Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 14

Shine on

My “move more” goal was to walk at least a mile, preferably between 2-3 miles, every day. The past week was 3.3 (my last blog post); 2.7 (a walk to the marsh); 3.1 (beach in the morning, marsh in the afternoon); 2.1 (marsh with my writing accountability partner and Sophie); 3.2 (beach visit); 3.3 (a walk out to the farmlands in the morning, plus the farmer’s market, plus a neighborhood walk); and 4.2 (the community forest and redwood trees). Go, me! Shine on, self.

Honestly, I wish to make no predictions about my ability to sustain that level of movement  in nature — it helped a lot that the weather has been absolutely fantastic — but it was an awesome week.

The Arcata Marsh. There’s a picnic table that’s exactly one mile away from the house.

It was also an awesome writing week. I said in my last blog post that I was just about to hit 20,000 words on my WIP: one week later, I’m at 35,000. That averages out to over 2K words a day and for me, those are stratospheric numbers. Especially for the me of the last couple of years, when writing has just been Sisyphean. I’m attributing this success to a number of factors, but I think the most important one might have been words of wisdom from my writing accountability partner. And I see that I have never mentioned her on my blog before (I had to read back), so…

Sometime after I got back to Arcata in August, I got a message on a writing site (The Creative Academy for Writers) from a local writer who was looking for an accountability partner. She wondered if I was interested. I was! Ever since then, we’ve been meeting up once a week or so for an hour long chat about writing, including setting goals for the week ahead. Sometimes we get lunch at a local restaurant; often we spend the hour walking. She is, in her day job, (and conveniently for me), a therapist, which makes for excellent conversations. But she really helped me break through my long-standing writer’s block by — to make a long story very short — encouraging me to “embrace the pain.” Long story, very short! But wow, there is a lot of great creative energy that comes with letting your characters suffer & hate & grieve & be betrayed.

None of which is to say that this story is dark — it’s actually possibly the most romantic fairy tale I’ve ever written and I’m making myself laugh all the time with it. My POV character has been giggling a lot, too, despite being worried that her twin brother is plotting to murder her. It is also trope-tacular! I’ve got evil twins, a super model, millionaires, a marriage of convenience, angry ghosts — all set (so far) in glorious Walt Disney World. My heroine falls in love with the hero in the Japan store at EPCOT, aka, as our hero says, “Not just any gift shop, the best gift shop in the entire park.”

I’ll obviously have to do some kind of COVID disclaimer when I publish this story — alternate timeline, maybe set in the past, the multiverse — but COVID is boring and no fun, so I really don’t mind not including it in my non-boring, extremely fun, delightfully entertaining story. And when I say “delightfully entertaining,” I really mean delightfully entertaining to me — I’m having a great time writing it. (Another factor in my success: Suzanne is being an excellent audience, both in listening to me work out the details and also laughing at my jokes.)

Have a (non-edited, rough draft, snippet):

Noah said, “No offense, but I don’t want Niall to be collateral damage if you’ve got a jealous ex trying to kill you.” 

Laurel’s smile was wan. “No jealous exes here.” She took another bite of her chocolate mousse, then remembered Sierra calling her fat. The memory made her start to giggle again. 

She giggled helplessly for a minute, maybe longer, while the brothers looked at her with identical expressions of confusion that just made her giggle harder. She had tears of laughter in her eyes when she finally stopped to catch her breath. 

“Sorry. Sorry. It just —“ She turned to Niall. “Look, I was probably over-reacting. I’m sure I’m going to be fine. Noah’s right. Marriage is a big deal and I don’t want to take advantage of your — your — ” She searched for the right words, finally finishing, “—your chivalrous spirit.” 

Noah snorted. “Chivalrous spirit. That’s a new one.”

Laurel pointed her fork at him. “You’re losing your good twin badge, you know. Pretty sure you’re gonna be in evil twin territory soon.” 

This week I am hoping to write many, many more words. Suzanne is — barring further COVID disasters — headed out for a family vacation next week, which means I’m going to be on puppy-dog-cat-chicken duty. I am not optimistic about my word count that week. On the other hand, I will probably score quite well on the exercise front.

One of our beach mornings. All that debris is driftwood, much of it remarkably beautiful.

The Coastal Trail

This morning, before heading out on my morning walk with Sophie, I went in Suzanne’s house to see if she wanted to come with us and maybe make it a bigger adventure. I’ve been walking to the marsh down the street most mornings, which is awesome, but I’ve been seeing signs for this thing called the Hammond Coast Trail for the past two years. Every time I’ve mentioned it to Suzanne, she’s had a “Oh, sure, we could do that someday,” response. This morning she said, “Yes, let’s go!”

We drove off to a mid-point of the trail, unloaded the dogs and started walking. Within a quarter of a mile or so, I said, “Wait, is this trail like an urban trail? Are we seriously going to be walking past chain link fences the whole time?” (I paraphrase: I was not quite so scornful about the chain link fences out loud, because I wouldn’t want to be rude to the owners of the chain link fences. But I do find them so ugly, and not at all conducive to pleasant strolling.)

Suzanne replied, (again paraphrased, because I don’t actually remember her real words), “Yes? It goes up through McKinleyville.” She gestured to a playground on our left, and said, “There’s a dog park over there, including an area for off-leash dogs, but it’s not fenced. The trail goes this way.” She gestured straight ahead to the road.

