Pandemic and Covid-19
That seems to have all the headlines absolutely everywhere right now. Is it warranted? Hard to say. So far, we've had three confirmed cases in Wyoming, but undoubtedly, there will be more.
The biggest impact, of course (as you can see on Facebook in all the memes) is the toilet paper shortage created by everyone "prepping" - with toilet paper! I did take a look this week when I did my shopping and sure enough, no toilet paper to be found! Good grief.
Thankfully, I already prefer to use "toilet cloths" for pee and only use paper for poop. However, I'd gotten lazy and like to also use it for a runny nose, so, I'm back to the handkerchiefs for that - and trying to train everyone in the house as well. If I'm successful, we still have a month's worth of toilet paper.
More importantly though, the US now has a travel ban in place. With my son supposed to be here in two months (as of today), I'm just hoping he will be allowed to fly. Fingers well-and-truly crossed!
With the toilet paper stuff, I realized I needed to do a bit more prepping of my own, so yesterday was spent processing a bunch of rice and beans (sometimes together, sometimes separately) in my canner. As beans/meat take nearly 6 hours to process in a waterbath at my altitude, I got two batches done yesterday - and some rice pudding. I have a couple of jars which didn't seal, so we'll see how these things turned out later.
Inspections and Housing
They finally were done. All that work just for someone to go through for five minutes and say "yep" or whatever. Honestly, this inspection is more of a building/facilities inspection. They make sure the smoke detectors are working and that none of the drains are clogged, things like that. BUT, we are expected to keep tidy and clean, so it's on us too. Done for another year. (We can go back to being slobs... only partly kidding. I'm no housekeeper!)
We're also watching the economy closely. Pandemic aside, with the oil prices dropping through the floor right now - and a lot of our local economy is based on the oil fields, it's thought that housing prices will also drop - maybe in time for our loan? Maybe not...
The housing market is looking somewhat stagnant at the moment, but who knows... All we need is that one right property to go onto the market at a price we can handle, and then we'll be all set!
Writing
It has been another slow writing week, because of the inspections and checking on the chicks and brainstorming...
I was given some new binders this week as well, so I spent a bit of time yesterday simply reorganizing everything so that I can find things more easily. Additionally, I spent a little bit of time going through my A'mara encyclopedia making sure everything was up-to-date, especially in regards to history and when certain things happen. This turned out to be fortuitous as you'll see below.
Someone commented (both here and on Twitter) how it's very appropriate that I'm dealing with Black Death - the Plague - in my current book Freyja's Fire and that I should write about the Covid-19 pandemic. So, the past two days, I've been working on preparation for a book about a manufactured plague called Decima. (You'll find out soon enough why it's called that.) I've now got my characters ready (I had to do a bunch of genealogy work yesterday for this) and my plot plotted... It's ready to write - should take a month if I work at it.
(This was where my earlier updating work paid off - I needed a time where I could throw in a suspicious pandemic. As I looked at my history timeline, I knew exactly when it happened and who was the Empress who made everything worse... oh man, she is bad news! But... Spoilers!)
However...
I don't expect this one to be done in time to not have a gap... so, I am also working on Neví 6 which (I only realized last night) has to be split (again)... I keep trying to do too much in one story. So, it's going to be based in Towani (Almara) where Vanti has been struggling in her abusive marriage (that we had some glimpses into in Name of the Neví) as well as seeing Janika who is still pining for Coomar. But will she be brave enough to tell him how he feels when he's called back?
Today, I will do the split and finish plotting that one and get back to writing, weaving in more from the local Neví as well...
I'd love to hit 5k words today, maybe 2.5k per each of the two books. A writer friend of mine had a 20k DAY last week! That would be amazing!
Requisite Chicken Pictures
The chicks are growing quickly. They all have feathered wings now.
Here, the full flock sits on my youngest. We did lose the silkie, but the others are all doing well.
I swear this cochin is nearly twice the size she was when we got her only a week ago.
Our new warming plate came for them this week. This is a replacement for the huge heat lamp bulbs that are expensive to replace and can shatter when something (like ducklings) splashes water at them! (Yes, I've had it happen.)
I will share more about this warming plate later.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a great week!
Photos taken in March 2020 with my Nikon D7200.
Past issues...
Feb 2, 2020 - Flu Sucks!
Feb 9, 2020 - Planning 2020
Feb 16, 2020 - Skating and Eating and Writing, Oh My!
Feb 23, 2020 - Chicken Scratchings and Graphics
Mar 1, 2020 - Inspections R Us
Mar 8, 2020 - New Chicks
Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
(Buy my work at RedBubble, TeePublic, and DeviantArt.)
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter
