Monthly Archives: November 2014

creative focus

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I need to narrow my creative focus. I’m too all over the place. It’s overwhelming.

I started with writing. I’m good at it, but it’s hard for me. I have a pretty decent manuscript finished, and ideas for a couple more, one started. I have a re-write project I could sign on for.

When I went back to school in 2011, it was because Mr Moth suggested it. It was because I realized, with my stalker dead and my youngest starting college and my husband employed, I could go back and finally get the degree I allowed myself to become derailed from in 1985. I chose Graphic Design as a major for three reasons. (1) No math requirement. (2) Photoshop, yo! And (3) I thought I could use the skills to maybe design my own covers and make my own ebooks, on the chance I may someday decide to self publish.

Halfway through the first year of Graphic Design, the school developed a brand new curriculum called New Media, which is audio, visual, social media, web design and development–basically everything you need for digital marketing. Like Graphic Design, it’s a business degree. I really wanted to jump ship, but by that point I was also invested in setting an example for my youngest, in not giving up. So I stayed the course, got my degree in Graphic Design, and then signed up for New Media. They even wrote a special curriculum guide to cover the second degree, allowing credit for things I had already taken, even if they weren’t quite exactly the same courses required in the second major.

I did have to take Business Math though…

Anyway, I now know how to do so many different creative things. Also, I know there are things I don’t know how to do, but now that I know they exist, I would like to learn them. Digital painting, for example. I am learning to shoot and edit videos, although photography has always been something I enjoyed, and I think I still prefer it.

However.

I miss writing. I miss it veddy much badly. And while lack of time is very much a factor,  I feel like the creative demands of the programs I’ve chosen sap my creativity to the point there’s nothing left for storyteling. But when I am done, if I were to take a creative-type job, I’m guessing there would still be very little to nothing left.

I’ve accepted the fact that I’m never going to crochet again. But I still want to take photographs. And I want to make graphics. And draw.

I also need time to refill my tank. (And there is another post coming very soon, I think, just on this topic alone.) Reading, sitting on the deck, dog things, family things, browsing the second-hand stores. Vacuuming! I like for the house to be clean so I can take pictures without worrying about the sty in the background. I also like knowing where things are; it saves time. I want to spend time with my family, including my husband, which I almost never get to do anymore.

So, in summary, there are many things I need to do, and many things I want to do, and just not enough time (and lately energy) for them all.

I am going to have to narrow my focus. Decide which creative outlet I want to pursue and focus on that. I could maybe do three things, but more likely only two, and one of those is going to be writing because telling stories is what I do.

I don’t want to, though–narrow my focus. I want to do everything!

Sigh.

Narrowing focus is like choosing a shelter dog. You know you’ll love the one you pick…but what about all those others? I don’t get more dogs because I like to focus my limited resources on the ones I have, but. But. But what?

I’ll never be really good at any one thing as long as my limited resources are spread across so many potential creative fields, is but what.

Did I sigh already?

Well…SIGH.

the whateveritis in our garage

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We caught the WhateverItIs; it is a WhateverItIs no more.

I suspected a raccoon, mostly because I didn’t think cats, squirrels, or possums could pry the lids off food-grade five gallon buckets of dog kibble that I can’t even get the lids off of half the time, and also because I’ve actually seen neighbor cats in the garage. (And once in the kitchen.) But I never heard any cat noises, not even when Kelly got hurt.

Adding to the doubt is the fact that none of us have ever seen a single ‘coon in this neighborhood in the going-on six years we’ve lived here. (Nor a ‘possum for that matter.) We smell skunks quite often, to the point that I call this neighborhood Skunkridge at times.

Adding to the fun of this week (which events included my accidental overdose on my medication, due to which I am still feeling like death in a bag) was that our visitor, the WhateverItIs, had gone from the garage to the attic, and possibly into the walls. The dogs would just randomly start barking at the walls, or racing through the house whining at the ceiling. And Kelly’s bark would be that full on terrier YARK that people–including me–hate, like a railroad spike through the head, possibly more so when you’ve poisoned yourself with diabetes pills.

I started to worry, because there’s this one wall behind the tub that Artemis the Ckatten got into, and followed it down into the basement’s drop ceiling, crashed through, and landed amid an avalanche of ceiling material, on Mr Moth while he was doing homework. So in between trying to do my (hideous, kill me now) video assignment–not so easy when [a] all the neighbors are using their leaf blowers right up until they put them away and then get out their snow blowers, and [b] dogs are breaking out into random barking sprees, and [c] you’ve poisoned yourself and can’t breathe.