I believe I said, “Pfft,” or some other basic noise of disgust. All this time I imagined the “coastal” trail as a scenic wilderness trail with views of the ocean, soaring birds, and probably incredible smells of salt water and eucalyptus. No wonder Suzanne always said, “Oh, someday,” about this walk.

But the aforementioned park to our left had a dirt path running through a field of dry grass. In a choice between your basic asphalt road, and a dirt path, I’m always going to try the path, so I veered off that way. I think Suzanne might have offered a faint protest — “That’s the wrong way?” — but she wasn’t opposed to checking out the dog park, so she followed me.

The dog park was a big empty field, not fenced. We let the dogs off leash and they ran around like crazy creatures in the way that puppies do, with Riley meandering along checking out all the interesting smells. Some other dogs appeared, but their owners kept walking along the path and disappeared into the distance.

Suzanne said, sensibly, “Let’s see where this path leads.” And so we did.

Guess where the path led? If you’re guessing “to a coastal trail with views of the water, floating birds, and delightful woodsy smells,” congratulations, you hit the jackpot! So did we.

Somewhere along the way, in a woodsy section where the dogs were disappearing into the undergrowth and I was taking deep breaths of ocean air, I called out to Suzanne, who’d gotten pretty far ahead of me, “I’m feeling very pleased with my life choices.” She laughed, but I seriously was appreciating the sense of smugness that comes when you find a really good walk.

Sophie appreciated my choices, too. A walk that includes a place to get wet and muddy is the best kind of walk, in her opinion.

Of course, I should have been writing a book. It was a Monday morning, after all. I’ve got an assortment of practical business things to deal with, including getting the audiobook of A Gift of Thought posted and finishing off some covers, but I’ve been trying to write fiction words every day, ideally at least 1000 of them. Today will be the day when I reach 20,000 words on my WIP, which is a nice solid chunk. I’m guessing the WIP is not going to be a short story, and probably won’t even be a novella. I might be 1/3 of the way through, though, so probably a short novel. Assuming, that is, that nice walks don’t get in my way.

10 Days In

Ten days into my 2022 projects and I have made a few important discoveries.

Cookbooks aren’t meant to be read straight through from beginning to end. Or at least I’m not good at reading them that way. I still haven’t even made it to the recipe sections on the cookbook I started with, which obviously also means I haven’t cooked anything from it yet, either. I’ve been reading a little of it most days, but it’s packed with information and a little goes a long way.I like learning, but apparently I really don’t want to learn anything more about writing. Or at least I seem to have tremendous resistance to opening the pile of writing/publishing/marketing books in my 2022 Learning Project collection.Books make it into my “you’re a good book and so maybe I’ll read you someday” collection when they’re dark and depressing, sometimes violent, sometimes just angsty or sad. Also? I don’t want to read depressing books these days. How long has it been since I willingly read depressing books? Um, possibly a decade, since my mom died. But I’ve definitely rejected the dark during the pandemic years. Brilliantly-written mystery that starts with a young woman’s mutilation and murder? NOT INTERESTED. Compelling story of a family facing tragedy? NOPE. Engrossing fantasy in which a protagonist faces the forces of darkness? Eh, probably not.

I understand my 2021 reading a lot better, in which — for example — I read approximately 35 books in a science fiction series where basically nothing happens. But nothing happens in a very comfortable and friendly manner, with uber-powerful Artificial Intelligences stepping in to stop the biologicals from hurting themselves or others. Those books are, honestly, boring, but I read one after another after another until I was done. (All in KU, so they weren’t costing me money.)

What does this mean for my 2022 Fiction Reading Project? Well… I’m not sure yet. But it might take me a lot longer to make it through those 36 books than I anticipated it would and a lot of them might just move back to the Read Someday collection. Someday I’ll be tired of comfort reads, right?

Basically, I’m 10 days into my 2022 project and… well… I kinda just don’t wanna. On the other hand, I’m being good about trying to walk at least 2 miles a day & avoid sugar, so maybe this year is just going to be a year about getting a little healthier. There’s plenty of the year left in which to find out. But I’m not going to push myself through reading books I don’t enjoy — this is not grade school and I am not my own teacher, demanding I do busywork for the sake of doing busywork.

Also, when it comes to how I choose to spend my time, reading things that I don’t enjoy just for the sake of saying that I read them feels… like perhaps not the smartest use of my energy? At any moment, I could be walking a dog, going to the beach, taking a photograph, writing a book or story, learning more about art… yeah. I’m not quite giving up on my 2022 projects — I’m still going to try to turn to those books when I’m looking for something to read. But they’re not going to be a drain on my energy.

In other news, I finished my review of the audiobook of A Gift of Thought this weekend, so it’s going to be available reasonably soon. It was another interesting reading experience for me. Where did I ever get the idea that I wrote light, fun fiction? That book is about a dead teenager struggling with guilt over his own death! It did make me laugh here and there, and I really loved a few of the scenes, but it’s not nearly as light as I thought it was.

The hardest scene for me to listen to was one at the end with Sylvie telling Dillon how much she loved him and how hard she’d tried to always make the right choices for him and how she would do anything, absolutely anything, to help him. Talk about heart-breaking. I was, of course, writing my own feelings about my own son. The irony — one I was completely unaware of at the time — was that Dillon has acknowledged in the previous chapter that he doesn’t really care about her. Can we call that irony? Maybe just prescient in some way? It made me cry, but fortunately, it was the last chapter so I finished up and moved on.

