We are still walking. It’s become a part of our daily story. Above is one of the scenes we see. We went this way today.
Thursday’s walk
We went straight until we heard the prompt say it was a mile. Then turned around.
Oops screenshot captured the chat! But hey! Awards are fun!
Today’s walk. Way shorter but longer somehow.
So coming around back towards our street a neighbor came out to talk to us. She was concerned about a dog in a house closer to us. It seemed tangle in chains. They had tried to give the dog water as the chain was keeping the dog standing and unable to reach food or water.
The dog owner had been suffering from a stroke so none of us knew where he was.
We reported it to the sheriff looking for a welfare-check for the dog’s owner. My brother and husband untangled the chain and brought the dog here to chain in our front yard.
We learned his name is Bear. He is sweet. Even Kali likes him. We still don’t know where his owner is, or even that he is okay. Wish we could afford to have a big brute like Bear but we’re barely able to care for what we have.
Anyway, that walk was short for milage but long on story.
I’ve set up my yWriter7 for my memoirs. CampNano started today. I think my goal is a little too high, 50k. My imagination is good for that. But real life? I can already see it will be a bit of a psychological trip but to get to nuggets to share I need to walk in the mully grubs.
Just so you don’t think I’ve left my knitting behind. This hat is ready for the crown decrease.
Today’s walk looks the same but we went the opposite way. It was barely raining. We could almost walk between the drops.
I think there were less steps because we didn’t take the dog. But better time. Worrying that the lightning might start made us walk a little faster. Glad we got home before the wind started.
Made progress on the rewrites of book two. I was supposed to get another 6k this month but may have to be happy with what I will have on the 31st.
CampNano starts April 1st. This time I’m thinking of making it an autobiography. My cousin has sent me a tape recorder and tapes to start recording family memories. I thought writing it all down might help with recording and vice versa.
Comprehending the world is getting harder and harder. My brain just doesn’t want to compute the possibilities. The negatives are piled together with so many others it is hard to pick them apart to analyze each one to find the place to pin my hopes. No one could compare one life to another. No one can compensate for the losses in the recent past, current, or future. Compelling information of fake or real news keeps us all complaining about each other and the world at large. Complex feelings overwhelm us in confusion.
Why not compliment each other for the good we can find. We could spend time composing our thoughts, making compassion our mission. As my mother used to say, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” Granted she could have held on to her own advice most of her life. But one piece of gold can compensate for a lot of mud.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “comp.” Find a word that starts with or contains “comp” and use it in your post. Enjoy!
I’ll probably finish these by Sunday. I really need to learn to pull the sock off the loom and onto circular needles as I feel I’m faster doing the rib cuff that way. Actually, learning to needle knit two at a time socks is still a huge goal. But for now, there might be someone out there who needs these socks. I have a bag of things to take to our charity. I can’t wait!
More progress on the dragon. I’m loving the ruler for straighter lines.
I spent about 3 1/2 hours. I’m so addicted to the meditative energy that even when hurting I keep dotting the diamonds.
I brushed on the frame for the sunset. Not sure I like it. Maybe I’ll try to get a regular frame. Or see if I can make it nicer.
All is not lost. More paint or actual frame. I kind of like the wood feeling up near the top. But not happy with the inconsistency.
My editing seems stalled. But maybe if I plant myself at the laptop right now, I can find my way to words–good ones, I hope.
Sometimes in a person’s life they need more ‘atta girl’s. Not always. Sometimes just everyday keeps us going. But I have found that when I feel least alive and I can’t find motivation for even breathing, I need to stop and take stock of my day, week, life. While it is nice when others congratulate me. I find my own boost in saying, “Look at that! Look what you survived, created, loved!”
This blog has been that for me. Day-to-day can be dull. Downright angsty. Especially these last two years. So I am learning to see small accomplishments. Not earth-shattering wins. But things that make me smile and feel alive.
Today’s win is I ran out of Haven 2 to edit. There were 52,053 words altogether. There was no ‘the end’ and quite a few undeveloped characters, scenes, and plot bunnies to work on. I have a better working title: Haven, Above, Beneath, Beyond. My next step is to work toward 60k a full story, minus stuff that needs to be deleted.
Sorry. Not sorry. Just didn’t finish the Sunset Beach. There was only straightening, sealing, and painting a frame, but for me the straightening is the hardest. Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll ‘gird my loins’ and face it.
