While we were camping over the weekend, Cricket boarded at the vet’s. What this means for today is that she has oodles of extra energy and enthusiasm. I took her for a long walk this morning, from home down to the beach and along the beach a ways so she could sniff at dogs and lunge at birds and then home. The theory was that this would make her more likely to be calm for the rest of the day. Thus far it isn’t working.

It doesn’t help that she has to be cooped up today. The workers who are fixing the dry rot on the corner of the house returned yesterday. This means that the gate on that side of the yard yawns open, since it normally attaches to the part of the house that is not presently whole. I have her leashed where she can go outside onto the porch or hang out with me in the kitchen with her food and her bed, but she’d much rather be out sniffling things. Heck, I’d rather be out sniffling things myself.

The theme for my week, so far, seems to be work under adverse circumstances, including the sound of pounding on the house, the jingling of the dog, the ingress and egress of people, and my own tendency to procrastinate. My mantra continues to be that writing is not a race. I am willfully ignoring the fact that I have to have some pages to take my writing buddy HAT on Monday and that Christmas will come whether or not T.’s and Syd’s stories are finished.

I hope that somehow the singing of the saws and the kiss of puppy fur against my fingers and the honking of the geese we saw migrating will add up to writing sooner or later.