It’s cooler this morning! Yay! So no little one here so I was out working on pulling up more of that nutsedge weed grass. What a job. Sun was coming out, and the fire ants were getting bad so it’s time to get back to writing. I have about 6 cardinals out in the yard right now. Many are young.
I wrote 4,000 words yesterday, 1,000 words away from word count. Yay!
I’ve been having fun taking pictures of the ladybugs in the garden. I have tons of them. Usually I might find one or none a year. So this is a surprise. I still have the same number of aphids whether the ladybugs are in the garden or not, so I’m glad to see the ladybugs.
I was reworking my first simple painting this morning to resubmit for review. We can only submit a painting, then wait for review, then submit a rework or the new one if we passed–once a day. But they’re good about reviewing them daily. I’m behind on the art course from working on the books, so I’m trying to do one a day, reworks, etc, and have the next one ready as soon as one gets approved. And still work on the books. 5,000 words left on this one.
Little one and I fed the birds, the dogs, and did a puzzle and some workbooks, and collected leaves on the way home from our walk, so did some leaf tracing, not sure what it’s called, to show the form and veins, and I was teaching her about the different kinds of leaves. I showed her all the ladybugs too.
Then we worked with coins–teaching her about the penny, nickle, dime, and quarter. I was teaching her about the value, but she was having difficulty figuring out which were which, so I concentrated on having her tell me what they were and which pile of coins they belonged to. This is the first time we’ve done it and she was having a ball. It’s fun when teaching is fun.
We’ll keep doing that every time I have her. I was teaching her to count by 10s with dimes, 5s with nickles, etc.
Anyway, today is writing day!!! It’s going to be beastly again. sigh.
Radishes Painted in the Beyond Your Brushes Art Class
We had delight storms last night! Yay! Woke me up, but I was so glad to get some rain and blessed relief from the heat. We took a walk this morning to feed the fish. The turtles wouldn’t come to us. Their loss. I figure if we keep going over there to feed them, they’ll finally get a clue.
It was so nice out, I was able to weed before my granddaughter got here. I want to do more before it heats up again.
Okay, now were off to breakfast and then puzzle time and workbook time. We also picked up a bunch of leaves to do a study on. And I’m going to teach her coins. I feel like it’s a dying art. Like cursive writing.
I’ve been watching that Eco challenge. It’s really fascinating to see what people put themselves through to reach a goal. And I thought I had it hard. lol
100 degrees Fahrenheit, tack on 12 for heat index. Took my walk early and man is it muggy. I was trying to take pictures of ladybugs, a whole crop of them are eating away at the bugs on my plants, yay! And my lens kept fogging up.
I’m getting a little bit better at this. But this is like the 2nd time I’ve worked on it, so practice makes better. We have eggs to do soon. Ugh. I can’t imagine trying to keep sharp edges on the eggs. lol I had uploaded the wrong picture at first. I thought I had redone it with a better background. The backgrounds are a lot of fun to make.
First Simple Photoshop Oil I did.
It’s fun to do though. Anyway, back to the story. Getting together with the kids in a little while.
I write about werewolves, why not gargoyles? In my fantasy novels, I could. I wrote about unicorns and trolls and the fae. In my urban fantasy, it has to be more realistic. Unless I write like some authors who have done, who created a gargoyle as a romantic hero in modern times. Don’t think it can be done? lol
I was a skeptic, but they were fun to read.
So I was reading that keeping your mind active with creating new things can help keep your brain functioning better. Yay!!!
Maybe working on the oil painting class is helping my brain out. I sure hope so. Of course, creating stories should too.
Okay, enough fantasy and reality–I am avoiding the news today so it doesn’t hurt my mojo to write–I’m off to get at it again. Seven-thousand words to go! And to think I hadn’t even written a word of the novel only a short while ago!
Oh, and Joy to the Wolves will be in audiobook too. I’m so excited about that!
The last two nights I couldn’t shut down my brain until after midnight. Why? I’m thinking of the art class I’m doing, what I need to do next. I’m thinking of Wolff Bros, what I need to do next. I’m thinking of weeding, what I need to do next. I’m hearing baby songs playing in my head.
The good thing is, I’m only 9,000 words away from my minimum word count on the novel. yay!
I’m off to write!!! It’s getting down to the wire now. I need to figure out how to wrap it up. Once it’s written from beginning to end, I have fun going through and adding to the story.
Are you ready for some more of those hunky Highland wolves?
10th Anniversary Release of Dreaming of the Wolf –Jun 29, 2021
And a brand new novella!
The Best of Both Wolves (Red Wolf)–Oct 26, 2021
More of the red wolves of Portland, Oregon area.
10th Anniversary Release of Heart of the Highland Wolf (time to be announced)
And a brand new novella!