This Christmas/New Year’s was the first time I made no effort to reach out to R. I’ve usually texted him on holidays, even though I’m fairly sure he blocked my number, and of course, I tried to send him stocking stuffers on Christmas for 2020. This Christmas, though, I spent hours wavering — email? voice mail? another text into the void? — and finally I resorted to asking the universe for a sign. The universe gave me a gorgeous, full, bright rainbow, which felt so much like an answer! Not, unfortunately, a very clear answer. But it did inspire me to google, which led me back to his Twitter feed. He’d unlocked it at some point, so I read through it. It turned out to be helpful, because he had a tweet about taste that was in phenomenally poor taste, which reminded me that he is not the 15-year-old I adored. I guess I needed the reminder.

Speaking of reminders, though, I could be writing fun things now. Or walking a dog. Or going to the beach or cooking something delicious or even scrubbing the toilet, any of which would be more fun, productive, and satisfying than dwelling on the past. Or even on the future. There’s a therapy line (or maybe a 12-step line), “Do the next right thing.” I think I shall go do that, whatever it turns out to be!

The marsh down the street. I could be walking there right now!

Welcome to 2022

I did not make any resolutions about blogging more in 2022. I admit, though, in the back of my mind, getting back to blogging consistency feels like a good goal. Not quantity, necessarily, but the regular weekly or 2x weekly post. We’ll see.

I also did not make any resolutions about losing weight or exercising more. Again, in the back of my mind, it feels like a good thing to maybe put a little effort into, especially the exercising more. It’s much too easy for me to wind up basically staying in bed all day long. I get up, make the bed, then sit on top of it while using my computer. I try to remember to move, but when I get involved with something, I can easily wind up sitting still for hours.

Last week, in fact, I basically sat still for two solid days while I worked on my real New Year’s resolutions. Except they’re not resolutions, they’re projects. I sorted through all the books on my Kindle, all 1341 of them, putting them into collections. The relevant collections are:

2022 Fiction Reading Project – This contains 36 books that look like very readable books, that have been sitting on my Kindle for untold numbers of years. Seriously, I have unread books from 2011 on my Kindle. It is time to read them or conclude that I will never read them.

I also have a collection of Books to Try that contains another 135 books that I haven’t read, but I’m not crazy enough to try to schedule reading 171 books in the next year. Especially because I know myself: in the time since creating this collection (literally, one week), I’ve also put another two books on hold at the library, downloaded three KU titles, and bought one novella. It’s an addiction, I suppose, but such a nice one. And so far on my 2022 Fiction Reading Project, I’ve read one book, a historical romance from the 1990s that was somewhat too violent for my taste, and concluded that two others just weren’t for me after hitting the 10-20% mark in them. There’s a reason these books have gone unread for so long. I expect to be done with this project a lot sooner than 2023.

2022 Learning Project – This collection contains 20 non-fiction titles, also downloaded over the past decade and mostly unread. I’d guess that I’ve started almost all of them, but never finished. Most of them are books about writing or publishing, so I may wind up deciding that some of them aren’t for me, too, but I am going to make a solid try at finishing them, including taking notes so I retain at least some of the information. So far… well, so far this project is proceeding more slowly than the fiction project. Still, many months of the year are ahead of me!

2022 Cooking Project – This collection is currently empty. But I own 46 cookbooks and this year I’m actually going to try some of the recipes in them. Or delete them. It’s not that e-books can’t just live in the cloud forever, but there’s no reason to keep books that I will absolutely never read or look at. So I’ll be adding cookbooks to the Cooking Project collection as I try them out. I’m excited for some of them and others I strongly suspect are going to wind up deleted. Hmm, but writing this… the ones I’m excited for are all the interesting international cookbooks. Malaysian food, Vietnamese food, Spanish food — I think those will be fun. Not so sure about the paleo, AIP, & slow cooker cookbooks, of which I own far too many. I suppose, though, if I think about it as 12 years worth of cookbooks (which it is), 46 is not really so many.

Along the way of sorting my books, I also deleted 60 or so. And I’ve got another 325 or so in collections that acknowledge I will never look at or read the book, but the books are not deleted because I want to know to avoid downloading more the same authors. (Or at least to be wary.)

Anyway, organizing my Kindle was a very satisfying chore as I headed into 2022, but like I said, didn’t involve enough movement, and neither do my projects. It’s not a resolution, but the “move more, eat less” mantra is one I want to keep in mind. Also, of course, “write more.” I’m working on A Gift of Luck, one of the Tassamara projects I mentioned recently, and enjoying myself, one sentence at a time. Still haven’t managed to reach a writing flow state, but maybe someday soon.

In actual news, Suzanne and I took the puppies to the snow. Our first visit was just a short drive into the mountains where we played with puppies in a pull-off on the side of the road for half an hour or so. When it comes to snow, I’m about 1000x more anxious than Suzanne, which is the difference between growing up in upstate New York, where people die in the snow every year, and growing up in Southern California, where snow is fun and fluffy and pretty and strange. But Suzanne was right about that snow — it was extremely perfect winter snow.

See that spot of pink? That’s Suzanne. Those trees are huge and that snow was falling fast. Truly lovely.

