Monday, May 5, 2025

Short stuff!

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 1706:

Hope you all had a good weekend, I really enjoyed the shares yesterday of what you all were celebrating!

For me, yesterday did not turn out to be quite what I had expected when I wrote out my to-do list the night before. First of all, it rained during the night, for a short amount of time, but enough to make streets wet. So, before I even started the day, I decided not to do my usual Sunday cleaning, since I knew that we would all, our dog especially, be tracking mud into the house. However, no additional rain was forecast until late afternoon, so I spent the morning doing the basic clean, wrote yesterday’s Tada! post, and did a little editing of the past couple of days writing on the novella, with one foray into research to make sure I got the right terminology for something. I also journaled, and took my first walk of the day.

Then it was time for a long catch up with my closet friend from my teaching days, a woman I shared my office with, and really the only one of my colleagues from those years I have stayed in close contact with. This took me to lunch.

Because of the phone call before lunch, the plan was to do my second walk after right after lunch, since it was forcast to start raining at 3. But, during lunch it started to rain—well drizzle—but it drizzled quite steadily throughout the afternoon. With a brisk wind blowing the raing sideways, a walk would have been very unpleasant. So, no second walk yesterday. Which actually suited me. I worked a little on my novella in the afternoon getting my 500 word goal, did some laundry, and read, which fit the gray slightly chilly day.

This morning I have had yoga, cleaned, and then I took my first walk. It sure looked like it was going to start drizzling again, but I stayed dry, and it only misted a bit during our morning visit from Rio the border collie.

Bursitis is kicking up again, and either causing or being caused by some discomfort from neck, through shoulder, and down upper arm to the elbow. Experimenting with compression sleeve, heat, cold, and advil. Except for the advil, nothing has been really consistently helpful. Pain isn’t bad, just annoying, so I will keep experimenting on what combination of the above helps the most.

No phone calls scheduled today, so I should be able to make progress on writing and reading, and I also hope get in the second walk. Looks like another gray, on again off again drizzle kind of day, and it is actually chilly enough that we have just turned the furnace back on for the first time in weeks. Great day to drink hot tea, which is what I am going to do as soon as I post this.

Yesterday I took a number of photos of rose blooms that had droplets from the early morning rain.

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