Seven Clans of the Cherokee

But… were there really only seven clans?  Why did some get to stay behind?

An entire morning spent making some sense out of plot notes and a notebook full of conflicting research just proves I need to hit Cherokee, NC and find out for myself.

Like I’ll complain about finding a mountain.

Things I Did While I Wasn’t Here

George R.R. Martin is my hero–I don’t need to hyperlink him because the whole damned world knows who he is now.

I confess I had never heard of A Song of Ice and Fire before I heard about the HBO show. I know, bad writer, me. ::eyeroll:: Really, we writers only have so much time to read because we’re writing so much, so gimmie a break. I’d never heard of Ken Follett until I saw the mini-series, either–it’s at Redbox now, if anyone is interested. I read outside of my genre, but I spend a bit more time reading within it for obvious reasons, and they’re both outside my genre. Anyway! Watch this video. I love his answer as to why he makes us love his characters, and then kills them. (I smiled as I was reminded of the night my first beta reader for An Ordinary World screamed through her house.) I’m caught up reading Martin to where the current season stands and it takes everything in me not to keep reading. SPOILER ALERT: The Red Wedding did me in. I’d pump out Martin’s bastard snow babies at this point.

The new it-has-a-title-but-I-ain’t-spilling project is slow going because I need a basic outline in my head and I don’t yet have it wrapped up enough to begin. Neither do I have an outline for a short that’s due July 30th. Which is fine! I’ve got this. I was advised to basically just think about them when I have moments to let the spice flow, and that’s what I’ve been doing because that’s what’s always worked for me, but I’ve just been rather busy with puppies and failed adoptions, and a host of other things. Not the least of which is my husband coming down with ehrlichiosis, or tick fever. He’s good, thanks, just worn slap the hell out. We find it odd that we’ve reached our mid forties and neither of us had this when we were kids who played in the woods all the time, pulling off deer ticks on a regular basis, but he gets it now from being in some woods by the river for a few days in a row. Go figure. Oh, and Lily-dog has an ear infection. And I’ve had dentist appointments, plural, and have several more next week. And we have two cars down for the count. And my roof leaks.

I’m tellin ya, I’ve been buried in stuff.

Twitter is confusing the bloody hell out of me because an old tweet about a Backstreet Boys online thingy (don’t judge) ages ago keeps getting favorited. I’m guessing people hit favorite and then unfavorite it or something, because it has only two official favorites and yet has a bunch of people’s pictures there. I only care enough to wonder because I keep getting emails about it from Twitter.

WTF?

I have an incredibly full in-box, so anyone wondering where my replies are, they’re coming. I still love you, I promise. I’ve just been swamped. Which reminds me of my new favorite tv show, Swamp Murders–helpful for the Luceverse, not so helpful for the new project. IOW, distracting, like everything else. Yay for the dvr which records things so I can watch them later.

I’d like to get out of my house this weekend, like Leigh Evans did the other day, and let my mind drift into that blissful world where I think I know what I’m doing as a writer and actually make some sense out of the scraps of paper I’ve been carrying around in my purse that contain the plot of you know what and the short.

I’d like to, but it’s ten in the morning and I already need a nap.

Break, recharge, onward.

After I put meds in Lily’s ears.

This is your idea of “resting”….?

No, no one has said that to me today except myself, though I expect the hubs to chime in with something like this quite soon.

Yesterday, I told my friend, Lily, that I was taking the weekend off to “rest.” Make those sarcastic air quotes like really big because I’m obviously not resting this morning. I’m at the flipping computer, reading, and forgetting simple rules of punctuation like whether sarcastic air quotes go on the inside or the outside of the period. Yes, I need a break. Not from writing, but like a vacation that forces me to physically remove myself from this chair/my day-job chair and get away. I honestly cannot for the life of me remember when I last took a real vacation. The last time I had time off from “work,” I was still working my ass off, just not the day job.

(I have not yet been rejected, btw–eight months and counting.)

Well, that vacation won’t be today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Or… geez, wtf ever.

This morning, I was emailing Lily about her blog post, which led me to see this guy in the comments, which led me to his blog on this, which led me to—>

Escape from Stockholm: An Epic Publishing Saga by Judith Tarr.

