Wednesday 6 August 2025: Catching up for last week

I’m way behind on the blog posts at the moment. I’ll try and keep them short and sweet so that I can catch up a bit.

Last Tuesday

By the end of last Tuesday, Words Worth Reading: Issue 4 was still only showing on Google Play Books. It was supposed to be published the following day, and the lack of movement didn’t bode well. Especially when I’d already written the publicity post.

Also by the end of last Tuesday, The Battle of Stubbins Bridge was not showing on Google Play Books or Draft2Digital. Google Play often says it takes 24 hours, but I’ve seen D2D respond much more quickly. I’m glad I finally bit the bullet and bought Vellum. But I’d prefer it if I didn’t have to go to KDP first either.

During the evening, however, the notifications started to come through from D2D. I don’t know why there was a hold up. It’s usually much quicker than that.

Last Wednesday

On Wednesday morning I’d set my alarm 10 minutes earlier. My 10-minute snooze was taking me 10 minutes into my dirty cuppa hour, and I lose 10 minutes at the end of the hour as well for getting dressed, etc. So I set my alarm 10 minutes earlier and was up on the hour.

After a very leisurely dirty cuppa, during which I shared yesterday’s blog post to my personal profile page on Facebook and put a washload through, I started my flylady hour. I fed and watered the birds, hung the washing out, dusted and vacuumed the dining room, removed some of the clutter from the dining room, and emptied the dishwasher.

The only job I had to do all day, beside the usual daily competitions and tomorrow’s blog post, was the great novella challenge, Novella #9. I actually created the hello August and August wrap-up graphics, wrote blog posts for Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday, and scheduled them all to post. I did my daily competitions over my midday breakfast so I could spend the rest of the working day on the novella uninterrupted.

Throughout the day emails from D2D trickled in with publication updates. I was surprised that the Kindle one didn’t land until midday. Usually that’s one of the quickest too, and it started to make me wonder what they were double-checking. The only thing I could think of were the references to the IRA (Catch the Rainbow starts in this issue). Otherwise, everything else was just the same as with previous issues.

At 4pm, the poet took me to the dentist. I wasn’t sure if I was having a tooth out or another one filled, but as I find both quite traumatic, it didn’t matter which one they did. But I did make sure I had something to eat before going in case I didn’t feel like eating anything later on.

As it turned out, it should have been the extraction, but as I hadn’t had the filling yet, we decided to do that one first. I was in for the best part of an hour, still.

When we got home I was able to go back to work for an hour or so, which was useful. I didn’t fancy a huge, chompy tea, so the poet made me scrambled eggs instead!

Last Thursday

My flylady hour for Thursday is supposed to be the bathroom and the office. But both haven’t been touched properly since we moved here. Oh, we do the things we can see in the bathroom, like the bath or the wash hand basin, but the only time everything comes out for a good, thorough clean is when we move house. By now we would have normally moved twice, so it hadn’t been done. I had to rectify that.

I couldn’t hang the washing out straight away as it needed another spin, so rather than watch that for 12 minutes, I swept the patio, fed and watered the birds, and collected the windfall apples. There were loads of apples this time. I didn’t remember strong winds during the night, but I was dead to the world for most of it. It was almost August, though, so perhaps they were just ready to drop.

When it was ready, I hung out the washing, and then I started on the bathroom. It took me the rest of the flylady hour. So no walking the garden for 15 minutes, and no starting the office. It’s not so bad. The office will come around again this week, and I’ll start with that in tomorrow’s flylady hour. Once that’s had a good, deep clean as well, I’ll see if I can do both rooms in one hour. If not, then I’ll have to move one of them to an easier day, or swap it with something quicker, like the hallway or the dining room.

I got to my desk and rattled off a few quick jobs. I did my month end/month start finance transfers. I did the daily competitions. And I shared the gig list. That meant that, aside from meal times and bathroom breaks, I had a solid day on the novella. I quickly updated today’s blog post, and off I went.

Last Friday

I ended up pulling an all-nighter, and finally submitted my novella at 6:30am UK time. I did a quick search to see what time it was in Vegas, and it was 10:30pm. I didn’t realise we were 8 hours ahead. That means I actually have until 8am the following morning, in case I ever need it. I went to bed, and spent the entire morning in bed, getting up just after noon.

It meant a lot of jobs didn’t get done on Friday, but they’ll still be there this Friday, if I didn’t get them done on Saturday.

I was so tired on Friday, it wasn’t worth me starting anything major. So I finalised today’s blog and scheduled it to post, did the daily competitions, did a weekly backup, mapped out the month ahead on my wall calendar, and updated my 36-project spreadsheet.

Monkey Dust were playing at a wedding on Friday night, which meant the day ended early. It also meant we had a free weekend ahead.