The lovely Kate Diamond over at Damned Scribbling Women tagged me for my first Meme of 2009!

The Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you…Done
2. Write down six things that make you happy…Done, see below.
3. Post these rules…Done (these are them)
4. Tag six others…Done. But if I didn’t happen to tag you, please jump in!
5. Notify me that you’ve tagged six others–or that you’re not in a happy place right now…Doing it right now…

I’m tagging:
Angie McIntosh
Keri Mikulski
Caryn Caldwell
Barrie Summy
Alyson (New England Living)
Jason (Scribblings of a Madman)

Six Things That Make Me Happy (that occur to me right now, in my current frame of mind)

Crisp blue, cloudless skies

Sitting outside as twilight falls (no, not the book)

Brownie Sundaes (made with Betty Crocker brownie mix and Blue Bell vanilla ice cream)

Little boy hugs from my two big boys

Sunday afternoons to myself, curled up with a book and a quilt

Pushing Daisies

Yesterday I tackled my first (perhaps only) homemade pickle project. I started with three pounds of pickling cucumbers and a bunch of zesty ingredients, including whole cloves, crushed red pepper, whole yellow mustard seeds, and ground tarragon. It was a little difficult finding the canning jars, because according to the lady at Walmart, they’re seasonal. This didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, because I figured people must be canning stuff (spaghetti sauce, pickled vegetables, sauces, jams, etc) all the time, but Walmart is often a mystery, so I just let it go at that. I ended up with some squatty little contemporary-styled (quoting he package) half-pint jars.

After prepping all the ingredients, I still had to figure out how to sterilize the jars (I went with the dishwasher) and the how to pasteurize the pickles once they were done. This required much consultation of both my mother and the Internet. I ended up using a spaghetti pot (with strainer inside) and a kitchen towel to buffer the double-decker layers of pickle jars. It was QUITE an experience, and I’ve just finished cleaning up all the resultant dishes. The pickles need to marinate for two weeks before I can try them, so I will be fashoning some cute ‘Homemade’ labels in preparation for giving some jars away.

Believe it or not, after nine months of absence, I am back at the computer, editing. The same manuscript. Taking an agent’s advice, I’ve decided to revise my manuscript to shift the point-of-view from first person present to first person past tense. The agent thought it would be ‘less jarring’ that way, so I decided to give it a shot. My husband wasn’t enthusiastic about this change, staunchly and sweetly defending the work as it was, but after reading the first twenty pages rewritten, he admitted the agent had a point, and he actually liked the new version better.

So…I’m back at it again, but in a slightly different context. You’d think it would be all cut-and-dried–my uncle actually suggested I try creating a macro in Microsoft Word to do the bulk of the edits–but as I’m sure you can imagine, the change requires more than adding an ‘ed’ to all the verbs (even making allowances for the irregular ones). And, of course, there are other, non-related things I want to change… But that happens with every edit.

I go from being really happy with the work and kinda sorta impressed with myself to wondering if it’s cohesive enough and up to par with what’s being published right now. But, while working on this, I’m trying to consider my next project–whether I want to pursue the book I (just barely) started at the end of last year or try something altogether new. As a writer, it seems I live in Limbo Land.