It has been a busy week. Busier than the usual busy weeks, in fact. I leave tomorrow to fly back to Wisconsin. I'll meet up with Peter in Minneapolis and we'll drive from there to Onalaska to relieve Karen from nursing duties, so she can go with the kids to a dance competition. I've been setting aside individual servings of entrees for Charlie to heat up while I'm gone. I'm glad I started early. He hates to cook.
He can choose from enchilada casserole with refried beans, lasagne or Italian tuna pasta with homemade bread, Indian red lentil soup with naan and something I call green soup (sort of a pea soup fancied up). In the big freezer in the garage, we have ready-made tamales, mini tacos, individual pizzas, breaded cod, Irish stew, spanakopita and precooked chicken pieces. I made another batch of corn salad to have with feta cheese. That should take care of salad for several more days. (It will keep up to a week or more in the fridge.) There are also a few leftovers.
We had pizza earlier in the week. We get the frozen cheese pizzas from Costco and "decorate" them with whatever we have on hand, usually mushrooms, zucchini, peppers, greens, avocado and faux pepperoni, which is actually pretty good.
I did an extra load of laundry midweek, so I could pack my clothes for the trip. I'm all packed and ready to leave in the dead of night tomorrow. My flight leaves from Redmond at 5:50.
Over the past year, I've been going through stories I think might be good for the new book. For this one, I actually have enough for several books, so it was difficult to choose. I think I have the choices made now, though. I'm editing, curating the photos and boosting the photo exposure when needed. (The publisher made me do that on my first book, so now I've learned that the photos are never as bright as they appear on my laptop, so I try to take care of it ahead of submitting my manuscript for publication.)
I use the previous year's final draft as a template. I just "save as" with the new book's name. Then I go through and replace text and photos on each page, as needed. That way I have the same type faces, margins, and other characteristics, as in the other books. If I have a question about something, I check in the previous book to see how I did whatever I'm concerned about. There will be five stories in this book, and I have four of them pasted into place in the new manuscript. One more to go! I'm hoping to have all of the stories pasted before my trip. I'll take the laptop with me, and as I have time, I'll tweak the type and photos as needed, then go through and proofread before giving it over to my wonderful proofreader/editor family members.
Obviously, I didn't get too much knitting done this week, but I know I'll have time to work on my project on the plane. Here's the right side. If you read last week's blog post, you'll know I'm knitting on the wrong side now, just knit, knit, knit. I don't mind purling, but the designer wrote the instructions to allow knitters––once the yoke was done––to work the body in all knit stitches down to the ribbing. You just turn it inside-out and start knitting in the opposite direction at the underarm.
Dusty had surgery on his foot 2 1/2 weeks ago, while he was knocked out for his teeth-cleaning. He had a lump between the middle two toes on his left front foot and another on the back of his neck. They were both benign, but the vet thought it was best to remove them. He was licking the one between his toes (Dusty, not the vet), so it was probably bothering him. Wednesday the vet removed the stitches at both locations. Everything looks good. It hadn't slowed him down much, but we tried to keep him from running and playing vigorously until the stitches were out. We didn't get too much walking in during the recovery time, not just to reduce stress on Dusty's foot, but also because we had rain, wind or mud much of the time, and Charlie has been recovering from his procedure, which made it difficult for him to walk too far. All of those problems have mostly cleared up. The weather has been nice the last few days, Dusty's stitches are out, and Charlie has been walking slightly farther each day we walk. He took charge of Dusty on Saturday's walk, the first time he's walked with a dog since his procedure. We've been walking mostly on the Larkspur Trail.
We noticed this sign on a post that obstructs motor vehicles from getting on the trail. I'm assuming the message is, someone doesn't like E-bikes. I don't much like them, either, having come close to being run over several times when going around a curve where visibility is a problem. Some people here allow their children to ride E-bikes on the trail without supervision, and it can be dangerous...for them and for pedestrians.
On Saturday,, the warm weather seemed to return. We try to divert from the trail to what's left of the wild area that's left over from the main section being developed for housing. We let the pups off-leash for a little running, which they really enjoy. They keep us in sight, though, and when we have to leash up again, they come when they're called.
Here's a screenshot of our walk on Saturday.
We received this charming little story on a postcard from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which we donate to. It describes perfectly how I feel about my books, as they go out into the world.
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What's in The Doll's Storybook: In Why Don't Airplanes Flap Their Wings, the dolls find out how airplanes fly with the help of "The Four Superheroes," in another story from The Doll's Storybook.
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