Novel Synopsis

And here is the synopsis for the novel I just finished (well, the first draft anyway).  I actually won an honorable mention for the Frank Doubleday Awards in Wyoming for the first ten pages of this novel.

A year has passed since Sam Guerin made the choice to walk away from his best friend, Darcy, without a backwards glance. Now Darcy has wrapped her car around a tree and Sam spends the endless hours of his days working at his father's mechanic shop and hiding in his house, angry and reclusive, with nothing left of Darcy but the blame gnawing at his heart. Forced into good behavior by his probation and the adoration of his young niece, Olivia, Sam is determined to keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble. That means keeping his life as boring as possible and avoiding his ex-employer, Jackson Knight. Sam just wants to get on with his life and forget about Darcy. It's too late for them anyway.

It begins with mysterious texts from an unavailable number, unexplained disturbances in Sam's house, and the cat's increasingly strange behavior. Then the dreams start, dreams that hint at details Sam has no way of knowing, dreams that slam him awake drenched in a cold sweat, and bring on a fever unlike anything he's ever experienced. Someone or something is playing with him, rattling bones better left buried, and tormenting him with memories that fester in his mind. As if that isn’t enough to drive Sam completely insane, Jackson is campaigning for him to come back to work for him and he’s refusing to take no for an answer. If Sam is just losing his mind, overwhelmed by the grief he's locked away, then why is the cat acting so screwy? Why is Olivia insisting that Darcy is visiting her at night? And why is Jackson trying so hard to drag him down again? Sam is close to falling down the rabbit hole that put him on probation and made him lose Darcy in the first place, unless he can finally learn to trust the one person who has always had faith in him. Figuring out the circumstances surrounding Darcy's death may prove to be his undoing, or it just might grant Sam the second chance his soul craves and open his mind to a new talent he never knew he had.

I Feel Pretty

I am one of those people who takes very little time in the morning to get ready.  I take a shower, throw the hair into a ponytail, and out the door I go, sans makeup, sans fuss.  This strikes me as amusing considering how much I love makeup.  I like to buy it, I like to look at it.  I like to put it on.  I just don't like to put it on when it causes an inconvenience or is more trouble than it's worth.

The less time I have to spend being presentable in the morning, the happier I am.

This has rubbed off on my pets.  Grooming is not one of their favorite things.  That's funny as well considering cats generally spend the 90%  of the time they are awake grooming themselves.  Not my cats.  Puckett is so fat she can't reach anything but her front paws and Willow for some reason is uninterested in grooming herself.  Because of this both of them have developed mats in their fur.  Puckett's mats are the result of laziness and portliness.  Willow's mats are a result of her very fine fur and thick undercoat.  That and a stubborn refusal to let me brush her.  I have to sneak attack her every day with the brush and remove one mat at a time before she claws the hell out of me and runs away.

It's a miracle I have not developed cat scratch fever.

The last struggle had me coming away with scores down both wrists and bite marks in my hands.  My coworkers thought I'd made an attempt to trespass somewhere guarded by a rottweiler.

Welcome to the friendly neighborhood rottweiler - a six pound, bug-eyed tabby cat.

Trimming Willow's nails is an even more traumatic experience.  One would think I was murdering her and dismembering her one limb at a time.  It requires me holding her down (gently) and taking the nail clippers to her little carpet shredders.  She screams and yowls like nobody's business and since she's boneless anyway, keeping a hold of her is quite the chore.  It almost requires a kitty straight jacket.  The last time I trimmed her nails Percy was sure I was killing her.  He came up and slurped her right up the side of the head in reassurance which only served to infuriate her more.

We both got the tar beaten out of us that night.

Puckett is a little better about brushing.  I have to attack her daily with the comb as well and remove a mat at a time, but she does not attempt to pummel me into the ground for my efforts.  She does, however, spin circles while I chase her around trying to hook the teeth of the comb into her fur.  When she has enough she runs upstairs and gives me the "glare."  This morning she pooped on the floor. That's her way of saying, "Not cool, Mom."

