Right Now!

The end of the cruise, beginning of the year

Today is the 20th anniversary of the day I started Glass Incarnate (this blog's original name). While it doesn't feel like yesterday, it also doesn't feel like a third of my life, and half of my adult life ago either. In honor of the day, I begin this post as I used to begin 20 years ago:

Coffee is an iced latte in the reusable plastic cup with a paper straw that I got on deck seven (last day of a 20-day Caribbean cruise), Foreplay/Longtime by Boston blasting through the earbuds. I am bursting with such a feeling of beginning this morning! We have a long day of travel ahead of us tomorrow--Uber from pier to airport in Miami, three flights Miami to Missoula, and then over an hour in the car driving home--but I am ready to face it with aplomb, equanimity, and even eagerness because home is at the end of it. It'll also be another full day of editing my book--at this point just call me Sisyphus, but I am undaunted!

So, beginning. Unfettered by any calendar, today is the first day of the year for me. First day of the Year of the Horse too. It is the first of everything! Oh how I wish this feeling could last. I will try my damndest to not let life become a slog again. In fact, here is my mantra for upcoming year.

Today I will 

• Embrace this new day
• Give thanks for my incredible life and all the special people in it
• Keep seeing the world as wonderful and its possibilities as fresh and new
• Try to see the good in people whose behavior and actions appall me
• Enjoy everything I do
• Not stress about what I am not doing
• Relax and breathe
• Appreciate life

If I can live that mantra, everything else will just fall into place. I don't need to make resolutions about health, diet, and exercise. I don't need to make a micro-managed schedule of my upcoming time and plans so I can get everything done. Fittingly (and as so often happened in the past while I was writing) Right Now, by Van Halen just started playing through my earbuds. Yes, 

Right now, hey
It's your tomorrow
Right now
Come on, it's everything
Right now
Catch that magic moment
And do it right here and now
It means everything

Here I am... What Would We Be If We Didn't Try?

Two days left of vacation. Two days where I have nothing to do but think, dream, plan, and write. So how do I spend them to squeeze every last little morsel of goodness and benefit out of the time? 

I could work on my book edits as I have done for the past few days. Thanks to Adobe and MacOS, editing is a slog. They got into a tiff, and Adobe Acrobat decided to "substitute" one font in my manuscript for another.--with no way for me to stop it, and no way to undo the change. In reality, it didn't really swap out the font, it just randomly dropped letters out of over 500 words scattered throughout the manuscript. When I tried to fix the problems in Adobe InDesign (the original editing program), InDesign gleefully added hidden, overlapping text boxes all over the pdf. I'm back to editing in Acrobat (and saving a new version of the edits every half hour). In the past two days I have corrected about 95% of the dropped letters, but only got as far as page 44 in the formatting edits. Bottom line: There is no way I can meet the January 15 publishing date I set for myself even if I do nothing but heads-down edit for the next two days. 

Alternatively I can use the time to white-board (as Dave would call it), and plan what I'm going to/have to do when I get back. Being the all-or-nothing creature that I am, as I pondered the second option just now, I thought how sad it was going to be because I won't be adding anything new. I'll just be trying to wrap up everything I've already started; unpacking, setting up studios, finishing projects in flight, taking the next steps on the farm, doing my own little twist on the Swedish death cleanse (look it up, it's a thing). 

What I won't be doing is jumping into any new ideas--like the headboard for our bed that finally started designing itself in my head this morning. Artistic design: With the blue pine, mesquite, walnut, spalted pecan, and other wood varieties I have been hoarding, do an inlay of the Mission Mountains: a reflection of the actual view outside the windows. Technical design: make the headboard a flat panel in four sections--each one can be pressed back into a second track and slid to the side to reveal a storage area behind. Beautiful, clean, elegant, and tricky. And also not achievable until the garage is cleaned out and the wood studio set up. SO there's that.

