Category: aging

Time Change Sunday: March 2023 Newsletter

 

Time Change Sunday: March 2023 Newsletter

Today, I did a little research in Wikipedia about the origins of DST and discovered that clever founding father Ben Franklin first suggested it way back in 1784 as a way to save money on candle use.

He also suggested people tax window shutters, ration candles, and wake people up at dawn by ringing church bells and firing cannons. To me, this seems a bit counter-productive as far as saving money goes due to the high price of cannon shells and other ammunition. But then, apparently old Ben had his tongue firmly lodged in his cheek when he wrote that letter to the editor of The Journal of Paris.

The notion of pushing the clock hands forward in the spring and backwards in the fall took a while to catch on. But it finally did in the United States during World War 1 as a way to save on coal.

Personally, when I was growing up in the 1950’s, people always said we needed that extra hour of daylight in spring and summer so guys could have more time to play golf after their 9-to-5 workdays and kids could play outside longer. Presumably, the wives and mothers would happily accommodate those activities by getting supper on the table in a timely fashion.

Also personally, I’m rather against DST. For one thing, springing forward never been consistent in this country, let alone in the world, so sometimes while traveling, through Indiana on I-70, for instance, where at least one county was a hold-out to DST, I’ve gotten confused about what time it is.

One argument in favor of DST is it’s good for livestock. Farmers vehemently deny this. I don’t know much about cows and such, but I can say that our cat, the only animal around the place, is oblivious to clock time, so he continues getting up with the birds no matter exactly when by the clock they start chirping outside.

It can get confusing. My daughter just came to ask me if I wanted to do Jazzercise this afternoon, but she didn’t realize that it was an hour later in the day than she thought because she hadn’t changed the time on the clock on her work table.

As an old person, I can attest to feeling a little off today with one less hour of rest last night though my fitness tracker claims I got 7 hours. (Liar!) So, I’ve been dithering around the house even more than usual today.

And once upon a time in the autumn, my mom and dad came home from the mall furious that they couldn’t get into Macy’s to begin their daily walk because the doors were bolted shut and there it was not even 10 o’clock! They were pretty embarrassed when I reminded them of the time change.

Recently, there’s been talk of putting the United States on DST year around or not bothering with it at all because spring forward and falling back messes big time with people’s circadian cycles and leads to more heart attacks and car wrecks. It’s like going through jet lag twice a year. Apparently two thirds of Americans agree. But we’ll see . . .

 

New for Juliet: February 2023 Newsletter

What’s new at our house includes the air fryer my daughter Jess bought me for a surprise Valentine’s Day present.

It turns out that it’s requiring lots more thought than I expected it to including where to put it. In fact, even that was a problem given the lay-out of our kitchen in our house built in the late 1940’s and added onto sometime before 1960 before the microwave started becoming popular in 1967 and wildly popular by 1975. My daughter and I soon learned that if we ran the toaster and the microwave at the same time, we would pop a circuit breaker and the lights would go out in the kitchen.

So, we wanted to avoid loading up the rather limited outlets in the kitchen and ended up moving Mr. Coffee out of his place on the counter by the door to the family room where he’d long ruled to the other counter next to the narrow door to the hall to the front bathroom and bedrooms. And of course, the coffee bean grinder, the jar of coffee beans, the filters, and the two Brita water carafes had to go there, too. Mr. Coffee and the grinder now have an outlet a piece. Still, I ended up tweaking that arrangement when I realized that the jar of beans logically needs to sit next to the grinder not on the other side of Mr. Coffee by the water carafes.

As for our new 16” wide, 14” high, 14” deep shiny behemoth that bakes, toasts, grills, and dehydrates fruits and veggies in addition to air frying . . . We parked it at the end of the counter by the door to the family room. A plus: there’s no cabinet above it and it has plenty of room to breathe in air on the sides and blow it out in the exhaust in the back. But plugging it in had issues. The maker of our air flyer gave it a super short cord that doesn’t actually reach to the outlet by the kitchen window above the sink. So, we had to plug in the power strip we’d used for Mr. Coffee and the grinder. We also plugged in the electric can opener that Jess bought me to replace the hand-cranked openers I had trouble with due to the arthritis in my fingers.

