random ramblings

I need to start getting to bed earlier.  Especially since I need to cut back on the caffeine while I'm trying to stave off getting a UTI. 

It's gonna be a really, really pretty day.  I'm thinking about taking the kids to the back yard for a while.  I'd just kick them out, but because of neighbor complaints, we no longer have a yappy little dog that gives an alarm if someone approaches that she doesn't know, and we live in town. 

It really sucks.  I dimly remember having unsupervised outside time at their ages.  I wish I could give them the same in their own fucking yard, but it really is a different world of dangers: if it's not the dangers of stranger kidnapping (which actually does happen, no matter what people who quote statistics would say--and has happened near here within the last two years), it's the dangers of some shithead bully calling the cops for what they consider neglect.

And, given the whole issue with somebody calling the cops on the dog, I'm not willing to risk my kids.

We'll be taking the kids and going to PetSmart for some cat food within the next hour, hour and a half.  They'll have their pet adoption days going (i.e., kennel cages with dogs and sometimes cats) set up where the kids can coo over and pet the dogs), and the pixie loves watching the small rodents.  The imp loves the lizards (which seem to love him, too). 

We'd recently gotten the cats some catnip mice, and Cricket loves them.  She carries them around in her mouth, yowling with her mouth full of toy, then jumps up to play with them around the arm of the couch.  I don't mind so much with the toys.  It's when she does it with a real one that I get miffed.

Shadow doesn't care so much for the toy mice.  She'll play with them when she's bored, but she prefers these furry little craft fuzzballs that the pixie brought home after an art project.  They're like pom-poms, but...well, they've got a semi-solid center, and sparklies worked into the fibers sticking out in all directions.  She found one, day before yesterday, and...yeah.  Chaos in the kitchen.  She'd found it at lunchtime for the kids, and it was difficult and took several minutes to get them to stop squealing and giggling over the cat and back to eating their lunches. 

I've got the nibs, feeds, and sections cleaned up on the Parker VS, the Sheaffer White Dot lever fill, and have started on the Sheaffer Touchdown.  I'll need a small clamp before I can put new ink sacs in them--it's probably a bad idea to use my teeth to hold the sections while I stretch the sacs over the section nipples.  Other than that, I've got one more pen (a Sheaffer Fineline lever fill pen--one of their student pens) to fix.  To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten about that one. 

I have two pens I need to do writing samples for, six to take pictures of, and then three to write out of ink and clean up.  Then I'll have six more pens to post on my Etsy page.  After that?  There's the three more I'm going to go ahead and sell to finish fixing, test, write out a sample for, take pictures of, and post. 

Last month, I had someone from Taiwan buy three of my pens.  It came out to around $102 brought in, and I'm beginning to wonder if I really can turn this into a business.  It's kinda going to depend on my time, and how much I can find the pens for, vs. how much I can sell them for. 

Writing...I've hit another block.  I'm up to just almost the halfway point (and up to 21K words in part 1), and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to skip ahead and come back to write the filler up to the good part later.  It's a bit of a slog, and I'm thinking it has less to do with the actually writing, and needing more sleep.

Which takes us back to square one: I need to start getting to bed earlier.