I spent most of Friday catching up with the proofreading job. I’d done my own proofreading, but now I had to consolidate mine with the author’s and the proofreader’s. It took longer than I thought it would because, while the author hardly made any changes, the proofreader made quite a few – many of which I didn’t even realise were house style now. And they were mainly style changes.
I finished the consolidation, but before transferring the mark-ups to the pdf, I fired of an email to the client asking if there was a new style sheet and letting her know when she could expect the marked-up pdf back. In the email I also cited some examples of things I wasn’t aware of, or things that fell by the wayside several years ago.
I created the cover for the WORDS WORTH READING ISSUE ONE bookazine, and I did it all by myself in Affinity. No Canva there. The short story covers are still in Canva and I may transfer the design to Affinity when I have time. But for now, I’ll leave them in Canva and carry on using those and creating new ones based on that template.
The story I chose for the cover was PAPER ROSES because I like the artwork. A lot. But I couldn’t find the original artwork with the credit information on. First of all I trawled through all of my pictures on Canva, but it wasn’t there. Then I did a search on Pixabay, where I found the original and the required citation.
But I’d changed the background of the image to mono and kept the blood-red roses in colour. However, I couldn’t remember how I did it, although I’m sure I did it in Affinity. So then I had to do a deep-dive into my archives to see if I could find that image I created from the one on Pixabay. I found it, applied the credit citation, and saved it in the current filing system.
This means I just have to collate all the short stories in a single Word file and proofread them. The stories are all already written. I still have the welcome letter and the credits to write, but those are the last 2 jobs anyway.
I was just wrapping up for the day, I still had to write today’s blog post, for example, when the poet suddenly started calling me from the kitchen to go and help him. One of our double wall cupboards, the one with 2 shelves filled with crockery and glassware, was about to come crashing down onto the worktop – the eggs, the bread crock, the goody tins, and some crocks waiting to go in the dishwasher.
He asked me to hold it up while he emptied it. It hadn’t come loose yet, but everything holding it up, and it turned out to be not a lot, was bending or coming out of the wall. So I had to stand there for quite a few minutes while he cleared the worktop and the draining board as well. Then he carefully eased the cupboard onto the floor.
There was a lot of cursing and some ouching, and the kitchen was like a bomb site with crocks and glasses and all sorts of other things on every available space. He got the cupboard into the hall, and then we made the kitchen as tidy as we could in which to make tea and still carry on with kitchen living.
Once he was in a position to be left on his own again, I came back to my desk and finished today’s blog post.
The plan for the weekend was to get as much done on Saturday as we could and then spend time on Sunday in the garden. If I could, in between, I wanted to make a start on transferring those mark-ups to the pdf. But the cupboard falling off the wall had put the kybosh on most of our plans.
We had the weekly shop to do, we went to the butcher, and we shopped around for some replacement jelly pots with lids, as we’re somehow down to only 3 now when we started with 6. I reckon they’ve gone in the bin after they’ve been used because they look a lot like the disposable pots we get readymade individual steamed puddings in. We couldn’t find any, but the poet was able to pick up some things to fix the cupboard back to the wall with.
On our way home, we dropped in to see the mother-in-law. We took her some apples from the tree and 7 mugs we decided we didn’t have room for in the kitchen. When we got back, we put the shopping away and he did what he could to repair the cupboard where it stood.
On Sunday we got the cupboard back up on the wall but he had to leave it for 24 hours for the strong glue he’d also used to take hold. Then we went through all of our crocks and glasses, throwing out any that we definitely weren’t using and putting some spares in a safe place. And then we changed the cupboard contents around, putting lighter stuff in the one he’d just repaired and the heavier stuff spread out more equally.
We ended up with a shelf and a half in a double base unit completely empty and 1 shelf in the new crockery cupboard. Mugs we decided to keep went in the repaired unit along with tea, coffee and hot chocolate stuff, sugar, xylitol, that kind of thing. Twelve glasses went in there too, of varying shapes and sizes but in 3 sets of 4. And the breakfast cereals went in there too.
Three of our cereal containers don’t match the others (I have a different cereal container for each day of the week as it’s easier to select first thing in the morning) and one of the older type’s lid didn’t shut properly. So we went out to see if we could get a couple of matching ones for the slightly smaller boxes. We came back with a different type of jelly pot but no new cereal containers.
We had turkey pie for tea, left over from Thursday’s tea, and I made an apple and blackberry crumble, which we had with custard. And then we flaked out in front of the telly.
We still have to put the doors back on the cupboard and we still have to rearrange the bread crock, the eggster-skelter and the goody tins. But the kitchen is much more streamlined than it was.
I’m still catching up today, so blog posts elsewhere will be late or postponed to next week.
How was your weekend?
Busy tine of it. It’s amazing how much a single cupboard contains, isn’t it? And that shuffling all around always takes longer than expected.
We could hardly move in the kitchen for clutter!
It certainly made you have a good sort out! At least the cupboard didn’t fall.
Happy catching up!
Yes, a good excuse to have a tidy up!