Ditzy...moi?

Song of the day: “Grace Kelly” by Mika. Still a fun song.

So let’s see how things have gone yesterday and today…boy, I never figured that it would be almost more difficult to write an update every two days, rather than every night. I manage to shave off maybe half an hour in total, but that’s it, because it takes so friggin’ long to remember what I wrote already, and what not. Drat.

But anyways, yesterday morning started almost two hours late because my alarm was behind by two hours, which was frustrating as heck. Felt slightly off-stride all day, the way oversleeping tends to do.

Then when I came downstairs to start on the humongous batch of laundry, it became clear that the washing machine was on the frits again (still is, aaargh). This, of course means that I won’t manage to get through the stuff before the rains starts, which puts me out of sorts a little. Now we’re going to have to take the machine apart and hope that we can fix the problem. It’s one of the nasty side effects of modern machinery, I think. They make everything high-tech and impossible to fix without a master’s degree, or something. I mean, seriously, you can’t just take out a lever and replace it…nooo, you need to replace the motherboard, or some sort. It’s like looking into the bowels of a spaceship, for crying out loud.

But we’ll figure it out, somehow. On to the next item: Rather than do more proofreading, big brother and I opted to start on a new round of send outs, so the majority of the morning’s hours were spent going of the manuscript’s query letter. We looked up addresses for publishers and agents working in the genre of “Saving Nina” and going over the alterations and adjustments that have been made in the requirement lists of said companies. Tiring work, that, which makes my mind murm that’s a fact.

As is the norm for time, it passes way too fast, and soon we wrapped it up to start on the activities of the day.
While big brother and grandpa finished up the fence of the upper part of the yard, I helped the sisters mix paint for their room (the one with the new floor) and middle sister’s bedroom. Next, while they got to painting, I took out the laminated slats intended for the second landing at the top of the stairs and put in a new floor there too. This part only took about half an hour; the rest of the four hours of work were spent selecting plinths and doorsteps to add to it. Grrr, the detail work is so friggin’ time consuming!

Big brother fixed the bathroom faucet, which blew last night, for no apparent reason, and luckily he managed to (at least temporarily) correct the error. It would be a real pain to have to find a new faucet that is twelve centimeters, rather than today’s standard size 16; you actually can’t get the 12 anymore.
Be that as it may, my small section of floor gets done, and after a quick dinner made by mom, big brother and I head into our office for some much needed cleaning/organizing (because the weather is ominous of late, we’ve slowly been piling things into it, until we find the proper places for them.

It took an hour or so to create some room to work in, but once done we got down to printing the letters, synopsis and chapters. We don’t actually finish with the stuff until 1:30 AM, but what the hey, we overslept so, we could do with a few hours less of sleep.

Of course, by the time we were done and had moved up to my cabin for our habitual report of the day and the plans for the next, we started doubting if we had done something wrong with the letters so we had to reopen all the envelopes again to check. Aaaargh. We didn’t do it wrong, as it turned out in the end, but better safe than sorry.

Spent an extra half hour scrubbing out my bathroom, ‘cause seriously it was a mess. It is just so hard to find some decent time to do a proper cleaning, but I ended up getting it all done to my satisfaction.

So, yeah, got too little sleep today (darn me for checking my alarm last night, hah) and my eyes were bleary when I woke up, no matter, though, much to do and too little time. When all the tasks, projects and whatnot ahead started to pile up (they tend to do that from time to time) into this massive mountain ridge that I had to climb, I decided to just blank out. I picked a song from the top of my head (Unwritten by Natasha Beddingsfield, just for the heck of it) and not think of more than the next action.

Afterwards, I could just start on the day and have a positive outlook of all the happy accidents that might occur. Lots of accidents occurred, I assure you. Apparently I’m ditzy again, ‘cause at this very moment I’ve got five bandages on a variety of appendages from asinine little mishaps from the course of the day.

But I’ll get to that later. The morning started out with some writing for this rather new “thing” I’m working on (thing referring to a story I don’t have a title for yet, hah) and then delving back into the frustrating job of finding the right publisher/agent. Yesterday’s packages are in the mail, by the way, and this morning we spent the majority of the session preparing and sending out to three agents (one already said no. Why do I do this to myself, aaaargh), which isn’t at all easy because they all have different formats to which I need to adhere.

We were a little on the late side when we finally got down to the projects, but in the hours that followed, little sister and I put in the first section of the new floor for her bedroom. Which is one of the reasons I ended up with three band-aid, by the by. A tip: Do not turn your head around to call for a certain type of screws while your hammering in a plinth. OUCH! Didn’t feel anything for a full ten seconds and then it started: Oh my Gawd! Slammed a piece of skin right between the hammer and wood--not one of my smartest moments for sure. Hah.

The other band-aids are for other nicks that were just starting to heal. But no matter, we got the intended section in so the majority of her room looks rather neat right now. Once we were done, middle sister was doing the second layer of paint in their rec-room in the mean time and little brother is fixing one of his favorite cabinets, there was a short road trip.

As it turns out, we did anticipate correctly during the past few days, ‘cause on the way back, the car loaded to full capacity with wood and a new mattress for our tenant, the clouds burst open and the deluge started. I for one am not looking forward to having to slosh my way up to my cabin half an hour from now, yikes! I haven’t even dried out yet…better yet, nor have the dogs. Gawd, I’m going to have my entire cabin soaking wet if it doesn’t let up for a few minutes at some point. Darn it all to…okay, not thinking about that.

And so another day has come to an end. Yep, I’m definitely ready to hit the sack and get me some shuteye…hoping that tomorrow the weather will be sunny once more.