Alright, life has taken on a whole new meaning of hectic. Ash and I recently took in three strays: a four month old, thirty pound Irish wolfhound mix and a mother cat and her kitten. This brings up our total amount of furry kids to three dogs, six cats, two ferrets, three rats, and two fish. Our house is absolutely insane. To top it off, Ash’s laptop is out of commission and she’s been using mine for her work – which I’m fine with since it has allowed me to focus more on art and catching up with reading materials, but it means I’ve had to take a break from twitter and some designs I was working on.

Anyway, Ash and I recently took the three strays to the vet and spent a little over $160 to make sure all three were healthy. The cats were strays, but the puppy was obviously someone’s pet – only we’ve had him for five, six days now and nobody has called in a lost dog anywhere. We’ve checked the paper, the shelters, animal control, etc, and yet nothing. Unfortunately, we can’t really afford the bill, having just paid the vet even more money on our rats and our oldest dog, so we’re asking for donations from other animal lovers to help us get these rescued animals fixed up for their future owners (since we can’t keep them ourselves, we’re fostering them until we can find them new homes).

All donations will go straight to the vet bills, to get vaccinations, get tests, etc. Anything helps – even $5 goes far. I usually don’t like asking for money, but this is for such a good cause and we really can’t do this without your help. Also, if anyone is interested in a puppy or a couple of cute kittens, let us know. ;D If you want to know more about these cute kids, go check out the blog over at our rescue site I Love Rescue Animals.

Hopefully this all explains why I haven’t been online and why I’m pushing my ComicCon Contest back a few days. I just can’t keep up with things right now – our house is a mad house and there is far too much to do offline. I hope you can understand. I’m sure you will. I can’t say no to a fluffy puppy face. Who can?

Mondays are generally the most stressful day of the week (and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and – well, weekdays can just be bad), and if you’re like me and tend to just drag at the beginning of the week, then you might find it useful to do a few things that make yourself feel good. And what better way to make yourself feel good but by making other people (or animals) feel good. So here’s a short list of some things you can do during your day to make the world a better place with just a few small well-placed happy gestures.

01. Smile.

Really. That’s it. Ever hear that smiling is contagious? It’s true. You smile at her, she smiles at him, he smiles at someone else, and it just keeps going. A smile is a good thing. Do it. It can brighten the darkest of days and the crankiest of souls.

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For the past three weeks or so, Ash has been sick with some cold/illness/death/plague that has finally started to give her a break only to jump to me as host. I am now laid up in bed, too sick to stand, and coughing too much to talk. So I shall blog.

Here is a list of my favorite things to do while sick that generally perk me up and help me get through the whole thing faster.

1. Sleep

Normally I feel guilty if I take a nap in the middle of the day, but when I’m sick, it’s generally all I want to do. Not that I don’t still feel guilty about it, but at least other people don’t get as irritated with a sick person that sleeps like they would if a perfectly normal and healthy person wants to catch a few Zzzs when they have time. Which still isn’t fair, but ah well. Sleep is good. And good for a sick person.

2. Watch TV

I’m not a big TV-watcher. I make up for my lack of big-screen watching with staring at my computer for hours on end, but when I’m sick, sometimes the mind-numbing effects of a stupid TV show or a no-brain movie can be comforting. You don’t have to think or move or type or work; all you have to do is keep your eyes open. Sometimes I even fail at that, but it’s no big deal because nobody will bother you about resting your tired eyes (see point #1).

3. Be Pampered

I’m a big baby when I’m sick. A lot of the time I’ll fight whoever is trying to make me take care of myself and pretend I’m fine and that I don’t want anyone to take care of me, but I do secretly like being pampered and tucked in and fed soup and tea and, basically, being treated like an invalid. Sometimes you just need that, you know?

4. Reading

Reading is one of my biggest passions, but I rarely ever get to do it. Lately, because I’ve been sick, I’ve been devouring book after book and rediscovering how much I love to read. There’s just something about getting sucked into a good book – you don’t have to be yourself anymore. You can be any character in any world and you don’t have to be sick and laid up in bed. You can leave everything behind. It’s an escape.

5. Ignore Everything

If you’re like me, you almost always have a large list of to-do items. When you’re sick, everything on that list can wait (okay, almost everything – you can’t exactly put off bills or someone’s wedding or use the coupons that expire tomorrow), and nobody is going to say otherwise. You’re sick – how can anyone expect you to be competent enough to code an entire calendar in CSS or create a design for a photoblog when you can’t even brush your own teeth? Need ideas on how to ignore everything? Please see the four previous points.

I’m sure there are more things that could be added to this list (and if you think of any – let me know), but I am far to sick, dehydrated, and completely out of it to really type anymore. I think I’m going to go crawl into bed, turn the TV on, grab a book, have someone make me soup, and ignore everything.

That’s one thing you can still do while sick – multitask.

Celestial by Andy Mumford

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will. ~Rachel Carson