Saturday, May 22, 2010

Where I kick my own butt just a little

So, as the title of this blog states, in addition to being a writer, I am also a designer and a crazy cat lady.  In a perfect world, I can juggle all 3 in total harmony.  Sadly, the world is not so perfect, and sometimes things have to take a backseat.

All month (more than that, really), one of my cats (Ana) has been having an allergic reaction to something.  Most likely a flea bite, but really, it could be anything, even the pollen in the air.  Whatever it is, it's making her extremely itchy, and she's licking off a good amount of her fur.  The other cats have also been somewhat itchy, but not to the extent she has.  I've tried everything: flea collars, other flea treatments, bug bombs in the house.  Finally, this week I decided to bite the bullet and take her to the vet.  She'd been getting worse, and was clearly miserable.  She'd taken to sleeping on top of me every night, as though she was trying to find solace from her troubles in me.  It was sweet, but also heartbreaking to know she was suffering and I couldn't help her. Then she started shaking her head all the time, sometimes rather violently, and I figured it was time to get medical attention.  Her sister had also had a weird balance thing, so I thought maybe there was an ear infection going around, and hauled them in.  They were not happy.  And at the end, neither was I.  $400 spent, and no real answers.  Just a few shots (for the cat, not me) to help the itching and heal some scabs from all the scratching, a box of Revolution flea treatment, a couple of ear tests that came up with nothing substantial, and a bottle of ear medication to give them anyway, just in case.


Saturday, May 8, 2010

Well, that week was a bust

I had the best of intentions this week, I really did.  I was going to do more agent research, settle on a couple “top choices,” and send out at least one query. If I was feeling really productive, I was even going to dust off one of my other completed novels and start polishing it up.

Instead, I had a minor personal crisis come up that took away all my focus, and I never quite got back to my plans before the week was up.  My vision disorder (I have cone dystrophy, which means my vision cannot be brought all the way to 20/20 with a prescription. Instead, it’s about 20/60 with glasses/contacts) caused me to fail the eye test when I went to renew my driver’s license, and I had to make an emergency visit to the eye doctor.  Thankfully, I was still within the parameters of Florida law, and didn’t lose my license. Cue the HUGE sigh of relief. I love to drive.  I love my car (a 2010 Kia Forte SX). I did not want to lose either the car or the right to drive it.  So naturally, the fear of such a thing happening shook me up for a few days.  By Thursday I had my new license in hand and could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Shiny New Blog

I'm not sure whether or not I consider this my first blog. On the one hand, I've been journaling online for years now. On the other, I never consdiered any of that to be blogging. Maybe because no one other than my friends ever read it, and I've always considered a blog to be more of a public thing, where anyone could be interested if the topic appealed to them. Or maybe it's just becfause I was using LiveJournal, and not Blogger, so I was more prone to think of it as a journal. It's right there in the name!

Anyway, that's all semantics. Point is, this is my first journal/blog intended for the masses. Not that I think I'm going to have masses flocking here anytime soon, but the purpose of setting this up is to correlate with my beginning quest for publication, so if I'm ever lucky enough to actually get a book deal down the line, readers will have a place to go online to see what I'm all about.