Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 6

A Potentially Scathingly Brilliant Idea

Back last summer, I blogged about Writer's Tools That I Like. One of those tools is a free download from printablepaper.net for twelve box comic panel.

I like to use this comic panel printout to write a brief synopsis of each chapter in my book. If I were smart, I would do this as I went along, but I never remember to do it until I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the book.

Well, last February, when I reached that 2/3rds point in Wicked Ambition, Oz and Ayla's story, I had a brainstorm! What if I printed out two of the 12 box comic panel sheets, put them back-to-back, and then laminated them? Instead of printing it out for each book, I could use a wet erase marker and wipe it off when it was time to use it for the next story.

The brainstorm continued. Color coding! I could color code which Point of View (POV) the chapter was in! Hero one color, heroine another, secondary characters get their own colors. Perfect!

I didn't want to buy a laminating machine for one project, so I bought those self-sealing laminating pouch things. I messed up the first one so badly, I had to throw it away (along with the print outs).

The second attempt went better. It helped that I glued my pages back-to-back so they wouldn't move while I was trying to seal the laminating pouch. I found ultra fine line wet erase markers and they were great! The real test will come when I wipe off the laminated pages and try to use them on the next book.

I haven't done that yet.

Oops, I Did it Again

There are a lot of things that are a challenge for me because of ADHD. One of those things is the impulsiveness. And yes, it happened again.

I'm trying to get my house organized. My goal is to take care of it one small thing at a time. One of the things I've noticed is that I could use better under the sink storage in the master bathroom.

Heading online, I searched for solutions. There were some plastic pull-out drawers that looked as if they'd work. And no, I did not immediately throw them in my cart and purchase them. I planned to give it more consideration than that.

Until I got an alert that it was a lightning deal, and this was the lowest price these plastic bins had been in six months. Set of four? Should be perfect! Oh, and look! Those narrow storage bins I like are 50% off. I better order a set of six.

Everything arrived. The pull-out bins were easy to assemble. They're very nice bins. I like them. I can't fit four of them under my sink because of the other things I need to keep there, but I can fit two. And instead of saving me space, I now have less room than I had previously. I've had to shift multiple things around and other items like the cleaners had to come out of the basket I stored them in.

Sigh.

It does look neater under the sink. Things aren't falling everywhere, which is what I was dealing with before, but still. How do I lose storage space?

And the six pack of long, narrow storage bins? Yeah, I really didn't need six more of them, although if I ever get my pantry organized, those will work really well in there.

Lessons Learned

I thought I'd come up with alternate uses for the planners that were not going to work for me as actual planners. This has been an epic fail for me.

Item 1, the planner I thought I'd use as a memory planner. Sigh. It showed me how bad I am with inked stamps and that I don't feel like fighting this every day. Especially because (see item 2)

Item 2: I have four journals now that I have to record stuff in every day. FOUR. One is the Five-Year Diary, so it's not exactly a journal and serves (sort of) a different purpose, but this is like three too many.

I would be okay with the Five-Year Diary and one B6 sized journal, but I have an A5 journal and 2 B6 journals and OMG!

I keep telling myself I don't have to do this, that I can drop a couple of them. Unfortunately, my brain does not like this idea and the thought of abandoning them is untenable.

My solution for the memory planner is that next year I will buy stickers and redate the entire thing and use it in 2026. I will have to figure out how to cover up and re-use the pages I messed up trying to stamp, but I'm confident something will come to me.

On the journals? I'm just plugging along.

Item 3: The monthly planner was unneeded, and I've moved these items into my everyday planner.

Item 4: The weekly planner was also unneeded, and I've moved these items into my everyday planner.

Item 5: The EveryDay Carry (EDC) Planner. This is kind of working out for me. I like having it all on paper in front of me, and one of my weekly to-do items is to synchronize my planners. Um, I'm mostly successful with this. The one thing I don't like is this planner has a bunch of weekly pages and blank pages and I only need the monthly view. Next year I will buy a calendar booklet and not get an actual planner.

Item 6: the writing planner I wanted to try out, and thought would be my writing planner has turned into my secondary planner. As in it has all the items (or most of them anyway) from the everyday planner, but I keep this one on the other side of the house from the official planner. That way I don't have to run around to check my day.

