Friday 21 April 2023: Sleepy head

Image by Nina Garman from Pixabay

The animals managed to let us sleep until 7am yesterday. Either they both slept all the way through too, or we were just so dead to the world we didn’t hear them. I always seem to have half an ear open in any case. But Wednesday night I slept like a log.

It didn’t mean I got up any earlier, though. I went straight back to sleep after letting the dog out. (And in again, in case anyone was wondering.) His legs were very wobbly at the start of the day yesterday. He’s had a mad case of the munchies and I think he’s gaining weight. I also vaguely remember the vet saying something about steroids. So we’ll just have to give him smaller portions. After he’s had a proper sleep, his legs are less wobbly. But he’s very much up and down.

Household chores included cleaning the cat litter and changing the bag in the dog poo bin. Oh, the glamour! Also, the washing that had been out in the garden earlier in the week was transferred to the clothes horse on both days to give it all an extra airing. We may have sunny, blowy days at the moment, but they’re not very warm and the washing has still been a bit damp when it’s come in again. I took the washing off the clothes horse, folded it and put it all away.

I entered a handful of competions, did a couple of surveys, claimed some money from the survey company, redeemed the Amazon gift cards from the games company. It’s only pin money, but it’s still nice to see and even pin money builds up.

I’d rather have PayPal than Amazon, though. I could also choose gift cards for Tesco, Sainsbury, Google Play, Starbucks, Uber, John Lewis, H&M, Decathlon, Adidas or Kigso (whoever they are), or a pre-paid Mastercard. People have reported that they haven’t been able to use their Mastercards, and I hate to have any of my money tied up regardless of where it came from. But I don’t know if the supermarket gift cards can be spent on groceries. That would be useful, I suppose. but PayPal would be better.

I surfed the jobs board too, pitching for four. Three of them were a bit vague in that they had a budget ($160, $400 and $500) but they didn’t mention how many words or pages. So I turned it around and told them how many words their money would buy them (not a lot, but the information might be useful to them). Usually I ignore these as usually I’m too busy to spend a lot of time explaining things to them. But I thought I’d give it a go this time, see what kind of response I get, if any.

I went through this week’s submissions to 12 Stories in 12 Months, selecting a load that hadn’t had any comments yet. Then I weeded through them to see which ones I felt inclined to say something about. I had to choose four. I also had to switch browsers again. The site was being glitchy and kept getting stuck on the third page. I opened it in Chrome but it was still sticky there, so it must be something to do with the site.

I officially closed down the ghostwriting contract on Upwork, as I’ve not heard anything from them for two months. And I rated the client. I’d already decided I didn’t want to do any more for them, so perhaps it’s just as well I hadn’t heard from them. I hadn’t seen anything advertised by them on Upwork either, but when I drilled down a bit, I found a number of jobs posted in the past 22 days, all starting at much less than what I was being paid. Perhaps I’d exceeded their budget. I think the reason I didn’t see them was because I crossed ‘ghostwriting’ off my searches. If they’d ‘hidden’ me from the jobs, I wouldn’t have found them at all.

The poet went to band practice and I finished brushing up on the Save the Cat workshops. I had another quick brainstorming session with The Fool. I was just about to retire to the living room for the evening, taking The Fool with me, just in case, when the poet called. He was on his way home and what did I want for tea?

Today, I only have routine and/or faffy stuff booked in the diary, as well as more work on The Fool. I also have to look at Microsoft Teams, download it and maybe have a practice, so I can join an online meeting regarding probate for Mom on Monday morning.

Have a great weekend!


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2 thoughts on “Friday 21 April 2023: Sleepy head

    1. I’m starting to wonder how I fitted it all in before, but then I remind myself that I didn’t really fit it all in at all!

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