We also had to move some things. For example, we no longer had room for the Rolodex, coupons, grocery lists, and pencil cups on the counter, so we moved them into my dad’s old desk in the family room. To have a parking place for hot food, we moved the cutting board we used to keep by the sink over to the left of the air fryer and got out our extra cutting board for the spot close to the sink.

We spent quite a bit of time the day we got our air fryer educating ourselves about it. We read the Air Fryer + Oven Quick Start and User Guides. We perused the air fryer cookbook that I bought when I went to the store that day. I sent out a call to my Facebook friends for tips and recipes. Some of them happily obliged. Soon I discovered that an air fryer doesn’t actually fry. It works by sucking moisture out of food. We also found out that air fryers get so hot that probably we should cook our favorite dishes for less time and at lower temperatures than our old recipes stipulate.

The day after we got the air fryer, we tried it out, And, sure enough, we discovered that the medium setting makes toast too dark for us. (Our old finicky toaster-oven hasn’t been the same since one morning the toast caught fire. It was an alarming sight to see flames stand up in the back of that toaster. “Shut the door,” Jess shouted. And when I did, the flames went out for lack of oxygen. We banished that toaster, with its permanently darkened front door, to the room next to the kitchen from which it might depart on our next Trash Day.)

Using our cookbook, we’ve made tasty chicken tenders and a breakfast frittata. I did learn that really you should choose the lower of the baking times suggested by your cookbook after I cooked the mozzarella cheese bites an extra two minutes and the cheese oozed out all over the air fry basket and the bake pan below.

I’ll do better next time. And I must say that this old girl enjoys learning new tricks at her advanced age.

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Also new from Juliet: trade paperbacks of the expanded edition of Novel Basics, An Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel and of Cinderella, P. I. First Case to Last. Both cost $9.99 exclusively from Amazon and have easy-on-the-eyes 14-point font.

If you prefer digital versions, they’re available wide from a large range of retailers including for Novel Basics

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/u3fmrjku

Apple Books: https://tinyurl.com/4jd9a9w3

Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/3zr54p6k

Kobo: https://tinyurl.com/yetuh8bc

And for Cinderella, P. I., First Case to Last

Amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/327m8md2

Apple Books: https://tinyurl.com/uutf6ud8

Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/mvch3err

Kobo: https://tinyurl.com/2p9fdhj2

Until next time, all the best, Juliet

Works-in-Progress: January 2023 Newsletter

Gee whiz, it’s only January 8. And already I have an enormous to-do list for 2023 that includes aspects of my life as an indie author, as a person, and as a home owner. (There’s always something going on with a house, so I won’t talk about that here.) I’ll limit the topics of my life as a writer  to three specific projects.

Currently, I’m redoing Novel Basics, An Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel, in an expanded version that includes advice on self-publishing. I hope to publish the eBook of it wide so people can read it on Nooks and other devices in addition to Kindles or through the Kindle app. I also plan on publishing the new version as a paperback soon and possibly as a workbook this fall for National Novel Writing Month in November.

During the holidays, I set aside Death in Shining Armor, a book I’ve worked on in several different versions for over thirty years. I would very much like to finish it and publish it in 2023, partly so I can move on to other projects.

And I’m working on my memoir. This fun little project stews on a back burner in my head. I drop a slice of life here or chunk of memories in it from time to time. Still, inside my head, the combined voices of my mother, the father of my child, and the woman I once thought of as my best friend, say, “What? You write your memoirs?” [Insert derisive laugh here.] “You insignificant little nobody! Who could possibly want to read about your life?” Quick, quick, I counter with the voice of a friend, a notable children’s author who died in 2022. “You’ve got the gift, Juliet,” she once told me. “Keep on writing.” And shortly before her death, she said, Don’t you dare quit writing!” Yes, ma’am! Besides that, the very thought of writing my memoirs gives me joy. And that’s enough of a reason for me to keep it on my Works-in-Progress list.

