Ironic

Song of the day: “Daydream believer” by the Monkees. I blame one of my discussion forums for this. It was musical Monday and we had to pick ‘50s or ‘60s songs. Grrr. I’ve been having the
whackiest songs in my head since then.

But anyways… Another week bites the dust, and I am most delighted to inform y’all that the edit is over and done with, all the Is are dotted, punctuation checked and typos erased (hopefully) and the editor is looking at it as we speak. Yes! I figured to be smart for a change and sent her a personal heads up…and to ask again where the heck I was supposed to send it again. So hard to keep track of all the rules and such, better ask than do it wrong and needing to apologize later on.
Be that as it may, she promptly answered (she remembered, yay) and advised me on my following actions. I do love it when editors a nice people. Good thing I checked, because apparently I was supposed to send it to a different section…which is where the irony starts. *sigh*

You see, the last time I was supposed to send it to a department where the maximum word count was 40K, and now I sent it to a department where the stories can be 50-65K. Funny part is, one of the reasons we took so long with the edits was because during the rewrite I overshot the 40K by at least 3000 words, which meant we had to go through the story with fine toothcomb and cut out any and all excess. And not scenes, mind you, but parts of sentences, words that were not strictly necessary. Aaaaargh!
I am proud to say that when I checked out the particular submission guidelines and saw the allowed word count managed to keep my reaction to a blink of my eyes and then a resigned shrug…while mentally banging my head against the desk, of course. Irony. Seriously, it totally reminded me of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic”. Hah.

As to what’s next regarding writing. We’re going to try to get A.T.O.L. edited in time for the ABNA competition. If I don’t win anything, it will be nice to get some impartial opinions on the story. Also, I’m wondering if changing the title from “A Taste of Life” to “Addie’s Magic” would be better. I mean, I like the first one, the pun, you know? The good witch vs the vampire? A taste of life-giving blood? Hint, hint. *snort*
But, since it is more about the witch and her witching family, Addie’s Magic might be more suited. What would you be more inclined to pick up, I wonder?
Anyway, we read the first chapter last night, and I do have to say that we did the last edit really well. The narrative of the protagonists is distinct, as in, you notice the moment something is told from her perspective, or his. His is old-fashioned, ponderous almost, while hers is light, and definitely Irish. I’m looking forward to the read.

Moving on.
Work’s been fascinatingly insane…but that’s mean of me to mention because I can’t tell about it, drat! It’s not all bad, though. I work with animals and that beats humans any day.

I had planned to make pie for my birthday last Friday, but never got around to it. Luckily the apple pie I made two days earlier worked out splendidly, and I enjoyed that for two days in a row. The experiment worked out really well, and it is one that will have to go into the cookbook for sure.

Cooking has been basic lately. Too little time, too little appetite…partly because of the one week headache that insisted on taking up residence in my skull. Finally got over it three days ago, which was a relief. It sometimes rears its ugly little head, still (freaks me out, because I’m always afraid of another 2 year headache) but I’m handling it. The way I figure it’s got to do with anger issues, not surprisingly what with everything that has been happening this fall, and I am slowly working my way through them, letting go them go because there is no benefit in anger, however righteous it might seem…yeah, okay, let’s not get too deep here, eh? *slow exhale* Letting go.

Oh my, it’s a bit nippy here at the moment, but the sun just broke through a patch of clouds and is wonderfully warm on my face. Yay. Gonna enjoy that for a moment, if you don’t mind…………

Knight II…I spoke too soon the other day. I had to lock him in my sleeping area a little too long yesterday afternoon, so guess what I found when I came to fetch him…Yep. He’d become bored, taken off his sock and licked his foot open again. I could have strangled him—but that would of course defeat the purpose of keeping the big lug from eating himself. Grrrr. You should see his guilty expression when I catch him licking his foot into oblivion. Like “I can’t help it, boss”. *sigh* I’ll just have to let him live, won’t I?

Well, I had a wonderful workout, just now. A little on the short side, but nice regardless. I get so stiff when I let the exercises slide too often. If only I had a little bit more time, but as it is, there’s work, cooking, whatever chores I can fit in in the afternoon, and then edits or writing. Regretfully workouts take the back seat from that little list. Such a pity.

I do love the occasional free day. Today I actually had time to sort through my clean laundry, can you believe it. I actually cleared a horizontal surface or two, which is nothing short of a miracle. Need to do more still, but it’s a start, at least.

Though we’ve had one rainy day this week, things are remarkably dry. Not good. Plants are suffering under it, which is a pity, since this is supposed to be the time of the year where they are allowed to recover from the summer. No such luck, though.

Then, lastly, a pic as a sort of "looking back" after my 35th birthday. This would be little Sammie at 7.

My, do the years pass fast. That day seems like yesterday to me. Hah. Regretfully you can't see the massive gap of my missing front teeth. They took forever to arrive, so I had a nice thlisss going.

Time to get busy.