Think Thank Thunk

I'm in a bit of a blogging drought at the moment. My whole house is recovering from a cold/bronchitis/plague and being on doggy deathwatch is what it is. My writing brain is hyper-focused on NaNoWriMo, aka let's take an ordinarily busy month of the year and make it an international writing event with the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Or National Novel Writing Month, for those of you hung up on details and accuracy. I have been bouncing between two ideas (and putting my current project on my internal back burner), effectively occupying my brain with character backgrounds, world building and plot outlines.

It is nice to be (mostly) over being sick. That fifth week of a cold can get to you, know what I mean? *cough-pneumonia-cough* I find it incredibly difficult to get lost in books when I have a head cold/sinus infection/plague, so I managed to do some serious binge watching of shows I'm super behind on. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Haven, Vicious, The IT Crowd, etc. Don't even get me started on my delight at catching BBC America's airing of The Rocky Horror Show.

My last blog post involved finding out my senior dog has a few weeks to live according to our vet. I was not sure what this week would look like given that information. I notified my siblings to figure out how they wanted to handle their kids (my dog was my niblings' first dog and at least 2 of them want to say goodbye while they can). I tearfully researched what to expect, trying to figure out how I have the right to decide he should be put to sleep while I also want to prevent him unnecessary suffering/pain/fear. I went out and got wet dog food to give him as long as he's able to eat to make him happy. The vet's office called since then to let me know that while he's dying of cancer, he also has a heart condition and needs medicines to help make him more comfortable. In the intervening 3 weeks, he has gone on hikes, slurped up the added wet food with abandon, got his first tick (which I thankfully seem to have noticed and removed in the optimum timeframe before the damned thing finished feeding) and is on as much blood pressure medicine as any of the older human folk in our home. He has shown no signs of slowing down, aside from skipping the last spoonful of his meals from time to time. So, I'm trying to appreciate each day that we have with him still and keep him as happy and relatively spoiled as he can tolerate.

As far as NaNoWriMo, we'll see what happens. Last year's project has spanned most of this year (with time out for short stories and the frequent odd new story ideas to outline). I still want to finish that project and see potential in it, but I'm excited to switch gears and work with different characters in a different setting. Maybe I'll choose to look at November as a time to recommit to writing as the last month or two have been less than optimally productive.  You know, instead of bitch and moan about fitting in 50,000 words in the middle of holiday season. Like I normally do.