It was a fabulous visit, and the first holiday since my momma passed away I didn’t sit in a pool of my own salty tears, wailing about poor me. So that is definitely an improvement. While I will never, ever be a fan of the holidays, at least this one was more than tolerable, mostly because of my GirlChild and my Muffin.
The drive down was supposed to take three hours. It took eight. It took eight frakkin hours because MapQuest LIES ABOUT WHICH DIRECTION YOU SHOULD GO. I ended up westbound for way too long, necessitating a longer and more southerly route. I actually had to stop and buy a PAPER MAP. Yes! With red lines and everything!! Can you even imagine the horror?
The good news is I arrived in one piece. The bad news is my ass was totally numbified. But, once I saw my kid and Muffin, my ass was the least of my concerns as I hugged and kissed and maybe let a few tears loose. The last time I saw Muffin he was a wee baby, and now…he’s an actual walking, talking (and “mewing” — sometimes he thinks he’s a cat) PERSON. With, like, opinions and everything. Oh yeah, definite opinions.
Up until now, Muffin was convinced I lived in the phone. I talk to him every day, to the point when his mama puts him on the phone with anyone else, he looks at her in total puzzlement and says, “Noni? Noni?” and she’ll tell him, no, that’s not Noni, that’s *insert poor sucker here* and he won’t have anything else to do with said poor sucker. Now, he knows that Noni doesn’t just live in the phone, and that Noni will feed him marshmallows and Peanut M&Ms for breakfast. Heh.
If I had known being a grandmother would be so much fun, I definitely would have done this first.
We had a great visit. Cooked, baked, shopped, watched Baby Einstein videos and cuddled, and had one of The Best Times Ever. It was worth the wait, although I really don’t want to wait that long to visit again.
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The proof for the work-in-progress arrived while I was otherwise occupied, so when I got back home I dived in. It was thrilling to hold an actual copy of so much work in my hands, but upon further inspection there were a couple of things that I felt needed tweaking. The print on the back cover was a tad too large; a word misspelled; the graphics on the front needed a little rearrangement. Since the word was misspelled, I took the opportunity to tweak out the other stuff because the whole file will have to be re-uploaded anyway. That’s okay — that’s why you order a proof. I took a look inside, and there were some other little things that really needed to be fixed, as well — such as centering the page numbers and going over the material one more time for a little judicious editing. Remember, I told you that you could never go over it enough. So, a request went in to the Cover Dude, and I am concentrating on tweaking out the interior a bit more while he does his magic.
Oh, I suppose I could have let it fly — but the thing is, I want it to be perfect. I know it will never be exactly PERFECT — but I want it to be as perfect as I can get it. I owe it to the readers who will (hopefully) be plunking down their hard-earned dollars for it, and I owe it to me. Once I’m happy with it, I’ll upload, wait for approval, and order another proof. Hopefully, this will do it and I can release it for distribution.
I hope this information is helpful to those out there contemplating self-publishing. I will say that so far I’ve enjoyed the process and learned a lot.
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In the meantime, I hope you all had a great and non-ass-numbed holiday. Heh!