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, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1272:
Brief check-in: This past week wasn’t so great in terms of writing and exercise. This was because of taxes at the beginning of the week and then the problem with injuring my knuckle in the middle of the week. However, today the knuckle is definitely improving, so I hope this means that there’s no fracture, just a bruise and arthritis. In addition, I’ve already had a fair amount of exercise between cleaning the downstairs and my first walk of the day, and I hope to also do Pilates and my second walk.
Celebrations:
My first celebration for this week is that I did get the tax information compiled and turned into our accountant, and this is definitely a reason to celebrate.
The second reason to celebrate is that the problem with my knuckle did in fact get me to try the dictation app that is available both on my phone and my computer. As a result, I am dictating this post, and I can tell that it goes much faster than if I was typing, it in even when my hand was in good shape. I’ve always wondered whether or not if at some point my arthritis got bad enough I would need to turn to dictation to continue my writing. I don’t know whether or not I will be able to use this process for actually writing my fiction. But it’s a reason to celebrate that it is a possibility.
A third reason to celebrate is that we got new windchimes. Sometime soon after we moved to this house (over 30 years ago) we ordered windchimes and in doing so we discovered that there was a company that had been founded by a man who had been at Oberlin college, which is where both my husband and I attended and met. He was actually in the class between mine and my husband. He was in the conservatory of music, and he created and sold these windchimes that were based on musical notes of different kinds. We ordered windchimes that were based on, I believe some kind of jazz notes. But a couple weeks ago, the thread that was holding them together frayed and part of it broke, and we could tell the rest of it could fall apart at any time. In addition, the chimes themselves had become very rusted. We were delighted when we discovered that the company was still in operation, and that we could in fact get exactly the same wind chimes, because we have always love the sound the produce. they chime when there’s any slightest breeze and they provide a kind of musical background to our lives. Here is a photo of the new chimes.
Finally, the third reason to celebrate is that my amaryllis, after successfully having five blooms, all of which have now died, has popped out a six bloom. And, the first of the three bulbs, that had bloomed, now has leaves growing, and there is the possibility that there will be blooms coming out of that one as well. Oh, I also added a photo of the sky last night as the sun set. Because that was definitely a reason to celebrate.
So, ta da! these are my celebrations this week, what are yours?
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Celebrate using new technology!
Love this post, Sister! Thank you for sharing your reasons to celebrate! Tonight we had a party where mom lives and everyone shared the reason they are celebrating. Your post today fit right in!
So excited about your Amaryllis.