I don't even try to trim her nails.  First of all she isn't destructive with them.  She claws only what she is supposed to.  Secondly, manhandling 23 pounds of cat to the ground to try and trim her claws is basically committing suicide.  If one is feeling a kamikaze wish, then by all means.  She has been known to beat the snot out of me when I've tried to put her in a cat box.  Which is why she now rides along in the car on the front seat like a diva rather than in a kitty carrier.

Tess is a water dog.  She loves to swim.  I take her down to the river where she jumps right in and swirls around making waves and ripples while trying to shovel as much of it in her mouth.  I've taken her to the lake and she will swim all day, until she is ready to collapse, and still be ready for more.

I bring out the hose to give her a bath and it's like the world has ended.  If I don't leash her first she runs away.  She will go right into her dog house and good luck dragging her back out.  Once I have her secured, I have to hold her leash with one hand, while turning the hose on her with the other.  She stands there with a mournful, horrified expression like I have just condemned her to a place with no doggy bones.  I soap her up with her specially formulated anti-allergen doggy-safe shampoo and she gives me this look like I'd better watch my back at night.  Once she's done she does the doggy happy dance all over the yard.  All is right once again in Tess world.  I don't even try to trim her nails.  That's what the pavement is for when we go for walks.

Percy is the best of all of us.  He grooms constantly.  His coat is testimony of this as it is a beautiful shiny coal black.  I can clip his claws with absolutely no fuss.  He snuggles into my lap and purrs happily.  When he's not cleaning himself, he is licking Willow or Puckett's heads, cleaning them as well.  He'll even lick the lotion right off my legs if I let him.

Isn't it funny that the one who spends the most time in the bathroom is the male?

Best Friends

This is a rogue post.  Because Tess is absolutely terrified of the camera and she tends to leave the room whenever I pull out my phone and make like I'm taking a picture, I have to post this.  I snapped this when she was least expecting it and true to form, she left the room after giving me one hell of a dirty look.  This picture, however, sums up the true relationship between Tess and Puckett in all its raw emotion and honesty:

And here's another:

Define Yourself as a Writer

As per my instructions for today's October Platform Challenge, courtesy of Writer's Digest - http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules - I am going to take this time to set up my bio and define myself as a writer.

Name:  Anita Weisheit
Positions:  Reference Librarian; Pet Blogger; Novel Writer; Short Story Writer
Skills:  Customer Service; Reader's Advisory; Grammar, spelling and language; German speaker; Creative Writing; Blogging; Teaching; Computer and Tech Skills; Database Navigation; Social Media Navigation (Facebook, Twitter).
Social Media Platforms:  Facebook and Twitter
Accomplishments:  Master's degree in Library Science; Bachelor's degree in English and Literature; Teaching certification, Montana and Indiana; Honorable Mention for the Frank Nelson Doubleday Award Competition, June 2014;  Honorable Mention for a short story in the 84th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition, September 2015.
Interests: Writing, Animals, Cooking, Baking, Reading, Gardening, Knitting, Quilting, Sewing, Bellydancing, Wine, Music to name a few...

In one sentence, who am I?  When not saving the world of knowledge with my librarian superpowers, I can be found at home wrangling my codependent pets and dreaming up other worlds for others to eventually enjoy.

The Seasons are Changing

My dog is depressed.  I can tell when she's depressed and it's totally my fault.  Autumn has finally arrived and it's not being super nice.  Whenever the seasons start changing my animals get into these weird moods.  Percy races through the house like his tail is on fire.  Puckett starts Bogarting the couch and gets very pushy about it to the point where if I even get up for a nanosecond she has parked herself in my spot.  Willow just doesn't even care if the litter box is close enough or not, she pees on the floor if she feels like it's too far away on that particular day.

And Tess...well, Tess just gets mopey.