Also, though I don’t have a schedule for it yet–the Wolff Bros 2 Christmas story.
That’s for 2021. I’m busy writing Wolff Bros 2 and will be writing Dreaming of the Wolf.
Oh, and for my polar bear and jaguar and cougar lovers, I will have something out next year, hopefully this year too. But I’ve got to get cracking. The year is running out on me.
This morning I had to ship off my broken laptop and a book that never reached one of my beta readers, and I wanted to pick up some more emergency supplies, bottled water, another lantern, another flashlight, more batteries. When Hurricane Harvey hit here, the stores were wiped out of everything. So it’s hurricane season again and we’re supposed to have a busy year. I need to pick up some more canned goods too.
So yesterday I was teaching my 3 1/2 year old granddaughter how to mend things. It’s never too early to learn! And miraculously, she was able to thread the needle for both projects for me, so I didn’t have to put on reading glasses. lol She pulled the needle through the fabric on her pants that she poked her finger through a hole and said they were broken. Then we mended her blanket that zips up into a frog pillow. But the seams had broken loose. I was teaching her how to tie a knot, but grandma couldn’t get the two threads separated to tie the first one, so I let her do it, and she’s got such little fingers, it worked like a charm. So I showed her how to do the knot.
I also let her pull the threaded needle through the fabric each time asking her which part of the fabric I had to poke the needle in next to connect the two fabrics and she was doing really good figuring that out. She wanted to be the one to poke the needle through the fabric, but later, on another project. She stuck herself twice, her face in shock, but I just smiled so she wouldn’t get upset. And then she smiled. The last time she did it to herself on purpose, touched her finger to the point of the needle to see if that really was sharp. It was. But we laughed and finished the projects.
I also have her watch me cook meals and when she can, she helps. Though she wanted to sprinkle the lemon and pepper in the food and dropped the spice container in the food. And she helps me with laundry too! Feeding the birds, the dogs, watering the plants, weeding, cleaning windows, and using one of those sponges that cleans off marks on white baseboards and doors… My daughter said something about child labor laws. lol
Just teaching ABCs isn’t all there is to life.
Okay, I was supposed to spend ALL day writing, so now I’m finally home after having to run all those errands–looked for envelopes I use to ship books in, but Walmart didn’t have any, and neither did the post office or HEB,–and now, I have to get to work.
Hope you all are staying safe and enjoying your day.
If I keep telling myself that, maybe I will stick with it. lol
You shouldn’t ever compare yourself to others–whether in how good they are at something, how much they have, whatever it is–you need to be you. But sometimes when you’re told you’re doing it wrong–and you look at how some are doing it who are really good at this, you think, hmm, maybe this isn’t for me.
But what is their past? Have they used a Wacom for eons? Many have. And I’m just learning. Have they painted real paintings before? Some have. And I never have. So I have to tell myself it’s like when I began writing. It’s not like reading a story and knowing how to do it. It takes some study–at least it did for me–to see what you actually had to do to write a novel.
And practice! My first composites were awful. Not that I sometimes don’t do lousy composites now, or lousy photos, or lousy paintings, or even goof up my writing and have to go back and fix it. Everybody does! But it’s all a challenge and–I’m not going to be a Photoshop Oil Painting Dropout!
Maybe I won’t ever be that good at it, but maybe I will be really great at it. And the thing is I won’t know that unless I keep on going. And practicing.
Have a super great day! Little one will be here shortly and I’m trying to get a million things done!
It was way too hot–105 heat index, but little one and I went to feed the turtles at another pond. It’s closer to the house. There’s another one even closer, but it didn’t even have any of the tiny fish in it, so nothing came when we threw out some turtle food. I have seen turtles and wading birds in it, soooo. We walked to the other pond in the heat. Awful.
But there, we couldn’t see any turtles, lots of fish though. Then I realized we had walked right past a turtle and it was hurrying to get off the grass and into the water. He was right next to us. lol They’re shyer in there. No one is feeding them. So we will feed these turtles whenever little one is here. We’ll have to take a walk first thing early in the morning though. Then it’s the splashpad out back in the shade and then the rest of the day, we’ll be inside doing air conditioned fun.
I tried to blog yesterday and had another glitching blog. I had to run, so didn’t get back until afternoon.
In the meantime, I’m trying to dig up all the weed grass in the front yard. It grows in dark green tufts and it is taking over my yard. I think my grass needs some nutrients. It’s yellow green.
Where the dirt is showing, that’s where I’ve dug up these nefarious weed grass tufts. It’s a job and a half in this heat and humidity. I did a ton of it last night. The first picture was as bad as the bottom picture, but I dug up tons of it there already. I tried to do more this morning, but fire ants started biting and I gave up. I’ll try again tonight.
