My good publishing friends, Gayla and Fran, spent the night last night. We had been to an all-afternoon sales meeting followed by dinner at Joe T. Garcia's for about ten of us. Gayla, Fran, and I had a quiet evening after that. They went to bed about ten and I rushed to catch up on email and ended up staying up too late. This morning, I remember in half sleep hearing a funny rumbling noise, and I thought vaguely, "Gayla's playing with Jacob's toys"--she always likes to sleep on the bed in the playroom. But I had wrongly accused her--it was thunder, and Scooby knew it. He refused to go out. I gentled, I did everything I knew, and then I got a leash. With great effort--I'm always afraid his 55 lbs. of pure strength will pull me down when he resists--I got him to the back door, but I couldn't get him out. So I thought, "Well, I'll just miss today's meetings," because I can't leave him alone in the house, and I knew he had to pee. The ladies loved on him, which led him to send me resentful looks like I was an old witch. He came as far as the dining room where we were having coffee and snuggled up to me, so I snapped the leash on and tried again. This time I got him, holding back, climbing on a chair, tangling his legs in his leash, to the back door, got the door open, and couldn't quite get him out. I called for Fran, who came and gave a final shove to his rear end--and he was out! We all three looked out the windows as he peed--and peed and peed. Gayla said, "I've never seen a dog pee for that long." Yeah, he really needed to go out, poor thing. Fran is the one who was here the night the cat bit me (almost two years ago) and she rushed me to ER, so I told her she's always here for my animal emergencies, and she said "It's just that you have more of them than most people." Scooby would never bite or anything--he's just terrified and can't help himself, and I understand irrational fear better than most people. But as I kept trying to tell him, life has to go on.
Fran went to Dallas, Gayla and I went to the sales meeting at the Botanic Garden where we talked about all kinds of things that are the changing world of technology--upgrades so that online ordering is more secure, amazon's increasing pressure on providers, print-on-demand technology. Things like that make me think it's time to retire. At lunch, it was pretty enough to sit outside with our box lunches; but when we left about 3:30, it was raining. Six blocks away, it was sunny and dry! I fed Scooby tonight, but I don't think he's forgiven me.
It's been a long two days, and I intend to do a bit of work, read a bit, and go to bed early tonight. Tomorrow I'm having lunch with my mentor, and I want to take him the newest version of my mystery, the now rewritten second book which has become the first book--all seven and a half chapters of it. Not much.
I'm going to start having guest bloggers so watch for an occasional new voice in the next few weeks. I hope you'll find them interesting, and I hope they'll deal with the things this blog is about--writing (especially mysteries), cooking--okay, I'll keep the grandchildren part for myself.
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