Hummingbirds are back!

I’ve had my hummer feeders up for about two weeks, but only one, and it was kind of tucked away where it would be hard to find–not really in my line of sight.  But this last Friday, I was startled at the small hovering shape zipping from the slice of orange I have out for the orioles  I wasn’t sure if it was a hummer or not.  (It could have been a pixy, you know.  :-) )  But I put out the real, serious feeders, and sure enough, one showed up yesterday, sipping from the two feeders outside my window, then darting immediately around to the side yard where I had one up as well.  It was a nice, bright male, and he’s setting up territory for the coming females.

I’ve not had a lot of success with birds since moving, mostly, I think, because the yard has been bare of low bushes and shrubs, and seeing a returning bird who knew where all the old feeders were last year is a great feeling.

Work is going good, and I should finish up the editorial rewrite for EVER-AFTER today.  It’s been kicking my ass, but I won in the end because I’m in charge of the muse, not the other way around.  I’m taking Friday off ’cause I broke my rule and worked through entirety of last weekend on this.  (I felt like such a bad mom/wife, but they were both understanding.)  And guess what?  It’s supposed to be . . . sunny!  I.  Can.  Not.  Wait!  Both for the weekend and turning this back in so I can get right into the next.  I made some major changes in EVER-AFTER, with new chapters that gave more depth and maturity to a raw story, and I want to see what I did impacts the last two books.  Took someone out, beefed up someone I originally wanted as walkon-walkoff.  It got a little big for my liking, but I’m trying to cut as I go through it this last time this week.  I can trim an entire page from a 20 page chapter just by taking out unnecessary words and phrases, which can add up to 20 pages over the course of a manuscript, and I’m anxious to get to “the end” and see how well I did, word count wise.