Probably because it means I’m typing most of the day, so then when I go to blog my brain thinks “More typing? Can’t we go do yoga or something?” so then I go and drink iced green tea while I think about maybe doing yoga.

So, miscellaneous things that may or may not be of interest to you, dear reader.

• My very first phone that does more than making phone calls is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I probably will tell you, actually, in some sort of dedicated phone lust post next week.
• Zebradonkey. I love his stripey legs.
• My cats have a blog. Don’t tell them I told you.
• Revising is actually going really well. It’s slow, but since it’s more expanding & adding things than just polishing, I think that’s to be expected. Almost at the halfway mark, I think.
• This bunny is brilliant and I wants it but I do not have $500 for awesome bunny sculpture, which is tragique.

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. I’m in nonstop work mode. I saw Inception but I’m incapable of talking about it articulately without babbling and I’m very opinionated about the ending. I have flopsy kittens, which is typical for this time of year. I want it to be autumn, cinnamon-spiced and crisp.

I said I wanted a new desk chair, because I’m boring. Also, because I spend a large amount of time sitting in it, and the one I had lacked any real back support.

Somehow that turned into maybe also getting a new desk. So we had a planned before-birthday excursion to IKEA to spin around in chairs and see if any of their desks would fit the studio.

And the day before said excursion, my iMac decided to be cranky to the point of being worrisome, especially considering it’s my primary writing computer and no longer covered by AppleCare.

So, even though my birthday is not until Thursday, I have a brand new home office.

Old version:

Apologies for the glare. This was, I believe, my dad’s desk from high school, painted over several times.

New version:

We actually found an IKEA desk that fit perfectly, including a shelf that runs along the back of the drawers that collects all the cords and protects them from cord-gnawing kittens. My new chair is fabulous, and I cannot even tell you how shiny & wonderful the new iMac is, it’s amazing what only a few years difference in technology makes. I keep scrolling on any screen that will scroll just because the mouse has touch-screen-esque scrolling.

So happy happy early birthday to me, especially since I’m going to be glued to this spot for the foreseeable future.

We moved the old desk out into the hall for now. It has been claimed already.

Painting.

Kittens in boxes.

Not really knowing what to do with myself now that I am out of Revisionland for the moment, I thought I would bake muffins. But then I couldn’t find poppy seeds and I really, really wanted lemon poppy muffins. So while I wandered dejected and sad-faced through Whole Foods, the boy & I stumbled upon a tower of bundt cakes, and one of them was lemon with this lovely drippy icing and white chocolate shavings on top and we decided it was like muffins, but better.

So we pretty much ate lemon bundt cake all weekend in the sunshine.

It was really good. Likely better than any thwarted muffin attempt.

While I had the camera out I tried to take photos of Tessa, and while she is usually a very photogenic kitten she was not particularly obliging this time.

I set this photo as the wallpaper on the iMac and I keep laughing maniacally at it. I think this was actually mid-tail-lick rather than proper yawn.

I spent the cake-less, kitten-less hours of the weekend reading and cleaning the studio while the boy read the new revisions. Other than some minor things that still need tweaking, he really likes the major changes so that’s good. He’s read like, every incarnation of this thing and he’s a Virgo so I’m going to take that as a sign that I’m on the right track. Still have it out with other beta readers, so I’m going to try not to obsess over it while I wait and actually get other, non-revising things done for a change.

Also, my windows are open and it is sunshiny and that is happy-making.

Normally she is an equinox baby, but this year the equinox was yesterday. Maybe that’s why she was so cranky about letting me take birthday photos.

I tried. I did. She would not look at the camera no matter how I pleaded and waved things. I think she was shunning me because I brushed her first.

Ah well. She is not as much of a camera lover as her sister, but she’s still a pretty princess.

Happy Birthday, fluffiest of Fluffy Buckets!

