It's been awhile since I've had a cold, but I've been feeling pooky since Sunday.  It started in my sinus and now has developed into a full-blown cold.  So I'm having some quiet time these past few days.  I think I may have caught it from Veronique.....she was sniffling and sneezing while she was here. While I love all things French, I think I could have passed on this.  She probably caught it flying over from Paris.  We all know how germ-free those aircraft cabins are.  Not!

The groomer came on Monday to do Duncan and Brie.  Don't they look spiffy?

You might recall just a week or so ago I showed you a photo of my newly planted Crape Myrtle?  Will ya look at her now.........

She's just bloomin' away and there's lots more buds on there.  We've been getting some great rain and then factor in lots of sunshine and my TLC.

Being down with this cold, I'm doing even more reading than normal.  So join me next time and I'll have another book review for you.  Remember doing "book reports" in school?  Did you enjoy doing those or dread when the teacher would assign that task?  Obviously......I loved them. 

See you here next time.......

As many of you know, I'm kinda on "hold" right now with my professional writing.  The requested material for Book #2 has been sent off to my editor and I'm waiting to hear if it's a "go" for me to complete the novel.  So for the past month or so, I've just been "playing."  ie:  Doing things I truly enjoy and other things that I committed to.  One of the tasks I committed to is being the Chairperson for the Florida Writers Royal Palm Literary Awards.  It's time-consuming, but also gratifying to help other writers be recognized and acknowledged.  As you can see, my writers studio is being taken over by all that this entails......the entries, the manila envelopes, mailing labels, finding space for the books in the published category, etc.

All of this takes up a fair amount of my time, but the deadline for entry is August 1, so this task will be coming to an end.  I think most of you know what an avid reader I am and that keeps me busy.  I'm one of those readers that will prop the book while I'm having breakfast and lunch and just read away.  But the bulk of my reading is normally done in the evenings.  I'm not much of a prime TV kind of person.  If we're not watching one of our Netflix movies, I'm generally reading for 2 or 3 hours.

I also love knitting and I usually schedule in this enjoyment while watching one of my soaps in the afternoon.  I've come to realize that I'm very much like my mother and my aunt were........except for when having my morning coffee and allowing my thoughts to wander on plans, a writing project or whatever flows into my mind, I find it very difficult to just "sit" watching TV.  So this is the perfect time to indulge in my knitting while watching those mindless soaps.  Yes.....I do watch them.  It's a hangover from my young-mom days.......kids in for their naps and while I stood at the ironing board pressing clothes (not many young moms in the 60's had dryers to take away those wrinkles) I loved watching those soaps.  And years later, when my working life slowed down, I found myself returning to Erica and her gang, One Life to Live and Guiding Light.  Poor soaps have always had a negative connotation, so I guess I feel less guilty watching while I'm sitting there knitting.  Something my mother did five days a week after she retired.  Here's the dual projects I'm working on at the moment.

I've always wanted a cashmere scarf and I'm making it in the dusty rose color pictured here.  It'll be perfect for those crisp, autumn days in the south of France.  And a million thank-you's to my dear friend, Alice, in Salem.......she patiently helped me via telephone when I ran into a problem starting this.  I only have a few inches done so far, but as it progresses I'll get a photo of my work.  And to accompany this gorgeous scarf, I found a great sweater/jacket, also to wear in autumn in France.  However, I'm making it in granite, a really nice shade of gray that will go with the requisite black worn in France.

With 3 months left before I leave for France, my knitting needles are clicking away at every opportunity.  I always take my knitting with me for drives into Chiefland or Gainesville.  Can't waste precious moments just gazing out the window!

There's something else I've been doing for the past week and a half.  With the heat and humidity of Florida summer upon us, it's downright miserable to be out there walking the dogs in the morning for my exercise.  They get plenty, chasing each other and running around the yard.  So I decided to purchase a treadmill and make sure my own exercise was up to par.  I put it here, in my writers studio and yeah, it's a tad tight, but......the a/c is on, I turn on the Today Show and for 30 minutes, I walk away in comfort.  Well, relative comfort anyway.

So that's what I've been up to.  How about you?

See you here next time.........

Seems I've been playing catch-up since I got back from my writers conference.  But it was a good conference, and I met some really nice people there.  I very much enjoyed hearing Michael Connolly speak at the luncheon.  I admit I've never read any of his books, but I know he has many fans.

I found it interesting that the hotel where the conference was held had an outside fish pond, and I must say they have some mega goldfish in there!

My fish are doing very well and maybe someday they'll be big guys like these.

Lots of things happened in the past week.......To answer the comments made by a lot of you, YESSSSSS!  I'm very happy that Obama is finally the official winner of that long, drawn-out, primary.  I had had about as much of Hillary as I could take.  And I have to agree with some of you here......I didn't detect one ounce of graciousness in her final speech.  Years ago I had liked Hillary.  A lot.  Heck, I even bought her book, It Takes A Village.  However, I do feel she truly showed her real colors these past months.  And those colors are faded and tarnished.  And now.............onward and upward for Obama, I say!

Gas of course went higher this past week, more deadly storms and floods affected parts of our country and if things weren't bad enough.........geeze, NOW I can't even have tomatoes in my salad!  I mean, really, what IS this country coming to?  Actually, I heard yesterday that Florida tomatoes were okay.  But who knows what next week will bring. 

