I forgot to add that I found a new ‘pet’ yesterday–or, rather, I’ll only have her until it gets warmer and it’s less likely for her to freeze to death. She’s a yearling garter snake, a very nice thing to have in the yard. But February 26th is way too early for any snake to come out of hibernation, so she’s living in a setup on my kitchen counter for the time being. (I might end up setting up an aquarium, just so she’ll be comfortable.)

Ethan is fascinated, of course. He wants to hold her. Haha.

And just now, I discovered that a squirrel or bird has fallen into one of the downspouts that stretches down the length of my house. It’s all in one piece, so I can do little for it. Bad thing: The downspout goes directly into my cistern. Not that I was planning to drink the water, but still. *sigh*

Looking out my office window, I see blue jays, my little patch of ‘woods’, a squirrel or two, some cardinals, some grackles, and a bunch of other wildlife. Not bad for sitting in the middle of town, no?

This morning I woke up with a sore wrist (not sure why), a scratchy throat (ugh), and a stuffed up nose. I do not want to get sick! (Although nearly everyone in the office is sick at the moment. Urgh.)

I did manage to sweep the stairs, entry room, kitchen, and my room and my hallway today. That took care of a lot of the cat hair bunnies breeding in every corner. I didn’t get much done in the dining room, though.

I did, however, discover that there’s at least six layers of wallpaper in the dining room. At least. Maybe eight. It’s hard to tell, but the layers are at least an eighth of an inch thick. The first wallpaper is quite pretty, with pink flowers on a pale cream background. Most of the others resemble what is up there now, which is what I tend to call upholstery wallpaper. It’s cream on beige with a raised decoration, basically. There’s more of it (in a different pattern) in the hallway.

As far as I can tell, either the living room and the Green Room have no wallpaper or there’s only one layer. There are a couple of cracks in the walls, and they look like plaster, not paper. But I’m no expert. There’s hideous wallpaper behind the radiator in the Green Room, so it might be possible. (One of these days I will take pictures of the wallpaper in my house. If all the different types of wallpaper were showing at the same time, it would be scary.)

I am planning to have no wallpaper eventually. Although I don’t really mind the wallpaper in my bedroom and I do rather like the stripes around the top of the walls, I’d rather not have it at all, honestly. But all the wallpaper will take quite a bit of work to remove. Years, I’d say.

I do wonder, though, if there’s a way to unstick wallpaper from itself. Like, could I possibly see all the different patterns of wallpaper that have been in my dining room over the years? I will have to investigate, I guess.

Oh, and there also seems to be wallpaper on the ceiling of the hallway (which is the underneath of the stairs, whatever that is called.) It’s painted over, but the raised decorations are showing through. It also doesn’t match anything that is present, so I’m curious why they wallpapered that part of the hallway. Hmm. (Actually, I’m curious about a lot of things, including the buried door decoration thingys (don’t know the technical term) and if anyone really used the secret hidey hole I found for a secret hidey hole.)

But anyway. I did open the transom above the front door this afternoon while I was inspecting the wallpaper in the hallway. It took a little bit to open, but it opened, and it looks dusty but fine otherwise.

It even has a screen, so it could be open and letting air in or out when the weather is warmer. Interesting.

It must be close to spring. Right? Even though it snowed Wednesday night (as usual; I think it hasn’t snowed one Wednesday night since winter began) it’s close to spring. It has to be, because my crocuses are blooming.

Did I mention I have crocuses? And daffodils and tulips already four inches (or so) high. They’re everywhere. All along the back of the shed, along the side of the house, and in front. It will look very nice when they all bloom.

It will look nice after we rent a dumpster and clear out the shed, the front porch, and the basement. All that carpet gone! All the crap gone! I can’t wait.

Part of me wants to say it’s finally Friday, but this week hasn’t gone very slow at all, really. I had to watch Ethan Wednesday night and half a day Thursday (circumstances happened, and we ended up having him almost all week long) and while it was exhausting, it went okay. At least he didn’t break anything.

But at least it’s the weekend and I can concentrate on continuing what I started last weekend. I want to get the dining room cleaned up, the rest of the hallway cleaned up, and work in my office a bit this weekend. Other than cleaning out the litterboxes, that’s pretty much my only goals, other than writing. I’ve been working on SCR a bit every day.

Em is coming down this weekend, too, so that should be fun. She hasn’t been in the house since Christmas. (Yikes! Two months ago today! Time is flying.)

Well, we’re inching back up the queue… #7 and #15!

(I’m being kicked off the computer by a very polite 2-year-old, who kindly just asked me to please move, Tea! Want to play game with Bert and Ernie and Prairie Dawn!)

So I guess my time is short this evening…

And I swear, I swear, I swear Mischa has Siamese somewhere in his background. He has the most strident meow I’ve ever heard on a cat before in my entire life!!

(As he serenades me from the doorway.)

I’m all alone tonight! Well, not really alone, since Mabel and the cats are here, and Bekah will be home soon. But at the moment, I’m alone. It’s nice.

My life revolves around litterboxes, putting down paper so Mischa can pee on the paper instead of the floor (argh), sweeping cat hair off the steps and out of every corner, and wiping slobber off my pants.

But that’s okay. I can live with it. Actually, it’s going quite well, other than the peeing on the floor bit. I had to explain to Bekah today that all animals shed in the springtime, and while it’s irritating to have to sweep the floors quite often, they don’t shed all the time. (Everyone is shedding at the moment. Including me.)

I have the cats’ food on top of a table now, for when Mabel is allowed in the rest of the house (which will be as soon as we can get things picked up.) I cleaned a bit this weekend–not as much as I wanted, but I did get all the laundry done, at least. This includes various rugs that had hairballs cemented to them, so clean rugs will be nice.