As I was reading, I’d jump up and down nodding at one sentence, mutter ‘ohhh, burrrrnnnn’ at another, then be mortally offended by the next. I’m not supposed to be allowed to read articles on writing anymore and this blog/essay reminded me of why. There are too many options in publishing today. I like the path I’ve chosen and I plan on sticking to it, but it all makes my brain hurt. I want to write and be read. Additionally, I’d like to not have my creativity squashed under the weight of my current day-job. Can one, in this new age of publishing, have both? That’s not a lot to ask, is it? Or is it?

Yes, I’m going to take the rest of the day off.

Probably.

Dog Adoption Failure

Well, damn.

I mentioned somewhere in here that we had a reason for not keeping any of the puppies.

See, here’s the story. The very day my hubs found the puppies, someone asked him if he was interested in adopting a pit bull. “Not with six puppies around.”

Well, six puppies and many tears later, my hubs called the guy and said he wanted to give it a try with Charlie because I missed the puppies so much, and Lily needed a friend as active as she is.

This is Charlie.

Cell phone pic, sorry.

This is Charlie and Lily getting along…

But suddenly, slap out of nowhere… they didn’t.

They were GREAT as long as they were outside or at the dog park, but as soon as Charlie was
in the house and in a position to be possessive of his new humans, he lashed
out. Lily ended up with a cut on her nose and lip. He lunged at my bird’s
cage and didn’t like my outside cat–none of which boded well for him
meeting my inside cat (which he never did) or my yorkie (which he never
did). Charlie went back to his foster home after his day-vist to ours with the advice that he go to a family with no small
kids and no other pets of any kind.

I love my husband for trying. Charlie was a great dog, but he needs to be in a one pet family, and we have a zoo.

Will we try again? Maybe.

But tonight… you belong to me.

All the puppies are gone. As I handed over the last one, I almost pulled her back.

You know they liked Go The Fuck To Sleep, but do you remember the movie The Jerk?

She didn’t have a name. She was my ‘poor black child.’

I know she belongs to somebody new now, but I’ll never hear this song without thinking of her the most. They liked this song, too.

Tonight You Belong To Me

#heartbroken

I hope I never have to go through this again.

“You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear…”

 

Lest you all get the impression that taking care of these puppies has been nothing but pure joy–said through gritted teeth–I present this video and the story behind it.

For the last six days, the puppies eat, pee, poo, play, sleep, repeat. Only sometimes the sleep part doesn’t come easy. A few days ago, I’d been seriously pulling my hair out trying to keep them and my spare bedroom/office clean and needed to mop, but I had puppies hanging off my tennis shoes and the legs of my jeans.

I can’t mop until they get over on their covers in a pile and sleep. SLEEEEEEEP.

Dear gods, please go the … wait.

I jetted over to Youtube just for some comic relief.

Please, go the fuck to sleep. 

It worked.

They heard his voice and the music and they all stopped and looked up at me. One or two heads cocked, one or two butts sat down. Then a couple laid down and yawned.

Within two minutes, every puppy was asleep.

The Youtube window has been open for three days straight.

I’m exhausted.

ETA: Further proof that this works! 

AYFKM Part 2

Picture the scene:

Yesterday, I’m on the living room floor with a lady (good job, great home, my kinda potential mom) and all six puppies. I’m trying to keep all their attention on us instead of every corner of my living room that they’ve not yet had the chance to explore before today (This is exhausting in case anyone doesn’t know!) when my phone rings.

Person: Do you still have the puppies?

Me-struggling with puppies and the phone: Yes.

Person: I want the one boy with the blue eyes and one other one. Can you bring the whole tub of puppies out to blah-blah-forty-miles-away?

Me, blinking and snorting: Um, no. There’s six of them and one of me right this minute, and none of them have blue eyes, anyway. You might be seeing the flash reflecting in their eyes. All puppies have “blue” eyes.

Person: Oh.

Me, deciding to test her motive and purposefully do not tell her exactly which puppy it is I’m talking about: There’s one that has what I call “messed up eyes” because they’re gonna be a strange color, but I don’t know what yet. It’s a girl, though.

