I did not make any resolutions about blogging more in 2022. I admit, though, in the back of my mind, getting back to blogging consistency feels like a good goal. Not quantity, necessarily, but the regular weekly or 2x weekly post. We’ll see.

I also did not make any resolutions about losing weight or exercising more. Again, in the back of my mind, it feels like a good thing to maybe put a little effort into, especially the exercising more. It’s much too easy for me to wind up basically staying in bed all day long. I get up, make the bed, then sit on top of it while using my computer. I try to remember to move, but when I get involved with something, I can easily wind up sitting still for hours.

Last week, in fact, I basically sat still for two solid days while I worked on my real New Year’s resolutions. Except they’re not resolutions, they’re projects. I sorted through all the books on my Kindle, all 1341 of them, putting them into collections. The relevant collections are:

2022 Fiction Reading Project – This contains 36 books that look like very readable books, that have been sitting on my Kindle for untold numbers of years. Seriously, I have unread books from 2011 on my Kindle. It is time to read them or conclude that I will never read them.

I also have a collection of Books to Try that contains another 135 books that I haven’t read, but I’m not crazy enough to try to schedule reading 171 books in the next year. Especially because I know myself: in the time since creating this collection (literally, one week), I’ve also put another two books on hold at the library, downloaded three KU titles, and bought one novella. It’s an addiction, I suppose, but such a nice one. And so far on my 2022 Fiction Reading Project, I’ve read one book, a historical romance from the 1990s that was somewhat too violent for my taste, and concluded that two others just weren’t for me after hitting the 10-20% mark in them. There’s a reason these books have gone unread for so long. I expect to be done with this project a lot sooner than 2023.

2022 Learning Project – This collection contains 20 non-fiction titles, also downloaded over the past decade and mostly unread. I’d guess that I’ve started almost all of them, but never finished. Most of them are books about writing or publishing, so I may wind up deciding that some of them aren’t for me, too, but I am going to make a solid try at finishing them, including taking notes so I retain at least some of the information. So far… well, so far this project is proceeding more slowly than the fiction project. Still, many months of the year are ahead of me!

2022 Cooking Project – This collection is currently empty. But I own 46 cookbooks and this year I’m actually going to try some of the recipes in them. Or delete them. It’s not that e-books can’t just live in the cloud forever, but there’s no reason to keep books that I will absolutely never read or look at. So I’ll be adding cookbooks to the Cooking Project collection as I try them out. I’m excited for some of them and others I strongly suspect are going to wind up deleted. Hmm, but writing this… the ones I’m excited for are all the interesting international cookbooks. Malaysian food, Vietnamese food, Spanish food — I think those will be fun. Not so sure about the paleo, AIP, & slow cooker cookbooks, of which I own far too many. I suppose, though, if I think about it as 12 years worth of cookbooks (which it is), 46 is not really so many.

Along the way of sorting my books, I also deleted 60 or so. And I’ve got another 325 or so in collections that acknowledge I will never look at or read the book, but the books are not deleted because I want to know to avoid downloading more the same authors. (Or at least to be wary.)

Anyway, organizing my Kindle was a very satisfying chore as I headed into 2022, but like I said, didn’t involve enough movement, and neither do my projects. It’s not a resolution, but the “move more, eat less” mantra is one I want to keep in mind. Also, of course, “write more.” I’m working on A Gift of Luck, one of the Tassamara projects I mentioned recently, and enjoying myself, one sentence at a time. Still haven’t managed to reach a writing flow state, but maybe someday soon.

In actual news, Suzanne and I took the puppies to the snow. Our first visit was just a short drive into the mountains where we played with puppies in a pull-off on the side of the road for half an hour or so. When it comes to snow, I’m about 1000x more anxious than Suzanne, which is the difference between growing up in upstate New York, where people die in the snow every year, and growing up in Southern California, where snow is fun and fluffy and pretty and strange. But Suzanne was right about that snow — it was extremely perfect winter snow.

Our second trip to snow was a much longer adventure: we drove up to Ashland, Oregon for a night. We walked the puppies in the redwoods along the way, then let them romp around Emigrant Lake, then took them to a dog park. Yep, travel with puppies is very puppy-centered. But it was an excellent mini-road trip. Plenty of outside time, fresh air, good conversation, and movement. And Ashland was still beautifully decorated for the holidays, sparkling with lights after dark. Of course, it was also cold and wet, so we didn’t spend a ton of time wandering around, but we had fun.

Coming home was rather less fun, because it was raining, reasonably heavily, and every time we passed a possible place to play with puppies, we kept driving. Heading out, the destination was never the point, only the journey, but on the way home, the destination was very much the point. I was so glad to get back to my cozy tiny house and snuggle down.

But speaking of rain, it is currently not raining, so I’m going to grab the opportunity to put “move more” into practice and take Sophie for a walk. Happy New Year to all!

When Suzanne first named Bear, I thought her nicknames would be about berries. We called her Hucklebearry and Berry-berry and I sometimes tried out the other berries, too — Bluebearry, Boysenbearry, Raspbearry. (Auto-correct really hates those extra As.)

In fact, her nicknames are Bearable, Bearly Bearable, and Unbearable. Today’s Unbearable moment came when she figured out how to turn the water on. The spigot on the back patio is a lever, nicely up and down, and Bear loves water. I am astonished by how quickly she managed to flood the patio. I was putting together chicken soup ingredients inside and didn’t even hear the water running, but it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before the water on the patio was an inch deep.

When I came outside, squealing in dismay, she was so excited she jumped up on me. “Look, look how fun it is,” she seemed to be saying, as she splashed through the water.

Meanwhile, Sophie and Riley D both said, “We want to be inside now, please. It’s cold out here.”