We really didn’t want the WhateverItIs in the house.

Mr Moth asked me if I had any suggestions and I suggested a box trap, and he said he didn’t know where to get one, and I said I didn’t either, and then he thought of Tractor Supply Company, which I always call Quality Farm and Fleet because once your company name is registered in my brain it will never be changed, I’m looking at you too Revco and Lawson’s. So he went and got a trap and we baited it with Oliver’s slightly crusty gooshy fudz leftover from morning. Mr Moth somehow finagled the whole thing into the attic entrance (it’s not a real attic, more of an access space).

We also had some discussion about how, if he didn’t catch anything, he would dis-arm the trap before he went to bed because we didn’t want anything caught for a long period of time out there with no water and it’s ten degrees, ugh. Also he was pretty sure we were trapping a cat. I was pretty sure we weren’t. But neither of us was completely certain.

Forty-five minutes after trap deployment, Kelly YARKed so I got up and went to the door, opened it, and then heard the trap close. I hollered, “You got something!”

It took some wrestling to get the thing out of the attick, but this is what we caught:

Some time ago Cobie caught a turtle in the yard and I took it out to a pond I know of and let it go, and to my surprise the turtle made an about face and hauled ass away from the pond and toward the tree line. Mr Moth took this critter out there and turned it loose and it streaked away across the frozen water. I think–I hope–it is a good place for raccoons, I see a lot of road killed ones there, but I think that is more a factor of the booming population than that the road is particularly bad. There’s water, and trees, and hopefully this ‘coon can make a living there.

However, I am not a huge fan of raccoons, and this one is presumably the varmint that hurt Kelly to the point she had a seizure. I realize she would have killed him/her if she could, so no hard feelings, but yanno…you hurt my dog and you ain’t even paying rent, so Mr/Ms Raccoon, you gotta go.

It looks bigger in the photo than it is. It was actually about Kelly-sized, and she weighs about 20 pounds.

Last night was the first night in I forget how long I didn’t get awaked by dogs barking at something in the ceiling, so hopefully this was the only squatter.

sightings

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My mom placed her Aldi order. She knows I don’t really have time to do that, but my father, who like me is a “little bit Asperger-y” (except he’s a lot Asperger-y) really loves their vegetable soup and eats it every day for lunch, and he also really wants to have two kinds of Aldi crackers, and their brand of margarine in the yellow tub (not the brown). She likes their baked potato chips, and sometime a can of the low-fat mushroom soup, which I also like. It’s somehow creamier than the full-fat kind.

Anyway, I was zooming toward the family home (in the next county; I came here to escape Dead Ex Stalker Husband) and I saw a fox. A red, red fox. It was the color of the stripes on a ginger tabby cat, with various shades, plus accented in white and a tiny bit of black. It’s bottle brush tail was standing straight up. It was taking a crap several yards off the side of the road.

I think I saw a couple of gray foxes once, many years ago, but I have never seen a red fox alive. I see them as roadkill occasionally. Lately roadkill makes me cry and I’m pretty sure someone is going to come revoke my half-breed redneck card if I don’t knock that shit off. But this fox was definitely alive! Quiveringly alive! And red! So very red! It was glorious, I say!

One red fox taking a crap by the side of the road = one moment of grace in a week full of crap.

And then there was another.

On the way home I saw a white tail buck. He was galloping up the road toward me. I hit the brakes. He kept coming. A car–or cars, not sure–behind me blew their horn; in the twilight I don’t think they could see the deer. He was not particularly close when he veered off into the brush on my right, his left. But he was close enough for me to judge his rack was almost as wide as my van, holy toledo. Magnificent.

I am not going to say where I saw either animal precisely, because while I have no ethical objections to hunting for food, and have eaten venison before and would again, I am not going to snitch out the location of this tremendous deer that gave me such a moment on a day when I so desperately needed it.

I saw a bigger buck twenty years ago, at the intersection of Rt 36 and Upper Valley Pike. Standing there under the blinking traffic light, looking quite frankly haughty. We stared at each other for the longest time before he turned and departed. I didn’t actually see where he went, just the turning and then poof! He was gone.

This concludes my wildlife report for today.

a scary critter adventure

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Something has been getting into our garage.

