poor cat

Smartie did not have a great day today. Not his worst, for sure, but it's been quite a while since he horked at all and today he did it twice. Plus, I managed to run out of fresh turkey for him, so he's really pissed at me. Oh, well.

Wednesday is the day he goes in for another round of radiation therapy. I find myself tensing up thinking about it, again, which I know I shouldn't do, but it creeps up on me, what can I say? I mean the thinking ahead part, which is not living in the now, which I really try to do, but at which I think I fail miserably a good deal of the time. Okay, most of the time.

So now. What's going on right now? I'm listening to the sleet hitting the air conditioner and the fire escape and trying not to worry about what if I have to go out tomorrow in snowy, slushy, icy conditions. Because I really, really hate that. I'm also hoping that it's all gone by Wednesday.

Yeah, back to now. Now I'm drinking a cup of red bush tea, which I wouldn't have known about except for Alexander McCall Smith's books, starting with the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. They take place in Botswana and a friend of mine thinks they're racist, because the language he uses is fairly simple and the people depicted as possibly a little slow or at least naive. But I think, one, that the Botswanans may in fact talk like that, for all we know (and they may in some ways be more "naive" with respect to our culture, but then Westerners may well be quite naive if we found ourselves there). And, two, I really think they were written as young adult novels. If you read the second one in the series, it's much more obvious and the rest of them just seem to confirm this suspicion. I mean, they're billed as mysteries, but you never read such mild mysteries in your life.

Meanwhile, I actually finished the acrostic puzzle! It was quite a PIA, but I did it! It's really not very good, of course, but I'm still shocked I managed to get all the letters accounted for. I'm going to tackle another one this week, after I put in all the clues--I guess I'm really not "finished" until I do that.

Well, the cat wants some milk, so I'm going to go warm some up (for me) and get his small saucerful, too.

Oy

Oy. Yes, it's been a while since I've been here, blogging. Not sure why, though some of it has been because I've been working myself hard, trying to make up for the fact that, last year, it seems my little business grossed more money than I've ever earned in my life before--except nearly half of it went to subcontractors and, in fact, I personally earned less than I did during the next-highest grossing year since I've been in business. Something is wrong with this picture.

Anyway, tonight, I'm procrastinating, big time. And it's insane, I have plenty of work to do, I want to get it all done, there's nothing wrong with me except I can't seem to get my head into work mode. Maybe it's because of the aforementioned "working myself hard"? I dunno. I just know that I'm trying not to kick myself, but I really can't stand it when I get like this. I want to be more active, doing things to get them done and out of the way so I can do the next thing that needs doing. Or, ya never know, at some point there'll be time for some leisure.

Actually, I shouldn't complain about that. I took last Friday off. I even went so far as to use my vacation message for my main email account. A first! I met an old friend for lunch, which was fun. Then I went to the first appointment with a new PCP. Now, doctor-shopping, which is what this was, is one of my least favorite things to do, but as these things go, this was pretty painless. I even like his scale, it seemed to think that I had lost 4 pounds or so, which is patently ridiculous. My clothes tell quite a different story.

Speaking of stories. No, I haven't gotten any more writing done. But I did start a new project and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm creating a double acrostic. I'm using a friend's book and I've picked a quote and I'm trying to make it work. And it isn't, so I'll probably have to find a different quote, but I was planning on doing that, anyway. But not until I've spent a lot more time with this one, seeing what's possible. I'm learning from the process, anyway. I would love to find some software that would let me do this on the computer, though. Maybe I could create something with a table in Word, which I'm sure would be onerous to do, but if I could get it done once, then I'd have the template and that would be worth the trouble. But first I'm going to look around the Web, see what's out there.

This is something that I've been thinking about for a while and, somehow, I just finally got started with it. I hope I finish it and I hope I sell it to Will Shortz.