dogs Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

Back to Work, Coffee Disaster, and the Heavy Bag

Now that the government has decided to get back to work, we take you back to our regularly scheduled blog. When I wrote this it wasn’t below zero temperatures, so everyone stay warm and safe.

I woke up at 4:00 AM and just couldn’t get back to sleep, the book I’m writing was too loud in my head. I thought I’ll get up, feed the dogs really fast, and get to my desk. Of course, it didn’t work that way. I got to chase one of our dogs through the cold, snowy darkness because he was eating poo in the yard – again. But not all was lost, because when I got the dogs back inside the sweet, sweet smell of coffee greeted me from the coffeemaker. Then I heard the first sizzle and pop, and realized water was leaking out of the coffeemaker. Steam rose as the water hit the hot plate under the coffee pot. I thought at first it was smoke, but just steam, thankfully. The pot was full of coffee, so I thought, I’ll try it. The wonderful aroma wafted up as I took that first sip. It was weak like water that coffee had run by and waved at, and so cool that I could put my finger in the liquid and not be burned.

I still hadn’t fed the dogs or gone to my office. I did a quick video about my morning and posted it online, thanks to everyone who hoped my day would get better. I wanted to let you know that the morning’s coffee debacle was the low point and the day improved. I managed to get some writing done, perhaps not as much I wanted, but some days pages are pages. Celebrate your victory and move on.

But what finally chased the last of my morning crankiness away was going to the dojo for Filipino Martial Arts, (FMA). I normally do Kali which is stick and blade training, but tonight I did Jeet Kune Do, (JKD). I had an hour and a half which I was splitting with my daughter. I never dreamed that mother/daughter bonding time would include the dojo, but it’s wonderful that it does. She did Kali with our instructor, our Sifu, while I did JKD, because she’s a lot newer at this than I am. Sifu trusted me to be self-entertaining, so I stretched and then used padded sticks on one of the heavy bags, but I prefer to use sticks of any kind with a partner, so I got gloves from my equipment bag and started working on punches. I have a tendency to like to want to make the bag move as if it’s all about strength, but it’s not, it’s about form. The strongest fighter in the world will lose if they’re fighting someone with more precise technique and better form. The latter will also keep you from hurting yourself when you’re hitting the heavy bag. Sloppy form means injuries, I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. So I had to keep forcing myself to slow down and be precise, turn my body and not just try to muscle through with my arm and shoulder. But it’s my kicks that still aren’t up to snuff, so that’s what I asked for one on one help with when it was my turn with Sifu. I have some new exercises to add at home to help with hip flexibility. We ended with him holding focus mitts for me while I kicked and punched. My kicks were weak enough at the beginning that he wanted me to kick his thigh so I’d get a better feel of it, by the time we were done he wouldn’t let me kick him, just the mitt, which meant I’d improved. Yay!

I’m reading back over this blog and realized just how much I enjoy FMA. Yes, some of Anita Blake’s workouts in the books are based on what I do now, and some of it is what I did in college or my twenties, like the running. Not sure my ankles and knees will take that again, we’ll see. For now I’m apparently very happy to be doing FMA. I don’t think I realized just how happy until I read this over. I was still pleasantly achy from yesterday’s gym workout, which is weights and cardio, before I even started on the heavy bag tonight. I haven’t worked on JKD this long and hard in months. Somewhere in the heavy bag work with the sweat and the sensation of my body hitting something solid on purpose over and over I let go the anger that had started to accumulate with the morning’s coffee debacle. The negative head space had haunted me all day, I just couldn’t shake it until that moment in the dojo tonight. The last of the bad feelings and the dark head space floated away on the feel of my body doing something so physical. Sometimes no amount of mediation or yoga mudras work for me. I need something harder hitting, literally. It helps clear my mind, soothe my spirit, and add strength, dexterity, and speed to my body. What’s not to love?

First Dog and First Book

The picture with this blog is of my original copy of Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. As you can see it is a much loved book. I’ve had the book for about forty years, but that’s not why the book looks so beaten up. I bought this book through the Scholastic Book Club in junior high. I think I was twelve. I got off the school bus with my new book in my armload of school things. I ran towards the house eager to start reading this new adventure, but when I got inside the house I couldn’t find it. I searched every inch of what I’d been carrying in my arms, including my sweater, but the book was nowhere to be found. I finally looked outside and found my dog, Jenny, chewing on something in the yard.