Moving to a set of personal items on my to-do list, I’m happy to say that my wonky knee has improved. My fitness tracker says I reach my goal of 7,000 steps a day pretty often. I’ve resumed my yoga routine of two Salutation to the Sun routines pretty much every morning. Purists might snicker at the way I crawl back to my feet, but at least I’m doing it. I’m happy about this because I thought I’d permanently crippled myself somehow and doomed myself to a sedentary life in front of the tube.

New Year’s Resolution (you know I had to have one): my usual one of putting in twenty hours or about three hours a day to some aspect of my writing. Last year, my weekly average was 18.83 or 2.69 hours a day. My actual writing work averaged less than that because my tally includes webinars, meetings, creating ads for my books, and promoting my work through social media. But I’m happy to report that reached my twenty hours writing goal for the first week of 2023. Whoop. Whoop.

FYI: all the mental activity of reading and writing novels, reaching out to others through social media, and physically exercising keeps the brain of this old girl alive. For after all, I’m a Work-in-Progress. How about you?

Best, Juliet

P. S. Right now, I’m running a countdown promotion of the boxed set of January Jinx, Fatal February, and Mischief in March, the first three novels of my historical mystery series, and “Detectives’ Honeymoon,” a fun short story. You can get it for reduced prices for the American and British versions from now through midnight of January 12 when it returns to the original prices of $8.97 in the U. S. and whatever they are in Britain. Unfortunately, I didn’t write down the exact prices for the levels of the countdown when I set it up. But this is all part of the learning process to enhance my Work-in-Progress publishing skills. 

P. S. S. Safa, the adorable, says, “Happy New Year!

Wounded Knee: November 2022 Newsletter

Sometime in August, I wounded my right knee, perhaps by twisting it inwards too fast during an exercise routine. Regardless, this simple little injury has pretty much dominated my life ever since. How did it do that? Let me count the ways.

Appointments have taken away considerable time from the thing I love to do—write. These include a visit with a nurse practitioner; a visit to the hospital for x-rays on my newly injured knee and my chronically achy left foot; a trip to the drug store for a prescription grade pain-killer; a visit to an orthopedist; and two visits to a psychologist to talk about my depression about no longer being able to exercise by dancing with my daughter Jess four times a week, take long walks, and do yard work. Even dealing with the doctors’ office phone system was frustrating and time-consuming.

But like many things in life, this experience had its lessons. For one thing, I learned to deal with the nurse practitioner via the patient portal instead of the phone. For another, I learned to be patient with myself and listen to the experts when they tell me to wear a brace on my knee so it won’t buckle out from under me and to ice the knee up after I’ve been active.

(It was a bit of a shock when the NP and the joint specialist disagreed on what pain-killer I should take. After some research, I discovered all pain-killers can kill you via your kidneys or your liver, or your mind through depression and suicide, and I backed off on all of them. But recently, I went back on the pain med with the fewest lethal side effects.)

Also, I’ve made adjustments to my life. For example, for a while, I backed off of most exercise including my morning yoga routine that I’ve faithfully done for at least fifty years. Since I no longer can put pressure on that knee, when I get down on the floor, I often can’t get back up again without dragging myself across the living room to the closest chair, placing my hands on the seat of the chair, pushing my butt into the air to get my feet under me, and then slowly straightening up.

And my poor wounded knee has improved. I’ve worked my way back up to taking 7,000 steps a day. Sometimes I shuffle around the family room behind Jess during a streamed dance-exercise routine. And instead of getting down on the floor to exercise my core, I sit on a chair. Also I try to warm up to my day with some exercises I learned from the tai chi class I joined a few weeks ago. (Millions of old Chinese people can’t be wrong.)

I’m so not trying to walk to the park right now, but a trip around a block or two or three, preferably hand in hand with Jess, is quite feasible. When I can’t kneel to reach around in the back of a cabinet, I ask my daughter for help. Ditto when I need to climb on a chair to reach something high up in a cabinet.

So, my life goes on, slightly revised. And still, in spite of all this trouble from my wounded knee, I am VERY HAPPY to report that I’ve finished the most recent draft of Death in Shining Armor, my current WiP, in exactly two months from my birthday on 9/11 until November 11. And the book looks good. But I’ve temporarily set it aside to mellow while I deal with all the seasonal stuff. This year, the stuff includes a holiday giveaway I’m participating in. Here’s the deal.

