And while it doesn't mean I like everything about him, I like him too. Because he reminds me of my dad. Which is pretty old school, come to think of it.
I probably have dozens of stories that start, "Once I was with my dad and there was this dog..."
More than once when we were out riding bikes in the county, some big farmdog came charging out barking and snarling, and Dad would not really holler, but call out, "Go lay down." And the dog did, every time. Once we were in the bike-a-thon when this happened. The other riders could hardly believe it when this big collie-shepard mix made a big u-turn in the driveway and went back to his house without a yap of protest, but I expected it. It never in life occurred to me that a dog would choose to not listen to my dad.
Anyway, we never had a dog when we were kids because we lived in an apartment. But the neighborhood had a dog, a black and white mongrel, possibly a terrier-border cross with a tablespoon of spaniel, named Barney. Dad made us a toy to play with Barney. He took a broken toy garden hose that the hoe blade had snapped off of and tied a string to the end, and on the end of the string he tied a leather triangle cut from the chimney of a pair of his worn out work boots. We could pull the leather bait around and Barney would chase it. It was tremendous fun for us and Barney. We called this game, "Fishing for Barney."
Cobie mostly ignores the TV, except for the time he tried to attack Charlie Manson through the glass, and once when I was watching "It's Me or the Dog," and Victoria had this thing called "Fox on a Stick." Fox on a Stick is a toy fox on a string tied to a pole. It looked quite a bit like Fishing for Barney.
Turns out these things are called flirt poles now, and are apparently sometimes used for training fighting dogs? but yahnah. Cobie's a lover, not a fighter.
So yesterday I made a Fishing for Cobie pole. I used the handle of a mop the former homeowners left behind, and a bit of rope, and the one leather glove remaining after Cobie carried off the other one and buried it, which I take to mean he likes it. And he had a blast chasing that glove in circles.
Now somebody can come along and tell me how dangerous this toy is, even though I took it easy because he is still just a pup. But until then I can feel pleased that I finally did something right--or at least not traumatic--for the poor doggy dude.
Big Honkin Ideas, for me, are not really a fantabulous single idea, but the place where two fairly decent (and often unrelated) ideas collide and form a premise. To that end, when I get an idea I text it to my gmail where I find it in the morning and transfer it to an index card and then place it in the index card storage box I call the Nugget Bucket, thereby (I hope) encouraging collisions.
Except it hasn't really worked...until now.
This is so astounding, so simple, so high concept. Why has nobody written this yet?
When the BHI came, I almost forgot to loathe myself for a second, but I remembered just in time.
- Mood:distressed
Nah.
Yesterday we went to the dog park again. The visit got off to a rough start when three dogs ganged up on Cobes as soon as we got in the gate. I was sure he'd be permanently traumatized; after all, we're taking him there to get over his anxiety around other dogs. But he got over it way faster than I did, and ninety seconds later he was joyfully chasing the worst perpetrator around in circles.
That's what Cobie likes to play: chase. Or anything, really, that involves running full bore. Maybe this is his husky blood. He goes like a biological landspeeder, never quite seeming to touch the ground and so frickin graceful. Where is the puppy clatter-assness? We're still waiting on it to show up.
There's this one little poodle at the park, a rescue I'm told, that's quite aggressive and possessive. Cobie doesn't mind, because it's easy to provoke the little bugger into endless chase games. I'm not so sure it's good for the poodle though, but his owner doesn't seem to notice unless somebody's picking on him (the poodle.) Like it's clever that her little dog is a turd. But for other little dogs who may be feeling unsure of themselves, Cobie is the dogpark therapy dog, or playground equipment, because they get to chase him and bowl him over and he is completely non-threatening, willing to submit--almost--every time if it will soothe hurt feelings so the chase can resume.
He never quite hits his full stride at the park though; if he ran there like he does when he's at home and James Brown's "I Feel Good" is playing on the dogtunes in his brain, he's leave them all miles behind and just sail away.
I think.
Overall, the dog park is great. Cobie has a blast, gets some social skillz, wears himself out tearing around. Most everyone there is nice too. My only complaint is that for every, oh I'd say six, people who come, there is one that pays no attention to what their bully is up to. And by bully I don't mean bulldog. I mean the (nearly always unneutered) Grand Pyrenees or the chihuahua or the puggle or the Chessie that thinks he's the bossdog of the park.