I ran out and, of course, Jenny was chewing on Charlotte’s Web. I grabbed the book from her and I was furious. The cover was ripped off, there were tooth marks all over it. The book was ruined! I yelled at the dog, and can still remember how angry I was with her. I marched back inside with my damaged book and she stayed out in the yard where she always was because my grandmother didn’t believe in indoor dogs, or indoor pets for that matter. I was able to read the book, but every time my fingers touched the tooth marks it made me angry all over again. I was livid about the book being damaged for a long time. Fast forward a little to the serial dog poisoner that was killing in our small town. The coward even put poisoned meat inside fences and cages where the dogs never got out to bother anyone. If I’d been the grownup in my life, I’d have brought Jenny inside to live with us and put her on a leash – always – until the poisoner was caught. But I wasn’t the grownup in my life, and my grandmother only allowed Jenny inside the house one day a year, on Christmas morning to get her presents. You can guess the rest, one morning we discovered Jenny stiff with her body stretched out in a painful bow. I know enough about poisons now that it was likely strychnine, which is a painful way to go.

I dug the grave for my dog in our yard. I ground was hard, or maybe I’m remembering other pets and other graves dug. It all sort of gloms together in my mind, digging in the dirt of the yard to bury something I loved.

In the years to come I would value this copy of Charlotte’s Web all the more, because it holds the toothmarks of my first dog, the only dog my mother would ever bring home to me because she would die the summer of my sixth year. The marks that had irritated my fingers when I touched them before were a touchstone that comforted me and reminded me of things I had loved. No, I suppose in the end this book reminds me of things I still love. You never forget your first dog. The one that was beside you on the first adventures out of the yard. The one who roamed the woods at your side. Jenny even risked her life to protect me, taking on the most fierce dog in the town. One so dangerous that even his owners knew it and kept him on chain, or caged, except with them. He got loose one day and tried to attack me, but she threw herself at him. The other dog was almost four times her size but she never hesitated. This was her child, her pack! The big dog’s owners heard the dog fight and my screams and came running. They dragged the other dog off and miraculously Jenny wasn’t hurt. He’d gone for the throat and her thick wooly coat had saved her. But I can still taste the fear on my tongue when the dog attacked and the surprise when my little dog that had never picked a fight in her life launched herself at the other animal. Ironically, the other dog would be one of the first victims of the poisoner, who put meat into its outdoor caged run.

Would I have read Charlottes’ Web so often if touching it hadn’t reminded me of my lost dog? I don’t know, but I do know that this was the book where I first began to figure out how a good sentence was constructed, how a descriptive paragraph worked, how a story is built. For decades I would read Charlotte’s Web once a year in the autumn. Eventually this, my first copy, got so fragile that I bought other copies to read so this copy could be saved. But when I think about reading Charlotte’s Web, this is the book I think about reading. This texture of toothmarks, and tears, that one rip. I know the feel of this coverless book in my hands better than almost any other book I’ve ever read, save perhaps one. This book helped make me a writer, and those precious teeth marks helped me learn another invaluable lesson. That there is no anger, no fight, worth being truly enraged at someone/something you love. It’s not every book that can teach you two life lessons, and its not every dog that can help you learn them.

You never forget your first dog. I’ve had other dogs since, but once I got to be the grownup in my life and had a way to make choices, all the dogs have been indoor dogs. I would never lose another pet because I could not protect it. As I trace the bite marks on the pages, I wonder would I have loved this book so much if Jenny had not chewed it up, and then died, so that it was my remembrance of her? Since this book was the first one that began to teach me the trick of being a writer, would it have happened without everything that I think of and feel when I touch this book? What goes into making a writer? How does the magic happen? I don’t write about dogs much, or pigs, or clever spiders, and I certainly am not a writer of children’s stories, but I know, absolutely know, that this book was critical to my development as a writer. For the first time, I wonder if maybe my first dog, Jenny, was more important in that development than I thought. I’ll keep this book forever, because a writer never forgets that first important book, and a girl never forgets her first dog.

A Dog always Breaks your Heart, at least once

I’m sitting in the sunshine on our patio listening to our water garden sing down the stones, with our pug, Sasquatch in my lap. He’s been my office dog since he was twelve weeks old. He’s fourteen years old now, and will be fifteen this summer. He’s the oldest dog I’ve ever owned from puppy to now. We had a rescue, Jimmy, that we got at age ten, and he made it seven more years, but we never saw him when his paws were soft, and he was all uncertain of the world. Jimmy was decidedly himself when we rescued him on his last day from a kill shelter. Sasquatch was all puppy uncertainty as we let him sniff his mother good-bye and took him with us in the car. Sas helping us on game night.
He is an old dog now, our oldendogger. I can’t imagine waking up without him in the house, but I know it’s coming. Even now his heart beats frantically against my hand, the rhythm of it is unsteady and unfamiliar. I know his heart beat almost as much as I know my husband’s, and this is not it. We took him with us to lunch and sat outside at a table with him. The four of us took turns holding him so the others could eat. Yes, he got scraps and probably got more chicken than he normally does at a meal, but that’s okay, roast chicken and a little bit of chips won’t hurt him. He’s always been a good dog, easy going, letting us use his paws to do the YMCA song by the Village People when he was a puppy. Yes, I’m that kind of dog person. If you don’t do silly things with your dogs then we are not the same kind of dog people and you may want to skip the rest of this essay, because much sentimentality may ensue.
I wrote the above on a day when we thought Sasquatch would pass on his own, in his own time, but it turned out to be an upper respiratory infection and antibiotics helped him get better. Every day after that has been a gift, but today is the last day. Today will be Sas’s last day. He’s stopped eating, even his favorite treats cannot tempt him. Any of you that have ever owned a pug know that a pug that will not eat is a very sick pug indeed. Pugs will eat until their stomachs explode, no joke, but Sas is only taking water, lots of water. He continues to lose weight, and for the first time ever he has a wasp waist, stylish if you’re a Weirimer, but pugs are meant to be square, not round, not fat, but blocky and solid. When I pick him up now he is too light, I can feel his bones and tendons under my hands, against my arms. He is wasting away and we cannot save him.

