Who am I?

When I look at my Facebook profile, my list of interests includes things like dogs, yoga, Buddhism, martial arts, travel and reading. I think about the people who knew me when I was in high school, and how these likely come as a surprise to them. They must think, “Boy has she changed. That’s not the girl I used to know.”

Even reading and travel, things that seem like they’ve always been a part of my life. I didn’t do all that much traveling between the ages of 16 and 19, and not only had I stopped reading for pleasure in high school, I didn’t read very many of the books assigned to me in English class.

Not that there’s anything wrong about having different interests when you’re 32 than when you’re 16, but for weeks I’ve been wondering what the teenage me would have listed as interests. I couldn’t think of any! It was like I didn’t have any interests! I wasn’t into anything.

I liked movies, but who didn’t? Today, finally, I remembered that I was into acting and theatre and such. So I might have listed, “Shakespeare and showtunes.” And you know what? I’m sure those don’t jibe with Rob’s impression of me now.

Strangely compelling

A What Not to Wear Marathon.

I turned it on as background noise while I applied the 2nd and 3rd coats of merlot paint, which I am so happy dried darker than the first coat yesterday, because that was positively raspberry. It’s still more plum than I envisioned, but I can live with it.

Anyway, I haven’t been able to change the channel or turn off the TV or leave the room. I’m not feeling inferior, like I did when I got sucked into Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style, because I know I’m working my WWU sweatpants and seriously oversized sweatshirt. It’s so oversized, it doesn’t even fit Rob. It’s meant to go over his impact reduction suit.

Oh, but I feel bad for some of these folks, when Stacy and Clinton lay into them about their fashion sense, because so often it’s tied into their body issues or whatever. And then there are my heroes, like Lynn, who refused to let them cut her hair (even though I really wanted to see how it would look) and Erin, who is so funky and bizarre, she makes me laugh. She’s on right now. I can’t wait to see her transformation.

Waaargh

Is it me, or is November just not a creative month? I’m finding it next to excruciating to sit down and make up a fictional scene. If that’s redundant, it’s because I’m trying to cough up 50,000 words by the end of the month, and that goes against my journalistic training to use as few words as possible to convey meaning.

Here’s an amusing anecdote, which is so totally going in the book. Isis broke away from me yesterday during an attempted off-leash training session in a high school parking lot. We’ve worked in the parking lot dozens of times, and I always clip her little light line to the collar, so I can step on it if she tries to escape.

So we’re practicing “drop on recall,” in which I back up, call her to me and then tell her to “down” before she gets to me. We do this a few times, with me putting her in a stay and then backing up and calling her to me.

Until she decides not to come to me, but to race around me at freeway speed and head straight for the soccer field. Sometimes on Sundays, when no one’s around, I let her run wild on this field. So naturally, she thought she was allowed to do it on this particular Saturday, even though there was a soccer game in progress.

It was a Spanish-speaking league, and fortunately the players were mostly good sports, as they yelled “Perro! Perro!” at each other (at her?) while she raced between them on the field intercepting the ball and running with it.

It was mortifying. And hilarious. The futbol players couldn’t even get close enough to grab her, for what seemed like an hour, but was probably about 7 minutes. The longest 7 minutes of my life.

Drat

Got a speeding ticket tonight. This sort of thing happens to Rob every other month, but I haven’t gotten one since Sept. 2003. I was on my way to a Weird Al concert then, so you can see why I might have been in a hurry.

Today, I was driving leisurely home from a dog class in Seattle. Wasn’t even aware I was driving 80, until a car pulled behind me in the fast lane, and I looked at the speedometer, thinking I better move over because surely I am driving so slowly this person will want to pass me.

But then that person turned on his damn red and blue lights.

Isis didn’t care for the inconvenience of being pulled over on the freeway and having a stranger talk to me through my window. It roused her from dozing on the passenger seat with her head on my lap. She barked shrilly at the officer while he gave me the instructions for responding to the citation. To his credit, this did not visibly bother or offend him.

I thought of the officers who fatally shot someone’s out-of-control pit bull that snarled at them from a car while they questioned its owners. I guess Isis’ police dog lineage makes her a less likely candidate for that sort of demise.

Update

About that post below… Just had to get that off my chest. I’m up to 26,775 words now, where I should have been yesterday. So I’m only a day behind.

Moving forward…

As in, quitting for tonight, but I’ll write again tomorrow.

Thinking about quitting

Isn’t that awful? I was keeping up very well with the novel-writing this month, and hit 25,000 words on the 14th, a day ahead of schedule. But then I didn’t write anything again until tonight.

I have a general idea of where to take the story, but not a lot of motivation to drive it there. I know I should just keep plugging along. But really, does anyone care if I write another 50,000-word novel? Clearly I’m not all that invested in it, if I have no compulsion to move forward.

Not neighborly

I’ve really had it with the jerk dog owners who share our trail who don’t keep their dogs leashed!

Today, one woman politely grabbed hers by the collar, when she saw me try to put Isis in a sit. As she walked by, she said there was another little dog up the way.

When I saw the little dog, I couldn’t believe myself when I called out, “Is your dog leashed?”

That owner leashed the little dog and said as they walked by me, with Isis thrashing about on her harness, “Not friendly?”

Wish I’d responded with, “Not law-abiding?”

Unproductive

You’d think with all this time away from work that I’d be making great progress on my novel.

Not so much.

I haven’t been in the office since Wednesday. I had a field trip Thursday and was supposed to go on an excursion Friday, but decided to be sick instead.

I’m still sick, too sick to be creative, but well enough to buy paint and do the library walls. (which I really, really enjoyed. Rob was resistant to the change, but come on, how could he deny me something that brings me such happiness? I’m still giddy about my indigo and camel bathroom. He admired my imperfect first coat yesterday by saying, “You do a good job.” *Beams*)

I keep thinking I’m on the mend but then develop some new symptom, like the chest wheeze or sweatiness while painting.

See? Even my blog sucks.

Cough. Cough.