The Power of Christ Compels you

I don’t understand the expression “sick as a dog.” I was sick as hell for Christmas, as well as the days before and after, and my dogs were just fine. On more than one occasion, I had a hard time getting to the toilet to vomit because I had a dog sitting on me. At one point, I was laying face down on the couch and Bartleby had nested on the backs of my legs. “Bartleby, I need to puke,” I told him. He was unaffected by this revelation, and fortunately it was just water that I puked up into the air, being pinned down by forty-five pounds of canine. The clear emesis went splat on the carpet, and Saffron wasn’t far behind ready to lick up the mess. A day later, I was sitting in a chair thinking I was just fine, having a conversation with my parents, with Bartleby curled up in the chair with me. I was seized with the sudden urge to upchuck, and Bartleby was again indifferent to the announcement. I had to push him off of me, but it was too late. Exorcist pea soup green projectile vomit spewed forth, not getting the chair, fortunately, but getting all up in my hair and on the carpet. Saffron didn’t get to eat any this time. My dad restrained him, spoiling all the Christmas fun.

My Uninteresting Life

When I started this blog at the beginning of Nano, it gave the writing here a certain focus. But now that it’s the middle of December, I’m running out of material. On the reg, my life isn’t that interesting. I mean, it is to me, but when I excitedly tell my Life Stories to people, I quickly realize how uninteresting they are.

Allow me to give you some examples. The Big News of my Life in the past two weeks are as such:

• The Mormons still haven’t come back to trim my cat’s nails (this is what I get for saying, “No, thank you.”)
• I think my work stopped carrying Coconut Cherry Bomb cookies, which is infuriating but it might be in my favor because if I kept buying them, I would eventually have had to buy bigger clothes.
• I discovered the taste of Licorice Mint tea is reminiscent of Coca Cola.
• I meant it when I tweeted that Drunk Kathryn was on a time-out until Mercury was no longer retrograde, but she managed to get out anyway. Which turned out to be fine, because she tried to start a mosh pit while a folk band was playing, and I think this is my new proudest moment. Thanks, Drunk Kathryn.
• Saffron pulled off Bartleby’s collar while I was asleep in my Papasan chair, and I still can’t find it.

Camp Nano starts April first. I’m planning to take a whack at it (Sophia might be joining me). Therefore, if Nano is what makes me life interesting, I have about fifteen weeks to pretend like my life is interesting enough to write about. I may dredge my memory for shit that happened in the past that’s Actually Interesting, but it might be a stretch. Then again, if I keep it up, the stretching will come in handy while I’m trying to make a 50,000 word count during the month of April.

The Good News of Jesus Christ

A few mornings ago, I was sitting in my front room in my Hello Kitty pajamas when my Kelpie mix, Saffron, fired off in a succession of barking. Bartleby, the Pit mix, barked in turn, climbing up on a piece of furniture, maybe the give the illusion to whoever was behind the door that he and Saffron were a force to be reckoned with (a fancy term which here means, be given belly rubs). I slightly parted the slats in the blinds to see who was on the porch. They had nametags and Books of Mormon. They looked over and saw me. They saw me see them. There was no going back. I didn’t want to seem rude.

My front door consists of a basic wooden door and a storm door, and after I opened the wooden door, I had to brace Bartleby because the storm door isn’t particularly sturdy and Bartleby will bound through just about any obstacle if it means he can make new friends. Bartleby had stopped barking at this point, but Saffron had not. I stood there, standing over Bartleby with his upper body in my arms, while Saffron locked eyes with the women on the other side, barking continuously.

I could hear maybe 70% of what the Mormons said. It was a good thing they had name tags, because I missed most of their introduction. During the whole time they stood there talking to me, Saffron just barked over and over. I heard enough to hear them say that I have a cute house and beautiful dogs and would I like to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. “No thanks,” I said. Saffron’s about ready to herd you. I’m not saying Mormons are sheep, by the way, I’m saying Saffron wants to herd everyone. Saffron once tried to herd my boss.

The Mormons seemed completely unphased by Saffron barking at them. He’s only like 45 pounds, he doesn’t really phase me either. The Mormons said that part of what they do is provide service to people, and did I or someone I know need any service? I declined, but after the Mormons left and Saffron recovered from their presence, I walked into my kitchen and saw the 2+ weeks’ worth of dishes rotting in my kitchen, and it occurred to me that I could have used their service.

