Dog Days

This past week, Harlequin Intrigue author, Kathleen Long spoke at the Valley Forge Romance Writers' meeting. She confided that writing had been difficult these past few years with her baby daughter. Mornings had been lost, her prime writing time but she hoped, her daughter now going on 3, she might start getting some of her time back. Most of us assured her that she would get her mornings back, eventually.


I'd never been a morning writer until recently. My girls are now at the age where it can be hard to get them out of bed. I can ignore their wake up times in order for me to get another page or two or sometimes three written. Although this often leaves us racing to the bus stop. To be honest, I often get them up so late we end up driving to school. Not a good habit now that gas is topping $4 a gallon. But that, I suppose, is the price of art.


Last summer, in order to avoid the insanity of wanting another baby now that my girls no longer allow me to baby talk them, sing potty songs, or pin them down and make loud raspberries on their bellies, I got a puppy. Well, two puppies actually.


Not a dog person, I tried to prepare myself for the intense work a dog can be compared to a cat. I like cats, prefer them really. They are cute, playful and with one toss into the litter box they are trained. They come and go as they please, are soft on the lap and make wonderfully comforting purring noises when scratched behind the ears or under the chin. But they are hardly something you can pin down and tickle, not without painful consequences.



Did you know most vets won't declaw a cat? In the UK it is downright illegal and no one will do it.


So last summer I found myself getting up two and three times a night to let the puppies out. I was sleep deprived, though seriously amused by the antics.




A year later and the antics are getting old. Well, sometimes. The Boston terrier, Tallulah, cracks me up whenever I look at her. Buddy, the very handsome border collie, can be very charming. However, in the past half hour I've tried to write I have gotten up no less than five times. Buddy decided to pull a rather large hunk of stuffing out of the dog couch, so called due to the fact that it is old, half eaten, and remains simply for the dogs to hide rawhide in and jump on. I tossed him outside, picked up the hunks of foam and sat down in the kitchen to continue writing.

Buddy then barks at the glass door beside my sunny kitchen writing spot. When I ignore him, he jumps up, pulls the door handle and pushes, saunters in and proceeds to sit on the Boston and tries to fit her head into his mouth.



I get up, close the door, lock it, and remove Tallulah's head from his mouth.



I sit down, start typing, at which point Tallulah leaps into my lap and starts enthusiastically licking my face. Buddy is jealous, barks, and starts chewing on my knee. I get them both off of me to find Buddy back at work on the couch...and on it goes. It is now well past the time for me to get Emma up so I can get her to day camp, supposedly giving me the day to write.



Before we had dogs, we had two cats and a ferret. All of whom would followed me around all day, but were never much trouble. I only felt a bit crowded and "hounded" when I would open the bathroom door to find cat, ferret, cat in a line, noses pressed to the base of the door waiting for me to emerge. I didn't really get all that much done then either.


The dogs are quiet now, mostly because Buddy is outside hunting chipmunks and Tallulah has found something nasty and unspeakable to eat (tomorrow I'll be taking her to the vet -- again). But right in front of me, outside the glass doors is a small birdhouse shaped like a caravan. Emma painted it and hung it in the early spring. Two black capped chikadees moved in and raised a some chicks. They've gone now. But two goldfinches seem to be thinking of moving in and I can't help but watch them peer in, fly back and forth to the garden gate and back, in and out. As soon as they leave, a small brown bird (I'll have to ask my daughter Kate, the walking field guide, what type of bird it is) begins to examine it. An Open House? On a Wednesday?

And now I have nothing completed on my novel, and can only wonder if our chickens need water and let out. I am now an hour late getting Emma up for camp.


And I wonder why writing a pulp romance, the sort that many of my friends churn out 3, 4 and sometimes 5, 6 times a year has taken me nearly 10 years ...