Nov/081
It happens in 3’s
What a last couple of days. Currently, I’m running a fever, going through a kleenex box an hour, making sure to not continuously bump a self-inflicted stab wound that’s got my left hand all wrapped up and trying to keep sane in a house with a new puppy, a jealous old one and two people just trying to relax for a minute.
Not that I’m one to complain usually but I must have said something about Fate’s momma that got me in his crosshairs.
It is pretty comical in a way though. I started feeling a little off Saturday and then we brought home a new dog which had made me forget about the aching head and runny nose for at least a day. Out of pure guilt, I decided Sunday to run to Petsmart to get a nice little cage to give Zoe a place to her own and brought Koda with as a “Hey, sorry about the shock to the system” trip. That amount of guilt right there talked me into buying him a new toy and when we got to the car, he was incessant on getting whatever tennisball like toy out of the plastic bag without delay. Grabbing my barely used swiss army knife, I went to cut off the thick plastic strap holding on the paper backing and underestimated the give, putting a long blade straight into my palm underneath my left-index finger.
So, yeah. Imagine me, 6′8″ running out of my car bleeding everywhere and basically diving into the back of my Jeep to grab a white sheet I had laid down to keep the back area clean. This wasn’t some 1 foot wide sheet, it was a full double-sized bed sheet with a 40lb cage stacked on it that I had just bought. There’s me, in front of a parking lot full of PetSmart patrons, with blood all over my shorts, shirt and hands wrapping a 10 foot long sheet around my left hand swearing quietly to myself.
I’d imagine there’s a few people that said under their breath “This is why I hate the city”.
Keeping in mind I’m about 15 miles from home, with my dog in the car giving me a what the hell just happened look, I knew I had to go to ER but that would take an ungodly long wait based on my vast experience with waiting in ER lines. So, I had to drive Koda back home, drop him off so he wasn’t forced to wait in some crappy parking garage for 4 hours after just watching his master bleed all over the damn place. I haven’t asked yet what answering the phone must have been like for Nicole as I’m driving home, a bed sheet on one hand, explaining to her what I had done.
To make a long story short, a half an hour drive trying to find exactly where the entrance to the ER is at St. Joseph and a one hour ER wait got me in the care of a very witty doctor. Thankfully, he and the rest of the ER staff had a good sense of humor over the large man that had come in, the victim of PetSmart packaging and an overly sharp Swiss Army knife. One large stich, some decent exploratory on the spot handy work by the doctor and his scaple got me a pretty sore left hand that made this one of the hardest blog posts to write.
My poor delete button.
Not to mention I have the worst head cold I’ve had since I was a kid that isn’t showing any sign of letting up and a new puppy with the bladder the size of a dime, I’d like to think I’m holding my own pretty well given the situation. I’m sure Nicole would have something to say in relation to that statement though.
I just hope I feel better in the morning. There’s very little resting that gets done when you’re staying home with a new dog and her jealous older brother. Hopefully some more sleep will knock out this fever and my cough/disgusting nose problem.
Nov/082
Insert Name Here
Yesterday we went and brought home a new addition to the apartment. So far, she’s a stark difference from Koda in terms of behavior. Koda was, and is still, a furry Evil Knievel with the personality to back it up. Our new little girl though is incredibly patient and maybe a tad bit mellow. That’s not to say she’s not giving us a new appreciation for hard wood floors however. I mean, she’s like a walking sprinkler system.
We picked her up yesterday at an adoption drive put on by the Colorado FurBabies. She was, along with her 4 siblings, literally dumped in an overnight bin at a high-kill shelter in New Mexico. Thankfully, the program we adopted her from makes trips monthly to bring back dogs that are Death Row there, which included our newest little girl. The great thing is, they’re put in foster homes until adopted so while despite my burning desire to adopt all of the ones there yesterday, it was nice to know the ones that didn’t get adopted went back to Foster homes instead of a cage and a waiting list.
It got me thinking about how much I care about dogs. Not in the, wear a sweater with a knitted dog face on it sort of way but in the way that I find so much fulfillment in the fact we helped save a dog from being euthanized by freeing up a spot with a foster to bring back another one. While I didn’t get much sleep, Nicole getting much less, and the fact I got myself a rather nasty head-cold yesterday and have a new appreciation for how well trained Koda is, it’s a pretty happy occassion.
