Yearly Exercise Binge

Yes, it's December again, which means, first off:

Holidailies! Go check out some other blogs. Most people are much funnier than I am, and the ones that aren't will make you appreciate my writing more.

But also, December is my traditional "time to buy exercise equipment" month. I think it's a combination of the constant darkness, the uninviting outside conditions, and the amount of crap I eat in December. Lately I've been trying to run more, and that's hard to do when the track is a muddy mess and you constantly trip on sidewalks.

I do have an exercise bike and an elliptical, and I've even used them both within the last week, but I do think that running is a more efficient form of exercise. I find it really hard not to expend energy when I'm running.

Anyhow, I looked into joining a gym so I'd have access to a treadmill, but Woodland is a very 8am-6pm type town. There is exactly one 24-hour gym, it's 5 miles away, and it would cost me $100 just to get in the door.

So I started looking online, and there is a huge range in price on treadmills. I don't need a professional version that will hold up for five years in a commercial setting, but I also don't want one that has reviews like "great for walking, but I'd never want to try running on this thing".

My favorite review question

I posted a note in my FB running group asking if people had recommendations, and everyone started saying they loved their $3000 treadmills. Apparently I should have added "for cheap bastards" in my request.

After looking at a bunch of reviews, I might have found one, but then I read a review that said it was definitely going to take two people to set it up and... ugh. If I wanted to let people into my house, I'd invite my friends over.

Maybe I should just build a climbing wall in the living room instead...

Mom, she's touching me! There was much grumbling from the big dog.

Poltergeists

So I've had the two feral cats living in the house for the last however many months, and they've adjusted well. After they both got fixed and vaccinated, I let them have the run of the house. Then I didn't see them for something like two weeks and I was really hoping they hadn't gotten out or gotten stuck someplace.

3 month old photo because I don't have a shutter speed fast enough to photograph them now

After a while, though, it was like I had poltergeists in the house. Everything would be picked up before I went to bed, but I'd come out in the morning and the blanket would be knocked off the couch, or an empty box would be on its side.

Then in the dark I would hear herds of elephants thundering up and down the hallway, retreating back into the fairy kingdom as soon as the light of dawn arrived.

After that I would often surprise them in the kitchen. Gin kept an eye on me and trotted away. Baby Tonic always lost his mind and ran at top speed. One day I went into the kitchen and he jumped out from behind the washer (where I wouldn't have been able to see or get to him), did the Scooby scramble toward me, deflected around me at the last instant, nearly ran into the little dog, made it through the baby gate, then literally bounced off the big dog on the other side before running off into the living room.

I'm hoping Tonic gets a little smarter when he grows up.

Now Gin has gotten to the point where she will stay put if the bulk of the living room is between us. Occasionally she'll even look out the window when I'm behind her. And yesterday I caught Tonic and Ripley hanging out together on the heating pad and Tonic didn't immediately run away when he saw me.

I figure in, oh, maybe ten or so years, they might sleep on the bed at night. As long as I don't move.

Effing Scooter

It feels like it was just a couple of months ago I was saying that with my luck Effing Scooter, the cat that had been peeing on all of my things for sixteen years, would be the one to outlive me. Oh wait, that's because it was just a couple of months ago. Turns out my prognostication skills suck.

Look at this magnificent old dude

When I list it all out, it looks like I've had a run of terrible luck or else I'm a hoarder with a billion cats, but the real problem is that all of my cats were roughly the same age, and that age was "old". In the past year or so, Crow the cat died of lymphoma after briefly being on rabies quarantine, Guido (Crow's littermate) was also diagnosed with lymphoma (he's still doing well!), Ripley had surgery to remove a couple of lung lobes after he inhaled something (he's still doing well!), and...

Yeah, Scooter lost a bunch of weight, and when we started looking for the cause, he had pancreatitis and a mass in his bladder. He was feeling like crap and not eating, and I had to be out of town, so I put him to sleep.

