Chocolate Thief

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
― Willie Nelson

When the mouse laughs at the cat, there's a hole nearby.
― Nigerian Proverb

If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice.
— George Gobel

Last week was another one of those weeks where I had a plan. Last weekend was the Labor Day weekend, which meant the kids went back to Tuesday, which meant no more babysitting. I spent the holiday Monday back and forth between my current office and my former office (across the hall) de-junking both spaces and ferreting out stuff to donate to a big thrift store.

I actually loaded up the car Monday night, so I could drive to the thrift store first thing Tuesday morning. Everything went as planned, and on the drive home I started thinking about the bit of work I had left to do in my office – dealing with a couple of left over bins and the stacks of books on the floor.

But when I got home a wave of apple scented air hit me – I had a bag of apples given to me by my neighbor and I needed to deal with them. That took me the rest of the day and cleaning my office was put off until the following day.

I won’t bore you with the details but my office was looking pretty good when I happened to notice that the opened chocolate bar I’d tossed into a bin with a bunch of other stuff to be dealt with later, looked like it had been nibbled on. So I looked in the small bookcase I’d pulled it from, and sure enough I spotted some mouse droppings. Eww!

This was a game changer. My office now needed a thorough cleaning. Which is how I spent my Thursday. In the process, I also discovered that one of the Kinder eggs (chocolate, foil-wrapped eggs that have a plastic bulb with a prize inside, not available in the U.S.) I’d left on my desk about a month ago had been broken into. There were a couple of holes in it, right through the foil wrapper.

Double ewww!

The irony of this is that I used to keep a stash of snacks in the bottom drawer of my desk, but stopped months ago. And those snacks had never been touched. All that was left in that drawer was a jar of Planters Peanuts from well before Christmas, about a 1/4 full. A jar that now had a chewed up lid (although they hadn’t made it through the plastic yet).

The open jar full of Werther’s caramels on my desk was untouched, as was my baggy of dark chocolate squares. Since the caramels were individually wrapped I just closed the air-tight lid, but the baggy I tossed.

I guess the mice only liked the milk chocolate of the Kinder eggs. In fact, when I was moving stuff away from one of the book cases to vacuum, I found the yellow plastic bulb from the center of an egg which had been opened to reveal the toy inside, and a few flecks of foil from the wrapping. Could the mice have really carried an egg off my desk to chew on at their leisure?

I have never had any sign of a mouse in my office before, not even when I habitually stashed snacks in my desk drawer. Of course I used to have a cat and I find it interesting that this has taken place about a month after we had to have him put to sleep.

You can be sure when I replenish my stash of dark chocolate I’ll be putting it in a vacuum sealed jar, like my caramels. As for the Kinder eggs, I’ll still buy them for my granddaughter and I to enjoy when she comes to visit, but I’ll be keeping them in the fridge from now on.

At least until I get a replacement for my cat.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

I totalled about 300 more words last week than the week before, and I’m kind of surprised I managed that, what with all the time lost to apple peeling/slicing and the thorough cleaning of my office.

Most of the extra words were in the serial story. It ran a little long, but it couldn’t be helped – there was a lot going on. My only problem with it is that I wrote it late at night so I wasn’t feeling the most coherent and I think the installment suffered for it.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,548+816+610+928=3,602
Poetry – Poetry – 68 (included in blog post)

Total words: 3,602

Goals For Next Week:
Try write words other than blog posts.

EDITING:
11 pages
It may not seem like a lot of work, but first, see the above story about my cleaning binge. And second, I’m taking a little more time. I’ve been working with the marked up version my editor sent me, most of which are just little changes. When there’s been a big change I’ve pretty much been highlighting it to come back to later. There hasn’t been a lot of them, but there’s a few.

But now I’ve been making the lengthy changes as I go along. Like, rewriting a scene where it seems like there’s a narrator that appears out of nowhere. So, the editing is taking a little more time. The good news is, I only have about 50 pages left.

Goal For Next Week:
Step up the editing pace on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING:
*sigh* No Marketing. I was gonna, but I didn’t.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECH & TRAINING:
I didn’t get around to figuring out what I’m going to do with my new and improved subscription to Dropbox, but I did straighten out my virus protection. Avast was bugging the crap out of me with all its popups, so I decided to go with McAfee (seeing as my original subscription automatically renewed itself). I even managed to get rid of the trial version Staples installed – no more annoying popups telling me my free version was expired.

Goal For Next Week:
Figure out what I’m doing with Dropbox.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Last week’s form was the Descort. It wasn’t a difficult form, but I find I prefer ones that are a little more structured. The whole point of the Descort is that it is totally unstructured.

Goal For Next Week:
Find a new form to share and give some more thought to the anthology.

CRAFTING:
Didn’t work on the pillowcase at all last week, but I did get another stripe done. Each stripe is 10 rows.

I actually did get my sewing machine working again and finally sewed my sleeveless blouse together. Unfortunately, it needs some altering. By hook or by crook I will make it fit!

Goal For Next Week:
Work the pillowcase. Work on the cancer afghan. Get the alterations done to the sleeveless blouse and finish the skirt.

WHAT I’M READING:
Still haven’t updated my Goodreads account – I’m really going to hate myself when I finally get around to it.

Finished reading Book Lovers by Emily Henry and started reading Small Town Big Magic by Hazel Beck. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I like what I’ve read so far. And I have incentive to read faster – I had four books delivered last week, including the new Stephen King book, Fairy Tale.

Goal For Next Week:
Suck it up and update my Goodreads account!

GOAL REVIEW:

My total word count was a little higher than last week’s, which was good considering my week was even busier than the week before. I’m not sure that straightening out my virus protection counts as tech or training, but it’s all I got. :-)

I’m happy to report that I didn’t spend as much time on the games. And for all my office has never been cleaner, I didn’t get around to doing my shredding.

Did take my car load of donations to the thrift store, but the only room that really impacted was my office. Did I mention how clean it is now?

I actually did make a couple of lists last week, long lists that lasted a couple of days each. It did actually help me be more productive, so you can be sure I’ll be keeping up with that.

Happy writing.