Monday's State-of-the-Meerkat

Was in bed this morning, waiting for the feline alarm to ring, thinking about the nicely-gelling plans for the California Road Trip, and suddenly realized that I have Something Major due the day before I'm supposed to head out there. Which caused me to run backward over my schedule in my head, from October to now, and realize that I'm already off-schedule for everything I have to do.

Gack.

Time to ramp up again.

(the problem with All Things Planned is that I'm also under orders not to a) overwork, b) disappear for days at a time, and c) go without sleep. The Plan did not allow for things like sleep or a social life. Or a kitchen renovation. And yes, Catie, I can hear you laughing from here...)

It's all doable. The Plan says so. *nods firmly*

EtA; And now I'm even more behind, thanks to various no-shows and delays not of my making. The phrase "needs killin'" has resonance in my life right now... and yet, since I didn't actually expect any of those things to go right today, I'm angry but not upset. Hi ho hi ho it's off to Mordor we go...

alarums and excursions

For those interested, my new essay is up at The Paranormal Romance Blog, telling "The Terrible Truth About Secondary Characters."

Meanwhile, I am told that the audiobooks for BRING IT ON and CURSE THE DARK will be available in April, with BURNING BRIDGES and FREE FALL in May, and then BLOOD FROM STONE in June. yayyy!



In updates of the Better Homes and Deadlines sort, the CEM is done and will go back to tomorrow morning. Writing will recommence at that point, thank god. Today was spent painting, and being on the phone with the asswipes at Home Depot, who not only can't be trusted to deliver three boxes of tiles within a two week period, but told me a different lie every time I spoke to someone there, from the salesperson who wrote up the order to the person who checked on the order for me on Thursday, to the manager who told me I was SOL today (and took almost three hours to "call me back in five minutes with the information.") And I still don't have a firm delivery date -- "maybe Thursday. Worst case, Saturday." Twenty days to deliver three boxes of very basic ceramic tiles that were supposed to arrive within 7-10 days. So everything's on hold until then, despite the fact that the cabinets are ready, and the appliances are ready, and the granite is ready to be cut, and.... *sighs*

(and yes, I know Home Depot is terrible -- had I another option I would have taken it. They had the tiles I wanted, so it was either them or look at the tiles every morning and think "that's not what I wanted.")