I mean, it's hard not to want to slam some idiot in the back of the head with a clue shovel when he's sitting with his back to his dog that's body slamming other dogs half his size and jumping on people who are shouting for him to stop and the owner never even looks around.
Ok, that only happened once, but I'm still annoyed.
Back to the plus side, Cobie is not the only one benefitting from these trips. Yesterday I came home with a big muddy pawprint right where my cleavage is when it's not covered by a t-shirt...and I am pleased to report, I did not shit my pants...or even notice really, until Mr Moth pointed it out. My career *koff koff* as a pizza delivery driver left me with fang scars on my thigh and on my psyche.
(If you think your dog won't bite a stranger who comes onto your property REEKING of the most delicious food imaginable, you're delusional. I have been chased, treed--most memorably on the roof of the Domino's Pizza company truck--bowled over, tripped, robbed, and pack attacked by customers' dogs. And once, in those pre-cellphone days, I was trapped in my car by two Saint Bernards who left raptor marks on my doors and tooth marks on my bumper, and I could not leave because of the customer's security gate.)
Anyhow, yeah, some dog mauled me and I forgot to freak.
It's obviously true. You don't get the dog you want, you get the dog you need. At least sometimes.
Now Cobie wants to go for a ride.
Guess what door he is scratching?
Poor Big Blue Berta.
After his Saturday with Squabby trauma, Cobie lay around like third base most of Sunday, and worried me by not finishing even Saturday's kibble ration until Monday morning. I'd take him out--and it was a glorious indian summer weekend!--but he would just poop and then lie around, offering up the mystery of, if he isn't eating where is all the poop coming from?
I thought of taking him to the dog park, but he is conflicted about the dog park, seeming to both love it and yet be very anxious about it, running up to dogs and then streaking away and diving for cover under the nearest picnic table, bench, or hapless bystander. So I decided a quick trip with me to drop the netflix in the mail was enough, beautiful day or not. And he didn't yack on the seat during the ride, so I was already beating the odds.
But then a friend posted on her FaceBook that she was at their dogpark (in AZ) for the first time, and I felt like, I should take him but... Then Mr Moth came in and I decided to foist the decision off on him. "Do you want to go to the dog park?"
"I was going to blow the leaves," he said, settling the matter until five minutes later when he said, "Sure, let's go."
So we went to the dogpark, and there were other dogs there, yay! And Cobie bristled some but nothing like usual, and he has still not got the hang of allowing the buttsniff, he never hid under any furniture at all. He didn't only play with the dogs his own age (and thus half his size) either.
He's six months old. Here he is last week. The other dog? His mother. He's a moose, I tell ya.When it was time to go, he trotted right to the gate, stood for his leash, went willingly to, and into, the van, stood to be harnessed, didn't yack again.
He was all mellow, so I tried something I would not have dared a month ago, which is to lay on the sofa while watching tv...and not only do I still have my face, he got up and lay behind my knees.
Snuggles!
Laterer still, I needed to put something in the oven and I said, "Back, back, back...sit." He did it no problem. But...BUT!! When I needed to take something out of the oven, I said, "Back..." And he backed all the way up to where he sat before...and SAT.This morning after Mr Moth left for work, Cobie sneaked into bed with me and actually lay there like a sensible dog instead of playing Bilbo Flees the Mountain where I am the mountain, Oliver is Bilbo, and Cobie is a Warg.
More snuggles!
He whines to go out now, instead of staring at the door and trying to will it open. AND...he scratches to come in. Which means he can go out by himself for short stretches.
He's not just getting big, he's growing up.
Here he is, waiting patiently to be released from the van. The door's open, mind you.
And still waiting.
Which is not to say I think it's going to be sunshine and rainbows from here on out, because while I typed this I got to feeling all warm and fuzzy toward him and gave him my plastic lunch bowl to lick. He took it in the living room and rendered it into shrapnel in about forty seconds flat. He's still a hurricane. But maybe he's becoming a hurricane I don't so much mind living with.
So, yeah. I have hope.
- Location:cobieland
I never quite get it, when some otherwise mature intelligent someone says, "Oh I met Some Celebrity and I turned into a blithering ninny!"