The irony of the mass in his bladder is that if he hadn't been constantly peeing on my stuff (paper! plastic! down comforters!) since he was a six week old kitten, I probably would have caught this a whole lot sooner. Hoisted by your own petard, buddy! Dammit.

Quit bugging me

Anyhow, since he's been gone the house has started to smell a little better. Eventually I'll find all the things he peed on and clean them. I hope. And I can leave packing paper out -- the ferals and Ripley have been enjoying playing with it.

But let's all raise a toast to Effing Scooter, aka Scoo-tay, aka Bubby, aka Bubbaloo, aka Bubbly-do -- he may be gone, but his spirit lingers on. Or else that's the smell of cat urine. Either way, he will be missed.

My favorite Scooter picture of all time

Revenge is a Dish Best Served with Cat Gifs

I'm too lazy to search my old blog posts, but I'm pretty sure I mentioned that at one point my boss annoyed me and I got back at him by texting him something like twenty cat gifs over the next couple of days. (As you can tell, I'm an excellent employee and an overall joy to work with.)

So today, he was having trouble with his phone (and I'm just doubling down on "it was his phone, not the network" here, because if it wasn't his phone our whole department is in trouble because we design and run the network). He couldn't text anyone, and incoming texts were not getting to him.

For a while he was trying to figure out if it had something to do with sending texts to a group (And have I mentioned before how much I hate group texts? Because my boss is the most egregious offender. He sends group texts about everything, and then people start "liking" the texts, which sends me another text. On my birthday they managed to send about forty birthday messages/likes in the space of an hour just to irritate me. I almost blocked all their numbers.)

So today I sent him a test message. And what better thing to send than a cat gif?

Naturally mine was the first one to get through, and then all the other test messages were delivered and his phone sounded like it was a really bad video game for a few minutes.

My theory -- based on all the available evidence -- is that we just need to send him a cat gif to push things through any time we send him a text.

Another thing to know here is that I'm a terrible pet parent -- I left the big dog home alone today without an e-collar, just assuming he'd be good and not chew his stitches out. About 3pm I was starting to have some buyer's remorse on that decision, and I mentioned I was a little worried. My boss asked me to text him when I got home so he would know my dog was okay.

You know where this is going, right?

I figure I can keep this going for another few days (or weeks). There are a lot of cat gifs available...

I Leave You Alone For Two Minutes...

Here was my day:

It started out well. I got up in time to make my 6am run. After two days of steady rain, the track (normally sand on packed dirt) was a bit soft (sand on mud) so my times were a little slower and I was ready to collapse about halfway through, but the big dog and I made it all the way.

We went home, I ate breakfast, and then let the big dog out for a couple of minutes. He does this thing where he bumps me with his nose because wants to go out, then a minute later he wants to come in, then twenty minutes later he bumps me with his nose to go out, and that repeats all day long. I don't have a dog door (because of the cats), so I spend half my life opening doors for him.

Anyhow, I let him back in, I took a shower, and then it was almost time for work. But I wanted to get the Roomba started, so I did a quick pickup of all the cat toys and cords that the Roomba likes to strangle itself with. And I noticed a blotch on the floor. So I grabbed a wet paper towel and cleaned it and realized it was dried blood. Then another bloody paw print, and another, and then some drops, and then pretty soon I decided I needed to go check on the big dog.

He had a cut over his carpus and though it wasn't bleeding any more, it was deep enough and long enough that it needed stitches. (Before you go assuming I'm a great pet parent -- if it had been on his flank I would have ignored it and let it heal on its own.)

So then I took him in for urgent care and -- this is the best thing about having a dog and not a child -- I left him there so they could fix him while I went back to work. When I picked him up in the afternoon he was pretty stoned, which I got a lot of amusement out of. Maybe not $400 of amusement, but close.

The drama queen wouldn't even look at his foot for hours.

Anyhow, we're home and we had to skip agility tonight which is the worst thing ever, and the whining has been pretty intense. Cheddar cheese did abate a lot of the agony though.

Now I just need to find the rest of the blood that has been sprinkled around the house...