Speaking of hairballs, I can’t really tell if the new food is helping. I haven’t really found any fresh hairballs. Just old ones we missed.

I am working on making little visual displays throughout the house with some of my cool things. I have typewriters on display, and books, and anything else I can find that will look good together. I’ve taken some pictures, but unfortunately, I still have to buy the version of WS_FTP I was using, or find my jump drive (it’s in a box) and transfer the old version from Dad’s computer to this one. (That’s the only program I forgot to transfer, of course.)

This will be a nice week, work-wise. I have a meeting tomorrow, so I don’t have to go in to the office at all, and the rest of the week will be eight-hour days, which means I’ll get home earlier, which will be good for being productive in what I’ve started this weekend cleaning-wise. I should be able to get some decent writing done as well. But we’ll see.

Writing-wise, I’ve been working on SCR a little bit at a time over the weekend. I’m about to go write some tonight, since I’ve been cleaning all day and I feel I deserve a break tonight. It’s going as well as it can, I guess, even though it’s still a bit murky.

Other than that, all is well as far as I know.

Well, I woke up this morning kind of dreading to go downstairs because of what I might find. I heard her three times throughout the night, barking at the cats, who were probably teasing her anyway. (Except for Pooh. She doesn’t bark at Pooh anymore.)

So I got up rather early, walked downstairs, and she met me at the gate.

There was absolutely no evidence of poop or pee in either room, and she hadn’t gotten in to anything! I gave her a treat and praised her for her good work.

Of course, Mischa peed on a piece of construction paper someone left in the bathroom, but you can’t have everything, I guess. *sigh*

So I guess I will leave her out tonight as well, and if she behaves herself, I don’t see why she has to be shut up in the crate overnight anymore. (I mean, she sleeps in it. I know she slept in it, because I heard her scratching around in it overnight. So it’s not like she doesn’t use it at all.)

Eventually, of course, I’m hoping she can sleep in my room on the rug or something. But that will only be when she’s not chasing/barking at any of the cats at all.

Reason # 2,119 that it’s nice to have a ShopVac (even if it isn’t mine):

When the house two-year-old accidentally drops a bouncy ball down the bathtub drain and it vanishes into the pipes, it’s very nice not to have a plumbing bill. On Dad’s suggestion (a last resort before dumping a bottle of vegetable oil down the drain and hoping for the best), I blocked the overflow drain, stuck the ShopVac’s shortest tube down the drain, and turned it on. It took less than two minutes to suck up the bouncy ball, which is going to stay in the ShopVac.

(I have reinstalled the plug in the drain. I took it out early on because it was all clogged, and then it wouldn’t go back, so I kind of forgot to try to reinstall it. After buying a strainer-thingy this afternoon and having it not fit, I thought I’d try the drain again, and managed to get it in. Yay.)

I might just have to buy a ShopVac for myself eventually.

(Two hours later, he deliberately shoved my jasmine plant off the ledge it has been sitting on for two months (untouched), breaking one of my Sango Avignon plates (I only have four) and causing me to lose my temper for the second time today. Argh! The bouncy ball was an accident, but the plant was most definitely not.)

Now I’m tired, my back hurts, and I’m going to curl up in bed (in a moment) to write.

One good thing: I got an unexpected check for $95 from Keybank today. Evidently they audited my mortgage account, and credited me the money that would have been for the final inspection, which was evidently not necessary. So found money! Cool, especially since I’m broke until my next payday-ish.

Oh, and tonight is the big test as to whether Mabel is housebroken or not… I’m leaving her crate open overnight. Baby gates will still be up, but she will have the run of the two rooms. So we’ll see.

Wish us luck.

Counseling a fictional character has to be one of the more unusual requests my coworkers have had. I had to make sure I was on track with how Malachi is acting in Scarecrows, so I asked one of the counselors at the office to give me their advice as I explained the scenario and the background of the story.

Turns out I’m not far off, so that’s good. I have promised her a mention in the acknowledgements for this book.

SCR is moving along, but I haven’t touched Ladybug, Ladybug all week. I did, however, hotsync for the first time in two months (I hadn’t realized it was two months until I checked last night. Yikes!) and transferred Ladybug, Ladybug to the Dana so I can work on it without internet access. I am finding the internet too much of a distraction for writing in my office. Again. Urgh. Yes, even with dial-up.

Yesterday on the way home from work, I started getting flashes about Nightshades. I am thinking I will end up rewriting it from scratch, like I did all of my more interesting books. I’m not ready to write it yet; I still have some issues to work out with Ella, but I think I’ll be on the right track when I do get around to it.

For the record, Scarecrows takes place at the same time as The Eighth Room. The Secret of Redemption takes place right after Scarecrows. And we’re still five or six years away from catching up with the Shadows trilogy. Yikes.

Oh, and congrats to Vicki on the good news!

Eventually, I want to get another dog. If I were to get another dog right now, I would pick Sasha. I cannot believe her previous owners treated her this way! And her poor, poor pups.

It is heartrending to read some of the horrible stories on petfinder.com. But it’s not surprising. Most of the cats we have had have been strays, dropped off at our house or ones that just showed up. Mom and Dad bought one of our dogs at a fleamarket–that was Simon. Pepper, our first dog, showed up at my aunt’s house in St. Bernard right after we moved. Mom got Max from a breeder, but he was a puppy who didn’t sell and she didn’t really want him anymore.

While browsing around the Animal Adoption & Rescue Foundation, where Sasha is living with a foster mom, I discovered WirelessFundraiser.com, where you can donate your old cell phones to many different organizations! How cool, considering I have an old cell phone I was attempting to figure out what to do with. Once I find it, I think I will donate it to the AARF. Just because of Sasha.

I hope she finds a good home.