First Round of Edits

Well, I finally made it through my first round of edits.  I think I might have more work to do.  We’ll see what my friend thinks next month when we get together to go over it, but I believe I have some beefing up to do.  I’m not sure what parts of the story or what exactly to add, but hopefully she will have some ideas.  Maybe just spots where the story obviously trips over a metaphorical rock that, being too close to the story, I have missed. I still think I want to end it in the same place though. Taking the story on further will mean moving it into probably double the length.  Because once it heads in the direction it is going, it would need to keep going, I feel, through the complete next stage of her life.

This is also why editing goes slowly…Jack helping.

To be frank, going double the length wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen…right now, I’ve estimated that my book is less than 200 pages long.  That seems like a bit of a let down after all the work that has gone into it. Certainly beefing up other parts of the story will add pages too though.

I’m rambling just a little, I think.  haha.  It’s 6:30am on a Saturday (!!) and my cats woke me up, looking to be fed.  In their defense, the pain in my lower back made their task far easier to accomplish.

As it has turned out, I haven’t blogged much this summer at all.  I’ve been preoccupied with knee pain. It hurts so much that I look like someone twenty years older trying to do stairs or sit down and stand back up again. If I don’t do something, I’m looking at a life of doing nothing but sitting and I cannot accept that.

Because I can’t really exercise, I’ve tried to find another way to get control of some of the excess weight that is putting stress on my joints.  I’m having warm sculpting done on my abdomen.  I’m halfway through a series of four visits and it would appear to be having some positive effects ~ when I was weighed at the doctor’s office, I was down ten pounds.  Not nearly enough weight lost yet, but certainly heading in the right direction.

On Facebook, I was seeing advertisements from a local health care facility that promises a more holistic solution to joint pain.  I had gone to a doctor in the spring who just wanted to slap a band-aid on my knees, in the form of cortisone shots. I’ve never been a “slap a band-aid on it” kind of girl (plus I hate needles) so I wanted to find a correction to the problem, not simply a mask for the pain.

So, now I’m preparing to begin my journey of recovery with a combination of chiropractic, physical therapy, and knee braces. Because, let me tell you, my skeleton is a hot mess.  One shoulder sits higher than the other, one hip is higher than the other and my knee caps are up and out from where they are supposed to be.  It’s painful to even look at that particular x-ray.  I’m all self-conscious now, like I resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame.  It’s truly not noticeable, but my head has turned it into this great big flashing neon orange spotlight.

On a more positive note, we had friends in town for a visit as well.  We went to Pounce Cat Cafe in downtown Charleston.  Oooo, let me tell you, if I wasn’t already four cats deep, there are two I would have adopted on the spot.  Look at how cute they are! The one on the right is Charlotte.  She was SO lovey dovey.  My husband and I sat and pet her for a long time. I don’t recall the name of the one on the left.  The shelter brought her there right before we left. So beautiful, though!

We wandered around on the Mt. Pleasant Fishing Pier, hoping to see a dolphin or two.  We didn’t see any, but we did get to watch a guy reel in someone else’s fishing rod from the depths of the Cooper River.  It made us laugh.  Apparently, someone had a bad day fishing and he decided the fishing rod was the problem.  Or perhaps he caught something he couldn’t land (a Bull Shark, perhaps?) and the rod was pulled out of his grasp?

We also made time for one of my favorite activities ~ a ghost tour. We took a tour I’ve done before, but we had a different tour guide, so we literally got a different tour.  Certainly some of the information is the same, but I love it and I can listen to the tour guides talk about Charleston’s ghosts all day long.

And of course, genealogy is still taking up a fair amount of my time. My husband and I took a DNA test with Ancestry.com this summer and got our results back a few weeks ago.  Mine wasn’t really a surprise, with the research that I’ve already done, but my husband’s was interesting.  I’ve always believed he was half German and half Irish.  I suppose my brain remembered what it wanted to from way back when my husband and I were dating. He’s 56% German, which makes perfect sense (his mom was born in Germany), but he’s only 7% Irish.  I found it fascinating that I’m more Irish than he is.

I’ve also been digging into his Dad’s side of the family and finding pictures of his ancestors that have been posted by other people.  I can’t wait to show his family what I’ve found so they can affirm I’m on the right track or tell me I’m crazy.  haha.