How I survived missing SURVIVOR!!!!

I have spent days editing...finished UNEXCUSED  today and it's ready to ship off to NYC.  Woohoo!!!  I'm finished.  And the cover is ready for my newest middle grade LEGEND OF ARTERBURN LAKE. 


Anyway, one of our biggest vices, love of life, or passion is SURVIVOR.  Life stands still for my husband and me when it's on.  No phone calls are accepted, no visitors, and we never leave on Wednesday evenings.  My hubby has been wanting to upgrade to HD tv for life.  So yesterday, while my eyes were glued to the screen and my butt was stuck in the chair he called Dish TV to discuss the upgrade.  He was on the phone for almost an hour pacing in and out of the office while I typed.  At one point I called out to him, "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this until SURVIVOR  is over." 


We are the most clever people in the world.  We always record SURVIVOR so we can watch it after dinner and baths are complete.  We snuggle into bed with some sort of SURVIVOR junk food and savor every episode.  Last night was no exception.  We had dinner and a bath, then slipped between the sheets and turned on the TV to our recordings and oh no...!!!  Dish network was making some changes and our recording didn't happen.  We were going to miss SURVIVOR!!!  I repeat....miss SURVIVOR!!!  My world just came to an end.  I was so angry...have any of you witnessed an angry author?  My husband has, it ain't a pretty sight.


He felt so bad that he had called on a SURVIVOR  day to make an adjustment to our television.  I had to forgive him.  I mean really, would it stand up in a divorce court?  Then my wonderful hubby found out we could watch last night's episode on my computer.  Yeah!!!  No....the service is too slow, so we'd watch two minutes, then wait for it to buffer for two minutes, then watch two minutes, then buffer for two minutes.  We got into the rhythm of it.  We were able to discuss the scenes between viewing it.  Then came the commercials.  They buffer differently and we had 10 minutes of commercials, each time they came on, but hey, just over two hours and we had watched the best episode of the season.


Husbands are wonderful creatures.  Without him I would've missed SURVIVOR.   We'll not discuss the reason  I lost it to begin with.

I want to be a writer why?

My eyes are burning, my legs are numb and my dogs are mad at me.  I've been sitting at my desk since Monday afternoon, editing.  I love the writing but oh my the editing.  And, why am I have such difficulty with it this time?  It's not my fault.  It's Detective Karst's fault.  It's his job to read through and check my police protocol and to double check his dialog. 


For those of you who don't know.  My sleuth in my books is a real live detective.  He's been a great character and loads of fun to take on tour.  When we have a debate about plots, I always win unless it concerns the police stuff.  I mean really, does it truly matter that I didn't have probable cause to arrest the guy I arrested in my new book?  What does he mean I can't put the guy in jail even for one night.  Sheesh!  I had to take my character out of jail, find a motel room for him, and rewrite several scenes where his daughter is concerned about her dad being locked up when he's not really locked up. 


I keep telling him someday I'm going to write him in as a villian...or on the days he really gives me a bad time I remind him, I've nearly poisoned him, I've shot him twice, he's torn his arm open jumping through a glass door to save a fellow female officer, and I sent him into a burning house with his arm in a sling to save three women, so maybe one of these times he won't make it out of the book alive...but then he'd proably just come back as a ghost.  I think he's here to stay. 


We've made it through 8 books in the Elusive Clue series together and then I wrote him into my middle grade book SECRET OF DRAGONFLY ISLAND without telling him....still not sure if he's read that one!! 


Anyway,  I quit for the day.  I'm going to eat, watch SURVIVOR and crash.  Tomorrow's another day and hopefully, I can finish the edits and send the manuscript off to New York and celebrate.  I guess even if I don't get it sent off, I'm close enough for celebrating with ice cream tomorrow evening.  I deserve it, I want it, I need it.  

Here's the drill...

Literally,  I have a dentist appointment today.  I chipped a wisdom tooth.  I've won the battle with every dentist I've gone to about removing my wisdom teeth.  How can I write without wisdom?  Today, I'm seeing a new dentist, a woman dentist, someone with smaller hands!  How many of you have had bad dental experiences?  Show of hands please.  See, all of you have a story to tell.  I used to love going to the dentist, no I wasn't crazy, I just had a really, really good dentist when I was a kid growing up in Omaha, NE.