I had hopes for this, but I've purchased actual author planners in the past and literally never used them even one day, so I'm not surprised. Plus, it's not a bad thing to have a reference handy. BTW, this planner would be totally awesome and a definite contender for everyday planner if it were one volume and not two. Two volumes are a deal breaker for me.

Item 7: the planner I tested, and thought would be my entertainment review book. Sigh. I had such high hopes for this one. I want to consume more entertainment, but I spend so much time writing that it's hard for me to find time to read for pleasure or even watch a movie. Especially when I have so many podcasts I enjoy listening to and they take up what little time I do have. Um, did I mention I'm over 120 episodes now on one of the podcasts I used to love?

And okay, I'm also spending way too much time writing in four journals to read or watch a movie. Gah! Four journals.

I'm sort of looking forward to 2026 when everything will be streamlined, and I won't be spending my entire life journaling.

Algorithm Hell

I'm sort of in algorithm hell on YouTube.

I like to listen to music to help me fall asleep and stay asleep all night. I've found a few live sleep stations that I like to listen to.

When I'm writing I sometimes like to listen to focus music, usually geared toward people with ADHD, but not always. Sometimes I like a pomodoro timer with music to help me write.

Sometimes when I have a headache or have had a stressful day, I will put on some relaxing music. A few weeks ago, I put on something that I think was called soothing cello.

In no way, shape, or form do I want the algorithm to recommend more of these videos to me. When I want them, I will seek them out, thank you very much.

And then it got worse. I watched a video on how to clean my oven without chemicals. ::sobs::

My suggested videos are 90% stuff I don't want to watch and don't care about. Maybe 95%. Watching without being signed in is not an option. I pay to watch YouTube without ads. I'm not logging out and being subjected to the constant interruptions.

I could probably go through and delete these videos from my history except that I kind of don't want to do that. If I want to rewatch that video on how to clean my oven with baking soda paste, I want a fighting chance to find it again.

There should be a check box that says something like check this box to exclude this video from your suggested videos.

It's so bad right now that I'm afraid to watch a video I spotted on how to organize my craft room for fear that my suggested watch list will become 99% videos I don't want to see.

Big algorithm is making it really hard for me to enjoy YouTube.

My Prime Beefs with ADHD

There are a lot of things about my ADHD that make me nuts, but I swear, number one on the list is not being able to find things I know I have.

Today, my pen ran out of ink. I know I have two boxes of this pen, so I went to my office to grab a replacement.

There weren't any, at least not where I thought I put them.

I looked through those drawers twice. Then I thought, did I take them out of their boxes and put them in a pouch? I like pen/pencil pouches, and I have a bunch of them. I hoped I didn't do that. Looking through that collection could take a while. As a last-ditch effort, I checked the drawers in my desk. I did put some pens there, too. I just didn't think the Juice Up 04 was one of them.

It was. I found both boxes in the second drawer, buried beneath loose Ink Joy pens.

The good news is I didn't have to buy more. I've done that more than once. It's still frustrating, though, to not remember where something is.

My other big beef with ADHD? The overwhelm.

When my dad came to live with me and we moved to a different house, everything just got dumped. Now that he's gone, I'm trying to get a handle on all the boxes and clutter and get rid of it. I was talking to my brother about how overwhelmed I felt. He was like, I don't get overwhelmed, I get it done.

Me: Dude, you don't have ADHD. That's the difference.

I've broken things down into tiny increments to avoid overwhelm as much as possible and there are times I still feel like it's too much. I've added time increments to the tiny steps. Like I just have to work on cleaning up my office floor for 15 minutes. Usually once I get started, I keep going.

I've had two 15-minute times. One was actually 90 minutes and the other about 30 minutes. The office is starting to look better, but there's still work to do and it's still overwhelming.

And even though I put my pens in what should have been a natural spot to look, I still couldn't find them immediately.

The Name Game Part 10,035

If you've followed this blog for a while, you know that I do not get to name my characters. They tell me their names, and if I don't like it? Too bad.

Sometimes I get things like: My name starts with an R. And then I'll spend hours combing through baby name websites and books trying to find the right R name. Hours is understating it. It was weeks because this heroine had a name classified as a male name in all but one resource. If I hadn't stumbled across that, I might not know her name yet.

