Just Friends at the Doggy Spa by Elsie Woods

 Life is grand when you are a dog groomer.  Rita organizes most everything at the elite dog spa attached to the Chateau Rose where the filthy rich and not so humble vacation while dropping off their fury and loveable companions for spa days in England. 

Rita happily accepts the position of maid-of-honor in her best friend's wedding. Whenever I hear that, I know something will go wrong.  Maybe it will go right this time.

Joey, the groom's brother and best man, calls her Buddy.  That'll be a platonic evening, for sure.

Although, when chaos strikes things may work out much better.

And it begins.  A driver drops a boxer off at the entrance of the dog spa and speeds away.  Rita needs Joey to find the dog's owner and take care of the boxer while searching.  The next tragedy sets the stage.  The wedding is in two weeks.  The bride and groom have not made any plans as they claim they're busy.  No flowers, no cake, no invitations, no hall rented, and none of the rest.  

Bride and groom beg Rita and Joey to cover for them.  In other words, plan a wedding in two weeks.  

"Buddy" Rita and Joey are now inseparable.  This is when you really get to know just about everything about each other.  Take the odd with the great and figure out how well all the details fit together like a complete puzzle or one missing pieces.  

I bet all the pieces of the puzzle can somehow squeeze together an create a beautiful picture.

Happy reading,

Dawn Kunda

Golden by Shannon Mayer

 A wickedly cute read!  Cats, dogs, wolves, and witches collide to figure out how to kick ass on the bad members of the community.

Cin is nearly murdered in a violent display from her wolf brothers directed by her witch of a mother.  And her mother has a powerful enemy who takes it out on Cin.

The curse Cin isn't able to avoid turns her into a golden retriever by day and she's herself for the nighttime with the codicil that she can't talk.  This is quite the problem when her appointed mate, Havoc, adopts her fury self.  Havoc's brother Han is a lot nicer to her, in a way.

Cin makes a handful of great friends after she leaves her pack and is in hiding from the relatives.  Great friends with great magic and schemes to save her, but with the constant and treacherous scenes that seem inescapable.  

Back to Havoc and Han and their family feud.  Can the fight between the brothers help Cin and lead her to a loving mate?  As long as she doesn't get killed.  I like to believe love is stronger than murder and root for Cin and her gangly group of friends to bring love as the final straw.

Happy reading,

Dawn

I ONLY LIKE THE WOMAN IN THE BEDROOM!

 

Hey, gang, how the hell are ya?  Doing good here, just busy as all get out trying to work my way through Kickstarter and now BackerKit. But I’m getting there! 

So, today I wanted to tell you about what I faced last week at home…a dog.  To be specific, a little “wack-job” of a dog that can’t weigh even 20 pounds.  He’s (I think) a chihuahua / Jack Russell cross and is crazy as a goat that’s been loosed in an LSD lab.  Seriously!  The dog is a freak. Nothing this animal does makes sense. 

Okay, let me back up.  Here’s a cartoon picture of the little guy from a couple Christmases ago.  I know…he’s cute. Don’t let that fool you. He’s not all there, and he's a bad judge of character.  He actually belongs to my son and DIL, and he’s a total mommy’s boy…and the biggest fraidy cat I’ve ever seen. His name is Zeus.  I think they were hoping he would live up to that, but I honestly don’t see that ever happening. 

Anyway, here is where being a poor judge of character comes in…Zeus is afraid of me. Terrified, actually.  Or at least that is how it would appear to the casual observer. But the truth of the matter is…the dog just ain’t right.  He’s so terrified of me that he won’t let me catch him to go outside, so we have to leave his leash on him the whole time he is here…because he’s not smart enough to know that just because he’s under the bed, the leash is still out there where that woman can get to it. 

