Over my dirty cuppa on Tuesday I actually caught up on social media. Once dressed, I fed and watered the birds and I emptied the dishwasher. It looks as though the flylady has been replaced with the dishwasher fairy. The poet emptied the laundry basket on Sunday while I worked, so there hasn’t been any washing to do this week so far.
At my desk, the first job I did was yesterday’s blog post. Once I’d started it, I set about making the graphic in Canva. But then I made a note of the page sizes and opened up Affinity. And yes, folks, I actually made my first Twitter/Facebook-sized flyer in Affinity. Granted I used the existing images. But now I have the template and will probably make my hello… and wrap-up flyers in Affinity too.
Feeling dead clever, I decided to make an Instagram-sized flyer from scratch, again using the sizing from the Canva design. I was able to download the Chewy font too, which has a business use licence, so I didn’t need to rely on CanvaPro for that one. And I made my first IG post in Affinity. I still have to find out where the two-tone colours are for backgrounds, but I did find a lot of background images that will work just as well as those in Canva.
Affinity is able to use Pixabay stock photos. Now Affinity are owned by Canva, we may be able to access Canva images too. Plus, I can use any I already own, either taken by me or the poet or licensed by me. The more I can move away from an annual subscription-based model the better.
It looked as though a Facebook writing friend had recently joined the blogosphere. So I went to have a read and say hello.
When we went to Mablethorpe for a weekend in the summer, we brought back some sticks of rock (sticks of hard candy). I like to eat rock in small chunks, like a boiled sweet (hard candy). So I got one of our big knives out and started hacking at one of these sticks of rock. Well, the big knife was completely useless, so I swapped it for a bread knife. A serrated bread knife. I started to saw away at this stick of rock and the knife slipped and carried on sawing the index finger on my left hand. And I just stood there watching it!
Until it started to bleed. And bleed. And bleed. I washed it and put a plaster (Band Aid) on it, but within minutes the blood had soaked through the plaster. So I went and got a special finger plaster (shaped like a butterfly), put that on, and put another regular plaster on over the top of it. That did the trick, but it interfered with my typing for a bit until I got used to it.
I was cold-called by someone in a foreign country purporting to be from Sky. (Yes, the phone line was switched back on on Monday too.) Now, I think we must be getting a bit to clever for these scammers. He wanted to sell me a faster speed, saying our hub was receiving a very slow speed. And I said of course it was slow, there was an outage, and was he calling to update me on the outage. (Okay, so I lied a bit.)
He tried to convince me that he was trying to help me, but it took a few attempts for him to understand ‘we currently have an outage’. I also suggested that if he truly was from Sky, then he’d already know all about it. Especially when I’ve called them 11 times over the past 2 weeks.
And that’s when he lost it. It was so funny! He started to rant that I was a ‘stupid woman’ and a ‘fking bitch’. And I started to laugh.
Reader, he hung up on me!
I stopped admiring my wonderful flyers on Affinity, got back to work, and tried some writing. I had a short story to write for this month’s 12 stories in 12 months, plus an editing job to crack on with.
It was the last day of the previous month as far as 12 stories in 12 months was concerned, and while I’d commented on about 6 stories throughout the month, there were still 3 people who’d commented on my last one and I wanted to reciprocate. So I read those three stories for last month and made a comment.
Wednesday
We were both really tired on Wednesday morning and we struggled to wake up. I don’t know what happened because we both thought we’d had a good night’s sleep. I checked social media over my dirty cuppa, fed and watered the birds, and emptied the dishwasher while he headed off to work and then got stuck going round in circles thanks to road closures and incorrect signage.
A text message came in from Sky saying they’d fixed our broadband fault. Er, no you didn’t. OpenReach fixed it. You were completely useless. The poet said he’d call them now to arrange the refund and the compensation, because I said I was sick of speaking to them and never wanted to speak to them ever again.
A phone call came in from Rotherham Hospital dermatology department. I have to have a series of ‘light treatment’ sessions, 3 times a week for several weeks. It’s basically a sun bed, but they have to ‘educate’ me prior to when the sessions start. As I’m having a core/punch biopsy at the end of October already, my light treatment sessions can’t start for a fortnight after then. But I still have to go and have my education and we’ll arrange the sessions then. We’ll be looking at November…
Didn’t I say I don’t have any work in yet for November? That’s convenient.
I rewrote a story I thought would suit this month’s 12 stories in 12 months. Yes, I cheated a little bit, due to having less time working thanks to the internet problems. But it *was* a rewrite and not just a straight copy & paste. This particular short story will be appearing in Words Worth Reading in the spring next year, ahead of it being published as a standalone, so it needed to be brought into the Scrivener short story master file anyway.
I grabbed the next prompt, word-count target (1,800) and deadline date (8 October), and had a look at my stories already in the planning stages on the Nobo power board. I didn’t have anything that would suit, so I started a new card off, leaving the title area blank. I actually took the card out for The Ace of Pentacles, as it’s now been published and has jumped off the Nobo board and onto my power spreadsheet, turned it over, and used that one.
By the time I’d done that, there were already 2 comments on my short story, both very favourable. How lovely.
As I’m gradually bringing all of my short stories into this master file, I went and grabbed another 5 short stories that I already know will be in different issues of Words Worth Reading next year. I also added in notes on where they’d been published or broadcast previously, where applicable.
I rattled off today’s blog post and scheduled it early so that I could spend the rest of the day on the current editing job. I wanted as long and continuous a session as I could so that I’d get more done and be consistent.
Today’s image has nothing to do with the post, but it’s free and it’s courtesy of OleksandrKliuiko at DepositPhotos.
I hope your finger heals soon.
I’m so sick of scammers.