Wonderful Weekend

We had beautiful weather here this past weekend. Neither I, nor my husband had to work, which is rare, so we enjoyed some family time. We went to a nearby park we enjoy that has a lot of pokestops, duck ponds, and a dog park. It's a fun place to walk. As we pulled into the parking lot, it was clear there was something more than normal going on, and it was our daughter who first caught made the deduction that there were an unusual number of people playing Pokemon Go, so there must be something special happening in the game.

She was right. There were large-ish groups of people standing together in areas we knew to be Pokemon Go gyms. Then we started spotting groups and families all wearing pokemon t-shirts, or hats, and even a kid dressed as pikachu. Maybe it's just the unusually beautiful January weather calling folks to get outside while they have the chance, I thought. My husband, however, Googled to find out what was happening, and sure enough there was some sort of special Pokemon Go event with special pokemon available to be caught only that day.

While we aren't the type to chat with strangers, it was still fun to be around so many other people playing while we walked and hunted pokemon. There were also slightly more folks out with there dogs then we usually see there - those ones probably really were just taking the opportunity to get out on a nice day. So we were surrounded with dog walkers and pokemon players. Our kind of people. It was a nice day.

As a side note - and a request for advice: my youngest has a fire tablet that we tethered to my phone via making my phone a wi-fi hotspot so that she could also play. Her tablet requires wi-fi to play Pokemon Go. But it didn't work very well. It kept either claiming no GPS signal, or placing her somewhere strange on the map that didn't look like anywhere we actually were. She got frustrated enough to give up playing. If anyone has tips on how to get that system to work better, I'd love suggestions. Thanks!

2018 Plans

I don't feel the need to make a list of grand resolutions this year, something I usually enjoy doing. While I do want to lose weight, procrastinate less, sleep better, exercise more, etc., etc., all those things everyone wants, I feel I'm moving forward, slow but steady on these fronts without resolutions, so I won't mess with progress.

More time devoted to writing is always something I want to work on. I think I did better this year, but maybe didn't have as much improvement as in other areas of my life. Striving to post here three times a week was a good goal, one I enjoyed, and will continue. I also tried to have a new short story to post every Friday. I missed that goal a lot, but not as much as I thought I might. I deciding how I want to proceed there.

I'm thinking I might like to start submitting some short stories to paying markets again. That process was slow and frustrating, and time consuming to research, so I needed the break I took last year. Now, though, I feel ready again. One new story a week was probably too much for me, especially if I want to continue to make progress on my novels as well, so maybe I'll have a goal on one month instead. Two a month? We'll see.

The revisions on my first complete novel are going better than I expected. I'm not sick of the story or the characters yet. That's impressive for me. I will hopefully have that ready for critique readers on a month or so.

As Promised - the New Kitten

Panther the kitten. photo by Kara Hartz

Her name is Panther. She was about 4 - 4 1/2 months old when we adopted her from the pound. She is perfect and delightful. Playful, silly, yet well behaved and cuddly. I thought I've give her and Meeko 2 weeks to start getting along before I worried about them. They were playing and sleeping together on day 3, and I'm not sure day 2 even counted since she wasn't home all day. (She was with me at work getting her check up from the doctor).

She is everything I said I didn't want in a new kitten. She was bottle raised, and she's a girl, and still, I don't think we could have found a more perfect fit for our hose than this fun cutie.

Meeko and Panther. photo by Kara Hartz

On a personal note, I may not have been actually ready for a new cat so soon after Bob. I thought, since we had discussed and wanted a kitten for awhile now, we were just holding off since Bob wasn't doing well and we didn't want to add additional stress to his life, that it wasn't as though she were replacing him. We had plans for a kitten anyway, and Meeko seemed lonely. Only when I found myself constantly worrying about her, thinking something was wrong, or I should be doing more to care for her did I realize I was transferring all my unused worry and care taking time for Bob and placing it on poor little Panther, who didn't need it.

Kara and Panther selfie

I'm far from being done mourning Bob. I think I'm leaving denial, and maybe moving into guilt and/or depression, but I'm coping. I may not be ready to bond again, but she is cute to watch and play with, and I keep reminding myself she's fine. She doesn't need medicine or trips to the vet. She needs playtime and cuddles, and we'll both be okay eventually. The kids love her and she loves them. We are going to do all right here.