Writing, Not Blogging

Lots of writing this week and last. The fish story, still incomplete but getting there, and now I've had to cudgel Festival Madness into a even better shape. Nothing like real feedback to help a writer. A nice agent gave me some feedback which actually agreed with something an editor said, so I'm making the umpteenth pass through the novel, cutting out more words and attempting to give one of the characters a bit more gravitas, as it were.

Next month I have to write a speech, and whatever happened to the long cold wintry days when there wasn't much to do?

We applied to work on the 2010 Census and took the test today. The sample questions were easy but not all the test questions were slam dunks by any means. I tried to remember the last time I took a test and couldn't. Even the classes I've taken, both writing and technical have not had actual tests. I believe test-taking is a skill like many others, a skill that can become rusty from disuse. We did just fine on the test. Now comes the background check and that sort of thing.

On Tuesday, I was glued to the TV all day and all night. Yowsa! What a great historic event. Saved all the newspapers. By now I have a huge Obama collection and a gazillion emails, too.

All by way of excuse for not doing much blogging. Busy. Busy. How doth the busy little bee?
Some house finches and exotic looking sparrows at the feeder today. Feeding birds, cows, cats, it never ends.

The herd of eight cows is suddenly down to four. Mary Ann's baby was shipped off and now Mary Ann is gone, too. The only "regulars" are Iris and Maggie. So sad. The problem is, I bond with the cows. A little weird to be sure, but true.

Back to my novel.

Grapeshot

January Blahs

I am neither a morning person nor a winter person, so getting up to get to my 8:00 a.m. aerobics class is difficult. Today the instructor had just returned from a cruise where she had eaten beaucoup bacon and drunk tequila with abandon. Guess who suffered? The class. My lord, that woman worked us. Came home and had to eat lots of peanut butter.

Normally I don't have a control problem with food, but peanut butter (and friend chicken) are two foods I can't resist. I don't know why I bought two jars of peanut butter. Making cookies? Small visitor. Anyway, I gave the smooth to the food pantry, and a few days ago I opened the chunky. OMG! I can't leave it alone. And we have apricot jam in the house, my most favorite PB accompaniment. Except mostly I just take a knife and dig out a big blob and eat it. Repeat.

Is there something lacking in my diet? Like Peanut butter? Dunno. It's bad. I ask myself should I just eat the rest and that's it, but it seems like cheating. Eat some everyday, but too much. Yeah.

S.O. and I are applying to work on the census. The pay is even almost decent. Better than minimum wage. I think I'll like it.

There is an old saying that eternity is two people and a ham. The ham, at Christmas, began with three people and we had lots of ham sandwiches and ham and eggs and finally I froze the rest. Now we've had a big pot of bean soup with the ham bone, and ham and broccoli gratin, and guess what? Ham left. At least enough for sandwiches and two more meals with eggs. Two people. One ham. Actually it was a half-ham. Eternity.

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