Our second trip to snow was a much longer adventure: we drove up to Ashland, Oregon for a night. We walked the puppies in the redwoods along the way, then let them romp around Emigrant Lake, then took them to a dog park. Yep, travel with puppies is very puppy-centered. But it was an excellent mini-road trip. Plenty of outside time, fresh air, good conversation, and movement. And Ashland was still beautifully decorated for the holidays, sparkling with lights after dark. Of course, it was also cold and wet, so we didn’t spend a ton of time wandering around, but we had fun.

Coming home was rather less fun, because it was raining, reasonably heavily, and every time we passed a possible place to play with puppies, we kept driving. Heading out, the destination was never the point, only the journey, but on the way home, the destination was very much the point. I was so glad to get back to my cozy tiny house and snuggle down.

But speaking of rain, it is currently not raining, so I’m going to grab the opportunity to put “move more” into practice and take Sophie for a walk. Happy New Year to all!

Bearly Bearable

When Suzanne first named Bear, I thought her nicknames would be about berries. We called her Hucklebearry and Berry-berry and I sometimes tried out the other berries, too — Bluebearry, Boysenbearry, Raspbearry. (Auto-correct really hates those extra As.)

In fact, her nicknames are Bearable, Bearly Bearable, and Unbearable. Today’s Unbearable moment came when she figured out how to turn the water on. The spigot on the back patio is a lever, nicely up and down, and Bear loves water. I am astonished by how quickly she managed to flood the patio. I was putting together chicken soup ingredients inside and didn’t even hear the water running, but it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before the water on the patio was an inch deep.

When I came outside, squealing in dismay, she was so excited she jumped up on me. “Look, look how fun it is,” she seemed to be saying, as she splashed through the water.

Meanwhile, Sophie and Riley D both said, “We want to be inside now, please. It’s cold out here.”

To which I said, “No! I want no wet, muddy dogs in my tiny house. You all get to stay outside.” I think I’m going to need to find a place to stash more towels, because while I do have a couple extra towels for puppies, I do not have enough extra towels to survive cleaning up three dogs after they create a pond on the patio.

Why, you might ask, am I blaming Unbearable for this minor disaster rather than either of the other two dogs when I didn’t actually see the water get turned on? If you knew the dogs, you wouldn’t have to ask. There are three dogs, but only one possible culprit when it comes to the kind of thing that makes you say, “WTF???” Sometimes Sophie is a participant in the creation of chaos, but she’s not the instigator. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that Sophie is an old dog soul, who already understands People Right from People Wrong (even if she doesn’t always choose to go along), and Bear is a fresh new dog soul, mystified by why we think chewing on furniture is a bad idea and dumping the garbage unacceptable.

The other day Bear was outside and Suzanne was scolding Riley, telling him how completely reprehensible the dog behavior inside the house had been. I asked if she actually thought Riley had done anything and she replied, “He didn’t stop her!” Ha. She’s bigger than him now, and still so gawky and awkward — it’s all he can do to keep away from her rather overwhelming adoration.

Fortunately, Bear is also a fresh new dog soul in other ways: loving, affectionate, goofy, excellent at snuggling, eager to play, willing to learn. Someday she will be Beyond Bearable, and probably Bearing on Excellent. She’s not currently good, as in well-behaved, but she is a Very Good Dog.

Sophie is, too, of course. I feel like I post more pictures of Bear on Instagram and I’m not sure why that is, but I think it’s just because Bear is so noticeably changing and growing (and becoming immense.) Sophie is equally adorable, but the fact that she’s getting fluffier by the day doesn’t show up in pictures much. I never did post the updated DNA info, but she’s more Australian Shepherd than border collie. (She’s an Australian Shepherd, Australian cattle dog, border collie, rat terrier, German Shepherd mix, plus 15% “super mutt”, aka lots of other breeds, too.) Australian Shepherds have thick coats, feathering on their legs, and “lush manes” and while Sophie has the markings of a border collie, she definitely seems to be developing the coat of an Aussie. It’s very soft and silky.

And as 2021 draws to a close, I’m feeling very blessed to have both these puppies — and a cranky cat — keeping me company. Last year, I wrote that I wasn’t convinced 2021 would be any better than 2020. Ha. I was prescient, I guess, because it sure wasn’t. My focus word for the year was GRACE — Gratitude, Reading, Art, Cooking, and Exercise. Um, nope. Well, I guess did read a lot.

I wanted to have a solstice celebration to say good-bye to the darkness and welcome the light, but I woke up that morning with a sore throat, so we postponed the dinner plan part of the celebration. Instead, Suzanne and I made origami snakes representing what we wanted to let go of from the old year, and origami cranes representing our wishes for the new year, then burned them on the fire pit with some dried sage from the garden.

I wonder if a decade from now I will remember what I let go of? I hope I don’t, that the things I released are so thoroughly released that I never think of them anymore. But I do hope that in future solstice celebrations I remember to wish for prosperity. Suzanne had that as one of her cranes and when she burned it, I thought, “Duh, what an obviously sensible thing to wish for!” Let us all manifest prosperity in 2022. (And also some creativity, diligence, focus, openness, and good health. Plus some kayaking!)

Still handy (to have around)

I’m not actually very handy. I’m not good at minor home or auto repairs and anything that involves tools tends to be experimental for me. But Suzanne had surgery on her other eye this week, so I got to continue my trend of being useful by driving her down to Santa Rosa, and then around Santa Rosa once we were there.

