Better

My ankle (or "cankle" as one dog park friend called it - calf + ankle looking) is much better. Thanks for the well wishes. I thought at the time it happened that it wasn't too serious and sure enough the swelling is down a lot. I might get a good-sized bruise out of it yet, which is always a conversation starter :-)

What else. We are making the transition to Mr W's middle school schedule reasonably well. I've been getting up 15 (just a puny 15) minutes earlier and I have felt it. Or so I think. After two weeks of it (on school days) I woke up last Friday a little before the alarm and took that as a good sign. However, I've also been in sort of a rut of waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble falling back to sleep. Nothing's wrong, I'm not anxious, I just can't fall back to sleep. It's frustrating, and hopefully will turn around soon.

Work is good. I handed in another manuscript to my boss so we can get that study published. It's a sometimes painful process, the editing and the back and forth about how things should be worded. He's nice about it, but it can be a long process. We've got two other authors this time around who will want to (and should) have input, but at least the ball is rolling. This means I can go back to the lab and do lab stuff, which is my favorite part of the job. Try this, try that, run samples, get data. I know it's not for everyone, but I do like it.

The bracelet stuff has taken a lot of my free time lately, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I need to promote the stuff, because just listing items on Etsy doesn't go very far. I use their within-site advertising, so if someone searches "button bracelet" my stuff will be at the top of the page, and that gets some views, but so far not many sales. So I'm beefing up my blog presence at my other blog, and trying to make those connections with people who make things out of polymer clay, mostly. They are by and large warm and friendly people and that makes it not so much like work. So much interesting stuff out there.

But it's hard to know when to stop with the checking and promoting and what works and what doesn't. I'm still not in a spot where I feel like my efforts translate into selling my stuff. So far that, and feedback about pictures that I post, are the signs of "success" in this for me. However, I do still get a kick out of making the stuff. I love it when a piece comes together and all the parts look good. I feel like I need to focus more on that, but would really like for this little hobby to at least pay for itself.

And for heaven's sake, don't take the above paragraph as a plea for you to please go over and buy something. Don't do that.

In the meantime, I have not played my banjo enough, and am making a concerted effort to practice more. I hate feeling guilty about not practicing, and really don't want that to be my motivation. I want to practice because I enjoy it.

I have had some insights about the garden this year that I will share in another post. Growing veggies didn't go quite as I had hoped this year. My tomato plant is monstrous, but with few fruits. The powdery mildew came early, and I probably, because I planted cukes near my cantaloupe, have some weird melon-cuke hybrids. The fruits between the two plants are more cylindrical than the first melons I  harvested. More on this later.