So naturally it was just a matter of time, right?
On Saturday, we left a pitifully terrified and decidedly un-hurricanelike Cobie in the care of my brother, former Desert Storm flight deck ordnanceman, and Mr Moth drove me across six look-alike Ohio counties to Wooster Ohio, where the Buckeye Book Fair was in full swing. He drove me because a.) he wanted to, and b.) I was a bit concerned about what driving east-ish in the morning and west-ish in the afternoon would do to my sun-hating cataract eye.
We went to meet up with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
onegrapeshy, aka Jen, who was signing her excellent YA novel Say the Word, and another_wip, aka Pam, who was 
helping out. But since I already own both of Jen's published books, I didn't like to take up space around the table that could be used by new readers, so Mr Moth and I went on a tour of the fair.
On the tour, the first thing I learn is, book fairs where the authors are present are awkward. Because if you pick up a book and then set it down again without buying, that's rejection. I would fail as an agent or editor, because I can't reject people easily enough. So I wander around trying to look at books without making any eye contact. Then I notice every author had a name-on-a-stick sign clamped to the table, and the sticks are tall and the signs are well above seated eye level, so I start reading those, and then I see the name THOM.
Huh? That sounds familiar. I scan the books on that table, and realize OMG. It's the Follow the River guy!
James Alexander Thom, that is.
Whereupon I promptly turn into a blithering ninny, the details of which I will withold to protect whatever shreds remain of my dignity. Let's just say there was gushing involved.
Afterwards, Mr Moth told me that when it was my turn to speak to Mr Thom, I hesitated, not long but for a second before stepping forward, and some woman behind me started in, "Step UP, step UP, it's YOUR TURN, step UP!" and then he stepped between her and me, using his amazing super power of Wall-Likeness to protect me, but I was so far gone I never noticed any of it.
Afterward we have a Pepsi and wander around some more until I recover some of my brain whereupon I remember that someone--not the author, who had 
been away from his table--had said something to me about witches. Witches during the Revolution, no less. Interesting premise, I'd said, but I'm still addled from authorlove and can't remember where I saw those books, so we tour the entire place again until I find witches during the Revolution, which turns out to be The Patriot Witch, by C.C. Finlay, whose name also should have rung a bell since I have seen his name around the blogosphere, right here on LJ, even. It is high time I read one of his books.
After the fair ends, Mr Moth, Jen, Pam and I go to Starbucks--a first for Mr Moth and I, and I believe Pam as well. Jen signs my copies of Say the Word and Before After and Somebody in Between and then I promptly slop coffee on them both. Thankfully neither is damaged, and we have a nice visit.
Eventually it's time to go home, so we do. Why does it always take so much longer to get home than to anywhere else, even when the distance is the same? We arrive to discover that Cobie is out from under the sofa, although he stayed under there for five hours! He never did warm up to Uncle Squabby, either, although the Child Formerly Known as Zor had a good time playing Resident Evil 5 on the Xbox with him.
And now there is just one small dilemma to be resolved. Book fair books, plus I'm still reading my library books, but also Under the Dome comes out today, and I did not think I would have the money to purchase it yet, but then...a check came.
Decisions, decisions.
This is a refreshing change from not being able to find anything I want to read.
- Location:in my office
And series, woo!
But now nobody can actually pry himself or herself off fantasy football or football or Madden '09 or other X-heroin to actually watch a movie with me, which is how I ended up watching Pan's Labyrinth alone. Mr Moth had said he wanted to watch it, and when I said it was on the way he was all, yay, but when it actually arrived he announced, oh we already saw that.
Stab!
I have not seen it, I say.
I think you slept through it, he says. So I am thrilled to be faced with a subtitled movie when I cannot half see, that I may or may not have seen before, and possibly even slept through. I almost sent it back unwatched, but I loaded the kong with peanut butter and beneful, and plugged in the dvd, and holy crap on a cracker! That movie is wow.
It was unrelentingly dark and dire, dreadful and fantastic, brutal and beautiful, terrible and amazing. The pacing was perfect to give me plenty of time to read the subtitles without being so slow I fell asleep, and did I really sleep through this film before?? There was just one scene where I thought OH HELL NO, even a [spoilery adjective redacted] child would NEVER do that!! But that's okay. Because taken all together, this story was exactly as awful and awesome as I remember fairy tales being when I was a kid.
