The Dog Days Are Over

Sorry for neglecting you, little blog.

My dog died about a week and a half ago. She was old and sick, arthritis, kidney and liver problems. She was improving on meds, but on her last Friday night she was acting really weird. She wouldn't eat or drink, and for over a year she'd been drinking and pissing constantly. At about quarter to two Saturday morning she was breathing hard, so I called the 24-hour vet one town up. I was going to bring her in, either to fix her up, or put her out of her misery. By the time I hung up the phone, she was dying.

When I was a kid, I'd be upset for a couple of hours when I lost a dog and then pretty much forget about it. I never missed a dog after that. This one was different. I never had a dog last so long; I never had an old dog before. My dogs would get hit by cars, or run away, or I'd have to give them away for one reason or another.

Because she was sick and I live alone most of the time, I had rearranged my life around her. The day she died, I kept doing things as if she was there. When I went out, I closed my bedroom door before realizing I didn't need to. No one was going to go in there and tear up my room when I was gone. I didn't need to brace myself for her when I came home. I didn't need to get back home at a certain time to take care of her. No bowls to fill, no piss to clean up, no pills to hide in food. I could leave the front door open if I wanted. I wasn't woken up three to five times a night to let her drink and pee. I didn't have to set aside a portion of my food for her, didn't have to do lots of little things that had become second nature to me. In the space of a few horrible minutes my whole life had changed.

I had been telling people for a while that my life would improve when the dog died. That's not to say I didn't love the dog. That was just fact. When she was around, it was unusual for me to sleep for more than two hours straight. I couldn't concentrate on a project for more than an hour or so because she would need something. So, I'm suddenly liberated, but the length and the depth of the sadness that I feel astonishes me.

Sofa So Good

Guh.

Feel crappy right now. My one hour walk with the dog was cut to a half-hour due to rain. We got soaked. Now I'm blowing my nose a lot. I don't think I caught a cold or anything, we got back from the walk just twenty-five minutes ago, but the nose-blowing sucks.

Listen up for the first episode of The Sofanauts tomorrow. I'm on the show along with Tony, Jeremiah Tolbert and Damien Walters, yapping about the week in science fiction news. I'll post a link when the show pops up. It felt a bit more like work than I'd expected. maybe that's because I'm not used to working without a script. And Tony asked me about hitting that magical One-Thousand mark at fifty and I basically talked about how slow I've been and how it was a reasonable goal, which doesn't make sense at all. I neglected to mention that I'm picking up speed. But you make screw-ups. That's the fun of what's basically a single take. Anyway, I hope you guys like the show. Tony's already saying that he'd like me back sometime in the future so that's good. Hopefully I'll relax a bit more in the future.

I haven't mentioned stories 100 and 101 so let me do that here and now: Unhappy Day and The Boat are the newest members of the family.

Give a listen the latest Aural Delights on StarShipSofa. At the tail end you'll hear Fiction Crawler No. 6, a special on flash fiction online as suggested by obstinate non-follower Church.

Aural Delights No 80 James Lovegrove

Editorial: Sofanauts by Tony C Smith

Poetry: Epochs In Exile by Mike Allen & Charles Saplack

Fact: Science News by Jim Campanella

Main Fiction: Wings by James Lovegrove

Fact: Fiction Crawler by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Narrators: Nicola Seaton-Clark Kate Baker

This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at audiblepodcast.com/sofa

Links to Fiction Crawler:

Colonists by Barry Napier
Homecoming by Jessica Melusine
Prairie Star by Cat Rambo
They Called Her Larry by Steve Duffy
Thaumatrope
Outshine
Nanoism
Six Word Stories

Spiraling!

As I twittered a little while ago, I saw the preview for the upcoming PBS series "We Shall Remain," five stories exploring the Native American experience since the Europeans hit the shores. It looks like a great show. Episode one talks about the Plymouth pilgrims and the Wampanoag, a sliver of whom live on in me. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/

I started The Terror by Dan Simmons today. I've heard him read bits of the book on a couple of different podcasts and it sounds like a fantastic story. I talked it up enough to get a coworker reading it, even before I cracked the book.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Terror/Dan-Simmons/e/9780316008075/?itm=1

I don't know when I'll have time to read it, but I'm going to try to work it in. I'd like to say that my life seems to be spiraling out of control, but in fact it's always been like it is. It's always felt like it's spiraling out of control. I started today to try to get some exercise in, by walking the dog along a route that takes about an hour. That's good for catching up on podcasts too. But I've got writing to do, and I haven't been squeezing in more than a few notes for the past week. It's now past midnight, I have to get up in four and a half hours. I don't know how to make the most important things work.

