Yesterday was a fairly self-indulgent day. I made this almond and apple pastry,  worked for a while, and then went out and shoveled up dog poo from my backyard. No one wants to do this in the winter, so things get pretty rural out there.

It was exercise.

I started on my bedroom clean up then, but got involved in a tech/design issue on a project and spent some more time working.

By the time I finished that, I was on the phone coughing and croaking at #2 daughter (she helped out with the design issue), so I decided to rest for a bit. I am feeling almost better, and I don't want a relapse.

#1 son went to visit #2 son at college this weekend, and my husband was working yesterday, so I had no car and therefore couldn't do the grocery shopping or anything of that sort. The mailman brought a collection of Netflixes, so it was clear that I had no choice but to spend the afternoon sewing and watching movies.

I didn't use the green crepe de chine -- there's more of it than I remembered, so I think it has an actual blouse or nightgown or something in its future.  

I have this nice teal chiffon, which I think will do just fine. While watching The Proposal, I traced out the pattern, cut it out, pinned it together, and tried it on. I think it'll be nice.

I got back to work after that, but finished up the evening swatching with Telemark while listening to my husband's adventures at work.

TodayI think I'll continue with all the things I started yesterday, including resting and trying to get over the last of this virus. I have more work to do, I really do want to get my bedroom in order, and I can probably sew up the teal top while watching Rebecca (the Hitchcock one). Maybe yoga a la Wii Fit.

With any luck, I'll feel like myself tomorrow.

This isn't really what Lent is about.

I haven't been keeping a good Lent, largely because I've been sick since Ash Wednesday. I haven't been doing anything except working and, when not working, lying around trying to recuperate.

Lent is supposed to be a time of contemplation, a time to prepare your heart for Easter. Sometimes people do give up things they'd like to give up permanently -- that's how I was able to cut down severely on being critical about other people -- but often we just give up something that we want many times during the day. If you give up tea, then every time you wish for a cup of tea, you are reminded to think about the things you've decided to think about during this year's Lenten journey.

I have work to do today, and I'm not feeling completely recuperated, so I plan to take things fairly easy outside of that, but I'm also determined to do some interesting things today.

The Organized Home Cleaning Plan is finishing up  Master Bedroom Week, so I plan to clean my bedroom. It's very much in need of that, and I think it's important to have a bedroom you can enjoy being in. I may also do some baking. And I'm toying with the idea of doing some sewing, or at least swatching for my next knitting project, whatever it might be. I still haven't decided. Part of that may be my dissatisfaction with Salt Peanutes in its finished condition. The collar doesn't lie right, and it's very big and fluffy and pink and shapeless. It could be that I chose the wrong yarn for this pattern. So I'm trying to make sure my next project is a more successful one, and that may require more time with my collection of knitting books.
 
And it's a glorious day, so maybe a walk. I've been doing 30 minutes of step with Wii Fit for the past few days and feeling fine with it, so I don't think a walk will send me into a decline.

If I do get around to sewing, I think I'll make this top, from Burda's spring issue. I have some green silk crepe de chine I've had hanging around for a long time, and I think this would be nice in silk. Easy to make, and it should look pretty under a suit.

The yoke is quilted, and I could even quilt it in an interesting pattern while I watch The Cashmere Mafia. And if I ever feel well enough again to go to a party, I could wear it to said party and feel somewhat dressed up. 

First, tea and cough medicine.

You: Being Beautiful moved on from energy through pain and moods or temperament. They have little quizzes (they said I should be a teacher) and charts as well as truly revolting cartoon drawings of human innards.

They had a list of characteristics that could be personality disorders, if overindulged. Extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability -- watch out!

They have lots of very medical things to say about these sources of misery (pain, that is, and bad moods, and disorders), and then they move on to the top source of stress: jobs and finances.

