. Lots to go yet, but I feel better with it well started.

It's still raining and is supposed to until the weekend, but the part for the lawnmower came in. Is that good news or not? Let me ask the farm cats.

Forward Motion

and by that I simply mean that I had some today! Not as much as I'd hoped (I'm greedy) but still, 1287 words put me over 60K so far on first draft. I think it's been 7 weeks since I started, so I shouldn't be whining. I think the main thing is that I'd actually hoped to accomplish something besides the words, you know? It was crazy busy at work, so I kept being distracted by that. I know that's hard to imagine, but hey, go ahead and try. I still have tons of files sitting in gmail waiting to come back to earth and my hard drive. I'm just pulling the ones I need at the time, but need to set aside time to download the rest. AFTER I get my words for the day, is what I told myself today. But I didn't even get THAT until quarter to five...

And there's always crits to do. Everybody in my 2yn (2 year novel writing course) has been working so hard on their books since January '04, that now that we're posting first five pages for crit I want to crit ALL of them. Not to criticize but to critique...and hopefully encourage. There's some fine projects coming out of this class. I doubt there's any publishers reading my blog, but if you are--beware. There's going to be a lot of great submissions in late fall of this year. You might need to start thinking of a new imprint. And 2yners--get that book finished as fast as you can do a good job of it and get ahead of the pack.

I should take a pic of my lawn to show you. Nah. Just go to any abandoned lot near where you live and take a look. My lawn mower's broke down, and my lawn hasn't been mowed for over two weeks. It is extremely shaggy. Even the cats are looking disgusted as they try to pretty paw their way across. And on that cheery note I'll leave you for tonight.

What every hopeful writer needs to know:

I was blog surfing this morning and ended up at Touch of Ink's blog" and from there discovered this article on facing every writer's second nightmare. The first nightmare has to be never selling any book at all, no matter how hard you've labored over it. The second nightmare is selling a few books and then sinking without a ripple. This little article is an honest look at the problem and how to prepare yourself for it, from one writer's personal experience.

At the moment, though, personally I have to deal with the first area: even sending material out so that it CAN be rejected. My goal is to have one novel making the rounds before the end of 2005. Maybe two. But apparently it's a good idea to start thinking of pseudonyms early on!

Photos of Flowers

This just seems to be the time of year that if you're taking pictures, you should take them of flowers. This first one I took last weekend in my sister's rock garden. She loves to dig and garden (we call her a mole!) and gets beautiful results.


My sister's rock garden 

My flower garden doesn't get a fraction the energy my sister's does, but the lilac bush is beautiful at this time of year!


Our lilac bush 

Other than flowers, I did get a fair amount of words Wednesday (1640) and found the story sliding even further off of its new outline. Oh well. What can I say? I'll get the winch out after awhile and pull it back inline.

Wednesday evenings are our worship team's regular practice night. We meet at the most logical home: centrally located, have a piano (and all their dozen or more instruments at ready disposal), have younger kids that can do their own thing because they're at home, etc. It is always a great evening of singing and having a great time together as friends in the Lord. An added (or subtracted) note this week is that Jim's sister's father-in-law is dying of cancer right now, making her rather quiet at practice. It's a tough week for the family, and may stretch out for awhile yet. Though by all accounts, it doesn't sound like it will be a lot longer.

Life in a Nutshell, which wouldn't post last night...

Anyone read anything by Kage Baker? I'd read a couple of her *Company* books, and just finished her fantasy *Anvil of the World*. She scored cover blurbs by Anne McCaffrey and Ursula Le Guin, so I gave it a try. Much of it is mildly amusing, but I'm not in any rush for the next one (if there is one). It includes too many messages that she hopes we get, too much on stupid humans and their bad ecological practices, etc. Do I think humans have messed up? Oh yeah. But slightly veiled references to that are not what I read other-world fantasy for. I also didn't think that much that happened in the story really mattered to the ending, you know? Didn't seem like an inevitable progression, even though it was mostly interesting. Anyway. I've certainly read worse, so read it if you have time and like her work. I'd be curious to hear other impressions.

In other news, I finally finished writing the scene I started yesterday. I tweaked the old outline yet again. It's funny how smooth things seem to flow when you're outlining and when you get there, you just slide a slightly different angle, as though the road was muddy. Not far enough to get off the road, you understand, just enough to shed a new light on it. Or at least up the wattage of the same light just a little. How's that for mixing the metaphors?

That's my life in a nutshell, mixed metaphors and all.

There are some things I need to deal with in the next while. I need to get my courage together and tackle Hewlett Packard yet again over my printer. It is NOT working right and it is NOT my fault. I've shut up for too long, and need to start hammering them again. And now I also have to deal with our cell phone, which seems to have some loose wires in it, and also has six months of contract left on it but no more warranty, so they think we should pay full price for a new one. And me? I'm thinking not. But we'll see who wins on these. But first I have to get up the energy to start the fight. Because if I don't fight, they win for sure, and that's just sad.

I'm Ba-ack!

