While Tony learns this week that Being a Boss is not all featherbeds and ambrosia, I'm having some issues of my own.

Our floor tile finally arrived from the factory. Wrong.

Amazon lost my entire shopping cart (with about 20 books I was dying to read but of course can't remember the titles of.)

...and the cat threw up on my hand.

Nice.

Two book signings today. Book signings are simultaneously an exercise in ego and humility -- you are The Author, with all the majesty that entails, yet you are also the one sitting alone at a table hoping for any scrap of attention from a passerby. So I brought a pile of rubber froggies and duckies and other bath toys to amuse myself, had a great time and came home utterly exhausted.

We need to do a training walk tomorrow but it will take a rhino stampede to get me out of bed.

Tony is tired also. Tons of interviews in New York, a late-night flight home, countless trips to the vet, and of course he was beside me all day today. So it might take two rhino stampedes tomorrow morning, not just one.

...and this morning, Gabe is huge and furry and purring loudly enough to wake me up. Looks like he's never had a thing wrong with him in his life.

(I guess it really is true about them having nine lives, huh?)

So. When they tell you your cat has diabetes, they also tell you it's no big deal. Feline diabetes is a lot less serious than human diabetes, they say, with few to zero side effects, and after you get used to giving the injections you'll see that it is really nothing.

They don't tell you about spending seven months (and counting) trying to get the cat's blood sugar regulated. And they really don't tell you about dealing with terrifying, hair-raising, early-morning seizures. That's what happened today, of course. He just started sniffing everything and walking in tight little circles, sniffing and circling, utterly oblivious to the world even when I picked him up. Turns out it was a hypoglycemic seizure. He's at the vet's now, and he's fine, but the vet still can't explain why it happened.

This is not nothing.

Tony left for his press tour in New York. He'll be talking mainly about CSI:Miami, though there are a few other products also on the list this time. This is the third time he's gone on one of these so a lot of the stress of it has dissipated -- he knows what he'll say, what he'll wear, what to expect from the people who come and interview him. Still, the thrill of dealing with all those big name magazines and networks never quite vanishes.
 
Meanwhile, I'm at home wrestling with a germ. It's been after me for the past few days, never quite knocking me down but not letting go, either. Eeeyuck.

Quick update: Gabe is home again and he's okay. We have to be ultra-conservative with him because of the diabetes, which means he got a staple in his thigh and has to be on antibiotics for five days. Everyone at the vet's office assured me that this sort of thing happens constantly... but I still feel AWFUL. Poor Gabe.

Been busy celebrating the return of the laptop...

But something bad happened last night. We were cutting mats out of Gabe's fur, and he kicked suddenly and now has a cut on his back leg. He's not acting as though he's in any pain, and it's not bleeding, but cuts are really serious for diabetics so I have to bring him to the vet in an hour. I feel HORRIBLE. I feel like the WORST PERSON ALIVE.

(I'm also afraid that they're going to throw things at me at the vet's office.)

The laptop is home! And... so is my data.

Now I can finally breathe, after all this time.

I'm trying to figure out what to do about a book signing I was invited to do. It's at a really great spa, local, with people I like... but they want me to provide my own books. I've never heard of this and, honestly, I'm a little insulted. But it sounds like fun otherwise, so I'm not sure whether to go or turn them down at this point.

(I'll be too busy to think about it for the next two days, though. We have a very physical weekend planned, with climbing/cardio this morning and another 12-mile hike to Palo Alto tomorrow. I'm tired already. Going back to bed now.)

STILL NO NEWS about the laptop.

Also aggravated about a number of other things. We are WAY behind on our fundraising. We STILL don't have all the tile, fixtures, etc. delivered for our bathroom redo. Tony is wildly busy at his work, and I am wildly stalled at mine. And don't even get me started about what the cat did on the carpet.

Our main consolations right now are iTunes and hot dogs. (And if you email a single word to me about Apple corp, pig snouts or cholesterol, I will poke you in the eye.)

No news on the laptop yet. Waiting is hard.

But today I am distracted by a new challenge -- we're having a BBQ. A fancy one, too, with chicken and clams and asparagus and other good things, much nicer than our usual 'slap it on the grill and eat with your fingers' hoedown. But can we actually pull this off? And if not, are there any pizza places open on the evening of July 4?

The laptop situation grows ever more dire.

We brought the hard drive to a data retrieval specialist. The news is not good so far, but we'll hear from him in a few hours with more info. It seems as though the drive is physically damaged -- therefore unsalvagable unless we send it to a special lab where, for an $800 minimum charge, they'll take it apart and hopefully pull off some of my data...

...including a large percentage of my new book.

Oh man.

NO NO NO
oh no

My laptop has died. It gives me the 'Unmountable_boot_drive' Blue Screen of Death every time I try to boot, even in safe mode. Tony and I have both tried absolutely every trick we know, but nothing. Two different technicians have given us two different telephone diagnoses, both dire.

This is BAD. Very BAD. BAD BAD BAD.