We celebrated the former wife's birthday earlier. Cake, ice cream and a big bottle of Bailey's. She's been at her new place a little over a year now. Time truly flies.

Another Day Wasted

Let's see, what's been going on around here? Not much. Did a day of work. The former wife and the daughter saw Coraline in 3D. They weren't gushing about it, but they liked it well enough. The boy and the dog and I stuffed our faces with pasta and meatballs and garlic bread and dog food. Only the dog did that last one, other than that we were all on board. I read a bunch of crap on the internet and that brings us to now. Another day wasted.

I watched a few videos by this Haleybop lady. This song, I feel, stands above the rest.

My Little Hunter

The boy and I spent Thanksgiving at the wife's house. She stuffed us magnificently as usual. I got in a little golf on the Wii and dragged my score down. I'm out of practice, but at least I'm still pro.

We watched the new Futurama movie, Bender's Game. I'm sure there'll be a lot of haters out there like for the last one, but I loved it. It had a Dungeons & Dragons theme as the ads made clear, but they didn't spend as much time in the fantasy setting as I thought they would. Lots of Lord of the Rings jokes, D&D jokes and an inordinate amount of dwarf-eating. The family mostly slept through it as I laughed.

After my nap, I got up to see that my wife and her dog were gone. My dog, Cutie (I didn't name her), was whining to go out so I took her out and she struggled to run as she always does. She's a hunter and I assumed that she was on the scent of my wife, daughter and their pug, Pepper. I figured we'd catch up fast so I jogged behind her (as best I could). They weren't to be found right away, but I knew the dog was on the case.

She's the kind of dog that can take care of herself if left to her own devices. Years ago, when we would let her run loose, I'd find pieces of rabbit in the front yard. She ate well. She's almost ten, but she's got a clean bill of health from the vet and she's young at heart. I trusted her. We searched.

My wife sometimes takes rather long walks, so I wasn't put off by the lengthening journey. I kept thinking that we were about to find them around the next corner and my wife would say, "How did you find us here?" and I'd point proudly to my dog and say, "She tracked you here!" My wife would say, "No way." And I would say, "Yeah way." And then my wife would be so impressed that she'd call her sister on the other side of the state and her mother in Brooklyn and tell them about my incredible dog and they would be equally impressed.

We probably got past the mile and a half mark when I realized that Cutie had brought us around in a small loop and into a new direction I didn't think my wife would take. I checked the next street sign, walked a little farther and looked down at the dog.

"Bitch, you don't know where the fuck you're going, do you?" I said. She sniffed and tried to keep on. "No, I'm taking over now," I said and we made our way back. It was dark, it was cold (yes, it was only Florida cold, but if you live here for twenty years, it's the same as regular cold), and all I was thinking was, They're all just going to laugh at us now. My wife, my daughter, her sister, her mother, maybe even the pug. Cutie had seemed so confident!

Finally we got back. My wife said she had just walked around the corner, sans daughter, maybe two blocks away and come back, surprised we were gone.

My little hunter.

Now I walk and walk and walk, it's been part of my job for years. I can walk for miles and it doesn't bother me. But on this excursion, I moved pretty quickly, using my muscles in a running way more than a walking way, so three miles or so have messed me up. For some reason my left ankle told me to go screw. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't want to bend upwards any more, either. So I've been walking around like some sort moronic monster movie creature for the last four hours, having to lift my leg up more than normal to move my foot forward. My wife and daughter got good laughs. Not Futurama type laughs, but good just the same. Here's hoping I'll be closer to normal in the morning.

My Woman Done Left Me

My wife, daughter and my daughter's dog are now living in another house, leaving me, my son and my son's dog in this one. No divorce, no separation, just one family living in two different houses.

Today was a good day. Still on hernia leave, I spent the day at my wife's place, waiting for the DirecTV guy while she was at work. I had many hours away from the enormously distracting internet and away from my needy dogs. I had hours to write and came up with one shade of an idea, one piece of flash-fiction and one two-thousand word story. It’s amazing what you can do when there’s nothing else to do. I really need to get away from reality more often. So, anyway stories sixty-four (The Ones That Got Away) and sixty-five (Dust Dog) are in the bag, though they haven’t yet been sent out. But will be by this time tomorrow.