Of Cabbages and Kings

The Mighty Sam and I went to a niece's birthday party yesterday. It was not bad as parties go, but it was, you know, a PARTY.

Fortunately I found a cat to pet.



The cat is a neighbor cat that my nieces have named Robert. Robert (who is almost certainly female, as she is a tortoiseshell Siamese) comes over every day to see them. She doesn't have a collar but appears to be healthy and well fed.

Parties are hard. I get tired of talking to people after a while, and also I just realized that I get really tired of not being able to run around and do the things I feel like doing, instead of being stuck at someone else's house.

I can't believe it's almost September. The summer has been so atypically dismal, cloudy, and cold, other than one or two hot days here and there. I'm kind of sad that fall is coming, because I hate the shorter daylight hours, and generally dread winter and how it's pitch dark when I leave for work, and pitch dark by the time I get home, but I'm also kind of glad because it means the beach will be less crowded again.

I just read on the intarwebs that fall is the best time to plant trees, so maybe we'll plant some palm trees in September. I'm sick of our yard looking so dead and shitty, but I don't want to do any yardwork either.

I started reading Better than Before, but then I realized that the new October Daye book is coming out in September and I started rereading A Red-Rose Chain so I'd be all ready to delve into the new one.

After all my carpet cleaning yesterday, Bark pissed on the living room rug this morning. *sigh* At least it's a cheap Ikea rug that I won't mind throwing out if I can't get it clean.

My latest literary interest is the British author Tom Cox, who writes about living out in the country with a bunch of cats. I love his stuff because he truly loves cats and understands feline nature, and also he's really funny. I had to order his first two cat books (Under the Paw and Talk to the Tail) from a UK seller on Amazon.com because they're not published in the US yet. I was able to check out The Good, the Bad, and the Furry from the library, but I'm sure I'll be buying that too. And the new one, Close Encounters of the Furred Kind, once it is available in the US.

He also has a Twitter account called "Why my cat is sad" (@mysadcat), about his wonderful cat The Bear. Here is an article about The Bear.

I have a three-day weekend. I was going to be productive and do a lot of stuff today but all I really got done was a 7-mile wog, plus going shoe shopping with The Mighty Sam, who has embarked on a couch-to-5K program.

Crocuses are out all over, and even some daffodils have started blooming. West Seattle is a teeny bit more temperate than the rest of the region, but even so I think the climate here has definitely changed. Stuff never used to bloom this early. You'd see crocuses in February but no daffodils until March.

There are a few things growing in our back yard, probably daffodils. It will be fun to see what starts blooming around here. Then I'll have an idea of what to plan, and plant, for next year.

The Mighty Sam had some snuggle time with the dogs.

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Today in Billings, firefighters and cops rescued a dog that had frozen to the ice on a pond.

At least 9 firefighters were involved in the rescue, plus some sheriff's deputies.

It may be kind of a backward little hick town, but there are some good folks in Billings. And lots of good dogs.

In today's paper there was an article about what Montana is going to get from the Stimulus Package.

I notice that one of the things is tax refunds of $400 for individuals (or $800 for couples, which works out to $400 a head, so i don't know why they distinguish it).

Anyway. I don't think pissy little refunds like that stimulate anything. To paraphrse Lewis Black, a little payment like that doesn't do anything except make you realize how totally fucked you are.

There's other stuff too, though - college aid, Head Start stuff, highway construction, etc.

I don't know though, if this is the right way to fix the economy. I sort of think that some of the bad debts just need to go bad and clear out of the system.

Since banks and other lenders seem to be too dumb to realize that lending money to people who can't pay them back is a Bad Idea, I think there ought to be some more regulation in lending.

If there's going to be spending, I would like to see it in ways that would actually create industry and real wealth. I'm not sure how to do that, but I definitely don't think giving every Joe Schmo $400 is going to do it.

What do YOU think needs to be done to fix the economy?

please, be mean and contentious and have flame wars! It will help divert me from my worrying about Freyja, so it's all for the good.

I am so tired of reading all these stories about idiots who bought more house than they could afford, and more car than they could afford, and racked up crazy amounts of credit card debt, and when someone got laid off, suddenly they're totally screwed, and they moan and groan about how everything went to shit and it's not their fault, call the waaahmbulance!

So it was refreshing to see this story on CNN today.

In short: guy gets laid off from management job. He can't find another equivalent job, so he takes a job delivering pizza at Domino's so that he can make money while he's looking for something better. His wife earns a little money working for an exterminator. They sell the motorcycle because they can't afford it anymore. They disconnect the cable TV and start seeking free entertainment. The kids get jobs instead of allowances. Their mortgage is only $440 per month and they have no credit card debt, so they actually manage to pay their bills and not take on any more debt during the hard times. Hopeful ending: Guy gets security officer job with management potential.

