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.
In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.
Daily Diary, Day 1342:
Check in: I had a good night’s sleep, and this morning I changed the sheets. Turned out that with the mattress on the floor this provided a great bout of aerobics exercise. While it rained a bit this morning and is quite windy, I can already see some blue sky, with sun forecast for this afternoon and then a whole string of sunny days going up to at least the high 60s. Good news because then we can sit outside more, which would let us escape the constant noise of the dehumidifiers. We haven’t heard from anybody about whether or not the air got the all-clear We’re assuming that Monday morning is when the remodel company will come and assess things like how much longer the dehumidifiers have to run and what kind of repairs need to be done before they can start back to work. I hope that next Sunday I will be able to report that everything is back on track in the Tada post. But now for today’s celebrations.
Celebrations:
Had fun writing posts about Madam Sibyl’s Last Client:
I started out to do a single post on why I came to write this prequel short story in 2014, but I was having so much fun recalling the series of steps I took that led me to make my protagonist a pretend clairvoyant that I ended up writing three posts. The last post will be published tomorrow, and then on Wednesday I will start actually publishing the short story in the newsletter, scene by scene, as I did Dandy Detects. This experience was a good test of how I can use dictation for the initial draft, which then permits me to limit the use of my injured hands to just editing. I hope that you all have been enjoying reading these posts much as I have enjoyed writing them.
New neighbors moving in:
I’ve posted before that our long-term neighbors from across the street sold their house recently and now the young couple with a baby that bought it have started moving. I met the husband, Scott, yesterday when I left on one of my walks. He and a friend had just pulled up in a small U-haul. He said his wife was named Brittney and the baby, who is only three months old, is named Benjamin.
All day long, watching from the upstairs window (next to where I was working on the boring sales data spread sheet), I saw them repeatedly unload, then go off to refill the truck. They must have been living close by because they came back so quickly to unload. At first my reaction to wonder why (given they had the wherewithal to by an expensive house) they didn’t hire somebody to do it in one trip. Then I remembered back when my husband and I were that young and moving out of a rental into our first house and how the truth of the matter is we just didn’t have that much stuff yet (and young friends who didn’t mind helping!)
Scott said that their plan was to sleep in the new house last night, and when we got up this morning, there were two cars parked, so I assume they were successful in getting what they needed moved. I am curious to see if they have more moving to do today. One of the neighbors is planning a “Tea” to welcome them later in the month. There are a lot of us grandparent-aged people in this short cul-de-sak, and these are the first young people with a baby to move in, in decades. There are houses with kids in them…but they are all either high school or college-aged. And even the grandchildren that one of our neighbors frequently takes care of are primary school-aged!
My injuries continue to heal.
Not much to say beyond the fact that every day my knee and the joints in both of my hands seem to be a smidgeon less painful. This morning I increased the length of my walk from 15 to 20 minutes, which will permit me to just do 3 walks a day (easier to schedule). The walk went fine, the sun’s out, cool and windy, and no discernable increase in the level of pain. And here is a lovely row of flowers against a white picket fence from the walk this morning.
All in all, despite the snafu with the start of the remodel, definitely reasons to celebrate.
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The little garden is a spot of joy!
How pretty the flowers are in front of the fence!