A Little Magic

I did this picture last night of a little elf adding magic to the Christmas toys. I might try to do a set of them for the holidays. It's about all I'll be doing for the holidays this year, but it is, at least, diverting. And time consuming.

I've been jabbing at my story, Ash and Oak, and the 2YNY2 book for a couple days now and not getting much of anywhere. I know, just relax. But not doing anything at all is worse. And Russ is in New York. And when I don't write much, I get in really bad moods. I'm running out of time and excuses not to get the 2YNY2 book done, at the very least.

I would really like to just sit back and have some fun. Well, okay -- what I would really like is about $100 so I can go to the Daz site and buy some really neat stuff to play with. Yeah, I know. Don't waste money on stuff like that when you know there are other things you should be worried about. (Goes and looks at PayPal account. Goes and looks at sales at Holly's site...) (Reminds self that it's the holidays and really shouldn't be looking at things for myself.) (slaps fingers)

Oh, and as long as I'm thinking 'art' stuff... Corel Paint Shop Pro XI would be wonderful. I played with the free download for a month and loved it. and Corel Painter 9.5 (yeah, right). The last is way out of even my 'pretend going to buy it' league -- although, since Russ is teaching part time at a community college, I think we can get the educator version.

You know, writing is so much less expensive, especially since I already have basically everything that I want for it. Good thing I already have a good digital camera, since the other one did die. Oh! And some of my stuff is showing up on the Animal Diversity Web now. My resource page there:

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/lazette_gifford/index.html

Soon they'll be showing up with the proper animals, too. They're just putting stuff into the database now.

Really, I can't complain. We are holding on here, and while it's sometimes annoying and unpleasant, we are still doing all right. There is food for us and the kitties. We have heat in this house, and although I still owe money to sff.net and some damned Vision payments, we are mostly caught up on everything else for the moment. You know, that's not bad since Russ hasn't had a full time job in a couple years. We are living on part time work and writing -- and there aren't a lot of people who can do that, even at the basic level we're at.

And I am grateful to Holly Lisle and the people who have been buying my books at her store. Since I get paid for those each month, it's helped keep things going and helped me from going crazy. I know that if I can just get the 2YNY2 book done, it will help. It's just that every time I get moving on it something bad happens and knocks me back out of it again.

I don't want to think about that right now. I want to do something fun.

I've opened the 2YNY2 book and I'm going to make another couple jabs at it. I'm well over half way through it -- though some of the pieces are not in the right order yet. It's not as long as the previous book, either. So I can do this, right?

And it will keep me away from the Daz site.