Our puggy boy.
We knew something was wrong, but finally got tests back a few weeks ago that is was cancer. If he’d been a younger dog we would have risked the surgery to remove his spleen and take a bigger sample of his liver, but the chances of him surviving the anthestia was very low, so we chose to treat the symptoms, but not actively treat the cancer. He’d already been losing some control of his bowels, but there are doggy diapers, not sure how he felt about his curly pug tail sticking out of the ridiculous things, but he took it like he takes most things, patiently, good naturedly, trusting that his humans know what they’re doing. I hope we do. I know we try to be worthy of the level of trust he places in us.
His back legs have been giving him trouble for awhile, but now they are going out from under him. He doesn’t so much lay down as collapse. He woke my husband, Jon, and I up about every hour from 1:00 AM this morning. Jon got up twice, and so did I. The first time I came back to bed I put Sasquatch up on the bed, which I knew was a bad idea, but I wanted him to sleep in the bed one more time, he loves it so. By the time I could no longer sleep about 5:30 he was deeply asleep on the corner of the bed. We had two of our younger dogs with us, too. Mordor and Keiko, both Japanese chins, good naturedly went out every time we took Sas out, but this time they were solidly asleep, too, so I left them with Jon and went downstairs to start tea, breakfast, the day.
Unless the veterinarian tells us some miracle later today, I know this will be Sas’s last day, because I called and made the appointment when I got up with him about 4:00 or 5:00 this morning. His vet isn’t on duty today, but she won’t be in until Friday, and it’s Thursday, we can’t make him suffer for another day just for a different doctor to help us, it wouldn’t be fair to him.
Jon texted me about thirty minutes later that Sas had thrown up. He’s been doing that for a few days now. By the time I came upstairs with new paper towels he’d also lost control of his bowels on the bed. Why wasn’t he in a doggy diaper? Because I knew this was his last time to sleep on the bed with us and somehow I just wanted him to be as comfortable as possible, and the diapers are for our benefit, not his, so I didn’t put it on him. I started cleaning up the blanket and Sas, Jon took Keiko and Mordor downstairs, and then came back up to help strip the bed. The bed clothes are in the washer now. Sas is asleep at my feet in my office with me, which is one of his favoritest places in the world. He’s always loved coming to work and has spent many a dawn and late night at my side while I wrote. I’ve already carried him to his favorite dog bed in the family room, and put him in his favorite bed here, but he’s chosen to lay on the floor which he almost never does. I even put a dog bed under my desk so he could use it, but he chose the floor at my feet. Keiko is in the bed, because chins are just as comfort loving as pugs. Mordor stayed in the kitchen with Jon which is unusual, because both the chins love to come to the office. Heck, the two big dogs are learning to love it, too, and there are days when I have all five dogs curled around me as I write. The two big dogs are with Genevieve and Spike in another bedroom. We all discussed it, and there’s no need for all of us to have this kind of disrupted night, but more than that we still don’t have a bed big enough for four adults and five dogs, and last night was about Sasquatch. He needed his corner of the bed, and just the little dogs, because sometimes the new bigger dogs are just too physical for him now.

