Life – Page 2 – freckled crab

Same, But Different

For the past year or so I’ve been going way deep with story structure. Books, podcasts, courses. I find the phrase “learning your craft” presumptive and cringy, but that’s what I’m doing, if I considered my book a WIP (a work-in-progress for the snooty snoots), and not an HMOUD (hot-mess-of-unrealized-dreams).

And for the past six months I’ve also gone way deep on dog training. YouTube, trainers, podcasts. We adopted a dog who is so much fun, but she and one of my current dogs hate each other.

What I’ve found is that for both of these things, there are a thousand ways to get to the truth of the matter. There are foundations that can’t be denied. Certain things have to happen or what you want to happen just…won’t. You can dress it up anyway you like – the path can be long and winding or straight and narrow, but you’re going to the same place.

For writing, there are foundational beats that a reader expects for the genre, and tension that has to exist. Your protagonist has to make hard choices, and for me that’s hard because I’ve made very few hard choices. But to my credit, the ones I made were biggies (even though sometimes it was the wrong choice).

For dog training, there are rules and boundaries a dog has to understand, otherwise they get out of whack and become a mess. Implementing those boundaries are hard for me (note the above bad choices).

So, for two things at the same time, I am learning that I and my life situation are not special, and if I want to get where I want things to go, I have to act like my protagonist and make things happen.

That’s all I got for tonight guys.

Bad Internet Led To No Point

While we were eating dinner last night, I was watching my puppy in his pen. We have his old crate in there that we started keeping his toys in, and he was fussing with that. In the end, he realized he could get on the crate and that would make him higher up, and possibly closer to us, so he tried, and he did it, and it was a mess.

Much like that first paragraph.

But he did it.

So of course I turn it into something about ME and a life lesson that you’re supposed to learn in your adolescence. That’s why I’m here with you now, at 5:18 am, with only one cup of coffee in me, and fingers that are swollen from a salty dinner, still trying to get into practice of writing and not being afraid of an IMPERFECT MESS. A mess, I tell you.

///so I started this and my internet was lame and now it’s 8 pm and I’m watching Fargo by the fireplace. Hopefully tomorrow I will remember what point I was trying to make///

Late in the Covid game.

I’m gonna just post real quick. I think this is how it has to be. I don’t have the patience to carefully craft prose with perfect links and images, which gets kind of boring, don’t you think?

Anyway, anyone else getting Covid for the first time besides me and my husband?

I’m the culprit. My boss brought it into work and I got it and then it was a week until my husband got it. I’ve been testing positive for 7 days now and it’s annoying. However, I am lucky because it’s not that severe of a case. I’ve still walked my dogs twice a day (sometimes very short walks), and have been able to eat (a little).

It’s given me an opportunity to hang out with the dogs and kinda see life from their POV. I’ve learned that walks are great, but being in the house 90% of the time with the same companions can get boring AF.

The reason this is important is because our pack has doubled in size. We adopted a dog in August and got a puppy in October. More on this later.

Point is – I’ve got a heeler that is policing the new dogs and it’s causing issues. Her bossiness didn’t bother us before because it was fine with our lifestyle, so now we’ve changed the rules and want to curb some of her lifelong behaviors, but ideally do it in an organic way so that it’s not a punishing, stressful training. And also do it quickly.

Don’t laugh at me.

But for realz if you have experience with this type of situation let me know.

Anyone Got A Marker?

I live sandwiched between a two-lane highway and a national park. That kinda makes it sound cramped and compressed but it’s not. Hmm. It’s more of a relaxed, meatball sub instead of a smooshed grilled cheese. You know what I mean.

Anyway, there are deer and chipmunks and coyotes and EVIDENTLY A COUGAR.

Can you read that? The notice about how there is an apex predator in the neighborhood that someone wanted to warn us about by putting pencil to freaking yellow paper?

PENCIL!
YELLOW PAPER!

Seems like whoever wrote this isn’t going to be that sad that someone and/or their pet goes missing. Oh wait! What if this is the murderer’s preamble? Plausible deniability? Ooohhhhh. What if it’s for ME?!?!?

Also, those e’s kinda bother me. They look like part of the Michelin Man, all wayward and round.

So that’s my news.

My Countdown

I had a countdown going on for a minute there. It was for my vacation, in case you were curious. I had all kinds of plans for the blog countdown – a quick post daily, photos of the dogs every day so then I could make a cute video. Whole lotta nope.

I can think of two schools of thought to that – either I’m putting too much pressure on myself to do something that is a hobby, OR, stop being a lazy, procrastinating asshole. You can probably tell I agree more with the latter. Because I am a jerk. An undisciplined jerk.

Now that I’ve explained, I need a new countdown date. I have a bday with a zero in it coming up, so I could do that. No I will not say which decade I will be entering because you would be shocked, shocked and dismayed, by my immaturity. My emotional development stopped somewhere in the high teens but luckily I have other qualities that balance that out. Or that’s what I’m assuming because I do have friends that aren’t family and I am married so someone likes me.

Holy crap I just googled it’s less than 60 days until I am ?0.