Beautiful Photo Edits

I am loving the group “free photo edits” on facebook. I submitted this picture of my grandmother and great grandmother. My grandmother was born in December of 1905 and was 15 when she lost her mom. So this photo was taken in 1920 or earlier. Here’s the original:

Here are the edits. They’re beautiful!  I love these so much. I shared it on my facebook page, but chose my settings to hide the post from one of my cousins who has an insanely irrational fear of AI. (He’s on my dad’s side anyway, so this isn’t his ancestors). I’m also going to text them later to two cousins on my mom’s side that don’t have Facebook. 

 

Unexpected Sunday

 First things first- the wife of one of my cousins gave birth to their second child. It’s a boy, and there’s no need to give the baby’s full name, but trust me when I say, the initials are very unfortunate. They are ASS. The baby’s initials are ASS. My mother is already referring to him as “baby ass” and he’s not even a week old yet. And honestly, I’ll get to what happened yesterday. I’ll just let the news of baby ass sit with yall my readers. No one is mentioning it to the proud new parents, because no one is sure if they did this on purpose or if they genuinely didn’t think of what his initials would be. As for me, I always considered initials, even for hypothetical babies I never had. 

Eggplant Bacon 🥓

I heard of this a long time ago- vegetarians and vegans making “bacon” by slicing eggplant really thin, brushing it with liquid smoke and Worcestershire sauce, and baking it at 250 for 40 minutes. I did this, and we made ELT’s. It didn’t taste like bacon. It tasted like smoked eggplant, because that’s what it was. It was actually really good if you don’t expect it to really be like real bacon. 

 

Tidbits

October is my favorite month!  Don't  you know, just as October started, we started getting temperatures in the 60s in the mornings. Texas goes through fall phases where it's nice in the morning and then 90 in the afternoon. I'll take it, though. 

I joined a Facebook group called “Free photo edits”.  I gave them this selfie of me

And asked them to fix my eyebrows and the cat’s face on my t-shirt. 

Only one person responded, and he gave me this. It's very AI-looking and doesn't look anything like me, but I said thanks anyway. I have an old pic of my grandmother and great-great-grandmother back when my grandmother was about 14. It's the only picture I have of my great-grandmother. I have to find it, though!

Two years ago, I got this AI pic of myself on tiktok and like it a lot better. I look like some kind of supernatural PI who's solving all the mysteries. 

Ordering: I ordered two Scrub daddy bundles one for us and one for a Christmas gift. I am trying to pre-order a book called Holy Disruptor by Amy Duggar King

I'm going to read it. Do you remember the old reality show 19 Kids and Counting, about a couple who had 19 biological children with the same mother and father? Amy is their first cousin. She's also an only child. I follow her on social media. I joined a live stream of hers one time and idk, for some reason I commented “Im writing a book called The Child Advocate”.  There were a lot of comments going by in the live stream, but Amy read mine out loud. She responded to me saying, “Oh that's wonderful!  I love it!  You definitely should do it!” It made me feel good. I have to buy her book now. 

 I just can't find a pre-order link, and it comes out on the 14th. I love the picture of her on the cover. I feel like all she needs in that picture is a feather boa.

I also ordered this Lizard flash drive.  It will go in my bottom drawer, and my immediate family (Anna and Kevin) are aware that it’s there with my book just in case I die. I don’t want to die!  Yet!  But, it will be there. 

This weekend, we are off, and we have plans. I’m making vegetarian bacon out of eggplant, soy sauce, Worcester sauce, liquid smoke, and maple syrup. After that we will have ELT sandwiches. I’m also going to my mom’s house to clean and do shopping for her. 

inspirational

I could have written this about 2014-2024. 

 

Writing Update

 I have been keeping my goal of writing 30 minutes a day. Each day, I think of a new topic in my book to explore during that time.  

The main document on my laptop, The Child Advocate, which I haven't worked on in months, has a word count of 21,713. This morning, I copied and pasted the entire thing into Grammarly, and it gave me over 2,000 improvements. It must have decreased the word count quite a bit, but I didn't count it until I copied and pasted my past week of writing into the main document. 

After editing the old 21,713-word document and adding a week’s worth of 30-minute increments, my total word count is now 25,464. 

However, the book is a mess. It's all out of order. It's going to be fixed a gazillion more times. 

Writing Made Official

 I got paid on Saturday. I sent Anna some money, paid my insurance premiums, brought my student loan balance down to $15,990 (which in no way allows for a celebration of getting it under $16K because of the compounding interest) and purchased a one year membership on Grammarly Pro. 

I set the goal to work on my book for 30 minutes a day. In fact, I became pretty convicted about forcing myself to do it. Checking into motels for a few days and doing nothing except my writing was a lot easier when I was single and working while traveling around nine states. It isn’t going to happen any time soon, though. So I just have to make time like a regular person. 

I want to make it clear that I’m not using Grammarly to write blog posts here. If I pick up again on either my child advocate blog or missing person blog, then I would. But here is just a place for me to vomit thoughts. I blog from my phone, and Grammarly is on my laptop. 

I’ve made it my job to do 30 minutes a day of my book. I’m using techniques I learned in some memoir writing books. It has to happen for me, even if we are working out of town long days. I’ve been successful at it all weekend, too.