Sas helping me write in better days.
Pugs are very stoic dogs, they don’t show pain much, so we have no way to be certain how much pain Sas is in, but he’s started staring into space in that way that some animals have when something hurts as if the pain is something they can see off in the distance, or maybe they see the end of the pain, I don’t know. This morning we carried him downstairs every time, because the stairs are beyond him now. For his last morning in the office with me I carried him up the stairs which I hadn’t had to do since he was a very little puppy and couldn’t quite manage them safely on his own. Now, as our oldendogger, he can’t manage them safely again.
Our daughter, Trinity, is home from college, so she’ll get a chance to say, good-bye. She got to dog sit Sasquatch this long weekend past while the four of us went on a retreat. It gave her some serious quality time with Sas. The other four dogs went to the puppy spa, but we wanted Sas to be at home with familiar things and people.
I’ll sit on the couch with him later today in his favorite spot which is a combination of mom’s lap and the corner of the couch near the arm. He’s on his third couch for this lifetime and he always chooses the same spot no matter if it’s the original green couch, or the red couch, or the new gray one. They all have arms and a spot where he can tuck himself in, so he does, with, or without a lap to snuggle into, though Trin informed me that he found her lap a suitable substitute, so maybe it’s not mom’s lap, but just whoever sits in his spot. Maybe to Sasquatch it’s never been him sharing my spot on the couch, but him sharing his spot with me, or whichever of his people was sitting in his spot.
Tomorrow his spot on the couch will be empty, his favorite dog beds filled by the other dogs, no eager pug face waiting for treats, cuddles, pets, and to curl up beside me. We will be a pugless household, for me that will be a first in almost thirty years. I don’t know how I will bear it.

New meds helped Sasquatch to recover himself for a few weeks after I wrote this blog. He never had another night where he threw up, or lost control of himself. He started eating again, though only soft food, and only certain foods. He liked cooked green peas mixed with his meat, not sure why, but we fed it to him, because that’s what you do. But now, we are back to him refusing all food, even cooked peas and chicken. For the first time he’s not even drinking water, so that’s it. We might find another round of miracle meds to help him limp on a few more days, but to what purpose? There comes a point with a beloved pet where you have to ask yourself, am I doing this for them, or for me?

One of the last pictures I took of our boy.
I’ll carry Sas over to the office one last time, because he can’t get over here by himself anymore. It’s not just stairs now, but even walking across the floor is hard for him. We’ll all say good-bye today, and this evening we’ll take him into the vet and it will done. I’m trying to be very unemotional about it all, but what I wrote earlier is very true. We will be a pugless household by tomorrow and even with four healthy, wonderful dogs remaining to give doggy kisses, beg for belly rubs, play with their favorite toys, fill the dogs beds, go for walks, its not the same. For all of you that have found “your breed”, you know what I mean. YOUR BREED, should always be in capital letters, because it is a profound bond not just to a particular dog, but to all the dogs everywhere that look like your dog. Genevieve and Spike are members of the Church of Dog, but they are new to our denomination of Pugdom. They brought two wonderful mutts into our lives, but neither of them has found “their” breed for certain. Jon, Trinity, and I have been pug owners for a lifetime, literally in Trinity’s case, and tomorrow we will not be. Japanese chins are a close second for us, but we always saw us with chins and pugs, never without our snoring, snuffling, wrinkly faced, rolling-gaited, curly-tailed, pugs. It somehow makes losing Sas feel even more awful, because there is not another pug to come home to, once we say, good-bye to our fuzzy pug boy.
The End: All five of us went with Sasquatch on the last trip to the vet. When the time came, I held him in my arms, made sure my skin was close to his nose so he would have my scent, and know for certain that I was there. He went very quickly, so fast the vet was surprised. She double checked his vitals, but he was gone, so ready to go that he didn’t even wait for all the anesthetic to be administered. She used it all, just in case, but Sas wasn’t there. He was already somewhere else, where nothing hurt, and he could be reborn to a time when he was younger, healthy, happy, his cast iron stomach back and puggish appetite back so he could be the shape a pug is meant to be which is barrel shaped. Multum in parvo, much in little, a big dog in a small package, true of every pug I’ve ever known and certainly true of our Sasquatch.

New Blog – Our Anniversary, our dogs, and Enjoyment

“What are we going to do tonight, Brain?”
“What we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!”

People keep asking, “What are you doing for your anniversary?”
“What we do every night. Love and enjoy time with each other!”

We are spending part of the night watching Gotham & Sleepy Hollow so the dogs can enjoy couch time with us, after all Sasquatch is thirteen this year, exactly as long as we’ve been married, so every year he gets to celebrate with us now is a bonus. We got him as a puppy that first year, so it seems fitting that our olden dogger gets some cuddle time along with Keiko and Mordor, who at six and two are newcomers to our pack.

Time to take the dogs out one more time, and then Jon and I get to go celebrate the rest of our anniversary just the two of us.

New Blog – images from the weekend

Sasquatch enjoying the summer weather with me this lovely weekend.

Jon and I had a couples’ day out Saturday at Asymmetrical Solutions. We took their, Basics of Tactical Shooting. Eight hours in the Missouri heat was grueling, but worth it. We learned an amazing amount. The picture is my Springfield Range Officer getting it’s well deserved & needed cleaning.

We managed to eat healthy this weekend, even fixed our lunch ahead for the tactical class. Roast turkey and a salad of heirloom tomatoes, carrots, colored bell peppers, and fresh leaf lettuce.

