Tiniest Spider & Changing Leaves

I was sitting in my chair going through yet another proofreading when I see this little bright thing fall onto the top of the left lens of my glasses. The cat is on the back of the chair behind my head and neck, kind of catnapping, so I knew it was nothing of his doing. There is definitely something on the lens so I take off my glasses and look, not know what to expect.  What do I find? An almost microscopic size very pale golden spider- the teeniest, tiniest spider I have ever seen. I am not a fan of spiders but I managed to refrain from freaking out about even this miniscule spider. I stood up, carried my glasses into the kitchen and shook it off into the sink. Not sure where it went, but at least it wasn't on me or anything connected to me any longer!!

My minutes spent out in nature today resulted in this observation- it is July 25th and I can see a number of trees that have leaves changing color already! Isn't this a little early? Two look as if it's October already! Kind of disconcerting.

Was up late last night doing further organization of the holiday stories and realized I have 25 stories that will fill four volumes of about 240-250 pages apiece.  Then again, this is 16 years of writing Christmas stories...this is going to take an incredible amount of work to prepare, so, I'd better work through this one last proofreading and edit of The Archetypes-First Generation and be done with it because, quite frankly, I am more than ready to wrap this one up after seven readings and numerous edits and rewrites of various sections to smooth it all out more.  Because self-published authors don't get advances from big publishers this is basically all a labor of love that may reap very little if any reward other than the fact that I got off my ass and just did it because it was what I wanted to do- there's some satisfaction in working hard and getting a finished product you are happy with, even if it only makes you happy. (My husband is not supportive in the least, but Kelly is very supportive because she also writes and knows how much a writer invests in anything they produce, so that's a good thing. My closest friends are also supportive and that helps make a difference at the end of a long discouraging day.)

The fox woke me this morning, barking in the driveway at 4:15AM. I could not get back to sleep so this has been a long day, almost seventeen hours awake. Starting to drag...but never an early night around here for me.

Back to the FINAL proofreading of Archetypes- 46 pages to go.

Was a perfect beach day- hope some of you who live close to the ocean, a lake, a pond, a swimming hole- whatever- managed to have some fun in the sun today!