And also my trend of finding us excellent places to eat. Because of the Celiac’s, I generally have to put more effort into restaurant selection than your average tourist. I can’t just wing it and hope that I’ll find something both gluten-free and delicious. (Well, I could, but generally what happens when I do so is that I wind up hungry, cranky, disappointed, and worried about getting sick. So I don’t.)

On our first trip to Santa Rosa, we went to:

Sazon – excellent Peruvian food, with a really terrific GF fried seafood appetizer.Dierks – for our post-surgery brunch, I had Sonoma duck confit, which was delicious. I don’t remember what Suzanne had and I bet she doesn’t either.Bird & The Bottle – Tapas! The beet salad was fantastic. The rest — well, the GF menu was very limited, so I wouldn’t eat there again, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to someone who could eat gluten.Avid Coffee – The best GF pumpkin spice muffin ever.

On this trip, we went back to Sazon and back to Avid, but we also tried:

Boon eat + drink – TripAdvisor’s favorite restaurant in Guerneville, and totally deserving of their love. Their truffle fries were probably the best fries I’ve had since I stopped eating gluten and the chimichurri was so much better than my own that I whimpered when I tasted it.Schat’s Bakery & Cafe – The minute we walked in I knew I was taking a serious risk: this is a real bakery, so plenty of wheat-based flour in the air. But I ate there 48 hours ago and I’m not sick yet, so kudos to them for making me a delicious chicken sandwich that managed not to be contaminated. The GF bread was probably not as good as the bread that the sandwich was supposed to be on, but it was a lot better than the usual GF squishy stuff. I bought a loaf and brought it home to make avocado toast.Bia Cafe – Our surprise win was the cafe next to our hotel. We wandered over early Thursday morning, hoping for coffee. The front desk guy at the hotel had already told us that the menu there would be whatever the proprietor felt like cooking that day, and there’s no link on the name because she doesn’t appear to have a website. But she did have gluten-free muffins and scones, so I had one of each.

We again had fun on the trip and not just food-related fun. We brought all the dogs with us, which turns every day into a search for places to let them romp. We had a great river stop on the way south and another in Monte Rio, a long hike around Spring Lake, a stroll around downtown Guerneville — lots of movement, lots of outside time. I’ve got to admit, though, that perhaps my favorite time was back at the hotel, Casa Secoya. My “room” was actually a cabin with a deck, a kitchen, and a gas fireplace, (it’s pictured on the front page of their site) and the weather was exactly right for turning on the fireplace and reading a good book while cuddling with a puppy. Or two, while Suzanne was recovering from the anesthesia.

In other news, I finally did something I’ve been thinking about/wanting to do for months. Maybe years, even. I re-designed all the covers of the Tassamara books. I was motivated because the narrators of the audiobook for Ghosts are currently working on Thought and soon to be working on Time and eventually to be working on Grace. I knew I had to make a decision about audiobook covers, and my decision was to make my own.

These are the draft versions of the audiobooks, but the final versions will be very similar. Versions of those covers for the ebook and print versions are already up on Amazon.

Along the way, I read both Ghosts and Grace. It was oddly fun. Grace, in particular, lives in my memory a certain way and the reading experience was not at all what I expected it to be. I amused myself more, confused myself less, and surprised myself with the cohesiveness of the storyline. But I suspect the lesson I should learn is to stop trying to do specific things and just write. I was trying to write a romance in Grace: it doesn’t work. Also, Sophia’s too bitter (literally — I need to delete about three uses of the word “bitterly”); Misam’s too bubbly (not sure how to fix that); and Noah’s either too stubborn or not stubborn enough. Maybe both. But I would hang out with those characters anytime. All quite fun to be with.

Still I remember obsessing about making the details fit together just so, and really, who pays that much attention? In fact, if a reader is paying that much attention, I’ve lost already because the story isn’t holding them the way it should. But I’m feeling more enthusiasm for future Tassamara stories than I’ve felt in a long time. I started a couple that dead-ended and I think I’m going to be trying to make my way out of those dead ends sometime soon. But definitely not trying to write “romance” — just trying to write stories that maybe wind up with happy endings where good people who like one another end up looking toward the future together.

But that writing will not be tomorrow, because we’re heading back to Santa Rosa for Suzanne’s post-surgery eye exam. The drive’s getting a little too familiar, but fortunately, it is mostly extremely beautiful. And with every expectation of delicious food and fun play with puppies along the way!

Post-Thanksgiving Thanks Giving

Some days I can’t believe how lucky I am. Other days I think, “Dogs! That’s my bed! Where am I supposed to sit?!” Most days, both happen at once.

I have had grand intentions of writing every day for the past several weeks. I have written… once. Maybe twice. In the grand scheme of things, though, I don’t feel unaccomplished. Sure, maybe my accomplishments were pretty minor: I got Bear to sit and show me her paws before jumping on the bed at least once out of every three times she tried, and I stayed totally cool when a stranger dog told Sophie she was being a brat at the beach (she was!), but in the grand scheme of things, those accomplishments probably count for just as much as words going nowhere.

I also — if I do say so myself — kicked ass in the “handy friend to have around” territory. The week before Thanksgiving, I went down to Santa Rosa with Suzanne so that she could have cataract surgery on one eye. She needed a driver to pick her up post-surgery, so she drove us down on Tuesday. We got grocery store sushi for lunch, took the dogs to a dog park, went to her pre-op appointment, and then had terrific Peruvian food for dinner. The next morning, we walked the dogs in a park near the eye doctor, then she went in for the surgery while the dogs and I waited in the parking lot. They wheeled her out by 10 or so.

