4:20 Mattie wakes me up. I am the opposite of amused. She wants to bail on me and go sleep with my parents. Instead I take her outside and then make her get back in bed. Before I fall back asleep I'm disturbed because I can't remember what a chain reaction is called (as you can see, I have now remembered).

7:30 My alarm goes off, startling Mattie awake. Sweet revenge. I go to let the dogs out and feed the kitten.

On the way home I pass a pole-dancing skeleton. I could not make this up.

Then I pass a giant pumpkin man who partied too hard last night

8:20 I get back home and create a poll for the Realmmakers book club to pick a November book.

9:00 I eat cereal on the couch and we watch the church livestream. This is the second week where it's back in-person but they limit it to 60 people (the sanctuary usually has like 300) so we've just been staying home. My mom is really savage because if she doesn't like a song she just gets up and skips it with no input from anyone else. The pastor baptizes a baby. My dad talks about the time he wore shorts to church and an older lady told him he had "sexy legs." I swear United Methodists are a different breed.

10:00 The livestream ends. Facebook automatically starts playing another livestream, a cricket match in Bangladesh because why not. I play with Mattie because she's a little antsy.

10:30 I get the absolutely ridiculous idea to self-publish my 500-something page story that was originally a Duggar family parody, simply so I can buy myself a physical copy. I'm raring to start, but I haven't even finished typing it yet, and I have to finish editing my REAL book first.

10:35 I tell my mom my idea and she says it will probably have to be multiple volumes. It's 231K words and not even finished so she's very possibly correct. I don't know where to begin, so she suggests splitting it up by year, which is genius.

11:00 I finish separating it into volumes. The exciting news is that I can go ahead and publish the first several. I start proofreading it, ignoring my actual to-do list because my whole life is basically an If You Give a Mouse a Cookie book.

11:30 I'm interrupted when my mom, brother, and I take Mattie for a walk. We get in two miles.

12:10 We get back and I have to go let the dogs out. I don't want to but such is life.

12:45 I get home and we eat leftover vegetable soup and cornbread. Then I continue to proofread volume one, which is 54K words.

4:30 I've been proofreading all afternoon. I'm on page 80 of 130. My mom wants to go for a walk, so I leave to feed the dogs and kitten first.

5:15 I get home, but it's raining again, because this hurricane wants to be in a long-term and committed relationship with us. So we don't walk. My mom and I hang Halloween lights on the mantle instead.

Sometime later: I lost track of the times. We had cheeseburgers and fries for dinner. I published Volume I and it's processing to go live on Amazon. I can't make myself edit one chapter a day of a novel but sure, I can edit and publish 130 pages of crap in eight hours.

8:30 Jasmine and I watch Doctor Who. In between episodes, I have to go let the dog out. On Friday, we will finish not only the season, but THE SHOW. It's been fifteen months straight.

11:05 I take a shower and set my alarm for 6:20. I am going to feel dead tomorrow.

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