Write Off

I booked my hotel for the family gathering. If I spend time writing while I'm there (which I will, because I'd like to get this book done by mid-January), can I call it a writing retreat and write it off on my taxes? I may have to set a story there or something.

(Don't follow any tax advice from me. I always get at least one letter from the IRS after I file my taxes. Some years it's more than one. That's normal, right?) 

Gouache of the Day

I mean, it turned out kinda terrible — my pen work is way too uneven and I think it would probably be better without trying to make the sections different colors. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. This is the whole point of practice, right?

It's supposed to be a big wave.

I think I know what I want to change. Perhaps version two will be better.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

It's Taki!

Unexpected

Winner

Big news today: The Mysterious Murders short story contest winners were announced on a call today and I won first prize! Absolutely unexpected — I really liked the story I submitted, but I wasn't sure it qualified as a "murder mystery with a fun twist". Apparently it qualified.

The winning stories are here: https://www.mysteriousmurders.com/

The prestige of winning also comes with a hefty cash prize, so I'm riding high today. Also, I just think this contest is such a wonderful way to remember Anja Boersma — I never met her, but she was loved by a lot of great people.

Questionable architecture

There's nothing like drawing or painting something to realize you have no idea how something looks. I'm pretty sure these houses would fall down, and the wiring is especially dodgy.

Attempted to follow this tutorial: https://youtube.com/shorts/u8xhnALwc1I

Also started another dragon eye (just because) but I'll have to finish it another day.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Pringles!

Found Them!

As mentioned yesterday, the foster kittens went back to the shelter yesterday. (All five of the Snack Pack have already been adopted!) That means it's time to clean all three rooms where the kittens were.

I'm still in the early stages of cleaning — towels and soft beds get shaken out and washed, litter boxes get emptied/cleaned/bleached, and the floor gets swept to keep from tracking everything into the rest of the house. Eventually I'll get to the next stage, when I clean and disinfect the walls, floors, and furniture. It's a process.

Today when I was moving the couch in my office to sweep underneath, I found five springs, two crinkle balls, a ping pong ball, a fabric mouse, two plastic balls, and about a hundred bits of paper from when the Snack Pack toilet papered my office last week.

No wonder I can never find any toys for the kittens.

More Gouache

Two tutorials, and more blobbies with fun expressions:

Blobbies!

Dragon's eye tutorial — I followed the directions!

I almost followed directions and then got bored, so things changed a bit.

Obligatory kitten picture

Cheese Puff!

Zero

Remember yesterday when I said the plans for my foster kittens kept changing? They changed again!

Since the one kitten I was going to keep until her surgery next week (Yorkshire Pudding) is no longer sneezing or displaying upper respiratory symptoms, she went back to the shelter today along with the Snack Pack and the last two Vampires. People who are hoping to adopt a kitten will be able to see her over the weekend, and hopefully she'll have a home lined up even before surgery.

This means I currently have zero (ZERO!) foster kittens in the house. The mess is still there, of course, but I've run one load of laundry and done the first stage of cleaning the spare room.

I fully intend to laze around in bed tomorrow morning for the first time since... March? I can't remember the last time I didn't have kittens.

On Saturday there's no sleeping in because I have a virtual awards ceremony to attend for the Mysterious Murders short story competition. That should be interesting. Fingers crossed I don't make a fool of myself.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

This is from back in October — it's Akasha, the mother of the Vampires along with her brood. All six liked to pile on top of her, but only three were actually nursing by the time they came to me. The smallest three had stopped eating and I spent the next couple weeks tube feeding them every few hours until they were weaned.

Change

One of the reasons my art isn't as good as it could be is that I'm easily bored. Getting better at something requires practice, and I hate doing the same thing over and over. But I'm finding different things to try while still working on the same thing. So I started with this:

And then I wanted to try again with a better background:

But I realized partway through that I'd made all the leaves in the same direction and it just looked weird. So I tried it again today and ended up with this:

There's something I still don't like about the background, but it will have to wait for another day.