Then there are the characters who are sort of easy. I was walking down the hallway and I heard Mika. And while I had no clue who she was or what story she was from, at least I didn't have to work for her name. (Through a Crimson Veil)

I preface this blog post with all this information because it explains why I am in a tangle with names in my Paladin League series.

If I were picking names, I would have chosen ones that were a lot different from each other so that there would be no confusion. Instead, I have Case (Wicked Suspicion) and Cal (AKA Baggs). I have Iona and Ian (AKA Rusty).

To combat this, after Case's book, he is only referred to as Lurch. His first name is no longer mentioned. There's a book between Case's story and Cal's book, so I'm hoping that helps.

Iona also goes by Io. Ian is Ian. This one is going to be painful. I'm still debating how to handle this. I have one possibly good idea. If Ian was called Rusty by his family the entire time he was growing up, maybe he would think of himself as Rusty and then I wouldn't have the I-name issue.

The thing that's so frustrating to me is I worried that Ayla and Iona were too close. They are twin sisters. I probably couldn't have changed either name, but I might have been able to coax a nickname out of one of them.

I never considered the other books and other characters.

Although, in my defense on this one, Ian was going by Zack when Ayla and Iona made their appearances in my brain. Don't even get me started about the characters who give me the wrong name and then change it on me at the last minute.

Review: OliClips

I did not receive compensation of any kind for this review. I paid for these products myself when they had a sale.

I've been using magnetic bookmarks in my planners forever. Years ago, I picked up a set of three at a craft store, and paired with some decorative paperclips that I received for free with sticker orders, I managed to separate my planner.

It wasn't until I got into the Tomoe River Paper planner community that I heard of OliClips. There's like an umlaut involved, but I don't know how to make an umlaut in Blogger, so apologies.

My first attempt was an OliClip knock off. It was okay, but it looked like a knock off. It was out of alignment, kind of banged up in appearance, and generally not ascetically pleasing.

When the real OliClip maker had a sale, I tried some of their small clips. What a difference! These were awesome and so much better than the craft store magnetic bookmarks I'd been using. The next time they went on sale, I tried a bigger size clip and the new (at that time) slimline version.

The big clip is excellent for thick sections of paper. I'm using this in my everyday planner to separate the weekly section from the daily pages. The smaller clip couldn't handle the thickness.

And the slimline. I love the slimline. It seems to have less magnetic power than the small OliClips, so I reserve them for particular uses, but the reason I love them so much is how they work in my time tracker booklet.

I was using the small size OliClips in my time tracker, but the bottom righthand clip covered up the page at the bottom. One of the things I use my time tracker for is to record the number of words I wrote that day and I put that number on the last row of the grid. It got annoying having to slide the clip up and down at the end of the week. Too high and it covered up my timeline. Too low and I had to move it to record my word count.

It took me until the end of January to go, hmm, I have a couple of extra slimline clips. I wonder if that will solve my problem? It did.

I was using a decorative paperclip in the top left, but it kept falling out, so I added another slimline up there. Another problem solved. All my annoyances were solved with two small switches.

Anyway, if you were wondering if the OliClips are worth it. I think they are. I wish I'd found them earlier because they are so much better than those weak magnetic bookmarks I had been using before I bought them.

Highly recommended. Your size depends on how much magnet you need, so choose wisely.

And as a reminder, I did not receive compensation of any kind for this review.

Souped Up

One of the things I love having for dinner before it gets too hot is soup.

When my dad was alive and living with me, he did the cooking because he enjoyed it, and he was good at it. Me? I hate cooking. I get bored, wander away, and up with stuff burned to the bottom of my pans.

I really, really missed my dad's Tortilla Soup with Chorizo and Turkey Meatballs. It was a recipe I found at Cooking Light back years ago. A search of their site didn't turn it up, but I found a blogger who has the recipe posted and linked to that site for you.

As much as I wanted the soup, it seemed like too much work. Like was I really going to make turkey meatballs? No. But a friend told me there was premade turkey meatballs available at the store. Okay, call me stupid, but it never occurred to me that they sold premade turkey meatballs. I knew they did premade beef meatballs, but turkey?

My ignorance ties into something else I hate. Grocery shopping. Ugh! I make a list, I run in and buy what is on this list, and I get the heck out of there ASAP. I've since learned that a lot of ADHD people (like me!) do not like grocery shopping or cooking. With my get-in-get-out mindset, I don't do any exploring.