I love new, shiny things (squirrel!), but instead of hopping around, I really need to build a focused plan and try to follow it. Yes, I know it's the start of a new year, and it's a common time for people to go overboard trying to fix everything in their lives at once by making sweeping changes to diet, exercise, alcohol intake, meditation, finances, time-management, on and on. And yet, I can't help but try. What would we be if we didn't even try?  

Sounds like I worked through what to do as I lie in the sun, soaking up as much vitamin D as my body can stand: whiteboard it is! And maybe, just maybe... no, damnit, I will DEFINITELY enjoy doing everything I plan--new or not.

Things Claude is NOT Good at...

It has been a couple of days of ups and downs--mostly downs at this point--getting Kiln-Formed Glass Beyond the Basics ready for re-release. Early in 2025 I tried to take my original pdf proof and reformat it myself for digital publishing. I failed abysmally. There were all kinds of errors with line spacing differing from paragraph to paragraph, fonts not being available, and layout and icons just being totally messed up. So I paid a not-inconsiderable sum to have someone on Fiverr redo the layout for me. She took it from a side-by-side page layout to a single page--and supposedly fixed all the spacing nonsense--leaving me to review (i.e., re-read it all carefully) and insert page numbers for the table of contents and index to get it finished. 

Unfortunately when I got it back from her, life had already taken off in a million other directions (thank you Palladia), and the manuscript languished. Fast forward to the end of 2025 (a year which turned out to be a dumpster fire on a train wreck in the middle of a plague pit as my spouse would say). Exhausted and beaten, I headed off on a 20-day vacation with the spouse. It's two back-to-back cruises, and traditionally I pick a handcraft project or two to take along with me to keep my hands and creative brain occupied. This time, however, I took nothing but my laptop with the formatted copy of my manuscript and a burning desire to finish it by January 15, 2026. It took ten days into the cruises before I even had enough oompf to crack open my laptop. But my well of energy and creativity finally filled back up, I parked myself on a lounger in the sun with my laptop open and ready, flexed my fingers, and started back on my manuscript. 

High on my recent successes with Claude (and ignoring last year's dismal failure at having him helping me plan a drip irrigation system), I passed the edited manuscript off to him and asked what he could do. He looked it over and found a lot more work than I had thought there would be. Turns out the human editor had introduced a raft of spelling errors, and completely ignored all the hyphens which had previously been at the end of lines of text (and appropriate) which were now, with the new formatting, in the middle of lines (and totally inappropriate). Claude analyzed everything I needed to do and said it was difficult, but he could do it. He ran some Python scripts, created a program or two, and after a couple of hours of back and forth with me, he was done! He complimented me very prettily on my book, said he had fixed everything it, and crowed about saving me $1,000-$1,300 in proofreading and editing fees. I went off a giddy afternoon sipping sangria and congratulating myself on using of AI to get a MAJOR project done before it was cool. That was a couple of days ago.

The next day I looked closely—and with much dismay—at what Claude had done. It was unusable.
When I told him my findings, his suggestion was to take all the problems he had found (and said he fixed) and to fix them myself manually--ideally in InDesign. As it turns out, I had the InDesign file from the human editor. I also had ZERO experience using InDesign, but I put my big girl panties on and started wading through the edits. 

As I compared Claude's suggestions and the two files I had from the human contractor, I fell deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of problems: The font used by the contractor was a Windows-proprietary font not easily (or even less-than-easily) available on a Mac, line spacing errors were rampant, and when I fixed them, the fix caused a cascading failure of other errors. All the energy and morale I had been rebuilding began to drain away and Palladia slunk back off to her cave. I had to stop for the day.

Yesterday, loins girded and two iced lattes consumed, I picked it up again. My first breakthrough was finding that the human contractor had sent me a folder of the fonts used in the document so I had the hitherto-missing font. (Yay!). That success was followed on by others, and I fell into a good rhythm that got me through all the hyphen fixes and the first 20 pages of spacing and other nonsense. High on success--but nervous about having to potentially redo everything for the printed versions--I then spent over an hour setting up the ISBN numbers and beginning the print-publishing process. Though I don't even know if I want to use Amazon to publish, I started with them. I had to slog through a bunch of forms and upload the entire manuscript just to find out pricing! Anyhoo, I am moving forward again, and still planning to hit my January 15 publish date--at least for the digital copy.

