Setbacks

So it's been a rough week.

First of all, the New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants. As a die-hard Pats fan, that loss hurt. And it was only the beginning of what shaped up to be a pretty terrible few days.

My husband and I both caught this nasty cold that's going around, so we've both been a barrel of laughs the last few days.

Tuesday night, my guinea pig Max died. Bit of backstory here: I'm a huge animal lover. I have three guinea pigs (well, two now), and they are spoiled rotten. They have huge cages that---no joke---take up an entire room in my house. My husband and I don't have children, so our pets are our babies.

Max was only two years old. We're still not sure what happened---he was fine in the morning, but Tuesday night he was limping, breathing funny and refusing to eat. His condition deteriorated and he passed away in the middle of the night.

I took the day off from work Wednesday because I still wasn't feeling well, and staying up almost all night worrying about Max hadn't helped. I spent part of the day reconstructing the guinea pigs' cage to fit two instead of three, and spent the rest of the day recovering.

Then, my husband's mother called to tell us that his grandmother had passed away.

I'm sorry, universe...exactly what did I do to make you hate me this much?

So this week has pretty much been a wash as far as work goes. I'd gotten three of my 10 articles for eHow written before Tuesday, planning to bang out the rest of them over the next few nights. Obviously, circumstances have gotten in the way. I just emailed the editor asking for an extension of a couple of days. I hate that I had to do that. I pride myself on meeting deadlines. And I'll totally understand if they can't grant me an extension...I'd hate to lose them as a client, but I'd understand.

I hope the rest of February turns out much better than it's shaping up so far.

February Goals

I'm a little slow out of the gate posting my goals for this month, but I have good reason---as I mentioned last week, my goals from January resulted in regular paying work!

As a result, February has been a busy month for me so far. Since it's a short month and I can only take on so much freelance work on top of my full-time job, I'm aiming low this time:

• Research and write 2-10 assigned articles a week for MoreFocus
• Research and write 10 articles for eHow
• Blog at least three times a week

Like I said, I've been busy. I spent most of the weekend (well, when I wasn't watching Super Bowl coverage) researching and writing two wedding articles. I submitted them last night and they were accepted this morning.

The 10 articles for eHow are due Friday, but they're not coming along quite as quickly as I'd like. So far, I've only got one written. The good news, though, is that they're very easy to write, since I'm limiting my topics to subjects I'm already familiar with. My first article, "How to Nail Your Audition Song," took under an hour to put together. The trickiest thing is coming up with topics that aren't already covered on the site.

So it's certainly not a bad month. And I'm thrilled to pieces to have regular jobs coming in every week.