I think both of us anticipated a fast snapback from the anesthesia, which was the kind where you stay awake, you just don’t remember the experience. Quick and efficient, right? Suzanne, however, did not snap back quite so quickly as expected. I have a toss-up between two favorite moments related to the not-quite-awake Suzanne.

The first was when, a couple hours after the surgery, sounding a little disconsolate, she said something like, “Everything’s blurry.” I said, somewhat tentatively because it felt like stating the obvious, “Um, but you’re wearing your glasses? I would have trouble seeing if I was wearing your glasses.” For at least the next ten minutes, she read all the street signs to me, awed by the miracle of sight, which was really fun.

The second actually happened the next day, when I was following GPS directions to Costco and said, “Okay, thank you, Liam,” to my Australian-male-voiced Apple Maps app, and she said, “Why is your GPS named Liam?” with sheer puzzlement in her voice. With an equivalent amount of puzzlement in my voice, I said, “Um, because you named him? Yesterday? Because you thought he needed a name? Do you not remember this??” She did not remember. I couldn’t tell you how many times we’d discussed it as we wandered around Santa Rosa post-surgery — shopping, finding parks to walk dogs, finding restaurants for lunch and dinner — but it was more than once. That anesthesia is good stuff.

On Thursday, Suzanne had her post-op appointment, and then we slowly headed home, plenty of stops along the way. On Saturday, she flew off to the UK for a long-awaited trip with her grandson, leaving me with three dogs, three cats, and a dozen chickens to care for. To be honest, I was not looking forward to it: I expected that having the two puppies together 24/7 was going to feel overwhelming, and be exhausting.

It was, in fact, worse than I’d imagined, because we — and I use that word fairly, this was a mutual decision — were total IDIOTS! I had blithely said, “Sure,” when the vet suggested Monday as a date for Riley to have his teeth cleaned, not even really noticing the “and have a mass removed from his chest” part of the conversation. I dropped him off at the vet that Monday morning and took the puppies to the beach, never even considering what it was going to be like to have a dog recovering from surgery with two puppies around. Poor Riley had just an awful week. I definitely get “handy friend to have around” points for the 45 minutes I spent trying to get blood out of Suzanne’s sofa the next day. Also for the rather excessive amounts of vomit clean-up over the next couple of days, although some of that was Sophie. But note to self: never schedule surgery for a dog when his real owner is going to be away. It made an already challenging week just so much harder.

The highlight of the week, though, was Thanksgiving dinner. I had put exactly zero thought into the fact that I’d be alone on a major holiday and figured it would just be a day like any other. Dogs, cats, chickens, maybe with a little added bonus grieving for my (estranged) son and my (deceased) mom, but just a day. However Mara, the awesome next-door neighbor, also realized I’d be alone on a major holiday and promptly invited me to join them. I had such a nice time. Was it the green bean casserole, giving me just the right amount of nostalgia? The gluten-free stuffing, gravy & dessert, making me feel like I could relax and eat safely? The good company, mostly family enjoying one another’s company, but a few other solo guests? All of the above, probably. Maybe with a little added, “I have escaped from the puppies!” and a lot of added, “And we get to socialize with groups of people again!” Obviously that was before news of the new variant started spreading, but on the day, no one was worrying about the pandemic. It was just a good meal with warm, friendly people. (Thank you, Mara!)

Suzanne came home from the UK Saturday night. Her plane was just slightly delayed, not quite enough to make me cry, but enough to get me to start writing mental horror stories as I circled the airport. Good imagination practice, right? All residents of the Mighty Small Farm are delighted to have her back. But despite her return, life still feels really busy. She’s not allowed to drive yet, so I’ve had places to go, things to do, excuses to not write. Next week we go back to Santa Rosa and she gets surgery on her other eye, and after that, things should settle down some. Maybe writing more will have to be a New Year’s resolution.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling pretty grateful for my life. Dogs, cats, chickens, friends and neighbors — and hey, hot running water, always worth appreciating. I didn’t spend my Thanksgiving week thinking about how much I had to be thankful for, but there’s so much, and I am.

Doggie DNA

For Christmas (early), Suzanne gave us both Embark Dog DNA kits, so we could find out what genetics could tell us about our rescue pups.

Last week, I got the above results for Sophie.

Um, what?

I was completely mystified. Two of those breeds — the Beauceron and the Greenland dog — were ones I’d never even heard of! And Husky? Greyhound?

But you know, DNA doesn’t lie, so I pretty quickly started wrapping my brain around the idea. English Setter, okay, I can see that. Sophie is very sweet & quite friendly, as English setters are supposed to be. And her fur is lovely and silky.

Plus, even though every fifth person on the street says, “Oh, a border collie puppy! So cute! And SOO smart,” I actually haven’t really noticed that she’s smarter than the average pup. In fact, Bear seems to catch on to doggie tricks faster than Sophie does. Bear shakes paws like a champ these days and when you throw a ball, she drops it right back at your feet so you can throw it again. Sophie is still unwilling to return the ball. Sure, that might keep the game going, which she would like, but she’d really much prefer it if you just produced an unlimited supply of balls and let her hoard them instead.