You need gifts and we’ve got books.

The Kansas City authors who make up Of Books and Nooks are giving you a chance to win eight amazing books to enjoy for yourself or give as gifts! Just enter our holiday book giveaway for a multi-author, multi-genre book collection!
The winner will be selected at random on Dec. 11, 2022. Enter by Dec. 10, 2022. Your entry automatically puts you on each author’s email list for future giveaways, newsletters and release announcements! You will also receive updates on new posts on Of Books and Nooks. Winner must have a valid mailing address in the United States. No books will be shipped outside the U.S.
Good luck, and happy holidays to all!

June 2021 Newsletter

I have become the old woman that . . .

I have become the old woman that, wearing pajamas, robe, and flip-flops, totters to the curb on trash day to put one last plastic bottle in the recycle bin. Or still in her nightclothes, she carries the bird feeders to their hooks in the back yard. Or she takes pictures with her phone of the lovely lavender hosta blossoms that line the garden shed. (She hopes to start a watercolor painting of them at her weekly art class and possibly insert a rabbit among them.)

But I’m also the old woman that, changed into a green and pink striped camp shirt she’s had for decades and black pedal pushers with an elastic waist band she bought last year, gets to her computer in the home office by ten most mornings and averages twenty hours a week on her writing project.

So I’m pleased to announce that Apart in April, Book 5 and the fourth novel in my Calendar Mystery series, will be published on June 30 as an eBook. It’s now available to pre-order for only $2.99 at  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B095J4BB94. This special price is going away on July 6 when the price will become $4.99, so better get it cheaper while you can. And if you like it, please write a brief review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

For those of you who prefer reading print books instead of on devices like a Kindle, a Nook, or tablet, I am very pleased to announce that I’m currently working on the cover for the paperback version of Apart in April and it will be available for purchase by July 15. (Yay!) I haven’t figured out the price yet, but I’ll let you know.

And just so you don’t think I’m asking you to buy a pig in a poke, here’s a brief description of this forthcoming book.

Apart in April features  love, loss, and dangerous secrets. In April 1901, after a deep personal loss, Minty Wilcox Price runs away from her husband detective Daniel Price. But she leaves behind letters containing clues (both false and true) as she goes undercover on her own to find out the truth about how a young woman died. Will the secrets Minty uncovers prove deadly? Will Daniel bring his own grief under control to find her and help her with the case before she comes into danger, too? You’ll find the answers to these questions and much more in Apart in April, Book 5 of Juliet Kincaid’s Calendar Mysteries that tell the story of business girl Minty Wilcox and detective Daniel Price from newly met to newly wed and beyond in Kansas City, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago.

Also “The Barn Door” and “Lost Dog,” two prequel short stories to the Calendar Mystery series that feature business girl Minty Wilcox and detective Daniel Price when they first meet though they don’t realize it, will both be FREE from July 1 through July 5, 2021, at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073G7ZXMP and http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0752SWBG1.

Don’t have a Kindle? When you get the stories, you can also download the free app to most tablets including a Nook. My books look especially neat on my iPad mini.

Stay safe and well in this troubled world, my friends.

Juliet

P. S. If you enjoyed reading this post, please share it with your friends.

An Envelope, a Single Stamp

A week or so ago, I walked to the post office nearby to mail something and to buy some stamps. Not knowing if USPS might have jacked up the price per stamp again, I put an extra dollar in my pocket. (I didn’t want to carry my heavy purse or have lots of money on me.)

When I arrived inside the post office, I got in line behind two men. The first, a young guy, was having the clerk on duty price out the various speeds of mailing several different sizes of the boxes stacked on the counter. $37.50 seemed the limit to what the young guy would pay, so he gathered up the boxes that he’d apparently brought with him, and fled.

The next man stepped up to the counter laid a plain white rather square envelope on the counter and asked for a single stamp. I never saw this guy’s face, but I could tell he was older than the first due to his gray hair and hunched shoulders under his thin coat jacket.