I have never abused the poor little thing, nor have I even threatened him and no one in the family can figure out why he has fixated on me. But Zeus has been part of the family for…hell, I think about eight years, and yet you would think every time he sees me that he is seeing some big, hairy monster for the very first time ever. They pull into the driveway, and he gets out of the car all excited to be here and I step out the front door and say, “Hi”, and he freaks the hell out. It’s the same routine every time and is so funny and weird that it has become the family joke that Zeus loves going to gramma’s house until he learns who lives there…because clearly, no one has ever told him before who lives at this house. 

Recently, he’s surprised us all, as he’s begun to warm up to me—well, sort of. His mom and dad will bring him and his sister, Zoe, by and leave them with me to babysit for a few days. Zoe…no problem. She’s in my lap the minute they are gone and, while she will cry a little bit over them leaving, she does great with me. 

Zeus, on the other hand, needs time to warm up to this stranger he’s clearly never seen before ever in his whole life.  Who could be so heartless as to expect a sensitive young man like him to just jump into the lap of a perfect stranger?! 

Well, the newest thing is that within an hour of his parents leaving, a switch flips in his brain.  He spends the first hour he’s here cowering behind a chair, peeking out to see if I’ve left yet. Then he just can’t stand it anymore and when he sees me sit down in the recliner in my room and Zoe getting all the pets, here he comes, launching himself into my lap. Scared the bejeebies outta me the first time he did it.  I saw him flying at me and worried that he'd finally snapped. 

So, once in my lap, he’s as happy as can be…stays glued to my side the rest of the day.  I sit, he’s in my lap.  I sit at my desk to work, he’s right behind me in the recliner…we are best buds…in my room, for the remainder of that day. 

Then he sleeps... 

Apparently, when he sleeps, his brain does a “clear storage” operation and he’s the living embodiment of 50 First Dates. I go to get them out of their kennel, and he is cowering in the back, avoids me like the plague all the way to the door, then hides behind a chair the minute I take his lead off and snap the short leash on him.  Yes, he still has to drag the leash because friendship is a very fleeting thing with this wackadoodle. 

This photo is the morning after he has just spent the entire day following me and laying in my lap.  Now, all this said, keep in mind that I do spend most of my day in my bedroom, working—either in the bedroom recliner or at my desk.  If I move into the living room mid-day, all bets are off…the dog that has just been in my lap all morning is now terrified of me again. I go to the bedroom, we are buddies.  Move back to the living room later and I’m dead to him. His friendship seems to be very location-specific…again, only with me. 

We have tried to sort it out and the only thing we can come up with is that he really only likes the woman in the bedroom.  Apparently, the woman in the living room is a terrifying, mean person that is NOT to be trusted. 

Have I mentioned yet that he is NOT right?

Well, that’s my story, weird and wacky, and I’m stickin’ to it. Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,  

 

Did you miss the Butterscotch Martini Girl Kickstarter? Worried about what new items we have added that you may have missed? You can still get in on the fun and pick up some great items either by backing a tier or choosing ala carte! Go to the BackerKit platform NOW at the link below, as you only have a short time and some of the new items are limited quantity only. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

COWBOY CRUSH CAMPAIGN ON BACKERKIT

Riley's Summer House.

Hey, ya’all.  How’s tricks?  Good, I hope!

Well, here we are again...another Friday...and I got nuthin’ to blog about.  So, I thought I’d update ya’all on my dog Riley.  Back on Friday, June 10^th, I reported that he was eating himself out of house and home.  For those of you who haven’t read that blog, you can find the link at the bottom of this one.  LOL

For those of you who might have read the first blog, you may remember that Riley started with the house on the left and had taken his remodeling far enough to have achieved the look on the right.

Well, Riley is still remodeling his doghouse and, apparently, he’s going for the Tahitian hut look.

Oh, wait...a Tahitian hut has walls. 

Perhaps this is the look he’s going for???

 Well, I’m here to say that Riley is no slacker.  He has been hard at work on his remodeling project since last June and has expanded his dog house to include..........

.........the entire outside.  Yep, that’s the doghouse as it sits now.  Dog, remember?  No opposable thumbs.  Can’t wield a hammer, can’t run a skill saw.  I actually believe this is what he's going to end up with by the time he outgrows the chewing phase...