Considering I watched it on the little TV in the living room while a large puppy galloped over me dripping peanutbutter slobbers on me, I have to wonder if it might not have been too much (for easily overloaded me) in the theater.
I'm glad I didn't send it back unwatched.
Mr Moth was at work.
Zor came stumping up the stairs just as the front door opened and Becky's boyfriend came in.
"I gotta go poop!" announced Zor.
"Go poop," I said, and then to the boyfriend, "Hi."
"Hi," he said back, and went through to the kitchen.
Zor went into the bathroom and closed the door.
The crockpot lid clattered open.
"Save some of that for Tim!" I called out.
"Ok!" came the reply from the bathroom.
Cobie couldn't be in puppy class until he had two sets of shots, and I didn't want him to miss puppy class because of time off for neutering. So I called about the puppy class and they're not having any until after the first of the year.
When he'll be too old for puppy classes.
Okay, I know he can take regular classes, but... Sigh! I wanted puppy classes.
Maybe I can find a nice pony class for him in the meanwhile.
How high's the puppy, momma?
Two feet high and risin...
A while back I was thinking about writing. Actually I began by thinking about not writing, as in, why wasn't I writing? Like nearly every writer I know, I thought I had too many distractions going on--mostly my husband, but the phone, the kid, the neighbors, the landlord, the school, life...
When was I most productive? I wondered. Maybe I could duplicate the circumstances. But I immediately realized that my most productive times were those when I had the most distractions. When my youngest was a toddler, for instance. Also, to an even greater extent, when I worked in a laundromat.
My best writing days were still laundry days, when I was up and down, rebooting, folding, adding fabric softener.
So what the heck is up with that? How could I be at my most prolific during those times when the interruptions were constant?
Everyone knows writers can't write when all hell is breaking loose around them. Distractionsn are BAD. VERY BAD. Right? Right?
Well, it took me until this week to develop a guess about that. When I first came up with the Chaos Writing method for myself, I was only trying to duplicate, well...chaos. I was trying to create the kind of constant interruptions you get while working in a laundromat or raising a toddler.
I wouldn't have thought of this, if I hadn't attended a workshop run by author Annie Kelleher, who said she used a timer while writing, to (if I recall correctly) remind her to re-enter the real world, which made it easier to allow the zone to claim her.
I bought a timer after that workshop, but had not used it until I decided to make it my toddler.
I brought it out, opened the package, futzed around with it, tried different settings. Half an hour, twenty minutes, five minutes, and finally I hit on the magic number for me, 12 minutes. Twelve minutes of writing, then twelve minutes of something else, anything else. Whatever was trying to distract me during my writing time got it's turn, and in my case this was almost always housework. Twelve minutes of vaccuuming. Twelve minutes of dusting. Twelve minutes of filing.
I can stand doing just about anything for twelve minutes.
This worked amazingly for me. For one thing, I stopped having that nagging voice at the back of my head while I was writing: You should be cleaning! You should be alphabetizing the dvds! You should be organizing the bills! Because I was doing those things.
And...AND! While I was doing these relatively mindless tasks, my brain was free to think ahead to what I wanted to write next, to weigh possiblities and sort choices, to make decisions. During my twelve minutes of writing I was actually writing, not hesitating or mulling or worrying.
And! When the writing was going badly, I only had to slog for twelve minutes. Those days--if you write very often you know the ones-- folding laundry looks like happy swell fun time, haha.
Then Hannah got sick, and she became afraid of the timer. She had always been that way about smoke detectors, how they chirp when the batteries go low, but now the timer frightened her too. She would quiver all over and roll her eyes like we were under attack by invisible pterodactlys. Because I pretty much orbited her, I never problem-solved that from the angle of, find a different timer. I just put the timer away and took care of the puppy girl. When we got the new phones last year, they had timers that could be set to vibrate, and I thought THAT'S IT!, but then we started the house hunt, and then came the Move That Never Ended. I packed the timer, and noticed the battery was dead in it. It was a button battery too, not something simple like a AAA, and I almost threw it out, but didn't.