To be honest I'm kind of sad and depressed too, partially because of the changing seasons, and partially because of other things.  We had a rather long summer.  It's the first week of October and we've had one really nasty, cold weekend where all it did was rain.  Just last week it was still in the nineties.  Now the air has warmed up again but there is that definite shift.  It's not summer warm, it's Indian Summer warm when the mornings are frosty and cold and the evenings have a bite.  The mountains might already be getting some snow.  It's no longer warm enough for my lazy butt to get out of bed in the mornings to walk my dog and the days are getting shorter so there is very little time after work to walk either.

So Tess mopes.  I don't blame her.  As of late I haven't been much fun to be around.  My summer was weird and I just ended my latest relationship with a guy I really liked but knew was completely inappropriate.  Tess liked him too and that makes it harder.  I hate letting my dog bond with someone I know isn't going to be sticking around.  She senses my unhappiness and so she mirrors it.  We lay around and give each other sorrowful looks.  The cats look at us in disgust and go back to the food bowl or to whatever bed they are using at the moment.

It is a season of endings.

I don't care much for fall. It means the weather will start getting cold.  I hate the cold.  My garden is on its last leg and I have to harvest what has made it through the season while it's still warm enough to dig around in the dirt.  My bumblebees under the front porch are gone.  Wally and his friends have lived their circle of life and now their new queen has gone off to hibernate for the winter so she can start a new nest in the spring.  Unfortunately that new nest will not be my front porch as they usually don't nest in the same place twice.  Even my spiders are hiding out.  In the summer my house is an eight-legged party.  As fall approaches they disappear to wherever they like to winter which is probably under my house in the crawl space.  It's comforting knowing they are down there, but I miss having them to talk to.

It hasn't escaped my notice that Tess is at the halfway mark of her eighth year.  She will be nine in March.  I will be 38.  My first German Shepherd, Flag, died when he was 8.  Tess is getting older and I cannot stop it.  She has been my longest most enduring relationship and instead of enjoying her company I'm moping around the house and encouraging her to mope as well.  My friend mentioned that she wished we could just stop time and stay like this for awhile until we are ready to move on.  Ready to give up our independence and have children.  Ready to stop acting like we are in our twenties.  Ready to grow up.  Ready to say goodbye.  But we know that can't and won't happen and time marches on.  Tess is getting older and I'm getting too old to have children, to get married, to find my soulmate.

Though Tess might just be my soulmate.  In which case I am not ready to lose her.  I am not ready for her to be nine years old, moving into the canine senior years while I'm still middle-aged.

I am not ready to say goodbye.  To Tess, to summer, to Wally and his friends, to that last guy.  I want the season to last just a little bit longer and be content while time stands still.


I'm not ready for the seasons to change.

The Tidy Bowl

My employee is my new best friend.  Seriously, in my eyes, she is a goddess.  I have worked with this particular lady for several years now and she has always demonstrated exemplary performance in the workplace with her meticulous attention to detail and her drive to be constantly busy doing something.  She also has a wicked sense of humor that comes out against some of our more colorful patrons at the library.  I have always liked her but the other day she did something so amazing, so beyond the call of duty, that I have elevated her to goddess stature.

On her next performance evaluation she gets an A++.  Five stars across the board.  "This employee deserves a raise!"

What did she do that was so amazing?  She introduced me to most amazing cat litter ever.

Having owned cats all my life I have no idea how this particular brand of "How to Make Your Life Ten Times Easier" escaped my notice in the past, but now that I have been shown the light I am in love.

I am in love with my cat litter.

I may be a little in love with my employee too, but that's another story.

A little backstory is needed here.  I have three cats - three spawns of the devil to be more precise.  And they do nothing but pee and poop.  Particularly my male, Percy.   I have mentioned in previous posts how this little guy enjoys announcing to the world when he is on the verge of a bowel movement by yowling for twenty minutes.  Then he'll scratch in the box for another twenty minutes.  Then he'll finish by racing through the house at the speed of light and the sound of elephants for five more minutes yowling his head off yet again as if expecting praise for a deed well done. This occurs at least two times a day and he pees twice as much.  As a matter of fact, if there is a clean box in the house then it is his sworn duty to make sure he messes it up as quickly as possible.  He will poop in one box and pee in another.  If I am cleaning a box he will sit beside me with his baleful green eyes demanding me to hurry up so he can soil it.

