Post 32 - In which a hedgehog is bathed and Alina goes slightly nutty

I took a little time off from working on the book tonight to wash my hedgehog, who was absolutely filthy from running on her wheel last night (and for the last several nights, for that matter...). She is now trying to convince me that she's the most miserable creature that's ever existed, even though I let her dry off in the nice warm bathroom, wrapped her den in cozy blankets and gave her several treats for enduring the tortures of bath time.

Every time I checked on her to make sure she wasn't damp, she hunkered down and pulled her forehead quills down over her eyes in her patented SquintyFace, sniffled, and then tried to dig deeper into her towel.

Hedgehogs - made of pure cute, even when they're grumpy.

As for myself, I am utterly exhausted. I spent last weekend scrambling to get the book finished, and not coming even remotely close, took Monday and Tuesday off work as well.

Now, that may sound nice. Four day weekend, right? Yeah, well, not when you spent every minute of those four days working, and evenings the previous week as well. It was actually relaxing to go to work today, because I could let myself forget about the book for a bit.

I'm trying not to stress over it too much, but we're getting down to white-knuckle, last-minute, "oh my god, will it ship in time for the Con?" time now, and there's still so much to be done...

It's certainly a do-able amount of work. I have a few revisions to make on the cover, some writing to do for the interior, and most importantly, I need to finish the Introduction. It's my bane right now - I had a direction in mind when I started it, and in the week since then, I've completely lost that goal and veered off on a wild tangent. The problem is, the tangent is still a damn fine tale, and I don't have the heart to cut it all, since it fits very well into my point. But damned if I can make the two fit together well right now. I know that it's just because I've been staring at it too long, and that if I give it a little time, I'll come up with something. But there's a very nervous, very twitchy small animal living in the back of my head, and it has a big pocketwatch and a calendar. Every time even I think of taking a break it goes into pure panic-stricken terror mode and starts warbling things like "deadlines!" and "shipping time!" and that's usually enough to make my logic duck and cover.

I -will- finished this damned thing. I will finish it before Layne gets back from his trip. But maybe I will get some sleep first. I remember sleep. It was that thing I did back before I had a full time job and a book to finish.