The pasta bake made a second meal on Tuesday and the plan was to start the mushroom risotto off first thing Wednesday morning. However, by the time we’d binge-watched Steeltown Murders on Tuesday night there was no time to prepare the risotto. As the pasta bake was so nice, we decided to go for it for a third time on Wednesday and make the risotto for Thursday. Next time he’ll only make enough for one meal.
We all slept like babies on Tuesday night, all of us waking up on the first alarm of the day. Even the dog didn’t want to get up. I did wonder where the cat was, but she was sitting in between the curtain and the window watching the garden birds through the patio doors in the dining room.
I did all of my social media and email stuff before breakfast and before going into the device-free conservatory. Over breakfast I finished reading the latest book for NetGalley – it’s a device-free zone but I’m allowed to take the PaperWhite in there as the Kindle is my main source of reading and this one can be read in bright light.
When I got to my desk, I did a quick scroll-down through social media again and saw the usual weekly reminder from our local hair salon that Wednesday evening is gents’ evening, and that reminded me that I needed a haircut before the weekend. I rang him up straight away and he’s going to squeeze me in at 9:30 on Friday morning…
Eek! Half-past nine? In the morning? Ah well, it will be a good reason to be up and dressed earlier than usual and at least presentable for going ‘outside’. With a bit of luck, the poet’s repeat prescription will be ready Friday morning too and I’ll be able to pick it up on my way past. (The doctor and the hair salon are literally three doors from each other, with only the pub in between them.)
My first job of the day was to plot out Paper Roses in Plottr so that I could expand on what I’d already outlined. Once I was happy with the structure, I exported it to Scrivener and started to work on it there. The target word-count was only 1,500 words, so I made myself a cup of tea and went for it.
When I came into the WordPress dashboard to start today’s blog post, I noticed that there were posts with replies on that I hadn’t received email notifications of. At the start of the week I had a bit of a clean-up, deactivating some of the plugins that I didn’t think were working. Now I have to try and identify which one is the email notification plugin for comments. To save time, for now, I turned them all back on. When I have more time, I’ll go through a process of elimination, to see which one specifically it is. Of course, a WP expert will know in an instant which one it is. But my memory isn’t that good.
I had a salad for dinner and played a game while I ate it. I emptied the kitchen bins and the dishwasher, and I started to fill the dishwasher again. When I came back to my desk I started to receive email notifications for comments on the blog again. Clearly this time it was user error (aka me) and not tech’s fault!
Back to Paper Roses and I had several false starts. But by the time the poet got home from work I’d written 2,066 words. I had 566 to lose. I read it out loud to him while he did tea and had a break from it while we ate in front of Perry Mason (the current one, not the old one). Then I went back to my desk and trimmed away those extra words. Every. Single. One.
It was gone 9:30pm by the time I finished and was able to submit it. But, hey! Another brand-new short story. Fantastic.
I have quite a few errands building up for tomorrow, so it looks like today’s my last working day before we go on holiday. I have a lot to get through.
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WP updated all my sites over the last few days. It cleaned up the problem with Pages on Stages, but created plugin issues.
Hmm. I’ll have a closer look at it all when we get back off holiday.