Stumbling From May To June

We're already a couple of days in to June.  Can you believe it? Where has this year gone?

 

Thankfully, we haven't yet seen any extremely hot weather, though the weather has remained warm.  I mean, it is sticking around the high end of my tolerance for heat, but hasn't yet gotten beyond that point.  It's been around 20C in the day, and around 11C at night (that's somewhere around 70F for the daytime temperature, and somewhere around 54F for the nighttime temperature).  I've got no complaints about the nighttime temperatures, and I'm even OK with the daytime temperatures at the moment, but my preference for cooler weather means I don't want it to get warmer.  This is perfectly fine, thank you very much! If it was up to me, it would stay like this until it's time for the cold Winter weather to return.  What? I can dream... Can't I?

 

Anyway, if I could have done exactly what my body wanted to during the past week, most of the time would have been spent in bed, resting.  The trouble is, when you spend an extended period of time – such a    s a couple of weeks, for example - neglecting any task that isn’t completely essential, you eventually find yourself needing to tackle many of those tasks, with the addition of any that crop up while you’re trying to catch up.  And that’s the position I found myself in, so that I spent the week alternating between trying to rest enough to at least recover enough spoons to function, and trying to actually do all the things.  Resting enough to regain a few extra spoons would have been even better, but I’m just grateful I was able to manage to rest enough to get enough spoons to have the energy to just about cope with doing what I did.  I feel like I've been stuck in survival mode to make it all happen, which isn't ideal, but it got things done.  Sometimes that has to be good enough, and this was one of those times.

 

So, despite everything, last weekend was mainly devoted to catching up on housework and blog posts and such, with a couple of phone calls and Zoom calls thrown in, and rests where and when I could.  I might have skipped the Zoom calls, but they were my book clubs, one of which I actually facilitate myself, so I didn’t want to not be there.  I mean, even the one I facilitate I could have skipped; I could have had someone step in for me and facilitate the ACB Crafters book club in my place if I needed to.  But I wanted to be there, exhausted and in pain though I was.

 

If you're interested: we'll be reading "The Chocolate Bear Burglary" (A Chocaholic Mystery, #2) by JoAnna Carl in June for the ACB Crafters book club, and the June book for the 18th and 19th century book club is "False Colours" by Georgette Heyer.

Then, with the weekend not even completely over, my Mam ended up back in the hospital.

 

Still being beyond exhausted from about two weeks of dealing with both Mam’s dogs on top of our own, I knew there was no way I could deal with both of them coming here again.  But Izi is a relatively calm dog as a rule, so we agreed - with some reluctance, I admit, due to my level of exhaustion - to take her back if someone else would have Cai.  I mean, I feel bad for Izi and Cai having to be separated from each other on top of being pulled away from Mam and their home again, but Cai is a very energetic pup, who becomes very easily overexcited, and having him here again when I’m already so drained from the last time would not have been a good plan.  So Izi came back to stay with us Sunday evening, while Cai went to stay with someone else.  At the time of writing this, Mam is still in hospital, and Izi is still here.

 

Lilie and Logan are accepting the situation, though with some reluctance.  They like Izi, but are clearly not happy about their play date and sleepover lasting so long.  All three dogs are wondering when Izi will be going home, and hoping it will be soon.  They really don't understand.

 

Anyway, since I was hoping not to fall behind on things again, the rest of the week basically continued in a similar manner to how the weekend had gone, with trying to catch up on – and keep up with – things both online and offline, attending a couple of Zoom calls, and resting when possible - which rarely seemed to be.  Only from Sunday evening onward we were doing so while having an extra dog around the house.

 

Despite somehow - and please don't ask me how - being reasonably successful at getting things done, I feel like I've been stumbling through the past couple of weeks in a haze of exhaustion, and would just love a few days where I can just rest and not need to worry about doing anything else.  Unfortunately, things need to be done (and the things I'm doing by choice I feel like I need to do to retain enough of my sanity to be able to deal with the rest) so I don't see that happening any time soon.

*~*

 

In other news...

 

Just like basically everything else in the universe right now (or, so it seems) KDP printing costs are increasing, which means the price of the  paperback versions of my books will need to increase to reflect that if I want to get any royalties from paperback book sales, which - though I'm not publishing with any hopes of becoming rich - I would like to do, as I'm sure you can appreciate.

 

Thankfully, they had a “bulk update” option they were offering on the author dashboard, so I was able to take advantage of that, rather than needing to update the price of around 60 titles individually.  I do wish it hadn’t been necessary though.

 

I had hoped to say something before the update to the prices was completed, and to give you a chance to grab them at the original price before they actually increased in cost, but I forgot to mention it in last week's post, and then they did the update quicker than I expected after I clicked the "bulk update" button (they said it would take a couple of weeks, but I got an email saying it was done within a couple of hours).  At the time of writing this, the changes haven't been reflected on their pages, so they're still at the original prices, but the price may have increased to the new list price before you have a chance to see this and grab them.  Sorry.  If you hurry though, you still might be in time to grab them at the old price...I mean, it couldn't hurt to check, could it? If you want to grab copies, that is.