Friday February 14, 2025

Happy Valentine's Day!

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1626:

Hope you all are having a great Valentine’s Day! (I loved these sugar candies as a kid!)

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

We had over an inch and a half of rain yesterday! Most of it in heavy mist and drizzle, which of course is a better way to get it after the long dry spell; more of it soaked in rather than ran into sewer drains. However, I was a bit sad that the heaviest rain came last night, when, except for the sound of our wind chimes, we really didn’t get a sense it was happening. The downside of being well insulated, with double pane windows, since I do enjoy looking out at a good downpour.

Today we are back to rather ominous looking clouds, but only some light drizzle and maybe an occasional shower predicted.

I haven’t accomplished any work on my short story or my novel the past few days. This is because we have been busy with the work that is needed to get a king-sized bed for our bedroom. I finally determined that this was necessary because of the difficulty I am having turning over with my pain points (particularly the bursitis in my elbow) without bumping into my husband. So, when I have a restless night, he does as well. Then worrying that I am disturbing him, keeps me awake! Many of you probably know that fatal loop.

So, although the queen bed we have is not very old, we are going to move it into the guest room (formerly our daughter’s room). But this means getting rid of the bed and dresser in that room (acquired at least 30 years ago for our daughter), replacing one of the dressers in our room that will no longer fit with the new king-sized bed, and probably ordering some new night-stands as well to save space.

Oh of course we also had to get a new platform frame for the new bed, but the most difficult part of the process is probably going to be disassembling the current queen-sized bedframe. If any of you remember, after much difficulty at the beginning of the bathroom remodel, we determined that we couldn’t get this bedframe down the hall and into one of the front rooms, but it didn’t look like it would disassemble easily, so we just slept with the mattress on the floor.

So, it is possible that it will break in trying to disassemble, and we will have to order a new one for the queen-sized now going to be a quest-room bed. And, wouldn’t you know, the new mattress is going to be the last item to arrive.

This means we don’t want to disassemble our current bed until we know the new mattress has successfully made it—because we don’t want to have to end up sleeping for a long time on the floor again. So for now, the new frame is sitting in a box in and we are waiting for the new dresser on Sunday, and, the new mattress on Tuesday.

My husband did disassemble the old double bed frame, and it and the bed itself are now in our laundry room with the old quest-room dresser. As he dragged the old dresser down the (thankfully carpeted) stairs, I fluttered ineffectually around asking if I could help. He said, “No, I’d rather break the dresser than break you!” Now wasn’t that sweet? Best valentine ever.

Anyway, as you might imagine, all this measuring spaces, picking things to order, checking to see if they shipped, cleaning the dust bunnies from where the double bed and dresser sat, weeding out the old dresser in our room (which will also need to be gotten rid of because the new one will be smaller) weeding out the stuff I stored in the old guest room dresser, etc. etc. etc. has taken up time and energy. But today nothing is supposed to arrive, we can’t do anything else until the new dresser arrives on Sunday, so maybe I will get some work on my stories done.

So, here is a picture of the “staging areas” and the empty guest room, and I will be sure to do after photos to go with the before.

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