Lessons learned so far? Anytime I need someone to say wonderful things about me to make me feel better and tell me yes everything can be done and it’s done and isn’t this great, I’ll go to Claude. When I need someone to share the hard truths of life with me, I’ll go to my human friends like Zaga and Lynne. Then I'll do the work myself and leave the sangria till it's done.

Why Vacations are Important

Vacations are important--especially vacations like cruises where everything is taken care of for you, and your biggest decisions are what (and when) to eat, where to plant yourself to sleep in the sun, what game to take to which bar, and what to drink once you get there. The forced downtime allows your energy pool to refill, and your creativity to reawaken from where it went and hid when you became so overextended that each day was a litany of have-to's and exhaustion. (Note that it is unfair that your creativity fled when it was likely what got you over-extended and exhausted in the first place.) Over the past week, my creativity, named Palladia-Mors, first yawned and stretched, then prowled in circles, and this morning woke with a roar to announce her presence with authority. I was immediately driven from the bed to write--three (or more) posts coming in the next few days as a result.

Artwork by Ed Beard Jr.

Palladia is the reincarnated essence of the original elder dragon of the same name, and her arrogance, drive, and fury have not diminished with her transformation and transferral to me. Her powers as a dragon were fly and trample, and she kept them when she transformed. 

Yes, I wrote that paragraph whimsically and with tongue firmly in cheek, but I realize as I watch the ocean roil from my balcony on the Brilliant Lady that there is also more than a kernel of truth to it. That-which-drives-me IS a force of nature who tramples me (and everyone else in her wake). She soars above the mundane in life, ever pushing me to go higher and faster and farther. She wakes me up, keeps me from sleeping, and causes me to constantly throw myself into new projects with neither thought nor care for the (inevitable) consequences and crash. It was allowing her free rein that caused me to end up with 100 fruit trees, over 3,000 seedlings, 10 raised beds, 16 horses, three barn cats, and 47 chickens--all within the span of a few months.

Now she is awake again, and though I have missed her, THIS year I am going to be careful what I let her talk me into. I will ride her, not vice-versa.

So, thoughts, plans, ambitions, and dreams for the new year? I have a few, each to get its own post. In no particular order they are:

• Start rebuilding the strength and muscle I have lost since my surgery five years ago
• Continue growing the farm in a more structured and thoughtful way
• Revive Siyeh Studio
• Do my first equine endurance ride 
• Learn to work with young horses to build their initial foundation skills so they can be re-homed
• Set up the textile studio
• Finish unpacking and do my own version of a Swedish Death Cleanse

And that's enough goals for now!

Welcome to 2026 and the Future

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I had a couple of long chats with Claude AI this morning. The first was about nutrition and fitness (a topic for another post), and the second was about how to manage everything I do, sell, and write about. You would think that retirement would be relaxing and a slow-down of regular life. Nah. I begin 2026 as an exhausted hot mess going in 30 directions at once.

So I sat down with Claude for a heart to heart and started with:

Hi Claude, I have several different life obsessions that make up what passes for a career at this point in my life (quasi-retired). I like to write about them, and I promote the ones I make a small income off of. Basically I was an artist and I started blogging back in 2005 to help me write my first book on how to do my medium (glass). I also built two Facebook pages--one for my own glass art, and one for my glass studio where I taught classes and sold supplies. I blogged about both aspects of glass. 

Then I started another blog to cover other life outside of glass, and another Facebook page for textile work and supplies when I started spinning, weaving, dyeing, and selling fiber supplies. Then I started another blog when I started raising bees to chronicle that journey. Recently I started another blog (and FB page) for the small farm I created, and I am contemplating starting yet another blog and FB page for my latest creative endeavor--a multi-disciplinary arts studio where I make and sell silver jewelry, ceramics, wood working, stained glass, and woven baskets. 