Dawn Chorus

I did not sleep well, at all, last night. I’m still sick from the virus and sinus infection that I caught sometime last month, which went undiagnosed. Yes, I went to the doctor. I’ve slept most of the last few days. So much, in fact, apparently I can’t sleep anymore. My mind is too full of ideas, goals, things I need to do so other people can do their job to keep resting. I made myself sleep until 5 AM, but after that I allowed myself to get up and start getting dressed. If I felt wretched, then I’d go back to bed, but if I could manage it I wanted to be up.
In the bathroom as I dressed, I could hear the dawn chorus of the birds at their spring best, that spurred me on, energized me. Now, of course, the energy is ebbing and I’ve got a fine tremble in my arms as I type this, so perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve done, but . . . I called circle to the music of the birds in a choir all around me through the open windows. The cool, spring air is still caressing my bare legs in the skirt I’m wearing. I’m wearing orange and black for Halloween colors, which makes me smile, and because orange is the color for the navel chakra, and I’m wearing citrine set in gold, because those are colors that are good for the solar plexus chakra. These two chakras have been depleted, or blocked for weeks and now I know why. Sometimes I can keep pushing on sheer will power and guts, but eventually I pay the price, this illness is that price, but I push, that’s who I am. I push myself and I push those around me, not push them around, but I always want the best for and from those closest to me either in my personal life, or business. I want us all to be happy and to be the best possible us we can be, I don’t apologize for that, it’s who I am. Never apologize for who you are if it works for you and is your true self.
I called circle and entered sacred space with the moon still shining overhead in a veil of clouds, and the spring air soft on my skin, every bird in the neighborhood singing their hearts out like a blessing in the air, and darkness still thick enough that I had to light my candles carefully in the dark, so I didn’t trip over our three small dogs. For those who don’t know, I was lighting a candle for each element – earth, air, fire, and water. I also light a candle for spirit, and then invoke God and Goddess. If you haven’t guessed, I’m Wiccan, some of us use the term witch, but I do not. I find the word is too dramatic for most of the people here in the Bible belt and explaining that our path of faith is Wiccan, as they are Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, works better than other terms. Some words are hard to separate from their past associations like witch, or inquisition.
The three small dogs were very happy that I was up and wanting to come over to the office and meditation area. They know they get treats and which drawer they’re kept in, and if they were bigger dogs they would so have had it opened and burgled months ago. I’ve caught our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, worrying at it, and trying with mouth and paws to open it. Our pug, Sasquatch, awaits his orders when they need muscle, like ramming doors that will not open. It’s given him his umpteenth nickname of Rhino. Sometimes Rhino finds doors too solidly closed and you hear a thump, and he staggers himself, but mostly he gets the doors in the older parts of the house to open, but most doors open promptly by their human staff, if they’re allowed in that room at that time.
I watched the first glow like a cut in the darkness that allowed the light to seep through, and then dawn spread in a pink, mauve, purple, lavender neon extravaganza lighting up the eastern sky just behind my eastern candle and I was able to greet the light, praise God and Goddess, though dawn always feels more feminine to me. I asked for their help in healing, and being positive while I healed, and finding the lessons that I’m supposed to be learning during all of it.
Now, the dogs are over with our daughter Trinity, who’s job it is to feed them, and I’m left to bird song and the first sounds of my neighbors rising for their days. The sun is a visible ball of fire through the trees like an orang-yellow spotlight and the sky is soft blue with clouds. I’m finishing the first tea of the day in my new chipmunk mug, and feel better than I’ve felt in two weeks. I can see the two silkie bantam hens grooming and searching for insects in the grass of their yard, and I am feeling all together domestic and biology loving, and that always makes me want to write. For those who are new to my books, or who know me only through the mirror of my books, you will find more about nature and animals in my blog and personal musings than violence, sex, vampires, or werewolves, or wereanything. I work in a world that is incredibly violent, but I try not to live there. I need the other sides of myself to nurture the parts that are drawn to the violence, and as for sex, I still haven’t decided how much of that to put here, or anywhere on line. I simply can’t decide my comfort level, so I leave it alone for the most part in these personal writings. If I find my comfort level at some point that may change, but for now there will be more of writing, ornithology, faith, and puppies in my blog than sex and sadism. If that isn’t what you want there are other writers that seem more than happy to share their most intimate details with you, or share the intimate details of others, but I am not one of them. I still feel that intimate reality is a gift to be shared with those who actually get to see you naked on purpose for happy nefariousness, not something to simple titilate and tease for more readership. Which is weird since I put more details in my books during the sex scenes than pretty much anyone out there, but that’s my fiction, and I’m comfortable with that. Don’t get me wrong, I love sex, but sharing my personal sexual details with the world, still not sure that’s a good idea, so – more of blossoms, than blow jobs, in my blog. Yes, that is a tortured reference to Dickens.
Now, I hear crows and they’re letting me know they’ve found a hawk, or perhaps the fledgling great horned owl that our pair raised this year, and I want to see what they’ve found. It sounds more like their, “We’ve found an owl, than we’ve found a hawk,”. Grabbing my binoculars . . . owl!