So, okay, my cute little border collie is really a descendent of the same breed that inspired Doberman pinschers. Also sled dogs. Also Greyhounds?!? Um, but every single one of those breeds is a large dog and nothing about Sophie indicates that she’s going to get that big. Bigger than Zelda and Bartleby, yes, she’s already that, but nothing like officially Large. Of course, any breed has outliers, so maybe she’s just a very small Large dog.

Because DNA doesn’t lie.

People, on the other hand, make mistakes. The next day I got the Oops email from Embark. Those are not actually Sophie’s results. My little border collie may in fact still turn out to be a border collie, but I’ll have to wait a while longer to find out for sure. I was pretty amused, mostly because of how hard I’d tried to adjust reality to fit the “facts.” I’m assuming at least a few people caught up in the mistake sent emails to Embark saying “Not a chance!” because that was my first instinct and I’m sure if I’d known more about Sophie’s history, that’s exactly what I would have done. (If I’d gotten those results for Bartleby or Zelda, I would definitely have sent that email. I just had more of an open mind because Sophie’s not full-grown yet.)

In other news, I’ve discovered the delights of medical marijuana. I’m not sure how much it’s helping my pinched nerve, but wow, a THC hard candy or two before bedtime gives me a great night’s sleep. I don’t seem to feel much from it — I definitely don’t feel inebriated — but when I close my eyes, I drift off and I stay drifted off. It’s astonishing to me how cheerful I am when I wake up after a full night’s sleep. (I’m usually a very restless, very light sleeper, awakened by anything, and never sleeping more than a couple hours in a row.) Sleep, I recommend it.

I’ve also concluded — alas! — that my arm problem is related to typing on my iPad keyboard. I bought the iPad this summer after I sold the van hoping it would mostly replace my laptop, but apparently that’s not going to work. So I’m back on my MacBook Air, being reminded of all the reasons why it’s not quite satisfying. I’ll adjust, I’m sure, but it makes me cranky, especially after all the hours I spent trying to set up the iPad to work with the apps I wanted. So it goes. I’m now referring to the iPad as the most expensive book reader ever, because I do love reading on it.

The other thing I decided was that maybe my cheap mattress is Not Good. I bought it this summer for $200 and I think if you’ve only owned a mattress for a few months and you’re experiencing back/neck pain, it’s probably worth wondering if the mattress is the problem. The Best Brother Ever pointed out that the quality of 1/3 of your life is worth some expense and given that my bed is actually a lot more than 1/3 of my life — it’s the only comfortable seat in the tiny house, so I spend plenty of time sitting on it as well as sleeping — I decided to buy a new mattress. Ugh, mattress shopping is no fun. But $560 later, I am awaiting a Novaform mattress from Costco, hoping I’ll love it. Maybe it’ll even be nice enough that I can go back to typing on the iPad.

I do not own a cat. But it occurred to me as I wrote about my limited seating in the tiny house that Gina, #notmycat, has five different seating spots. I emptied one of the cubbies and put a towel in it for her; there’s a pillow on top of a shelving unit for her; the closet hanging clothes shelves have an almost empty space at the bottom for her (she kept creating it herself by knocking all the clothes in it onto the floor and I finally accepted reality); the top of the shoe rack had a box and now has a towel for her; and I partly emptied one of the soft cube boxes for her. My extra pillowcases are currently stored under my pillows on the bed — a ridiculous place for them — but it keeps them safer from cat fur than most of my other storage options. And yeah, there’s usually a bowl with cat food in it somewhere to be found. Still don’t have a cat, though.

Sophie wishes we did, but not Gina. She still loves Olivia Murderpaws passionately and wants to play with her all the time. Alas, Olivia Murderpaws does not feel the same way. Yesterday, Sophie asked Gina to play instead — perfectly politely, a nice play bow, maybe a little too close. Gina’s response, translated from cat, “F**k YOU!” Sophie will not be inviting Gina to play again anytime soon. Fortunately, she has Bear.

Yesterday we took the dogs to the beach in the morning. (Not the above photo, which was at sunset a few days before.) We were walking, talking, appreciating the weather, when I looked up and saw Bear in the distance, investigating a dead thing. (A skate, about as big as Sophie.) I had just enough time to say, “Oh, Bear — I think — she might –” before she started to roll. Oops. So she got to have her first bath at the doggie spa, and Sophie joined her because it’s a good experience for a puppy. Sophie was unenthusiastic but well-behaved, and her fur is soft and silky and luxurious today. Baths, also recommended.

Sciatica of the shoulder

On Tuesday, October 26th, I woke up in pain. In completely weird, random, unexpected pain. My arm/shoulder felt like I’d somehow broken it in my sleep. It was that kind of pain — intense, throbbing, surprisingly overwhelming. In a different life (or actually if it had been my left arm instead of the right), I would have been off to the doctor or maybe an emergency room within a couple hours. In this life, I consulted the internet and decided that I had a pinched nerve.

Over the course of the next ten days, I’ve never once changed my opinion about that. Honestly, it’s a pretty easy diagnosis. It is a pain that definitely starts in my shoulder — if I move the wrong way, it’s like a knife in there — but then radiates down my arm doing one of three things: sometimes it feels like a vise around my bicep; sometimes it feels like a bad sunburn on the back of my upper arm; and sometimes it shoots all the way down my arm, over my wrist and into my middle finger with pain, tingling & throbbing. Mostly just my middle finger, though — my pinkie and thumb are always fine. Clearly that’s nerve pain.

It sucks.

