A Personal Record?

Thank you to everybody who posted blog comments or sent e-mails or Facebook messages hoping Terry and I were feeling better. The headache is gone for me and I’m doing much better. Terry is still sore from her procedure and will be for a while, but every day is a new day and one step closer to better health for both of us.

Besides being uncomfortable from her visit to Mayo, Terry is sore and bruised from having to climb inside and out of the big Glimakra loom she is trying to get set up for her current weaving project.

This is the loom that she made several rugs on a couple of years ago, but since then she has changed the setup to what’s called a counterbalance, and this is the first big project on it since then. Getting everything adjusted properly has been a major challenge for her.

She had to route 580 different threads through a series of string heddles and a metal reed and then adjust the tie-ups for six different foot pedals to move several components in the loom. That’s proving to be a bit of a balance nightmare the first time around.

One of the side effects of chemo and aging is that Terry’s skin is very fragile, and she bruises easily. In fact, her legs and thighs are so bruised from crawling around inside of the loom that we joked that when she went to Mayo on Thursday, the doctors might take one look at her and call Security and have me arrested as a wife beater. But she assures me it will all be worth it once she finally gets things adjusted and can start the actual weaving part of the project.

Of course, weaving is not the only talent Terry has, as we all know. The other day she made a batch of delicious blueberry muffins. I would show you more of them, but some of them disappeared during breakfast the last couple of days.

Last night she made up a batch of her delicious shrimp and grits, with crumbled bacon on top. Every time I think Terry has cooked the finest meal I’ll ever have in my life, she turns around and does something even better. I’m absolutely in awe of everything this wonderful woman can do, even after 23 years together.

As for me, I did 11,066 words in my new John Lee Quarrels book yesterday, which I believe may be my personal record for the number of words in one day. Of course, I wasn’t typing them, I was narrating them into my Sony digital recorder, then transcribing them with Dragon. I will still have to go in and make corrections, but it was a darned good writing day nevertheless.

This puts me at over 61,000 words, about 75% of the way. I never know exactly how many words a book is going to be, but most of the books in this series average about 80,000 words or a little more. Not bad, considering I started on August 10^th.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. Thanks to Susan and Ron Wilson for today’s chuckle.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is a four-book set of audiobooks from my pal Carol Ann Newsome’s popular Dog Park mystery series. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing, please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – No, I will not take the road less traveled. I live in the South. Have you seen Deliverance?