Puppy Diaries

Day One

9:48 pm
The puppy has arrived! Oh my god, he’s so cute! Look at his big ‘ole paws as he bounds down the hallway. We’re instantly in love with this little creature.

2:20 am
I was sure he’d have slept a little by now. Oh well, he’s still so cute.

Day Two

11:15 am
Wow, this little guy has crazy amounts of energy.

1:45 pm
Seriously? I take him out and he does his business. Less than two minutes later he poops on the most expensive rug in the house.

3:45 am
Doesn’t this thing ever sleep? No, I don’t want to play fetch.

Day Three

2:00 pm
There are approximately 732 dog toys strewn about the house. 700 of them have squeakers in them. What insane person thought that putting a squeaker in a dog toy was a good idea? Is that some sort of cruel joke?

10:20 pm
Grandmothers hand-crafted statin pillow, handed down from generation to generation is now the favorite chew toy. I’m sure she’d understand.

Day Five

Time unknown – daytime I think
Only slept a few hours in the last week. We’ve run out of Band-aids. The little bastard has razor blades for teeth. Wearing knee-high plastic wading boots to protect the last remaining pair of pant cuffs.

Afternoon
The $300 iComfort dog pillow is a shredded pile of memory foam. We’re out of dog treats and afraid to leave the house for re-supply. Currently feeding the puppy the last of the saltine crackers.

Nighttime
Trying to sleep on the couch. Puppy wanted the bed. For the love of god, make the howling stop.

Day Seven

Puppy became self-aware at 3:28 in the afternoon. This may be my last diary entry. I’m hiding in the closet. Puppy does not like subversive activities. We’re sleeping the garage, visiting the house only to attend to puppies fickle wants and needs.

Shush! I think it heard me. I hear paws on the hardwood. And the squeaker…

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Rust In The Brain

This writing stuff is hard. It’s obvious that I put my brain on energy conservation mode quite a few years ago. Knocking off the rust and getting it working again has been an interesting process the last few weeks. I frequently have all kinds of ideas for stories, a novel, and blog posts floating around in my head. Usually they appear when I’m nowhere near a computer.  By the time I sit down to write they’ve disappeared. Potentially discouraging, but I’m reminded of a favorite movie scene in “Get Shorty“. Bo Catlett is talking to Chili Palmer, trying to convince him that they could write a screenplay themselves. It’s simple according to Bo: “There’s nothin’ to know. You have an idea, you write down what you wanna say. Then you get somebody to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words… although I’ve seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it at all. So I don’t think it’s too important. Anyway, you come to the last page you write in ‘Fade out’ and that’s the end, you’re done.”

I’m heartened by that because all the pesky grammar, commas and shit, tend to get in the way of my creative process. I know I have the next great novel in me if I could just stop worrying about punctuation and spelling and stuff.

Speaking of rust in the brain, I find it interesting that I’m less rusty when I first wake up in the morning. I know some folks struggle with basic motor functions like speech and movement until they’ve had multiple cups of coffee and an hour of warming up by the heater. Oddly I’ve never been that way. Be it writing or programming I tend to solve problems and come up with ideas when I sleep. When my eyes open in the morning my brain seems to be clear and sharp. I can’t count the number of times I’ve struggled for hours in the evening on a programing problem or how to fix or build something with little success. Go to bed and I’ll wake up with the answer. Hmmm, maybe this means I should start taking naps during the day? I think I’ll start that today.