 Of course, the other two dogs are annoyed.  Every time it rains, they glare at him and run into the other doghouse (smaller and older).

Fortunately, he hasn’t eaten that one yet.  Why, you ask?  Because he loves to sleep on top of that dog house.  Hard to chew down a house from on top of the shingled roof.  LOL  But he did manage to keep his butt on the ground long enough to chew a hole in the front porch of that doghouse and...as you can see, the pool is fair game.

Since I was on the subject of chewing dogs, I did a little more research to see if there were more strange dog chewing stories.  Oh yeah.  I found a whole slew of stuff not mentioned in my June blog that pooches around the world have chewed on.  These are some of my favs.

My dog ate...

·       My homework.  (This one, if true, really sucks!)

·       Ant bait.  (Seriously?  I had to open this one to make sure the dog lived.  It did.  Threw up and was fine...even went back for a 2^nd course of the stuff—in a midnight garbage raid.  Again, survived.)

·       A battery.  (Apparently, this one is more common than I would have expected because there were a LOT of internet entries on this one.  The thing I found strange is that so many people out there post in the middle of the night on the internet looking for someone--anyone--to answer, rather than...I don’t know...TAKE IT TO THE VET, MAYBE?  Sigh...don’t get me started!)

·       A toenail off.  (Strangely, I’ve heard of this before...our beloved Bradley had this issue...and nothing to take lightly.)

·       My passport.  (Note:  Do NOT travel with this dog, or you ain't gettin’ back in.)

·       Glass.  (Lots of these too.  Really?  Who leaves glass laying around?  While researching this one, I also ran across...Christmas Tree Ornaments.  Guess they were outta cookies.)

·       Matches.  (Holy cow!  DON’T feed that dog beans!!!)

·       Insulation.  (Sheesh...I can hardly stand to be in the same room with a piece of fiberglas insulation...how the hell could a dog chew on it and not scratch himself to pieces?  Actually, I loved the solution that was put forth...Don’t let him eat it in the first place.  Really?  Rocket science, I guess.)

·       Firework.  (Uh, okay.  I was actually horrified by some of the videos I found posted out there about dogs attacking/eating fireworks.  Dogs and kids...don’t come with a handbook, but I’m pretty sure this one’s self-explanatory.)

·       Sharpie.  (Guess he had a story inside just dying to come out.  No nasty letters, please...I couldn’t resist.)

·       Dryer sheet.  (Bad breath, maybe?  Do NOT try this at home!)

·       Robot.  (And the funny thing is...they are’t talking about a robot vacuum cleaner...they are talking about an honest-to-goodness robot.  Guess the dog’s afraid of being replaced by a machine.)

·       Glow stick.  (This might be my favorite, and I’m dying to know what that looks like on an x-ray.  Sheesh, I sure hope it wasn’t one of those with a hook on the end...that’s gonna hurt later!)

Well, those are the new chew toys I’ve found just since June.  When I look at this list, Riley’s new doghouse looks pretty darn normal.

That’s my story, rickety and ridonkulous, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight, ‘cuz w’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love Ya,

Kayce

Link to the original Riley blog.

Eating Himself Out Of House and Home!

Hey guys, how ya’all doin?  I’m good…thanks for asking!  So, today we’re gonna talk about one of my favorite subjects…misbehaving dogs.  Yep, everyone who’s ever had a dog has had one of these.  You know the ones…cute, sweet, loyal, loving, and the devil in disguise when you step out the door for a quick run to the supermarket.

Okay, I got a new dog last November (day before Thanksgiving), and I’m still wondering WHY?  He came to me with the name Hulk.  Seriously?  Who names a doxie–lab cross Hulk?  His legs are about two inches long, and his body is about a two-footer!  Anyway, I couldn’t live with the name, so I renamed him to Riley.  Nice name, seemed to suit him at the time.  But now I’m thinking perhaps Jaws would have been more appropriate.  The dog chews everything!  In fact, he’s literally eating himself out of house and home…and the other 2 dogs are none too happy about it either.

