life and art

A Gal’s Best Friend

Velcro Dog and Thunderstorms

I’m not going to apologize for not posting. These last months have been about writing the story, revising the story, finding a freelance editor, and trying to find a new way to bring order to what feels like a chaotic life.

I’ve posted before that I’m not working. My full time job is all about managing my chronic health issues, trying to keep on top of house stuff, and writing. Oh, and being Velcro Dog’s entertainment and food service. One would think that having so many hours in the day would mean I could get it all done and be rested and relaxed.

Excuse me a moment while I laugh/sob hysterically.

Here’s the thing, not only are there only so many hours in a day, there’s only so much energy a person can expend during a day. With my brand of health issues that energy varies from hour to hour let alone day to day. Every day I start with some goals and a task list. And every day I have to prioritize and reprioritize those lists so that I get the absolutely most important things done. Things like pay the bills, feed the dog, take my meds, interact with my husband. On crazy low energy days this may mean I eschew showering and instead feed and exercise the dog so he won’t plot ways to kill me in my sleep. Or I skip making my word goals so I have energy enough to have some quality time with my husband. Or toss my blog plans out the window so maybe I can work on my wip.

This is what I mean by chaotic. I can’t create a schedule and just stick with it. I have to be flexible with my energy output. In order to do this I need to be okay with leaving things undone.

Which is HARD for me! I am that typical first born child who wants to excel at everything I do. I’m a recovering perfectionist who is learning what good enough looks like. And trying to make peace with the fact that even good enough changes from day to day.

One of the things that helps me the most, aside from some amazing friends, is Velcro Dog. When I was in grad school for my psych degree I met a woman who trained therapy animals. We got to talking one day and she told me just how important animals could be to the therapy process. We had a different dog at the time, a big white fluffball who always seemed to know when I needed to snuggle with him. I told my colleague about our fluffball and she told me about her animals.

Then I graduated and didn’t think much more about therapy animals until I had to leave my day job and spent most of my days at home. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. And yes, months have turned into years. Pain and fatigued filled years.

Last year I started thinking again about therapy animals. Velcro Dog is not a trained therapy dog. He’s just a very loving dog who happens to think my days exist to serve his needs. I’m not complaining. I love my dog and I am happy to spend my time playing with him and snuggling with him. Even when he’s driving me up the wall because he has energy we weren’t able to burn by going to the dog park.

But I think of my life without him and how these last years would have been very different if he wasn’t with us. I would probably be way more depressed than I am. And I would not move around as much as I do. I wouldn’t be laughing as much without his antics to bring me out of myself. There is something incredibly life affirming about Velcro Dog and I’m so glad he loves me enough that he never plots ways to kill me in my sleep. I hope.

Dancing in the Rain

Sometimes my life feeds something within the story I’m writing.

I don’t try to put snippets of my life in my stories. I write fiction, not memoirs. But as my writing is an extension of who I am, my life and my experiences feed the fiction.

An example. Today was cold and windy and the air felt like a storm was brewing. I looked out the picture window in my kitchen searching the sky for any signs of impending rain. I had a dog to walk and errands to run and both of these activities would be easier to do when it wasn’t raining.

And it struck me, as I searched the sky, that once upon a time I used to love storms. I would stand on the hill of our former house, the hill that looked out over the western skies, and would dance in the rain. Wild dances, with my head faced up to receive the rain and it poured down. I especially loved thunderstorms, the way the electricity in the air would dance across my skin as I in turn danced beneath the lightening and the thunder.

I  haven’t done that in a very long time, and today as I looked out my picture window, cursing the thought of rain, I wondered why. Why don’t I dance beneath the rain any more? Is it because I’m 46 instead of 26? Because I’m more self conscious? Or is it because as my health has become a slave to weather patterns I no longer feel affinity with the coming storms?

Whatever the reason, I no longer dance in the rain. And neither does Hope, the heroine of my current story. She, like me, used to dance in the rain. She used to live for the feeling of electricity skimming across her skin. Used to life her face to the rain. Used to be the raging storm.  But she isn’t any more. Her life is more…complicated.

And it’s important for the story that she realize this about herself. Realize that she no longer dances in the rain. I didn’t know this until I had my own melancholy realization. My life fed my story. My subconscious worked out a story problem and used my own life to do so.