So it goes...

Stuff getting done, slowly but surely.

I did get the main part of the living room rearragned. Still a work in progress.

Found someone on Freecycle that wants the end and coffee tables I inherited from Mom. Those I can gladly and gratefully let go of. In letting those go, I did bring one new thing home - a scanner for my computer. If I want to I can scan in all the photos I have and ditch the paper.

I primarily bought the scanner so I can scan in issues of the Taijiquan Journal. I found them on Freecycle. Got a lot of great articles that I want to preserve. I'll scan them in so I can have them on my iPad, then give the paper journals to my instructor. He hadn't heard of the magazine before, so I know he will want to read through them. The journal is no longer printed, but there is a blog associated with the journal, so I can keep up with it that way.

KK is still having issues. The vet discovered that she had already been spayed, so while she had her open, decided to go look at her guts. KK's colon was red, and given the low good bacteria count in her gut, presuming she has colitis. The colitis could be caused by anything from allergies, blunt trauma, emotional upset, change in food, parasites, bad gut bacteria... To start we've put her on Forti-flora, which is a cat probiotic and moved her to Hills W/D food. If those work to slow things down, then she's still adoptable because it can be easily controlled. If not, we add another antibiotic to the mix and we keep trying to figure it out.

Poor kid also has no vertebrae below her pelvis. Even Manx cats have a vestigial tailbone. She doesn't have anything holding her together below where her sacrum holds the pelvis. It's not an issue at the moment, but could be as she gets older.

Meanwhile, nothing on the work front. I'm OK with that for now. Still got a lot to do around here with cleaning and moving stuff out so new stuff can come in. Two or three things out for every one new thing in.

And getting the graduation afghans started. Hard to believe the oldest one will graduate from high school in May. So I have spent some time getting her afghan started. Thankfully she wanted the same colors as the wedding afghan I did last fall, so I can use that yarn up before I buy more.

Half way through January

I'm starting to get a better handle on where my hours go and what causes me to not get things done. Back in October I had picked up a book called '168 Hours: You have more time than you think' by Laura Vanderkam. I made time to read it and modified her weekly hour tracking to fit me.

What a wake up. I realized where most of my hours are going, and it's not to a worthy cause, it's a time waster. Now, granted, I did get about 20 hours in on the TCM ghostwriting project Wednesday through yesterday, and I have many more hours to go. I have spent 90 minutes every morning meditating, at least a half hour a day walking, and Monday and Friday I did my primal exercises to start regaining some muscle mass.

Still, I've got some holes to fill in the schedule. I have realized that I need to take my to do list and actually block off time on the schedule to do those things. I want to work through Calling in The One - that needs a two hour block per day for a while. There's cleaning to do - make that a half hour block between other reading or working blocks to get me up and moving between sitting on my duff. Same thing with tai chi, take a half hour a day to work on that.

What are my priorities and how do I fit them all in? And what happens if I get an assignment of a day, a week, or if the full time perm software licensing comes through? I'll face that when I get there.

I've come to recognize that this is the year of allowing for me. I'm allowing the stuffed emotions to come to the surface so they can be dealt with and let go. I'm allowing the resistance to abundance to let go so the money can start rolling in. I'm allowing myself to explore the dark side - I can't truly know the light until I've been in the dark. I'm allowing me to find out who I am.
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KK is at the vet for her spay appointment. Had to haul her in Thursday because her diarrhea didn't stop and she became really bloated. The vet was thinking she might have some bacterial issues in her gut, so she's getting antibiotics for that. Took a sample in so they can test, and she'll be getting other antibiotics as part of her surgery today. Between the oral and the penicillin shot, hopefully that will take care of the issue. If not, keep loading her with probiotics, eventually the good stuff will win.

Time to go shuffle the living room while KK's safely tucked away elsewhere. Perhaps some before and after photos tomorrow or Monday.

Breathing room

So, the last assignment is done and I now have some free time. Time to free up some more space and get stuff out of here that no longer serves me.

Case in point: went surfing through Freecycle this weekend. Originally I was looking to see if anyone was giving away their cat(s) like when I picked up Tabby and AB last year. Didn't see anything, but they did refer me to Petfinder.com. So I went looking there. A couple rescue organizations needed foster homes, so I put in a couple applications to be a foster mom. One called me a couple hours later asking if I could take one from a shipment they were getting that night. Sure, I can do that, still have litter and food from AB.

I came home with a young female Manx I first thought was named Kemble. On her tag it says Krumble. I am not calling a cat Krumble, so I've nicknamed her Kay or KK. She's a good girl so far. We've had some digestive upset as the crap they were feeding her previously works out of her system and the good stuff kicks in. I'll add some aloe juice to her water to help her along.

She does know a few commands. She understands that 'hop up' is permission to come up to the bed or onto my lap. Hasn't quite figured out 'down' yet, but she's getting there. She also stops whatever she's doing if I tell her no. One thing we really need to work on is where the proper place to scratch is. She hasn't quite warmed up to the Emery Cat I bought her.

When I got her home the first thing I did was trim her nails. A couple of them were almost curved back into her pads, so that couldn't have been comfortable. They are now much shorter and blunt. Still, my jeans, comforter, rugs and carpet are not approved scratching devices. So along with the Emery Cat I also bought catnip spray and a spray to tell her where NOT to be. Entice her to where she can go, discourage her from where she shouldn't. And if she turns out to not care about catnip, well, the other spray will point her in the right direction.

Another thing I found on Freecycle was someone looking for a massage table. I've had the one I bought at Costco sitting in the closet since 2007 when I stopped doing shares. It's not doing me any good, it's holding space for something that's not going to happen again, and there are too many memories attached to that table. So I gave it away. That made room in the closet for my massage chair and the Body Cushions. Sweet.

There are several things I'm going to put out on Freecycle, see if they go. If not, to ARC they go. I also need to make a run to Ocean Tech to drop off a couple dead computers and CD players. Ocean Tech will, for $5 each, wipe the hard drives on the computers before they recycle them. Works for me, more clutter out the door in a responsible manner.

I've also got some plans in my head on how to re-arrange the furniture in the living room. It's been the same way for the last 14 years. Time to shake some things up. Most of it isn't a huge move - swap the love seat for the couch, move a couple book shelves, move the TV. Most of it will make conversation easier, cause right now it's not a comfortable place to sit and talk.

Then I'll tackle the 'other' office area behind the couch. Turn the desk around, or move it to a more favorable feng shui direction. Move more bookshelves, the pantry with the yarn, the empty freezer...

Then it's to clean out the main office, get that down to basics again. Move into the bedroom, clean that up, find matching night stands, maybe even move things around.

In other words, spring cleaning has hit WAY before spring is here. Might as well do it now while I have time. The last time I cleaned like this was when I landed the software licensing... Do a bang up job this time and I might get the job permanently. Or another opportunity might come along.

Time to have some breakfast, or lunch... I suppose I should eat... or not...