They live in Lafayette, LA, which I thought was cool, since we used to live there.

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Just like that:

90,587 / 100,000 (90.0%)

Over 90,000 words. over 80,000 for Sven.

This question is for cappsize and solcita, but of course, anyone who knows the answer should chime in!

Someone calls 911 because there's an intruder trying to break into her apartment. Caller is reasonably calm (scared, but not hysterical) - calm enough to say, "This is X, I'm calling from Y Address, and someone is trying to break into my house."

What questions do you ask? How would the call go?

The person is someone she knows - he's actually violating a restraining order. He's yelling her name and throwing himself against the door trying to break it down. The door is deadbolted and chained, but the construction of the apartment is so flimsy that the area around the doorknob is starting to come apart from repeated banging. Oh, and it's the middle of the night. 3 AM. And the apartment building does not have a secured entrance - it has doors to the units on the outside. And the break-in is happening at a ground level apartment.

I always do New Years resolutions. I've gotten better and better at keeping them, too.

The other day I saw this article on CNN about how to keep resolutions, and I pretty much totally disagree with it. Not the content, per se, but the tone... the idea that you should do something easy instead of something hard.

I think that if you aren't in the right frame of mind, you won't even be able to do something easy.

I say, Set goals that are hard! Set goals that are really hard!

Do you know how AWESOME it is to accomplish a difficult goal? Not only does it make you feel justifiably good about yourself, but it also makes you a better person.

Goals should be specific, measurable, and hard.

There's a difference between the emotional desire to have something, and the commitment to actually do it. Wanting is emotional. You can only go so far on emotions. As soon as you lose the giddy excitement of starting a new thing, you need something else to keep you going. That thing is commitment.

You start a project - say changing your eating habits or starting an exercise program or writing a novel. At first it's all shiny and new and you're all high on it. But after a while it starts to lose that shiny-ness. You weigh in after the first week and you've gained a pound, say, or you're exhausted after work and you're sick of being jealous of the 20-something aerobiqueens at the gym, or the novel just seems like total dreck and you can't seem to figure out what happens next. You just don't feel like doing it. Maybe you'll give it a rest today and get back to it tomorrow... but tomorrow comes and you have another excuse.

No matter how excited you are about a goal, you can't rely on emotions to get you through. In order to keep at it even through the I Don't Wanna, you have to have a commitment.

So this is what you have to do: When you are setting goals, you have to commit to doing them even when times are hard, and you don't feel like it. Know in advance that those days are coming, and intend in advance to do those daily tasks even when you don't want to do them. If you're prepared for that you'll have something to draw on to battle the I Don't Wanna.

You have to be able to integrate the little day-to-day tasks and routines into the big picture. For writing the first draft of a novel, I set up an Excel spreadsheet with my entire goal mapped out so that I can see how each day's wordcount goal fits into the novel as a whole.

Reject the idea that missing one day won't hurt. It does hurt. It puts you another day away from achieving your goal. And it hurts your character. It hurts your sense of self-worth. It hurts your trust and confidence in yourself.

Do the tasks associated with your goals first, before goofing off. But fit your goals into your life in a way that works with your natural rhythms, too. I am not a morning person, so it would be foolish for me to plan to write or work out in the morning before work. But I do start writing during my lunch break, and I work out right after work, and when I get home I finish my day's writing. If I have other tasks for that day I might do them before I do the writing (because one of my Big Goals is to get my daily to-do list done every day).

You don't grow as a person unless you're doing things that are hard for you. Challenge yourself, and then live up to your expectations. Or exceed them.

Pleasure and happiness are not the same thing. Happiness is pleasurable, but pleasure without effort doesn't lead to happiness. You get happiness when you are the you-est you you can be. And that doesn't come from coasting.

Everything you do impacts your character. Character is A distinguishing feature; characteristic, a complex of mental and ethical traits marking a person or a group. There's that story about everyone having two wolves battling in their heads, the good wolf and the bad wolf. Which wolf wins? Why, the one you feed.

Character is like that. If you act with discipline, you become disciplined. If you do good things, you become a better person. If you cut corners, you become lazy. If you blow things off, you become a slacker.

If you really grok that, you will have something way stronger than emotion to overcome the I Don't Wanna. And each day that you overcome the I Don't Wanna, you get a little bit closer to your goal. If you keep winning that battle, day in and day out, you achieve the things you want to achieve.

That is how to set goals, and why to set them, and how to follow through, and why it's so important that you do the things you want to do, even when you don't feel like doing them.