The invasion of fruit into our diet has not exactly come to a grinding halt, but the final week of editing combined with the shift into no external schedule has dealt the habit a severe blow. I intend to reinforce the healthy eating by buying a condiments on ice tray from Amazon.com. Hopefully that will help us keep healthy snacks in sight where we’re more likely to eat them.
The daily schedule is very skewampus right now. This is normal around the Fourth of July holiday. All the late night revelry plays merry havoc with the schedule every year. Come Monday I’ll be trying to put things back to normal, get kids into bed before 9:30 and get them up before 11 am. I also need to schedule time to do cool stuff with the kids. I recently read the autobiography of Diana Wynne Jones who had a sorely neglected childhood and I’m feeling a need to make sure that my kids never find me so absorbed with business projects that I don’t pay attention to them. Next summer we need to have a real family vacation where we all go someplace together just for the fun of it. The last few years have been too full of convention travel and too short on funds to consider such a thing.
Fireworks with the neighbors went well. I was once again reminded how much I love my neighborhood. Last night was a spontaneous neighborhood party. No one was assigned to bring anything, but there were enough sodas, cupcakes, cookies, and glow sticks for 50 people. This was good since that’s about how many people showed up. The teenagers all lit the fireworks in the street while adults and younger kids sat on lawns to watch the show. It was fun, but there was almost too much going on for it to be relaxing for me. I liked it better when the kids and I re-located to our cul-de-sac where a quieter party was taking place. The kids ran around with their friends throwing bang-snaps and frisbees until after 11 pm. I got to sit and visit with neighbors. It was really nice.
We got our first small batch of Schlock Mercenary magnets. I’ve figured out the packing process for them and I’ve printed all the necessary postage. This means I’ll be ready to get to work when the rest of the magnets arrive next week. Next week will also contain the arrival of the Hold on to Your Horses books. That triggers more shipping work and also some marketing work. Several people have handed me some very exciting leads on marketing the books and I need to follow up on them all.
Last May I instituted a mandatory hour of outside time. That hour has become somewhat optional of late. I need to get back to doing it because I’m happier when I get outside, also my garden is happier when I spend time beating back the weeds. It is hard to want to work in the garden with the weather so hot. This ties in with the schedule some. If I would just get up earlier in the morning, I could be outside while the weather is still cooler.
Hmm, very neat idea, showed my wife the container. I have gotten very into dried frut chips… I get purple Vietnamese packets at the Chinese grocery that have banana, jackfruit, taro, sweet potato, and pineapple, no added sugar or salt, very good but much drier than you normally get, more like potato chips. We also get dried bananas and pineapples from the regular grocery pretty often.
Dried fruit is a good idea. I’ll have to throw some in front of the kids to see how they like it…or alternately I could put it in a bowl on the counter. That might work better.
Skewampus?!?!
Oh, I love it! That’s just a wonderful word, and totally new to me too!
Thanks, Sandra – I shall now look for a way to slip skewampus into conversations and boggle more minds gleefully!
Re: Skewampus?!?!
Your comment led me to look up skewampus on dictionary.com. It isn’t there. I’m forced to conclude that skewampus is a made up word unique to my family or possibly region. I’ve been using it for decades. Now I’m curious. Has anyone heard the word skewampus anywhere other than this blog? It is such a lovely word, conveying both something between “askew” and “higgley piggley” with perhaps a dash of “inside out.”