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Yesterday I enjoyed breakfast with my daughter Eve.

Afterwards she said she needed a particular kind of hat for a presentation at her library on Saturday, so we went hat shopping.

Her program Saturday will feature a talk by the County Coroner, who will talk about how to determine if a dead body died of blunt force trauma — and a troop of hula dancers.

What a blend.

Ginny and I plan to attend the event and I plan to write about it afterwards.

Last night, we enjoyed a fine dinner with our daughter-in-law’s parents. We talked about books and birds and their recent trip to Germany. (Blair had just had a cancer removed from his scalp and the fresh wound was sore — .He laughed when I told him he needs a new barber).

Between that breakfast and that dinner, I finished editing A Zealous Heart: the Diary of Samuel Ward, a translator of the 1611 King James Bible!

That book is almost done.

Thanks be to God!

I started this job back in December and by now I’m thoroughly sick of Ward and his diary and his Jacobean English; yet being so close to the end of the project elates me.

Yesterday Ginny compared me to a woman who’s eight and three-fourths months pregnant.

Carrying this project around with me 24 hours a day for months exasperates me and I’m tired of it and want it to go away; yet at the same time, the expectation of seeing a shinny new book appear thrills me.

For months I’ve obsessed over tiny details of dates and times and spellings.

For instance, yesterday I woke at 3:15 a.m. realizing that somewhere in the text I had spelled the word undue as undo!

Horrors!

My book will never top the Times best seller list with that kind of error.

Why didn’t the spell checker catch my mistake?

Why wouldn’t WORD’s fine/replace feature locate either spelling?

I browsed through 140 pages of text to find my mistake and correct it.

Got the rascal.

Changed it manually…

Got to wondering if that date was 1625 or should it be 1639???

Samuel Ward, a Puritan, said, “Be not overly righteous”.

He said, “There be some … over-nice men in this sense also, who have not learned that God will have them merciful to themselves”.

I uploaded the Ward text to the printing company for my proof copy to correct about 1 a.m. this morning. I’ll get the test copy in a week or ten days.

Lord, prosper Thou the work of my hands.

All I have to do is wait.

Maybe it will have the right number of fingers and toes and dates and headers and pagination and footers and section breaks and …

I should not engage in undo worry.

Can’t wait to start my next book.