I have a closet in my office where I store my off-season clothes. See, in my family, the women have a full wardrobe for each season. Since it was an alarming 35 degrees out when I got up this morning, I figured it was time to break out the winter clothes.
This isn't simply a matter of pulling out everything in the office closet and switching it with everything in the bedroom. No, a change of seasons means that each item of clothing must be gone through to see if it still fits, remains fashionable, and is free of stains and/or  holes. Join me on this adventure, won't you?

Pants: I have seven pairs of winter pants that don't fit, and two that do. See, on my mother's side of the family, if we're not on a diet or undergoing major dental work, we're gaining weight. Since I take after Mom, it was no surprise that my pants seem to have shrunk while in storage.

Toss the pants that don't fit? Heck no. There's a chance I could weigh less next year. Plus, I have long legs, so finding slacks that reach the bottom of my ankle is difficult. They can live in the bottom drawer of my dresser all winter.

Sweaters: I found several sweaters that still fit, mostly because I tend to shop in the menswear section for these items (women's sweaters are made for fashion, not warmth, and I like to be warm). However, I did find a few that got shorter over the summer.

Toss the sweaters that fall just above my belly button? Absolutely not. While I won't be baring my midriff in the dead of winter, they're too cute to toss, and they might magically grow longer in a few months. (What? It could happen.)

Turtlenecks: Nobody looks good in a turtleneck. I'm serious. If you think you do, you're lying to yourself. Even Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson looks like a doofus in a turtleneck, and you know I love me some Dwayne Johnson.

Toss the turtlenecks? Sadly, no. I have some sweaters that are loose-knit (read: see-through) and the only thing I have that offers warmth and complete torso coverage are these stupid turtlenecks. Keep.

Suits: I still have several sharp-looking suits from my "have to go to a board meeting" days. Now I run a bookstore, where the standard office attire is "not a sweatshirt." When will I wear these things again?

Toss the suits? Nope. If I toss the suits, my store will go bankrupt and I'll need the stupid things for job interviews. I'm too superstitious to jinx myself like that. They'll live in the closet all winter.

Dresses and skirts: Also a little too fancy for work, but they're good for holidays and funerals. Plus, when I'm feeling lazy, there's nothing like a dress to quickly pull on so I'm not walking around naked. However, I may need to invest in some more control-top pantyhose. 

Toss the dresses and skirts? Nope. Too handy for lazy days.

See how tiring and time-consuming this can be? It also explains why I have a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear. Going to be a long winter, folks.

Every year in Colchester, they have a scarecrow contest on the green in the center of town. Since our bookstore is in Colchester, Jason decided that 1. We would sign up for the contest and 2. I would create the whole thing by myself. Incidentally, we're still not speaking.

In between my nurse duties (which, this week, have consisted mostly of me driving Kathy around while calling her 'Miss Daisy') and running a bookstore, I managed to do something pretty amazing this week: publish a book.

Jason has been harassing me (he'd call it encouraging me, but let's be honest here) to put together a collection of my own short stories for well over a year now. Finally, to shut him up, I took a look at what I had. Were there enough stories here to fill out a book? Had the rights expired yet on past stories that had been published in other anthologies? If not, would the publishers ever really notice anyway?

I wrote a few new stories, liked some old ones enough to want to reprint them, and was able to pull together a collection of twelve tales. I gathered them up in a pile, threw them at Jason and said "Here! Do something with these!"
What Jason likes to tell people is that he will come up with an idea, and then have his wife execute them. True to form, he handed them right back to me and said "you're the editor!"

ANY writer will tell you (if they're a good writer, that is) that it's impossible to edit your own work. You simply can't be objective. Plus, you know what you meant to write, so if there's a missing "the" or "disemboweled" in a sentence, your mind, as the author, will fill it in automatically, and you won't catch the error. So I emailed some friends, begged them to provide me with free editing and proofreading services, and sent off the stories. This bought me about seven days of quality time to relax and play Candy Crush.

My friends (thank you, Catherine Grant, Jan Kozlowski, and Kristi Petersen Schoonover) were pretty efficient, and got the stories back in record time. Now, it was on to formatting and layout. Which, by the way, I have zero experience doing. But Jason had the bright idea that we should start our own small publishing press, so I had to give myself a crash course in Formatting 101.

I finished the layout, uploaded the file, looked over the proof, found a period where a comma should be, fixed it, uploaded the file, looked over the proof, found two spots with extra spaces, fixed it, uploaded the file, looked over the proof, found a missing "disemboweled," fixed it, uploaded the file . . . you get the idea.

Eventually, the file was to my satisfaction, and I green lighted the print copy.  In between Candy Crush and Formatting 101, I'd contacted a cover artist (not the singing kind) and Stephanie Johnson designed an incredible cover for the collection. On Thursday, a box arrived. I had a brand new book, written by ME, in my hot little hands. If I hadn't been so tired from driving Miss Daisy around all week, I would've jumped for joy.

I'll admit it feels pretty incredible to hold your own book and see your name on the cover as the author. I immediately started setting up dates for a book tour, which begins tomorrow. That's right: I'll be appearing at the Sixth Annual Homemade for the Holidays Craft Fair at St. James Episcopal Church in Preston on Saturday. I'll try not to let all of this media attention now that I'm a famous author go to my head.

This week, I have a new role: nurse.