During the first failed transaction, I read the nameplate on the pocket of the clerk’s shirt and found out his name was Tom. A man about sixty, he had brown hair and a pleasant, round face. After Tom rang up the single stamp, the older man asked, “How much is the envelope?” He pointed to the envelope on the counter.

“That envelope? Well, that envelope belongs to one of the cards on the rack. It’s not actually for sale.”

“Oh,” the man said.

“If you need an envelope, there are some on the other rack, just turn it around and you’ll see.”

“Okay.” The older man returned the first envelope to the rack among the cards and brought back a postal service envelope of similar size that he lay on the counter.

Sneaking a peek past the guy, I saw that his fingernails were little more than short, white flakes close to the quick.

“How much?” the man asked.

Tom rang the purchase up. “That will be a dollar four.”

The man reached toward his pocket, but stopped. “I only have a dollar,” he said. “I’ll pay with my debit card so I can get change for a twenty. Can I do that?”

“You bet,” Tom said. “Put your card in the machine right there.” After the man did that, Tom said, “The transaction failed.”

“Oh . . .”

And so, finally more from impatience than any kindness in my heart, I reached in my pocket, peeled off the extra dollar bill and tossed it on the counter. The man scooped the bill up with his damaged fingers and handed it to Tom. Tom quickly rang the purchase up adding the four cents he paid. The man left and I stepped up. “Takes all kinds,” Tom said toward at the door after the guy had left. “And what would you like today?”

Not until much later did I realize that the man’s flaky fingernails indicate that he’s probably diabetic, his bounced debit card a sign that he’s almost penniless. Quite possibly he’s homeless, too. And what sort of letter did he put in that envelope and send with that stamp? A plea for help perhaps? Or maybe an apology to a loved one in some place too far for him to travel to. I’ll never know.

“A book of stamps, please,” I said to Tom. They didn’t have any more books of the Winter Berries stamps that I like so much, so I got a sheet of twenty Celebrate stamps, paid for them with the eleven bucks remaining in my pocket and walked home to my life for which I have so many reasons to celebrate.

“But Wait!”

A Progress Report

Since my cataract surgery, I’ve been saying “But Wait” to myself a lot.

“But wait! Don’t you have to put your glasses on before you can see to walk around the house?”

“But wait! Don’t you have to take your contact lenses out before you put those eye drops in?”

 

“But wait! You mean to tell me those green socks you wore to match your green jammies have been light blue all the time?” (And what other surprises lurk in my sock drawer?)

Apparently, I’ve been walking around in a soft, sepia fog for many years. (This isn’t a particularly bad thing for a writer of historical fiction, though.)

On the other hand, I used to say, “But wait! Wasn’t that your turn?” as I whizzed past the place where I was supposed to turn. But now I can read those street signs from half a block away.

So after my cataract surgeries, I’ve had to make small, odd mental adjustments to the changes in my vision. But I also have to admit that I’ve probably never seen as well as I do now.

Eye Drops

A Live and Learn Blog

This coming week, I’m scheduled to have cataract surgery on my right eye and the left eye the week after that. Now this is a rather alarming prospect in itself. How come? Well, it’s like this. As a fiction writer used to creating all sorts of nightmare scenarios, I can think of an abundance of things that can wrong. The information sheets the eye clinic sent me home with don’t help since they include complications like losing an eye. I’m not sure an eye patch is really the fashion look I’m after though maybe a black satin patch with sequins . . . ?

The info sheets also list major risks that include a droopy eyelid. Oh great! My eyelids are already so droopy that when I went for my eye exam last October, the technician at my regular optometrist’s office took at least two-dozen pictures of my eyeballs in one test before she thought she got a good one. For another test, she called in another technician who grabbed hold of the back of my neck and tried to pry my eye wide open with her other hand, thus blocking the camera.

These exams turned to be such an ordeal that when I finally saw my doctor, I said, “Oh gosh, I think I flunked my eye test.”

Nice guy that he is, the doctor merely smiled and said, “You’re fine.”

