I was finally able to schedule a time when I could drop my car off at the mechanic's and have my mother, who lives nearby, pick me up and let me hang out at her place.

I was a little anxious to get it done as I'm doing a lot more driving these days with the little driving gig I have...2 hours daily is what it works out to.

It was really just a routine oil-filter change but i had him check all the other routine stuff as well, and he said my air pressure was pretty low on all 4 tires and i'd need to replace brake pads at the next oil change. So all I spent was $45.

I brought him a box of big tomatoes from my garden.He's Portuguese, from the old country, and he and his wife thanked me.

So the car was ready around 1:30 pm, but i decided i might as well stay the rest of the afternoon at my mom's since i'd have to drive back in that direction to pick up J. from work around 4:30 pm anyway.

So I helped her begin to clear out a large storage area and then we started shredding old utility and bank statements from 2001. She has a cheapie shredder which kept jamming the way mine does.

I was checking my email at her place to see if the PR agency had commented on the big brochure I turned in last Friday. They did respond around mid-day, with a somewhat vague and yet alarming statement by the account manager that N., the owner of the firm, didn't think it was completely in line with the postiioning statement I wrote, but then she suggested just rewriting the headline and 2 lead paragraphs...by 2 pm tomorrow.

So I couldn't really start on it today, at my mother's, and I'm too tired to do so now, so by the time I get back home from driving J. to work tomorrow, I'll have about 5 hours to write the new lead. Which should be possible, althought i'll have to come up with something that sounds powerful but hits all their points but is yet unique and different and....you get the picture.

I'm a little nervous cus she also said she was going to look at the draft "now," and would send me i guess her comments on it, which she hasn't done yet. If she waits to send them to me at noon, that won't be very helpful if i'm trying to hit a 2 pm deadline.

This is the woman who has been most unhelpful everytime I have a question or whatever. Let's see if or when she comes thru with whatever additional feedback she might have. It almost might be better if she sent nothing at all.

She wanted to know how many hours I'd spent so far on the project becus they have a budget. I tallied up my time and it came to 27.5 hours, which equals $1100. Holy guacomole! We are far from done with it. The client will invariably have changes they want me to make. So anyway, this is quite lucrative. I hope the hours I've spent on it are in line with what they were expecting. It took quite a bit of time just reading and absorbing the many lengthy documents (annual report, 3 yr business plan, etc) that were supplied me. The client is brand new to me, so there was a rather steep learning curve.

This will be my top...only priority to get done tomorrow. I need to be inspired and to inspire.