After a few days of thinking about it, the list got longer. I would go to perform a chore, and I’d think, Why am I doing this? I could have had the Mormons do this.

So, be warned, Mormons of the world, if another pair of you come to my door, I’ll be asking y’all to do the following:

• Wash my dishes
• Clip Edgar’s nails
• Steam clean the front room carpet
• Change the oil in my car

Because, the good news of Jesus Christ (in theory anyway), is that you can convince unassuming strangers to clip your cat’s nails.

Cleaning the refrigerator will not be on the list. Edgar has that covered.

I didn't win.

I didn’t win NaNoWriMo. I really wanted to. It crossed my mind to copy and paste words like “meow” and “woof” 14,000 times at the bottom of my document just to get my word count to winner-status, but that felt too much like cheating, and there was no point if I couldn’t enjoy the victory.

I spent most of the third week of NaNo with my family, not writing. This may have been my downfall. I entered the fourth week with only 30,000 words and girded myself for a series of writing binges. But knowing how many words I had to write was kind of a creativity buzzkill. That made it feel more like a paper to write than a novel, and if I was the kind of high-functioning individual who thrived on that kind of stress, I would have gone to grad school. Or taken up an instrument and become a travelling musician. Or something.

But I’m not that kind of individual. I think it was when my boss asked if I wanted to pick up some extra shifts that I came to terms with losing NaNo. I wasn’t about to stress myself out trying to get to the deadline and start my work week totally exhausted, immune system lowered, and ready to get the flu and be really miserable for my extended work week.

But did I lose NaNo? I may not have 50,000 words, but I have a story and characters and something to show my writing group. When December 1 came around, my “novel” clocked in at 36,148 words, and that’s a lot of progress for someone who’s been struggling to get her writing mojo back. My new goal is to flesh it out into a respectable, chronologically logical draft by the end of February. If my first blogpost in March begins with, “So I abandoned my novel…” I’ll make sure to link back to this post.

36,148 words ain’t too shabby, though.

Novel Maestro

My family came up for Thanksgiving, but I didn’t make time for Nano during that time so I lost a few days. Whoops.

During that time, I assembled a cat tree for Edgar, and Edgar LOVES it. He sits on his little pirate perch all day like he’s king of the castle. Definitely worth the money.

Edgar spies on the neighbors.

In this episode of Edyn Jacks’s “What a Fat Vegan Eats in a Day”, she visits a cat café. I only watched the video about an hour ago, but it might be my new life aspiration. I have a colleague whose aspirations include starting a food truck. I’m going to tell him about the cat café and see if I can change his mind. Who wants a food truck when you can have a cat café?!

Well, I better get back to making up for lost time. That drivel won’t write itself. In the interim, here’s my “Novel Maestro” playlist.

1. NOFX – Six Years on Dope

2. Siouxsie and the Banshees – Spellbound

3. Violent Femmes – Blister in the Sun

4. A Radio With Guts – So Damn Beautiful

5. Anti-Flag – When the Wall Falls

6. Powersolo – Baby You Ain’t Looking Right

7. Against Me! – Sink, Florida, Sink

8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps

9. The Cranberries – Zombie

10. Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl

Still Behind (I made dog biscuits)

I made dog biscuits from scratch for the first time.

Also, for the first time, I converted oats to oat flour in my blender. It worked really well!

I used this recipe for the dog treats. Instead of flour, I used the oat flour, and instead of non-dairy milk, I used pumpkin puree. The dough didn’t hold together like a dream, but it held together pretty well.

At the time, it seemed like a good idea to double the batch, but that’s not something I would do next time. Of my two untrained brutes, Saffron is the most food-motivated. It took a while for me to roll out all of the dough, which gave him a lot of time to get increasingly excited about what I was doing. When I ran out into the hangup of having insufficient cookie sheet space, I ended up halving the remaining dough between the two dogs because I felt like the dogs would find the dough anyway before I had the chance to make space on the cookie trays that were in use. One batch will suffice in the future.

Hey, I heard you were making cookies...

Perseverance.

Even Bartleby got in on the action, but he was a little calmer about it and easier to call off.

I used Santa Cruz organic peanut butter because it’s just peanuts: no crappy additives. I was very excited when I discovered this! Mind you, I’ve fed my dogs peanut butter with sugar in it before… but it’s nice to avoid it, if possible, since they don’t metabolize it in the same way that humans do.

I used whole wheat flour to flour the rolling pin and roll out the dough. I made thick biscuits and thin ones, and found that the thin ones held up better in the oven.