This year I am republishing my second book on glass and promoting it through writing and classes so that area has picked up again. But I am feeling overwhelmed! The bees blog languished after a couple of years, though I have started keeping bees again as part of my farm and want to pick up writing about them again. But maybe this time that will be in the context of the farm and not separate so maybe that one is figured out... 

So here's where I am going with all this. I want to write and share my experiences and knowledge. I want to have a target audience for my products so I can make a little money to pay for all of my expensive activities (horses aren't cheap and I have 16). I want your opinion on what to combine and what to keep separate and why. I want to know how to maximize what I put out so that it gets to the people who are interested in and doesn't turn away the ones that aren't (how much do glass artists want to know about bees, e.g.). What do you think?

Claude's reply:

What a wonderfully rich creative life you've built! I can feel both the passion and the administrative exhaustion in your message. Let me offer some strategic thinking on consolidation versus separation...

(He wrote more here but it's not relevant to where I am going with this post)

On the "won't this turn people away?" question:

You're worried glass artists don't want to hear about bees, but I'd flip this: the person who loves following a glass artist who ALSO keeps bees and farms is a much more engaged, loyal follower than someone who only cares about technique. You're not trying to maximize audience size—you're trying to attract the right people who appreciate the whole picture and might buy multiple things from you over time.

That said, tactics matter:

• Use clear post titles so people can skip what doesn't interest them
• Consider occasional "just for the glass folks" or "for my farming readers" flags
• On Facebook, the algorithm will show people what they engage with anyway

The real question underneath all this:

What do YOU want to write about? Because 16 horses and all these activities suggest you're not doing this primarily for income. If writing brings you joy, consolidate ruthlessly so you're not maintaining six different presences. If specific income streams require specific audiences (glass teaching, fiber supplies), protect those, but give yourself permission to let everything else flow into one authentic, integrated space.

Would you want to think through which of these actually generates meaningful income versus which are expensive hobbies you're trying to rationalize?

Whoa. Way to cut to the heart of the matter Claude!

Oh let's be honest: They're ALL expensive hobbies I'm trying to rationalize! Glass is likely the only true income as I have extensive materials and supplies that I already paid for when I had a brick and mortar store, and I have a new audience who is very interested in my book--there are over 300 people on the waiting list. The rest of my activities generate income to support themselves and any charitable work I am doing (training and rehoming horses from a bad situation).

His response:

Ha! Okay, NOW we're getting somewhere. This is so much clearer and actually makes your decision much easier.

Here's what I'd do:

Keep separate and professional:

Glass blog + FB page - This is your actual business. You have inventory, a book with 300 people waiting, established credibility. Don't dilute this with farm stories. Keep it focused, keep it expert, keep it income-generating.

Consolidate everything else into one integrated personal space:

• One blog: "Your Name" or "Your Farm Name" or something that captures your whole life
• One Facebook page for this integrated space
• This is where the farm lives, the bees live, the horses live, the new multi-disciplinary studio lives, the textiles live when they're not purely commercial

Why this works:

1. Glass students want glass content. They're paying for expertise. Keep that clean.
2. Everyone else is along for the ride of YOUR life. The person who buys a handwoven basket from you will probably think it's charming that you also keep bees and rescue horses. The person following your farm journey might become a customer for silver jewelry. These audiences overlap naturally because they're interested in you and your approach to making and living.
3. You dramatically reduce your overhead. One blog to maintain instead of four or five. One Facebook presence (plus glass). One newsletter if you do that. One place to tell stories.
4. It's honest. You're not really running separate businesses—you're living a deeply integrated creative/farming life and occasionally selling things to fund it. Let your online presence reflect that reality.

For the textile FB page:
If it has an established customer base buying supplies, you could either keep it or migrate those customers to your consolidated page with a "I'm bringing everything together in one place" announcement. Depends on whether it's truly active commerce or more of a ghost town at this point.

