COUNTING

....the number of days I have with my family before I have to head across the pond to deal with selling my mother's house. But I can't start the countdown until I get my husband's memoirs launched, which was supposed to have been April 8th. But, oh, various things and people have conspired against us to insure this date was not met. I cannot begin to go into the reasons, just know that Denis has had to increase his prescription for Zopiclone (sleeping pills) and go back on antidepressants. And I have lived with a constant eyestrain headache from proof reading the thing for the nine hundredth time. Finally, though, I do believe there is light at the end of this tunnel. After OK-ing it, I will sign off on the paperback version next week. Leaving only the Kindle and then epub version to proof read and OK. All three can then be up and running at the press of a button. How the Audio version is progressing being loaded onto Audible, however, I have no idea. We have given up. So. When ALL the versions of Key Changes are done and dusted I will book a plane ticket and start counting the days. Am really excited about it too, with the papers full of "Al Qaeda capable of bringing down a transatlantic jet liner from London to America at any moment".

...the ways in which I am going to put the Becket house on the market. Furnished, unfurnished, with 12 acres, with 15 acres, with 25 acres, with a bonus for the realtor if she sells it within a month, with another bonus for her if she also finds an apartment in which to install my mother. And or finds a buyer who would like a 98 year old sleeping in their living room.

...the days until Alex, son and heir, moves out. I like him, but it's--time. He starts music college the end of September, in London. If--if if if--he can find the funding. By this I mean loans, and not from us. 

...the number of emails I get regarding Peg's health updates. Bonnie is very thorough. Much more thorough than I would be, I can tell you that. Two hours plus on the phone yesterday, she said, to track down a drug company that makes blood pressure pills tiny enough for Peg to swallow without gagging. Seems Rite Aid cancelled their contract with some company, so can't get them anymore, or they're not making them, or something, anyhow the only place Bonnie can get them now is WalMart and it has to be a special order, and it takes 6 weeks or more. (I would have made Peg take whatever she was sent, that's the kind of caring and concerned daughter I am). Plus they bought a new scale, to weigh Peg every morning. And a thing for her finger to measure her oxygen levels. I am so bored with all this vital-statistic-taking. Okay, there, I said it. 

...the number of DVD's I have watched of Peg's old Ethel & Albert kinescopes from the Fifties. Comic Relief Charity, which Peg helped promote last March in the UK, asked if she would help launch their RED NOSE DAY in America, on May 21. They want to feature her on their official website.  I said sure. This meant creating a USA based fundraising page, and linking it to a new video. After, as I said, watching about 30 of her half hours. Which meant borrowing an external DVD drive since this mac hated the USA formatting of the disks, and my laptop had no DVD drive. And then getting the chosen disk over to my friend Claire's, who knows about All Things Video, in order to isolate the one show from the four on there. Then get it onto YouTube. Then find out for anything over 30 minutes you need to verify your account. Then write the bumph, link it onto the fundraising page, load a dozen images onto the fundraising page, after resizing them. Then presto. I tell you, piece of cake. I said last March I was never doing this again and I meant it. Except for this last time, of course. The mass mailing goes out tomorrow.

...the number of builders we need to get estimates from regarding the new Peg Hut we want to erect in the garden, and now just called plainly The Hut, because Peg or not, it's going up. As soon as we get a low enough estimate.

...the number of times the Belling company said they were sending their oven repairman, who then fails to show up. We have been sans oven for 8.5 weeks.

...the number of times I have to change the batteries in my (clearly defective) mouse.

...the number of bumblebees that fly down the chimney into my room here as I'm trying to work, which then buzz frantically against the windows until I down tools and home in with my Bee Rescue Kit: a plastic cup and a piece of cardboard. Whereupon I release Babbity Bumble out the front door. Am trying now to think of a way of tagging them, because I swear I keep seeing the same faces in here. Out they go, only to shoot right back up to the roof and back down the chimney again. Today was a 16 bee day. So far.

...the number of posts I have left in me.