I've certainly had both job and financial stress in my lifetime, though right now my only issue is overwork and my collection of extremely predictable and boring growing-business issues (seriously, I know that I'm just like a new parent or a teenager: everyone has exactly the same issues, but it seems much more important and serious when it's you).

The authors do, in the sections I'm running through so briskly here, suggest that it's an evolutionary issue. We are designed to make snap decisions and overreact to present stimuli and fail to look toward the future, because we're physically still adapted for life on the savannas with the saber-toothed cats.

This could be true, I suppose.

I don't feel that I'd be well adapted for that, myself, but I guess if I lived on the savannas with the saber-toothed cats I'd be dead by now, so it wouldn't be an issue.

I'm writing about business today. There's probably someone else at xanga writing about something more exciting. My feelings won't be hurt if you leave and read them.

Work, you see, is great. I work at my computer, happily writing grant proposals and donor letters and websites and press releases and stuff, and I get emails from people asking me to write their web sites and articles and letters and things, so I always have plenty of work to do. I am, or will be when I completely recover from my virus, happy as a couple of clams.

But business involves more complex issues. My designer wants twice as much for the next site he does for me. My project manager has a full time job and can't get the proposal done when I said it would be done -- so maybe I shouldn't have said that's when it would be done. And what about those proposals? It's a couple of hours' worth of work, at least, for each of us, and sometimes the client doesn't give us the job. Should we put in more time to make a more splendiferous proposal to increase our chances, or spend less time since it's a bird in the bush, whereas I already have plenty of birds in hand?

And what about taxes and accounting? I still don't have that fully under control. My PM says that the amount I think I spent last year on overhead is too small to be the real amount. So does that mean that I'm very frugal, or that I should keep searching in case there are still more deductions out there somewhere?

I read in Kiplinger's about a freelance couple doing video who spent $50,000 in their first year on hardware and software. Should I, since I really want the business to expand in the area of multimedia, take this to mean that we can't afford to go in that direction and give up? I know a good video provider, so maybe I should cultivate him more and make sure I give him enough jobs that he considers me a valuable client -- but then of course I'm dependent on him, and what about when he suddenly doubles his price like the designer?

My social media maven wants to attend an expensive training. Expensive training is often the best kind, and it could be not just a way for her to become more expert, but also an excellent networking opportunity. How do we prioritize that cost against the cost of hardware or software -- or her brother's tuition, since at this point I'm the one actually earning money for the business?

Thinking about, researching, and discussing this type of question is completely unbillable. But I know that successful business owners don't spend all their time doing direct service provision. Balancing the business part with the provider part is a challenge.

And I know that this is a normal part of business growth, too. Maybe I should talk to my SCORE mentor again.

I'm feeling slightly more human today. I coughed my way through four phone meetings and one face-to-face meeting this week, and a couple of classes, but I sound a little better, and expect to live.

Instead of paying a doctor to tell me that I was sick and should rest and drink fluids, I bought Kindle novels with reckless abandon, and have read a whole bunch of light murder mysteries. I'm currently reading Purses and Poison, by Dorothy Howell. I read the first in this series, Handbags and Homicide, when I was visiting in L.A. last year. You will have noticed that murder mysteries now have to have not just a Belgian detective or a detective in a wheel chair, but  must have some huge irrelevant marketing hook. The one for this series is handbags.

It's hard for me to take handbags as a raison d'etre at all seriously, but I guess it's not much stranger than the ones focused on knitting or cooking. I read the entire first book without paying much attention to the handbag motif, but this time it is just weird enough to make me think about it more.

I actually own a bunch of purses. Like more than I can mentally count real fast, in a one- two -many kind of counting. I know that last year, my husband felt moved to speak to me about the number of purses I had. I had, I think, just bought a black pleated purse. I think it was about the fifth one I had bought,and I had also made a couple, so I had kind of a whole bunch even then. Now, I think that I bought the two in the picture here without even mentioning it in my xanga.

