The last week was far too busy for me, with way too many people in it. It started a week ago last Saturday with a trip to the vet.
On Monday I posted the latest chapter of Diary of a Scaredy Cat to Substack, for paid subscribers only, and I did write a brand-new short story from start to finish and send it out. In between, I carried on editing that nasty editing job.
Tuesday morning, my story submission was acknowledged, but it was wall-to-wall editing with a quick break for the gas engineer in the afternoon.
On Wednesday I was in hospital, and should have remained awake during the entire procedure. But I fell asleep. And when I got home, I slept some more.
Thursday was more wall-to-wall editing, but at least I finished the nasty edit (Yay!), apart from the notes section at the end (Boo!). The client was very appreciative that I’d finished the book at least, and she gave me leave to wait for the next proof to come through to finish the notes section.
On Friday morning we had appointments with the asthma nurse, and on Friday afternoon, we were at the optician’s. In between the two, I managed to fall over in the garden whilst carrying the dog. He may only be little, but he’s still heavy. And if he starts to wriggle as well…I think I was still suffering the after effects of the sedative I was given on Wednesday. In the evening, I touched base with my NaNo project.
Then on Saturday, we were in the midlands at my parents’ house, filling a skip. The poet worked in the garage; I worked in the boxroom where my sister’s kids had moved everything from the loft to. Both she and her youngest were there as well, and the four of us worked really hard. I almost fell over again when the dog got under my feet. I don’t think that was the sedative, but it may have been a weakness from the previous day’s fall.
We would have liked to have taken Sunday off, but we had shopping to do, and I had a meal plan and a shopping list to write.
I don’t only use a meal plan for budget planning, although it does come in very handy when we don’t have proper farm shops and it’s difficult to know, without checking first, what’s in season and what should therefore be cheaper. I also use it to ensure we have a balanced diet. On Sunday, I finally created a double-page spread for an eight-week meal plan, but I’m only including main meals and puddings.
When we got back, the poet did some painting and I finally started my monthly planning for November. I started by looking at up and coming calls for submissions, and then choosing one a week to complete if it takes my fancy.
Recently, I’ve been trying to turn these short stories around on the hoof in just one week, but that doesn’t work when I also like to leave them to cool for at least a week. Even with me knocking client work on the head (apart from the odd one or two), I’ve still been raving busy, and I haven’t had time to plan properly. so I took time out of my weekend to start this once and for all, and it carried over into Monday.
I managed to stay upright on Sunday.
The trip to Birmingham is two hours each way, give or take. And the poet was up early on Monday and back down in the midlands again. My first jobs of the day were to feed the birds and to make myself some jellies for puddings this week.
I transferred all of the previous day’s planning to ClickUp. I had a lot of work to do on ClickUp, because it’s had an update that seems to have fixed my recurring task problem, only I had to do them all again. Once I had the month sorted there, I transferred it to the diary for this week.
That took most of the day. After dinner, I wrote and posted yesterday’s blog post, started today’s, shared the gig list post on Facebook, and printed off the next editing job. Because I wanted to get a few ticks on my list, the next job I did was this week’s chapters on Substack. I checked that the next two Monkey Dust gigs were on Diane’s Gig List (they were), then I went and shared a couple of event reminders on Facebook. (Another tick.)
I moved a few things along the week, just to even out the workload. Then, when I’d taken the wheelie bin out for the bin men today, that left the rest of the day to work on NaNoWriMo. (It was already 4:30pm…)
NaNoWriMo 2023
2,296/50,000 words – 5% done!
Oh, that’s a lot. When I had the surgeries, the anesthesiologist told me it takes 7 months for the anesthesia to completely work its way out of your system. Even if you weren’t fully under, it will still probably take a few weeks.
I already have to lay off certain medications for at least a week, and they did warn me about still reeling from the affects for a few days. It did feel like my blood pressure dropped a couple of times, though.