Catch Up Day

Today is a double entry day. I forgot to post my entry yesterday. Yesterday my husband took a day off after spending a long weekend traveling to New York for a wedding with the kids. Since he was home I took advantage of the chance to go to Lowes to find replacement blinds for our living room windows. The blinds have actually been in terrible shape for at least six months. Picture a dog eager to look out the window and the blinds are closed so rather than wait for a human to open or raise them she uses her paws and jaws to rip them to shreds. The last straw came when one of the other dogs that like to lie under the window lay on the bottom of the curtain and pulled the rod out of the wall.

Last night with the help of my husband I replaced the broken blinds, curtain and rod with Roman shades. I should have taken a before photo of the blinds, but forgot. Oh well. Hopefully the new shades will help avoid the destruction problem. But if they do by chance collide with Josie's paws and jaws the cost was reasonable enough that I won't have a heart attack if they get ruined, though I would prefer they didn't because there are only so many places to put wall mounts.

This little project was not something my husband wanted to tackle with me so late in the afternoon but he did and while I was mostly frustrated trying to get it right he kept a level head and we both were able to get the shades hung and for once we had no problems with uneven lines. Thank you, honey for your patience and helping me when I know you would have rather read your book!

FOUR DAYS OF CALM

Last Wednesday night my husband loaded the car and got everything ready for the long weekend road trip he was taking with our daughter's. Their destination was New York for some sight seeing and a family wedding. My girls went fishing for the first time and they saw Niagara Falls. My youngest took some wonderful photos too. I know they had a fun weekend because they got home trying to cram the entire weekend events into the first fifteen minutes of being home.

For me the long weekend was quiet, well peaceful actually. I haven't seen my dogs that relaxed since before the kids got out of school last June. I spent most of the four days reading and writing. I spend many of my days doing those activities though the difference this time was no interruptions! I would have loved to go up to New York to see family and to view and photograph the falls but finding competent care for our dogs is tough. There aren't many places and the ones that are up to my husband’s standards and mine fill months in advance. I'm not boo hooing because it was our decision to bring the dogs into our family and just like my kids they deserve the best care we can find them.

I finished reading Laurell K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams. It was good but it could be shorter. I saw some places that could have either been tightened or cut. But more than scenes that didn't do much to further the plot this book was so poorly edited that I almost grabbed my highlighter pen. I figured I might as well edited for spelling and other copy mistakes and then send the entire book back to the publisher. If I as an unpublished novelist sent a manuscript to an agent or publisher riddled with simple mistakes like those in this book my manuscript would have been sent to the slush pile. While some of the problem with the missed mistakes rest with the author, it was the copy editor's job to catch these sometimes glaring mistakes. Well I finished the book Sunday morning and put it back on my bookshelf for my husband and went off to work on my novel. After a few hours writing I went back to my bookshelf, no not to highlight all the mistakes in Incubus Dreams but to read the next LKH book Micah. It's her shortest book thus far in the series and it was much better than the last few I've read. Actually I finished it in a little over three hours.

Now that I am caught up with LKH series, well almost I'm just waiting for her current release to come out in paperback I will move onto to either read Eldon Thompson's Crimson Sword or another vamp story title The Historian.

Until next time good writing.