I’ve been at home all day. I’m not proud of this. It is Sunday. I like to go to church on Sunday. I woke up with a sore throat and a cough. The grandgirl has a serious cold and I kept her on Thursday night and Friday night to give her mom a break. So I have a cold, too.

I also have a deadline. I have been working at getting my manuscripts out to publishers and agents for some time. I was at a SCBWI conference (It means, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and won a silent auction. The item was a gift certificate to have a professional company format my manuscript for self-publishing. The deadline is December 31 of this year. So I thought – why not?

I hired an editor and a book cover designer and there the story does not end. I have had to make a lot decisions about the design of the cover. I am still working on the back cover copy, and I haven’t finished the edits. So today I thought would be a perfect day to work on edits – I have about 100 pages left to go over – but such was not to be today anyway. I have done everything but what I intended to do. I’ve answered emails, read other people’s Facebook pages, watched what other people have recommended on u-tube. As if spending hours on Facebook wasn’t enough, I organized all my drawers in the kitchen. I have two drawers that contain stuff from my house renovations projects. That means tape, stickers, paint swatches, pliers, and half a ton of screws and nails. So I thought I would organize every single item into its own little compartment. The project took at least two hours. It’s done. I have the most organized drawers in the universe.

So I’m upstairs thinking that I’ll spend a few minutes on Facebook. Ha. An hour later I’m into getting new friends on my author page, which is rebeccanolen author (Facebook) just in case you want to friend me. It’s a public page. A public page means that anyone can get on there. It’s a little scary.

Meanwhile, every time I feel a need to stretch my legs I get up and go downstairs. The TV is on so I turn it off. I can not tell you how many times I have been downstairs and found the TV blaring and no one is watching it. I have turned it off at least four times. No, it isn’t the house ghost. It is my husband. He is working in the yard, but … he is also watching TV.

Is it just me or is this what a lot of folks deal with? I don’t know. It isn’t as if I can hear the TV from upstairs. One of the benefits of having a hundred year old house is that the walls are too thick for noise to penetrate from room to room, something that those in newer establishments can hardly comprehend, having lived in new homes before.

I find it hilarious that the TV is left on no matter what. It isn’t just today. The TV is on all the time. I’ve been married 30 years. That’s a lot of electrical usage. I turn the TV off a lot.

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