Jean Marie Bauhaus

[Cross-posted from Daydream Believer]

I’ve been enjoying a lazy morning snuggled up on the sofa with my pets and the snuggliest afghan in creation (thanks again, Susan!), but it’s about time to wake the aytch up and get to work, so let this post serve as a warm up for my brain.

It’s chilly here, and wet and gray, and it’s been that way for a few days now. If we don’t see the sunshine soon I’m going to start fighting off another case of the SAD blues, but for now I’m enjoying the cozy vibe that all of this covering up and being glommed onto by cold kitties (and Pete) desperately seeking body heat is giving me. The house is chilly enough to be uncomfortable without hiding beneath layers, but not cold enough to justify turning on the heat and running up the gas bill; so when the chill starts to get to me, I try to think about early August, when our AC needed repairs and I pined for just this kind of weather. And then I make tea.

I also made myself a pair of “Fetching” wrist warmers over the weekend. See? I kind of thought fingerless gloves were pointless when it came to actual warmth, since it’s my fingers getting frozen that hinders my typing and such; but then I realized I kept pulling my sleeves down to cover my hands and figured there might be something to this hand-warmer thing. And you know? There is. Even my fingers feel a bit warmer when I have these things on (and when they get too cold I can just tuck them inside the gloves until they warm up). Since we tend to keep the temp in the low 60s throughout the winter (except for when we have company, natch), these will be a big help in keeping my hands functional instead of frosty.

On to this week’s goals. Oh, but first, on the accomplishment front, I finally cleaned my office, including my desk, so I have an official work space again. It’s still not as private as I’d like it to be, since we keep the cat box in there and I have to leave the door open so they don’t just up and decide that the clothes hamper or the dog’s bed or, Heaven forfend, our bed makes a perfectly good toilet. Earphones do a pretty good job of tuning out distraction and signaling Husband that I’m in concentration mode, though. And for jobs for which even music is too distracting, there’s White Noise mp3s.com, which usually does the trick.

This week I’m trying to turn my schedule around and go to bed/get up a couple of hours earlier than I did during the summer. This is mainly because I thought it would be nice if I could get most of my work done before Prime Time hours, so I can relax and enjoy my shows in the evenings, and then finish up my work before bedtime without it taking until 2AM. So far, the getting up earlier is happening, but the going to bed — or at least, the going to sleep — earlier is not. I’m telling myself that if I keep getting up early, eventually my body will get a clue and start getting sleepy at the right bed time, but these experiments have been tried before, and have failed. So we’ll see how this one goes.

I’m aiming to finish marking up my Hero Factor edits this week, and then I’ll start gearing up for NaNoWriMo next week. I only have four or five more scenes to get through, so that’s totally doable. As for This Old Haunt, if any of you are waiting for me to post the conclusion, I’m going to try very hard to get it posted tonight.

Work is still keeping me busy, which is excellent. I need to get a lot of admin-type stuff done for the business, and I want to totally redo the web site and start keeping a professional blog over there, but I keep getting too busy with client stuff to do any of that. So I’m going to try scheduling my own business as a client and see if that helps me get on top of things. I still need to formalize the biz, register it with the state and get my taxes sorted and all that. I haven’t made enough yet to make income taxes for this year a concern, but I’m not sure about business taxes and how that all works, so at some point I’m going to have to sit down with someone at our tax agency and have it explained to me. But those things probably won’t happen until the new year. For right now, I’m just focusing on figuring out how to fit in running the business with doing the work and keeping my clients happy.

In other news, my cats keep wheezing. Niblet’s been doing it intermittently for a few weeks now, and I was getting pretty worried, because she’s getting older and I’ve read that that’s a symptom of heart disease in cats. But now Boudica’s doing it, so now I’m wondering if they’re just passing around a kitty cold of some kind. If Sasha starts to do it, too, then we’ll have a trifecta and I can stop being so scared that Niblet’s going to have a heart attack before we can get her checked out. I’m still keeping my eye on her, though. Which is not hard to do, since she’s practically been attached to me and my afghan since the weather turned chilly.

And now my brain is as warmed up as the rest of me, so I’m going to go put it to work. What about you, dear reader? Tell me how your goals are coming along in the comments.