Odds & Ends for Friday

A quick update for this Friday:

Our very nice neighbor and my new friend, Elizabeth, is letting us use her daughter's play horse. Her daughter does not like it at all, and Paprika, of course, loves it! She wants to climb on it herself and bounce away. She loves it! We're having a lot of fun with it and we're so glad we get to use it for the time being.

Our heater is out- kaput, not working! I have a space heater going in Paprika's room, but otherwise it's downright chilly in our house. Our thermostat says it's 60 degrees, so we've been bundled up and keeping warm. I am going to break down and call the heating repairman this afternoon, since it's become obvious that the heater won't fix itself and winter has just begun.

Today is the first day of rain we've had in I don't remember how long. Paprika ran to the window and started exclaiming "water! water!" as if it was the most amazing thing that water was falling from the sky. I told her that when it comes from the sky it's called "rain" and then she started saying "Ain! Ain!" I wonder if it is confusing to her that water, while so important, has so many different names and uses. Ocean, Lake, river, rain, waterfall, ice, snow, bathtub water, drinking water, toilet water, etc. It's a lot to sort out!


Paprika Looking at the Rain for the First Time:

We have a busy weekend ahead of us planned. We are going to Lauren and Don's Christmas Party tomorrow- and I'm so excited about it. Paprika is spending the evening at our local Mother's Day Out center, and I know she'll love being around other kids. We had a tour and she wanted to play with all the other kids while we were there. It's a fantastic place. It'll be my first time dropping her off, and I'm nervous as heck about it. But, I know that she'll be in great hands, and we'll be back to get her before she knows it. Can you tell I'm a little nervous? I'm sure she'll do better than I will!

I am hard at work marketing my book, UnInked! The Complete Guide to Tattoo Removal. It's selling very well on Amazon.com and Borders.com. I am working on finding other channels to sell it. I am in talks with a distributor, which would put the book into brick and mortar stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I have started a few websites: http://tattooremovalsupport.com/, http://tattooremovalbook.com/, http://erikafinn.com/, and http://zibibooks.com/. I still need to work out the kinks on the websites, add to them, and the "Buy It Now" option needs to be easier and more user friendly. It's baby steps right now, literally!

I am also working on two more books in my spare time. I am co-authoring a book with my good friend Jessica, and we have an agent from ICM who wants to rep the book for us. That's great news. We hope to go with a large publisher for the book, like Random House. We are about half-way finished writing the book- it's fun writing with a partner!

I ordered our Christmas cards a few days ago and just got a notification that they're in route! They are majorly cute this year. I can't wait to send them out!

Mr. Mustard is busy, busy with work. So far this year he's done more shows than I can remember, and all of them were major. In his next break between shows, he may do some work at home- which I would love!