I’ll be doing it again, and I’d recommend it to people who like to pamper their dogs. I liked that the ingredients were simple: pumpkin, good peanut butter, oatmeal, and traces of wheat from using whole wheat flour to roll out the dough.

Nanowrimo has personal achievement badges that Wrimos can award themselves. One of these badges is “Novel Maestro” for putting together a “writing soundtrack” for your novel. Perfecting such a soundtrack has been a welcome distraction… but oh so distracting. Once I’ve tweaked it to unnecessary perfection, perhaps I’ll publish the list of songs here.

I also discovered “word sprints”. I love word sprints. They’re helping me a lot.

My family is coming up for a few days this week so I’m hoping to get caught up with my word count by then before I get too far behind (I’m still behind, btw).

Gay Rude Boys

Coming up on a month ago, my bestie Sophia and I were driving down the highway on the way to look at rescue dogs. A car passed us that had a bumper sticker with a dog paw and a rainbow flag inside the paw. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sophia asked. “Do they have a gay dog?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Is that possible?”

Well, Gentle Reader, after having acquired a rescue dog and having him meet my other rescue dog, I can tell you that it’s possible. One of Saffron’s and Bartleby’s favorite pastimes so far is to happily take turns humping each other. We could get into a debate about whether or not that means they’re actually gay, but I like to think of them as my gay rude boys. Gay, because they hump each other, and rude because they are both virtually untrained. We’re working on the “untrained” part, but in the meantime I find my untrained brutes to be quite charming indeed, even when I wake up to the carnage leftover from the night before. Bartleby is crate-trained when I’m not home, but I cherish my late-night cuddle parties with the gay rude boys, so they find ways to entertain themselves while I’m sleeping in. For instance…

• Knock over the water bowl and bring it to the foot of my bed
• Play tug of war with my Hello Kitty pajama pants
• Play tug of war with my Jack Skellington scarf
• Play tug of war with and destroy a knee sock
• De-stuff a novelty pillow
• Destroy sketchbooks
• Urinate on the floor

This has been a long-winded way of saying that I am even more behind in my Nano word count than I was last week, but I’m prepared to take a leaf out of one of my untrained brutes’ books. So far, I have been enshrining my Nano novel as a place to escape to, but I think my story will be more interesting if I set fire to paradise and give myself some betrayal to write about. I will break my own heart in the process, but making the word count will be much easier.

Behind

It is Day 6 of Nano and I am currently behind about four thousand words.

Back when I used to write for realsies, about ten years ago, I used to draw heavily from my day to day life. I remember writing pretty well, too. I remember writing vivid imagery and all that stuff, but my skills are rusted so I’m basically churning out drivel. Which is fine, I think that’s one of the functions of Nano: it’s an exercise of quantity over quality. It’s like going 90 miles per hour on the freeway and giving the cop who’s chasing you the finger, only in this situation the cop is your internal critic.

I did not do adequate research in the weeks approaching Nano, so I’ve been forced to draw some from my life. However, I’m trying to draw inconsequential details from my life so I’m not setting myself up for stewing in a tedious cesspool of personal drama. I do that enough already.

They say to write what you know if you want to write something good. So I figure if I’m intentionally writing what I don’t know, one of the potential consequences is not-great writing. I am trying to provide myself an escape, so if my writing is not-great at the end of the month, I’m okay with that. When in Rome, spew drivel if that’s what’s required to keep up with the word count.

This means, of course, the inconsequential details of my life that appear in my story are mundane details such as eating more Sour Patch Kids than a doctor would recommend and cleaning up dog vomit. In that regard, I’m surprised I haven’t yet written at length about my piles of dirty dishes. The piles of dirty dishes are real: let me tell you…

Anyway, have you tried Tropical Sour Patch Kids? I had some last night. I like the watermelon flavor better, but I would buy the tropical again.

Inaugural Post

Good morning, Gentle Readers.

My name is Kathryn Buttercream. I am participating in Nano for the first time this year. I mean, I did it once a few years ago, but this time I’m doing it for realsies. This year I have no excuses. I’m told that the Nano train, much like the personal blogging train, has already left the station, but I’m okay with that. I’ve always been one to wear white after Labor Day.*

I expect overall rottenness, many faux pas in passive tense, abuse of common tropes, etcetera. However, I also expect to actually finish and maybe even have fun.

What about you? Are you or have you participated in Nanowrimo?

*That’s a lie, I primarily wear black.