Nervous about the surgery, I put out a call to my Facebook friends and they were quite reassuring as in “easy peasy.” So I’m feeling a little more relaxed about it. Still I have a problem. In the build up to the surgery, I have to put eye drops in my eyes. This wasn’t immediately easy since I had to take a pair of manicure scissors to the plastic on one of the tiny bottles of eye drops just to get it open. (What is it with these companies that make the containers they put eye drops, food like mini quiches, juice, and other things in that it’s such a struggle to open them?)

But here again my droopy eyelids were problematic. There I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom trying to drop the once-a-day stuff in my right eye. And it’s cloudy and it gushes out and I feel it on my cheek. Plus extra comes out of the vial that I have to wipe off. This stuff isn’t cheap. Those three tiny bottles shown above altogether cost $75. So I worry about wasting the eye drops, having to buy more, and also being scolded by the eye surgeon for not properly preparing for the surgery.

The first two applications of the other pre-surgery eye drops ended up on my cheek as well, or mostly anyway. Thank goodness for my daughter. She suffers from chronic dry eye and so she’s developed a method for dropping liquids in her eyes. She gave me an eye drop tutorial. She tilts her head left when she wants to put eye drops in her right eye, puts the tip of the bottle close to the corner of the right eye but not against it, and squeezes the vial. I tried her technique and sure enough, most of the drop went in my right eye instead of rolling down my cheek.

So this whole saga goes to show you that old dogs can learn new tricks. Plus it’s really great to have a kid and friends that care. Thanks, everybody!

 

P. S. January Jinx, Book 1 of my cozy historical mystery series, is only #99cents athttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HSSSBE4 and a penny less than a pound at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HSSSBE4 today through Tuesday January 7, 2020.

WiP Report: Life Happens, Part 2

Living My Life

Today I was going to write and post a really long, extensive follow-up to last week’s whine-session subtitled “Feeding the Cats” about my bout of illness, injury and insomnia. But frankly this week I don’t have the time because, for one thing, yesterday I made a proposal to Border Crimes, the local chapter of Sisters in Crime, started by notable writer Nancy Pickard, of how we might go forward in the future.

That’s part of the point of this WiP. Life happens. Things come up. I care about what happens to our chapter of Sisters in Crime, and I don’t want it on my conscience that it suffered because I didn’t pay enough attention to it at a critical time.

In the past I haven’t always done that. One of my deepest regrets is not attending the funeral of a friend two or three years ago because I was embroiled in working on a book and trying to get it done. I don’t remember which book exactly, but I still feel guilt and regret for not properly saying goodbye to dear Barbara J.

So here’s the bottom line. I have lots of projects I could do. I always have. And so I have to choose. When I first began the Calendar Mystery series shortly after I retired in 2004, I thought I’d whip out all twelve books, one for each month of the year, and publish one a year. At that rate, I would have finished them in 2016. It’s now 2019, and I’ve only reached April and that only slightly, in a short story called “The Shackleton Ghost,” that appears at the end of Old Time Stories available now in print and as an eBook exclusively from Amazon. Since it’s impossible for me to write, edit, produce, publish, and properly promote a novel in ten weeks and get it out by the end of April this year, I’m setting the Calendar Mysteries aside at least for now. Maybe next year . . .

This year, I want to reboot an older series I’ve already published and return to a project I first completed thirty years ago. (Yikes!) Meanwhile, I hope to do things like going to my exercise class at noon today and to this evening’s book club meeting. (We’re talking about Kate Griffin’s Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders and I’m looking forward to hearing what my friends say about it.) Maybe once my Physical Therapist is through working on my sore right arm and left hip, I can resume my art classes. There are always day-to-day chores like buying for, preparing, eating and cleaning up after meals, occasional chores like cleaning the home office which I finally did yesterday, and everyday pleasures like walking around the neighborhood on a beautiful afternoon.

Also I’d like to be there to help an ailing neighbor or a group in need. I want to go to a friend’s funeral even if that means setting aside my writing or not posting on Facebook or my website regularly. In other words, live my life. For after all, life happens – until it doesn’t.

WiP Report: Life Happens, Part 1

Feeding the Cats

Our little panther Safa boy Bombay (on the left) isn’t a picky eater and chows down on dry food. But last March his sibling Honey girl (on the right) quit eating and became terribly thin. Thus began our attempts to keep her alive. (FYI: with our current budget, taking the cats to the vet isn’t an option.)