Carving words out of flesh

The moon hangs in the sky glowing like white-gold. I can see it as I write this, and I see the beauty of it, I do. I’ve found a new band that I’m loving, Imagine Dragons. I’ve got their album up full volume roaring around me. All three dogs are scattered through the office asleep even with the happy thud of music. I was never allowed indoor pets as a child, and having the dogs fulfills a wish I’ve had since I was very small.

I’m in the middle of a great scene with Anita about to wade into a fight between the police and the undead. We have zombies! Except for the jeopardy to my imaginary friends it’s a great scene, the kind I used to love, but I’m hitting one of those moments that just happens when you’re writing a big book. I don’t know if it’s the size, so that you begin to despair at every finishing the journey, or something else. I just know it always hits somewhere between 300-500 pages when I realize that 500 won’t see me done. Yay, for you guys, more to read, but I still gotta write it and my deadline does not change. So, on one hand I’m having a great time fighting zombies on paper and seeing new facets of my characters as they rise to the occasion, but on the other hand the amount of pages stretching before me . . . it’s a little daunting. But between this sentence and last our Japanese chins woke up and invited me to play and it’s impossible to be unhappy after playing on the floor with two adorable dogs that happen to be yours. Sasquatch, our pug, watched from his bed confident I would pet him after the rough housing was over. His expectations were fulfilled, lazy ol’ pug.

I am resolved to finish this scene tonight. I’m not sure why but I feel if I get past it that some magical page barrier will be past. This feeling is usually right and once past a certain point the book gains steam and flows. I’m really looking forward to that part of the writing process. Right now, I’m stuck in the part of writing where it feels like I’m carving the words out of my own flesh. It hurts, it leaves a mark, and you begin to worry about scars, but I’ve learned that if I just keep carving eventually the right symbol is painted on my skin and the muse and I are one again. Until that time I have the moon, music, the dogs, and myself. Sometimes the solitariness of my job is not my favorite part, especially when the dark is populated with demons from old issues, but then one of the ways I exorcise my demons is by writing them out in fiction. And no, before someone asks, I have never really had to fight zombies. Sorry, fiction.

Joy Requires Effort, or Finding My Wunjo

I wrote this a few days ago, but never got to post it, so here it is,one of my lessons for the year. Enjoy.

I got up just past dawn to write on the new book, Affliction, but I’m only now getting to my desk at 8:07, so what was a doing for the last couple of hours? What was so important that it kept me from my desk and work? Glad you asked.

I had to take the dogs outside before I dared to bring them over to my office, so I grabbed leashes, and found the lower third of two of the leashes wet – one was very wet. I smelled my hand and it wasn’t water. We have three dogs, two males, I knew it wasn’t water, and in fact if it had been it would have been worse, because that would have meant a leak in the ceiling somewhere, that would be worse than Sasquatch our pug having peed on the leashes, really that would be worse, but standing there with dog pee on my hand and two useless leashes I wasn’t thinking that logically. How do I know Sasquatch was our perpetrator of pee? Because for some reason Mordor was still in his crate. When my sister, Chica, left for work she must have put him back in, and let me say his crate will need to be cleaned out later. *sigh* I grabbed extra leashes from the back of the pile and finally managed to take the dogs out. I then cleaned up the pee underneath the leashes on the floor and on the pair of snow boots that have been sitting there for months. Why didn’t the snow boots go somewhere else? I have no idea, they aren’t mine. *deep breath* *let it out slow*

It was a beautiful chilly autumn morning, almost cold enough to see my breath, and there was a flock of birds in one of the tall trees. I think it might have been cedar waxwings, one of my favorite birds, but I didn’t have binoculars so I couldn’t swear to it. Normally, I’d have taken the dogs in and run for the bionocs, but I knew I had to clean the leashes first, so I soaked them in soapy water, applied anti-urine stuff to them in the hopes that the dogs won’t now think they are markers to be remarked forever, then I washed the leashes again, marveling at how our twelve-year-old pug had gotten this high up on the dangling leashes. He’s spry for his age apparently. *grumble* The leashes are now hanging in the downstairs bathroom to dry. By the time I got down the flock of maybe cedar waxwings had vanished, of course.

I was grumbling to myself, “I bet James Patterson doesn’t have to clean up his own dog mess.” I was being childish and a very grumpy bear, so when I got to my office and treated the dogs with their favorite snacky bit, I decided I’d mediate and get back into the headspace to write.

