I seem to have lost large chunks of yesterday and today, and I have no idea how it got to be 9:20pm on Friday night. I think there must be some sort of phenomenon that actually steals time. I may have a local black hole problem. 

I spent most of the week at a friend's, where we put our minds to a writer's retreat, complete with good company, good food, good booze, and good entertainment at night. The only thing that would have improved things would be the presence of my cats. Though given the texts from the cat-sitters, it's probably for the best that I missed one cat barf-bombing the other. They are all quite pleased to have me back, with lots of meows & snuggles from Smudge, many lap demands from Rosie, and Rudie's lovely staring which so clearly means, "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH I AM GLAD YOU'RE BACK I THOUGHT I'D LOST YOU FOREVER!"

I don't know that I've ever seen one creature look at another that way.

At any rate, I got a lot of good words done during the day, tho' I still haven't nailed this time travel short story thing that invaded my brain and may end up being a novella at this rate. I thought I would get to that this afternoon or evening, but it's 9:20pm. I'll still put in some time, but probably won't get to where I hoped to get it today. 

The parts of my brain that might come up with more interesting things to say here are now getting jittery to get into that story, so I'd best listen to them.

AND I QUOTE:

"Someone threw up. I figured it was Rosie… Because she threw up on Rudie. He was not pleased. LOL!"

Yes. My orange cats are so talented. One of them threw up on the other.

Three margaritas into the night, just finished Back to the Future, planning 4th drink and dessert.

LOTS of words have happened in the daylight hours, so it's all well earned.
​

Sassy & classy orange cats.

I am not fond of Things that Must be Done alongside all the Creative Things I Do. I could probably make a very long list (and very long post) if I wanted to get into each and every one of them. But I don't and won't. I'll give you a few examples, though: Framing artwork, cutting mats, and matting artwork. Marketing art or writing. Storage. Maintaining websites. Varnishing. Scanning. Keeping scans organized. Trying to keep frames from getting dinged or damaged. Maintaining stock of mat board, frames, and finishing supplies. Writing queries, synopses (tho' once they're done I do kinda like querying, as not-yet-as-fruitful-as-I'd-like it's been). 

I'm thinking about framing because a frame got damaged on one of the big paintings and I need to replace it. And it's led me to realize I'd rather sell the painting without it at a discount. I really really really would rather not deal with it at all. It's not a terrible task, nor will the fix be costly. I just would much rather paint and write than devote another round of thought to it. 

So, if you want to buy a painting at a discount, and I'll tell you what I'd do to frame it, let me know. Not planning on pitching sales from here, but this is on my mind today, and I thought you should know. http://www.angishearstone.com/for-sale.html

I'm at the end of the beginning of a few-days creative retreat which basically amounts to staying over at a friends and writing all day and then drinking & eating good food at night. Today we only got to the food & drink part, and wow, did we get to the drink part. I'm exploring the art of making my own cucumber martinis or whatever it ought be called. So far, I'm pretty happy with just a bunch of muddled cucumber & gin, but I've had these sorts of drinks elsewhere and I know there's more to be done with it. That may have to wait for another time.

Today's intentions for an earlier post got lost in a "woke up very early get to a doc appointment at 8:15AM about 45 minutes away traveling through predictably traffic-prone areas of the state, then got my eyes dilated, then did a few too many errands afterwards, way more prone to these things since the accident but at least the eye doc reinforced that the vision issues are often typical to mTBI and should clear up with time" headache.

I don't know if that sentence makes sense, but I"m not going back & reading it. You'd understand if you knew how much gin was involved this evening.

Tomorrow: Lots of words. I have an agenda, and if I get 30-50% of that done, it'll still be a hell of an accomplishment.

​Woot.

​I have two VERY strong, visceral emotional reactions that stand in conflict with each other with regard to a specific subject: Floors.

I fucking LOVE clean floors. And I fucking HATE cleaning floors. Sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, all of it. I can't stand it. I'm not fond of the act of cleaning in general, but something about floors just irritates me more than anything else. But once they're clean… Wow.

So, I've decided that science needs to come up with a self-cleaning floor. Something solid and attractive by itself, that, while everyone's asleep, becomes porous and sucks down any dust, dirt, cat barf, and whatnot that ought not be there. It then quietly disposes of all that crap while everyone dreams.

Utopia.

It wouldn't take bigger items like cat toys & shoes. And as soon as it feels the weight of a person or animal on it, it deactivates and turns into a regular floor again. This substance could be a base for carpet fibers, or carpet fibers could be make out of a similar stuff.

Can someone please get on that right away?

The storyteller in me can now imagine all sorts of things going wrong here, and maybe I'll get a story out of this as well.

In other news, sometime soon I will highlight some of the oddball results I get when searching for free stock photos for a specific item or subject. There's always a few "what the hell?" results, and always a cat in there, too. Anything you'd like to see, either as a real topic or as a comical photo search, please, suggest something.

I'm having one of those days where I have a bunch of small projects stuck in "open loop," where I'm waiting to hear back from a client, or where I need to run errands or buy something for the next level. But really all I want to do is sit and write, after maybe 20 minutes of daydreaming to get fully into the groove. The writer brain is kinda flipping out, with three different projects (and two different aspects of one of them) that need attention. If I can wrap up and bill out some of these open loop issues, I plan to allocate a bunch of time to writing next week.

It's annoying. Especially when I might've been writing today if I didn't spend a few days sick this week. 

At any rate, I'm afraid of what my brain might do if I bug it to try to come up with something interesting to write about here. It's already got too many things in front of what it wants to do.

Luckily, I've been accumulating interesting things from all over the internet for a while now in preparation for this very situation.

So, for today I give you  HTTP Status Cats: A Set on Flickr.

​https://www.flickr.com/photos/girliemac/sets/72157628409467125/

Enjoy. I'll be over here, tormented by my Set of Status Cats on the Bed.

Oh! And PS: New blog post at Amazing Stories:  http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2017/03/sound-vision-words-pictures/