Junebug skipping like a stone

Spent a good chunk of the weekend with my website down, but things are chugging along again now - so here goes, another rambling blog post (somewhat overdue).

Let's see. The day after that previous entry, I took my list of Authors To Email with Awkward Requests and asked around - hoping that some of the lovely people I know might be persuaded to take a peek at Maplecroft, since the ARCs had landed. Awkward emails were awkward, but the authors I approached were perfectly lovely.

In the wake of a morning spent chasing down bubble envelopes and camping out in the post office ... I also went back to work on the yard. For the moment - for JUST THIS MOMENT - it's more or less "done."

It won't stay "done" for more than a few days, because such is life in summer, in the south; but it's as tidy as it's going to get for now. I trimmed all the edges of everything, yanked a million vines, weeded a million beds, replaced most of the flowers in the front flower box because they keep dying but whatever, excavated the sidewalks in front of our house and swept everything clear, painstakingly took weed-killer to the old stone retaining walls because they won't make it another 120 years with dandelions and tiny trees growing out of them, did likewise to the driveway and sidewalks, and fed all the flora that needed feeding.

There's still some work to be done, but like I said - it goes on the back burner for the moment. Namely, I want to remove the pea gravel from the herb-garden-turned-dirt-hole path (yes, thank you Greyson) and throw down some pavers. I can do that myself - pillaging them from elsewhere in the yard (I have a number of salvaged pavers that we've been using as bed borders, but I intend to redo all that later this summer). It'll be hot work, and annoying to dig out/discard all that gravel, but it's worth doing. I'm sick of the pebbles getting tracked in via us and Greyson, sick of stepping on it all the damn time, sick of sweeping it off the landing.

Ugh. It needs to go.

As for the backyard patio, that's still penciled-in for the first week of June, but we'll see. We have so much travel and/or out-of-town guests over the summer/fall that if we can't get it taken care of at that time, we may just have to put it off for another few months. But such is life.

* * *

Speaking of all that yardwork, I wonder if any of you can contribute to some peculiar anecdata. In short, I stumbled across something online about people taking B-complex vitamins as a means of preventing insect bites and stings, and I thought to myself, "Self, I could probably use some vitamins. Can't hurt, might help." We went through a six-pack of bug-spray last summer, and I loathe the stuff.

I have no idea if there's an ounce of anything credible to the theory, but I will tell you this: A few weeks ago, I added a B-vitamin supplement to my morning routine. Nothing crazy - just one pill, at an ordinary dose. And believe it or not, I haven't gotten a single bug-bite so far this year ... despite all the copious (and tediously documented) yardwork I've done, here at the edge of a mountain in Tennessee's heat and humidity.

Coincidentally - or not - my husband mentioned that he'd likewise added a B-vitamin to his regimen back in January, and he was wondering where all the damn bugs were this year.

So ... anyone else have any experience with this? Anything concrete to back up the anecdata? Am I just lucky as hell, and certain to be devoured alive by mosquitoes in another week?

* * *

Speaking of Greyson (I did, in the first segment of this post), the little monster's done something to his back right foot. By "done something" I mean he either hurt it, or he's having allergy issues and has exacerbated the problem into something really raw and tender.



At first I thought he'd just stepped on a sharp stone, or got a burr caught between his paw-pads - for I was almost certain I saw blood in there; but he won't stop slurping on the thing, and therefore it won't dry out, and it just gets more and more raw and pink between his pads. He's leaving soggy puddles all over the house, from where he continues to groom it and groom it, to his detriment; and now he'll barely let me touch it to investigate.

I don't mean to make it sound like this has been going on for weeks or anything.

We noticed it yesterday afternoon, and called his vet. Since he wasn't limping and wasn't actually bleeding at that point, we agreed to give it until tomorrow - in case it was just a sting or a thorn that needed a little time. But it's gotten a bit worse throughout the day, so it looks like our boy has a date with the doc on deck.

I'm not in a panic about it. I just don't like to see him so uncomfortable.

* * *

So as you may have heard, there's a bit of a kerfuffle going on with regards to Amazon.com and the publisher Hatchette. (If not, Forbes has a rundown here.) To sum up for the tl;dr crowd, Amazon is trying to bully the publisher into accepting some bad terms - so it's throwing its weight around.

By this I mean that Amazon is making it very difficult - all but impossible, really - to order any Hatchette books from its site. And caught in the crossfire are the authors, whose sales are suffering and whose livelihoods are being jeopardized.

For authors, especially authors who aren't super-established (or are anything short of wild bestsellers, really)...sales numbers determine future books, future advance money, future just-about-everything. It sucks, that's what I'm saying - when one of the largest retailers throws a tantrum and says, in essence, "Fuck 'em." Obviously Amazon is well within its legal rights to behave this way, but there's plenty of nasty, unethical behavior that's perfectly legal. That doesn't mean you should support or endorse it.

I am not a Hatchette author, but I am friends with many. If you're the reading sort, you're probably fans of many, too; it's a big company, publishing a vast array of genres and subjects.

If you would like to show your support for these authors, well, Amazon.com says that you should shop someplace else in order to do so. I say you accommodate that suggestion. If you have an independent bookstore handy, go check out their stock. If they don't have your preferred title on the shelves, they can order it for you easy-peasy - and this is likewise true for Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and so forth. (I live in a city that lacks even a single indie bookstore, so I know how it goes.)

Go here for a list of Hatchette authors. Scroll around, use the search feature (there are a LOT of them), and see if you spy anyone whose latest release you haven't picked up yet.

Now's the time.
Everywhere except Amazon is the place.