Some Days...

To alleviate the severe shortage of space to lie down in a three bedroom house with a gigantic yard, I bought some more dog beds.

So we've gone from this:

to this:

Meanwhile the three gigantic dog beds in the living room are sitting empty.

Not really how I had envisioned it working out.

"George, Don't Pee On Your Sister's Head!"

The house has been lacking a big dog for the past few years, so I rectified that this week. Meet Georgie:

He's a lovely five year old mumble-mumble-something-Shepherd mix who was looking for a place to live.

I took Ginger over to meet him at his foster home last Sunday,  and Ginger was pretty terrible but Georgie was good, and since I couldn't just swap dogs I brought Ginger back with me and adopted Georgie two days later. Better yet, he was 50% off. Such a bargain!

After a short detour to the Sheriff's Detention Center (Me: "Why do they have razor wire around the Solano County Shelter?"), I signed his papers and then picked him up.

The household has been adjusting pretty well. Georgie's about four times the size of Ginger. She can walk under him without ducking. This has led to a slight problem when they both run to sniff the same thing (which happens constantly on walks). They sniff, Georgie moves forward, lifts his leg, and pees on Ginger's head. Not ever having had a boy dog, I hadn't realized this would be a problem. Luckily Ginger is starting to back up when Georgie lifts his leg, so I think this phase is almost over.

Georgie also eats 4x the food and poops 4x the amount. Let's just say the yard will be kept short from now on.

Most importantly, Georgie is polite to the cats, even when they do things like this:

Yes, that's Ripley plopped in the middle of the one bed that Georgie sits on. He lay on the floor next to the bed for almost an hour. Eventually Ripley gave up and wandered off and Georgie got his bed back.

Another Day, Another Rejection

Remember back in the good old days before the Internet when you had to send a story via snailmail to get a rejection? You would stick some insane amount of postage on a manila envelope with your story and a self-addressed stamped envelope (aka SASE if you wanted to show you knew the cool lingo) and drop it in the box and then three months later you would get your SASE back with a letter saying "sorry, not what we want, try again later".

It's gotten easier. Now you just attach a file electronically (or paste the text into a box) and click on a button. And then the next day you get an email saying "sorry, not what we want, try again later". And then you go to the next website and do the same thing until that story has gone around the world enough times to retire. Then you start the same thing with the next story.

The process has gotten so efficient that it's almost as fast as just sending the story straight to the recycle bin.

It's okay, though. It keeps me amused.

In the meantime I'm working on my Camp NaNo novel. It's moving forward nicely. It's almost time to kill off someone. He's a jerk, though, so I don't feel too bad about it.

Obligatory graph:

Astute readers will notice that my bars are slightly under the ideal trend line. It turns out that sleep deprivation is not conducive for writing. Clearly the only solution for this problem is to quit my job. I mean, eventually I'll make a sale, right?

(The delusion is real with this one!)

While I Was Sleeping...

This is just one of those week in review type posts. Mostly because it was sort of an odd week...

First off, the bathroom remodel is officially done. That means I have two complete functioning bathrooms! Woohoo! I celebrated by not getting up at 5-damn-thirty-in-the-morning over the weekend. Anyhow, it looks nice.

The next item is that I got a short story rejection at 3:05 am. I guess I should care more about the fact that it was rejected, but eh... seen one, seen dozens of them. (No really, I have.) It honestly doesn't bother me anymore. If something ever gets accepted I'll probably stroke out on the spot, so rejections could be seen as a good thing. But 3am? Now I feel bad that someone is going through the slush pile at 3am. Slush pile reader whoever you are, go get some sleep!

I stopped in at the corner market and bought some cookie dough and didn't look at the expiration date until I got home. December of last year. Yes, of course I ate it anyway. Can something with that much sugar go bad? I did, however, bake the dough first, just like it commands on the package. But seriously... isn't there any law about selling completely outdated food items? And more importantly, why do I ever go there?