I know you've missed me. Friday afternoon I hopped the bus to my sister's for the weekend so we could continue to work on our family scrapbook. We started just before New Year's with our oldest artifacts (a card made by our grandmother as a child in 1897) and have proceeded all the way to 1953 by the end of this, our third weekend on the hit parade.

My mom was able to spend a few hours at my sister's both days I was there. She's 82 now and aging rapidly, so we're trying to catch the stories while she's still telling them. It was wonderful to be able to spend mother's day with her and my sis, being as my kids are too far away to come home. My daughter did track me down at her auntie's house, though, and made me check my email from there on webmail, as she had painted me a lovely mother's day painting of daffodils on her computer. She is a very talented girl, and I'm loving my gift! My son, who doesn't have a long distance plan on his telephone because he's a student and can't afford it, did also call home and catch the answering machine. "Hello, you have a collect call from: Happy Mother's Day"!!!! Gotta love his originality! I laughed myself silly. Jim drove over to pick me up and enjoyed a bit of time with my family as well. My sister's 3 year old granddaughter did her best to monopolize Uncle Jim. "Uncle Jim, will you play with me?" They read stories and played ball and did a puzzle.

We got home after ten thirty to a very lonely kitty cat who needed lots of attention too!

For the record, last week I wrote about 9500 words On *Marks of Repentance*, Shann's story. And so far today, nothing! Except...that my new cable modem has been installed on my work computer, and I now have everything pretty much set up. Time to flag down some words for the day...

A farm photo to cheer your day!

Lest you think all aspects of farming are glamorous! 

No, really, there ARE other things to think about. I finally got all the files for Shann's story together on my work computer today. That seemed like a good idea, for the number of times this week I've wanted to check something that I'd already written, or a bit of worldbuilding. So, then...I decided to get serious with the words today and kicked out over 3k. The story is coming together very well and I'm enjoying this part of the process a great deal.

And now I'm very tired and headed for bed after a busy day and busy evening...

on the road again

The *new* old computer is pretty much up and running, though I discovered that I hadn't thought about all my bookmarked sites! Oh, well. I can find them all again. A lot of them I have on the home computer so it's mainly a matter of emailing myself a bunch of links.

I had a little bit of a scare this morning when the computer refused to copy my files from the diskette in A drive to the hard drive. Then I found that I could open it okay, and THEN save it. A little more hassle to do them that way, one at a time, but the only thing that really mattered in that category was the writing I'd done on the laptop. Everything else I had uploaded to my gmail account and will get transferred back down as soon as I have the new modem at work. But I had everything I needed to keep rolling in the meanwhile on that disk.

Of course I got side-tracked doing other things! :P But mid-afternoon I reminded myself that I had goals and a blank screen, so I got to work and pumped out about 1400 words before closing. Trying to keep on track is like herding ten cats through a stream. Just go ahead and try THAT.

Things are looking up!

I got better at typing with my eyes shut today. It was either that or lose TWO days of word count, and I wasn't willing for that. Besides it was almost dead quiet at the store. What would I have done for six of those seven hours without my story to keep me company? So...1695 words. I'm quite content with that. And then I read for a bit.

I tried your suggestion, Mar. Perhaps that refresh button doesn't exist in Win98? At any rate, I poked through all the settings but couldn't find anything to deal with the lag on the laptop screen. And like I say, I solved it my own way--by not looking at the screen unless my fingers were at rest! Hey, whatever works.

At the end of the workday I picked up my old but improved tower from the computer shop across the back alley. And while I type this on the *home * computer, I'm installing programs back onto the *work* computer on the table beside me. So the deal is that it will be ready to go back to work with me in the morning, and it will *only* take a couple of hours for me to train Word out of its autoformats. I can't even wait until I'm done my writing for the day to do that. Aargh. Maybe I can it done tonight while it's still at home....

You don't want to know...

and neither do I. Aargh. Trying to do the upgrade on my work computer crashed it, so now I have to take it into the computer shop anyway. Let's hope he's feeling gracious in the morning... I took our old laptop to work to write today. That was almost more annoying than not writing. It's a beater; the thing belongs in a dumpster. One of the hinges is broken, so it can't support the screen/lid. Propped that up with a pile of books. There's a dark fade spot in the middle of the screen. Annoying. And it has a little *visual echo* thingie going that nearly made my eyes go buggy. Most of the time that I typed today, I did so with my eyes closed. I just couldn't stand looking at the screen.

Yes, I got some words. Not as many as I needed, but under the circumstances, I found 900 words to be totally acceptable.

A very busy weekend, as all weekends tend to be down home on the farm. Flowerbed weeding and lawn mowing took my the lion's share of my time. I have inherited too many flowerbeds, and they are too large. I've been trying to cut them back the past couple years, but that's a big job, too. I like looking at pretty flowers as much as the next gal, but I'm not so into the work of keeping them pretty. We let the bull out with *his ladies* on Saturday to begin working on next year's crop of calves. We need to be ultra-cautious out there now when feeding, as he is rather...exuberant.