Riley is probably the happiest dog I’ve ever owned.  He loves to run and play with the other dogs, bark at the duck and the horses, bounce off of mom’s butt when she bends over to put food in his dish, and do a little home remodeling—especially those snug doorways that need to be enlarged. In fact, here is a before and after picture of Riley’s remodeling work.

Nice, huh?  And yes, that is Riley showing off his remodeling rskills.  You can see the debris on the ground...chew toys, a rawhide bone, 2 rawhide bone pieces, and a log he pulled off the tree.  You can also see that the tree is trimmed to the height Riley can reach.  Can you say BAD DOG?!

Yeah, good thing there are 2 dog houses in the dog run, or the dogs would be swimming when it rains.  At least this way, they have a second house to move into when it starts to rain…because the remodeled one won’t keep anyone dry.  And you should see how the other two dogs scowl at Riley when they have to make a break in the rain for the dry dog house.  In fact, we’re starting to refer to it as the summer home…open and airy.

So when I decided to write this blog, I went out to the internet to see what other dogs were chewing.  I came up with some pretty amazing stuff—stuff like…

·   One dog ate the nose off a rubber ducky…and it wasn’t his toy.
·   Another one chewed a bottle of blue nail polish on his mom’s brand new comforter.
·   Then there was the spendthrift who “blew the wad” and chewed up $170.
·   An empty beer can fell victim to a dog who must have had steel teeth.
·   3 mobile phones.  Seriously?  Yep, same dog chewed all 3 phones!  I’d have to try to call them…don’t lie…you know you would too!!!
·   One independent and ambitious guy opened the freezer and ate an entire frozen turkey.
·   Tube of super glue.  Okay, I’ve actually done this…it doesn’t end well!
·    Chewed false teeth.  This one stunned me.  I thought my mother was the only person on the planet whose dentures had fallen victim to a canine chew caper.  Well, maybe she’s the only person on the planet to have this happen 3 times.
·   Christmas tree tinsel.  Yeah, I had a cat who used to do this…had to quit decorating the lower 1/3 of the tree.  It was either that or continue to freak out every time the cat walked by with tinsel hanging out of her butt.  Not pretty!
·  Then there is the proverbial underwear thief…this one seems to be a really popular theme.

 

So, given my research, it doesn’t seem that Riley eating himself out of house and home is all that unusual.  Dogs everywhere are finding more and more creative ways to entertain themselves.  And dog owners everywhere are finding more and more creative ways to shame their dogs.  I thought about making up a sign to hang around Riley’s neck, but I’m pretty sure he’d eat it.

So I’ll just continue to buy rawhide bones in five-packs every week and hope it at least slows the little monster down.  I actually saw him chewing on a log the other day.  Oh, and did I mention he’s been hard at work trimming the Mulberry tree?  Hmmm…maybe I should put him to work on the mesquite!

That’s my story, crazy and chewy, and I’m stickin’ to it.  (At least until Riley eats it.)  So hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,

Kayce

CHUBBY GIRLS IN PRETTY NECKLACES AND PISSED OFF LONGHORNS.

Hi there!  Good to see ya’all back again.  I haven’t see you since last year!  LOL  Hope your New Year is off to a great start, and I hope you enjoy these silly pet tales.  We’ve all got ‘em, but these are some good ones.

I recently read a story on the internet about a guy who loved cutting his grass with his riding lawn tractor.  He would wave to the neighbors and drink a cold beverage as he worked, and was very proud of his ingenuity. Then one afternoon when he got on the tractor to work, the key was missing from the ignition.  After blaming absolutely everyone in the household for taking the key, he finally gave up and resorted to mowing the yard with the push mower.  This went on for two months before their dog finally dug up the key that she had stolen from the mower and buried.  Good dog!  Could be worse…at least she buried it and didn’t eat it…that’s a whole different return routine that ain’t pretty.

Apparently, the same dog later racked up a large vet bill for the family when she decided to see what fish bait smelled like and she lodged a treble hook inside her nose.  The owner now keeps the very expensive fish hook next to the dog’s picture…and there’s probably a hook on the wall next to it with the tractor key.