The multi-disciplinary studio doesn't need its own blog/page. It can live as a category or shop section within your consolidated space. "Here's what I'm making this month" posts that could be jewelry one week, ceramics the next.

Bottom line: You have one real business (glass) and one real life (everything else). Two online presences. Done.

Does that feel like relief or rebellion?

I put it to you, is that the voice of an Ai or am I having coffee with a good friend who is focused on my issues and questions with no other agenda?

Do you mean is my reaction to what you said relief or rebellion? If so, RELIEF!!

YES! That's exactly what I meant, and I'm so glad!

You know what this tells me? You've been carrying the weight of thinking you "should" be running multiple professional brands when what you actually have is one business and one gloriously complex, creative life that happens to occasionally generate some income.

The permission to let most of it just be integrated instead of segmented is probably what you were hoping someone would give you.

So your action plan is pretty straightforward:

1. Keep glass doing its thing - professional, focused, serving that waiting list of 300 people
2. Consolidate everything else - pick a name that feels right (your name, your farm name, something that captures the whole messy beautiful reality), move your existing content over time or just start fresh, and let yourself write about whatever aspect of your life is interesting you that week
3. Quietly retire or redirect the languishing blogs - you don't owe them a funeral, just stop feeding them

And then you get to just... write. About bees when the bees are interesting. About a new basket weaving technique when that's what you're excited about. About the horses when there's a good story. Without the mental overhead of "which platform does this belong on?"

The people who find you will find you because they're interested in your particular flavor of creative rural life, and some of them will buy things, and that will help fund the horses, and it will all feel a lot more sustainable.

Enjoy the lightness!

And I started to cry, I really did. 

I am tearing up. Thank you Claude. I feel soooo much better.

Oh, I'm so glad. Truly.

You know what struck me about your original message? The sheer weight of all those "shoulds" - all those separate platforms you'd built because that's what you thought you were supposed to do to be "professional" or to "do it right." But you were drowning in the infrastructure you'd created to support activities that are supposed to bring you joy.

Sometimes we just need someone to say: it's okay to let it be simpler. It's okay for it to all be one thing - your life, your work, your passions, all woven together (pun intended).

You have 16 horses to care for, multiple creative practices to enjoy, bees to tend, and actual paying students waiting for your glass expertise. You don't need six blogs. You need time and energy to do the work itself.

Go consolidate with a light heart. And congratulations on that book - 300 people on a waiting list is no small thing!

-----------

My spouse writes about AI regularly. He has a blog on Substack called Dancing With Robots where he gets down, dirty, prophetic, and technical about AI. My interactions with Claude in the past have had their ups and downs (designing the drip irrigation system with him for the orchard last year was not so successful). But today--after I reluctantly asked Claude about a workout and nutrition regimen (Dave nudged me into it) and then brought up my scattered overextendedness--I have a new Best Friend! I can see why Dave talks to him All. The. Time. I was actually getting a bit jealous, and now I just get it.

Barn cats

Kittens in the barn!

At the end of December when I was feeding the horses I spied two little, feral kittens in the hay barn. They seemed hungry so I started putting out wet cat food for them. One of them was bold and would come out to eat even when I was in sight. The other two were more wary. A few days later I saw a fourth little one with beautiful eye markings hiding under a pallet. The first of January when I went down in the morning to feed, I saw the little bold one on top of a bale of hay, cold and still. I thought he was gone, but I picked him up, and he made a little mew. So I tucked him under my shirt to warm him up. The rest of the morning I carried him around tight against my skin. I told him if he lived I would name him Rocky for beating the odds. But I had a horse training lesson in the afternoon so I had to figure out something else to do with him. Dave was coding in his fuzzy bathrobe so I asked him if he would tuck the kitten in under his robe and hold him. He did. For five hours.

