Exhausted

So The Husband has a head cold, which I am trying to stave off. Meanwhile, we've had 4 emergency vet trips in the last two weeks. Three trips for The Bulldog, and one for one of the cats, who went into diabetic shock in the middle of the night. Fortunately for him, he fell over into his water bowl, and we heard the splash. He's ok now.

The Bulldog, on the other hand, should be thanking his lucky stars that he's so cute.

Ok, so the first three trips were not his fault. We thought he was sick, then we thought it was pancreatitis, then we thought he had swallowed something and it was stuck in his stomach, so they did exploratory surgery. Didn't find anything, but they tacked his stomach while they were in there, so we didn't mind so much. Turns out he had some sort of "bacterial overgrowth" so they gave him antibiotics.

The antibiotics have let his surgery incision heal up beautifully, by the way.

So he's starting to feel better now. Surgery was the 14th, and we're starting to wean him off the pain killers. So he's getting his old energy back, but we're not walking him much. I wanted to take him out last night, but it was too icy to walk.

Today we get home, Husband is tired and cranky, and we discover that The Bulldog has decided to eat half of an oven mitt.

Back to the e-vet.

Some vomiting and x-rays later, we've recovered a portion of what was missing from the mitt. No idea where the rest is. Probably in his intestines by now. So we're giving him a boatload of pumpkin and watching to see what comes out the other end.

I am officially exhausted. And desperately trying not to get sick myself.

Holidays Are Different From Vacations

I don't know if I really take vacations much. (This includes weekends.) I know there are a lot of writers out there who write lots and lots every day. I'm not one of those. I have been, for a few months at a time. But in general, no.

And yet, my weekends and vacation days tend to fill very quickly. Sure, I squeeze in time for formatting, research, cover design, and even a little writing. But a lot of my time gets taken up with caring for our animals, doing dishes and laundry, and other sundry chores.

Not to complain, exactly: everyone is like this, really. But I know lots of people who are happy to do nothing on a vacation day. I actually have to schedule myself to not do things. If I'm at home, I feel like I should be doing something productive. There are always so many little projects in the back of my mind. I would love to declutter the house at some point, for instance. I've been wanting to do that for ages. But I also don't want to do it in little chunks. Therefore, it keeps getting pushed out until I can find a nice big block of time to do it in. (Like that's going to happen.)

And Facebook! Good gods. We had a day this last long weekend where we left town and deliberately stayed disconnected. I kept wanting to make a status post. Or check my email. What the hell? I did not used to be like this. I shudder to think how twitchy I'm going to be when I finally break down and get a smartphone. I might actually tweet more than once a week.

I know no one drives me to do this to myself but me, but ugh. When else am I going to to all this stuff? If I don't do it, who will? (If not me, who? If not now, when?) And yet, when the heck am I going to relax? I just got back from Photoshop class (print covers are mostly done now, just need to do the spine) after a full day of dayjob, did the Monday chores, and still feel like I'm not getting enough done today.

Anyone have some valium I can borrow? And a Quith worker to do my chores for me?