Maybe I'll get a battery and use it to time cookies, I thought, but quickly discovered the new stove had a working timer built in.
A few months ago, without thinking about why I was doing it, I took the timer apart and hauled the battery to Meijer and purchased a new one and replaced it. And stuck the timer back in the desk. Because Hannah was still with us then...and when she wasn't anymore, the last thing I was thinking about was writing or timers or anything but how I was burning alive with grief.
Well, you know.
So. A few weeks ago I printed all my ending notes, outlines, and skeletal scenes to paper and put it in a notebook which sat on the kitchen table, until I was digging through my desk (looking for a crayon sharpener) and found the timer. I took it to the kitchen and clipped it to the notebook, and well...here I am.
Cobie is not afraid of the timer, and I am Chaos Writing again, for as long as it works.
Why does it work? Here's the idea I said I had:
Maybe focus is an ability, like walking. If you never learned to do it, or if you stop doing it, pretty soon--frighteningly soon--you can't do it.
I was never good at focusing. I think this is partly because my brother was a baby who never slept and the first two years of his life, when I was 3 to 5 years old, were spent being as quiet as possible in the vain hope that the little varmint would sleep more than twenty minutes every two hours, and also so as not to put too many demands on my beyond-exhausted parents.
Not pointing any fingers here, I'm just saying, my mom taught me to write my name in cursive before I went into kindergarten, but she couldn't teach me to refocus after each distraction because there hardly were any. Oh sure the baby created some, but when he hooted, everybody just stopped what they were doing and tended to the hoot. No refocusing necessary.
This is what I think Chaos Writing does for me. It lets me write without guilt, because I'm getting Real Life tended to, twelve minutes at a time. It exercises my re-focusing muscle so that every time the puppy needs to pee, I don't lose my train of thought irretrievably. And it keeps me alert, because one rule of Chaos Writing is, when the timer goes off, I STOP. I go away from what I was doing. I finish it next round. Because I'm up, blood flows to my brain instead of puddling in my ass.
I'm not gellin, lol.
The other rule of Chaos Writing is, I never start the timer and don't finish the twelve minutes. If something comes up, I stop the timer. I come back. I refocus. I write crap, but I write. I clean imperfectly, but I clean, until I hear the beep. I'm not committed to word counts or page counts or counting anything at all...but I put in my whole twelve minutes, and if the phone rings twelve times, I stop the timer twelve times.
If I want to reread the last few lines before I start writing again, I don't restart the timer until I've done that.
Goofy, I know. But it works when I remember to use it.
- Mood:accomplished
Imagine a new housing development. The houses look complete on the outside but inside there's just drywall. They don't have any heat or lights or running water. The yards are clumps of mud studded with hunks of rock you could break an ankle on. Clumps of foxtail and buckhorn stick up here and there. The houses are complete, but not finished enough to live in.
That's my last few chapters. Today I worked on Chapter 30, but I don't know what to say I did, exactly. The chapter is still not "finished," if by finished you mean polished.
I guess I could say the chapter has advanced another step toward being ready. I guess it's fleshed out. It is no longer a rough draft. It's a draft. I did all the work longhand at the kitchen table, which is where I began this story and where I may very well finish it (except for the polishing.)
I polish at least twice before I show my writing to anyone, and I do mean anyone. No one sees the rough, not even Mr Moth. No one sees the second draft, where the plumbing and wires are installed. Ordinarily I might show the third, when the carpet is laid and the wallpaper hung, to a select few...but now I am under the porch until I am ready to unveil. And after it is beta'ed, I'll apply the final tweaks large and small to those final chapters. I can do that while I'm querying I suppose.
I can work on a query simultaneous to the tweaks. I can do it in my spare time. Yeah, my spare time. You heard me.
Spare.
Time.
Hahahaha!
I moved the work to the notebook so I could take it outside while I'm endlessly yarding Hurricane Cobie, and it has rained ever since. Boo.
But yeah. I'm thinking a query letter might be a handy thing to have around.
