Genuinely thought that I got nothing done as far as last week’s goal list goes.  I ended nearly every night exhausted.  Last full week of the quarter means work was kind of crazy, but helping my son with schoolwork was extra crazy.  Add in Halloween and other areas of drama to make it nearly impossible for me to do any writing.  Still, I can’t say the week was a loss.

To be fair, I never got to any outlining or ‘Phi Beta Files’ prep.  Even when I had energy, I used it to do other things.  Chores, errands, and the whole adulting thing doesn’t do itself no matter how much I want it to.  I didn’t even make a list of books to turn into paperbacks until last night.  That’s the goal for this weekend.  Shouldn’t be too hard, but I don’t know how to do the headers for ‘Life & Times of Ichabod Brooks’.  Do I put the book title on one side and the short story title on the other?  Same goes for ‘Quest of the Brokenhearted’ and the two ‘Bedlam’ books.  I should look at a few short story collections that I have for ideas.

I mentioned last weekend that my son and I were going to try to make ‘Ice Cream Bread’, which is exactly what you think.  It is bread made using ice cream.  Not a cold dish, but a hot one.  We used chocolate ice cream and self-rising flour along with sprinkles to make a loaf.  It was rather crumbly, but this is the end result:

Tasted really good.  I probably messed up trying to get it out of the bread pan as soon as it was out of the oven.  First time making this dish and I didn’t have this issue with the strawberry bread 2 years ago.  It was fun to make and I’m already planning a few more experiments.  At some point, I want to make 3 loaves with each one being a different flavor like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.  This will be for any event where we’re expected to bring desserts.  That happens fairly often.  We’ll see how it goes that time.  Tough to mix everything up.

The second big event was Halloween, which saw the debut of my son’s costume.  I made a post about it on Instagram, which got a ton of likes.  That was great to see since we had some issues.  The face paint got on everything and my son told me the next day that the wig was really annoying him.  So, we have to do some modifications when he plans on wearing it again.  Here’s the character and then the costume:

Soul King Brook from One Piece

He wasn’t happy about the picture taking away precious trick-or-treating time.  Still, it was a rousing success and some people gave him extra candy.  It was a nice change from all of the store bought costumes we saw.

As I said before, I didn’t get to do anything else this week.  I’m hoping to get more done next week, but I won’t hold my breath.  It’ll be easier if I get most or all of the paperback setups done this weekend.  Opens the way for me to write the next Darwin outline and work on the ‘Phi Beta Files’ notebook.  I’m thinking of making a post every Tuesday in January for each of the paperback series too.  If I put ‘Quest of the Brokenhearted’ up as its own thing then I have 5.  Gives me another delay on putting up teasers.

Nothing else major happened.  Twitter got uncomfortable and bizarre this week.  It used to be that I saw mostly author stuff in my feed.  This week, I saw a barrage of politics and disturbing vitriol.  I started unfollowing the people who were liking and following the terrifying stuff coming through.  Lots of racism and antisemitism as if a floodgate was opened.  Though, it could also be people trying to test out how far they can now go before they are banned.  Either way, I was strongly considering deactivating my account for a little while.  How is it useful for promoting books when people are more interesting in hating others on there?  (Betting this is the paragraph that will garner comments.)

Only other thing that was supposed to happen, but didn’t was starting a new Netflix series that I have a personal connection to.  They made a series called ‘Blockbuster’, which is about the last functioning Blockbuster Video.  For the youngsters, this was a place you would go to and rent movies and video games.  I used to work for Hollywood Video, which was their competition.  Still, I’m curious to see how much of what they show brings back some nostalgia and memories.  It’ll be some nice comedic breaks from formatting books until my eyes bleed.

So, goals of the week?

1. Writing if possible.
2. Help son study for last tests of the quarter.
3. Conference Day.
4. Take son to ‘One Piece: Red’ on Friday as a surprise.
5. Take son to his first Bar Mitzvah next Saturday.
6. Watch ‘Blockbuster’.
7. Start scheduling January posts.
8. Sleep better.