To which I said, “No! I want no wet, muddy dogs in my tiny house. You all get to stay outside.” I think I’m going to need to find a place to stash more towels, because while I do have a couple extra towels for puppies, I do not have enough extra towels to survive cleaning up three dogs after they create a pond on the patio.

Why, you might ask, am I blaming Unbearable for this minor disaster rather than either of the other two dogs when I didn’t actually see the water get turned on? If you knew the dogs, you wouldn’t have to ask. There are three dogs, but only one possible culprit when it comes to the kind of thing that makes you say, “WTF???” Sometimes Sophie is a participant in the creation of chaos, but she’s not the instigator. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that Sophie is an old dog soul, who already understands People Right from People Wrong (even if she doesn’t always choose to go along), and Bear is a fresh new dog soul, mystified by why we think chewing on furniture is a bad idea and dumping the garbage unacceptable.

The other day Bear was outside and Suzanne was scolding Riley, telling him how completely reprehensible the dog behavior inside the house had been. I asked if she actually thought Riley had done anything and she replied, “He didn’t stop her!” Ha. She’s bigger than him now, and still so gawky and awkward — it’s all he can do to keep away from her rather overwhelming adoration.

Fortunately, Bear is also a fresh new dog soul in other ways: loving, affectionate, goofy, excellent at snuggling, eager to play, willing to learn. Someday she will be Beyond Bearable, and probably Bearing on Excellent. She’s not currently good, as in well-behaved, but she is a Very Good Dog.

Sophie is, too, of course. I feel like I post more pictures of Bear on Instagram and I’m not sure why that is, but I think it’s just because Bear is so noticeably changing and growing (and becoming immense.) Sophie is equally adorable, but the fact that she’s getting fluffier by the day doesn’t show up in pictures much. I never did post the updated DNA info, but she’s more Australian Shepherd than border collie. (She’s an Australian Shepherd, Australian cattle dog, border collie, rat terrier, German Shepherd mix, plus 15% “super mutt”, aka lots of other breeds, too.) Australian Shepherds have thick coats, feathering on their legs, and “lush manes” and while Sophie has the markings of a border collie, she definitely seems to be developing the coat of an Aussie. It’s very soft and silky.

And as 2021 draws to a close, I’m feeling very blessed to have both these puppies — and a cranky cat — keeping me company. Last year, I wrote that I wasn’t convinced 2021 would be any better than 2020. Ha. I was prescient, I guess, because it sure wasn’t. My focus word for the year was GRACE — Gratitude, Reading, Art, Cooking, and Exercise. Um, nope. Well, I guess did read a lot.

I wanted to have a solstice celebration to say good-bye to the darkness and welcome the light, but I woke up that morning with a sore throat, so we postponed the dinner plan part of the celebration. Instead, Suzanne and I made origami snakes representing what we wanted to let go of from the old year, and origami cranes representing our wishes for the new year, then burned them on the fire pit with some dried sage from the garden.

I wonder if a decade from now I will remember what I let go of? I hope I don’t, that the things I released are so thoroughly released that I never think of them anymore. But I do hope that in future solstice celebrations I remember to wish for prosperity. Suzanne had that as one of her cranes and when she burned it, I thought, “Duh, what an obviously sensible thing to wish for!” Let us all manifest prosperity in 2022. (And also some creativity, diligence, focus, openness, and good health. Plus some kayaking!)

I’m not actually very handy. I’m not good at minor home or auto repairs and anything that involves tools tends to be experimental for me. But Suzanne had surgery on her other eye this week, so I got to continue my trend of being useful by driving her down to Santa Rosa, and then around Santa Rosa once we were there.

And also my trend of finding us excellent places to eat. Because of the Celiac’s, I generally have to put more effort into restaurant selection than your average tourist. I can’t just wing it and hope that I’ll find something both gluten-free and delicious. (Well, I could, but generally what happens when I do so is that I wind up hungry, cranky, disappointed, and worried about getting sick. So I don’t.)

On our first trip to Santa Rosa, we went to:

• Sazon – excellent Peruvian food, with a really terrific GF fried seafood appetizer.
• Dierks – for our post-surgery brunch, I had Sonoma duck confit, which was delicious. I don’t remember what Suzanne had and I bet she doesn’t either.
• Bird & The Bottle – Tapas! The beet salad was fantastic. The rest — well, the GF menu was very limited, so I wouldn’t eat there again, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to someone who could eat gluten.
• Avid Coffee – The best GF pumpkin spice muffin ever.

On this trip, we went back to Sazon and back to Avid, but we also tried:

• Boon eat + drink – TripAdvisor’s favorite restaurant in Guerneville, and totally deserving of their love. Their truffle fries were probably the best fries I’ve had since I stopped eating gluten and the chimichurri was so much better than my own that I whimpered when I tasted it.
• Schat’s Bakery & Cafe – The minute we walked in I knew I was taking a serious risk: this is a real bakery, so plenty of wheat-based flour in the air. But I ate there 48 hours ago and I’m not sick yet, so kudos to them for making me a delicious chicken sandwich that managed not to be contaminated. The GF bread was probably not as good as the bread that the sandwich was supposed to be on, but it was a lot better than the usual GF squishy stuff. I bought a loaf and brought it home to make avocado toast.
• Bia Cafe – Our surprise win was the cafe next to our hotel. We wandered over early Thursday morning, hoping for coffee. The front desk guy at the hotel had already told us that the menu there would be whatever the proprietor felt like cooking that day, and there’s no link on the name because she doesn’t appear to have a website. But she did have gluten-free muffins and scones, so I had one of each.

