(Image by mathey from Pixabay)
After a relatively good start on Monday, Tuesday was harder. I wasn’t as late, but it was more of a chore. I struggled to get up, then I lingered over breakfast.
But I did it.
The biggest issue was that I only had my work to do yesterday and it was only by reminding myself that my work was important too that I reported to my desk.
It had been a disturbed night as well (dog twice, cat once, downstairs blind crashing down at stupid o’clock once, that kind of thing), and I was tired.
But I did it.
Tuesday 12 October 2021
I walked to work with the dog (he shouted at every other dog he saw, which didn’t help), and then I had my social hour. During the social hour, I went to collect nearly two-dozen ebooks from the last two kickstarters I backed.
The vertical blind
Fortunately, the poet was working at home and was able to look at the blind that came crashing down. It’s one of those vertical blinds (which I detest in a domestic environment), and it was on a very large bay window… bay window = curved.
Unfortunately, it was too big a job for him to fix either on his own or with me helping him. He wouldn’t let it go, though, and insisted on trying to fix it, using me and two clothes props. More unfortunately, it had fallen down for a reason, and the fittings were not fit for refixing.
I reminded him that we were planning on taking the blind down anyway and replacing it with a flexi-curtain track and curtains. He didn’t need any convincing. It’s now wrapped in bin-bags to keep it clean and in storage in the garage.
Between now and the weekend, when we’ll have more time to go and get the curtain track and curtains and more time to fit them, we’re using the back room, which already has lovely curtains up at two windows (bought for us by his mom and my dad one Christmas).
When the patio doors needed replacing at the back of the house, that forced us to take that nasty vertical blind down and put it in storage. This blind falling down has forced us to finally get around to doing the front window.
If it wasn’t so expensive (time and money), all of the vertical blinds would be replaced with blackout roller blinds and/or blackout curtains in one go. After this we’ll still have the breakfast room and the spare bedroom to do. We might already have curtains for these, though. We also need something up at the kitchen door and window.
I think that curtains and fabric blinds are so much cosier than vertical blinds, and warmer too. Saying that, I do like Venetian blinds. But we only have those up at two windows in one room – the poet’s office/studio – as well as two pairs of lined curtains over the top of them.
While he took the blind to the garage (and one of the old pet baskets and the two cat carriers), I topped up the garden bird feeders and I did a dog poo patrol. It was just starting to rain and I said I’d been lucky with my walk to work. He said I’ll have to get a taxi when the snow comes…
‘My’ work
Once I finally got around to doing my morning’s work, I finished proofreading Twee Tales Twee and made the corrections to both the ebook file and the paperback file.
I uploaded the new ebook file to Draft2Digital, but I can’t upload the new paperback file until after 29 December without paying extra for it, so I added that to the diary for the first week in January.
As I was sifting through my WiP drawer looking for the next proofreading job, I found hard copies of both Twee Tales and Twee Tales Too as well as Night Crawler and Diary of a Scaredy Cat. So I’m going to gradually plod through each of those until every one is as good as I can make it.
I found Diary of a Pussycat (a Wordsworth writers’ guide) waiting to have the rest of its exercises adding to it as well as the starts for The Secret of Whitehorse Farm and The Fool (both novellas). I also found an entire draft of Catch the Rainbow (a novel).
Then I found a number of short stories that I’ve not yet done anything with so far. If they’re any good, or if they’re salvageable, I might look at subbing those to magazines while I collate them for (possibly) Twee Tales More. And then I’ll do a Twee Tales Omnibus.
I think I’ll start to clear this backlog before starting something new. Apart from the new stuff already planned for Words Worth Reading.
In the meantime, the proofreading job I pulled out was Project Management for Writers: Gate 1.
With Amazon playing up over me publishing my own material on my own websites, I may have to go in and delist this on Medium before it’s published as an ebook and a paperback. Then again, it’s my book, my property, and I might just leave it where it is as it’s one of my biggest earners on Medium.
At least my WiP drawer is tidy again.
Half a day’s holiday
The dog came along for the ride to my appointment and when we got back, off the poet went for another overnight trip. He had an early start in Stoke today, and he didn’t want to risk the traffic this morning. He also had a meeting planned with his boss last night, so they did it down there.
Me and the dog walked home again, and I called it a day. Or half a day. Or two halves of one day…