Precious does not enjoy a dirty toilette.

Puckett, my twenty pound queen bee, is mortified that she eliminates at all.  She is in and out of the box as fast as possible, always glancing furtively over her shoulder as though she doesn't want anyone to see her.  How dare anyone think she does such disgraceful things!

Willow, the neurotic hot mess, doesn't bother with the box at all, preferring to pee on the carpet.  She has been confined to a cage on a schedule to make sure she uses her own private litter box and as long as we stick to the schedule, she has been sparing the carpet.

The little darling.

Three cats who poop at least twice a day and pee twice as much as that leads up to a lot of waste and we go through a lot of litter.

I clean my litter boxes three times a day.

The litter I've been using in four litter boxes placed strategically throughout the house is biodegradable wood pellets.  It's the litter they used when they were at the animal shelter where I was coerced into adopting them and unleashing them on my unsuspecting quiet life, so being the anxiety ridden mess that I am, I didn't change the litter for fear that making any more changes in their lives would heighten their anxiety.

I needn't have worried.  Percy and Puckett do not have anxiety.  They couldn't care less.  Willow needs a Valium on a daily basis so there is no hope for her.

These wood pellets are the pits.  They are cheap which is great since I go through so much of it.  But they cause a constant haze of wood dust floating through my house that I am quite certain is the reason for my and Puckett's allergies.  We hack, cough, and sneeze constantly.  We sound like we have consumption.  The pellets also smell.  Not like cat waste (unless they have just been "used") but like freshly cut wood.  But not in a good way.  Sometimes wood just smells like musty old wood.  Or plain old sawdust.  And that's what cheap wood pellets smell like because they aren't made from mahogany or redwood or anything.  But I wanted to spare the environment so I used it all this time without being any the wiser that a much better option was available right here in my local Petco.

We have upgraded to the World's Best Cat Litter.  That is actually the name and they are not kidding.  This stuff can be flushed, it's biodegradable, it clumps, and it's dust free.  It has been occupying my litter boxes for almost a day now and I cannot smell wood or cat pee (and as mortified as she is by her own bodily functions, I am here to tell you, Puckett has the worst estrogen-laden smelling pee of any cat I have ever encountered.  At least she uses the box though).  I can't even smell the toxic waste scented dump that Percy left for me earlier in the day.  Or the pee puddle because it's - God love it - a CLUMP.  I can scoop it and flush it down the toilet.

Brilliant.

It's made of corn.

More brilliant.  

If Percy doesn't decide his toilet is a snack we are in business.

Willow is the one who will be the real test though.  When I put her in her cage at designated potty time, we will see if she gives me a look to shrivel me on the spot for once again upsetting her life with change, or if she'll actually give me a look like, "Finally, you moronic human.  I've been telling your for years to change that nasty litter."

My employee is a gem among stones.  She should be elevated to knighthood.  Or at least to level-five cat behaviorist.

https://www.worldsbestcatlitter.com/

Beware of Bee

I discovered this morning:  Who the hell needs a guard dog when one has a guard bee?  I have a purebred German shepherd who is extremely territorial, but she isn't much of a guard dog.  She barks at the neighbor's cat when it trots down the street and she'll glare at the neighbor who lives across the street when he is outside puttering around.  She has a great vantage point at the top of the deck in the backyard.  She does a great job protecting the flowers.  However when someone actually comes over she is completely embarrassing.  She gets so excited when I actually have visitors that she would probably hand over the silver just for a belly rub.  I'm fairly certain that should someone try to break into my house, as long as they don't set foot in her beloved yard, they would be free to rip off the TV and the laptop as long as they play with Tess and give her a doggy pop.