We again had fun on the trip and not just food-related fun. We brought all the dogs with us, which turns every day into a search for places to let them romp. We had a great river stop on the way south and another in Monte Rio, a long hike around Spring Lake, a stroll around downtown Guerneville — lots of movement, lots of outside time. I’ve got to admit, though, that perhaps my favorite time was back at the hotel, Casa Secoya. My “room” was actually a cabin with a deck, a kitchen, and a gas fireplace, (it’s pictured on the front page of their site) and the weather was exactly right for turning on the fireplace and reading a good book while cuddling with a puppy. Or two, while Suzanne was recovering from the anesthesia.

In other news, I finally did something I’ve been thinking about/wanting to do for months. Maybe years, even. I re-designed all the covers of the Tassamara books. I was motivated because the narrators of the audiobook for Ghosts are currently working on Thought and soon to be working on Time and eventually to be working on Grace. I knew I had to make a decision about audiobook covers, and my decision was to make my own.

Along the way, I read both Ghosts and Grace. It was oddly fun. Grace, in particular, lives in my memory a certain way and the reading experience was not at all what I expected it to be. I amused myself more, confused myself less, and surprised myself with the cohesiveness of the storyline. But I suspect the lesson I should learn is to stop trying to do specific things and just write. I was trying to write a romance in Grace: it doesn’t work. Also, Sophia’s too bitter (literally — I need to delete about three uses of the word “bitterly”); Misam’s too bubbly (not sure how to fix that); and Noah’s either too stubborn or not stubborn enough. Maybe both. But I would hang out with those characters anytime. All quite fun to be with.

Still I remember obsessing about making the details fit together just so, and really, who pays that much attention? In fact, if a reader is paying that much attention, I’ve lost already because the story isn’t holding them the way it should. But I’m feeling more enthusiasm for future Tassamara stories than I’ve felt in a long time. I started a couple that dead-ended and I think I’m going to be trying to make my way out of those dead ends sometime soon. But definitely not trying to write “romance” — just trying to write stories that maybe wind up with happy endings where good people who like one another end up looking toward the future together.

But that writing will not be tomorrow, because we’re heading back to Santa Rosa for Suzanne’s post-surgery eye exam. The drive’s getting a little too familiar, but fortunately, it is mostly extremely beautiful. And with every expectation of delicious food and fun play with puppies along the way!

I have had good intentions of writing every day for the past several weeks. I have written… once. Maybe twice. In the grand scheme of things, though, I don’t feel unaccomplished. Sure, maybe my accomplishments were pretty minor: I got Bear to sit and show me her paws before jumping on the bed at least once out of every three times she tried, and I stayed totally cool when a stranger dog told Sophie she was being a brat at the beach (she was!), but those accomplishments probably count for just as much as words going nowhere.

I also — if I do say so myself — kicked ass in the “handy friend to have around” territory. The week before Thanksgiving, I went down to Santa Rosa with Suzanne so that she could have cataract surgery on one eye. She needed a driver to pick her up post-surgery, so she drove us down on Tuesday. We got grocery store sushi for lunch, took the dogs to a dog park, went to her pre-op appointment, and then had terrific Peruvian food for dinner. The next morning, we walked the dogs in a park near the eye doctor, then she went in for the surgery while the dogs and I waited in the parking lot. They wheeled her out by 10 or so.

I think both of us anticipated a fast snapback from the anesthesia, which was the kind where you stay awake, you just don’t remember the experience. Quick and efficient, right? Suzanne, however, did not snap back quite so quickly as expected. I have a toss-up between two favorite moments related to the not-quite-awake Suzanne.

The first was when, a couple hours after the surgery, sounding a little disconsolate, she said something like, “Everything’s blurry.” I said, somewhat tentatively because it felt like stating the obvious, “Um, but you’re wearing your glasses? I would have trouble seeing if I was wearing your glasses.” For at least the next ten minutes, she read all the street signs to me, awed by the miracle of sight, which was really fun.

The second actually happened the next day, when I was following GPS directions to Costco and said, “Okay, thank you, Liam,” to my Australian-male-voiced Apple Maps app, and she said, “Why is your GPS named Liam?” with sheer puzzlement in her voice. With an equivalent amount of puzzlement in my voice, I said, “Um, because you named him? Yesterday? Because you thought he needed a name? Do you not remember this??” She did not remember. I couldn’t tell you how many times we’d discussed it as we wandered around Santa Rosa post-surgery — shopping, finding parks to walk dogs, finding restaurants for lunch and dinner — but it was more than once. That anesthesia is good stuff.

On Thursday, Suzanne had her post-op appointment, and then we slowly headed home, plenty of stops along the way. On Saturday, she flew off to the UK for a long-awaited trip with her grandson, leaving me with three dogs, three cats, and a dozen chickens to care for. To be honest, I was not looking forward to it: I expected that having the two puppies together 24/7 was going to feel overwhelming, and be exhausting.

It was, in fact, worse than I’d imagined, because we — and I use that word fairly, this was a mutual decision — were total IDIOTS! I had blithely said, “Sure,” when the vet suggested Monday as a date for Riley to have his teeth cleaned, not even really noticing the “and have a mass removed from his chest” part of the conversation. I dropped him off at the vet that Monday morning and took the puppies to the beach, never even considering what it was going to be like to have a dog recovering from surgery with two puppies around. Poor Riley had just an awful week. I definitely get “handy friend to have around” points for the 45 minutes I spent trying to get blood out of Suzanne’s sofa the next day. Also for the rather excessive amounts of vomit clean-up over the next couple of days, although some of that was Sophie. But note to self: never schedule surgery for a dog when his real owner is going to be away. It made an already challenging week just so much harder.

