I have some essplaining to do.....

I don't even know if I've ever watched a full episode of 'I love Lucy' but yet I can hear Desi saying 'You have some essplaining to dooooo!'.

If you follow this blog you know that I've sort of dropped off the face of the earth. I seem to do this in a bit of a cyclic fashion but this time there is a string of legitimate excuses. June has been a rough month for Cat-in-a-Box (not the actual cat.. he doesn't care, the whole world could collapse and he'd be happy as long as his food supply wasn't interrupted and he had a couple of humans around to apply his dorkiness to).

This is referred to as effective packing of kitties :)

In early June I attended a veterinary conference - which was great. It was actually a really good meeting and there was some great stuff presented. But traveling eats up time and despite having good intentions of posting to the blog and such, the conference really was pretty well all-consuming of my time for 1.5 week of the month.

Then upon return I contracted the obligatory travel-virus and felt crappy. A week of such illness is typical for me when I travel, but this was different - instead of sleep/tea/echinacea/gargling salt-water fixing it, a week later I felt as bad or worse. Another week and a course of antibiotics (I haven't been on antibiotics since about 2003!) and I felt better, but not quite 100%. And last night the throat started feeling suspiciously irritated again. So possibly another trip to the human doctor for me...*grumble*.

And on top of all of that we are in the process of moving (just locally - to a place where my studio will have way more natural light, yay!!). It may be the most painless move I've ever experienced but with the way I'm feeling this month it's just one more thing.

So those are my excuses - I've got a beautiful commission that is completed and will post as soon as it's delivered to the recipient (waiting on some framing materials). There *is* a winner for the June Desktopper contest who has been informed but is being graciously patient as I'm terribly behind on getting it finished. I have other works on the go and planned, things to blog about, a newsletter to put out, and so much else that is sitting on the ever-growing pile.

Desktopper for June - detail of the preliminary sketch

The best I can do at the moment is pick at the pile and try to keep (get?) healthy. So thanks for bearing with me - once the craziness has passed I will get more consistent with posting again!

~ Pam