A Busy Saturday

During the week, I put things off. I focus mostly on professional tasks and chores that must be done, like cooking or cleaning. I make my tea, then I make my water. If I am up before Gordon, I will make his coffee. I drink my tea, tackling the little things that have to be done, like minor kitchen clean up. I feed Salem who has to has her special food first thing in the morning, and I feed Tuna, who doesn’t need special food but gets it anyway, because she is a glutton. Once the tea is gone, I get my water and go to work.

Since I put things off, today I got up at 8:00 am, and I just now got done. I made coffee, fed the cats, cleaned up the laundry room, gave Baby her 2 medications hidden in pill pockets, put the other 2 medications into her eyes, rinsed her ears, and told her she was good girl.

My grocery store delivered some fruit to me yesterday, so today I washed the grapes, pulled them off the vine, and separated them into glass prep containers. Funny fact, when fruit is stored in attractive glass containers, people are much more likely to eat it. It’s clean, so all you have to do is grab it. I stored the dragon fruit Kid 1 wanted, then I made my water.

I’ve noticed that in summer I drink gallons of iced tea with Equal sweetener in it. One day Kid 1 came back from a yard sale with a big glass jug that sits on a wire stand and has a little faucet in front. Every morning, I wash a lemon, cucumber or a couple of strawberries, whatever I have handy that’s in danger of getting spoiled, and I toss it in there with 2 gallons of filtered water. It goes bad after 24 hours, but meanwhile Kid 1, her boyfriend, and I drink it all day. Gordon sticks to his iced tea and lots of coffee.

Today’s water is lemon strawberry. Courtesy of HEB that delivered a half pint of rapidly expiring strawberries to me. Supply shortages what they are, I am used to it.

Then I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, discovered that Kid 1 was right and we are out of dishwasher tablets, so I put in an order to Costco with some other stuff, which I have been putting off. I repotted my orchid into hydroponic clay pebbles – it wasn’t doing too hot, so we’ll see if that will fix things. Then I cleaned the kitchen. And now I finally came to talk to you because I haven’t posted all week.

Sorry, Mod R. Normally I make an effort to schedule nothing on the weekends, because everyone deserves a weekend, but Monday the work carousel will start again, so this is my chance.

This week was heavy on admin tasks. This has been the case lately, and it is annoying but inescapable. The release for Ruby Fever is coming up, and there is publicity associated with it.

We received a nice review from Kirkus to share. It’s starred so they really liked it. Whenever a review like this lands, the publicity department picks it up for quotable bits.

I liked this one.

The action-packed and imaginative second trilogy of the Hidden Legacy series ends with a spectacular, satisfying finish.

Our editor, however, ignored all that. This is the one she highlighted.

All the beloved characters from earlier in the Hidden Legacy series reappear, which gives the thrilling final showdown with Arkan a gratifying “Avengers Assemble” feeling.

Ruby Fever, just like Avengers. You read it here first. Heh.

We have a few appearances coming up, the PR planned some fun events like recipes for a Hidden Legacy dinner. This is how you know I’ve spent too long in Texas. Jeaniene Frost and I were discussing it, and I was like, “I can put that together. Fajitas, some good queso for an appetizer…” And she said, “Oh queso is easy. Take a block of Velveeta, melt it, and dump a jar of salsa into it.”

At a minimum, at least use Queso Blanco. Don’t use regular Velveeta.

The other promo focuses on using Zillow for the Texas mansion research. In the spirit of that, I bring you a Zillow listing. I call it Boulder Potty. You will see why. Hint: it starts at photo #26.

What if you slip? I am just saying.

We have a renovation coming up. We are considering selling the house. We may end up staying a bit longer, simply because we don’t know where we are going and because the house prices are hella expensive. Gordon watches these videos hosted by a real estate professional, and she asked a very astute question. If you put your house on the market, could you afford to buy it? I am not sure, to be honest. Austin area’s prices are insane. Companies keep moving here, and they are breaking ground on a movies studio in Bastrop.

Whether or not we are moving, we have to fix things. The rail on the 2nd floor catwalk is unsafe and must be replaced. The house walls must be textured and painted. We are boarding everyone – dogs, cats, etc., and leaving for 2 weeks. Except everything is expensive and we can’t take the 2 weeks off, so we are loading computers into the car and bringing them with us on vacation. Oy. I’d buy a laptop, but I would never use it.

This will be a fun trip.

No worries, the innkeeper installments will continue as scheduled. Thank you for all of your supportive comments. We are so glad you’re enjoying this book so much. We hoped it would be fun for you.

Well, this concludes my long rambling post. My timer is done – I made some croutons out of some light wheat bread I made in the bread machine. It didn’t get eaten and I didn’t want it to go to waste. I’ve got to pull them out of the oven. See you next week!