Now, it’s just the task of figuring out a name for her. She’s a mix of border collie, shephard, lab and ninja I’ve come to conclude so she’s got a lot of clever in her eyes. Nicole’s adament about not making her name too girlie (Princess Cupcake) or crazy (Malibu Barbie).
I’m pretty sold on Artemis, Greek Goddess of the Hunt.
Of course, Koda is still figuring out what the deal is. I’m sure he was thinking life was perfect without a new addition. So far, he’s been playing the big brother, doesn’t really think she’s cool, takes her toys just to let her know he can role. Figuring by mid-week he’ll accept her and not view this as a coming apocalypse in relation to attention.
Wonder if she’s peed while I wrote this…
Nov/082
National Attempting Novel Writing Month (NaAtNoWriMo)
There’s a misconception, even with myself, that I have mild ADD. I can see why that conclusion comes up so often when people, myself included, evaluate my behavior. The list I’m sure at this point would be huge in terms of the evidence that could be presented in support of that deduction but there are crystal clear moments that occur now and then when I realize there’s a deeper truth to who I am. That truth really seems to center around the way my inner-self operates.
What might be alleviating or terrifying to most people is that I’m constantly playing out little storylines in my head. Now, it’s not to say I’ve been reciting War and Peace from beginning to end over and over again. More accurately, I dream up different scenarios, characters, stories and the like on a constant basis whenever my mind has a moment to stretch. The issue there is that it’s usually a new story every single time. Perhaps over the course of a certain duration, the character, plot and setting intermixes but for the most part, it’s like an improv show constantly restarting in my head.
Thing is, I never thought that was unusual, and perhaps it isn’t. It doesn’t distract me in anyway I like to think or infer that I have some neurotic issue, I hope. It’s merely that, when applied to how people perceive the external me, it might be misunderstood. It’s what I’ve determined provides me a well of improvisation that I feel I’m talented at and as well, the reason I feel I’m well versed at creating ideas on the fly, if not randomly. Thing is, while the fact I have a sort of library inside my mind of random little ideas I’ve sewn together over the course of a lifetime that allows me to use them at will, it also means things become a little hard to focus for me when I’m tasked to put that creative energy to a complete task.
Writing a novel would be a fine example of that. As I’ve said in the past, one of my longest dreams has always been to be a writer. Not for the fortune and fame that 1% of all writers accomplish but simply to allow myself to make a story real in such a way that others could share in it by simply reading it from start to finish. Knowing this, for the last years, every time the month of November has rolled around, there’s been a burning desire to put myself to task and finally start, and perhaps finish, one of the stories I’ve had in between my ears for so long. This year was no different and I decided on October 31st that it was time I stopped putting it off.
Hard part is, while I have several stories already dreamed up, the process in simply picking one to put to paper has almost become paralyzing. I’ve been so curious about my issue at hand that I’ve done some research to see if that’s a common problem. While I definitely feel that there’s a sort of Writer’s Block happening, it’s not in mind the standard definition of it. I have material, full material organized in my own way throughout my inner-notebook but for some reason, simply attempting to write the first paragraph becomes crippling for me. There’s almost this fear that I’m not leaving well-enough alone; that if I put a story to paper that I may risk discovering I have no talent for it, or that even odder still, that I’ll ruin the story in some fashion.
There’s a sense of ridiculousness then with all of that in mind that I spend words explaining my inability to forge words. Even moreso, it’s nearly 6 days into November and I’ve but wrote a sentence yet which starts to pull heavily at that same “ADD” I entertain as it tells me to make better use of my time rather than wasting it trying this current interest. That there perhaps is what truly makes me define myself as having the affliction is that I have a very demanding will at times that constantly encourages me to entertain it in some fashion be it through watching a movie or building a house.
Trick is, I desperately want to create stories that can be shared with others. There’s a passion there I’ve known for a long time and as I grow further into my thirties, I worry life itself will start to dictate what my dreams should be rather than what they really are.
At any rate, I just needed to relay it to my blog so that I at least put that anxiety somewhere for now in the hopes that releasing that frustration may allow me to finally just move past it and begin without fear of failure or success in this.
In other news, I do think Nicole and I may be bringing back a second dog this weekend. It’s just a matter of finding one.