I lit my candles, I knelt on the meditation cushion, but was still too agitated to meditate, so I reached for my runes, the Norse runes. I have several sets made of different types of semiprecious stones. I find often when I can’t still my mind and heart that picking my rune for the day helps me find that inner quiet, that inner strength. Yesterday’s rune was rose quartz and I was going to put it back in the velvet bag and reach for another one, but in picking up the bag I spilled all the runes out in the storage area underneath my altar. I thought, “Really? Really!” Well, yes, really the universe seemed to say, and I proceeded to hunt the spilled runes through all the other paraphernalia underneath my altar.

Rose quartz is a heart stone, and for me it’s always about emotions and heart issues, as I hunted and searched trying to make sure I didn’t lose one of the runes it was not lost upon me that I’d just dumped all my “emotions” and was having to gather them back up. I had to laugh, because I love the Norse pantheon, and Odin especially has a sense of humor, or of the obvious, and this was such a lesson. I said, “Thank you, Odin.” I found a stone I hadn’t worked with in months, but it’s box held one of the pink rune stones, though the stone is black and holds a star within it. Black star diopside, in fact. Most of the stars in my life have come from very dark places, and it also represents the blackness of space full of stars and I need to look outward more and not narrow my vision down quite so much. The mundane things have to be done, like cleaning up after the dogs, but I can’t let the mundane mire me into it, because I’m supposed to be following my star. That was one lesson, but the other was more important. I couldn’t find two of the runes. One Mannaz ended up still being in the bag with two other runes that hadn’t even fallen out, but the one I couldn’t find was Wunjo. I found a whole unopened bag of rose quartz rune stones that I’d forgotten I bought as a gift for someone. I thought I can use the Wunjo from this, but I wanted my Wunjo, my rune.

The meaning of Wunjo is joy. I’d lost my joy, and as I sifted through everything underneath my altar I was determined to find it. The rune turned out to be somewhere I’d already looked, I swear, but it was my altar and like altars is a place of mystery and miracles, so one misplaced stone isn’t that surprising. I found my Wunjo, my joy, but it was upside down, reversed, which means the opposite of it’s normal meaning. I had found my joy, but I wasn’t joyful, and I wasn’t. Spilling the runes had calmed me down, but I was still grumpy and prickling with all the small issues that had delayed me this morning, and they were small problems. It’s funny, no matter how much death and destruction you live through, there will come a morning where the mundane problems make you insane again, and then you have to remember, or be reminded of your joy.

We have had Sasquatch for twelve years. He’s the oldest purebred pug I’ve ever owned, and he’s my third one. The other two died by the age of nine from heart complications, or some other genetic defect. Every day extra with our olden dogger is a blessing.

Our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, make me laugh and roll around on the floor with them more than any other dogs I’ve ever had.

I get to be in my beautiful office which I helped design. The trees are turning their autumn colors gold, orange, scarlet, as if the world is beginning to smolder. The view is great. There was a time in my life when the kitchen table, or a type writer stand on wheels was all the office and privacy I had to write, and now I have this huge room of my own.

I get to work on the twenty-second Anita Blake novel, Affliction. My first novel, Nightseer, was supposed to be the first of four novels, but my editor at that time rejected the second book, because the first one hadn’t sold enough, as is typical of a first novel. I remember when I got the first contract for the Anita Blake novels, the first one was complete and they’d bought it, but they gave me a contract for three books. I remember thinking, “Well, at least I know there will be three books in the series.” I am writing the twenty-second novel! That is so cool.

I have eight books in the Meredith Gentry series, and yes, there will be a ninth, but Merry and I are negotiating with each other on what that next adventure will be. I was pretty grumpy that my main character wasn’t cooperating to the degree that I had to miss a deadline and wait for her to talk to me again, but to have a fictional character so alive in my head that she argues for her life and her happiness is an amazing gift. I have faith that when Merry and I finish our lover’s quarrel/feud that the book that comes from it will be better than anything I could have come up with on my own without her input.

I’m a writer, all I’ve really wanted to be since I was about fourteen. How many people get to follow their dreams and be successful at it? I mean, that’s pretty cool when you think about it. Sometimes I get caught up in the deadlines and the work, and forget just how amazing that is that I am a #1 New York Times Bestselling Writer, and I have exceeded every goal I ever had a as a writer. How amazing is that?

Two huge crows have come to sit in a tree near my office. One is calling out over and over, I thought there was a hawk, because that’s what the call means. Apparently, there is no hawk, but it is time for me to get back to making pages on Affliction. You think it’s just two crows that happened by, well maybe, but then again, maybe not? There is more magic around us every day than most of us realize, and there is more joy to be had even on the grumpy bear days. I’m off to honor my Wunjo, my joy, because part of what the rune means is that joy in the face of whatever may come. It is going smiling into battle, not because you know you will win, but because you get to go and try yourself against the odds, against the others, the elements, all of it. Go joyous into your day, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s your day – yours- own it, love it, find your joy, just remember sometimes you have to work for it, hunt for it. Joy requires effort to find it sometimes, but it is so worth it.

