Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

What the Hell Was That?

By

I’m going to tell you three things straight up:

  1. This post is not about dogs, although they do have cameo roles in the story I’m about to tell you.
  2. I will leave you hanging at the end of this post. Only because:
  3. I will tell you what the hell it was in Follow-Up Friday’s post. There will be a prize (a bag of treats) for the person who guesses correctly just exactly, What the Hell it was. (Hang with me, you’ll understand shortly.)
Wait? WHAT? That's a treat right there! A Frankenwoofer by JONES!

I hope it doesn’t take her as long to tell this story as it took her to let me have this Jones Frankenwoofer.

Hubby was out of town this past weekend. He left on Thursday and returned Sunday evening. I never sleep GREAT when he’s gone, I always worry about someone breaking in. SO, I sleep with my pepper blaster on my nightstand and put a tea kettle in front of the door. (Don’t judge.) My thought is this, if someone tries to get in they will knock the tea kettle with the door, which will wake me up enough to shoot them in the face with my pepper blaster and then Delilah can eat them. Perfectly sensible, right?

Well Saturday night Sampson didn’t come to bed. Which meant I couldn’t booby trap my door. Despite this, I fell asleep and slept fairly well until about 2:30. Around that time my bladder intruded into my sleep suggesting I might want to get up and make a trip to the bathroom.

Sometimes this happens and I ignore the bladder, but not this night. This night I appeased my bladder and got up to empty it.

I climbed back in bed, bleary eyed, ready to get my sleep on. I flipped this way and turned that way to get comfortable and then I was startled by a flash just above my curtain. You know when you’re using the flash on your camera and you get that quick little flash, just before it blinds you? Yeah that one. Well that’s what it looked like.

You’re dreaming, I told myself staring at the window.

Flash!

There it was again.

I swiveled my head around to check the shelves on the other side of the room, thinking there might be something up there that was causing it.

Nothing.

Whip my head back around and stare intently at the windows.

Flash!

Shit, I think the aliens are here for our cavity probe, I whispered to Delilah, who never moved.

I got up and cautiously approached the window.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to just open my curtains and peer out into the night. I have this fear of something/someone peering back at me. Granted I live in a raised-ranch, but there is a small porch outside my room, it’s unlikely, but not inconceivable that someone who was determined COULD manage to get up on that porch. Which is why I hesitated briefly.

I crept up to the window and carefully grasped one side of each curtain and slowly put one eye to the crack and gently pulled.

Nothing. No eyes peering back at me (thank Dog!) No alien spaceship shining a light in my window or trying to attract my attention by flashing me.

I let my breath out, and climbed back in bed.

I stared again at the window.

Nothing.

You’re still half-asleep, I assured myself as I once again started to close my eyes.

And Flash! There it was again, but this time it was on the chair next to the nightstand.

I grabbed my cell phone, activating the flashlight quickly and trained the light on the chair.

I didn’t see anything.

Someone’s fucking with me, I thought to myself, trying to figure out if this was one of those times where I needed to vacate the house immediately. Because we all know in those damn horror movies, investigating this shit doesn’t work out for anyone but the homicidal maniac.

I closed the flashlight and lay there staring at the chair.

FLASH! There it was again.

Again I grabbed the cell phone and using the flashlight feature, I once again inspected the chair.

And that’s when I saw it.

And this is where I leave you.

Yeah, so this is the cliff hanger portion. What do you think I saw? Leave your answer in the comments and whoever guesses correctly will win a bag of treats. These treats are something I recently found, they are made locally and my guys love them.

If there is more than one correct guess, I will put all correct guesses into a drawing using random.org and pull a winner. All guesses must be received by 9:00 PM eastern standard time Thursday, July 14, 2016.

Friday, July 15, 2016 I will reveal the answer to what the hell was flashing in my bedroom.

Treasure Hunters

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The stillness of the quiet Sunday was broken by the steady hum of leaf blowers, trying to corral the ever growing piles of leaves.

Men and women, leaf blowers and rakes in hand worked diligently forming large piles of leaves on the side of the road in anticipation of the town’s leaf collection.

Children with small rakes worked alongside their parents, and randomly abandoned their task to jump spontaneously into the piles, emerging laughing with joy, their hair and clothes full of leaves.

Trees not ready to let the last vestige of their finery go, clung tightly to the small amount of leaves that remained.

The cold November winds tugged tenaciously at the trees, trying to wrestle the remaining leaves from their tenuous hold.

Meanwhile on the streets, dogs happily plodded along, noses buried in the leaves sniffing for buried treasured.

So this is what nose to the grindstone means.

So this is what nose to the grindstone means.

 

I JUST know there's something in here.

I JUST know there’s something in here.

The treasure.

The treasure. Yes, it’s bread. Why do people throw big hunks of bread out for the birds?

 

When the Words Won’t Come

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By now you should all know that I will be speaking at the BlogPaws Conference in Nashville at the end of this month. My topic is Engaging Your Reader.

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I was a little nervous when I heard they were opening sessions for people to sign up. What if no-one signed up for me? But I’m happy to report, my session is full. For those of you who get into my session, don’t worry. I’m at conference from Thursday until Monday morning, if you see me there, grab me chat me up. If you aren’t attending, don’t worry, I’ll be writing a post recapping my topic. 

Last Thursday to give peeps a little taste of my topic, I participated in a Google Hangout with Jessica Willams from You Did What With Your Wiener (who will be doing one on one sessions about increasing your Facebook interactions) and Carol Byrant, Marketing Manager of BlogPaws and blogger at Fidose of Reality.

You can watch the chat here or you can go directly to Youtube. (Honestly, could that picture be any more unflattering?)

I’m telling you up front, I fidgeted a lot and had a real problem keeping my eyes looking at the camera on my computer. I kept looking at Carol and Jessica on the bottom part of my screen. And I think I got off track once, but Carol was all cool about it. After the chat Jessica and I hung out a bit and answered a couple of questions.

One of the things Carol and I talked about was what to do when you experience writer’s block. 

There are a number of things I do when the words just won’t come.

  • I have a bunch of posts in draft form in my dashboard. I go through those and look to see if something catches my eye, (although some of them are outdated now).
  • I will also flip through pictures in my computer and see if any of them inspire me come up with a post.
  • I am also sometimes inspired by some of your blog posts, or one of your posts reminds me of a story and I’ll jot some ideas down.

These are some of the ideas I use when I’m at a loss for words, what methods do you use when the words just won’t come?

And just because who the hell wants to see my picture on the blog, here is a cute picture of my puppy on his solo walk this past weekend.

Golden Lab

If you’re happy and you know it, lift your paw.

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