Wally on the other hand is a fierce protector of his home.  Also, Wally appears to have multiplied.  As of this morning there were three Wallys buzzing around the garden next to my front door and as soon as one flew off, another one would land on the front step and crawl under the porch.  I thought bumblebees were solitary but apparently Wally has created himself a family.  And now, since I'm not sure which one of them really is Wally (or Wilma as the case may be) I'm just calling them all Wally.  I did happen to piss one Wally off though.  My columbine routinely  needs deadheading so I was taking care of this while Wally and his friends were taking care of their own business. They really are quite remarkable.  Sometimes it looks like they can barely hold their fat little bodies up with those wings.  When they are airborne their wings are invisible.  They just look like yellow and red blobs hovering in the air and their butts droop.  If they are close to the ground, gravity actually pulls them down, but when they get high enough in the air they take off like little airplanes.  They can be seen for quite a few feet in the sky, they are that big.  There is a quote I've always liked by Mary Kay Ash:  "Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know it so he goes on flying anyway."  Metaphorically this works for those of us who dream of a more creative, fulfilling life too.  I feel sometimes that my dream of writing novels is impossible.  But if I take a lesson from Wally's playbook and pretend I don't know this, I can go on and achieve this anyway.  Wally is not just a pollinator of my flowers and an adorable guest under my porch, he is also a source of constant inspiration.  So I sat on the porch step for a moment to watch the three of them fly back and forth and crawl under the step.  One little guy seemed a bit confused.  He kept hovering over the porch like he knew where the nest is but couldn't quite figure out where the entrance is.  He must be the doofus of the trio.  There's always one.  They probably keep him around because he's the biggest and carries the most pollen.  He sniffed my hand a few times but continued to circle around in confusion, trying to find his nest.  Meanwhile here came who I believe is the original Wally because he knows right where the entrance is and always goes straight for it.  I must have pissed him off because he flew right into my face and the buzzing was loud enough to rival the humming of my refrigerator.

If you've never seen an angry bumblebee right up against your nose I can tell you.  It's the beginning of a horror movie. They seem to triple in size and Wally is not a big guy to begin with.  I am not generally afraid of bees but for a moment I felt like my life was in Wally's stinger.  Swatting at him didn't help.  He's quick.  He decided to express his displeasure in my hair.  I ran down the walk a ways to get away from him but he was not having any of it.  He chased me and buzzed spirals around me.  It actually sounded like there were six or seven of them circling me, that's how loud the buzzing was.  And he was zinging around me so fast it kind of looked like there were several of him as well.

Those little bastards really know how to intimidate someone.

To get away from him I had to run into the house.  That little beast actually followed me in and now I had a bumblebee in my house.  Of course now he was so disoriented by being in the house and trapped by a screen door that he left me alone.  I went back outside to give him a break.  We stared at each other through the screen and I'm fairly certain he was giving me the finger.  I am not proficient in bees.  I know wasps will sting you at the drop of a hat because they are assholes.  Bumblebees on the other hand, especially my little bumblebees, seem fairly harmless unless they are threatened as Wally so passionately demonstrated.  I was more worried, should he sting me, that it would kill him so I was really trying to avoid that.  Turns out bumblebees have smooth stingers so apparently they can sting more than once.  I've become rather attached to Wally but that doesn't mean I want him to use me as a pincushion.  I opened the door to usher him out and he responded immediately, disappearing into the sky.  Smart little bugger.  The flies that come into my house, to say nothing of the moths and mosquitoes that slip in attracted to the light, cannot figure out where their rear ends are let alone the way back out.  They either get eaten by the spiders, smushed by me or the cats, or die frying next to the light bulbs in my light fixtures.

The next time someone comes to my home unannounced, I'm not going to be too worried.  They have to step up on the porch to get to my front door and if Wally doesn't like them, he's going to give them a piece of his mind.  I'm seriously thinking about putting up a sign that says "Beware of Bee."  Also one that says "Please do not harm the bees."  After all, this is their home too.