Today’s find? A cucumber. Bear in mind, we’ve been closed for two days.
Ew.
library
What to do… Goalsetting and money making
Aside for needing to just update more (prepare to hear more complaints about my kid and the general joys of being a working mother who scrapes for time to be creative), I have been thinking about how to make this a bit more lucrative. I have sold a couple more books and more people have been coming to my site, but at the same time I am becoming more aware of how I spend my time.
In order to make "extra" money, I’ve been taking as much overtime at work as I can get. And it doesn’t seem to matter because no matter how much "extra" money I get, I either break even or am slightly less behind than before. My kid is literally BEGGING me for my attention and acting up because I’m not around. I’m always working. I’m working so much that on my days off I am so freaking tired, I can’t play with her.
Though I love my mother to Reece’s Pieces, that was one mistake she made with me. As a single mom, she worked two jobs to make sure I had not only everything I needed but extra: Dance lessons, Saturday enrichment classes, instrument lessons… I was a very busy child. In addition, on her days off she had to take care of the yard and house. We didn’t pay for landscapers; she mowed our HUGE lawn and tended all our bushes herself. And cleaned. Didn’t cook, though. Ma can’t cook for shit. XD All this made it so at the end of the day, she was too tired even for a game of Chinese Checkers.
Since I don’t want to make that mistake, I will be taking less OT in the future. However, there is still a mortgage to be paid and my kid will always be better served if kept warm and fed whether I’m around or not. :p And since both me and the husband work full time, it couldn’t hurt if I explored some other avenues of income. That short story that got rejected? Rather than post it for free, I’ll make it available on Kindle on the cheap. As soon as I figure out how the formatting works. @_@ Everything that’s on my site now for free will remain as such but in the future, my short stories will go up on Kindle with previews on the site. As much as I want to be the cool author chick who gives her awesome stories away for free for all you lovely people to enjoy to your hearts content but, Lenni needs to keep her house. And eat. Food is great! 😀 Oh!! And clothes! Trust me, it’s to everyone’s benefit that I walk around with clothing on. XD
To that end, I’m back to my 5 page a day goal. And my journal doesn’t count. Neither does the blog. Five pages a day of pure creative genius. I’ll get there. 😉
Alan Moore – Save our libraries!!
WOOHOO!!
I am FINALLY well enough to be upright and working again without the aid of Dayquil. I didn’t like the way Dayquil made me feel so I just stayed home one more day (yesterday) and slept till I felt better. The antibiotics make me a little dizzy but since I don’t drive, I can deal with that.
This also means I have a weeks worth of writing to catch up on. I did try to write while I was sick only to go cross-eyed and feel like I was going to vomit. And that’s only if my hand would stop shaking long enough to put pen to paper in the first place. 9_9 But there’s nothing stopping me now and I owe you all an update!
Library story of the day: There was a wayward zombie DVD up at the circulation desk that obviously didn’t belong to us and nobody could tell who it was reserved for. So naturally, they assume it belonged to me. It didn’t. But whatever reputation I seem to have at my job, I like it. XD
That’s all I have for today, kids. Stay well!
Well, Hi there 2011!!
And now begins the three week period of accidentally writing 2010 on everything. :p
I’ve started out this year strong with my food diary and several stories to work on. 🙂 I’m also trying to be less of a lurker in the 50 or so blogs I read. Granted, if I say nothing I don’t sound like an ass but I suppose on occasion, it’s ok to sound like an ass. ^_^ So be prepared to see my link popping up on your pages, kids.
Also, I’ll be adding my erotica section soon. The only thing holding it back is the typing of the story I’ve written so far. I also have an update for Go Away Girls pending and I’m DYIN to work on this library themed dystopian fantasy that’s been kicking around in my head. But let us get the unfinished projects finished first, shall we?
And I’ll be posting more nonsensical crap for you all to enjoy. Can’t forget about that. :p I enjoy nonsensical crap. ^_^
Super Shortie Saturday!
Been awhile, eh? Well, here we go! >D This is the intro to a silly little story I’m writing called "Winter Boot." It was inspired by a statue of a frog riding a hare that my neighbor gave me as a new baby/housewarming gift. No, I don’t quite know what she was thinking.