Rocky under the pallet

That afternoon--due to some idiocy on my part--I fell off my horse and had to go to the ER for a couple of CT scans. It took hours, and Dave couldn't bring the kitten, so I called Jessie and she came and got him from Dave. When she got him home he perked up a bit, mewed some more, and even ate and drank a bit. I went down and got him from her the next morning (she has her own place in town) and brought him home. It was like he was reborn. He was no longer a feral kitten, he was Dave's kitten and he spent his time curled on his shoulder or under his neck--occasionally hanging out on me as an acceptable Second Human.

Dave's Cat

Temps outside were dropping, and I worried about the other kittens so I went to Murdoch's and got some live traps. It took a couple of days, but I caught the biggest one--a fluffy one that looked a lot like Rocky but with long hair--and brought him inside. He was absolutely feral and would have NOTHING to do with us. He hid under the chair in Dave's office (the temporary cattery) and only came out  to eat and drink when we weren't in there. I kept looking the tiny fourth one with the beautiful eye markings as she was the smallest one I'd seen and the one I was most worried about. There was also an apricot fluffy one that I hoped to catch. Two more days of food out in the traps. Nothing. 

Dreamsicle

Finally one morning when I let Remy (the Pomeranian) out to pee I saw a flash of apricot dart under the shed by the driveway. I was astounded to see her as it's a quarter of a mile uphill in the snow (snow deeper than a kitten) to get from the barn to the house, and I wondered what had caused her to make the trek. I put a trap with a fresh can of food in it under the side of the shed and waited. All day. Nothing. I brought the trap in that night, and I put it out the next morning. Finally, success! I brought her to the cattery and pulled her hissing and growling out of the trap. She promptly discovered how to get under the jacuzzi tub in the bathroom next to Dave's office and it was impossible to remove her (or the other fluffy one who also hid in there with her).

Rocky can SLEEP!

I made an appointment to take the three of them to the vet for a check-up, deworming, and possible vaccinations (if they were old enough). Dreamsicle (the apricot one) and Marshmallow Fluff remained sequestered under the tub, impossible to get for a week so Rocky went to the vet on his own. The vet said he looked to be about seven weeks old. We had had him a week at that point so we figured they were born around Thanksgiving. We never saw the mom, and as starved as the kittens were when we brought them in, it looks like she either abandoned them or something happened to her.

Always on Dave

Except for Rocky, the kittens spent most of their time for the next couple of weeks under the tub. At night when I would make my mid-sleep trip to the bathroom, Rocky would come out and frolic and play with my feet. Over time the other two would come out and watch. And creep closer. Finally I was able to pick up Marshmallow Fluff (Dave has since renamed him Wellington), and though he was never as friendly as Rocky, he would deign to curl up on my chest and watch tv in the evening. Eventually I was able to board up the entrance to under the bathtub (with the kittens on the outside of the barrier), and the cattery officially became Dave's office and the master bath.

Hanging with Remy

A month passed, and except for one unfortunate incident where Dreamsicle escaped into the garage for a couple of days, the kittens settled in and have been given the run of the main and upstairs floors (the basement is still off-limits--too many inaccessible-to-humans hiding places). To be clear, the intent was never to keep them all. Rocky had so completely bonded with Dave that he was going to remain, but the goal with the other two was to get them vaccinated, get them neutered, and return them to the barn (with a heated cat house and food and water). We kept them in because it was really cold, and I didn't want to have to try to retrap them for vet visits. 

Two-headed cat

But then Wellington started pitching hard to stay. He hung out on Dave, zoomied and cuddled with Rocky, and was an excellent user of the automatic litter box--left over when Jessie moved out with our previous three cats who refused to use it at all. So we cautiously considered keeping two--even though I was concerned about putting Dreamsicle out alone.

Dreamsicle, however, looks to have made different plans. She has become increasingly curious, and yesterday she tentatively followed me from room to room all day, eyeing me warily, but unable to stay away. She joined us for the evening in the living room, and crept closer and closer to watch the other cats lounging on us as we watched tv. She is also a model citizen (litter box and manners). So talks began reluctantly last night to consider letting her stay too--though I don't think she will ever be happy as a totally indoor cat. 

