Adding Purple to my Green and Yellow

I. READING

A. Weekly goal

1. Read my assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor.  I think I did this.

2. Read ten hours a week in one of the books I am reading.  I’m reading “Crooked Lines” by Holly Michael, “God Called . . . He Need Your Decision” by Randy Kirk, and “Battlefield of the Mind” by Joyce Meyer, as well as that manuscript of a friend of a friend. I would say there was ten hours spent in all of those books this week

B. Goals for the Round                           

1. Have finished reading five books.  I am still at four.  “The Boy at the Museum”, “Years of Stone”, “Sell Your Book Like Wildfire”, and “The Two-Edged Sword”.    

II. WRITING

A. Weekly goal

1. Work on my novel, “Tale of an American Woman”. Wrote chapter 32, which went well, but led me to add another chapter.  

2. Edit “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”, the second book in the Bible Stories in 40 Days series. Finished!

 3. Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, The Dino Chronicles. I blogged here twice and four times in the Dino Chronicles, which wins me a green highlight.  

B. Goals for the Round.  

1. Have finished the first round of edits for “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days”. Finished!

2. Start editing my novel.   I still might get this started in the next two weeks.

III. REACHING

A.      Weekly goal.

1. Promote either one of my books on one other site or in person. Umm, I somehow need to make this a more concrete goal by next Round. I have been neglecting all my social media except for Facebook, so I did do some outreach on LinkedIn and Good Reads. I also took my two books into another store in town to sell on consignment. The store owner knows me and so she goes, “I was wondering when you were going to bring your books in.” A good sign, I guess.

2. Comment on my assigned blogs for ROW80. I think I did this.   

3. Research markets for an hour. Yes, I did. See B1 below.

4. Walk several streets of town, taking pictures and blogging about it.  Walked only twice, but am still ahead of myself on the blogging circuit.

B. Goals for the Round

1. Have submitted three pieces somewhere. Here we go. I submitted my third piece for the Round, sending the flash fiction story, “The Perfect Height”, to Splickety Love. I know, as if I have ever written a love story ever in my entire life. But this one is kind of cute. I hope they like it.  

2. Have sent a copy of “The Early Life of Jesus in 40 Days” to my clergy-friends for their input. Yes, I did this and my dear husband even read it and gave it a glowing review, as if he would give me less than a glowing review.

3. Have finished walking every street in my town.  So, since I decided that I am just not going to get this in yet this fall, I have plotted out in my head four or five remaining areas, so that is my goal for the year, not necessarily the Round. 

IV. PERSONAL

A. Nonprofit – Tumaini Volunteers – Ok, so this is the goal that has me completely blown away. Like blown away into the next century! My daughter called Friday afternoon and said she had some exciting news. She followed that statement with what they call a pregnant pause and now I know why they call it that. I was sure the excitement she felt was not going to be such to this woman who has no intention of ever being a grandma. But luckily the daughter finally burst out that she had just gotten off the phone with the IRS and they have granted our non-profit tax exempt status. I never, ever in a million years thought it would be that easy. We were all sure that it would take at least a couple rounds of forms being filled out before they deemed us worthy. The IRS woman told Val that the official letter would be coming within two weeks, so we both decided we wouldn’t get excited and announce it until we had the letter in our hot little hands. On her way to work that night, Val stopped at the post office box and - this is the part you will not believe – there was the official letter from the IRS. Sweet Lord above, can you even believe it!! Much excitement now! Much, much bigtime excitement! (That was way too much green, so I had to throw in some purple!)

B. Sewing -- Finish one project this Round. Yes! Sewed one dress and last night finished sewing a book bag for my writer group. Once again, ahead of the game!

C. Church – Get addresses for our college kids and find them all mentors.  We have nine college students, I have addresses for seven and mentors for five. This is really good and qualifies for yellow.  

And I don’t believe I told you about the latest with my stupid dog. So last week I posted his ALS ice bucket challenge. I got home from work on Tuesday and his vet had left a message. The stupid dog had won their pet photo contest for last month. What is up with that! The dog has more fans than I do! 

(No pictures of the dog this week, just the book bag I sewed.)