Friday Five: February 2

Whoa! I can't believe it's February already. Time is really flying.

1. I can officially say that I'm having a baby next month. That's kind of scary and exciting, all at the same time. I think those first time mom jitters are really setting in!
2. I'm starting to get really busy at my day job, which means late hours and no writing time. Now that I've modified my writing goal, it will be easier to keep up with, but most of my free time will still go to writing. Maybe my husband will pick up the slack on the cooking and cleaning? He'd look cute in an apron.
3. New Hunger Games trailer!
4. This weekend our project will be working on the baby's closet. As of now, it is not very baby friendly. Just one long rack to hang things on. Her little outfits look so lost in there. I love DIY'ing, so it should be a fun weekend. The plan is to end up with something like this:
5. It's been super warm this entire week. I hope the weather keeps up for the weekend. I hate it when it's a beautiful day and I'm cooped up inside an office. At least give me a chance to enjoy it on a Saturday or Sunday!

HAPPY WEEKEND!

New Year, New Goals

A few days ago, my online writing group shared their goals for the year. Since we all know that telling people our goals is a mechanism to keep us accountable, I thought I'd share mine here as well.

Before I get to it, I thought I'd share a great method for setting goals that I learned back in college. Make them SMART!

S - specific. Don't make your goal "lose weight", make it "Walk for 30 minutes every day."

M - measurable. If you can't measure your goal, you'll have no idea when you've met it. "Read more" is not enough. "Read 10 books by July 1." will help you stay on track. Especially if you're like me, and you said you'd read 75 books in 2011 and in December you were only at 30. Needless to say, I didn't make that goal.

A - attainable. Your goals should stretch your limits, but not overextend you to the point that you can't reach it. Saying you want to rewrite your entire novel from scratch in a week is unattainable, but saying you want to write 500 words a day is doable.

R - realistic. Make the goal something that fits into your life right now. Otherwise, it will be much harder to achieve it. If you've never sat for more than 15 minutes to write in one span, setting a goal of "write for 1 hour straight every day" can seem daunting. Instead, your goal could be "write for two fifteen minutes sessions every day for a month". Once you do that, you can up the ante.

T - timely. Without a time commitment, you're setting yourself up to put off the goal until the last minute. This creates stress and isn't good for you. Instead of saying, "I want to read 20 books," say "I want to read 20 books by December 31, 2012."

So using those guidelines above, I designed my writing/reading goals for 2012. Here they are in no particular order. NOTE: Since I'm going to be having a baby at the end of March, these goals are only for the first quarter of 2012. I'll have to re-evaluate once the little one arrives.

• Read 1 new release from a YA author per month.
  
• Read 3 books per month.
  
• Get WIP off to a CP by January 31.
  
• Blog at least once a week.
  
• Tweet/comment on at least ten blog entries per week.
  
• Once comments are received from CPs, edit three chapters per week of WIP.
  

So what are some of your goals for 2012? Are they SMART, or did you use some other method?

Totally Random Unrelated to Writing Blog Post About my Cat

Over the weekend my cat became very sick. He cried all night and even resorted to peeing all over my clothes to get me to notice. At first I thought he was just being a jerk (because that's totally his personality), but then realized something was wrong when he did it three more times that day.

My husband took him to the vet and it turned out my kitty had a UTI, which is VERY VERY BAD for male cats if left untreated. Several hours later, Caesar left the vet with 7 UTI fighting pills, along with a special food that will break up any crystals.

Fast forward to Friday morning, the first day we had to give him a pill. The directions said 'take with food', so we put out his special expensive food and he turned up his nose and walked away. Not to say I blame him because the stuff smelled awful. A few minutes on the internet offered the solution of mixing his old food with his new food. It seemed to work well enough. He ate about half, so now it was time for the pill.

First we tried the doctor's instructions: Grind up the pill and put it in some wet food. My cat was too smart for that. He just walked away - even though it was his treat food!

Next we resorted to shoving it down his throat, kind of like this video.



I say KIND OF, because it didn't happen nearly as easily. Claws, teeth and angry hissing were all in attendance. I'd say this is a much more accurate depiction:


The next day I was in the pet store and I saw these things called Pill Pockets. It's a treat you wrap around the pill then feed to the unsuspecting cat. I never thought it would work, but I bought a pack anyway.

Let me tell you - if you ever need to give a cat medicine, BUY THIS PRODUCT! It took about ten seconds to wrap up the pill. I put it on the floor in front of him and he gobbled it up. YAY!

And for anyone who's worried, I took Caesar back to the vet today. He gave us 10 more days of antibiotics, but the vet said he's improved a lot since last week! We have one more visit scheduled in mid-July to be sure all the crystals are gone.