Hello Monday! A Weekly Recap

Well, it's Monday everyone!

So, it's been a great week and a sucky week these past 7 days.

Good stuff first: I got a butt-load done in terms of organizing and cleaning!  The Christmas stuff is mostly put away, my husband and I are successfully keeping the clutter at bay, and our new system of dish-washing is totally making my day!  Hey, I'm a poet and I didn't even know it!  Ha!

But seriously, my hubby and I getting much, much better at keeping the apartment clean.  We went from utter chaos to a passable state of cleanliness.  Because Dave now only works 4 days a week, we've agreed that I'll handle the dish-washing during his work days, and he'll cover the dish-washing over the weekend.  So far, it's working!
Cleaning my apartment isn't the only thing I've been doing either.  I've also been sorting through my blogs and websites to make sure they're functioning right, and I've re-organized my Goodreads shelves!  I plan on re-organizing my photos next, as well as setting up a better reading challenge log.

In other news, I started teaching a new dance class last week.  This one is particularly significant because it's the first dance class I'm doing completely on my own!  I currently work at my mom's dance studio, so all the group classes there are her classes, with her students.  I'm just one of her employees.  With my mother's encouragement, I rented a hall in another county, and set up my own beginner classes.  My first ever class happened this past Tuesday, and it started out fairly well, with a positive response!  We'll see how it goes, but hopefully word will spread, and more people will come, and I'll start developing a good reputation by myself and outside of my mother's dance studio.  I even created my own website too!  Click here to see it!

Aaannd, one final bit of good news: my cat's health is currently awesome!

A little background info: ever since we adopted her a year ago, Miesha has been "suffering" from food sensitivities.  I say suffering in the lightest sense because she is very happy, energetic cat; she would just throw up her food on a regular basis.  We did a number of tests, went through two vets, tried every Hills Science Diet prescription food, and she would still throw up at least every other day, sometimes even twice a day!  My vet was starting to suggest putting my 2-year-old kitty on daily steriods (that would have been a pain in the butt)!  Thankfully, my dad recommended a small business animal store near where he lived, called Wholesome Animal Grocery Store (WAGS).  He claimed that they helped with my grandmother's dog, who had been throwing up his prescribed food.  It was a long shot, but I decided that I was kinda out of options, so I went.
There's a reason why small businesses are sooo much better than big-box stores!  The people there were really friendly and helpful right off the bat!  They understood the problem right away, and their explanation sounded very reasonable.  According to them, the dry food I was feeding her has too many ingredients that really aren't all that good for her.  Also, the Science Diets have waaay too many different types of proteins, so there is no way to figure out what she's sensitive to.  They recommended switching her to wet food, which contains fewer ingredients, and steered me to a brand that has all natural ingredients and has had real success with vomiting cats.
It has now been a month, and my cat hasn't thrown up in weeks!  She loves her new food and she's actually thinned up a bit too (the dry food was filling her out quite a bit; my mom kept pointing it out).  She's back down to her normal 7-ish pounds, and she's more energetic than ever!

So, enough of the good news, here's why my week was not so awesome:

Reading Slump

It's true and it sucks: I'm in a reading slump, and I have been for the past few weeks.  I lost my momentum over the holidays and I'm having some serious trouble getting it back!  My holiday plans can get pretty stressful, so it's no surprise that I couldn't read around Christmas or New Year's, but the holidays have been over for two weeks now and I haven't finished a single book!  I keep choosing TV over reading, and I've been listening to music instead of my audiobook.  It's awful, because I'm such a self-proclaimed book nerd, and I feel so incomplete! :(

I'm slowly pulling myself out of my slump, however.  I've been setting aside time to read each day, and I'm almost done with my current reads (I might even post a review by the end of the day!), so keep checking back!

Here are my book plans this week.  I'm keeping the list short so I don't put too much pressure on myself.

This Week's Reads:

(almost done!)

(also almost done!)

And one of these books:

Well that's it! Have a great day everyone and happy reading! -Lisa The Dancing Bookworm