- Location:in my office
- Mood:contemplative
I was sitting on the couch cleaning the dvr (ar ar ar) and Oliver was even sitting with me, which he hardly ever does since Hurricane Cobie blew in, when my eye was drawn to a flash of wings outside the kitchen window. (My first thought: BAT!) There followed a second much larger flash of wings (my first thought: BABY DINOSAUR BIRD!) and a sickening thud, and at first I thought someone had flown into the side of the house. Later I would realize that was a stupid thing to think because the house is brick and I wouldn't hear it if a mere bird flew into it. An airplane maybe, assuming I survived...
Anyway. Oliver hears the thud too, and wakes up with a start. So I get up and go to see what is going on, and there is our hawk, sitting on the sidewalk between the deck's weird serifs. I think, Oh no! Because if he flew into the side of the house, he is surely going to die, but then the hawk hops and flutters, so I call Mr Moth, partly because I have often pointed Cooper out to him wheeling in the distant sky (although of course it's possible there is more than one Cooper) but he has never seen the bird up close.
Also, Mr Moth might know if they still have the raptor rehab in Yellow Springs.*
Mr Moth is climbing the basement steps when it occurs to me that the reason Cooper likes our yard is, it is wide open with no trees, yet the neighbors have good trees for hiding. Also our deck is crammed with chipmunks and there is a rabbit warren living under the barn (which is only a barn-shaped shed, but I wish I had a barn, so.)
Having forgot that first flash of wings already, for a moment I felt a rising pissed-offedness at Cooper for daring to consider MY chipmunks and bunnies as his dinner. I still hope he is all right, but it also occurrs to me for the first time that the mysterious dark reddish stains here and there on the deck might be his (or her) work.
But if you want to have a hawk around for the cool factor, the hawk's gotta eat even if you disapprove...and hell, I eat meat. I even had rabbit once.
So Mr Moth gets to see the hawk, albeit in dim light, but dinner time fast approacheth and he has to go out to fire up the grill, at which point Cooper flies (straight as a healthy hawk) into the neighbor's tree where he shelters against the beginning drizzle under a leafy bough and glares (I now imagine) balefully at Mr Moth getting ready to enjoy meat that he neither hunted nor killed himself.
The clouds burst then, and in trying to get the food done yet not power-washed I lose track of the hawk, and then dark comes.
Fast forward to just after midnight when I take Cobie out in what was again a drizzle for his final tinkle. Mr Nose that he is, he immediately finds my leather glove that I had forgot earlier after using it to bring in as many of the 'maters as could possibly be considered ripe before the rain hit them and split them and the beatles got in, ew. The beatles being the reason for the glove; the little yuckers like to hide on the underside of the 'maters to where I can't see them 'til I've touched them, hooargh.
So Cobie finds the glove which had sailed off the deck rail in the blow, and he thinks he has found the AWSOMEMOST TOY EVAH and he's tearing around in the rain throwing the glove up and then CHOMPing on it. And he's tearing and CHOMPing instead of tinkling, mind you, and I'm getting wet.
The porch chairs are full of puddles so I go get a dry-ish milk crate to sit on. In the process I lose track of Cobie who takes the opportunity to run into the garage and take a big healthy dump behind Berta the van. I can smell it clear outside, in the rain, during allergy season. So I get a grocery bag and clean up the poo, and Cobie zooms outside and I hear
FLAPPAFLAPPAFLAPPAFLAPPA
Super loud, and for the second time that day I think BABY DINOSAUR BIRD. (Which I should probably explain at this point is an inside reference to pteradactlys.) And then, OH CRAP, THE BAT. (Which I had thought I saw earlier.)
Cobie has not had his rabies vaccine, as they were just going to do everything during his neuter appointment next month, and I'm thundering out of the garage with a bag of poo in my hand wondering in that wordless kind of way my brain works when I hit escape velocity stress, but if he's sniffing a freakin bat, they can go ahead and give him the rabies shot now, right? RIGHT?? OMG RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Then I realize that that whatever is flapping is under the deck, and Cobie has his nose pressed against the lattice, and I haul him off. He twists in his collar and tries to CHOMP me. I drag him inside, somehow without letting the cat out. And I break my no table food rule by chopping up a piece of leftover smoked sausage and flinging the pieces around the kitchen floor. While he is tracking them down, I grab my flashlight and go back out, because I need to know if he had his nose pressed up against a lattice with a bat on the other side. They say one in four carries rabies, and I don't like those odds.
