I’m pimping someone else’s words tonight, which came to me courtesy of Kradical, who posted the link in HIS ElJay.

It’s a page-long blog entry offering money advice to new writers, but much of it applies to ANYONE who is working in a creative field that doesn’t involve regular paychecks, benefits, or office hours.

The piece is here.

This is how we’re spending Sunday evening:

Zorro is curled on Fuzzy’s pillow, watching me as I type while half-watching television. I put it on to watch Brothers and Sisters and let it run through the news and now Ebert and Roeper. We might get snow next week, we might not. None of the movies being reviewed are interesting me much, except for In the Shadow of the Moon, which will be out on DVD soon if it isn’t already.

MissCleo is devouring a bully ring chewy. This is essentially a bully stick formed into a ring. They last longer than actual bully sticks because she has to create a gap in the ring before she can really go to town on it. She talks to her chewies, growling and warbling. It’s very cute.

Fuzzy is upstairs blasting things on the playstation 3, or playstation 2, or one of the Xboxes. We don’t yet have a Wii. He’s SUPPOSED to be getting rid of the original Xbox since we have a 360 now, but it’s been two months and I’m not holding my breath.

I am curled up in bed, with my laptop, and a pile of books to catalog. I have the receipts for them, but spreadsheets are easier. I need this info for taxes. Since I keep a bookblog, and it’s monetized, any book I buy that I also review is a business expense. If the FLIP video camera that I’m looking at is used to make ads, it can be deducted too. How cool is that>?

Tomorrow will be a day of writing, and since it’s Monday it’s a weight day. I’m still a little sore from Friday – I think I pushed myself too hard.

But the weights make me feel so powerful.

And on that note, goodnight.

This post is more for myself than the general public, but it helps me to post it here, so that I have something external forcing some semblance of accountability.

My mother is coming for a week in May. We have a bunch of things that we need to do for the house, which we’ve been putting off until after Zorro’s dental surgery on Friday the fifteenth. The list, so far, includes:

– Flooring:
We need to re-carpet the downstairs hall, upstairs hall, and steps in something dog-proof with little-to-know pile. I don’t want hard floors in those places.
We also need to put cherry laminate in the dining room, so we need a quote for that.
We went to Carpet One earlier today, only to find that they’re closed on Sunday. I’ve been hearing a lot about that directbuy place, where you buy a membership but then get deep discounts. I wonder if they install? I know they sell flooring. There’s a downloadable free pass on their website so we might have to check them out.

– Paint:
Kitchen will be peach. Pale peach.
Decided I like the green tea color of my office (it’s tranquil) but I want to add some lavender.
Fuzzy’s office will be the color of antique parchment.
The dining room is still undecided. I like the yellow base color, so if we get rid of the picket fencing and repaint the walls, it might work. It’s a sort of Tuscan yellow. Very rich. With the wood floors it will be marvelous.

– Plants:
Need to talk to gardener about putting a flower garden in front of the arch window, and trimming the shrubs.
Need to buy big pots for outside the living room and bedroom windows. Maybe citrus? I’ve heard there are varieties of lemon and lime that can handle Texas winters.
Need a large tree for the corner behind the couch. I will put my dragonfly lights on it, and it will be a good “nightlight.”

– Other:
Really need a chimney sweep.
And a general contractor for the ceiling plaster and front entry.

So, what do a bunch of geeks (and one feisty old lady) do on a sunny Saturday? Believe it or not, we all abandoned our homes full of various devices connected with Cat5e cable, and went to a quilt show.

The show in question was called “Four Score and Seven Quilts Ago,” and while a good portion of the quilts were newly constructed, using the very latest in quilting machines from Baby Lock (which, by the way, were seriously cool, and if I had $5,000 to spend on a sewing machine, one would have come home with me, just to “have”), many were also antiques, and others were made in memory of relatives who had been conductors on the underground railroad.

There was an informal debate among us all day, about whether or not using a computer to make a quilt was “cheating.” Ms. Feisty thought it was, the rest of us took milder stances, ultimately agreeing that it was the act of quilting, rather than the method, that was important, though I think we all have great respect for the women who did – and do – still hand-piece, and hand-sew all their squares.

In addition to a display of quilts, which ranged from the cute to the questionable, from the truly awesome to the incredibly frightening (orange and neon yellow in an “ugly fabric quilt”) – my favorite was a wholecloth quilt that was white on white and looked like the inside of an ornate tray ceiling – there were vendors, including a stall selling hand-painted batik. I bought my mother a collection of batik quilt squares with brightly colored fish, because she’ll appreciate it.

She wasn’t with me at the show, but she was very present in my mind when we were there.

Ms. Eclectic invited us to go along with her as she takes the Divine Ms. R to see a quilt show, which also happens to feature a Civil War Re-enactment Camp. I mentioned the latter to my mother on the phone yesterday, and then added that I’d never experienced such a thing from the perspective of the South. “What do they do,” she wondered. “Change the ending so they win?” We both laughed, but I have to admit that I’m still curious. Still, Ms. E is a history goddess, so it should be interesting to hear what she has to say.

When I told Fuzzy what we were doing, I presented his alternatives: paint the kitchen, install roller shades in the offices, and measure the carpet hallway for new carpet. Is it any wonder that he chose quilts and faux soldiers over that?

Still the kitchen must be painted, and the carpet replaced before May, when my parents are coming for a visit, or I’ll hear about it forever.

