Do you add relaxing times to your life?

Our long weekend in Hannibal was lots of fun.  Vacations do not have to be long distances or to exotic places to be relaxing and healthy.   This long weekend was educational, fun and relaxing.

Here I am overlooking the town of Hannibal, MO from a cliff called Lovers' Leap.  We choose to put relaxing, de-stressing times into our lives?  Do you?

Hannibal by riverboat

Here’s a picture of the Mark Twain riverboat.  

We toured Hannibal by trolley car, by riverboat, by foot and by automobile.  

I hope you choose to add relaxing, fun times to your life.  They contribute positives to our health.  

Cave tour at Hannibal

We toured Mark Twain Cave.   My first caving experience was ok; I wasn't scared.  Of course, we had a guide and were surrounded by 20 teenagers from a St Louis school expedition.  I was impressed with the magnificent boulders and walkways through the cave.

As we toured the cave, our guide talked about Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher's adventures in the cave.  One time they  got lost and wandered for several hours.  (That made me glad I was with the guide.)

Fall foliage in Hannibal MO

The autumn season has been gorgeous this year.  We find viewing the beautiful fall colors to be relaxing.  

Our trip to Hannibal found lots of fall colors in the trees. 

Every morning we sat and enjoyed the quiet as we sipped our coffee.  We watched the mighty Mississippi roll by.  All these relaxing, de-stressing behaviors helped us have a rejuvenating weekend. 

Weekend getaway in Hannibal MO

Do you remember when I talked about taking time away from life’s stresses to relax?
This past weekend we took a long weekend with our friends RJ and JL.  We explored Hannibal, MO and learned a lot about Mark Twain.  

Mark Twain wrote classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi and many more.  We enjoyed our journey through Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemen’s) boyhood hometown.  

We stayed at Reagan’s Queen Ann Bed and Breakfast.  Our hosts, Norm and Judy, shared their beautiful home and fed us fabulous breakfasts every morning.  We thank them for a great stay and recommend their B&B. 

Book page edits

A couple interesting details about book page edits:  any corrections I or the publisher make HAVE to fit on that page.   (The publishing process already has the page numbers set.)   For example, on my first book when I got to book page edits new research on glucosamine/chondroitin studies had been released.  The new research results were different from what had been previously understood (and my writing reflected the old information.)  Well, that one edit was challenging.  At one point, I threw up my hands and said, I can’t make this fit.   I did eventually get it worded so the new results fit on that page.  Not an easy task. 

Another interesting aspect was finding erasable red ink pen for the book page edits required an on-line search and purchase at the Paper-mate website.   A writer friend had warned me I would need erasable red ink so I began looking before the book page proofs arrived.  You cannot find erasable red ink in my town.   

Caregiver's Guide: Care for Yourself while you care for your loved ones

Some of you may wonder how the book edits are going?  I say good.  The process of having a book published goes like this:  after months of writing (in my case, it's two years), I mailed my book to the publisher.  The good folks at McFarland & Co., Inc do their work for several months.  Along the way, they email questions like "Is there supposed to be a chapter 12?  It appears to be missing." Oh dear, what did I do?  Of course there's a chapter 12.  So I attach chapter 12 to my email and send it to them.  Oops.  I'm glad they caught that mistake.
Then weeks later I receive an email, "book proof edits were mailed with instructions.  Please check these edits and make an index.  Please send all this to us hopefully within a month."

 Book page edits and making an index are the last thing a writer does.  Book page edits involve unbound pages that are set up exactly how the book pages will be.  I have to read through, make corrections, refer to the original manuscript (which the editors sent back with lots of red ink editor marks and suggestions.  (That's ok, it's their job to make my book look as perfect as possible.)  I look for content corrections, typographic corrections, etc.  You've got the picture.  That's step 1 in book page editing.  We will talk about the next steps in the next blog posts.