Fri-not-so-daily

This week has been NUTS.

Business as usual

I am caught up on orders but for three - one print had a flaw that I caught while packaging, and I have to print labels and wrap soap for the other two.

This meant an enormous car-load of packages to the post office. The other patrons eyed me in fear with my towering armloads of packages, and that fear turned to downright envy when I left them all at an open window and skipped off without waiting in line. I LOVE online shipping.

Art and Authoring

Starting to get work together for my gallery show, and am waffling between 'I'm not too bad' and 'I'm a talentless hack!'

Home and health

Something in the bedroom makes me sneeze in the mornings, I think. I need to fix the roomba (again!) and set it loose in there.

Our house is GORGEOUS. They may even be finished today, and I will post before and after pictures so you can marvel along with me about the amazing difference it makes. It's gone from a house-in-progress to HOUSE, in about 3 days.

I was scrambling along madly at work yesterday when Jake plaintively called me from home. He had stayed home to work on the plumbing vent in the attic that needed to be punched through the roof so the contractors could set the boot on it. (They were up there installing snowclips anyway.) But plumbing is often a two-person job, and he'd knocked the ladder over and broken the top shelf of my bookcase and scattered a pile of discs and there was insulation all over everything and he was bleeding and please come help?

So, I dropped work and went home and about dislocated my hip crawling around in the attic for an hour or so gluing ABS together and getting insulation packed into my socks, and then I cleaned up my studio and finished all the orders.

THEN I met my beautiful, wonderful friends* at the fair and did final take-down of the tents. My LAST fair! We went out to Lemongrass afterwards, and then I drove out to North Pole to return two tables and a borrowed tent, and then I went home and unloaded the rest of the truck into the connex box for another hour.

Long day. Much done.

Today, I'm at work, getting reports done.

Planning

Tonight, there will be Star Trek. And tomorrow morning I will sleep until noon and then make boxes to ship to Dragon*Con and work on orders. Two more large-ish print orders have just come in, and those, along with the soap orders, will need to go out asap.





*I don't just say that because I know they read my blog...

Instinct

So last night, Velcro escaped.

She's been hovering around the door when it's open, gazing out in great interest, but not making much movement past the sill. It helps that the stairs have been demolished, so it's a bit of a leap to the wobbly stump we're climbing into the house on.

But last night, with a burst of courage, she leapt out of the door while Jake and I were admiring our pretty new house and bounded off towards the woods.

With cries of "No, Velcro!" and "Bad cat!" we tried to corral her, and Norway thought this looked like entirely too much fun.

Now, normally, a 100 lb dog who decides to join a game of chase-the-cat is Bad News. It was with sinking heart that I watched him leap into motion - I was sure that poor Velcro was going to be chased right out into the woods to hide for a week. (Or until she got hungry. Or eaten by a fox, like my last cat.)

But a) that dog can corner the way a 100 lb dog should not be able to corner. And b) He is a herder at heart.

He knew exactly where the cat ought to be (inside) and he knew exactly how to get her there.

Velcro dodges! Norway corners! Velcro switches directions to dash to the back of the house! Norway gets ahead of her! (Best game in the whole world!) Velcro runs! Norway angles to cut her off! He never once went after her, only went where she shouldn't be going and made sure she didn't.

Before I could even panic, the cat was leaping back into the house to hide in shame and Norway was looking entirely satisfied and pleased with himself. We could not heap enough praise upon him.