It was warm the day my father died. It’s been winter ever since.
I knew Daddy had magic. He chased away the monsters under my bed, flipped pancakes, and reached high shelves to get treats for me. But I didn’t think he held back the snow.
Dun, dun DUUUUUNNNNN!!!
Yes, I have the mentality of a child. What the hell of it? XD
And another friendly note from your favorite librarian (and of course that’s me): Do not snidely say how helpful I was when I can’t pull a copy of the latest best seller out of my ass and cannot mathematically predict when you will get your copy. That’s the wonder of sharing books with every person in your town, somebody else might wanna read it, too.
/rant
Nice ego stroking! :)
If you see something in your local library that you enjoy? Tell. Your. Librarian. I really can’t stress that enough.
Today I had a very nice man ask me how many graphic novels he could check out and my answer was simply "As many as you can carry." XD He’d come from several towns away because he saw online that our collection was so good. I take a bit of personal credit for this because it was my idea to have a graphic novel collection in adult in the first place.
But seriously, circulation statistics are not the only way we gauge if a collection is working or not. Tell the staff when you love something so they can do it more. And so they can smile, because we get yelled at a lot, too.
In other news, the nice men came to knock down the top of our house today. I haven’t seen how far they’ve gotten yet. 0.0
My writing experiment is going well so far. I’ve got one story mere lines from completion, one 3/4 of the way done, and one I’m just beginning. The genres are all over the place so nothing ever gets boring! 😀
And of course, I get a ton if ideas for my two main novels as I work on this experiment. Just lovely. But my muse has always been an attention whore. He likes to mess with my head.
Watch, he’ll give me 2 weeks of writer’s block for that.
Library Tip Of The Day! :D
If a book is so disgusting you cringe to touch it to put it in a bag? Don’t bother to donate it to a library. Please. Your friendly neighborhood librarian is tired of getting rashes from old, dirty, moldy books. I know you feel bad throwing them away, I understand that feeling, but if you can barely touch it, how is anybody else supposed to read it?
And I’m tired of getting rashes from these things. It’s just gross.
Signed,
Lenni the Librarian.
I love, love, LOVE my job! Especially on days where I am approached by young patrons (not so young but younger than me) whose jaws just hit the floor when they see the graphic novel collection I’ve built and say “You’ve got the coolest job in the world!”
Yes. Yes, I do.
Ahh, Wednesday
Wednesdays are my usual late nights where I work at the library from 1-9pm, leaving the mornings to get various errands done or simply gird my loins for the long night. This week was a trip to the pediatrician to have the doc take a look at my coughing, runny nosed kid. We get to the office and don’t have to wait long, which is good because me and Penny have a similar attention span only a different taste in toys, and all the doctor has to do is LOOK at her and she starts screaming her head off. 0.0
My monkeygirl was warned ahead of time that there would be no shots this visit, that since she was sick, we were going to the doctor to make her better. She understood and was glad she was going. But once he was in front of her, we had to hold her down just so he could check her throat. You’d think we were torturing her the way she screamed!
On the upside? No strep throat.
The doctor sent me home with instructions to get her Dimatapp which said expressly on the label not to give to any kid under 6. I decided not to take the chance, given the HUGE Tylenol recall, and opted for a medicine for kids 2 and up. After the Tylenol thing, I just don’t trust over the counter medications for my kid. Me? I’m old. I can take the punishment. There’s still hope for my monkeygirl, so I’m not taking the chance.
I’ve been writing pretty steadily and reading here and there. I’m almost done with "American Woman in the Chinese Hat" which is sad but very good. I also finished a short story; "Chasing His Own Tale" by Marc Vun Kannon. It’s a really cute story which I will review in full tomorrow (since I don’t have it in front of me now). I met him on Twitter. W00t to social networking!! 😀 It’d be cool if he read my stuff, too, but I’m not gonna hassle him. No sense being a whiner about it, ya know?
These days, I’ve been working alternately on "Go Away Girls" and "Greenhouse." See that hotlink there? First chapter of "Girls" went up on Sunday. Go. Read. Discuss. Then eat a cookie. 🙂