All the dismal news even affected my beloved island.  There was a plane crash here on Cedar Key early Sat. morning.  A single engine Cessna had taken off about 1 a.m. and crashed on take-off.  A ball of fire ended up in the Gulf and it killed 3 people.  If you want to read all the details, visit the Cedar Key News at this link.  For those of you that might not know, we don't have an airport here on the island.  Just an airstrip but everyone refers to that area at the west part of the island as "the airport."  Apparently, this is the tenth crash here in the past 10 years and the seventh fatality.  It's a very tricky airstrip and causes many pilots to lose their horizon, due to the water and sky. 

Okay.....enough doom and gloom for this post.  In the past week I've received two blurbs from authors for my novel.  Needless to say, I'm very pleased with what they said.  And I'm afraid you'll have to wait till next spring to read them when you purchase my book.

My web designer, Heather, has done a super job putting together my new website.  We're not quite finished, as there's a few minor things left to do.  But if you haven't gone to my original URL that I had for my other books, if you click here, you can go pay a visit to my new site.  As things progress with the process of my book, I'll be updating over there.

Well, folks, I think that's it for this time from my little island.  I'll be continuing to play catch-up over the next few days and visiting you at your blog.  Till then, take care and..........

See you here next time........

Gosh, this past week seemed to fly by faster than usual.  I guess it's Friday because my calendar says it is.

Brian and Veronique came to visit us on Monday for a couple days and we had a great visit.  Brian was in Paris recently to visit her and she flew back to the States with him, but she returns to Paris on Sunday as she has to resume her job on Monday.  So I'm glad they got to get up here.  I really enjoy their company and I always take the opportunity with Veronique for her to help me with words in French that I'm unsure of the pronunciation.  I'm back to practicing with my Rosetta Stone, so hope to have improved my French phrases and words more by October.

Duncan and Brie were very happy to have them here visiting also.  Duncan adores Brian and the feeling is mutual.  Brian joked a few times that if we're tired of Duncan, he's more than happy to take him.  I'm afraid that'll never happen!  Brian will have to get his own Scottie.

Making their visit extra special was that I celebrated Mother's Day with them on Monday.  They brought me a box of chocolates, a bottle of champagne and Brian got me a wonderful rose bush.  It's called Goldilocks and they're yellow roses!  Which he knows is my absolute favorite color for roses.  So he helped me get it replanted into a container and I now have it out near the fish pond.

And my new fish arrived on Tuesday.  The ones in the pond seem to be doing well, but they've been mostly hiding.  Think they have to get used to their home.  However, the two Ryukin goldfish that I put into my aquarium here in my writer's studio settled in very quickly.   I'm enjoying them a lot.  So meet Renoir and Monet.......

I also reached a milestone with my publishing process this past week.  I did up an outline of Book #2, along with the first fifty pages and got that packet off into the mail to my editor.  My contract had said they wanted that before June 1, so I was ahead of schedule.  And now I wait to see if they like my story.  So I've been taking some "play time" with visiting, tending to my fish and birds, doing some container gardening.  I ordered about six new flowers/plants to put along the fish pond.  And I've been doing lots of reading, as usual.  I'm reading a very good book right now and I'll share it with you when I finish.

So that's it from my little island for this time.  Have a great weekend and I'll see you here next time.....

Yes......I'm afraid a week later, all I have left in my aquarium are three fish.  The babies?  All gone.  The yellow Mollie?  She's gone too.  The babies disappeared one night last week.  Turned the light on in the morning and poof!  No babies. 

  The other morning, I turned the light and no yellow Mollie.  I think she had been pooky and without getting gross here, I bet you can guess where she went.  Hmmm, is this what they mean by survival of the fittest?   So I'm down to three fish.....and I'm thinking when the tank is fully cycled (has to do with having the proper bacteria in there, etc.) I'm going to give these two Mollies and my Tetra to Oliver.  And me?  I'm going with good old Fancy Goldfish.  I just love the ones in my outside pond and they're doing SUPER!  Not namby pambies like these Tropical fish.

Update on Ray:  Well, he's certainly feeling much better.  Back to normal, actually.  However, we got a phone call on Thursday from the Hematology & Oncology Center in Gainesville.  Ray's iron levels are off the charts.  Normal range is 10-290 and his is 628.  Yeah, double.  So Miss Martha, the Nurse Practitioner in Chiefland, called Gainesville for Ray to be seen.  We're going this Friday at 1:00.  I guess they're thinking it could be Hemachromatosis......overload of iron.  Some of you might recall that my mother had that, unbeknowst to us, and ultimately it damaged her liver and caused her death. I'd done a blog entry about this last year.  After we discovered she had it and too late for her, I had to go and have DNA genetic testing.  Thank goodness "I" do not have it.  It's genetic and since I don't have it, it wasn't passed on to my children. 

 If caught in time, it involves going quite often at first to a phlebotomist to get rid of the blood.  Just like giving blood.  Once the levels are down, then you do this a few times a year.  We're not sure this is the cause for Ray's exceptionally high iron levels, but it could be.  And that's why we're meeting with the dr. in Gainesville for a history, more blood work, etc.  To be continued..............

Paris Update:  Yes, I'm supposed to be in France right now.  Actually, in Brittany and then we were going to Paris for a week on Tuesday.  But as you know, due to the episode with Ray's health, we had to cancel.  Am I feeling disappointed and sad?  Hmmm, a little.  But not a whole lot, because.........I was very busy this past week rescheduling our trip for the fall.  All the plans have been made, everything is booked and confirmed.

And we had a change of heart.  Rather than going to Normandy, Brittany and then on to Paris for a week.......we decided to do something different.  Oh yes.......it's still France, my one great love.

So join me here next time and I'll tell you all about it............