I'm also pretty happy with this one (which is straight from a tutorial):

Kinda boring, yes. But that's about the best tree I've ever managed in the foreground. I'll take it.

Obligatory Kitten Pictures

The plans for the kittens keep changing. Yesterday, the plan was for the remaining Vampires to go to a vacation foster on Monday. (They're big enough for surgery, but one needs his third eyelid snipped and reconstructed, and the regular shelter vet is on vacation so they're only doing spay/neuter surgeries until January.) But now the plan is for them to go to the SPCA in Sacramento, where they will have surgery and be adopted. So I'm taking them back to the shelter tomorrow and they'll go to Sac SPCA on Friday.

They're friendly little guys, so they'll find good homes soon.

Aliens

I've been trying different techniques with gouache, and the autumn leaf tutorial exposed some flaws in my ability to use the hair dryer without sending paint droplets skidding over the page. Again, the gel pen is my friend for making things look better.

Then, because I had a bunch of extra paint already mixed, I made some blobby aliens and they were way better than the leaves.

I especially like the one at the end of the second row who looks like it's shoving its butt out. Once you see that, you can't unsee it.

Obligatory Alien Kitten Pictures

Yorkshire Pudding went back for a recheck today, and she's doing so well that I thought they might keep her. (They didn't. She's still on the surgery schedule for next week.) Anyhow, I wanted to make sure I had pictures of her, so I took a couple on the traditional graduation backdrop.

Her pupils are so dilated that she looks like an alien. In handling her, I've noticed her irises are a lovely gold, but you have to really work to see them. I'll try for another set of pictures before I take her back on Monday, but I'm not sure how to make her not look like an alien...

She's kinda hard to photograph because she immediately walks straight toward me so she can get pets.

Blueberry Cheesecake Caramelized Croissants are Just Like Oatmeal, Right?

The only requirement on my todo list today was a trip to Costco since I was out of paper plates to feed the cats. Could I use real dishes and wash them? Yes. Would that be better for the environment? Probably. But the fewer ways of spreading cooties between groups of kittens, the better.

Anyhow, I also needed Diet Coke (which Costco conveniently keeps in the same exact spot every time, because they know the Diet Coke fanatics will hurt someone if they can't find their fix) and oatmeal. I never found the oatmeal. I know it was in there somewhere, because I saw it in someone's cart in the parking lot, but by the time I had wandered the likely aisles a few times, I lost my will to live and decided to do without.

I did get some blueberry cheesecake caramelized croissants though. Those count as breakfast food, right? Close enough.

Dollhouse

In an attempt to escape my current manuscript, I've been watching Dollhouse. The first season is actually not bad. I have vague memories of the second season stumbling into incoherence, but I haven't seen it since it was released, so maybe I'm mis-remembering.

My two main thoughts are

1. The show would be much better without Joss Whedon's creepy prostitution fetish. Weirdly, despite this being a show about attractive people who are rented out with synthetic personas, his fetish is less jarring here than it is in Firefly.  But yeah. He's a slimy guy and it comes through in his work, no matter how good some of the other parts are.
   
   
2. Someone really screwed up by leaning so heavily on the "tee hee, look, they're prostitutes!" angle in marketing, because the actual show leans into adventure and some interesting SF concepts. Would it still have disappeared without a trace if they'd chosen different theme music and opening credits? Maybe not, but I think that might have helped.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Action shots of Pringles:

Hello

That belly is a trap

She looks ridiculous, but she's just yawning

Sunday Grab Bag

Books Consumed (or not...)

First off, the good:

Maria Schneider (from Bear Mountain Books, go check out her books, they're fun!) recommended The Inheritance by Ilona Andrews, which I had been avoiding because I didn't think litRPG was for me. I enjoyed it! I think as a series it's going to run into the problem most of the Ilona Andrews series have — the main character gets so strong (physically/magically/whatever) that the antagonist has to keep getting stronger, and the battles become more and more detailed until 70% of the book is battle scenes. I tend to enjoy the first few books in every Ilona Andrews series more than later ones for that reason. But this is book one of the new series and I liked it.