Speaking of fish hooks, I have a friend who used to own a gorgeous female Samoyed who decided to see what fish bait tasted like.  Fortunately, my friend lived with a veterinarian, so removing the fish hook from the dog’s throat was free to her.  LOL  Moral of the story…be careful where you leave your hook, you never know who or what you are baiting.  Hmmm…that’s good advice even if you don’t own an animal or fish.  Just sayin…

When my son was a baby, we owned a Basset Hound named Connie who absolutely adored the baby.  One day while I was cooking dinner, I put my son in the baby swing and wound it up.  He loved to swing and would sit for hours in that thing as long as you kept it wound up and swinging.  So I’m cooking away and I hear him giggling up a storm behind me.  So I turn and look and what I see is the baby swinging to and fro in the swing.  Connie has figured out just how far the swing comes forward and she is sitting just at the edge of its path.  The kid comes forward and the dog licks his face.  The kid laughs all the way to the back of the swing’s path and then a he starts to approach the dog again, he closes his eyes and scrunches up his face which earns him another lick.  At the time, I was horrified that the dog was licking the baby on the mouth.  Knowing what I know today (as a grandmother) about the dirt and germs that kids manage to survive, I’d probably stop to take a picture.  I’ve always regretted I didn’t have pictures of that!  What?  It was cute.

Another article I read on the internet was about a Bulldog that got a cat door stuck on her head.  Apparently, she’d seen the love of her life passing outside and was in a hurry to catch up with this male specimen of a dog.  So she barreled into the cat door, which was only large enough to fit her head through it, but not large enough to allow her entire body to pass through—or to allow her to back her head out.  (She was a chubby girl.  So what?  Don’t DIS the BBW!)  So, anyway, when she panicked and pulled, the cat door came out of the wall, and she now wore it like a necklace.  The fire department was called to help get the necklace off the little strumpet, and the family is now waiting to see if she’s in the “family way”. Because, apparently, the love of her life came back to investigate when he heard the noise.  Oh, look, there’s a hole in the wall and a beautiful girl in a pretty necklace!  I think I’ll just go in and have a visit.  It’s always the pretty necklace that gets the girl in trouble, ain’t it?

The story of the Bulldog wearing the cat door reminded me of something I actually saw in my neighborhood.  The people who live behind me have several beautiful longhorns.  They are incredible animals to watch.  Those horns are H-U-G-E, and I always wondered if they ever catch them on anything.  Well, I can tell you now that…YES…they do!  Apparently one of the longhorns decided one day that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence (because it always is)…or maybe he had a hard-to-reach itch and decided the gate would be the perfect place to scratch it.  In any case, what ensued was this poor animal getting those H-U-G-E horns caught in the gate.  Did I mention these longhorns are enormous animals?  Well, they are, and they are incredibly strong because this guy with the stuck horns freaked out and pulled the gate clean off the hinges.  Only his plan didn’t work out so well because he got the gate loose from the fence, but it was now stuck on his head.  How do you get a gate off the horns of a pissed off longhorn?  You don’t.  You wait for the pissed off steer to work it loose and dump it on his own…or until he’s so stinking tired of carting that six-foot gate around with him everywhere he goes that he just lays there while you sneak up on him and work it free.  Don’t worry…the gate did come off the longhorn and the bovine is just fine.  Can’t say the same for the gate.  And it was yet another missed photo op.  I was so fascinated watching that enormous steer with a big gate stuck on his head that it never occurred to me to get a picture.  Dammit!

Well, those are my silly pet stories.  Be sure you grab a cup of coffee and check out the Butterscotch Martini Girls’ Blab on Funniest Pet Stories…there are lots more where these came from.  You can hear all about mothers who buy snakes, zombie onions, peeing puppies, kitties who crap ribbons, cats flossing in all the wrong places, goats picked up for breaking and entering, marshmallow the pig, lap goats, gramma kitty litter, and roof dogs.  You do NOT want to miss this blog!