The highlight of the week, though, was Thanksgiving dinner. I had put exactly zero thought into the fact that I’d be alone on a major holiday and figured it would just be a day like any other. Dogs, cats, chickens, maybe with a little added bonus grieving for my (estranged) son and my (deceased) mom, but just a day. However Mara, the awesome next-door neighbor, also realized I’d be alone on a major holiday and promptly invited me to join them. I had such a nice time. Was it the green bean casserole, giving me just the right amount of nostalgia? The gluten-free stuffing, gravy & dessert, making me feel like I could relax and eat safely? The good company, mostly family enjoying one another’s company, but a few other solo guests? All of the above, probably. Maybe with a little added, “I have escaped from the puppies!” and a lot of added, “And we get to socialize with groups of people again!” Obviously that was before news of the new variant started spreading, but on the day, no one was worrying about the pandemic. It was just a good meal with warm, friendly people. (Thank you, Mara!)

Suzanne came home from the UK Saturday night. Her plane was just slightly delayed, not quite enough to make me cry, but enough to get me to start writing mental horror stories as I circled the airport. Good imagination practice, right? All residents of the Mighty Small Farm are delighted to have her back. But despite her return, life still feels really busy. She’s not allowed to drive yet, so I’ve had places to go, things to do, excuses to not write. Next week we go back to Santa Rosa and she gets surgery on her other eye, and after that, things should settle down some. Maybe writing more will have to be a New Year’s resolution.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling pretty grateful for my life. Dogs, cats, chickens, friends and neighbors — and hey, hot running water, always worth appreciating. I didn’t spend my Thanksgiving week thinking about how much I had to be thankful for, but there’s so much, and I am.

For Christmas (early), Suzanne gave us both Embark Dog DNA kits, so we could find out what genetics could tell us about our rescue pups.

Last week, I got the above results for Sophie.

Um, what?

I was completely mystified. Two of those breeds — the Beauceron and the Greenland dog — were ones I’d never even heard of! And Husky? Greyhound?

But you know, DNA doesn’t lie, so I pretty quickly started wrapping my brain around the idea. English Setter, okay, I can see that. Sophie is very sweet & quite friendly, as English setters are supposed to be. And her fur is lovely and silky.

Plus, even though every fifth person on the street says, “Oh, a border collie puppy! So cute! And SOO smart,” I actually haven’t really noticed that she’s smarter than the average pup. In fact, Bear seems to catch on to doggie tricks faster than Sophie does. Bear shakes paws like a champ these days and when you throw a ball, she drops it right back at your feet so you can throw it again. Sophie is still unwilling to return the ball. Sure, that might keep the game going, which she would like, but she’d really much prefer it if you just produced an unlimited supply of balls and let her hoard them instead.

So, okay, my cute little border collie is really a descendent of the same breed that inspired Doberman pinschers. Also sled dogs. Also Greyhounds?!? Um, but every single one of those breeds is a large dog and nothing about Sophie indicates that she’s going to get that big. Bigger than Zelda and Bartleby, yes, she’s already that, but nothing like officially Large. Of course, any breed has outliers, so maybe she’s just a very small Large dog.

Because DNA doesn’t lie.

People, on the other hand, make mistakes. The next day I got the Oops email from Embark. Those are not actually Sophie’s results. My little border collie may in fact still turn out to be a border collie, but I’ll have to wait a while longer to find out for sure. I was pretty amused, mostly because of how hard I’d tried to adjust reality to fit the “facts.” I’m assuming at least a few people caught up in the mistake sent emails to Embark saying “Not a chance!” because that was my first instinct and I’m sure if I’d known more about Sophie’s history, that’s exactly what I would have done. (If I’d gotten those results for Bartleby or Zelda, I would definitely have sent that email. I just had more of an open mind because Sophie’s not full-grown yet.)

In other news, I’ve discovered the delights of medical marijuana. I’m not sure how much it’s helping my pinched nerve, but wow, a THC hard candy or two before bedtime gives me a great night’s sleep. I don’t seem to feel much from it — I definitely don’t feel inebriated — but when I close my eyes, I drift off and I stay drifted off. It’s astonishing to me how cheerful I am when I wake up after a full night’s sleep. (I’m usually a very restless, very light sleeper, awakened by anything, and never sleeping more than a couple hours in a row.) Sleep, I recommend it.

I’ve also concluded — alas! — that my arm problem is related to typing on my iPad keyboard. I bought the iPad this summer after I sold the van hoping it would mostly replace my laptop, but apparently that’s not going to work. So I’m back on my MacBook Air, being reminded of all the reasons why it’s not quite satisfying. I’ll adjust, I’m sure, but it makes me cranky, especially after all the hours I spent trying to set up the iPad to work with the apps I wanted. So it goes. I’m now referring to the iPad as the most expensive book reader ever, because I do love reading on it.

The other thing I decided was that maybe my cheap mattress is Not Good. I bought it this summer for $200 and I think if you’ve only owned a mattress for a few months and you’re experiencing back/neck pain, it’s probably worth wondering if the mattress is the problem. The Best Brother Ever pointed out that the quality of 1/3 of your life is worth some expense and given that my bed is actually a lot more than 1/3 of my life — it’s the only comfortable seat in the tiny house, so I spend plenty of time sitting on it as well as sleeping — I decided to buy a new mattress. Ugh, mattress shopping is no fun. But $560 later, I am awaiting a Novaform mattress from Costco, hoping I’ll love it. Maybe it’ll even be nice enough that I can go back to typing on the iPad.

I do not own a cat. But it occurred to me as I wrote about my limited seating in the tiny house that Gina, #notmycat, has five different seating spots. I emptied one of the cubbies and put a towel in it for her; there’s a pillow on top of a shelving unit for her; the closet hanging clothes shelves have an almost empty space at the bottom for her (she kept creating it herself by knocking all the clothes in it onto the floor and I finally accepted reality); the top of the shoe rack had a box and now has a towel for her; and I partly emptied one of the soft cube boxes for her. My extra pillowcases are currently stored under my pillows on the bed — a ridiculous place for them — but it keeps them safer from cat fur than most of my other storage options. And yeah, there’s usually a bowl with cat food in it somewhere to be found. Still don’t have a cat, though.

