~ Fresh Air ~

Ninety degrees outside and I felt the need for a breath of fresh air. Go figure. I stepped outside, looked around, took a few deep breaths, and went back inside ... to get my phone and a book! Seriously, it was gorgeous out there.

For a while, all I could do was look around me. I watched the hummingbirds sipping their nectar. I saw butterflies flitting across the yard, minding their own business. It was hard to believe, but not a single cat came to harass me. Now for some reading - in the middle of the day! Unheard of!

Then it was time to stretch my legs. I walked over to the uprooted stump of a tree, left over from last year's tornado. I had asked Weldon if it was going to stay there forever and he said, "No. Sooner or later it will rot away." Ha! Very funny! So, I'm attempting to turn it into a focal point - a piece of yard art, more or less. Kinda sorta.

A gardener I'm not, but everyone wants to help me take a few baby steps in that direction. In early June, my friend Tena brought some (more) flowering plants and bushes for me. I chose this spot and she thought it would be perfect. She dug the holes and planted the plants! I moved my little "bird bath" over there. See, I can do some things.

Tena, I don't suppose you can see it, but there's a white butterfly to the left of the stump, just above the purple flower closest to the stump. The purple flowers that you said would attract butterflies. It's true!

Ahhh. What a glorious, refreshing time I had in the 90-degree great-out-of-doors. Thank you, Lord, for books and birds and butterflies and friends and uprooted tree stumps.

Hidden Treasure?

"I kept a journal for years and years." That's what I've said to myself for years and years. But in the more recent past I've been asking myself, "If I kept a journal for years and years, where are they? Surely I wouldn't have thrown them away!" I had almost decided that, as is so often the case, my memory is a liar and I just like to think that I'd been writing for years and years.

About two weeks ago, a box in the corner of Weldon's closet caught my eye. What's in that big box? It's behind my carry-on and my little duffle bag, and that's my shoulder massage thingie on top of it. Hmmm. Three days ago I dragged it into my sewing room; two days ago I opened it up.

French books and a year of Reader's Digest in French; a few old photo albums; some commemorative magazines, including a National Geographic from May 1951; paraphernalia from my high school graduation, certificates of various achievements, papers I wrote during my two years at North Central Bible College; a little stack of greeting cards; a book in which I had written down quite a few of the songs I wrote way back when; AND thirteen journals!

I really did keep a journal for years and years! They span, approximately, the years from 1979 to 1994. In flipping through them, I see that, in my usual fashion, not every year is complete; but that's still a whole lot of reading ahead of me. I have no idea what I'll find. Will it be painful? Will it be like hidden treasure that puts a smile on my face? I'm hoping my memory cells will be jolted into actually remembering a few things.

I'm excited. I'm kind of scared. These books represent a couple of my previous lifetimes. But, hey! They're my lifetimes! I'm going to take a slow stroll down memory lane.
  

Crap Happens ... Wallowing Is Optional

Two years ago, I learned of National Novel Writing Month and signed up. I wasn't writing a novel, but I had been putsing around with ideas for a book about adjusting to life on the dairy farm for quite a while. It was time to get serious. At the end of November 2013, I had written 50,278 words and was declared a Winner.

I had written a lot of crap, so now I had to see if I could make some sense of my crazy month of putting words on paper. But, did I stick with it? Of course not. Enter NaNoWriMo 2014. I used the month for rewriting my crap—chalking up 50,611 words edited, moved around, and prettified. I was declared a Winner.

Now I was determined that these words would become an actual book. Almost every day of this past year I sat in front of my computer, honed my words, moved chapters around, ditched a lot of junk, and kept on and kept on. Some days I felt like success was getting close, and other days I felt like I had been sucked into some black hole and would never find my way out.

On September 1, a gal from the King Public Library came into the frame shop and, since I was the only one there at the time, we actually conversed :) I told her I was almost ready to publish the book I started two years earlier during NaNoWriMo and she asked if I'd be interested in being on a panel for the NaNoWriMo Kickoff at the library in November.

Now I had a goal. I was determined to have a copy of my book in hand before November 2. I enlisted my daughter Katie to make my book look like the real deal—from the cover to all the interior details. We spent many hours together on the phone and working remotely on each others computers. She's amazing!

Here's the cover:

I submitted the book files via CreateSpace and, after two rounds, I approved the proof copy on October 30th.

On October 31, I published Crap Happens ... Wallowing Is Optional. Click on the link and get yourself a copy :) and after you read it, please go back to Amazon and review the book for me.

NaNoWriMo 2015 is here. I signed up, but haven't written a word so far. Why? Because I'm exhausted. The next big project will be to make the ebook version available. But before that happens? It's the NaNoWriMo Kickoff tonight! I'll have my proof copy in hand and will be beaming like a brand new author.

I discovered this treasure today:

Thanks for reading!