BMG Blabs

While you're there, check out our other blabs.  I think you will be highly entertained!

Oh, and while I’m sharing…I posted another blog earlier this week over at the Phoenix Publishing and Book Promotion site all about the yearly mammogram that I think you will enjoy.

Phoenix Publishing and Book Promotion

Enjoy your New Year!

That’s my story, silly and petty, and I’m stickin’ to it!  Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love Ya,

Kayce

DUCK COMMANDER UPDATE.

Well, it’s been a while since I first blogged about our little Duck Commander, Tubby, and someone asked me the other day for an update…so here it is.  Yes, I still have one duck left of the three I started with.  And if you remember, the last duck standing was actually a duck we bought at the feed store to keep a rescued duck company.  She’s a mostly a black duck with some white feathers.  She was supposed to be an all black duck with a green sheen to her feathers…something called a Cayuga Duck.  In the right light, you can see the green sheen on some of the feathers.  But who knows where the white feathers came from?  Apparently daddy wasn’t who everyone thought he was.  LOL  

Just sayin…

Anyway, Tubby came to live with us as a companion duck back when my son and grandsons were all living with me.  Now everyone has moved on except one dog and the duck…they are both apparently stuck with me.  LOL  But they are entertaining, so there is never a shortage of laughs around them.

The dog is a little black terrier mix with an under-bite and a huge smile…and yes, he smiles all the time.  He is happy as hell and neurotic as all get out and a total control freak.  He will come to you to be petted and scratched on the belly, but only on HIS terms.  You have to keep one hand behind your back at all times and you can’t even think about picking him up.  If he detects the thought has crossed your mind (and he can), he runs like greased lightning and then taunts you by running circles around you just far enough out of reach that you risk putting yourself in traction if you try to grab him on the run.  So one day soon, I’m going to risk traction to  see if I can pin the little guy down and cut off the two dreadlocks that have formed on either side of his mouth.  Although, my fifteen-year-old grandsons thinks I should leave them because he thinks they look like a Fu Manchu moustache.  Funny how a Fu Manchu moustache makes actors look sinister, or like great thinkers.  The only thing it does for neurotic little Skay is make him look goofy.  LOL

So…back to the duck…I think where I left off with my last update was that Tubby was continuously trying to hoard eggs and sit on a nest in hopes of one day having offspring.  Well, that hasn’t changed.  She still hides her eggs way back under a big bush so they are impossible to get to on a daily basis.  Then when she accumulates ten or twelve of them, she starts officially “sitting” on the next.  That’s when my neighbor or I have to crawl back in there and clean out the nicely feathered and warm nest—before the eggs start to explode in our summer heat.  And Tubby still hasn’t learned to control her egg laying, so we still find the occasional egg at the bottom of the duck pool.  For the life of me, I can’t imagine how awkward it would be to suddenly have to lay an egg while swimming…but then that’s just me.  LOL

Tubby and Skay continue to play through the fence and we are now convinced that having grown up next door to the dogs, Tubby believes she is a dog.  She stands at the fence and calls the dog over to play with her and when he obliges, she sticks her beak right into his mouth and tries to grab his tongue while he pretends to bite her beak.  Total weirdness!  Then when it’s feeding time, she’s right there quacking and begging for her share of the dog food.  Yes, the duck shuns poultry food and begs for dog food.  She literally thinks she is a dog!

Now, the really strange and unusual part of this is the duck’s latest trick.  Somehow, we have acquired a rat problem outside.  ARGH!  These are not the usual packrats that you will occasionally find on a farm where grains are often stored.  These are the roof rat variety that probably came into the neighborhood on the fruit trucks.  But, in any case, everyone in the neighborhood is struggling to get rid of these suckers and I am no exception.  While I was out of town, the neighbor found a nest in my Bougainvillea.  Really?  Those suckers must have skin of leather to live in a hostile bush like that, but there you have it…rats in the tree.  This bush climbs the fence to the dog run which attaches to the duck pen.  So these suckers are helping themselves to the dog food (translation: duck food) and water in the duck pen.

