Monday, September 1st, 2003 - Writing Avoidance Behavior I want every weekend to be a three-day weekend. Didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, though I did engage in some major writing-avoidance behavior this weekend. Today, I finally cleaned the bathroom. When we moved in, it was pretty obvious that the person who lived here before us had done only the very tiniest bit of cleaning before she moved out. I've been living with her dog's fur sticking to the base molding for too long, and I was far too thrilled that I was finally wiping it off. I did the entire bathroom, in fact, and have discovered the source of the horrible cat smell -- the pale blue rug, aka the cat's secondary bathroom. It'd been scrunched up in the corner, and I hadn't realized that they'd been using it so, er, fervently. I'm hoping the fact that the bathroom is currently pristine, good-smelling and without wadded up rugs will discourage such behavior in the future. I'm pretty sure that rug is going to have to be thrown out. Ah well. Aren't you so excited that I'm updating more? You get to hear about the penalties for having not unpacked everything yet. The lesson learned? Don't let wadded up rugs hang out behind the plastic crate full of random empty boxes, fairy wings and candy forms or your cats will make you sorry. La. I started to revise SWF today, but didn't get very far. I did some laundry instead. The next time I tried to work on it, I finished an email to a friend and sent it off. The last time I tried to work on it, I seduced Tim into a frollick instead. Hee! Writing avoidance behavior isn't all housework anymore! Ok, I'm in a strange mood. Time to haul out the cat stories. Feeling guilty for having left the kittens all last weekend, I came back and bought them a new cat toy. This is a square piece of carpet-covered wood with a spring coming out of it with a grey furry ball on the end. They go nuts over this toy, batting it, attacking it, holding it down with their paws only to let it go and have it smack them on the nose on the rebound. I even caught Marzi all curled up with it, licking its little furry ball head lovingly. I'm always pleased when the cat toys (which I bring home far too often these days) are a hit. We lock the kittens out of the bedroom at night, mainly so that we can sleep through without having our toes attacked or our faces slept on (recently I had a Neil Gaiman moment when I yawned really big while Zanzi was on my chest, and closed my mouth on his little kitten head. Gah!). The kittens always run in to curl up with me and get petted while I read before bed, but when I turn the lights out first I have to put them in the hallway. Lately, we've even had to pull the heavy rolling cart in front of the door because they figured out that it wasn't that difficult to push the door open when I closed it. Sigh. So, in the middle of the night, I have to roll back the rolling cart, sneak out to the bathroom, and get back before the kittens discover I'm up and run into the bedroom and hide under the bed (which is sure to wake me up too much to get back to sleep). I've been getting pretty good at spotting kittens in the half-light of the hallway as a result. So, the other night, I get up, creep out my bedroom door and see a kitten sitting in the middle of the hallway, looking at me. He's sitting very still, and I can't tell whether it's Marzi or Zanzi. I call to him quietly and reach over to pat his little kitten head -- and his head bobs back and forth loosely under my hand. I let out a little shriek before I realized that what I was petting was the fuzzy ball head of the new kitten toy. Yeah. So, I think that's it for now. Hope you all had a lovely, long weekend. We didn't need that rug anyway.

Exercise Log: Some walking/ shopping yesterday. Shagging! Cleaning! Laundry! Current Publications: "Famishing" in Strange Horizons. My first pro sale! "Wetting the Bed" and a collab with Tim Pratt, "A Serious Case of Fairies" in Floodwater Recently read: Skellig by David Almond Donate money to my teeth, our moving fund, our wedding fund, or our writerly projects (Floodwater and Flytrap!). Every little bit helps!

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