Sophie wishes we did, but not Gina. She still loves Olivia Murderpaws passionately and wants to play with her all the time. Alas, Olivia Murderpaws does not feel the same way. Yesterday, Sophie asked Gina to play instead — perfectly politely, a nice play bow, maybe a little too close. Gina’s response, translated from cat, “F**k YOU!” Sophie will not be inviting Gina to play again anytime soon. Fortunately, she has Bear.

Yesterday we took the dogs to the beach in the morning. (Not the above photo, which was at sunset a few days before.) We were walking, talking, appreciating the weather, when I looked up and saw Bear in the distance, investigating a dead thing. (A skate, about as big as Sophie.) I had just enough time to say, “Oh, Bear — I think — she might –” before she started to roll. Oops. So she got to have her first bath at the doggie spa, and Sophie joined her because it’s a good experience for a puppy. Sophie was unenthusiastic but well-behaved, and her fur is soft and silky and luxurious today. Baths, also recommended.

On Tuesday, October 26th, I woke up in pain. In completely weird, random, unexpected pain. My arm/shoulder felt like I’d somehow broken it in my sleep. It was that kind of pain — intense, throbbing, surprisingly overwhelming. In a different life (or actually if it had been my left arm instead of the right), I would have been off to the doctor or maybe an emergency room within a couple hours. In this life, I consulted the internet and decided that I had a pinched nerve.

Over the course of the next ten days, I’ve never once changed my opinion about that. Honestly, it’s a pretty easy diagnosis. It is a pain that definitely starts in my shoulder — if I move the wrong way, it’s like a knife in there — but then radiates down my arm doing one of three things: sometimes it feels like a vise around my bicep; sometimes it feels like a bad sunburn on the back of my upper arm; and sometimes it shoots all the way down my arm, over my wrist and into my middle finger with pain, tingling & throbbing. Mostly just my middle finger, though — my pinkie and thumb are always fine. Clearly that’s nerve pain.

It sucks.

Do I have anything further to say about it? Um, not really. The internet assures me that it’s likely to go away eventually, and that traditional medicine isn’t going to do much for me. Maybe a prescription for painkillers specifically for nerve pain, probably some imaging studies to see exactly what’s going on, ideally a referral to a physical therapist. Instead I’m going the Californian route: CBD pills and lotion, meditation, acupuncture next week. And trying to avoid the things that clearly make it worse, specifically typing, playing games on the iPad, and throwing balls for dogs. So far — well, I don’t know whether it’s getting better or whether it’s becoming a pain I mostly understand how to live with. I really don’t want to live with it, of course, but I’m trying to view it as an opportunity to get really good at meditation. Ha.

Also I am trying to remember to be grateful every day for my elbows. Such good elbows they are! Of all of my joints, they are now officially the best. Go, elbows, go.

One puppy story: last week, the puppies got spayed. I was supposed to take them, but Suzanne’s car is a stick shift, and I wasn’t capable of driving just then, so Suzanne took them instead. When she came out with them, she was laughing about how she’d overheard three vet techs cooing over “such a cutie,” which turned out to be Sophie. Almost anytime I walk Sophie around other people, someone has that reaction to her. Random passersby saying things like, “Adorable!” and “Oh, wow, so cute,” and that kind of thing. This almost — almost! — makes up for the fact that she is currently barking at all strange dogs and bicyclists. We’re working on it — we stop walking until she’s ready to behave — but telling her she’s being annoying rolls right off. She knows she’s actually adorable.

Today’s accomplishment was chili: I made it in the morning, ate two bowls at lunch, and then at dinner, I was sort of “eh, whatever, I might as well have another bowl, since I’ve got plenty,” until I took the first bite and then I remembered, “Oh, right, this is really good chili.” I will not have plenty for long.

I didn’t follow a recipe and I am never going to be able to replicate it perfectly, but the key ingredient was a few leftover chipotle peppers in adobo sauce from a can I opened while making refried beans. I’ve been using it (them?) in dribs and drabs ever since — I threw some in some seafood stew last week and it was delicious, and I’m pretty sure I added some to the shrimp I was using for shrimp tacos, also delicious. For a small can, it was a surprisingly worthwhile investment. I suspect a similar can will be living on my shelves for as long as I keep cooking now. It’s lovely to discover an ingredient that’s easy, packed with flavor, and versatile.

The other delicious thing I made this week was spicy tuna for spicy tuna rolls. First I made sushi with canned crab and cucumber — your basic California rolls — and was vaguely disappointed. It was fine? But not exciting and not particularly interesting. I’m not sure why I thought they would be, I don’t have some deep love for California rolls, but I think I wanted to prove to myself that even a California roll would be better home-made than from the grocery store. It was, because the rice was great, but still, it was a California roll. Eh.

The next day, however, I had leftover rice, so I took it out of the fridge in the morning, so that it would warm up to room temperature. Then I mixed fresh tuna (well, frozen tuna that I’d defrosted), with kewpie mayo, Yellow Bird habanero sauce, and sesame seeds, and made a spicy tuna roll out of it. It was excellent. Not just better than grocery store sushi, but pretty close to good sushi restaurant sushi. Yum. Now I wish I could have another one. Fortunately, I can, as soon as I make some more sushi rice and defrost some more tuna.

I will probably not be doing that anytime soon, though, because I have a lot of chili to eat first. Also a fridge filled with healthy vegetables which go bad much too quickly. The hardest part of cooking for one is trying to finish things. Of course, anything I don’t want I can feed to the chickens/throw into the compost pile, eventually turning my rotting produce into delicious eggs/healthy dirt, but I realized recently that I’m not just feeding the chickens.

