Pasta, dog food, and other grandmotherly woes

Jacob and I have had dinner, read Boxcar Children for 17 minutes, and  written a long overdue letter to Elizabeth--well, that is, he dictated and I wrote except he signed it with a flourish. He's played with his leggos so that they are now scattered all over my desk and is watching something inane but harmless on TV. The last few nights he's been reluctant to go to the back of the house by himself, so here he is--in my office.
Dinner was not a success. A picky eater, he really likes red sauce on pasta. I found a simple recipe and made home-made sauce. He announced he wasn't hungry, and I knew why: he left four, yes four, snack bar wrappers in the playroom. I told him if he was going to sneak food without permission, he should at least be smart enough to put the wrappers in the trash. I swear the child has radar--he said, "Can we have the other kind of sauce?" Every time I make something from scratch for him--my preferred way of cooking--he wants the canned or preserved or whatever. Discouraging. Except I would never have admitted it to him but I didn't think the sauce was very good--I'll perk it up with some more salt and Italian seasonings. Meanwhile, no snack, no dessert--when he announces he's hungry I'll put more sauce on the pasta and reheat it. And we're going to bed early tonight...very early.
We had a mystery while we were eating dinner. When I was setting the table I noticed dog food scattered on the floor of the playroom. Neither of us could figure out where it came from--the lid was tight on the can (he checked for a rat inside); if Sophie had gotten into it the lid would be off, and she would have eaten, not scattered it. Jacob decided it was a ghost, which led to a discussion of ghosts--I fully believe in good ghosts and told him I'd seen some in the house. Of course he wanted to know date, time, full description, etc.--details I didn't have in my mind. Then when I went into the kitchen, he saw a whole family of ghosts in the backyard. The motion sensitive light in the way back went on just then, but my suggestion that ghosts activated it alarmed him a bit. Hope this doesn't mean he wants to sleep in my bed tonight.
Sophie obligingly cleaned up the scattered dog food, though Jacob had a great game of finding small pieces she'd missed and hand feeding them to her. Then she ate every bite of her usual dinner, so I don't think she got into the food can. And Jacob swears the scattered food was not there when he came home from school. A real mystery.
I tried new yoga poses tonight--chair sit against a wall went well, but have you seen those Facebook pictures that advertise a simply way to lose belly fat? The picture shows an alarmed-looking woman sitting in what looks like a "V" pose--legs straight up at an angle to the back, which is also straight up at an opposing angle. I want to tell you that's hard to do. However, if that old lady can do it, I'll master it. And I practiced hunkering, which is a yoga pose but has a more mysterious name. Whatever, hunkering is hunkering, and I never could do it but now can. Not easily, however.

The gift of a day

This morning I worked myself up to go for a long overdue eye examination. I always hate going to the opthalmologist--don't get me wrong.  He's a good guy, a friend of many years. But reading those charts makes me feel like I'm failing a test, and when he tilts me back and uses those prisms to look deep into my eye I hold my breath lest he say, "Omigosh!" or something equally scary. (Actually a previous eye doctor did say, "I don't like what I'm seeing" which I thought was really poor handling of a patient, especially a nervous one, and I never went back to him.). Anyway, today I had gathered my courage and was changing clothes when the doctor's office called to say he was ill and cancelling appointments for the day. So I got a three-week reprieve for which I am only partly grateful--I'd just as soon get it over with. Actually I'd rather go to the dentist.
But there I was with the gift of a day. I worked at my desk all morning and finished final edits on No Neighborhood for Old Women which will be out in April. In the last read-through I found several small inconsistencies and things that needed explaining or clarifying. I'm sure there are more small points and lots of typos--someone pointed out the typos in Skeleton in a Dead Space to me and I replied honestly that there has never been a book published without a typo. But we all keep trying.
I piddled the rest of the day--groomed Sophie with Jacob's not-very-helpful help (she play bites), watered plants inside and out, did a good yoga workout, forced a stubborn Jacob to do his homework ("No,  you're not sick--don't try that"; next minute he was grinning and trying to play a joke on me.). His attention span is still pretty short, and he wants to be outside playing. But it was a lovely day, an unexpected gift.
Betty and I had supper at The Tavern, a great restaurant that I always want to call The Ranch for some reason. We split their huge BLT salad--good, but there are other things on the menu I like better. Like their deviled eggs and their black beans.
Tonight, though I have a list of things to be done, I'm going to start Julie Hyzy's new book, Affairs of Steak, in her series about a White House chef.
Isn't it nice every once in a while to be handed a free day?

A new book plus a food lesson for Jacob and a small triumph

My mystery, Skeleton in a Dead Space, officially launched today, though it's been on Amazon and Smashwords since Saturday. Still this was THE day--and it was anticlimactic. Yes, I'm excited, but I've been excited for a long time. And yes, I got notes of congratulations and all that. Not sure what I expected. Maybe I'll feel different about it when I hold a print copy in my hands. My goal for so long has been to write and publish a mystery, and it's been a long road, maybe five or six years, so I guess it's hard to feel that it's really happened.
Meantime, I'm editing a young-adult manuscript by another author and fighting with Word--if I center the chapter title, it centers the last two or three lines of the preceding chapter; if I go back and justify them, it justifies the chapter title. Plus the track changes function is unforgiving--if I change something and  then change my mind, there's no going back. You end up with red all over the manuscript and it looks as though, as a prof once said to me, somone had bled on it. The one thing I remember from that class is "Never use red ink on a student's paper."
Jacob had a food lesson. While he ate his after-school snack of yogurt, I trimmed the ends off a whole pack of haricorts vert that I got at a bargain. I gave him a raw one to nibble, and he loved it, waxing eloquent over and over about how good they were, the best green beans he ever ate. He practiced saying haricorts vert but decided he would just say haricorts. Then when his mom came, he forgot it, had to be prompted, and ended with "But they're really carrots!" He tells me though that he's looking forward to eating them tomorrow night.  We'll see. I used this little teaching moment to talk about green is good, since his dad generally thinks if it's green and/or a cooked vegetable, he doesn't want to eat it. Salad and green beans are exceptions. Jacob and I talked about how good carrots and broccoli are and I promised to make him carrots Friday night.
Sophie has destroyed the jacket on yet another book, which means a lot of yelling from me--and then guilt. But we make up afterwards. She's clever--she piles all her toys right in front of her target spot on the bookcase bottom shelf, so I can't be sure if she's chewing a toy or a book. She's had three accidents today, all in my office, which I consider too many for as long as I've been working at this. If I happen to catch her at the right moment, she potties outside; if not, the corner of my office is convenient. But tonight a small triumph: she and I spoke the same language. I recognized her signal, rushed her outside, and she pooped. That may make up for the lethargy I felt earlier in the day. Now she's romping with her toys. Me? Chew books? Never!