Moose and Ink

… strange stuff happens.

On the subject of hardening off plants for the garden …

Me: The plants have been out all day pretty much. I  watered them around noon and they looked good.  Let me know if that’s too long or not but it hasn’t been unbearably hot or windy or anything like that.

Steph: All day is ok now. They need to learn to be tough!

Me: I went out to shut up the cold frame earlier.  The plants told me to get out of their neighborhood and I think they might have been dealing drugs. I saw a pot.   They may have gotten too tough.

Steph: *facepalm*

And then there was this …

Go, save yourself! I’ll keep the walls from closing in!

Empty House

The house is quiet these days.

Steph is gone on yet another business trip.  This time it’s a full week in New York, followed by 36 hours at home, then another full week in New York.  To make things more interesting (hurrah), I have to work the weekend that she’s home so our chances of actually seeing one another are pretty slim.

Then there’s Tucker’s absence.  His paws and untrimmed nails no longer click against the wood floor and he’s no longer scratching to be let out at 3am which means you get a full night of sleep.  A nice thing until you realize why.  Still, time is healing all wounds and each day gets better.

it’s still too damn quiet and when it’s quiet, you spend time with your thoughts and that never goes anywhere good.  Fortunately, in her infinite wisdom, Steph thought ahead and arranged a ‘dinner date’ for me with some of our friends.  I headed over to their place last night, had a nice meal, and a couple of hours of human conversation outside of work.  Helped quite a bit.

Empty Quill

On the writing front, there’s still no writing front.

I’ve put Carrionhove on hold as I’ve lost the story.  Usually when that happens, that means there’s a character problem or a plot problem or something else in there that isn’t quite right.

The events of the past week haven’t helped much but one hope of the new job was that I’d be in a position that was less stressful and allowed for a free mind at night.  For a bit, it was heading that way.  Then, as one might put it, things went to hell in a handbasket and I find myself dragged back into the position I was previously.  Even if it’s only temporary, it’s highly depressing.

Then again, perhaps so is writer’s block.

Sometimes crippling writer’s block is actually just depression, and it’s a thing you have to deal with in whatever positive way you can.

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) March 29, 2013

Reading that tweet (and the blog post linked below) got me thinking.  Every time I sit down at the computer, I suddenly feel as if I must write a friggin’ masterpiece.  Every word has to be right, every phrase and scene and so forth.  It ends up stopping me and I can’t go anywhere and I get bummed and frustrated and the cycle starts anew.

Of course, I know better.  Viable Paradise taught us that ‘It’s a draft, it can suck’ but my brain is ‘Screw that, if it’s not fantastic, go home!’  Some would argue this is proof I shouldn’t listen to my brain.

In a blog post sometime back, Chuck Wendig kind of answered this – “Care Less“. In a nutshell – all you’re trying to do is write words.  There isn’t much to it beyond that so anything else is a head game and you gotta figure it out some way or another.

I’m trying new techniques.  I’ve got a new story idea, something completely different than what I’ve done in the past, and I’m going to take a stab at it.  In addition, I recently bought a copy of Scrivener, a writing software that some authors praise.  It might not be for me but the current method of hiding from the blank Microsoft Word document isn’t working so why not?

Tucker

After nearly fourteen years, Tucker has left our side.

A couple of days ago, Tucker stopped eating.  He had a terrible, hacking cough that was not getting any better.  A visit to the vet revealed that he had a host of other issues.  One was a large amount of fluid in and around his lungs.  Another was that his heart was enlarged and there was a possibility of a mass in his lung.

We tried some medicine but in the end, it was his time.  Anything else would be prolonging it for our sake and not his.  This afternoon, the vet came to the house and we let Tucker go.  We’ll be burying him out at the farm, one of his favorite places to visit and run.

You can’t take 14 years and condense it into words, especially not when your vision is all blurry-like.

We got Tucker about a month after we got married (this Friday would have been his birthday).  At the time, he was a scrawny little thing and we were a bit worried how our cat – Tim Tam – would handle the new arrival.  Turns out, there wasn’t a problem.  Tim Tam established himself as the Alpha Dog and proceeded to chase Tucker around the house.  The day we knew they were brothers, though, was the day I made Mac n’ Cheese.

I left the pot in the kitchen while I ate in the dining room of our old home in Cedar Rapids.  When I came back for seconds, I spotted Tim Tam sitting next to the stove and Tucker sitting on the floor right beneath him.  Tim Tam would grab a noodle, clean all the cheese off it and then drop the clean piece onto the floor where Tucker would eat it up.  They carried on like this while I watched too stunned to say anything. I’m not sure who was the bad influence here but hey, they had each other.

When Steph and I were involuntarily separated due to jobs and moving, Tucker was our go-between. She’d have him for a week, then I’d bring him up to Decorah for a week. Right after we bought the new house but before we had any furniture, Tucker would sleep next to me while I lay on a mattress in the middle of what would be our bedroom.  Most importantly though, when the nights got lonely, I could give him a hug because it was the nearest thing to Steph that I had.

Snow at the farm

Tucker loved strange things.  He loved to bark at the air or maybe he was barking at a leaf blowing by or something us humans couldn’t possibly see.  He could sigh like no other dog I’ve ever known.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night while he was sleeping beneath the bed, he’d sigh.  Steph and I couldn’t help but laugh at our sighing bed.

He had a thing for shoes too.  He’d chew up Steph’s – straight out devour them.  But mine?  He’d only chew the aglets and left the rest of the shoe alone.  Snow was his paradise.  There was no better thing for him than a huge mound of snow.  He’d eat it, play in it, lay in it, whatever.   And the bathroom door was his domain.  No matter who was in the room beyond, he made sure to position himself outside to guard it.

Weird dog.

But he was our dog.  Faults and all.  That might be why we’ve spent most the night dreading today but knowing it was the right thing.

I miss my puppy.  But he’ll be waiting out there with all the others – Mandy and Theo.  Fudge and Sheba.  Dusty.  Sebastian.  All the rest.  Waiting to play fetch and to beg for pizza crust or a carrot and bark at air and eat all the snow.

Thank you, Tucker.

The first time Tucker ever went to the prairie, 2003

Decorah had a 5K Color Run today.  What’s a Color Run?  Basically you run 3.1 miles and people throw colored powder at you.  And if you’re up for it, you throw color back.  So everyone gets colorful.  Like this …

My colorful side.

* Technically it wasn’t a ‘real’ Color Run cuz of lawyers and stuff but the organizers did get permission to snag the idea so all’s good.