See, anything the chickens haven’t eaten by nightfall is still gone in the morning. And some things, such as corn cobs, are no longer in the chicken coop. I was mystified by this for days, because the cobs kept turning up on the patio and the puppies kept getting them and chewing on them — Not Allowed! Digestive blockages! Surgery nightmares! — until I realized that rats were dragging the cobs out of the coop in the night. Anything the chickens don’t eat, the rats do. It’s made me decidedly less enthusiastic about my composting. It’s not very environmentalist of me, but my corn cobs are now headed to the landfill.

Today’s second accomplishment: writing a blog post. Oh, wait, no, that’s my third accomplishment. My second accomplishment was actually opening a writing file (the sequel to Cici) and writing a sentence or two. Along the way I laughed at a line I’d written months ago, and for a brief, flickering moment I was reminded that writing is fun. Writing is fun! Or at least reading what you’ve written is fun. Sometimes. Now I just have to get back into the routine of it.

Hey, probably I should give myself some credit for playing with puppies, washing dishes, working on training puppies (we’ve mastered Down but Paw/Shake is still a little bit of a mystery), cleaning up poop and vomit (Sophie, I think, but I’m hoping it’s just a fluke, nothing serious), walking Sophie, feeding Gina, and finishing up some laundry, too. I mean if I’m really going to count ALL my accomplishments. Shine on, self, shine on.

 

Over the course of the past three weeks, I’ve probably started a half dozen different blog posts, all of which got thrown away unfinished. This was not because I didn’t have anything to write about or even because I was so terribly busy. Nope, it was because I truly, truly hate the new WordPress editor. It makes me not want to write. It’s not designed for writing, it’s designed for designing, which seems to me to be completely contrary to the point of a blog. Sure, if I wanted a web page editor, it would be lovely to be thinking in blocks, but I just want nice, plain words. The new interface is all… blocky. Clunky. Awkward. Annoying!

Today, however, Sophie was so darn adorable that I determined I really HAD to blog about my dog’s incredible cuteness. Much to my delight, the top widget in my my dashboard had a line that caught my eye: WordPress Extending Classic Editor Support Until 2022. Yes, please! It turns out that there’s a plug-in I could have been using that rolls back the clunky and returns me to my nice retro simple editor. Yay! Of course, 2022 is literally only two and a half months away, so I’m hoping that “until 2022” really means “through 2022” (and hopefully beyond), but I will take what I can get.

Back to my dog’s incredible cuteness: Suzanne is on vacation with her dogs, so it’s just been Sophie, me, the cats and the chickens here at the Mighty Small Farm for the last several days. Sophie has missed her playmate, of course, but Bear’s absence has meant more walks, more games, more snuggles, and lots more chances to play with Olivia Murderpaws.

Olivia has a “catio,” a fenced outdoor enclosure that she enters via a window from the house. It’s got a cat hammock, a cat climbing post, a bench and a bunch of potted plants. It’s not a big space, just nicely cozy for a cat, but the various furnishings are placed at different heights, so the different levels make it a good place for stalking games. Olivia stalking Sophie, of course. I don’t entirely understand why Sophie loves this, but she clearly does. It’s very different from the way she plays with Bear, which involves lots of growling and tumbling and chewing on one another, but it’s super cute.

But Olivia is a grown-up cat now, which means her tolerance for play is limited. She plays with Sophie for a bit, then leaps back into the house. Or worse, goes to sleep on her hammock, her tail dangling and twitching occasionally, so that Sophie can see her and know that the potential for playtime is there, just not being realized. Poor Sophie.

But yesterday I’d played ball with her, taken her on a nice walk, and gotten settled back in the house when she rushed in. With every motion, she conveyed that she needed my urgent attention: her eyes fixed on me, her tail waving, her whole body taut with excitement. A thing! A thing needed to happen! I asked her a couple of questions, then looked back at my computer, and she carefully took my sleeve in her teeth and tugged. It was so clear that she was saying, “You must come!”

So I got off my bed and followed her outside and she led me to the catio. Olivia was there, on the ground, poised for the hunt. I let Sophie inside and the two of them played for a while. Success! Also just so cute. And smart! I much prefer her solving the problem of “How do I get into the catio?” by coming to find me rather than trying to chew her way through the fencing.

Sophie’s also bringing me her ball now to tell me that it’s time to play ball, although our games never last for very long because she’s so extremely reluctant to let go of it. She’ll fetch it quite happily and she’ll bring it back to about two feet away from me, but that’s where she draws the line. “Give you my toy? I just can’t,” she seems to be thinking. Sometimes I try bribing her — aka offering her a trade in the form of a treat — and sometimes that works. I usually walk away eventually, but our games last a little longer every time.

The other thing she’s getting better at — ha — is jumping on my bed. Somehow she is committed to the idea that it’s impossible for her to do. It is absolutely not impossible for her to do. Three times now, she’s forgotten that she can’t get on the bed and simply jumped right up. I’m not sure why she did it the first time. I was moving around the tiny house and was so surprised when I saw her on the bed that I had to ask myself whether I’d forgotten I’d lifted her up. The second time she was excited about going for a walk and jumped up next to me when I was putting my shoes on. The third time was, I think, that she was trying to reach her chipmunk toy. But she definitely still believes that she can’t get on the bed. She’ll put her paws up and let me know that she wants up but it’s only when she’s not thinking about it that she makes the jump on her own.

She and Bear had their first vet visits last week. Covid protocols are still in place, so I waited in the car while the dogs went in alone, one at a time. Bear went first. The tech finally had to carry her in, all forty pounds of her, because she wanted no part of that scary place. When he brought her back, he told me there was much nervous peeing. I apologized and warned him that Sophie would probably be the same. Au contraire. When I got her back, I was told that she was fine, super comfortable, eating cookies and “showing off,” said with a laugh. She sits and lies down on command now and pretty much understands that if a treat appears, it’s a good bet that promptly lying down will get it into her mouth asap. Will she ever do anything other than lie down on command? Unknown, but she’s sure good at that one. Ugh, which does remind me that I meant to try to finish that expensive video dog training: I should probably get on that today.

