What You've All Been Waiting For...

Now if that doesn’t bring them in, I don’t know what will. Actually, I thought I’d just do an update for all my faithful readers - all three of you - on what’s going on in my life. I’m still a writer, still trying to sell my book. People are still buying it, though not as many here in depressing January. I didn’t really believe authors when they said that writing the book was the easy part, at least not until I had to go through the marketing and selling bit. The nice thing is that everyone who has read The Chronicles of Anaedor: The Prophecies (warning, shameless plug coming up), that I’ve hunted down and interrogated mercilessly, have told me they really like the book. "Couldn’t put it down," they’ve said, and "Can’t wait for the next one to come out." Music to my ears. Of course, flattery doesn’t pay the mortgage.

Anyhoo…enough of the depressing stuff. Here’s the good news…

We haven’t had much snow lately so I haven’t had to run the snowblower down our very long driveway, roof rake, and shovel the steps all by my lonesome. I normally wouldn’t mind, but with all the sitting I’ve been doing lately (editing 2 books), I’ve done something to my back. I’m the only person I know who has injured herself by sitting. Back in grad school, I had such bad pains in my chest that I thought I was having a heart attack. Turns out I wasn’t getting up and moving around enough when I was studying. Isn’t that sad? Of course, when you tell people about it, they just look at you like you’re a big baby. So, anyway, I’m grateful for the break from the snow.

Wrist update: We found out that my husband tore cartilage in his wrist, in a spot that the doctor, who specializes only in the wrist and has been doing this for about 35 years, has never seen injured. He said it was very difficult to injure that spot. You actually have to press the two bones protecting the area really hard together. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Here’s the kicker… That area doesn’t have its own blood supply so it can’t heal itself. However, after a cortisone shot along with antibiotics, the wrist has healed! Say, hurray! We’re giving it a couple more weeks, just in case, but soon my snow clearing partner should be completely healed and joining me in the joys of winter clean-up.

More good news…My son found my measuring spoons. They were in his Winnie the Pooh backpack. Now why didn’t I think of looking there? Now I can actually cook and bake again without having to measure everything with a 1/4 tsp. Life is good. Actually, he did offer to loan me his pink plastic measuring spoons from his cooking stuff he got for Christmas, but only until I found mine. Such a giver.

So, except that it’s January and cold and you can skate on some places on our driveway and the kids are getting restless and like to bicker about EVERYTHING, life is going well.

Now if only more people would buy my book, I could truly be happy.

Ha!

A Little or a Lot

It all depends on how you look at it, I guess. The other day I was doing my holiday baking. I was rushed, as usual, trying to get six things done all at the same time. While making gingersnaps, I had to measure out baking soda, among other things. I typically double the recipe, which called for 2 tsp. of the stuff. So, doing the math, I figured I needed 4. Not a lot. So far, so good.

So I go to open the drawer where I keep the measuring spoons only to find that my 3-year-old had struck again. All my measuring spoons were gone, except for a tablespoon and a 1/4 teaspoon. Have you ever had to measure out 4 tsp. worth of ingredients with a 1/4 tsp.? It’s 16 of those babies. Not to mention all the spices I had to add. It took a while.

We have yet to find my measuring spoons.

So what seemed at the time like only a little turned out to be a lot. Here’s another example: If you read my blogs, you know that we just bought a tractor. When we got it, my husband and I both had visions of clearing our driveway in half an hour, whipping around on Bobo like there was no tomorrow. That didn’t happen. We kept slipping and sliding. So we got chains, and another chance to try out Bobo. On Sunday we got a snowstorm of about 9-10 inches. Not a lot of snow, but enough to keep us busy, we thought. We went out to clean it up. Now that we had the chains, we were cautiously (or should that be foolishly?) optimistic that this day would be the day we’d be whizzing around cleaning up snow and making snow hills for the kids with the greatest of ease.

Boy were we wrong about that. What was only a little bit of snow turned out to be a lot. We were out there for 5 hours taking turns plowing and shoveling. Five very long, very hard hours. Needless to say, we went out and bought a snowblower the next day, with our sore muscles cheering us on, and very loudly, I might add.

Bobo, as it turns out, has been yet another of our very expensive follies. My husband and I seem to learn things the hard way. One time we tried to change our own oil and ended up draining the transmission fluid, which of course means that we couldn’t shift our car into drive. We had to call for a tow. That was the most expensive oil change we ever had. It seemed like such a little thing, and we wanted to be self-sufficient and save ourselves some cash. But man did it cost us a lot.

It’s funny how life can change our perspective on things. They say that all that matters is our perception of things. You can either see things as a little or a lot. Of course, it can also come down to the tools you are using. I felt like we were trying to move all that snow with a 1/4 tsp. measuring spoon. Actually, come to think of it, I think it would’ve been faster.