We got a new cat.

After we had to put Savannah down, I was thinking we’d be a one-cat household for a while. Not forever – more cats = more happy, after all – but for a while. But as soon as it became abundantly clear that Nicodemus was lonely as hell,* we decided we’d get him a new friend sooner rather than later.

Sooner turned out to be the next day, pretty much. (I don’t like to dilly-dally.)

This is Kobayashi Maru (Maru for short).** He’s a rescue cat with gorgeous blue eyes and opposable thumbs. He makes the most adorable little melodic chirp when he wants something.

Right now the thing he wants the most is for Nick to be his bestbest friend.

Nick, of course, is all “KID. There are protocols to follow. We do not just jump into this whole ‘friend’ thing. First I must snub you, then I must assert my dominance, then – HEY. Are you trying to lick me?”

And Maru is like “Hi. You’re funny. Let’s snuggle.”

*Nick is my baby and I seriously can’t stand to see him in distress. Also he is 14. 14 is young for a cat. SHUT UP.

**Other name possibilities included Astro, Matrix, Phantom (Ellison’s favorite), Coleco, Pixel, Asterix, Helvetica, and Ninja.

Yesterday was my birthday, which naturally I spent in bed. YOU tell me how cheerful and motivated you feel when a) you’ve just had to put down your second-favorite cat and b) in order to do so you had to use all of the money you were saving for your birthday celebration.*

HOWEVER, awful though yesterday was (and it was pretty awful, what with the depression and the frustrated loved ones and the donut shop which OF COURSE ran out of donuts like 5 minutes before I got there) it wasn’t my worst birthday ever. Vying for Worst Birthday Ever:

1) The party I threw when I was 14 at which no one showed up except our neighbor who was spending the night anyway

and

2) The year I spent all my money and vacation time on a hotel in Seattle for me and my long-distance boyfriend and watched every single passenger on his flight debark before realizing he HADN’T SHOWED. Apparently he’d missed his flight because he hadn’t been paying attention to the time. He didn’t bother to call me and tell me this before I’d made the TWO HOUR BUS RIDE from Bellingham to Seattle because he thought he could just DRIVE REALLY FAST. His roommate said he’d be on the next flight, probably, so I had no choice but to sit in the airport all day. Also when he did finally arrive he told me he was sleeping with someone else.**

So COMPARATIVELY yesterday was fine. I may have spent the day crying and wishing I’d never been born, but no one cheated on me or forgot me entirely! So that’s a win.

*And of course feeling shitty about the fact that you’re even THINKING such a thing, when OBVIOUSLY the whole “compassionately ending a beloved pet’s life” is WAY more important than someone’s STUPID BIRTHDAY.

**His birthday was the day after mine, so instead of dumping him on his ass and spending the remainder of my hard-earned vacation time touring Seattle on my own and eating room service, I wept until exactly midnight and then pretended it hadn’t happened so he could have a good birthday. I…don’t know, either.

ASK ME HOW LONG I HAVE BEEN SICK. Go ahead. Ask.

THREE WEEKS.

…And counting. (I know this because I was juuuust coming down with a funny little cough when I started Health Month on the 1st. Ha ha, I thought, how funny that I should have a cough that coincides with starting Health Month! It has only gone downhill from there.)

Despite the fact that I have allergies and asthma and migraines and ovarian cysts and – need I go on? I’m almost never sick with a cold or flu for very long. I know, it’s ridiculous, but there you go. My immune system is mighty, as long as it is not confronted with pollen or tree mold.

Ever since the kid started preschool I’ve been catching more colds/flus/whatever – because, let’s face it, small children are disease factories – but I still usually only sit around feeling miserable and snuffly for a couple of days before I’m up and about again.

NOT SO THIS TIME.