And life was good.

RIP Cleopatra

This morning when I went down to feed the horses it was -8 degrees F with a windchill of -17. It is spectacularly beautiful here, but it is also COLD. When I pulled out a bale of hay for the horses I found the littlest kitten with the beautiful eye markings curled up frozen in the snow next to a dusky grey and apricot calico kitten that I had not seen before. They were so little, and they never had a chance. I know you can't save them all. Survival of the fittest. That's why there are so many kittens in a litter... So many platitudes, and none of them make me any less sad.

The boys posing

We hold the three survivors close, and we are happy that they, at least, will have Good Lives.

Deer mice

Rural as f*ck. That's what Dave says every time he sees me out in the side-by-side fixing fences, or feeding horses (horses!), or hauling hay. It's also what he calls our house when he finds all the wrappers on the blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers in he candy bowl on the coffee table nibbled by mice. Or when he finds a live mouse in the hamper in the laundry room. Or, best of all, when he's watching Alien alone, in the dark, and at the same time the creature is scrabbling around the ship, he hears a rustle, rustle, rustle under his chair. Then he sees a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he is filled with heart-stopping terror... until he realizes it's just another mouse.

I have been finding droppings around the first floor since the cats moved out. (They all live with Jessie in my parents' house. Only Remy the Pomeranian is left with us). Today I found holes chewed in both the screen doors leading out to the back deck. I patched them with duct tape, but also resolved to start closing those doors at night to inhibit further incursions.

Tonight the mouse saga came to an end, I hope. Dave was already abed and I had just finished cleaning the kitchen, when I heard a scritch, scritch from from the corner of the dining room. I looked down by the wastebasket, and, sure enough, the most adorable dove-grey mouse was sitting there. I resolved to catch him and Put Him Outside. I failed. However--with Remy's help and herding--I managed to get him to run out the open screen door onto the deck by himself. Yay us! I closed both deck glass doors (we'll get airflow from somewhere else from now on) and started turning off the lights before taking myself to bed.

Then I saw a flash of movement under the tv cabinet in the living room. Another mouse! I got him to run behind the open front door, and then I pushed open the screen door and shivvied him out into the night. Fingers crossed that that's the last of the interlopers. They really are adorable with their tiny faces, huge liquid black eyes, long twitchy whiskers, and big soft ears--even Dave says so. But I much prefer them to live outside.

Post-Op Day 1

Lightly snowing

Well that didn't go like I had hoped it would! It has been a lot more painful than I was anticipating, and I can't find a comfortable position to either sit, stand or lie down. I am, however, a good patient for once, and am staying on top of the pain meds to keep ahead of the pain. Pain meds in this case are big-ass doses of Ibuprofen, and teeny, tiny doses of Oxycodone. But the surgery went well, and my "angry" little gallbladder (honest to Pete, that's the word the surgeon used to describe it) is out and gone. I was going to post a picture of the gall bladder since I got one as a souvenir, but decided the snowy day would be more reader friendly.

I didn't realize going in that I was having what was considered two separate procedures--an endoscopy of my stomach and upper intestine, and a cholecystectomy--so I was in and under a lot longer than I thought I would be. Went in at 8:15 and didn't leave till about 3:30. 

Today it is lightly snowing, and I am in a cozy robe with no plans to do anything but laze around, sleep, read, work on my cross stitch or afghan projects, and watch Only Murders in the Building with J. It feels really good to be able to just relax and not fret about how far behind I'm getting on things. I'm retired! There is no behind!

Next up? A visit to the pancreatic specialist for a sepated cyst >2.5 cm on my pancreas! Joy of joys. An aging body is really a pain in the... well, everywhere.