Do I have anything further to say about it? Um, not really. The internet assures me that it’s likely to go away eventually, and that traditional medicine isn’t going to do much for me. Maybe a prescription for painkillers specifically for nerve pain, probably some imaging studies to see exactly what’s going on, ideally a referral to a physical therapist. Instead I’m going the Californian route: CBD pills and lotion, meditation, acupuncture next week. And trying to avoid the things that clearly make it worse, specifically typing, playing games on the iPad, and throwing balls for dogs. So far — well, I don’t know whether it’s getting better or whether it’s becoming a pain I mostly understand how to live with. I really don’t want to live with it, of course, but I’m trying to view it as an opportunity to get really good at meditation. Ha.

Also I am trying to remember to be grateful every day for my elbows. Such good elbows they are! Of all of my joints, they are now officially the best. Go, elbows, go.

One puppy story: last week, the puppies got spayed. I was supposed to take them, but Suzanne’s car is a stick shift, and I wasn’t capable of driving just then, so Suzanne took them instead. When she came out with them, she was laughing about how she’d overheard three vet techs cooing over “such a cutie,” which turned out to be Sophie. Almost anytime I walk Sophie around other people, someone has that reaction to her. Random passersby saying things like, “Adorable!” and “Oh, wow, so cute,” and that kind of thing. This almost — almost! — makes up for the fact that she is currently barking at all strange dogs and bicyclists. We’re working on it — we stop walking until she’s ready to behave — but telling her she’s being annoying rolls right off. She knows she’s actually adorable.

Her ridiculous tail — fluffy, tipped with white — should be included in any picture attempting to effectively convey the cute, but this is the best example I had of her ears. Something about the one up, one down is just so charming…even when she’s barking.

Minor accomplishments

Sophie understands chasing the ball, but letting go of it after she’s found it is still very hard. TBH, Bear is a lot more fun to play ball with. But don’t tell Sophie I said so!

Today’s accomplishment was chili: I made it in the morning, ate two bowls at lunch, and then at dinner, I was sort of “eh, whatever, I might as well have another bowl, since I’ve got plenty,” until I took the first bite and then I remembered, “Oh, right, this is really good chili.” I will not have plenty for long.

I didn’t follow a recipe and I am never going to be able to replicate it perfectly, but the key ingredient was a few leftover chipotle peppers in adobo sauce from a can I opened while making refried beans. I’ve been using it (them?) in dribs and drabs ever since — I threw some in some seafood stew last week and it was delicious, and I’m pretty sure I added some to the shrimp I was using for shrimp tacos, also delicious. For a small can, it was a surprisingly worthwhile investment. I suspect a similar can will be living on my shelves for as long as I keep cooking now. It’s lovely to discover an ingredient that’s easy, packed with flavor, and versatile.

The other delicious thing I made this week was spicy tuna for spicy tuna rolls. First I made sushi with canned crab and cucumber — your basic California rolls — and was vaguely disappointed. It was fine? But not exciting and not particularly interesting. I’m not sure why I thought they would be, I don’t have some deep love for California rolls, but I think I wanted to prove to myself that even a California roll would be better home-made than from the grocery store. It was, because the rice was great, but still, it was a California roll. Eh.

The next day, however, I had leftover rice, so I took it out of the fridge in the morning, so that it would warm up to room temperature. Then I mixed fresh tuna (well, frozen tuna that I’d defrosted), with kewpie mayo, Yellow Bird habanero sauce, and sesame seeds, and made a spicy tuna roll out of it. It was excellent. Not just better than grocery store sushi, but pretty close to good sushi restaurant sushi. Yum. Now I wish I could have another one. Fortunately, I can, as soon as I make some more sushi rice and defrost some more tuna.

I will probably not be doing that anytime soon, though, because I have a lot of chili to eat first. Also a fridge filled with healthy vegetables which go bad much too quickly. The hardest part of cooking for one is trying to finish things. Of course, anything I don’t want I can feed to the chickens/throw into the compost pile, eventually turning my rotting produce into delicious eggs/healthy dirt, but I realized recently that I’m not just feeding the chickens.

See, anything the chickens haven’t eaten by nightfall is still gone in the morning. And some things, such as corn cobs, are no longer in the chicken coop. I was mystified by this for days, because the cobs kept turning up on the patio and the puppies kept getting them and chewing on them — Not Allowed! Digestive blockages! Surgery nightmares! — until I realized that rats were dragging the cobs out of the coop in the night. Anything the chickens don’t eat, the rats do. It’s made me decidedly less enthusiastic about my composting. It’s not very environmentalist of me, but my corn cobs are now headed to the landfill.

Today’s second accomplishment: writing a blog post. Oh, wait, no, that’s my third accomplishment. My second accomplishment was actually opening a writing file (the sequel to Cici) and writing a sentence or two. Along the way I laughed at a line I’d written months ago, and for a brief, flickering moment I was reminded that writing is fun. Writing is fun! Or at least reading what you’ve written is fun. Sometimes. Now I just have to get back into the routine of it.

Hey, probably I should give myself some credit for playing with puppies, washing dishes, working on training puppies (we’ve mastered Down but Paw/Shake is still a little bit of a mystery), cleaning up poop and vomit (Sophie, I think, but I’m hoping it’s just a fluke, nothing serious), walking Sophie, feeding Gina, and finishing up some laundry, too. I mean if I’m really going to count ALL my accomplishments. Shine on, self, shine on.