This time, I’ve been so tired I can barely get out of bed, coughing so much my ribs hurt, and having to suck on my inhaler two or three times a day just so I can breathe. This time, my lungs make noises typically reserved for malfunctioning engines. This time, every time I start to think I’m getting better has ushered in YET ANOTHER round of the sort of coughing that has strangers asking me (from a safe distance) if I’m going to be all right. So this has been…interesting, if by interesting you mean purgatorial and annoying and vaguely infuriating.

I am getting better, of course – the rocky Kathleen Turner voice has been replaced by my normal valley-girl chirp, and the cold air from the snowpocalypse-that-wasn’t didn’t make me feel like I was trying to breathe underwater. SO. YAY.

But I will still be VERY glad when I can make it through a whole day without needing a nap.

Usually my New Year’s resolutions are sort of cribbed together at the last minute and comprised of various levels of wishful thinking. Not this year! This year, I’m taking All The Reasons 2010 Sucked (TM) and using them as a base for some make-my-life-better resolutions. Not unlike a roux. A roux of suck.

Life-related:

1. I will write for two hours every weekday.

2. I will EXERCISE. (Yes I know, this is on my list every year.) Not So got me a 5-class gift certificate to Barre 3, my absolute favorite exercise studio anywhere ever, which means I totally don’t have any excuse to slack. At least for a little while.

3. I will set up a budget and stick to it. 2010 (Which Sucked (TM)) was the year we went into crazy debt when business dried up, and though it would have sucked any way you slice it, having some backup in the form of savings would have kept me slightly more sane for the duration. I think. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe money problems will ALWAYS make me into a crazy person. Clearly the only solution is to become disgustingly wealthy.

Work-related:

1. No more friends as clients. Friends + work = not mixy. (This is not to say I don’t become friends with my clients. I love that! But the other way around is just a recipe for doom.)

2. No more working for the weekend. Loverboy may have rocked the red leather pants*, but I vow to save weekends for other things, like sleeping and hanging out with my husband and my kid. And crocheting, which I did way too little of in 2010.

3. No more working on the cheap. I read somewhere that designers should do projects for full price or for free – never at a discount. Initially I scoffed, but now I’m kind of thinking that article was onto something. I’ve got sort of a half-baked plan to set aside a certain number of hours for pro-bono stuff that maybe I’ll offer to worthy causes or something. Something.

4. I will hire some sort of accounting/bookkeeping/numbers person to deal with the stuff I don’t know how to deal with, i.e. anything related to taxes. DONE! Look at that, it’s barely the new year and I’ve already checked something off. Woot!

*Yes. I totally just made an early-80s Loverboy reference that no one under 30 will get. I AM OFFICIALLY OLD.

So I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Oh, did I forget to mention that?

Here’s a fun fact about me: I go a little crazy when I don’t write. And I haven’t been writing for a while, so you go ahead and do the math on that one. The last three days I’ve been writing around 2000 words a day and I’ve been in a great mood. Surely the two cannot be related!

This all started when I had an epiphany about work vs. writing, and the epiphany went thusly: I own my own business. I set my own hours. What’s stopping me from scheduling time to write? Because before, when I’d try to work on a book or start a new story or what have you, I’d make it like my reward. Finished all my work for the day? Great, I get to write!

But any small business owner will tell you, the work is NEVER done. Never. This isn’t like having a day job, where you put in your eight hours and then go home and decompress. This is more like having a baby (except one that doesn’t give you colds or pull your hair or spit up on you, if you’re lucky), in that it’s ALWAYS on your mind and there’s ALWAYS something more you could be doing.

But, like having a baby, the parts that rock REALLY rock. I can work from anywhere. I don’t have to go into the office unless I feel like it. I don’t have to log hours or call in sick or worry about overtime. I can work in my pajamas if I want to. I can take off in the middle of the day to pick up my kid at preschool. I can work early, work late, take a Friday off and work on Saturday instead.

And I can set aside two hours every morning to write.

Yeah. My life pretty much kicks ass. (Running tally: 7729 words and counting.)