In other news… well, I have none. I’m hanging out with the dogs, reading a lot, thinking about writing but not doing any, contemplating life, and trying to remember to practice happiness whenever possible. My big accomplishments are almost always food related, ie cooked something delicious and/or different, and occasionally video game related. Sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen, but I don’t know what that would be. Inspiration to strike, maybe? But I’m grateful for these peaceful, placid days.

 

I started reading ebooks on April 6, 2010.

I know this because Amazon archives all the orders you’ve ever placed with them. (In fact, the first thing I ever bought from Amazon, back in 1999, was a book called Emotionally Intelligent Parenting : How to Raise a Self-Disciplined, Responsible, Socially Skilled Child. The second thing, Smart Love : The Compassionate Alternative to Discipline That Will Make You a Better Parent and Your Child a Better Person. The third thing, Bringing Out the Best : A Resource Guide for Parents of Young Gifted Children. I’m trying not to find all those purchases ironic, but… well, yeah. It’s hard not to.)

Moving on, the reason I was looking up my Amazon orders was because I was trying to remember what dog training books I read when Zelda was a puppy. I know I had great intentions of training her, but our life got super complicated right around then. Rory broke his arm and had to have surgery, plus he was in the middle of the testing that revealed his learning disabilities, so there were lots of doctors’ offices, school meetings, and appointments. Then, as summer approached, my mom and sister both needed back surgery, so the three of us (Rory, Zelda, and me) flew to Florida so I could babysit my niece and nephew while helping out around the house and also remotely working full-time. It was a chaotic period. Puppy training kinda fell by the wayside.

Sometime that fall, when things settled down, and Zelda was almost a year old, I finally started reading the dog training books and realized I’d done it all wrong. You were supposed to use one word commands; I spoke to Z in complete sentences. You were supposed to be the leader of the pack, which meant going through doorways first, never playing tug, and treating walks like military marches. I didn’t, did, and wasn’t going to. (On the latter, largely because it made no sense to me: our walks were for Z’s benefit, and if she wanted to sniff every tree along the way, surely that was the point of the walk?)

I don’t remember much more from the books, but I do remember deciding it was a lost cause and I’d just continue muddling along the way I had been. Because Zelda was already a really, really good dog. She didn’t need a leash (although she wore one on walks, because she was always going to forget herself at the sight of a squirrel). She came when called, sat when told to, and had a little repertoire of cute tricks, including jumping into my arms & standing up on her back legs while turning in circles. She could differentiate between a few toys, bringing you the one you asked for; find Rory and then return to me in a game of hide-and-seek with him; and play ball for endless hours. She was friendly to other people, but not too friendly — no jumping on them, usually — and tolerant of other dogs. I used to say about her that she’d do anything I asked, if she could figure out what it was that I wanted.

Sophie isn’t there yet. And Bear is definitely not there yet. Don’t get me wrong — they’re both doing great! Sophie’s not quite five months old, Bear’s not quite four and they both mostly come when called, sit in response to two different hand signals (because Suzanne and I didn’t coordinate on the signal), take treats gently, lie down upon request as long as they’re not in a distracting place, and let us know when they need to go out.

They also both jump up on people, Sophie barks more than I want to listen to, and Bear has a tough time remembering not to use her teeth on my arm and hands. She doesn’t bark much, but she’s a very mouthy girl! Sophie also pulls like crazy on the leash and while I’m happy to give her the walk that she wants to have — it’s for her, after all — I’m not suddenly going to become a runner just because she wants to run. Even with really good shoes and a low-sugar/low-nightshades diet, my joints can’t handle high impact activities.

Ergo, dog training. I started by looking at local dog trainers, but the raging pandemic ruled out in-person training for me. We’ve had 84 new cases, 3 new deaths in Humboldt County this week, and I don’t even want to get started on how frustrating it is that Humboldt has had more cases since July than we had in the entire first damn year! Literally, we didn’t reach 3000 cases here until March of 2021 and we’ve had 3,323 since July 1. The numbers are just crazy. But moving on (again!) one of the local trainers who’d moved online cited her certification from a dog training academy, and so I decided to jump to the experts, also online. Their introductory class was expensive, but I took the plunge, paid the fee, and jumped in.

Sadly, I grew to regret that decision. The course is a mix of videos and slideshows, with quizzes at the end of every chapter, and while I don’t hate the training, the more of it I did, the more it felt… wrong. It’s clicker training, where you basically reward your dog copiously for behaving in ways that you like. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it feels incredibly artificial to me. It’s very structured. You’re supposed to establish your goals for your training session, work on breaking tasks into small pieces, click & reward, wash, rinse, repeat. For a different person (or maybe a different personality type), it might be great, but I found myself increasingly reluctant to do the exercises and not advancing in the class nearly as fast as I should.

Enter the world of books, of course. In the past week, I’ve discovered Love Is All You Need: The Revolutionary Bond-Based Approach to Educating Your Dog; Teaming With Your Therapy Dog (New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond), and the extraordinarily delightful The Invisible Link to Your Dog: A New Way of Achieving Harmony Between Dogs and Humans. I’m waiting on two of the above to be delivered in paperback, because I wanted to be able to share them with Suzanne, but all three are focused on building a relationship with your dog, not on getting your dog to obey you. Meanwhile, I’m following the advice from The Invisible Link which means mostly I’m focusing on loving my girl and building the bond between us, as well as thinking positively and not worrying.

