shall we try this again?

I had a lovely post written on Thursday. Beautiful, word perfect, and it's lost! Well I exaggerate. It wasn't word perfect, but it was from the heart. Those are usually my best ones. But sigh. It is gone to never-never-was land. And that night? I ended up taking a ride with my 3yo in an ambulance, over the pass, to the burn unit in Seattle. (I live in central/eastern Washington) Was not the best night of my life.

I was making homemade Ravioli's, I had pot of sauce on one burner, boiling water on the other. I turned to get the freshly filled ravioli's and felt this heat hit my legs about the same time my kid screamed. I picked him up, took off his shirt, calling for my 10yo to turn on the cold water in the tub as I wiped the marinara sauce of my kids face. I splashed water into his eyes and got all the sauce off and splashed water into his eyes and everywhere on his burns, until his shivering was as harsh as his screams. My poor 7 yo was crying because of the 3yo's pain. it was heart breaking. I did not have a phone. I finally was able to load FB chat & saw my husband was on way home, so I contacted my MIL & told her Nate would probably be bringing the older boys by.

Turned out she came to hospital, and their aunt came & took the boys to grandpa. Anyways,  the ER doc at the burn center said my quick action in taking off the sauce covered shirt saved his chest from getting burns, and possibly the eye as I flushed it so well, and had him underwater immediately. I'm glad because I still cannot believe he got that serving spoon. It was about six inches above his known reachability. I mean, he can figure out how to make things fall off shelves, but I've never seen him get anything that high without climbing. He's VERY short/small for his age. Part of the Down Syndrome. I'm still going over in my head how he got there so fast. When I turned, he'd been in the kitchen doorway.

Mostly, I'm relieved he didn't burn his hands!! I still can't believe how that happened! but the main glob landed on his forehead. It was a harrowing night, but the burn center let us go home the next day. Both my husband and I have been EMTs and neither one of us had any problems with wound care.

And once again, Breathless Press proved to be my silverlining while waiting. I found the contract in my email in the morning when we'd finally settled into a room, about 4 am. So grateful to them. It helped to have something to read when my mind didn't want to settle.

So, YAY!!  I have a contract! and I'll be getting my phones soon! Hope your holidays went well! Isaac's healing nicely. And we're all relieved.

Mostly I'm

Back up

Recently, I have had a rash of bad juju regarding my files and things getting lost/stolen. So, I have endeavored to make sure I have back ups. Well, it was not enough. I had some sort of virus that would not let me access restore points or anti-virus.

I also found that my anti-virus was off. I don't know if that was me with a download that I forgot to turn back on, or if that was the virus. But any time I tried to access any of that, I was blue screened. It kept telling me to uninstall last thing I installed. I had not installed anything. I had TRIED to update my adobe last. But it had not started yet.

I spent HOURS yesterday, trying to make it recover somehow. It did not. Long and short of it is that I lost all my pictures and my research.

I had started moving files to dropbox so I have my 3 complete novels still saved. I also have some of my research in email boxes that I will have to track down now. (I send to my alternate email and myhusbands email, so between them, i hopefully have SOMETHING. I have a joint venture book published which I had on my computer. The sequel is gone. Unless I managed to send it a while back.

At one point, my back up files on this OS went blank. My whole back up drive just wiped out. I had already had plans for buying a seperate harddrive for back ups. My husband and I have even priced some. However, we have not had the money. This last check my husband only had five days of work because of the weather.

He was unable to get into work the day before Thanksgiving (turned out to be good thing since mypipes were frozen!) so he lost his two days of holiday pay as well. One twelve hour shift and two 8 hour paid days down the tubes. Sigh.

My dropbox used to have more on it, but I cleared it out to help my son back up his itunes before reinstalling. Something was not working right with quick time or something, so he gave up. I took out the music and started refilling my dropbox, starting with my MS.

Mostly, I'm bummed at loss of my pics. The ironic thing is that most of my pics that I don't yet have on disc/jump drive are on FB which was the culprit in the first place. One of my friends was hacked and her site used to send infected messages to the lot of us :(

I probably would have been fine, but like I said, my defenses were down. I am really bummed. This week, I've lost my pics, and discovered the loss of my and my children's childhood ornaments. Trying hard to not be a downer to everyone I talk to, but it gets harder with each thing that happens.

HOWEVER, I do have my completed manuscripts. With all the interest I have in my romance thrillers and paranormal romance, I think I'm going to relegate my sci-fi and fantasy series to smashwords for my small cult following. I will put them cheaply available like $1-2 dollars and will link the sites here for you.

I have to go back through and fix dialogue. I went and took out contractions, but on the reread, it does not sound good. I had this confirmed with a beta reader (without pointing it out), so I am going to fix it before I release it to the stratosphere :)

I have my thriller out with an editor. Keep those fingers/toes/hair/eyes, whatever you have crossed for me:)

And keep the happy juju thoughts coming so I can go back to being my cheerful self! I really am an optimist at heart...