You're Doing It Wrong

Yesterday we went to pick up our Christmas tree. I went into the shop to look for a bucket to fill with water so we had a place to keep the tree until we got it up.

There was already a bucket of water ready, but also, there was water everywhere like someone had just swabbed the floor with a sopping mop.

What is going on out here? I looked around and then I had a hunch.

Remember during the summer when I posted about my bucket for slow-watering the fig tree?

Bob accidentally picked that bucket first. 😂 “At least we know it works,” he said.

I made my goal by writing 27,040 words words in November. I wrote every day. My lowest day was 535 words. My best day was 1393. Often it was torture but I did it anyway.

The result isn’t pretty but I did get to know the characters and a few surprises came up so I guess it was a worthwhile exercise if my goal is try to get my mojo back.

What next? I keep changing my mind.

I’m going to spend one more weekend on my short story and either finish it or pack it away. Then go back to my longer projects and try to pick one. The possibility of writing another romance is still out there, too.

27040 / 25000 words. 108% done!

It seems like pillowcases come in two sizes. Barely there, so the tip of your ancient pillow sticks out and you’re constantly fussing with it to get your gross pillow carefully concealed.

And child’s sleeping bag so that you have to tuck in this giant end or it flops around and gets tangled up while you’re trying to sleep.

I vaguely recall from last time I was replacing pillows that pillows have also become complicated so I suspect the two are related.

A quick glimpse of no-tail guy at the beginning. These two look very well fed. I think they’ve got a good source somewhere.

I never know what I’m doing when I’m buying lightbulbs now.

I bought some that said “natural light” and they emit a blazing blue light as if from a space ship.

I have more than one light fixture with several bulbs. I never manage to get the bulbs to match. I label the bulbs in the lightbulb area with notes that say, “this is for the bathroom” “these are the ones you hate in the living room.”

But also somehow you can never buy just one bulb. We also have a sort-of nightlight and I used to be able to find a very low wattage for that fixture. If you wake up in the middle of the night you can see enough not to break your neck. But now the lowest wattage I can find, you could still read the side of the cereal box.

Just kidding, I need to be under the space ship light if it’s very small print.

Last night I had a dream that I was with a group–like we were staying in a house together–and they were teasing me because I couldn’t remember what day it was. I finally found my phone and turns out all of us had gotten up at 3:30 in the morning.

Later I dreamed that I missed an important professional Zoom call.

It’s a pretty good representation of where my brain is at right now. I am so worried about forgetting things that I keep jotting little notes to myself. I have so many little notes that I’m overwhelmed. I went through a few and consolidated and then tossed but there’s still underlying concern that I am forgetting something.

Well, like almost everyone, I would have preferred to have a bigger celebration but also trying to keep ourselves and everyone we love healthy.

We did a family zoom call and visited our in-town relatives by standing out in the driveway with masks on.

We ended up with a pretty traditional meal. I tried the NYT buttermilk brine for the turkey breast. We made a green citrus salad which is something I always want but end up running out of steam and/or table space for and usually skip. It was fabulous. Instead of pie I made the NYT ginger-pumpkin sorbet which was wonderful and refreshing after the big meal.

Ready for a couple episodes of The Crown before staggering off to bed.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

This picture is actually from August. I still don’t have all my “photo manipulation” tools on the new machine and I’m almost completely helpless. hehe.

It was dry for a few consecutive days so I moved the camera to the back of the yard by the fence and set the water bucket out again.

The videos were foggy from condensation but clear enough that I could see raccoons stopping by the water bucket at 5 different times.

Every time they stop to look in the bucket, then stir one or both arms in the water, then stick their face in to drink it. It’s like they aren’t happy until one of their dirty feet has been in there.

I moved the camera back under the awning by the house but I left the water bucket out to take care of all their bathing needs.

Check out this magical moment.

I am on my new machine but still fixing things how I like them, re-entering any number of passwords, re-authenticating things, fixing settings, trying to make things work like they used to work. All of Apple’s hard work to make things more fancy is lost on me. I want to do like I did it last year and the year before and the year before.

I was getting a random chime all morning. I never want my technology to make a noise at me unless I specifically set it up. I was checking notification boxes, and unclicking things right and left and still getting the chime.

I finally figured out it was my web-based work email and it took me several more tries before I found the place to turn that off.

Hopefully I can set aside some time next weekend to work with it some more.

This is probably too small to see but in the background you can see a pair of glowing eyes racing across the yard before the closer guy sprints by. That’s one of the funniest images is when all you can see is glowing eyes. Sometimes there are three pairs floating way back there in the garden bed

Bob and I like to have the closed captioning on for everything we watch.

The captions crack me up, “Somber music” or “Quiet mumbling.”

Recently on The Mandelorian there was a character that did not speak a human language and the Mandelorian couldn’t speak her language so she just gurgled a bit. There is an exciting scene and the caption was: “Frog Lady screams.”

For some reason I think that’s hilarious. I still laugh about it.

I am doing the computer today. Think good thoughts.

19446 / 25000 words. 78% done!

I now have so many of the same basic raccoon and opossum clips that it’s become ho-hum. I need to go back through the ones I got from the beginning that I was so excited about and weed them down. Computer anthropologists of the future will wonder why I have 10 million pictures of the same flowers and the same garden and the same wildlife. (JK – I don’t believe in computer anthropologists because there is no way anything will be that back-compatible.)

I recently came across a hard copy of that novel about hairbands (meaning Poison and Ratt, not like devices to hold your hair out of your eyes) that I wrote about 15 years ago. I re-read a part where the protagonist was concerned that by sound too confident about his band, he would come across as conceited.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Do kids today even know the word conceited? I’m sure there’s a generational divide on this topic.

Different times.

We are nearing an interesting time with the daily posts because I am ready to upgrade to my new computer finally and something is bound to come up to give me trouble and I won’t want to deal with posting. If I disappear, that’s what’s going on.