• Finished knitting the huge, boa-esque scarf that I have been working on for ages. Photos forthcoming. Of course, now that it is finished it is too warm outside to wear it. I have lousy knitting karma.
• Read Shaun Tan’s Tales From Outer Suburbia on recommendation from Carey. I was a Tan fan already but this book is lovely bits of whimsical wonderment and I loved it to pieces. A perfect blend of words & pictures. This is going to be one of those books I read over & over, I can tell.
• Managed to get a whole lot of revising done, including reworking a large part of the ending. I came up with the changes while completely hopped up on Sudafed and unable to breathe properly, but so far they still seem to work. Draft is still a mess, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again. Sort of. If you squint.
• Did not manage to properly get rid of this stupid cold. Am mostly better, but still congested. It is the cold that will not die no matter how much tea and vitamin C I give it. It makes me sad. *cough*

In other news, it’s disturbingly spring-like here. We had the windows open yesterday. It kind of freaked me out.

Tessa is enjoying the sunshine.

And then I realized since it’s app-based I can’t really do anything useful on it and would be deprived of my beloved Scrivener. So I am going to have to ignore the shiny for now. Someone call me when it runs OS X.

In better news, I tested USPS requested package pickup today and it seems to have worked just fine, so I now have an alternative to walking to the post office in the snow when I have something larger than print envelope sized to mail.

And we are rolling toward the end of our epic LOST re-watch. Season 5 is a lot more, um, inconsistent than I’d remembered. Still good, just missing something. But I know the finale will make me cry again, so maybe I’ll forgive the inconsistencies in a few days.

Still in revisionland, of course. I’m not sure I’m going to have a finished(ish) draft by as early in February as I’d wanted, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again, which is something. It still needs massive amounts of work but the structure is getting there and that’s making my brain hurt marginally less.

Bucket, as always, remains unimpressed.

And then this long crazy tarot journey will be a happy squirrel and some detailing away from complete. Which is kind of baffling.

I am mentally dipping my toes back into revisionland again, though the holidays and the snow and something vaguely resembling a head cold are making it a bit difficult. I have Ideas. I am attempting to string them together into something cohesive. I feel like I’m deconstructing the old draft the way they deconstruct food on Top Chef and I’m worried that it won’t taste good but I can’t taste it properly until all the ingredients are on the plate. Someday I will be able to explain my writing process without metaphors but today is not that day.

Also, I got tickets to see Sleep No More a third and final time after the holidays. Sleep No More & revisionland are currently tied up in my head in this moody masquerade of darkness and tuxedos that smells like evergreen. There’s something in it that is precisely what the novel needs. If I can find a way to translate wordless immersive theatre into text.

But I’m trying not to worry about that too much yet. Here, have a photo of Tessa in a bag.

Kittens love the holidays. ‘Tis the season of bags and cardboard boxes.

Well, 51,132. And I have at least 20, possibly 30 more before the end will roll around. Going to try to get it done before December.

Bucket remains unimpressed.

Tessa looks how I feel right now. Maybe without the yawning. But she’s been sprawled out in front of the fan all day and I would really like to be able to do the same but I don’t think I’d fit on that table and I have work to do. Lucky kitten.

I know, I should have the a/c on when it’s this humid. But we’ve had such a mild summer that we haven’t put the air conditioners up. It’s really not that bad with the fans, but it’s uncomfortable enough that I don’t really feel like doing much and would rather flop like Tessa. But I’m trying to be good.

Tarot Queens are going slow, mostly because the humidity makes it hard to paint. I still should be able to finish them by the end of the week, the base layers are down already and they mostly need detailing.

There will be sharable news on the literary agent search soon. I’m still playing the waiting game so nothing is definite yet. I think I’m actually getting better at the waiting game because I stopped biting my nails and I don’t freak out quite so much every time I have new mail.

I am not a summer creature, despite being born in July. I’m craving autumn already, with crisp leaves and pumpkin spice lattes and apple picking and none of this horrid humidity.