Arch Allies (Starhawke Rogue Book 1) by Audrey Sharpe. I think this is an offshoot from another series, but it works well enough without having read anything else. Interesting characters and it kept things moving, like a good space opera should.

And then the others:

The next was an audiobook: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. I love T. Kingfisher. She's the only author that I'll read horror from. But the narration on the book was not good. Maybe it's just stuff only I care about? I was not impressed. Anyhow, I'll read the book later instead of listening to the audio.

Also an audiobook: In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune. I got stressed out and had to stop listening. I'll try again later.

Random Art

They aren't fat penguins, but they'll do. Adding details with a gel pen helps make up for some of my painting deficiencies.

Obligatory Kitten Photo

They have a hard life...

Pinning My Hopes on Ponazuril

Had a fun morning at Morgan's Mill (my local coffeeshop), where Jennifer did not laugh too loudly at my unfinished dragon foot. I think I'm going to finish the right leg, move to the left leg, and if the left leg is an improvement, try the right leg again. Did I get any writing done at what is ostensibly a write-in? Maybe a few sentences...

After that, I went to the shelter to pick up the ponazuril that is (fingers crossed!) going to fix the Snack Pack kittens. While I was there, we set up a surgery appointment for the two remaining Vampires. If everything comes together, all my fosters will have returned to the shelter for adoption before I leave town and we won't need to find a vacation foster. I think we have decent odds, but I'm not holding my breath.

Only after I came home did I remember that I wanted to go to the pet store (about half a mile from the shelter) to get a couple new litter boxes and some extra litter — that will make things easier when I'm bleaching everything so the Snack Pack don't reinfect themselves. So... out again to the pet story, and then I stopped at Michael's to get a gel pen for adding extra details to the paintings.

Because, yes, the gel pen is going to fix everything.

(I did set up a hair drier so I could dry things faster, though. Maybe I'm improving?)

Michael's Rant

I know this is going to make me sound like an old person, but... Seriously, Michael's, this whole self-checkout thing you have going IS NOT WORKING. There were three employees assisting customers with "self-checkout", the line was moving really slowly, the registers kept throwing error codes to make the employees log in, and it was just a mess. It would have been at least twice as fast to have those three employees check everyone out.

Training your customers to run your machines is the least efficient solution. Honestly, it's probably losing you business. Who wants to to drop by for a small item if it takes twenty minutes to get through the line?

Okay, rant over. I hate this stupid self-checkout trend.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Look, they're not getting into trouble! Sure, they're sleeping, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

Sloth Day

Sloth Day

I spent the day relaxing, taking naps, and finishing the ARC of Tammie Painter's Scales of Justice (book 6 of the Circus of Unusual Creatures series). Spoiler: the book is a lot of fun and I enjoyed it.

Having "sloth days" is an important thing to build into my schedule. I mean, sure, it's not like I'm all that busy anyhow, but I need days where I just sit around and do nothing and (crucially) don't see people at all. Is this a neurodivergence thing? Ha, I'm a 57-year-old woman, so there is zero chance I would have been diagnosed with anything in grade school so we'll never know!

Important Poop Info

We have preliminary results back on the kittens' fecal examination, and at the very least, they have Cystoisospora, which is a protozoan. It certainly fits with their symptoms, so it's probably not just an incidental finding. The version that cats get isn't transmissible to humans, but I probably should bleach my office this weekend to keep the Snack Pack from reinfecting themselves.

And who knows? Maybe the final report will have more fun things to treat. These are the kittens that had roundworms even after they'd been twice treated with antiparasitics that should have taken care of that. I think these kittens just started off with a very high parasitic load.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Frito says hello.

