Let it snow!

I'm sure people in many parts of the country are sick of snow, and I certainly would normally prefer a return to our heat wave back from a few weeks ago.  Temperatures in the 60s and low 70s were definitely preferable to all this snow we're getting now.  After dumping on us over the weekend, we had one nice day (yesterday, in the 40s) and now it's starting to snow again, with snow and highs in the teens and 20s predicted through the weekend.

Keeping up with writing assignments

Who thought I'd be happy to go back to my regular schedule?  But I am, after the craziness of last week's long hours.  Suddenly my normal schedule seems easy in comparison.

I like sitting here on Monday, with the whole week stretched out before me like an untraveled road.  Inevitably I get behind on my journey and end up rushing to catch up at the end of the week, but the easy promise of Monday is well worth it to me.

When you have to be snowed in to write

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I had a crazy busy week.  Sometimes I should be better at telling people no, I think, but I'm not always very good at that, especially if it carries with it the promise of money.  This past week has been a prime example of how that can be both a good and a bad thing.

Win some, lose some

I had a client decide to stop working with me recently.  I think I'm probably better off for it, as they were difficult to work with anyway.  Their instructions were unclear, partly because they seemed not to understand the rules of grammar and punctuation, and partly because they didn't seem to know how to word complete and clear instructions.  I was still annoyed, probably because I had tried my best and spent a lot of time trying to decipher said unclear instructions, but I know it's for the best.  Some clients just aren't worth the trouble, not for a million bucks and certainly not for anything less.

The same day, though, I got a new client that made up for the lost client tenfold.

Finding time for it all

This past week, the weather has been gorgeous, with the dramatic exception of Wednesday: We went from 50 or 60 degrees on Tuesday, to 30 and several inches of snow on Wednesday morning, and back up to 60 degrees on Thursday.  I found some extra time and managed to get out to the barn Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to enjoy the weather.

Unfortunately, the end result is that this week has been busy and stressful on both ends with lots of exhausting fun sandwiched in the middle.

How NOT to get enough sleep

It seems like sleep is in the news lately.  Just a few days after the recommendations for sleep duration were updated, I saw this article, about how using over-the-counter sleep aids such as Benadryl can actually increase your risk of getting dementia.

There had been a headline on this a couple of years ago, too, I think, but this one is a more comprehensive study.

How much sleep do we need?

Sleep has been on my mind a lot lately, as you likely know from my Sleep Cycle reviews, so the timing of this article seems more than a little coincidental:

National Sleep Foundation Updates Recommendations For How Much Sleep You Really Need

The changes themselves aren't terribly significant for adults, unless you have kids.  For the most part they just widened the recommended ranges to acknowledge that some kids need slightly less sleep than was previously recommended.  (I'd err toward the middle or end of the range, though -- a chronically over-tired kid is no fun for anyone.)  But there are some interesting changes that pertain to adults, too.