Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

The Writer’s Process Blog Tour

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I was asked to do the Writer’s Process Blog Tour by Linda from 2 Brown Dawgs.

I turned her down.  I figured no-one wants to know how I come up with the silly posts I write.  Besides, I pretty much told everyone most of my ideas come from the dogs on a walk.

Then Pamela from Something Wagging This Way Comes invited me to do the tour.  Pamela indicated I was writing on a couple of different fronts and she’d be interested to know what my process was.

Hmmm, I never thought to do the tour about the book I was writing, but I felt super bad, I mean I’d already turned Linda down and I just didn’t feel right.

So I chatted Linda up and she said she was perfectly fine with it.  So here I am doing the Writer’s Process Blog Tour, but being the little rebel that I am, I’m going to write about my book writing process.

What am I working on?

I’m currently working on my first book, or do you call it a novel?  Whatever it’s called the damn thing is taking forever!!   It’s a comedy/mystery/action book set in the beach town of Emerald Isle, North Carolina.

I love walking on the beach with my dogs.

Emerald Isle is on the Outer Banks, we had such a lovely time there.

Why do I write what I do?

The story just started rolling around in my head.  Sort of wishful thinking I guess, since I love Emerald Isle and would love to live their some day.  Imagining what your life will be like is the first step to making it happen, isn’t that what they say?

How does my writing process work?

I started this book close to two years ago for NaNoWriMo and worked hard core at it for the full month.  At the end of the month, I had about 36,000 words.  It burned me out bad, and I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again for about 16 months.

But a few months ago it started rolling around in my head again.  I feel like my most creative time is early morning, just after I’ve walked the dogs and poured myself an Irish coffee.  I usually pick up where I stopped and it seems to come naturally.  There are times though when I have a thought about an entirely different scene and then I just go with it  For me the natural progression of the story is just flowing.

BUT it still remains to be seen whether I can get it published or not. 🙂

That’s the end of my tour, but in order to keep it going I’m supposed to tag three more bloggers.  I believe that most of you have already completed this tour, and my friend from The Dog Park said she was interested in participating.  

I love The Dog Park, I think I’ve been reading it for close on two years now.  I love how she calls her dog, Our Best Friend (or OBF), when she wrote about how worried she is that OBF will get sick and she won’t have the money to pay for treatment, I knew exactly how she felt.  When she shared that she was getting a divorce and had to break it to her children, my heart broke for her.  She has a way of writing that totally makes you feel like you’re sitting down with your best friend over coffee, sharing your deepest, darkest secrets.  

Yes, I really love The Dog Park.

Only she wanted me to tag her other blog, Opinons Opinions, but here’s the kicker, she hasn’t written in this blog in like two years, so I can’t really tell you what it’s about.  I can only guess it’s opinionated.  

Oh AND she won’t let me share any pictures either.  But according to Pamela at Something Wagging, people have a tendency to look like their dogs.  If that’s the case, I’m guessing she looks like this.

OBF

OBF

Although I’m thinking she doesn’t have quite so much fur. 🙂

So We Have This Snake…

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Neither Hubby nor I care for snakes.  Last year Sampson, Delilah and I came across a small garter snake on one of our walks.  I screamed, “Oh Oh” then “Leave it” while every hair on my body stood on end for at least five minutes.

There it happened again just thinking about it.

So when the Hubby showed me the photo of the snake in the wood pile, well you know my reaction.  I said it had to go and he said it ate spiders.  That’s a big payoff for me folks.  So now we have this snake in our wood pile.  The wood pile is off the deck so it’s a safe bet that Nagini (as I’ve named the snake) and I can live separate lives. Which is exactly how I want it.

And yes, as some of you pointed out Nagini is larger than most garter snakes I’ve seen and yes we know he eats more than spiders.  (For the sake of this article I will refer to Nagini as he.  More for my piece of mind then anything else, because the thought of a female making more snakes in my wood pile is too much for my little mind to comprehend.  Although I do love the idea of a female in a ‘wood’ pile, if you get my point. 😉 )  In fact, I’m betting Nagini has been helpful in cutting down on our mouse population.  No complaints on that front either.  Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the neighbor’s cat recently though…

For reference we have a large back yard and right now it looks like a jungle, so I’m fairly certain Nagini has been eating very well.

Nagini's feeding ground when he's not in the wood pile.

Nagini’s feeding ground when he’s not in the wood pile.

 

Hubby seems to be getting used to Nagini, in fact I took a picture of him outside working in close proximity to Nagini just the other day.

Brave or crazy? You be the judge.

Brave or crazy? You be the judge.