I go around to the other side of the deck and shine my light into the blackness under the deck. A black eye blinks at me. A head the same color as the wood and the sand swivels and another black eye blinks. Gradually I make out the curved head of a bird.
Whew.
And, well...DAMMIT.
I build a little barricade out of the milk crate I had intended to sit on. I hope I leave enough room for the bird to come out if it desires, and yet to slow down a dog or a cat long enough for me to get over there and drag them away. Then I let Cobie out to tinkle one more time, I throw away the abandoned poo bag, wash my hands, and we go to bed.
Oliver spends the night sitting on my head in protest. He doesn't even seem to care that it's raining and he doesn't want to be out anyway; he just wants to sleep on the redwood deck chair that's too wobbly for people but just right for a cat.
So this morning, out again, still drizzling. Cobie ignores the crated off area and mercifully takes care of his business timely. Ready for breakfast, he heads over to the garage, which door I have closed to prevent a recurrence of last night's poo incident. I go to let him in, and I hear a flutter. I turn back and I see one of our doves perch briefly on the deck railing before lifting off and heading toward the same tree where Cooper hid the day before after Mr Moth frightened him off.
I tense, waiting for some kind of whirlwind midair assault, but nothing happens except the dove disappears among the leaves.
Good luck, dove.
* They do.
- Location:in my office
- Mood:hopeful
And it's rare I have anything insightful to say about the process. A., my process is bizarre and changeable and violates most of the rules about what a writer's process is supposed to be, and B., nobody cares because who the heck am I anyway?
But today I printed up my skeletal final chapters and am about to undertake the assembly of a project notebook. I am just not finding the attention span. Some of this (quite a lot, actually) is puppy related, and some of it is seasonal. I want to be outdoors. I could take the laptop, but I'm not sure where to set up or if the glare would dagger my eye.
Besides, sometimes I like to work longhand.
(My ideal writing space would have a bar and a stool so I could perch or stand up and keep writing. Maybe other people write well with all their blood in their feet, but I'm not among them.)
Anyhow, you can boil down everything I really wanted to say today about writing like so: A notebook. I'm on it.
- Mood:busy
So I'm veging on the basement sofa, watching Zor play Left 4 Dead. Mr Moth is on the Father PC, doing fantasy football crap.
"What's that noise? It sounds like there's someone upstairs."
"No, that's Cobie behind the couch. See, here he comes."
"What's he got now?"
Well I think it's some little girl's perfume, Barbie Smells Like Raspberries or Love's Gags Your Baby With Sugar. It was here when we moved in, lying next to a bottle of nail polish which has since disappeared.* The perfume was still here when we brought the sofa down, but after getting stuck in the stairwell we didn't care.
Cobie trots by. I reach out "Drop it," I say. He gives two big defiant chomps and I pry the bottle of pink whatever-it-is out of his jaws.
I read the bottle.
Nipple Lick'ems.
Hot Cherry Nipple Lick'ems.
It's sticky. And...warm. I shriek and pitch it to Mr Moth, who has--AGAIN--moved the only trash can in the room to under his desk where no one else can access it. "Get rid of it!" I yell.
Mr Moth watches as it bounces off his neck and lands on the floor where Cobie is after it again like a shot. Mr Moth retrieves it in the nick. "What is it?"
I tell him.
Zor screams, "EEEEWWWWWW."
I don't think Cobie suffered any permanent hearing loss.
But PLEASE, America. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. For the love of all that is or might be construed as holy. If you are selling your house, or being foreclosed--PLEASE REMOVE YOUR PORN, SEX TOYS, AND PERSONAL LUBRICANTS before surrendering possession.
(Especially please remove HOME MADE PORN STARRING YOU. Your buyer is not that into you. TRUST ME ON THIS.)
Thank god it was only Cobie who found it and not a grandkid...
====================
*Oh lord, I HOPE it was nail polish.
- Mood:appalled
Because of the allergy, I've tried all kinds of different meat--you probably don't even want to know. I'm not sentimental about Bambi et al. But drowning him in a net and then throwing the body away offends me on all kinds of levels. Don't kill things you aren't going to eat* (unless it's a genuine threat).
*And the less waste the better.
That poor woman. I wonder if she feels sorry for him, or if maybe she would have liked it if the alleged curse had taken him and left her with another forty years of walking around time.
