Steady as she goes...

Song of the day: “Rome wasn’t built in a day” by Morcheeba. Such a sweet little song that can easily just go round and round inside your head, eh?

First of all, it is now official that the Daewoo is a lost cause. (They would have to replace the engine, which is of course an expensive endeavor and definitely not worth the expense.) Which means that we are now once again looking for a new 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand car that will get us around without being fancy, because, let’s face it, that is just not something that we can afford. *sigh* Don’t suppose any of you readers has something affordable standing around, eh?

Ah well, it was worth a shot.

So yeah, what with this abysmal news we’ve been driving around a bit looking for cars and prices, which takes loads of time and is...well frigging annoying. Stupid, friggin’ Daewoo. And we liked it so much. Apparently that makes no difference whatsoever. Hah. (I know, sarcasm: It becomes me. *snort*)

What’s been going on? Well, summer’s here, finally! Seriously the mercury is rising to a comfortably sweaty mid nineties, going towards a solid hundred in the full sunshine. *blissful sigh* I’ve been looking forward to this for the whole winter, so allow me to continue sighing for a bit here. Take this evening for instance. We were watering the lower garden when an absolutely wonderful breeze picked up. I looked towards the higher terraces and was momentarily stunned by all the color overhead. The plant-life showed an array of six different greens at least (the setting sun helped, of course) there were the pink and white oleanders, the hot pink and deep red bougainvillea, the last few crimson roses, the purple mimosa and suddenly snatched up by the western wind were the bright, deep yellow acacia flowers drifting in the air like a golden rain. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I just kept staring because I couldn’t stop. *sigh*

Besides the watering some small stuff has been going on, of course. What with the afternoons so perfectly hot these days, we’re using the afternoons for writing again, so projects are being spread thin in the first and last hours of the day.

Like yesterday, I spent the morning (after watering seedlings and the greenhouse, of course) cleaning and painting outside lamps. The pitch blackness while walking up to my cabin is driving me bonkers so I decided that it was time to fix up the outside lights and put in new wiring. Grandpa has been helping of course.

Big brother and grandpa have been working on the drive sweep. The plan is to dig out two big gutters and pour concrete one of these days (maybe tomorrow, we’ll see) and while they were doing that, Danni and I dug out the mess behind my cabin. I’m not kidding, no. For the past three years or so dirt, leafs, roots, and scrap metal has been piling up behind my cabin, and getting it all out is starting to become a pain in the behind. Just barely managed to dig out two wheelbarrows of the stuff (roots mostly) before the morning came to an end (watering took longer than anticipated because I had to harvest some ripe tomatoes) and it was time to start writing.

Writing went rather well since yesterday. Got a solid seven pages down, of a new scene no less. And though I will need to write the “in-between” at some point, it is going well. Definitely doing more dialogues this time, not mention lots of “thoughts”. Ah well, a gal’s gotta try everything once, right?

The character’s are forming nicely. The heroine is secretive, sweet and too cute for her own good. The hero big, strong, a little older and easygoing. Just the way I like ‘m, eh? Hah. He is of course going to have to be a hero of old, ready to save the damsel in distress. And she’s going to be in some serious distress, I assure you. Seriously, there are some scene’s going through my head these days, meaning that the poor girl is going to suffer some serious trauma. *sob* I am so friggin’ mean to my characters!

Ah well, it will all work out. All’s well that ends well, eh? Or won’t it. I do play with a not so happy ending sometimes, but I always end up going for a good one. Guess I’m not satisfied until the reader needs to grab a toothbrush, or something. Hah.

Doggie news: Sitabah is in heat, which is pretty darn annoying since she keeps trying to seduce Dax who is (surprisingly) not at all interested. You won’t believe this, but Dax falls for Spaniels for some reason. Seriously, you can’t keep him off them with a stick, but Sitabah, who is a ballerina compared to the sturdy cocker lasses, is of no interest whatsoever for him.

There was cooking, of course. Chili sin Carne, again, because, let’s face it, I need to eat palsies a lot and beans come close when it comes to nutrients. Besides the beans, sweetcorn and mushrooms, everything else came from the yard making it one friggin’ nice meal, thank you very much. Not to mention that with a bit of extra veggies it was perfectly fine for two days.

So now I am pretty much drawing a blank as to what is going on of late, so this is going to be it. I still want to do a kick boxing session before going to bed, and...well, it’s late, I won’t be able to write more for the book now. Darn it!