30 Days of Gratitude

In an effort to get back in the habit of blogging more often, I decided to do two blog projects in September. One is "30 Days of Gratitude," and I will blog about something that I'm grateful for each day in September. I also want to do a "photo a day." If you would like to participate, just save the list and follow along. If you have an Instagram account, send me your username so I can follow you, or use the hashtag #sept12photoaday so your photos are searchable.

I imagine that the two projects will intersect, and I will be taking photographs of things that I'm grateful for, but I'm not going to specify that.

Here's my September list:

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There are a lot of "photo a day" projects, apps and sites out there. I think I originally got the idea for the photo-a-day project from FatMumSlim.

I have used an iPhone/iPad app called Photo365, which makes a cool little calendar on your phone with a thumbnail of each photo, and of course, Instagram.

I also use Gratitude Journal, another iPhone app. There is also an iPad version. The app lets you record multiple things that you are grateful for, attach up to four photos, and rate your day (all my days are 5 star days). There are also various themes that you can use.

Here is the photo list in text format:

1. Home 2. Reading material 3. Family 4. Comfort 5. Morning routine 6. Hydrate 7. My hobby 8. Warm 9. Work 10. Lunch 11. Beautiful 12. Green 13. Take a note 14. Artist date 15. Gratitude

16. My obsession 17. Memory 18. Animal instincts 19. Exotic 20. Take a walk 21. Alignment 22. Time 23. Wrap it Up 24. Golden 25. Sky 26. Love 27. Bloom 28. What I carry 29. Patterns 30. Joy

Just my opinion

A friend posted on Facebook the other day that he didn't understand how other people who have full time jobs have time to go to the lake, visit friends, or have fun of any kind. He said that he and his wife spend the entire weekend from sunup to sundown cleaning the house, doing laundry, prepping food for the next week, working in the garden, doing yard work, etc.

I wrote out an answer, but didn't post it because I don't like to get into long discussions on Facebook. But here's my opinion: You figure out the things that are important to you, and that's what you do.

Of course, there are always things that have to be done -- housecleaning (to a certain extent), laundry, meals. I don't care if my house is spotless, and while I cook a "real" meal a couple of times a week, we're happy with sandwiches or leftovers, or picking up fast food, the rest of the time.

I'm sure Bob would love it if I would cook gourmet meals every night, but he understands that I need to do other things, like knit, read, sew, make jewelry. I'm happier, and he's happier as a result. I read a quote somewhere once that said, on their death bed, no one ever said, "I wish I had cleaned the house more."

If it's important to you to have a spotless house, more power to you. If it's important to you to serve a gourmet-quality meal every night, I'm not going to judge you. You can make your own salsa from vegetables you grow in the garden, and grind the wheat to make tortillas, and I'm sure they're amazing. But I'm going to feed Bob a ham sandwich, clean up the kitchen, and spend the two hours of free time I have before bedtime reading a book.

Vacation

I have four weeks of personal time a year--vacation, sick leave, personal leave, whatever I need. The only years that I've ever used it all were the years when I had surgery. I usually end up with at least a week or so unused. I had used one day this year, I think, and the year was more than half over, so I thought I'd better take a little time. Bob and I are going to take a few days and go down to the Lake of the Ozarks in October, I think, but I wanted to take some time before then, so I took last week off.

I didn't really have any plans, and I didn't go anywhere, but I made a point to go out to lunch every day, and one day when Bob was off, we went to lunch together. We went to Red Lobster, which was really kind of expensive, but as he said, we don't do that much anymore. Once in awhile is fine.

I made the rounds of the craft stores one day, and bought some new sock yarn. I watched a lot of the Olympics, cooked for Bob a couple of nights, slept in, and just basically had a pretty lazy week. Oh, and I gathered up about six trash bags full of stuff to give away. I need to call someone to come get them, right now they're lined up in the front hall. That's pretty much the only productive thing I did all week.

It was nice. And hard to go back to work this morning!

Fallen Angel

I've been struggling all month, trying to get the price of Fallen Angel updated at the outlets other than Amazon. Amazon has a requirement that the price of an Amazon ebook title can't be higher than it is at other retailers. My book is priced at $2.99 at Amazon, but they discount it to $1.99, so I had priced it at $1.99 at Smashwords, who controls distribution to other outlets.

Amazon emailed me that they were removing my book from sale until I got the price corrected. I needed to either reduce the price at Amazon, or increase it at the other outlets. I didn't want to reduce the Amazon price, because although they discount it, I actually get paid the commission at the $2.99 price, since that is the price that I set. So I had to increase the price at Smashwords, which I did, but for whatever reason, it never got changed at Kobo or Sony. As you can imagine, it's difficult to get changes made that require human intervention, since these sites (Amazon and Smashwords) have so many authors, and are so busy.

I sell by FAR the most copies at Amazon, so I hated for it to be gone from there. I lost almost an entire month, but today I was finally able to get everything accomplished, and it's back on sale. I don't know how much it cost me--probably around a hundred dollars, since sales have dropped off since the peak at about this time last year--but at least it's back!

Loon Lake

I discovered Victoria Houston's "Loon Lake" mystery series a week or so ago, and have been devouring them. I just finished the fourth one and started the fifth.

The books are set in a small town in Wisconsin, and center around a female police chief and a retired, widowed dentist, their families and neighbors. Like the protagonist of most cozy mysteries, the doctor finds way more dead bodies than one would expect. The doctor and the police chief have a slow sometime-romance, and the doctor has a nutty, yet philosophical, neighbor.

They also do a lot of fishing. I know enough about fishing to recognize the terminology, even if I don't do it myself, and the area she describes sounds much like a lot of the fishing spots I've been to with Bob. Also, they're set in an area close to where he fishes in Minnesota once a year.

I'm enjoying them a lot, but they're really making me want to live at the lake . . .

1. Dead Angler
   
2. Dead Creek
   
3. Dead Water
   
4. Dead Frenzy
   
5. Dead Hot Mama
   
6. Dead Jitterbug
   
7. Dead Boogie
   
8. Dead Madonna
   
9. Dead Hot Shot
   
10. Dead Renegade
    
11. Dead Deceiver
    
12. Dead Tease