The socks are nearly finished. Just putting on the ribbing.
And it looks like I’ll have just the right amount of yarn for both socks.
Editing/reading first round is nearly done. I’m happy that I almost doubled my goal for February. I set up this months’ goal as just finishing. Though the project has nearly 58k I set the goal (extended last months’ goal) to 60k. That will encourage me to write a couple thousand to build a few characters up.
Sorry cell picture of the computer screen doesn’t do well. But hopefully, you can read it. I have 45,190 in my project so it seems an easy goal.
My passion this week has been my reading, first edit of Haven Above and Beyond. Or until I choose a better title, Haven book 2. My goal when I started February was 25,000 words read/edited to yWriter7. I have ended February with 45,190. Nearly 50k! I’m more than pleased. And I’m excited about the project. I can’t wait to dig in and rewrite, elaborate or kill parts of the story to make it better.
The heels are done on the socks. It won’t be long now!
My body hasn’t cooperated to finish the last bits of the Diamond Painting. Maybe tomorrow.
I have started working with the Trapp recorder book as it is for the English/Baroque. Then I review what works from the other book. I’m starting it over sadly. I had finished that book.
Now I need to go finish a library book that is due tomorrow.
A classroom of students shuffled as they pulled textbooks from backpacks. Books pounded the desks. Pages fluttered as everyone found their places.
Sue moaned quietly. Not another story of rainbows and unicorns. Well, the unicorns were fine but why did they think all girls wanted princesses and all that fluff.
If Sue wrote a story, there would be peasant girls. There were more of them than the spoiled, weak, brainless royalty.
A pheasant walked by. It seemed to want to make sure of spelling. “Hhhhhh.”
“I’m not writing about beautiful birds this time, thank you.” Sue was always polite.
“I want a story about dragons. Smart dragons. Not a knight or sword in sight.” Her pencil raced across the page. “Who needs royalty?”
Suddenly the girl next to her kicked her desk. “Psst!” She hissed. Sue was always jealous of her friend. She always had that perfect pageboy.
Suddenly, she had a young page telling the dragon how to slip by the castle unnoticed.
Her pencil drew the scene. One line squiggled wrong. She erased, blew off the eraser bits.
Her friend coughed. “I’m sorry!” Sue said as she smoothed her friend’s hairdo.
“Sue, look. We’ve turned the page.”
Sue caught up and saw a picture of a dragon holding a young person who was reading an announcement.
NaNoWriMo is doing another group push. It’s called Now What 2022. It helps to have these things to try to kick me in the butt to get my editing and more writing done. So for my own accountability, I’m keeping track of words as I add my second Haven book back into the newest version of Writer. I wrote this and Haven back when the program was newish. yWriter5. We are now to yWriter7. I am nothing but redundant in my saving my WIP. So I consistently save the day’s writing in that program to RTF. Now decades later, I am glad I did that.
In this case, I can find my book, Haven Above and Beyond, open it in Word, and then use Grammarly to help me weed through and make a better version, if not rewrite the whole thing to make more sense. And as I enter it into a new yWriter7 project, I can count the word as I paste the worked-out bit in. I set my goal to 25,000 words. I have a few of my other books set up with the same goal because I might feel like moving around. I am not good at editing. I love the adventure of imagining a new story. But jumping into the mess and fixing what already played out as a movie in my mind, I miss a lot, and fixing things just doesn’t come easily. So the word count to date is 2,949. There are two scenes within that that are entirely yellow highlighted as I hate how it reads and will have to totally rewrite them. That’s okay. I’m glad I can see the awful within that movie.
So between editing, Diamond Painting, making a new charity hat while watching Sweet Magnolias, Duolingo, finding the moments to walk or play the recorder, and having a high need dog, I can get pretty turned around. I am grateful to be retired, with nothing but time. But there is never enough even without a job hogging it up.
Oh! Did I mention that in our tiny little community that had one gas station/convenience store and a tiny grocery store, both of which are charging twice as much as they used to, and even then, they were high? We just got a Dollar General. My son and brother went the other day. They came home and told me that it was a TARDIS of a shop, bigger on the inside. My husband and I plan to check it out tomorrow. Who knew, back in my big city days that I would be this excited to go into a Dollar General?
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
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