The staff at the local pet store probably got tired of me when I came in, and with their help chose a can or two of food to try. Over several weeks, we tried out at least a dozen different kinds. Most I took back because Honey stuck up her kitty nose at them and traded them for other kinds to try.

It took weeks and weeks until we finally discovered the magic ingredient that would pique her appetite – pork liver. Even then we had to narrow the choice to certain recipes of the brand we finally settled on. For instance, she won’t eat the hairball formula at all and the spayed and neutered only occasionally, but others like the aging formula she gobbles up so fast we have to supervise her eating so she doesn’t promptly barf the stuff right back up again. (Sorry for the graphic detail.)

Just finding the right food didn’t end the saga of feeding the cats. No indeed, it took many weeks to develop a system of feeding Honey that seems to satisfy her. Here’s the current one.

Around 6:30 AM, she begins her campaign of yowling at one or the other of her two Mommies, the young Mommy in her bedroom in the front of the house or the old Mommy in the bedroom in the back.

Some cats have a pleasant, euphonious meow. Honey has one of those high-pitched Siamese screeches about as dulcet as dragging fingernails down a chalkboard. She starts with that and progresses to vaulting the sleeper back and forth. If her prey still resists those attempts, she resorts to sneaking her paw out with nails slightly unsheathed and pricking the Mommy lightly on the nose. The thing, though, that always gets the old Mommy (me) out of bed is her purr. I can’t resist it and will get up at last to feed her.

The Mommy serves Honey a quarter of a three-ounce can of food four times a day. It must be thin slices in gravy because she eschews the (cheaper) loaf style in the six-ounce cans because 1) she doesn’t recognize that style as edible and 2) she won’t eat food from a can opened the previous day. We heap the tender morsels in a small puddle of gravy in the middle of a bowl. It has to be a perfectly clean bowl, not one that contains even the tiniest bits of an earlier serving that might be hard and dry. Before serving the cat, the Mommy covers the can containing the unused food with plastic wrap and then covers the can with a fresh bowl, so ants don’t get in it. (Note: we can’t refrigerate the food because Honey won’t eat cold food.)

So then the Mommy serves the quarter can of whatever to Honey and meanwhile tops off the bowls of dry food that Honey’s brother Safa happily munches on whenever he wants to. (Note 1: This kind of food must be a single layer or the boy won’t eat it either. Note 2: Sometimes the girl eats the dry food too, but only after she’s had her tender slices of pork liver in gravy.)

The food Honey will eat isn’t cheap. Indeed, it costs up to $1.72 per can or around $50 a month. But this Mommy will not let it be said that the cat died because we were too cheap to buy food she would eat.

Okay, let’s go back to the title of this WiP Report, which presumably has something to do with my Work-in-Progress. Indeed it does. You see, when we started dealing with this issue last year, Honey was getting us up at five-thirty if not earlier. (You try explaining the change from Daylight Savings Time to Central Standard Time to a cat.) The young Mommy usually can get back to sleep after feeding the cats, but not me, the old Mommy. So gradually I got sleep deprived. For example, the week of October 21 – 27, 2018, I averaged 5 hours and 39 minutes. (Even my usual target amount of sleep of 7 hours and 15 minutes is well below the 8 hours and something others in my age group average.)

Then I injured my right shoulder and my left hip, probably for going after my exercise routine too hard. After that I got sick. I had a cold in November while I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo2018 and an even worse cold at the end of December and the start of January. It was torture for me to get a decent night’s sleep rolling from my sore shoulder to my sore hip and coughing hard whenever I tried to sleep on my back. And so I got bronchitis in February.

I’m happy to report that I’m feeling better now that I’ve paid a couple of visits to the doctor’s office, got some medications, and started visiting a physical therapist. But you know what? It takes time to be sick and get physical therapy and all that stuff. And all of this interfered with my writing schedule.

 

Suffice it to say here that I’m now feeling more like myself and I will tell you about some of the decisions about my writing that I’ve made in my next WiP Report.

Best, Juliet