I promise you, I almost never buy anything without mentioning it here. For me, buying things is an event. And yet, I may have gotten so jaded about buying bags that I didn't even need to record the fact.

The one on the left is a briefcase. The one I bought back when I returned to teaching in 2008 is a briefcase/laptop case, and too big for comfortable toting around. Also, this one has pleats, and I am for some reason very drawn to pleated bags. The one on the right is a purse. It's like my grandfather's satchel, which I have always admired to an unreasonable degree.

I don't think I'm as bad as the heroine of the novel, but I had to wonder about buying purses at the rate of two or three a year. It may be because you don't have to go to a store and try them on, but can order them online. Or perhaps because it practically seems like a business expense -- I mean, I have to carry papers and files. That doesn't really mean that I need two briefcases, I realize, but it doesn't seem all that frivolous.

My grandmother used to have shoes and purses to match her outfits. I bet she wouldn't have thought I had too many bags.

I read Roizen and Oz's section on energy while suffering from whatever virus has me in its toils. This probably made the chapter more meaningful to me than it otherwise would have been. I'm usually happy and energetic, unless I'm so sleep-deprived that I know why I'm not feeling happy and energetic.
That's been common recently, though. The Wii Fit will ask me, in its chirpy way, whether I'm well rested and ready to give it my all and I'll glare at it.
Roizen and Oz make the question of feelings energetic seem very mechanical. There are these glands, see, and if you do the stuff you should, they all work properly and all is well. Otherwise, they get bollixed up and you don't feel energetic.
While they mention health issues that affect people's functioning, and go into some depth on treatments, the authors mostly give us the same old advice on keeping high energy:

• get 8 hours of sleep every night
• exercise every day
• avoid simple carbohydrates and saturated fats
• eat whole grains, fresh produce, and high quality protein

There you have it. Just do those things and you too can have radiant energy.
Illnesses, they agree, are exhausting. Your body has to put all this energy into fighting off the infection or virus or whatever, and has none left over for the ol' radiant energy. They say to do the things above, and also to wash your hands a lot. They also recommend using a neti pot, which is too disgusting to contemplate, not that drooping around for a week coughing up gunk isn't also disgusting. But at least you don't feel like you're doing it on purpose.

I'm still sick, in spite of having spent 36 hours in bed.

However, I have to read aloud about the temptation of Christ in a couple of hours in church, so I'm trying to get up and move around and feel better. If that doesn't work, then I'll go back to bed after church.

I thought you might like to see the Pantone spring fashion forecast.

I really like those soft greens and the whole peach and terracotta bit. I have yellow and blue and aqua things which I bought, surprisingly, last spring when #2 daughter took me shopping for clothes and a saleswoman told me to buy those colors. In fact, I rather think that my picture in the WSJ has me in the yellow and blue.

Here are the colors from last year.
 
 

The yellow and blue are still there; if yours from last year faded a bit, you're ready for this year. The greens are quite different, though. You can keep your Rose Dust stuff, I think, and people will figure it's Tuscany. We'll have to switch to coral and violet, though -- salmon and lavender are going to look just that bit outdated. You wore tomato red last year anyway, right? Who's going to give up tomato red just because Pantone says so?

Still sick, still feeling sorry for myself. I have a bit of work to do, and a whole huge lot of housework to do, but I think it'll all have to wait.

Good things: Kindle, for automatic unending supply of light reading for the sick, Nyquil, recent large shipment of Yorkshire Tea.

Feeling sorry for myself. I have to go to the Next County to teach, but after that I think I'm going to bed.

I'm sick. Again. I always resent being ill. It makes me cross, as though somehow it's really unjust that I should get sick. I teach, though, so it is actually completely normal for me to catch stuff all semester long, and I have no business objecting to it.

I have a couple of things today: a phone meeting and Vine day,and of course some basic blogging. But otherwise it's a fairly good day for me to be sick. I've got several projects hanging fire waiting for people to get back to me, so I think I'll be going back to bed until time for the meeting.