Just sayin.
Cobie is 12 weeks old.
Okay, gratitude coming up:
Mr Moth's cell phone, an Instinct, bricked on him. The deductible? $100. But I never liked my Instinct, so they let him take mine and I got an LG Rant 2 for $79 minus a $50 rebate. Most people would consider this a downgrade, but I am ecstatic. I could never quite feel the touch-screen love. Buttons! I have buttons! Plus how appropriate is it that I have a phone called a Rant?
Also I don't feel so tethered to the internet. No offense.
So...lemonade for everyone!
On the topic of phones, my phoneless friend found a way to get her phone back on. Whew. I found out...well, never mind that for now. This is a gratitude post. She is gonna get a code name on this blog very soon at this rate...
Moving on to the furnace. It's in! It works! There is nothing left but the cleanup and hauling away of junk, which Alan the HVAC dude is going to do free. He's probably going to scrap it all and make a few extra dollars which is pretty much okey fine with us.
Oliver. Mind you, Cobie has had two very mellowed out days in a row. Well, mellow for him. No snarling, no snapping. And Oliver treed him once on the sofa, by which I mean Oliver chased Cobie through the house and up onto the sofa...and wouldn't let him down. Later he trapped Cobie on the stairs. This kind of thing really annoyed me when he did it to Hannah, but now I am relieved. "Keep the doggy on the couch, Oliver, so I can go to the potty in peace!" Unlike Hannah, Cobie doesn't take it personally.
Six days until Cobie's second set of shots, and then I can take him out a little bit for walks, yay. He's getting a little people shy, and I don't want that.
I ordered a tea kettle with Coke points my parents saved for me. I always just nuke my tea or instant coffee water, but it seems so very very wrong. Like instant coffee isn't wrong enough; but it's the only kind that tastes right to me since I quit smoking. Anyhow, I got a set of their POP cannisters from Coke too, and I really like those, and a sink strainer which I picked up at K-mart. You wouldn't think there's much to recommend a kitchen sink strainer, but this one turns inside out which means I never have to handle grody food scraps with my hands. Yay!
USB memory sticks.
Dmitri! For he is still cute, even if he hates being handled when my hands smell like dog drool.
Edited 10/22/09: As
dhewco pointed out in comments, Samsung makes the rant and LG makes the Rumor 2. I have a Rumor 2, and I still adore it. It's name will not be preventing me from ranting any time soon, lol.- Location:in my office
Yeah, I'm a bit tired of "it is what it is." Omit needless words already.
Epic fail.
Entitlement bitch. (Everyone feels entitled to something...bitch.)
Helicopter parent. (But if your kid escapes the house because you didn't hover, everyone wants your head on a stick.)
[Whatever] much? (Especially when used incorrectly.)
People have choices. (Used to justify intolerance and lack of compassion.)
As [writers/women/Americans/liberals/conser
Welfare state/welfare bums. (There's very little actual welfare left. Let's update our vocabularies please. They're TANF bums.)
The word pimp when used to mean anything except a slave owner or at least something similar. If you are offering to rent your car to friends, yeah maybe you're pimping it. Installing a dvd player in the headrest and putting a sticker in the back window is NOT pimping.
Fat chicks. (I may be fat but I do not have feathers. I plan to have a taser at some point in the future though, so watch it.)
Trailer trash. (This term should be like other derogatives that are only used by the people they apply to. You know the ones. Like bitch.)
That's so gay. (When used to mean bad, lame, or stupid.)
Giggety giggety. (WTF? But please don't explain because I honestly don't care.)
SPO, or Stupid Pet Owners. (Everyone who doesn't agree with you is not necessarily stupid.)
Soccer mom. (Like having a kid in soccer defines a person?)
Mortgage crisis. (I think it's more of a JOB crisis. How about some EMPLOYMENT so people can afford to pay their mortgages, huh?)
...
Me: What?
Zor: Cobie can get on the sofa now!
Me: Yeah, I know.
Zor: I'm scared to lie down.
Me: Think you're scared now? Wait until he does the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon run along the back of the sofa, bites your ponytail, and jumps...
- Location:in my office
- Mood:anticipatory
- Music:garbage trucks
