I’m nervous but we’ll see how it goes.

It really is funny how much more nervous and antsy I am about my fiction that my non-fiction!

Well, I stayed home from work yesterday since I woke up with the stress migraine to beat the band. It’s generally a bad idea to try to drive when you can’t see out of one eye.

After hours of darkness and drugs, I got to the point where I was semi-functional and as C was home (a whole ‘nother story), we decided to inflict the SoftPaws on Mistress Meeps.

Meeps is a not quite eight lb short hair black cat who is definitely the Queen Diva of the house. But she’s our worst resident woodworker as well. C and I were both really tired of having the door trim, bannister, bookcase. etc shredded to splinters. But I’m morally opposed to declawing – so on my mother’s advice, I decided to try the SoftPaw claw covers and ordered them in Princess Pink for Meeps and a nice blue for Harley (who has not yet been victimized).

After getting the various things we would need on the bed, I managed to capture and scruff Meeps. She was immediately unhappy but had no idea just what she was in for! A regular claw trimming she takes with disdain and constant squirming but this was just …. wrong!

After trimming her nails, C proceeded to clean them with alcohol and then put glue in the nail caps and started applying them. She tried to turn into Dervish Kitty until I wrapped a towel around her back legs, then she quivered and mewed pitifully in between attempts to flee.

Finally done, we carried her downstairs for some squishy food (to both reward her and distract her from chewing at the nail caps immediately).

She won’t come near C at all and finally deigned to try to sweet talk me into her morning squishy food this morning and the caps appear to still be in place.

Last night I laughed myself silly when she tried to sharpen her claws on the tall cat tree and kept glaring at me across the room. Good things looks can’t really kill…..

No blood was shed, at least. We’ll have to see if Harley does as well.

My plans are made and plane tickets purchased to attend the RT convention in Houston, TX in April. I can’t wait to meet folks!

On the writing front, I’ve sent Raven’s White Hart out to two agents and an editor in the last few weeks. I’ll let everyone know when I hear anything but it can take many months.

After C’s Mazda MX-3 met up with a flatbed semi in an unfortunate parting of the ways between the car’s body and a good portion of the front bumper, C has been pretty bummed out. His original intention had been to repair the MX-3 (into which we’ve already put more money than we will ever see back out of it) and toward that end we had already obtained an after market set of body kit pieces for it and put a deposit on a set of special door hinges.

But after C visited multiple body shops in the area, we discovered that the amount of damage done was much more extensive than we had first realized and it was going to be many thousands of dollars to put it right.

Much pain and heartache later, C started shopping for a replacement car. I made him go out on his own to narrow it down because I HATE shopping and shopping with C is worse. I’m one of those people who know what they want and just want to go in and buy it. But C likes to explore all his options in great detail and, since this will be HIS car, he needed to settle on something HE would be happy with.

He was out after work on Friday and pretty much all day Saturday and decided on a Mazda 3 sport, Grand Touring, in a really nice color called Phantom Blue Mica. Today we went out with all three of us for a ride in both the manual and automatic versions and he settled on a manual and we bought it. The dealer had to buy it from another dealer so we’ll pick it up tomorrow.

Now I have a huge case of new car envy. I’m driving a 1999 Mazda Protege which isn’t bad but I’d love a new car too. So my challenge to myself (the queen of fiscal irresponsibility) is to save the equivalent to what my car payment would be each month for the next year and use that for a down payment on a new car for me. The hatchback version of that same car in a Phantom Purple Mica is really looking lovely to me!!

So I’ve signed up for a month long challenge to write an hour a day (my designated time is 10pm to 11pm) for a minimum of 5 days per week. Last night was the first night so we’ll see how it goes.

I’m also setting up my binders for tracking my series and world building information. It’s actually really interesting how much I know about the people and world but don’t have written down and I can easily see how, later on, it may all just become confused or jumbled together.

In the meantime C is hunting for a new car. I’m not sure what he’ll end up with yet, though.

Wish me luck!