Person: OH! I want THAT one. My boyfriend’s birthday is tomorrow and I want to surprise him.

Me, whose eyes are narrowing: Does that really sound like a good idea to you?

Person becomes Idiot: He’s always wanted a pit bull, so yeah! Can you bring just that one? I’ll be here until 11p.m., so you don’t have to rush.

Me, grinding my teeth: Can I call you back? There’s someone here looking at the puppies.

Idiot: Sure!

I hang up and go to the call log, choose the number and name it NO PUPPY so when she calls me back, I won’t answer. This is some kid who thinks it would be neat to give her boyfriend a pit with “cool eyes.” Just… no.

The lady with me wants one of the puppies, but wants to think on it hard, because she wants to be fair to herself as well as the puppy: question being, does she have time to properly potty-train and care for such a young puppy. I give this woman total props for being honest and wanting to be certain she was doing the right thing for herself and her family, and the puppy. She does ask me to save a certain one until Saturday. Sure can, because my boss’ wife wants her, too, so I have two people who are now debating that one little girl. Not a problem. Well, it might be, depending on how long on Saturday they take to decide.

The one I’m “saving” on the right. Girl with the “messed up eyes” on the left.

Notice I said I had six puppies. Honey came back the next day because while mom and daughter loved her, the father had a fit. That’s fine, Honey went right back to her spot in my little wolf pack.

Trouble

Lemme tell ya, my daughter has been great about the puppies. She has three jobs and yet has spent the night over here every night, and spent every spare bit of time here helping take care of them. My daughter wants to keep Trouble. There were tears when she left for work yesterday. There was a text later, meekly asking me “did they take him?” No, pumpkin, they didn’t. The other texts she’s sent haven’t been fun to read, either. Telling her we could not keep him was no fun AT ALL.

The one solid (mostly) black girl? Well, I kinda dig her. I like quoting that line from The Jerk to her every time she cries and I pick her up. “‘I was borned a poor black child’, huh, sweetie?”

My husband adores Honey because she, the most shy and timid of them all, found the courage to come running out, wagging her tail to him, thereby saving the entire litter.

But we’re not keeping her, either.

We have a reason for not wanting to keep any of the puppies, which I’ll get into… later. Not today–don’t want to jinx it.

The point of today’s blog, other than boggling over the idiot who wanted me to drive six puppies to Bum Fuck Egypt, is this: This is Bobby’s first summer working at the canal and we know this will not be the last puppies, or dogs, or cats, or kittens, that he finds abandoned, and that he brings home. We’d like to say, bless the people who do animal rescue and can still maintain their cool because I couldn’t do it–any of it. The amount of total ass-hattery and irresponsible people out there is astounding, and I have a mostly broken filter on my mouth, so I couldn’t not raise hell at people. The only reason that idiot on the phone didn’t get a blistering string of expletives is because I had a decent, responsible woman sitting beside me and I didn’t want to offend her. I’ve thought about fostering or even volunteering at rescues and shelters, but I’d seriously have to beat the flying snot out of someone who turned an abused dog over to me–if they were the one who did it. Bobby saw a man walking a grown pit along the canal yesterday. Poor dog’s neck was raw and bleeding from his choker collar–which was attached to a rusty chain–had cherry eye (don’t Google it, just don’t) in both eyes, and obvious dog fight wounds. The owner said the dog was fine. “He eats good.” Bobby replied, “Just because he eats ‘good’ doesn’t mean he’s healthy and being taken care of.” Bobby had to walk off before he beat the snot out of him.

The second reason I don’t think I could do it is because I–we, the whole family–get so attached and worry so much for their futures.

I just noticed how quiet it is in the room now, save for the sound of snoring and dreaming puppies. This means I have to quietly mop around them while I have a chance.  They ate ten pounds of puppy food in five days and only have one bowl left, so there’s that to fetch, too. They may leave later today, instead of Wednesday, to go to a TRUSTED puppy rescue–which I’ll talk about at length later, if I can see to type because I know I’ll be balling my eyes out when they go–so I need to go and get back and spend what might be my last few hours with my ‘poor black child.’

How do people do it? Foster, then trust and let go? It’s tough.