 

I was safely up on the deck taking pictures while Hubby was inches away from the snake.

After one of our bug infested walks I said to Hubby, “I was thinking of trying to clicker train Nagini, then I could put a leash on him and he could walk with us and eat all the bugs.”

Hubby responded with “You could wear him around your neck and he’d snap, snap, snap” and he made a motion of the snake moving from one side of my head to the other.

Let me think about that for a sec…”Um No.” Come on!  It’s a freaking snake!

On Thursday the guy came to spray our yard for ticks and apparently Nagini does not care for the smell.  He vacated his spot on the wood pile.

We thought, he’ll come back.

So Friday I went out to check after I got home.  Safely from my spot on the deck I peered over at the wood pile, but I couldn’t see Nagini.  I leaned over a bit and thought, that might be him.

And then I had a very scary thought.  I thought, maybe I can go down there and lift the tarp with a stick and see if the snake is there.

I know right?  WTF was I thinking?

I walk down from the deck and I could feel the hair on my arms standing up just a little at the thought of my boldness.  As I walked past the rack of already cut and stacked wood I saw something black out of the corner of my eye.  I screamed and jumped before I realized it was just the top of the rack.  It was at this point that I realized two things.

1) Nagini could not be seen on the wood pile

2) I wasn’t going to lift the tarp

I went back inside to wait for Hubby.

When he came home we both went outside and he said, “He’s not there, he’d be right there on that piece of wood.”

“Well maybe he moved somewhere else” I sighed.

Hubby lifted the tarp and moved along the wood pile.   “No he’s here.”

“Where?”

“Right here.”

“I can’t see him.”  Of course I couldn’t see him, he was on the far side of the wood pile at least 25 feet away and I was on the deck.

Hubby lifted the tarp a little higher and I leaned over the deck a little more and there, I saw him!

Hubby said, “I think he’s sleeping.” Then, “He’s not moving.”

And then Hubby reached out and touched the snake!!

“Oh my god!  Oh my god!  You touched it. ” I squealed, running for the house rubbing my arms to get the hair to lay flat. Nagini slithered further into the wood pile.

A few minutes later Hubby came inside, I was still beside myself.  “You touched it, you touched a SNAKE!”

Hubby said, “I have to use the bathroom.”

At which point I babbled something like, “Make sure to wash the snake off your hands before you touch your snake with your hands.”  Or something like that.

And then Hubby turned, looked right at me and licked his finger.

I lost my shit.

After my hysterical screams of “Oh my god, you’re disgusting, you licked a snake”  yadda yadda yadda Hubby said, I touched it with this finger (he held up his pointer) and I licked this finger and he flipped me the bird.

Yes, Nagini has become a source of amusement around our house.  Where do you find your humor in your daily life?

Troll-In the Dungeons

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“Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall, his turban askew and terror on his face.  Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore’s chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, “Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know.””

He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.  (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J. K. Rowling, 1997)

Okay so there’s not really a troll in my dungeon.

Actually I don’t really have a dungeon.  I do have a basement, but there’s no troll in there, only my mom.

Unless there’s something she’s not telling me, there’s no troll.

I know what you’re thinking.  What in the hell does that have to do with a dog blog?  Has she lost her freaking mind?

I suppose the answer to that would depend upon who you spoke to.

This post actually has nothing to do with trolls or dungeons.  It all has to do with our wood pile.  I just wasn’t sure you’d read the post if I told you what was in the wood pile.

The story goes like this.

Thursday after work I took the dogs for a walk and Hubby went outside to cut some wood.  When we came back from our walk Hubby said “Look what I found in the wood pile.”

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Hubby said he lifted up the tarp covering the wood and there it was.  He poked it with a stick and it slithered under the wood pile.  Yesterday when he lifted up the tarp, it was back again.

Hubby says it’s a Garter Snake.

I said it needs to go.

Hubby says it won’t mess with people or pets, he also says it’s eating spiders.

Well then.  As long as it’s eating spiders, it can stay.  As long as it leaves me and my dogs alone. I mean really, what’s one snake vs how many spiders in a pile of wood?

I’m really not so worried about it bothering me.  If you’re a betting person, odds are pretty good that I will never approach the wood pile again.

I’m not so sure about the dogs.  They keep going over there and sniffing.

Every time they head out that way I tense up.  But I grab my camera too. 🙂  If they do discover it, hopefully I’ll have pictures.  Unless I’m too busy screaming and running.

Would you leave a Garter Snake in your wood pile?  Would you go near a wood pile with a Garter Snake?  Inquiring minds want to know.

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