(I interrupted her in the middle of grooming. That's why she looks so furtive.)

Glamorous

Fellow foster-mom Jennifer and I often end conversations with "Fostering is so glamorous!" (She's the one that made me dig the 7" tapeworm from the trash and photograph it.)

Today was another of those glamorous days. I spent the morning waiting for Cheese Puff and company to poop so I could get a fresh sample to send off to the lab so we could find out why half of the Snack Pack have had diarrhea for three weeks. Glamorous!

More Fun with Gouache

The problem is that I see short instructional videos on YouTube, and I remember about 20% of the information when I go to recreate it later. (And also that I never wait for things to dry.)

Here are some penguins that are wide. Very wide. I finished this page and then actually looked at it and started laughing. I still like it, though.

Then there's the turn-off-your-brain thing that was fun to make.

And finally, I was trying to shade oranges by using the opposite color on the color wheel. In theory, it should have worked. But I failed to let it dry (shocking, I know), so it didn't quite turn out. But I added a penguin, so the page is a win anyhow.

Will I ever be competent at painting? Very likely not. But I'm having fun with my almost-daily practice.

Obligatory kitten picture

The new girl has a name: Yorkshire Pudding. Her eyes are still pretty inflamed, but she's eating and playing, so I think we're on the right track.

She'll be gorgeous when she's healthy.

Stoned

Stoned

Wednesdays are the day for breakfast and writing at Crepeville with some buddies. I was packing up my things at noon when the foster coordinator called and asked if I could possibly bring the Snack Pack to the shelter for surgery by 1pm. There was a mixup in the mobile surgery bus appointments, and they suddenly had an extra 20 slots to fill.

So I hoofed it back to the parking garage, drove home, grabbed all five kittens, and drove to the shelter with ten minutes to spare. No problem.

They don't actually have room for the kittens to stay in the adoption center (and these guys still have diarrhea), so I picked them up again four hours later and they are back in my office.

They were kinda stoned when I brought them home. It's now 7:30pm and you would never know four of the kittens had major abdominal surgery today. Theoretically, I should be trying to keep them from running, jumping, and climbing, but I'd like someone to explain to me how to get kittens to slow down. It's just not possible.

So Professional

In between ferrying kittens, I found out I had to send an author headshot somewhere. I don't really have an author headshot, so I spent a while trying to make that happen. I am not a person who ever takes pictures of myself. It would never occur to me to go to a photography studio. The idea of doing so makes me want to flee the country. I compromised by taking some selfies outside. They will have to do.

At least our two-weeks-so-far ongoing overcast skies were good for something today.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

As you can see, Frito and Cheese Puff are wrestling resting quietly.

Foster Math

It's day 9 of Holidailies!

Foster Math

There's a phenomenon in the rescue community known as "foster math" and it works like this:

This morning I had 11 foster kittens (5 in the Snack Pack, and 6 Vampires).

I took 4 of the Vampires to the shelter for surgery and adoption.

Now I have 8 kittens.

That's foster math.

Meet the new girl

To be fair, I had 7 kittens for most of the day, but then I got this text: "Hi Theresa! Might you have a spot for this sick girl? She just came in with a fairly severe uri. She’s sweet but snotty and our cat building is full at the moment."

This is her intake photo. Hopefully she'll look a little better after I spend some time soaking off the crusts this evening.

Graduation!

Here are the four Vampires that went back to the shelter and their info:

Bianca is the most independent kitten of her litter. She's friendly, but she's more likely to be off playing with a toy mouse than sitting on your lap — until it's naptime. Then she's all about the cuddles.

Bianca

Marius is the bold adventurer of the litter, though he enjoys snuggling and playing with his siblings. He is obsessed with the feather wand toy.

Marius

Armand is a wonderful himbo of a kitten — just generally happy to be wherever he is. Though he currently resembles a fluffy potato on legs, his glow up is going to be epic.