The roller shades may have to wait, but I still want them. The vertical blinds don’t give me the option of blocking just the TOP of the window, during the afternoon when the sun is slanting in, and my computer screen becomes unreadable.

As to the quilts, well, I love fiber arts, and I love quilts. I’m looking forward to this.

I’m not writing tonight.
My mouth hurts where I sliced the gum on a chip, and my head is hurting, and I’ve been at the computer too long either working on workstuff or playing scramble on facebook (the latter is addictive), and I think instead of writing, I’m going to go take a bath.

Yeah.

And then I’ll sleep.

Double yeah.

Bye.

We have the results of the heart workup, and the Z-Man has advanced heart disease (more advanced than they were expecting to find), as well as a stage six (of six) heart murmur. The chambers of his heart are significantly enlarged but he seems to be compensating. The vet wants us to keep him on the enalapril (ACE inhibitor) indefinitely, and we need to do blood draws to check kidney and liver function.

As well, he’s got dental issues. We went through the heart workup in part to determine if he CAN have the dental surgery to remove an abscessed molar that keeps swelling and oozing. (It’s OH so pretty.) The decision is that they’ll mask him rather than using injectable anesthetics, and monitor him closely, but they’re giving him a 50/50 chance of surviving the surgery. You can feel the murmur when you put your hand on his chest. It’s kind of creepy.

So, why do it, you may wonder? Because if we don’t the infection will linger, eventually spreading to his brain, and the tooth is causing him pain and discomfort.

And either way, our time with him is marked.

He’s not showing any real symptoms now that we’ve knocked his cough out. He’s a little slower, perhaps, and we’re lifting him onto the bed more, but he’s still feisty – picking on the big dogs across the fence, and growling at MissCleo when she tries to play too roughly.

We’re doing the dental stuff on Friday, February 15th.
I will probably be a basket case that day.

Got your attention? Super.

I’m all about pimping sites that I frequent, or that I think offer something beneficial to the community of folks who want to write, so let me tell you about The Novelette. This website features an ongoing novel about four women who aren’t all that unlike women you may know, and it’s updated in small chunks, about 500 words at a time. As they describe it on their site:

Four ongoing novelettes delivered in daily installments of about 500 words. Four women’s lives – Kitty, Joellen, Alva, and Isabel – unfold like a mystery story. If you like reading women’s stories, this serialized fiction is made to order.

In addition to that, they feature writing contests. The word counts are short, so that voters can read them in a single sitting – the max is 750 words – and each contest has a general theme. Last time it was babies. Right now, it’s travel.

Speaking of which, I’m a contestant! My submission is called “Rest-roominations,” (Yes, that’s a pun. Yes, puns are the lowest form of humor. Deal with it.) and you can read it here. Please visit – and vote for me.

You should also consider submitting your own piece.

Last night after my hair appointment and weekly book-buying extravaganza, we debated the options for dinner, finally ending up at Highlands of Arlington, where we were going to pick a restaurant until I said, “Let’s see what’s playing at Studio Movie Grill.” It was just after six, and there was a showing of National Treasure 2 at seven, so we decided to stick around, since it was a movie we both wanted to see.

We sat and read for about half an hour, until they opened the auditorium for us, and honestly, it was nice to spend some time together that didn’t involve one or more devices attached to fiber optic cables. We spend so many of our waking hours plugged in that being unplugged, awake, and out in public feels like a date, or a treat.

As for the movie, well, I would have happily skipped the Goofy trailer at the beginning, as I hate animation, and am not a particular fan of Disney characters, and I would have preferred previews for other films, but the feature was entertaining enough to keep me interested for the duration. Yes, it moves a bit slower than the first. Yes, some of the plot twists are preposterous and there were plot holes deeper than the grand canyon, but it’s fiction, and it’s fun, and the whole point of such movies is that you are supposed to suspend disbelief.

Nicholas Cage is showing his age a bit, but I still find him likable in parts like this. Helen Mirren, as Ben Gates mother rocked my world. I know she can do drama (The Queen) and darker comedy (Calendar Girls), and of course I’ve watched her in various PBS offerings forever, but she was pure delight in this adventure comedy, playing just the right notes, and doing a credible American accent.

If you haven’t seen this movie, and want something fun and lighthearted, I recommend it.
Goes well with a burger and a beer.

It may be 2:23 in the morning, but it’s still Friday night til I go to bed.

Today, I:
– wrote a thousand word article about health spending accounts for work, and didn’t even go batty from citing IRS codes.
– ate half of a mandarin chicken salad from Wendy’s, and then couldn’t eat any more, while watching the season two episode of Angel called “Darla.”
– wrote a 700+-word piece of flash-fiction and submitted it to the current writing contest at TheNovelette. I can’t post it anywhere public, but if you really want to read it, I’ll email the word doc.
– whined a lot about my head and ear hurting, took a long nap in the afternoon, and had a medicinal cinnamon dolce latte.
– spent a pleasant hour playing “fetch” with Fuzzy and Miss Cleo, who told us very clearly she wanted to play with the Special Toy in the Closet.
– watched the movie “Suburban Girl,” with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin. It was quirky, and charming, but not stellar.
– cuddled Zorro dog for twenty minutes, then accused him of smelling like an animal and threatened to bathe him.
– posted the new prompts for Cafe Writing.

So, what did YOU do today?