Sick Day

I'm recuperating at home right now after having emergency surgery over the weekend. I'm fine, but will be away from my day job for several weeks. I thought about how this will give me the opportunity to see what retirement will be like in the future.

After only three days home from the hospital, I have found that if my husband is home with me in retirement, which he likely will be since he's a few years older, I may have to move to my own house. LOL

Currently, he works on weekends and is home during the week. I never thought about this being a problem until this happened. Let me preface this by saying that I love him and he is a wonderful husband, but his and my priorities are a little different. Even though my movements are somewhat restrictive, I try not to impose on him because he has a routine worked out as far as household chores. On Tuesday, I did ask him to wash white clothes because I was running low. He promised he would, but instead did a load of his dark clothes. Today is Thursday and the whites still aren't done.

Monday through Friday, he always cooks supper and has it ready when I get home from work. Tonight, he didn't cook supper at all. But, the one thing that aggravated me the most happened tonight. I was online and ordering an accessory for my laptop and he knew I was in the middle of doing this because I told him. What did he do? He decided at that very time that he needed to work on the router. Needless to say, my online order did not go through.

Now that I have all of that off my chest, I can brag on him. He did not complain when I told him late Saturday night that I needed to go to the emergency room. He did not complain as he waited with me in the ER exam room while I was moaning in pain. He did not complain about making the hour drive each day to the hospital to visit me. And, he did not complain about me having to use the chair he uses when sitting at his ham radios, so I can get up easier.

Husbands are wonderful people, but sometimes, we just have to complain about them.

Carol

3/30/12: I have to correct something above. He told me this morning that he did wash some of the whites, which were still in the dryer. Pass the bowl of crow my way, please.

Booksigning success

Yesterday was my first booksigning for my current book, Saved by the Sheriff and I am calling it a big success. I was one of thirty-plus authors that participated in the 2nd Annual Author's Fair at That Book Place in Madison, Indiana.

On the left is me sitting at my table at the beginning of the day. I had free gift bags for everyone that contained a bottle of hand sanitizer, lip balm, a book light, and one of my postcards. At the end of the day, all of the gift bags were gone. I also had bookmarks and cards that many people picked up. In the blue bowl was peppermint candy. I also participated on the panel during an hour long discussion on mystery writing. I'm happy to say that I sold several books and it's my understanding that the authors in attendance sold a total of over 100 copies of their books. That is outstanding.

Sharing the table with me was fellow author and friend, Kayelle McClive, also from Indiana. Kayelle's book, Confederate Moon is tentatively scheduled for a May 2012 release.

Also, in attendance were the Southern Indiana Writers. A great group of wonderful writers that I am honored to call friends. They had their anthologies for sale and greeted everyone that visited their tent.

The owner of the That Book Place, Frank Hall and his family were terrific hosts. They constantly checked with everyone to make sure we had what we needed, including water, food, and sunscreen. Oh, and the food, what a wonderful job they did by having enough snacks and drinks to keep us hydrated and full.

I had such a great time at the Author's Fair. I met lots of wonderful people, saw a few old friends that stopped by to see me and buy a book, and the weather was perfect. As Kayelle said, "It was awesome." I can't wait until next year.

Carol

Author's Fair - Madison, Indiana

I will participating in the 2nd Annual Author's Fair in Madison, Indiana on Saturday, March 17 and I'm so excited about it and will be one of about 34 authors that will be there to sign and sell books. . I will have copies of my book, Saved by the Sheriff for sale and be available to sign them. In addition, I will have a bunch of freebies that I'll be giving away.

The local newspaper featured the Author's Fair in their recent edition, The Madison Courier. It was very exciting to see my book cover in the photo that accompanied the article and my bio was included, too.

So, if you in the Madison, Indiana area on Saturday, please stop by and say hi.

Carol

Mea Culpa

For those of you that subscribe here to update notices, probably received a notice about a post for a recipe for Mini Chocolate Chip Muffins. Well, I goofed and posted the recipe here instead of on my food blog, Carol's Food Bites. When I realized the mistake, I immediately moved the recipe over to that blog. Sorry for the confusion, but if you want to see the recipe, just hop on over there and take a look.

To update on me, I have been very busy getting ready for the first signing for my book, Saved by the Sheriff. It will be March 17 at That Book Place's Second Annual Author Fair in Madison, Indiana. My printer has been working overtime printing materials to give away at the signing. I still have a few things to get together and then I believe I'll be ready. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone, so if you are in the neighborhood of Madison, please stop by and say hi to me.

Carol

Crazy Week

The past week has been crazy for me. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were really slow days at work for me since it was the end of the month. Wednesday night, we had some severe weather come through, but nothing like what we were in store for later on Friday.

Thursday was a wonderful day, sunny and warm. It sure looked like spring had arrived. My husband and I didn't get a chance to go out to dinner for Valentine's Day, so we took that opportunity on Thursday night by going to a Mexican restaurant and we had some marvelous food.

Friday ended up being a pretty bad day around southern Indiana as tornadoes swept through the area. Between two and three o'clock, we were under the first of, I believe, three tornado warnings. For those of you that have read me for a while, know I am terrified of wind storms. This time, I wasn't so much. I'm also an amateur radio operator and weather spotter, so I took my post in front of our building to watch the clouds. As long as it wasn't pouring down rain, I stood my ground watching for the funnel cloud that had been
reported.

About fifteen minutes later, I saw it over the roof of the church across the street. The photo on the right is the wall cloud from which the funnel cloud came out of a few minutes later. My office doesn't have a basement, but we had already discussed where we would go for shelter, which was an interior hallway, and that's where we all headed.

We were lucky, it didn't touch down, but I did hear it pass over the office. Pretty scary stuff. Unfortunately, the people of Henryville, Indiana and east of them were not so lucky with most of the town destroyed. My heart goes out to them.

They say the weather in the Ohio Valley can change in an instant. Well, it has again because right now we're under a Winter Weather Advisory and have about an inch of snow on the ground. Driving to work in the morning is going to be an interesting trip.

Carol