Pumpkin and Peanut Butter

Exchanging gifts with my siblings during the holidays seems a little ridiculous when everyone has enough money to get anything they need during the year. And my niblings have so much stuff it feels like I would just be contributing to the destruction of the planet if I got them more, so I usually just contribute to their 529 accounts. I have everything I need (and more), and I don't really want to have to find room in the house for things I don't want. Basically, unless the gift is homemade or something that the recipient wants but can't afford, I think the holiday money is better spent on experiences or just going to charity.

This year, I've decided to make dog biscuits. That means everyone I know with a dog might get a present. And everyone who doesn't have a dog won't. Somewhat arbitrary, yes, but it works for me.

The first batch is from this recipe: https://damndelicious.net/2015/01/07/homemade-peanut-butter-dog-treats/.

Squirrel, bone, fire hydrant

My dogs give them a thumbs up, though I will admit that my dogs aren't super picky. One of their favorite treats these days is the persimmons that my neighbors have been desperately giving away.

These cookies were pretty easy to make, though I might just use the springerle rolling pin next time so I don't have to keep re-rolling the scraps.

At this rate I'll talk myself into buying a Kitchen Aid and a kitchen remodel so I have counter space to use...

NaNoWriMo 2019, or I'm *How* Far Behind?

This year I was going to be prepared for National Novel Writing Month (50,000 words in 30 days). Instead of trying to figure out what happened next through bleary eyes at 11pm, I was going to have an outline of my heist novel. A detailed outline.

And by the end of October, I more or less did. Maybe not all the sections were filled in, but I had characters (WITH NAMES!), I had a vague idea of the place, and I had a list of scenes I intended to write. I even had a pool of names for minor characters, because nothing derails my writing flow quite as quickly as having to come up with a new name. So I was ready. The first day went smoothly -- I wrote a few hundred words over my 1,667 par.

And then I had a family emergency and by the time I was back home and thinking about writing again, it as day 14 and I was 12,000 words behind where I was supposed to be.

For some people that wouldn't be a problem. I have friends who regularly produce over 1,000 words in a 25-minute sprint. They can easily skip writing all week and catch up in a couple of hours on the weekend.

I am not that person.

My average -- non-distracted -- writing speed is somewhere a little over 500 words / hour. I make it through NaNoWriMo every year by putting in the hours. Every single day. I get uneasy if I get a day behind.

And yet I did manage to finish on time this year. I'm writing my strategy down hoping it helps others and also so I can remember how I did this next year.

Light blue line is where I would have been in an ideal world, dark blue line was reality biting back

Failure is an option: I gave myself permission to fail. Obviously there were more important things going on in my life this year than a writing challenge. Adding the stress of "OMG I'm not writing enough!" wasn't going to do anything other than give me insomnia. If I failed then I failed, and that's just the way it was.

Making it manageable: Refreshing the NaNoWriMo stats page each morning was a little scary, because it would say things like "2,650 words left today". I was used to just barely making it through 1,667 words every evening after work. Adding an extra thousand seemed nearly impossible. So I added at least one writing sprint in the morning before work. I also brought my laptop to work on days I was in the office and added a sprint at lunchtime. My goal was to bring the "words left today" at least down to 1,667 before my normal evening writing time.

Word sprints: I'm easily distracted, so anything that helps me focus is key. https://tomato-timer.com/ saved me.  I would start a 25-minute timer and know that everything else (email, Twitter, food, etc.) could wait until it beeped.

Relaxation timer: If I just needed to sit down and relax for a few minutes with the intention of writing in just a bit, I would set the 5-minute timer to remind me that browsing the internet for two hours wasn't going to help things. (I ought to do this more often.)

Write-ins: I'm lucky to have an active group of NaNoWriMo participants in my area, and I made it to at least one write-in every week. I spent some time with friends and we also had word sprints going for 3-4 hours. That really helps get the words in.

If you have tips (for either planning ahead of time or hitting those goals during November), add them in the comments!