Armand

Rowan can be a little shy at first, but once she bonds with someone, she will follow them around asking for attention. She's adorable and will purr constantly.

Rowan

My kitten biographies are getting funnier as the year progresses, because I don't think people read them on the shelter website — I no longer feel constrained to keep it professional.

Still Not Dry

During the summer, I forget about how depressing prolonged gray skies can be. (Yes, I live in California. I'm a wimp. I'm amazed I survived an entire year in northern Germany.) Blech. In a perfect world, I would travel to the southern hemisphere every winter.

Anyhow, I played around with gouache again today. The image is totally cheating, by the way. I traced a photo of former foster Gidget on my computer monitor onto a plastic bag with water-based markers, then got the paper wet to transfer the image. It's a technique I picked up from YouTube — perfect for those of us who suck at drawing.

Anyhow, it's a good technique. I'll add that to my arsenal. My attempts at a background failed miserably because I was trying to do it without waiting for the cat to dry. It would have been far better to thin the paints down on the background, but then I would have run the risk of smearing them into the cat. Yep, my impatience caused problems.

Obligatory Kitten Photo

Once again, Frito is highlighting her horrible living conditions. (Cue Sarah McLachlan...) Her only shelter is a cardboard box! For only five dollars a month, you could rescue this poor girl from a life of hardship...

No, It's Not Dry Yet

It's day 7 of Holidailies! (And I heard from Mary/Bozoette, whose Red Nose blog disappeared when Typepad went away. She is on Substack now.)

I've been playing with gouache lately. If you're not familiar with it, it's a paint that you can thin down so it acts like watercolor, but you can also have it be more opaque, so it's a little like acrylics. Either way, I'm pretty terrible at it. (It's a hobby! I'm allowed to be terrible at hobbies!)

One of my main problems is that you really need to have a layer completely dry before adding something new... unless you're trying to mix the layers together, in which case, rock on. I'm usually not trying to mix the layers, but I'm not patient. The combination of those two things means I end up with a lot of muddy messes.

(I dried the base layer today only because I got up to check on something and then completely forgot I had been painting. By the time I remembered, it was three hours later and the base layer was dry. I'm taking it as a win and a sign of my newfound maturity.)

Typical Sunday

The rest of my day was absorbed by kittens and writing. Elisabeth came over to socialize kittens, so the little gremlins slept most of the afternoon. That gave me a chance to clean up my office, which the Snack Pack had toilet papered overnight. That's what I get for leaving a roll of toilet paper on my desk when the kittens are getting big enough to jump up there. (It was leftover from the last group of bottle babies.)

Anyhow, I finished the first of two Patreon digital bonuses for the month — this is another Reddit r/AITA post for the world of Theoretical Magic. It's fun to write those. If I ever start an author YouTube channel, I would read those and make up some comments. Reading AITA posts on YouTube is a thing.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

The Snack Pack steals my chair any time I leave the room. They look so innocent, don't they? Not at all like kittens who spent the night tearing toilet paper into teeny tiny pieces.

Turn on the Tunes

Yesterday was Bandcamp Friday, when musicians who sell their music on Bandcamp keep a higher percentage of the proceeds, so I spent a few minutes browsing and bought a couple albums by (previously unknown to me) Jill Tracy. One is piano-only, and the other has vocals and other instruments. I'll put links in case you're interested.

(Side note: I just previewed this page to see if the pictures were playing nicely together, and the mobile version of this layout is kind of terrible. Does anyone read this blog on their phone? Should I make the effort to fix it?)

I don't listen to music as much as I used to. There was a time I almost always had something playing, and for a long time I often had instrumental music in the background while I was writing. These days it never occurs to me to listen to anything. Is that because there are too many other distractions that I'd need to mute my music for? I don't know. But I think I'd like to get back to listening to more music.

Rant of the Day

It looks like there won't be a third season of Annika, which absolutely sucks. To put it in perspective, Annika is probably the first show since Elementary that really caught my full attention. Why can't we have nice things?

