Bonfire night has just passed and it's the second one where bear wasn't home to set off fireworks. It was such a big deal in our family. We didn't get a lot of fireworks, and we certainly didn't spend a lot on them, but there was that moment when the men in our family - father, DH and then, when he was old enough, bear, let off the fireworks in our tiny front garden. We'd been doing this since he was tiny, and now we're not. I'm still glad that he's away at university and living his life, and I wouldn't change a thing. I'm just taking a moment.
I'm still getting caught up in the whole 'preparedness' stuff. I ordered two extremely inexpensive solar powered power banks from Temu over a year ago. Today I finally dug them out. I'd planned to have them for the car, and I think that I should keep to that, to encourage adventures. However I thought that I may as well charge them and, as the weather was so grey and awful, I charged them from the mains.
I have no idea how good they are or how much charge they hold and for how long, but I tested them and they could charge my phone, and I guess every little helps. I had to ask DH to help me find out how to turn the lights on, as I couldn't figure it out for love nor money.
DH pointed out patiently that the instructions were on the box and I just needed to hold the button down. He also pointed out that the symbol for the carabiner on the box, labelled hanger, was actually a picture of a noose.
We both thought it was hilarious. I can't complain too much. I can't imagine doing too much better if I was translating into a second language, but seeing the noose hanging there just made me and DH laugh. I would add, I'm absolutely not leaving them plugged in unless I'm around - I've heard far too many horror stories.
I'm also feeling fairly good about food, as I cooked some Quorn chunks in a jar of lemon chicken sauce, both of which could do with being used up, and I had some with the rice that was getting near its 'use by' date, and I've got a big bowl of that lemon chicken in the fridge for at least two more meals. I adore lemon chicken, but bear and DH aren't so keen, and I tend not to bother too much for myself. For once, though, I went for it, with loads of extra veggies from the prepared stock in my freezer. It's a definite win, which I needed after the writing stuff.
Writing stuff - I want to write new stuff, but I've been bogged down all year sorting out old stuff. Just when I thought that I was getting somewhere, the crazy juice hit again. I wanted to try uploading a book to BookVault, a company that prints paperbacks. I've been looking for somewhere non-Amazon since Draft2Digital got peculiar. They seem plausible, and so I picked out Out of the London Mist and started skimming over the text to make sure it was all in order.
It wasn't. It is utterly not in order. I am ashamed, and someone bought a copy last month and I have no way of finding out who they are and apologising to them. I need to sort out soooo much. I suspect some of the text got scrambled between Three Furies passing the rights back to me and me uploading it again to Amazon.
So as well as converting the blog posts to books, I need to pull the books already on Amazon, double check for typos, especially the older stuff, and amend the notes at the end. Apprenticeship of Ghosts and Cats in the Bible should be fine, though I'll double check, and I'm fairly sure that most of the White Hart stuff is okay, but I'd need to pull them all anyway to add the new contact details now that I've stopped posting on Wordpress.
To be honest, when I realised that I'd need at least two passes to check the text, I nearly threw my laptop out of the window. I'll probaby have a writing blog post with an update next week, when I have a better idea of what's going on.
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