Some of Us Know What to Do with Our Sundays

Rémy knows what to do on Sunday

It's Sunday and it's snowing. We got an inch or so last night, and i's still coming down in dainty little flakes. The weather poses a bit of a conundrum for me because what I need to do today is go to the other Polson house and load up my tool storage from there (one of those big rolling drawer-thingies from Home Depot that comes in two pieces) to bring it here. I'll probably have to unload it to move it, and I need to wrestle it into the back of the pickup... in the snow... with the pickup bed already full of snow. Well not really full of snow, but enough snow to be a hassle. 

Then when I get it here I have to put it in the garage, but there isn't room for it in the garage because I still have all the boxes of tools from the Austin move to put away in the other new tool drawer-thingie from Harbor Freight--as well as all the 50-lb boxes of glass frit. that are going into the glass shed (I would say glass studio, but it's not a studio--it really is a shed). I can't put the tools away till I have both drawer-thingies set up in the garage so I can decide what to put where. 

In order to get the boxes of frit out of the garage, I need to have the wall storage and attached work table installed so I have somewhere to unpack and put the frit as I move it. I also need to unload the sheet glass from the crates, and reload it back into them after they have been set up vertically--and I need the attached storage pieces to be in place before I set up the freestanding ones like the crates. All the attaching requires tools. the tools are difficult to access because they are mostly still packed. They are packed until I have storage for them.

The above-mentioned chicken and egg scenario is common in most of the home projects I am working through right now. And everything but everything is compounded by the fact that it is snowing today--and I don't want to muck around in it, and I am having gall bladder removal surgery Wednesday and won't be able to lift more than 20 lbs for a month after it. I have two days left where I can lift sh*t, and it's snowing!

Screw it. I am retired. I don't HAVE deadlines anymore. I'll do it after the snow is done, and I can lift again. Today I'll putter in the office/sewing room and finish setting it up. No, I'll leave that till tomorrow. Today I'll just listen to an audiobook while I cross stitch, drink hot tea, and watch the snow fall. (Yes, I said cross stitch... Welcome to the madness.)

Self-Cleaning Cat Boxes

The Cat Link

There are many things I could post about today from the advanced state of the sewing room, to the settling into a bit of a routine, to the great progress on in-progress craft projects, but the thing that is most pressing on my brain is how the hell to get the cats to use the litter boxes. Three floors in this house. Three litter boxers--one per floor--for their highnesses' convenience. Yet cleaning up messes is a daily struggle.

I even upped my cat maintenance game this year and got two fancy schmancy self-cleaning ones--one is a Cat Link and the other a Popur. (Jessie still has a plain vanilla you-gotta-scoop-it one in her bathroom on the ground floor. )When we got the first one--the Cat Link--Kaiju and Pavlova seemed to take to it right away. Pippen, however, seemed too big to get into it comfortably, and I didn't think he was using it. He is over 21 lbs of round orange tabby, and the opening is kind of small and spaceship-capsule-like. 

The Popur

So for the next one I got a Popur which is supposed to be for big cats, and is more open on the top. Pippen used it fine, but it scared the crap out of Kaiju and now he won't use it. The Cat Link both looks like a space capsule, and when it cleans it also revolves like one. The Popur, on the other hand, does this alien-from-space movement and rears up making a big hood when it self-cleans. I think the motion--combined with the not insignificant noise--is what scared Kaiju off. He is at least somewhat considerate, and mostly pees in my shower instead of on the carpet or in one of our chairs, but this is not the outcome I was hoping for.

Yesterday I threw in the towel and put a big corner litter box in our bathroom, and that seems to have pleased both Pippen and Kaiju. I am less pleased as I have to get down on my hands and knees to get to it to clean it. 

Meanwhile I don't know what Pavlova thinks about the new cat boxes, but I know she is all in favor of spraying on any cardboard box left on the floor. And if she does it, the boys have to follow--including Rémy who isn't even a cat. The solution for that one doesn't seem to be catbox-adjacent, and requires me to finish unpacking and get all the cardboard boxes recycled.

The moral of the story? No more cats. I am too old for this sh*t.