So one day my neighbor tells me that she’s seen the dog, Skay, trying to catch a rat and that he’s pretty good at it.  My first thought is eeeeewwww…stop that, Skay!  I don’t want him to get bit…let the traps do the work!  Then I remember that some dogs were actually bred to hunt rats…maybe we’ve finally found Skay’s skillset???  Well, we continue to work diligently to trap and eliminate the rats when the neighbor comes over again to tell me she found an almost dead rat in the duck pen.  Okay, nothing earth shattering about that except that the half-dead rat was in the duck’s mouth.  HUH?  Yep, Tubby had been watching Skay try to kill a rat, so when she found one of her own, she did what any self-respecting guard dog would do…she grabbed it by the tail and started beating it against a railroad tie.  Now that’s a damn duck!!!

So here we are, our little band of weirdness, ensconced in our castle fighting rats in the mote.  But we are happy, healthy, guarded, and well-fed.  And yes, Tubby can have all the dog food she can eat.  Hell, any duck that can kill a rat can have my food!

So…that’s my story, ducky and daffy, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya, Kayce

Reading Time

     Oh my gosh! I actually have some free time (carefully carved out of my busy schedule) so, of course, my thoughts go toward….reading a book. I downloaded a bunch of Tessa Dare’s work onto my Kindle (thanks to a gift card for Amazon) and I can’t wait to dig in.

            So when an opportunity like this presents itself, how do you get ready? Do you sit in a favorite chair? The couch? Lay in bed? Do you have a nice tall glass of iced tea? Or wine? Coffee? What about something to snack on? Because you know you’re going to be sitting there for quite some time. Cookies? Cake? A big bowl of chips? Chocolate?

            For me, it’s the corner of the couch. I rest my Kindle on the arm. There’s a cup of freshly brewed coffee next to me and a bowl of grapes (I’d rather have some Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookies, but when in reading mode, I can demolish a whole bag and that’s not good for my waistline). Okay, now I’m ready.

              And here comes the dog with that look in her eye and her stuffed animal in her mouth. She wants to play simply because I’m sitting down for a change. *sigh* Looks like this carefully arranged reading time will have to wait.

As always, happy reading!

Marie

Writing Distractions

Today’s post is a little different than what I normally write about but I thought you all might like to see what I’m sometimes up against when I’m trying to write.

            This is my beautiful baby. Her name is Schatzie. She’s a German Shepherd and will celebrate her birthday in August. She’ll be a year old. The thing in her mouth? Oh, well, that’s a stuffed animal that does not contain stuffing (yes, they’re sold that way). This particular one is a lion. She also has a skunk, a parrot, and a squirrel. They come with squeakers that don’t last more than a week.

            This is what I see when I’m trying to write (incidentally, this is also what I see when I wake up in the morning). Her. Right there! Trying to give me that much loved toy. Actually, shoving/tossing it at me. If that doesn’t work, she’ll nudge at my hand until I take it from her and throw it down the hall. This is not a silent process, either. She makes noises, too! Soft woofs and little cries and this growl-groan that comes from deep in her chest (I’ve written a dog very much like her in one of my books…actually, Sarge, from A Good Man for Katie is a compilation of all the German Shepherds I’ve had over the years). I will admit, there are some days I’d rather throw the parrot or lion or skunk for her than try to pull words from my brain. It’s much easier and much more fun.

            This is my other beautiful baby. She’s seven and also a German Shepherd. Her name is Daisy. Notice how nicely she lays on the floor behind my chair, hanging on my every word and telling me what a fabulous writer I am. No stuff-less stuffed animal for her. She is too dignified for that; however, she, too, will nudge at my hand, making it impossible to type. Or concentrate.

            So, there’s my excuse…..why it takes me so long to write a story…..I have such lovely (and persistent) distractions. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

As always, happy reading!

Marie

PS. My apologies for the picture quality. Picture taking is not one of my strong suits!