Spiders, knees (human, not spider), dogs, book, and new ideas

This week so far:

Found brown recluse spiders in kitchen and one in the hallway bathroom. Exterminator has laid extra traps, but I am unfortunately allergic to most pesticides. It’s not an infestation of the scary buggers like we had about seven years ago when we found them by me being bitten by one. (That was painful and just not something I ever want to repeat.) Then Jon and I had to go away for a week so they could fumigate the house and not poison me. We did research for Blood Noir in Asheville, North Carolina, and even sick from the spider bite we both still loved the town. Need to revisit someday.

Jon’s knee that he had surgery on about five years ago is acting up. I’ve taken him to two doctor’s this week. Just learned early today that next week he’ll be talking to a surgeon. 🙁

Our Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, both have kennel cough, even though they were both vaccinated against it. Apparently, some dogs will get a mild case of it even with vaccinations, or sometimes because of it, but still better than the life threatening full blown illness. Our pug, Sasquatch, who is 11 years old, is fine. Pugs are the tanks of the toy dog world on most things. 🙂 Chins are quite a bit more fragile in a lot of ways. They tend to get sick more often, are more delicate for injuries, and how do you keep their food out of all that lovely, long hair? I swear Keiko rolls in her soft food like some dogs roll in noisome things in the yard. She ends up wearing her food, and since she has medicine in it, the texture on her curls is interesting. We love our chins, but pugs totally spoiled us with their comparable ruggedness and wash and wear ease of grooming. Still planning to have more chins someday, but first we need another pug. We all miss the dual snoring.

In the midst of all the doctor and vet visits, I have actually been trying to write more on the next Anita Blake novel. I announced the title at DragonCon this year, but never put it up on the blog, so here it goes. The next Anita novel is entitled,”Affliction.” Micah is called back home by his estranged family, because his father, a county sheriff, has been attacked and is terribly injured. Anita and Nathaniel are going with him for moral support and to meet his family under very trying circumstances. It’s an interesting book to be writing. I can’t wait for you guys to finally read it!

I had one day this week that I wrote six pages on, Affliction, and four pages on something brand new that demanded to be written. It came out of nowhere and made me go, really? It’s brand new, but I guess it contains at least two different ideas that I’ve made notes on before. I just never thought about combining them, and there were several new ideas added to the old ones, and it just worked. But first to finish the book. I don’t even know if the four surprise pages are part of a book, or a short story? It’s cooking, but whether it’s stew, soup, or something else, I won’t know for awhile. It’s kind of nice creatively to not know for a change.

Best Laid plans . . .

The morning started off with me checking off items on my To Do list, and about to head to office for finishing up the latest chapter and then . . . we’re at the vets. Mordor, our youngest Japanese chin, danced on his hind legs for his treat in the office, then yelped loudly and was suddenly limping badly. He finished his treat with his rear leg out at a bad angle. Keiko and Sasquatch, chin and pug respectively, finished their treats with no sympathy at all for their wounded comrade. We hoped it wasn’t bad, but when Mordor walked he was putting no weight on the leg. *sigh* So, Jon and I are at the vet with our pup. I’m beginning to remember how a multi-dog household can complicate things. The dogs are totally worth it, but the To Do list is totally out the window, until we learn something about our fuzzy boy. He’s sitting on Jon’s lap now, smiling his chin smile, and he’s totally stopped shaking because no one had done anything bad to him. He’s a very social dog, and is willing to believe anything will be fun eventually. When he came to us he was so under weight you could count his ribs, but now he’s filled out, and his coat is coming in longer and fuller, and he’s just a pretty dog.

Did we remember to eat breakfast . . . um, no.

Mordor’s kneecap slipped out of socket this morning, and went back on it’s own. Our pug, Phouka, had this in both knees as a young dog and eventually had to have surgery, after that she was fine. Vet says, Mordor needs to lose about two pounds. He’s not overweight by breed standard, but apparently the more slender, dancer like build of the Japanese chin will not take weight gain. I do remember reading in the breed information that they can have issues with hips and knees if they gain weight, but we’re used to pugs. They can put on a great deal more weight and be perfectly healthy. Phouka’s knees problems weren’t about weight, but the socket where the joint fitted into being too shallow. Vet wants us to give Mordor a week to heal up any issues with the knee and then next week we start with more cardio. More cardio for everyone!

If loosing a couple of pounds and putting some muscle around the joint clears it up, then great. If not, we’ll eventually have to have surgery for him, but here’s hoping that exercise will do the trick. It’s likely that it will, and now we know that what we’ve learned about pug physique doesn’t really translate to chin physique. Lesson learned, we have little track stars, not just miniature heavy weight boxers. Different “workout” routines for different body builds, true for people, and true for dogs.