R is for Rushed
I'm always rushing around. My husband says its because I don't sit down and plan well enough. And he's probably right, but who has time to sit down? I like to think it's because I try to pack a lot into my day. But some days all that rushing around backfires on me. Like yesterday. Here's what was supposed to happen:
Wake up early to write and edit Jess's book
Homeschool Ryan (Jess and Alyss mostly work on their own)
Alyss dentist appt
Get everyone lunch
Go to work
Take Alyssa to skating practice
Go back home
Take Jess to violin
Edit Jess's book while sitting at her lesson
Pick up frozen Chinese dumplings for dinner
Head home
Make rice and dumplings
Eat
Make sure kids are ready for bed
Collapse into bed
The first part of the day went quickly and smoothly. But then things went awry. We were at Jess's violin lesson and I was editing her book. Jess was just finishing up her lesson and I needed to quickly pack up my laptop. I thought I clicked "save", but something happened and the file closed itself. What just happened? I wondered. I reopened the file. Whew, it opened. I packed it up and hoped everything was ok.
Later I opened up Jess's file. Everything looked ok, until I read the last comment I had made. I had highlighted some dialogue and I asked, "Who is speaking?", but it clearly stated "Seth said" in the sentence.
The one before that concerned a sentence which was,
"I never thought it would be this way."
My comment was "cut out 'thought it would be this way' " leaving only:
"I never"
What was I thinking? Had I fallen asleep while editing? No, I was quite awake. I scrolled up the document. My heart sank. Every comment I had made for the last 100 pages shifted to the wrong spot. I was afraid to tell Jess. I knew she was counting on me to have this done soon. But she could tell I was getting riled up about something. "Uh, Jess, I did something," I said sheepishly.
We spent an hour trying to fix it. Usually Jess can quickly figure out what silly combination of things I've pushed and reverse them, but this time there was nothing. Somehow I had inadvertently pushed some combination which scrambled all the comments.
I felt bad for Jess. She felt bad for me. We went through the comments together and laughed at how some of the comments were now creating hilarious scenarios. We felt more relaxed.
This morning I resumed my editing 100 pages behind where I had been. But everything happens for a reason, and maybe just maybe I learned to not be so rushed.
Yikes I gotta go now, I'm late for work!
Check out all the other A-Zers.
Have a relaxing weekend! :)
Kathy :)
P.S.
Oh and can someone please tell me how to apostrophize Jess? Is it Jess' or Jess's?
P.P.S
Yeah, I know apostrophize isn't a word but hey im in a hurry!!!
I'm always rushing around. My husband says its because I don't sit down and plan well enough. And he's probably right, but who has time to sit down? I like to think it's because I try to pack a lot into my day. But some days all that rushing around backfires on me. Like yesterday. Here's what was supposed to happen:
Wake up early to write and edit Jess's book
Homeschool Ryan (Jess and Alyss mostly work on their own)
Alyss dentist appt
Get everyone lunch
Go to work
Take Alyssa to skating practice
Go back home
Take Jess to violin
Edit Jess's book while sitting at her lesson
Pick up frozen Chinese dumplings for dinner
Head home
Make rice and dumplings
Eat
Make sure kids are ready for bed
Collapse into bed
The first part of the day went quickly and smoothly. But then things went awry. We were at Jess's violin lesson and I was editing her book. Jess was just finishing up her lesson and I needed to quickly pack up my laptop. I thought I clicked "save", but something happened and the file closed itself. What just happened? I wondered. I reopened the file. Whew, it opened. I packed it up and hoped everything was ok.
Later I opened up Jess's file. Everything looked ok, until I read the last comment I had made. I had highlighted some dialogue and I asked, "Who is speaking?", but it clearly stated "Seth said" in the sentence.
The one before that concerned a sentence which was,
"I never thought it would be this way."
My comment was "cut out 'thought it would be this way' " leaving only:
"I never"
What was I thinking? Had I fallen asleep while editing? No, I was quite awake. I scrolled up the document. My heart sank. Every comment I had made for the last 100 pages shifted to the wrong spot. I was afraid to tell Jess. I knew she was counting on me to have this done soon. But she could tell I was getting riled up about something. "Uh, Jess, I did something," I said sheepishly.
We spent an hour trying to fix it. Usually Jess can quickly figure out what silly combination of things I've pushed and reverse them, but this time there was nothing. Somehow I had inadvertently pushed some combination which scrambled all the comments.
I felt bad for Jess. She felt bad for me. We went through the comments together and laughed at how some of the comments were now creating hilarious scenarios. We felt more relaxed.
This morning I resumed my editing 100 pages behind where I had been. But everything happens for a reason, and maybe just maybe I learned to not be so rushed.
Yikes I gotta go now, I'm late for work!
Check out all the other A-Zers.
Have a relaxing weekend! :)
Kathy :)
P.S.
Oh and can someone please tell me how to apostrophize Jess? Is it Jess' or Jess's?
P.P.S
Yeah, I know apostrophize isn't a word but hey im in a hurry!!!
That's terrible. Are you using the track changes feature in Microsoft Word. If so, I don't think you did anything wrong. I've had that happen before, and I'm pretty sure it's a MS Word glitch. I never could figure out how to correct it "sigh" I so love technology.
ReplyDeleteP.S. It would be Jess's. You leave off the "s" to indicate a plural.
Yeah it was in Microsoft track changes. Well at least it saved all the actual comments, I've just had to reread to put them in the right place. I have to admit, it's still better than writing it longhand!
DeleteI'm sorry to hear things got scrambled like that!
ReplyDeleteI'd echo Stephanie about Jess's. Jess' would indicate something belonging to more than one Jess.
The Golden Eagle
The Eagle's Aerial Perspective
Every time you start out mentioning Jesse, I start giggling because I can just picture how you two interact with each other. I was laughing throughout the first half.
ReplyDeleteThen I thought, uh-oh, it doesn't sound good. That's a little scary about Microsoft Word... I used it once to edit a long manuscript but I don't remember how it worked. Saving the file manually every so often would seem like a possible solution but I don’t remember doing so when I was using it. Any information you can share to prevent it from happening would be greatly appreciated for our future reference. If I figure it out first (doing the next beta read), I'd do likewise and post it here.
I'd blame your computer woes on the recent bout of solar flares. That is a bizarre story. Maybe a rogue computer pixie flew through your hard drive. Popped over from Jess's blog. Waving to you from my place in the mid 600's of the A to Z.
ReplyDelete