I love this. We just use an old jam jar as our rice scoop (gives us about 4 dinner portions), but this is so much nicer looking! And I love that it can measure spaghetti too. That one is hard to get the right portion of.

Thank you so much for sharing this. What a lovely bit of news!

I’m in Scotland but responded anyways!

Apologies for replying so late!

I succeeded in starting off of Amazon and found another good distribution method.

But. Romance! I find that it’s more fun and escapist for me to write romance. I grant myself a lot more artistic liberty with it for some reason, whereas in sci fi I get caught up in details. There’s also a very strict structure to a true romance novel which I’m not an expert on, but basically readers expect a 3 act structure and happily ever after ending. I find the structure freeing kinda?

Re: correspondence style, I find this to be such a cool compliment. I consider my email skills to be really good honestly, ha. Though I need to write more letters to folks. I enjoy it and always mean to do it more.

And thank you!

She is 6 months and has no idea that the 20 shiny wrapped boxes under the glow tree are predominantly gifts for her from family. I also don’t think she has the concept of a gift yet. Or holidays. Or time.

But she’s been squeaking a lot today so… moderately?

IIIII did not progress on my climate fiction. I might literally do so today after I put the baby to bed.

My goals this month are business related. My other pen name (the cli fi sci fi one) needs a bit of love. I am currently selling 0 books because it’s impossible to buy them… because I was refusing to put them on Amazon. I hate Amazon with a white hot fury. If I do put my books up there it will be angrily. But… well my author storefront fees just went up Too High, and I haven’t had hardcover books for sale in a Minute because I haven’t been able to ship them out. Because I had a baby. But that was in June and I wanna be a more authory author again.

My romance is doing well under that pen name. I’ve got a few subscribers on the serialisation platform. And some on bluesky now. I’ve been writing consistently, too!

So goals: figure out a way to sell e- and physical- books again. If that’s via Amazon… so be it. But I’m gonna try hard for it to not be.

I couldn’t say it any better than this tbh. But it’s a very good question to ask!

Update of the fun variety!!! I got accepted for my serial romance thing, so I’ve been publishing that twice a week for a few weeks. 3 weeks? Something. I’ve made like £0.50 so far, but what actually matters is that it’s kept me writing consistently. It’s been fun!

And i still have no clue what’s happening with my climate fiction, but I haven’t worked on it for a while. Maybe that’ll be this months goal; progress on that in some direction!

Oh, floors… I have had writing foiled by floors before. I wish you all of the luck getting the flooring finished swiftly so you can focus on the words!

Oooh this is neat! I’ve been writing a solarpunk/cli-fi sci-fi novel lately, as well as a serial romance that will hopefully help fund my sci-fi. My goal right now is just to keep writing weekly, and so far I’m on a 7 week streak of writing at least once a week, which is massive for me. There’s even a 23-day streak hidden in those 7 weeks that was only thwarted because I came down with a stomach bug.

I guess my other goal is for my romance to be accepted by the serial publisher that I want to work with. But I’ve submitted my sample, and now it’s just up to them to deem if I’ll meet that goal or not, heh.

I would also love to figure out what I’m actually doing with the cli-fi. I have vague theme and plot concepts kicking around, but I usually discover most of the story as I write it.

Oh geez this. My parents never let me try out new things if they would be messy or might fail. I wanted a veggie garden, nope. Baking, too messy. Tons of craft things were vetoed for a very long time too. Thankfully as an adult I’ve rekindled these desires, and i have a garden I cultivate and a sourdough starter going (as examples). But I do mourn the learning I could have done as a kid.

I’m determined to let my kid do messy things. Right now the messiest thing she can do is spit up, but when she’s older she can have so much play doh and dirt time and baking time.

(Play doh only if she’s not eating it)

I appreciate the sentiment (it hasn’t gotten better per se yet, but we’ve gotten more used to the… nature of the screams) and also I wanted to apologise for being rather combative in explaining the context— which, yeah, was definitely missing in the original post. Gonna edit that now to make this post less rant, more informative.

Yep this. I’ve been given the advice to step away from my baby when she’s crying if I’m overwhelmed and she’s in a safe place. That’s advice from basically every medical professional I’ve encountered during pregnancy and post partum. Because it is so, so important to not let your nerves get fried in an attempt to be a perfect parent, because letting your nerves get fried will lead to shit you’ll regret down the line. Be that shouting or checking out mentally or way worse stuff.

Ear plugs =/= can’t hear. Loops specifically are designed to allow you to hear but not have hearing damage.

My baby is colicky AF and will scream while we’re in the process of making her a bottle. Or while we’re burping her. Or when we have to pull the bottle away to wipe spit up. Or while we’re in the process of soothing her but not soothed yet.

I’m pretty patient (with children, not judgy parents though) but I’m not perfect. I can parent better and be more present while not massively overwhelmed by a noise designed by evolution to be horrible and intolerable.

I’m so sorry. I almost wanted to downvote this because I want to downvote the circumstance.

But heeeeeey that would sort childcare… woohoo…

The swaddle. My child has learned being awake is fun. Including at night. By the power invested in me by this swaddle blanket, she will learn the beauty of SLEEP.

I grew up such a people pleaser that this would have worked SO well on me. Stop leads to “why?” But my parent being upset, or god forbid dosappointed… those are some words of great power.

I swear my nearly 3 week old is starting to turn her head towards me, and occasionally even try to focus her eyes on me, when I speak to her up close.

She wasn’t even meant to be born for another 12 days! At least going by due dates. But honestly as much as I’ve researched adjusted age for preterm babies, I’m becoming convinced I can ignore all that. I can see her speeding towards the 2 month milestones (the first checkpoint, essentially). She’s not hit them yet, that would be crazy, but I’m seeing early signs like the above.

Also she read Watership Down.

Okay it was an abridged version for kids and I did the reading. But she liked the pictures.

Okay not strictly words, like at all, but the other day I had my baby in my lap and she randomly arched backwards, pursed her lips in an O, and after a dramatic pause let out a long “oooooooooooh”

I knew then I was sleep deprived because I lost my shit laughing.

Tl:dr; “ooooooooh”

If your freshly born newborn doesn’t poop because she’s constipated, well they work surprisingly like toothpaste tubes if you hold their knees to their chest.

I’m sorry for the image. I’ve earned my “grit your teeth and do what you gotta” merit badge at just a week and a half postpartum, so I’m… happy?