Foster Kitten Picture

This is Frito, one of the snack pack. She only has one little rag to sleep on... (Cue Sarah McLachlan tune) Won't you donate to help poor little Frito?

(There's not supposed to be a rag on the floor. That was one of the pile I keep on my desk for emergency uses. But I walked out of the room and left my chair too close to the desk, so the entire Snack Pack got up there to explore. Frito also wrote this message on my writing-group Slack: "7787777flo'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''+")

The Forbidden Closet

In my house, there is an ongoing war between kittens and boundaries. I don't let my foster kittens run free in the house because:

1. There are just way too many places for a kitten to hide,
2. It's hard enough to clean/disinfect one room when it turns out a kitten has !surprise! ringworm,
3. It's hard enough to clean/disinfect one room in general,
4. I don't want to worry about my fosters darting outside,
5. When I have multiple groups of kittens, I don't want them to swap diseases,
6. There is stuff in my house I don't want kittens messing with.

This means that I am constant climbing over barriers and blocking kittens who are trying to escape. Getting around in my house is a challenge.

I don't have many breakable items — everything fragile already been broken — but I do have a few things, including the audiobook recording equipment...

... which is in my office closet.

I have five kittens running around in my office right now. Yesterday, Cheese Puff figured out that pushing on the closet doors swings them enough that a kitten can get through the gap. (There's supposed to be a piece of hardware on the floor that keeps the doors from swinging in/out, but I lost it when I refinished the floors a couple decades ago.)

So now we are locked in battle over the closet. See Exhibit A:

Yeah, the kittens spent most of today trying to break into the closet.

Send reinforcements.

Good News

Pepper, the kitten I took back to the shelter yesterday, disappeared from the website this afternoon, which means he has already been adopted. I'm not surprised, since he was gorgeous and very sweet.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Cool Ranch again. He likes to nap.

Skill Issue

It's day 4 of Holidailies!

Slow Knitter

I started this knitted dragon over a decade ago, got through part of one wing and stopped. I picked it up again recently and finished the other wing a couple weeks ago.

Note: I am not a great knitter. I'm not even a good knitter.

Today I started on a foot. It's supposed to end up looking like this:

Photo pulled from Kim Harrison's blog

It requires three needles at a time and I have never knitted in the round (or whatever that's called). This is not really the project for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

Mine does not look anything like that picture. I still need to attach the last toe, but I'm fairly certain that's not going to help. Does a dragon need toes? This may be an important question.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Pepper went back to the shelter for adoption today! Woohoo!

To understand why this is so exciting, you have to know Pepper's story. If you're squeamish, skip over the next paragraph.

MEDICAL DETAILS

He came to me about a month ago with a prolapsed rectum (ie, his insides were hanging out through his butt). The usual cause is parasites causing the kittens to strain too much, but in most cases you can just sort of push it back in and things are fine. Pepper's was so bad that it needed surgery — they had to open his abdomen, pull everything back inside, and tack it down.

END MEDICAL DETAILS

Anyhow, the foster coordinator asked me to take him on Saturday (surgery was scheduled for Monday) because she knows stuff like that doesn't bother me. Understandably, he wasn't eating and didn't want to do anything, but he purred loudly every time I came in the room. The poor little guy was skeletal and smaller than the usual weight limit for surgery.

Surgery went well and he came back that evening to recover. For the first day, everything looked great. Then he started having horrific diarrhea and stopped eating. We started him on antibiotics and fluids. It didn't help. He lost more weight and looked really pale. I thought we were going to lose him after all, but about a week after surgery, we finally got him on the right combination of antibiotics, probiotics, fluids, anti-nausea meds, and appetite stimulants. He started eating and all his problems resolved over the next few days.

He's been off all his meds for the last week, and everything is looking great. Plus, he's still the sweetest boy. I'm so happy he made it!