Since I moved away, almost forty years ago...ouch...that's a long time.  I've been dentist hopping.  I won't go into the gruesome, frightening details, one of you might be planning a trip soon,so no sense in filling your mind with terror.  I remember about ten years ago, after another bad experience, just out of curiosity, I checked for my old dentist in Omaha.  And, to my surprise, he was still practicing.  I made an appointment to see him.  I drove 300 miles to see him.  He was great, a little old, well, maybe a lot old, but he still had that magical touch.  I left his office beaming.  That is, until his receptionist told me, that was his last week. He was retiring.


I'm prepared this time.  I went in a month ago to meet the dentist and share with her my oddities concerning dental work.  I liked her, I think we will work well together.  See I sound optimistic and upbeat about this don't I?  Wanna know my secret?  How can I make light of my appointment in just over four hours?


It's my husband.  He's a hypnotherapist.  He hypnotizes people to help them with smoking, weight loss, fears...Did you catch that fear part?  He hypnotized me yesterday afternoon to prepare me for today's appointment.  He took me to a wonderful place, a relaxing place.  He filled my mind with calming thoughts.  I was floating on his every word.  Then he sneakily tossed in a line or two about speeding up my metabolism.  Too many chocolate chip cookies and too much sitting still to write and he has to listen to me complain I'm no longer a perfect size 5 like when he married me, twenty-two years ago.


That's great, I love all the help he can give me.  But, do you know what happens when your metabolism speeds up?  Remember, my bathroom story from yesterday?  Yep, your body functions faster and you have to keep running to the bathroom.  Now, compound that with my fear of the dentist and I'm going to need a catheter to stay in that chair today.


Four hours and four minutes to go...I'll let you know what happens.


March 28th, 12:50


I'm back.  The hypnosis worked.  I was a little apprehensive around the house this morning waiting to leave.  But he took me through walking into the dental office right up through the finish of the procedure during hypnosis.  I was nervous when we stopped in front of the office and I stepped out of the car.  But, the moment I stepped foot inside, all anxiety stopped and I couldn't believe how relaxed I felt.


Dr. Rachel was perfect.  She has a more gentle touch than my childhood dentist.  She broke the news to me that I didn't need an injection and I didn't need the drill after all.  She used a small dental tool to excavate the tooth and filled it.  No pain, actually no discomfort at all.  The worst thing that happened was I had a little water splashed on my face during the cleaning.   Hooray!!!  It's over.  I plan to use her for all my future dental work.  But I still had to leave the chair to pee!

It was a dark and foggy day:

Well this is it.  My blog.  So what do I do with it?  Who's going to read it?  How will anyone find me?  Hello....I'm here.....anyone out there?


Today is dark, gloomy, cold and drizzly, the perfect day to stay indoors and write. Right?  Wrong.  I live on an old homesteaded farm in the middle of nowhere USA.  It's a great place to be alone with your thoughts to write.  But, my studio is the old bunkhouse 100 ft. from the main house and although 100 ft doesn't sound like a big deal can you leave a warm cozy house, where you're tucked into your cozy bathrobe, sipping hot chocolate and don a winter coat, slide across the icy deck, maneuver your way down the even more icy steps to the crunchy grass, then slip and slide your way to the studio door only to realize you left the keys at the main house?  Ask me how many times I've done that?  Okay, second trip, and I do mean trip, up the stairs and onto the deck, ice-skating across it to the door to retrieve my keys.


Get the picture?  So then after the perilous journey back to my studio, ( I can remember several days like this),  I take off my coat, gloves, and hat, then slip into my extra pair of slippers, light a candle and some incense, stand in front of the fireplace to take the chill off and then....the urge to go to the bathroom hits and guess what?  100+ year old bunkhouses have no plumbing.  No plumbing means no bathroom.  Can I hold it?  Maybe.  Can I write while holding it?  Nope.  So it's off with the slippers, on with the coat, blow out the candle, stop the incense, make my way....wind blowing...back to the main house where I surrender the idea of writing to baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies and watching movies.


I've wised up.  I never even attempted the journey today.  Chocolate chip cookies coming up.