2022 Life Logs, Day 66: Woohoo, Finished the First Edit
Date: Monday, March 7, 2022
Weather: Overcast, Windy; High 53, Low 39 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
When you have a boat, polishing the stainless is a never-ending job. When you are writing a book, the editing is never ending until the book is published. But I did finish my first edit of the entire book today. Woohoo! Book One has a Preface, a Prologue, and 17 chapters. And I am so excited that a friend in North Carolina has offered to be a Beta reader. At this point on my team, I have my English teacher editor, Christina, plus a local woman who has her own publishing company, Laura. They have been reading from the beginning. I will add Kevin and Claire and Patsy, the friend in NC. Now I am in the process of combining all of the chapters into one document and am finding that as I am doing that, I am making a few changes. Hopefully that will be done this week and the reading can begin. The Voyage of Windbird, Book One, has entered a new stage. Soon I will begin writing Book Two. Can I possibly write it in one year? Check back in March 2023 for an update on that.
This afternoon Shadow and I went for an ‘interview’ with friends who might volunteer to keep Shadow for me when I travel. The friends are Meghan the “goat lady” and Sheri, Olivia and Terry White’s daughter. When I say the “goat lady” I mean the owner of the goats that are hired out to clear property of poison ivy and other unwanted plants. Meghan’s business is called Get My Goats. Meghan and Sheri have a dog the same age as Shadow, but he is a big black lab, plus they have the goats, and chickens. The ‘interview’ today was to see how the two dogs got along and how Shadow related to the goats and chickens.
They were fenced today, and that part went fine. But Shadow did his pitiful yelping thing with their dog Griffin at first. He does when he meets a dog that he feels is superior to him. Griffin could not be more calm and pleasant, but still Shadow yelped. He finally stopped that and then began his usual jumping on people and running like a crazy dog. He and Griffin ran around outside. Shadow was twice as fast as Griffin, and unfortunately, he continued to run around and jump on people once we went inside. He is always calm here at home unless I have company. Then he is a rascal like he was this afternoon. After an hour, I suggested I bring him back and drop him off one day to see how he does when I am not there. Hopefully he will be better behaved in my absence. So, the jury is out as to whether this will work as a place for Shadow to stay when I travel. I would love for it to work out. We shall see.
Later in the afternoon, I went to see Jonah’s artwork at the middle school art show. The art teacher has every student do a pencil portrait in black and white and one with color added, a pottery ‘ugly’ mug, a piece of cut folded paper art, and a colorful poster. It is always interesting to see the artwork of Falmouth’s seventh and eighth graders. My favorite thing about Jonah’s art is his very distinctive JBG signature And I loved his ugly mug.
It was really ugly! 
All of Jonah’s art was impressive, but I really liked his black and white pencil portrait.
