Best advice in two lines

Advertisement

Deleted

So what do you do when you suddenly lose all your documents everything you have written in the last year and bit gone, completely wiped away?

There are no words adequate enough to capture the anguish, nay the despair, that grips you at the realisation that all your work, all your words have been erased.

Yesterday all my documents all my articles, all my novels all my columns were deleted in error of course, by my husband whose IT knowledge is next to non existent. He thought that by clearing out everything in our iCloud account he was merely deleting data off his phone.

I went to bed half way through an article on the festival for the next edition of The Buzz only to wake up with nothing, nada, zip. At first I thought it was a glitch with my iPad but when the so called glitch didn’t seem to resolve itself after turning the iPad on and off I sought out professional help. Not only was that article gone but everything else was too.

The technical support guys at Apple are fantastic, anyone who has ever had to deal with them will testify to this I am sure. My files are still gone but the Apple tech guys are trying their best to get them back for me. In the meantime I’m trying to remain hopeful. Not an easy thing to do I assure you.

How a pregnancy test can save a mans life

I read the most amazing thing on Facebook today, it was a post that someone else had shared, to alert people, especially men to testicular cancer. After reading the post I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps all men should take a pregnancy test from time to time.

Editing! Why is it such a gruelling task?

I have spent most of today trying to edit my novel.

Boy this is such a gruesome task. For some reason I just can’t seem to disconnect from the story and just focus on the editing.

Even when I try breaking it up into chunks and concentrate on say one chapter, or one page or even one sentence, I just can’t bring myself to alter any of the words.

I find myself reshuffling sentences, or adding full stops, commas, capital letters. But changing the words, I just can’t. These are my words.My story. In my mind and in my imagination, this is how it has all played out.

To change the words would be like trying to change the story. Yet I know it must be done. I will seriously need to enlist the help of a professional editor, I can’t see any other way around this.

Would appreciate any advice or thoughts or tips on what others writers do. How do you tackle the daunting task of editing? Surely I can’t be the only one that struggles with this? And if I am, what am I doing wrong?

Creepy crawlies

I have a phobia if spiders and bugs and creepy crawlies in general and unfortunately I have passed on this fear to my children. Yesterday the boys spotted a massive cockroach stuck in the air vent in their bedroom.

The logical thing to do would be to spray the cockroach with insecticide but we were so worried that it might drop on to the floor and then get lost in the bedroom that we just closed the door and left it there.

The boys slept on the couch, crazy I know but the alternative seemed scarier. This morning my brave husband went into the bedroom armed with a can of mortein and managed to kill the cockroach, so tonight the boys are back in their rooms.

Next mission the two daddy long legs spiders that have taken up residence in the toilet..

Painting 101

How hard could it possibly be to paint treated pine? Not hard at all one would think right? Well that’s wrong, depending on the cut of the timber painting can prove to be a very challenging experience!!

We are in the process of having our deck and pergola constructed, fortunately an old family friend who has recently started up his own home improvement company has undertaken this long time coming project for us and he has been really wonderful going through the whole process with us and trying his best to cater to all of our wishes.

We have had to make quite a few compromises I must say. The pitch roof I once wanted is now flat. The decking is treated pine not merbau. The rails are not quite as I imagined and the screen that I want running down the one side of the house will have to wait until next year when we can save up a bit more money. As a whole the deck is coming along really nicely, and it’s big, and new and within our budget, and we have been assured that it will be ready for Christmas when the whole family is coming for lunch so really we couldn’t be happier.

The only problem is we have hit a glitch with the painting. According to some people the wood needs to be primed before it can be painted, but according to our friend and deck builder, it does not. So far we have painted on three coats and the results are shocking. The wood appears to be sucking in the paint. Tonight my husband who is not a handy man by any stretch of the word, is out there after work (before even having his dinner) painting away. Has it made any difference? I don’t think so, but he does.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Clueless

Today my husband went in for a gastroscopy it was a relatively painless procedure, and lasted only 10 or so minutes. Ofcourse it took a lot longer for the anaesthetic to wear off. Oddly the last gastroscopy that he had a couple of years ago had shown a hiatus hernia which my mother in law also has, this time the gastroscopy however revealed no hiatus hernia, is it possible for it to just go away?

I’m no doctor so I guess we will have to wait until we see our GP next week and see what he has to say. The post procedure care instructions cautioned against driving a vehicle or operating heavy machinery or signing any legal documents. It makes sense he was a little groggy when he came out and not at all steady on his feet. Hopefully nothing a good nights sleep won’t fix.

Unfortunately my husband is not one to take warnings seriously and even though technically the IPad isn’t heavy machinery, for a computer novice like my husband (and myself I might add) it may just as well be. Somehow he has managed to lock himself out of his Facebook and the games he so loves to play.

So tonight has not been much fun as we cluelessly fumble around trying to rectify the problem, it is a case of the blind leading the blind.