With the knowledge that I didn't have to make my own meatballs, that I could buy pre-chopped onion, and that the only thing I would have to prepare would be the poblano pepper (it's mild!), I headed off to buy what I needed to make my favorite soup.

The premade turkey meatballs worked great. They weren't as good as homemade, but since I'm not making my own, it was good enough. The prechopped onion was also most awesome. I hate cutting up onion. I tossed everything in a big soup pot, added all my ingredients and let it cook for about half an hour to make sure the premade meatballs were hot.

Shock of all shocks, I actually made a good soup!

I added more corn kernels and tortillas than the recipe called for because both items were getting a little old and needed to be used up. I also added a lot more chicken stock than the recipe called for because I wanted more soup. And after I had a bowl, I added even more stock and seasoning so I would have lots and lots of soup.

The biggest issue I had was that I couldn't find things. The kitchen was always my dad's space, and he set it up in a way that worked for him. For example, before he moved in with me, I had my spices setup in an organized, alphabetized order so I could locate them.

My dad liked the spices he used all the time in front and everything else shoved in the back of the cabinet haphazardly. I needed ground coriander for the recipe. Could I find it? No. Do I own any? I assume I must since my dad always made the soup. Did he skip the coriander? Maybe. That means I might not own any. When I have a little time, I'll have to take out all the spices, inventory them, and reorganize for me.

At least I was able to find my big soup pot and the ladle. 

Epic Fail Time

I never enjoyed crafts when I was younger, but now I knit, and I did learn to crochet, although I forgot how and would need to relearn. I play with stickers in my planners and vellums and washi tape.

For the life of me, I cannot use ink stamps or stencils without it looking like a five-year-old child decided to play with those tools.

The stencils should be easy enough that even I can successfully use them, however, this is not the case. I've tried different pens, holding the pens at different angles, and everything else I could think of. My stencils still don't look like any of the stenciling I see online.

I'm even worse with ink stamps. Especially the clear, silicone-looking stamps.

I found videos on YouTube that say the problem is likely over inking the stamp. That makes sense, I thought, so I went out of my way to not over ink the stamp. I still end up with a hot mess. Especially on my fingers, the table, and the paper I'm trying to stamp.

The smaller the stamp, the better the job I do. Mostly. My small weather stamps (sun, cloud, rain, snow, etc.) usually come out okay. Not always. Sometimes I still end up with an extra line of ink when I stamp, but at least I have a fighting chance. These are wooden stamps with rubber impressions.

The bigger silicone style stamps that need to go on acrylic blocks are my Kryptonite. I probably have a 5% success rate with the damn things. Otherwise, it's a hot mess.

I honestly have no idea why this is so challenging for me, but apparently my crafting ability ends with yarn, stickers, and washi tape.

Fitbit Hell

I don't remember how long ago I bought my Fitbit Luxe, but it's definitely nowhere near as old as my previous Fitbit which lasted forever. I can't remember the name of that one, but it was the same size and shape as the Luxe.
Anyway, the Luxe has started to become a problem. Instead of charging it twice a week, I need to charge it every other day. That's not as big a problem as how far wrong the battery reading is. I just swiped and it says my Luxe was at 77%. Good, I thought.
And then thing wouldn't come on when I tapped it.
Back on the charger long enough to restart it and now the battery is listed at 1%. Really? A minute earlier it said 77%. Did the restart take 76% of the battery? I doubt it.
I only wear the Fitbit now for sleep information because I have my Apple Watch for steps and works outs, so I thought I'll just buy one of those cheap knock offs and use that.
The cheap knock off is fine. Mostly. Except that it lights up brightly enough to signal the International Space Station every time I move my arm despite the fact that I have it on manual. I also have doubts about how accurate the sleep times are because it will say one thing when I wake up in the morning and then an hour later it says I slept more. I didn't.
That drove me back to the Fitbit. It might be a pain, but at least it doesn't light up unnecessarily. But here I am, blogging nearly half an hour after I wanted to go to bed because the Fitbit is charging from the 1% it claims it was at. It also takes forever to recharge. Grrr.
I'm to the point where I actually debated buying another Fitbit Luxe. Guess what? Unavailable. Double Grrr.