The way the house is laid out, there is no door leading directly from the house to the back yard, so the dogs go in and out through the garage. I don’t like the arrangement much, but on the other hand, it creates a kind of safety valve, an airlock but for dogs–doglock. But I am lazy (not to mention lately also dizzy) and so when I am home and awake (and sometimes not awake) the man door stays open so I can just open the door from the kitchen to the garage and the dogs can charge out gaily and terrorize their back yard. This saves me having to traipse out there in my house shoes or bare feet to open the man door.

But something has been getting into our garage.

At one point I knew the neighbor’s cat was getting in out there, because I saw it. It had climbed Berta (the van) and was lurking in the rafters out there. In fact, here. Have a photo.

cat in the garage rafters

But lately something has been getting into our garage and tipping over five gallon buckets full of dog food. Those things are heavy. And whatever it is has removed impossible-to-remove lids on at least two occasions and made a huge mess, forcing us to relocate the dog food to the workshop, where so far it has remained unmolested.

Wish I could say the same for Kelly.

They hear whatever it is, and go crazy. I try to warn WhateverItIs before I let them out, and give it time to take shelter, but a few weeks ago it didn’t move fast enough. Maybe it thought I was kidding. But for whatever reason, it didn’t, and apparently Cobie and Kelly caught it, cornered it, or something, and all hell broke loose in my garage.

It was roughly one a.m., of course.

There ensued all kinds of yelping and squealing and barking and nails scrabbling on cement, but no noises that sounded like they might come from WhateverItIs. In short order the noises all rushed outside. At first I figured WhateverItIs had escaped, but minutes ticked by and the dogs fell silent and I started to think they had killed it, WhateverItIs.

Then I had to get shoes on, because, oh did I forget to mention, it was storming. Sheets of rain, and huge flashes of lightning in both sheets and bolts, and window rattling thunder. This is why we were still up in wee hours. Kelly is terrified of storms and had been shivering between my feet. Now she was out in her worst fear.

So I put on shoes and went out, and as soon as I got to the deck started slipping because damn that thing is slippery when wet. I have no idea if all wood decks are like that, or if it’s just ours, but regardless, yeah–treacherous. Worse, I couldn’t see. The lightning was blinding, and my eyes couldn’t adjust fast enough between flashes to actually see much.

And then, in between cracks of thunder, here came Kelly, charging toward me out of the dark. “Come on!” I cheered, and skated back into the house. She followed.

In the light, I saw her face. Her right eye was full of blood. I reached for her.

She ran past me and down the hall, threw herself down, staggered, hopped sideways, fell over, yelped, stood, hopped, fell over, began crying, got up, tore past me, fell over by the sofa, and started seizing.

The storm raged outside (where Cobie still was, doing heaven knows what) and in, and I screeched for Tim to wake up and come help me, although help with what, I had no idea. I was not able to think or move or do anything but stare in horror.

By the time Tim got out of bed, the seizure was over. Kelly hopped up on the sofa and wiped her bloody face on the spread there. She panted and panted, and I collapsed next to her, I didn’t touch her because I didn’t want to make things worse. After she cleared the blood from her eye she came and lay next to me.

Somehow, Tim got Cobie to come in. Zor came out to see why I was shrieking. I was able to inspect her and see that her eye was ok, just the blood from the scratch on her face had got into it. We debated the necessity of a middle-of-the-night emergency vet visit.

Kelly has never shown any signs of any neurological problems before. She’s a little high strung, but not really that much considering she’s a terrier and all. She’s already up on her shots, and her annual is coming up soon anyway. I remember the little dog Trickie Woo from the Herriott novels that would get so wound up he would have a “fit”, so it’s a thing.

So I put some neosporin on her, and called the vet in the morning. Barring a whole lot of expensive tests that might not show anything, there isn’t anything to be done at this point, except to worry obsessively, which of course I began at once.

I think she was already wound up about the storm, and then the WhateverItIs, and then blood got in her eye and partly blinded her, and it was all just too much. At least I hope that’s what it was. She has been completely normal ever since. Well, KellyNormal. Her poor face was a little puffy for a couple of days (but not hot, so no infection) and there’s a scab, which I want to go away right now because it hurts me to look at it. It makes me feel like a scared six-year-old:  Get offa my Kelly Doll, you bad ol’ scab!!!

So. We are all keeping an eye on Whee Kelly, and she has been a hundred percent KellyNormal. Which is good, because she is, well…my sunshine? My heart? My light? My joy?  She’s my dog.

Which pretty much sums up everything about her, as far as I’m concerned.

Scamper on!