Yesterday we took the dogs to the beach and for the first time, it was really crowded. Lots of people, lots of other dogs. Sophie was not a fun companion for the first twenty minutes or so. Pulling at her leash so hard that I was worried she was going to hurt herself, barking like mad at every dog she saw, hackles up… I was hating it. She probably was too, to be honest.

But as soon as we got far enough away from the parking lot that I was sure she’d really have to work at getting out in traffic, I took her off the leash and let her go. She still barked at other dogs, but after a little while, she’d mellowed out enough to mostly stop. She ran like crazy, played with Bear, chased after Riley, got incredibly sandy, and had fun. And when she got so far away from me that I could barely see her, I waited patiently where I was, believing that she would come back to me when she realized she didn’t know where I was. She did. By the time we left the beach, she was mostly walking on the leash like a very good girl — helped, of course, by the fact that she was tired. (That said, I’ve also bought a no-pull harness for her, and a We leash, both of which ought to help her figure it out, too.)

Back to the ebooks — I don’t regret the fact that my dog training books were not electronic, I guess. Fifteen years ago, the world of dog training was a different place, and the books I’m discovering today are very different from the ones I read back then. And it is fun to be immersing myself in a really different kind of learning.

On my first night of sharing a tent with Sophie, I had a moment when I thought, “Is this night EVER going to end?” and picked up my cell phone to check the time.

It was 10:11 PM. I had many, many more hours to go.

Apart from that night, the puppies’ first camping trip was pretty much perfection. Well, there was a little rain (less fun in a tent with a dog that wants out every couple hours than in Serenity) and a little more barking than desirable… but mostly it was great weather, fantastic beaches, happily energetic puppies, and excellent company.

We left on Labor Day and drove up to Humbug Mountain State Park in Oregon. We made plenty of stops along the way — at Trees of Mystery, the beach in Crescent City, Fred Meyer in Brookings — and managed to turn a three hour drive into a full day affair, but all of it was fun.

On Tuesday, we mostly went from one beach to the next, heading up the Oregon Coast. The puppies had such a good time, rampaging with one another, getting wet and sandy and exhausted, and practicing all of their developing skills. Empty beaches are wonderful places to work on responding when called. Even Riley got into the action, and not just for the treats. He had a couple moments of really playing with the puppies, running circles around them. It was so good to see three happy dogs having fun together.

Our northernmost point was our destination: Claussen Oysters, a restaurant where we’ve eaten before. I wasn’t particularly excited about going back there, because the only things on the menu that looked gluten-safe were the oysters on the half-shell, which are delicious, but not really sufficient to be a full meal. I warned Suzanne that we were going to have to find me more food somewhere. But the restaurant has plenty of outdoor seating and it felt like a great place to take the dogs for their first restaurant meal.

As it happens, it’s now a great place to take a person with Celiacs, too. Suzanne went inside to order while I stayed outside with the dogs and mere moments later, she came bursting back out the door, saying, “Great news! The chef’s girlfriend has Celiacs! Well, not great news for her, but great news for you!” They use separate frying stations for products with gluten and those without, and so probably 3/4s of the menu was actually safe for me to eat. I ate oyster tacos which came with fried tortilla strips and they were beyond delicious.

Literally, because Suzanne and I made a scale for our food responses during this trip and the highest point on the scale is, in her terms, “OMG,” and in my terms, a hum of happiness that precludes analysis of ingredients. The scale, as best I can remember, went in order: hum of happiness/OMG; delicious; tasty/yummy; good; okay; eh; unappealing; gross; revolting; disgusting. On Wednesday, my breakfast — a backpacking meal of eggs and potatoes to which one adds hot water — fell somewhere between gross and revolting. My oyster tacos, however, were definitely the hum of happiness. Beyond delicious!

The weather went from foggy and cold in the mornings, to sunny and clear blue skies, then back to foggy again (with rain one night), but always stayed in comfortable ranges, never uncomfortably warm or uncomfortably cold. I was sleeping in a tent, so that mattered even more than it used to. I did figure out that I’m going to need to do a better job with my layering if I’m really going to be a tent camper, but even so, I mostly stayed comfortable.

On Wednesday, we went inland and took the dogs swimming at a swimming hole. Bear, the Lab mix, was undecided about swimming, but Sophie actually really took to it. Her ears are currently sometimes up, but sometimes one up, one down, and the sight of her tiny head held above the water, one ear up, one ear down, as she paddled was ridiculously cute. No pictures, though, because I didn’t have my phone on me in the water, but I want to remember the image!

We came back to Arcata on Thursday, and even though camping was great, it was lovely to be home again, sleeping in a real bed, taking hot showers at will, even cooking in my own tiny kitchen. (I don’t think I mentioned this on my blog before, but while I was gone, Suzanne began a regimen of weekly food prep with limited foods. Lots of greens and sweet potatoes! It isn’t something I want to do, and while I know I’m welcome in her kitchen, it’s not really big enough for two people to be cooking at the same time, so I’ve been working on making Serendipity’s kitchen more functional. A griddle, a convection oven/air fryer, and a new fridge later, it’s getting there.)

Apart from camping and settling in, I’m not doing much right now — a thing about which I’ve felt occasional Puritan guilt. Is my sense of self-worth derived from my work ethic? A little bit. But I keep telling myself that my current situation is something like a maternity leave: I’ve got two adorable babies to hang out with and it is absolutely a once-in-a-lifetime experience/opportunity. Sure, I meant to get back to writing and taking the self-publishing business seriously when I got settled, but… well. C’est la vie. Meanwhile, puppies! Cuteness! Training and playing and walks, as well as lots and lots of sweeping dirt out of Serendipity — I can’t believe how much they track in. Anyway, life’s good and I’m appreciating it. I’ll get back to writing regularly eventually!