And finally, Camp NaNo started on April 1st, so I'm once again writing 1,667 words per day. Some of those words are golden. Probably about ten of them, and not necessarily in the order I've put them, but still... golden! I'll try to come up with the elevator pitch for this book by next week's blog. Here is the progress as of this evening:

Until next week...

Mine's the House That is Beeping

Before I forget, here are some tulips that I forgot to photograph a couple of weeks ago:

In remodeling news, the bathroom is one and a half days away from completion, by which I mean they will be finishing tomorrow except for a door which won't arrive until next week. (The company shipped the wrong thing the first time. My designer is not happy with them.)

I think I've mentioned before that as part of swapping out the electrical panel they had to install linked "smokies". The old ones are still in place, so now I have seven smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide monitor in a ten foot diameter area. My house is not huge. I always call it a "1950s tract house", but I think technically it's a "ranch-style" (without the ranch of course). I do have a book on the architecture in my area, so I know that on one side there is a 1913 Craftsman bungalow with a square bay window built on the angle of the front facade with classic tapered elephantine columns with block-shaped capitals and a gabled roof with a central dormer supported by simple elbow brackets, and on the other side is a 1928 rendition of Mediterranean Revival with a gabled front facade and classical front porch with a spiral-shaped column capped with a Corinthian capital, but for some reason the book skips over my house. In fact, my house is purposefully ignored in my neighbor's house's description with "originally this property included the lot to the immediate south". Yeah. There's a house on that lot now. And it has smoke detectors up the wazoo.

Anyhow, with all those smoke detectors I almost feel like I should start a fire or something just to get some use out of them, but I'd probably drop dead from the concentrated sound blast.

Pretend There Is A Picture Of My Lovely Tulip Garden Here

Well, I meant to take a picture of the tulips today because they're just starting to bloom and look really nice. But I forgot. And now it's dark and raining.

So instead here's a picture of Scooter. Isn't he just the cutest thing when he isn't peeing on my stuff?

In remodeling news, the Corian has been installed in the bathroom and I think almost everything is going to be done this week. The electrical panel is supposed to be replaced on Tuesday (unless it gets postponed by PG&E again). The process is: 1) PG&E turns off the power, 2) the panel is replaced, 3) the city inspector does his thing and puts a sticker on it, and 4) PG&E turns the power back on if the sticker is there.

As you can see, having this all work out in one day requires getting both PG&E and the city inspector to come out on the same day. PG&E appointments are made weeks in advance (although they've already bumped it once), and the city inspection has to be set up by 3:30 the day before. If it all doesn't come together I might not have power for over a day.

Keep your fingers crossed...

How To Put Clean Sheets On The Bed (With Cats)

Step number 1: Gather your supplies. You will need a clean set of sheets, blanket, and comforter. Note there is no need to gather the cats. They will magically appear.

(Poof! A tortoiseshell teleports onto the bed!)

Step number 2: Put the fitted sheet on the mattress. Note this step has already been accomplished before this tutorial. That's because I started trying to put the damn sheets on the damn bed earlier in the day and finally gave up.

(This is the most comfortable bed ever...)

Step number 3: Take hold of the top sheet. At this point you should have roughly 50-75% of the cats in the household on the bed. It's actually pretty amazing because there's no other thing in the universe that will draw cats as quickly to one spot.

Step number 4: Attempt to stretch out the top sheet while all of the cats run around and play with each other. Some will wish to be on top of the sheet, others underneath. You may not be able to get the sheet very smooth. Live with it.

(Cat #4 was in the process of jumping off the bed just out of frame.)

Step number 5: Give up on trying to make it look nice and throw everything else on the bed. You're done! Also, this will act as a cat repellent. You may wish to return to step three now that the cats are gone, but that's a rookie mistake -- that will just bring them back.

(All cats have been safely transported back to an alternate universe.)

And there you have your new bed. Enjoy!