Tales of a Sausage

So, I wasn't really planning on blogging today but I've been specifically told that 'it would be nice' so I did. It's nice to have loyal readers.

As always, I don't have any idea of what I'm going to say. I'm actually at my parents today. Having a four-day weekend, it seemed like a good idea. Currently, I have a loyal dog at my feet. Well, actually, he's not really that loyal unless I happen to have treats on hand. He's currently staring up at me, whining. In the interest of anonymity, I shall call him "Sausage".

Oh, who am I kidding, his name really is Sausage. He's a dachshund. We call dachshund 'sausage dogs' in the UK so the name stuck. He's the most exasperating dog in the universe, fickle in his love, lazy in his nature and not the brightest bulb in the box.

Of course, I love him dearly. He loves me too. He loves me most when I have what we call "meaties" which translate as leftovers from the fridge. Then, Sausage will stare at me with those liquid brown eyes, whimper with just enough sadness that I melt and I give in. I hate it. I'm being manipulated by a creature who sleeps eighteen hours a day and who would give me up for a slice of bacon.

And yet, I still adore him. He really is the laziest dog in history. He likes to wrap up in one of my dad's old sweaters and hibernate in the winter. Occasionally, he'll get stuck in the sweater. Sometimes, he manages to actually wiggle into one of the arms of the sweater and get stuck. Picture Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Pot...that's Sausage when he's caught in a sweater arm. During these situations, Sausage panics. He doesn't calmly wait to be rescued. He flails and cries and doesn't understand what has happened. We've had to cut him out before because he's a bit too big to be pulled gently out of the sweater's arm. After he has been rescued, he stares at you with baleful eyes that are almost accusing, like it was OUR fault he got stuck.

Have I mentioned that he's not the brightest dog in the universe? He's terribly sweet though. When he wants to be, that is. We used to have this tradition I called "The Snow Dance." Even before I moved to California, I loved snow and liked nothing better than a thick covering on the ground that would allow for snowman-building and the subsequent hot-chocolate drinking. So every winter, I would have Sausage sit up on his hindquarters, grab his front paws and shout "Snow, Sausage! Snow!".

And every winter, within a week of The Snow Dance, it would snow. My mother hated it. She actually forbid me to do the dance, convinced that it actually worked. I'd still sneak it in, anyhow. Especially when I was home for the holidays from California and missing the snow a lot.

Sausage actually did get smart enough to realize he should hide when I said the "S" word. You see, he hates snow. He despises it almost as much as my mother. He burrows under his sweater for days when it snows emerging long enough to eat. He'll also go outside to do his business. It takes him two minutes and then he's back, diving under the sweater for warmth.

I used to make up stories about Sausage. Well, ok, so I still do. I tell him he used to be King of the Village in his former life. Being a dachshund, naturally, I assume he used to live in Germany because it seems to fit. Sometimes I call him "Der Wurste Hund". I know that's probably bad German but it roughly translates to..."The Sausage Dog". Hey, I'm original, what can I say?

In my stories, as King of the Village, Sausage used to be the former fearsome ruler of Ravensburg in Germany, an idyllic little village where the residents celebrate Christmas year-round, where there is always snow that doesn't melt, even when it's warm, where everyone loves one another. Ravensburg is perfect, you see.* There are hot chocolate vendors downtown, candied houses like in Hansel and Gretel and, in the very middle of the village, there is a giant Christmas Tree where the villagers gather nightly, in a circle, hands clasped, to dance around the tree to celebrate the perfectness of their village.

Sausage, naturally, watches the dancing from his Sausage Throne, being fed meaties by the villagers who adore him. When he's hungry, he goes hunting, burrowing down holes and retrieving whatever pests bother him. He's particularly fond of chihuahuas. This is mostly because Sausage wishes in his real life that he was an only-dog. Instead, he is one of five little dogs- two chihuahuas and two Yorkshire Terriers.

Sausage hates the chihuahuas. Normally, he's a placid dog but he has awfully big teeth and when the chihuahuas yap and bother him, Sausage the Mighty King comes out and gets angry. He's a bit scary when he's angry, actually. He just doesn't like being provoked.

So, I tell Sausage stories of Ravensburg and he stares up at me with those big eyes, almost as if he understands me. I think he also enjoys the fact that I'm rubbing his nose or petting his tummy but he looks like he understands.

Around my nephews and nieces, Sausage is actually rather gentle. He's been forced to play Red Riding Hood by my oldest niece and was very good natured about it at the time although now, whenever she comes over, he dives under the table to avoid contact. He might not always be the brightest but he's not completely stupid.

He's with me now as I type this, his whining is increasing. He's convinced that nothing I do is nearly important as what I should be doing which is, naturally, paying attention to him. It's hard to resist. He has sad eyes and he knows how to use them. I know I'm being manipulated and yet...I can't resist.

The whining is getting louder which means I'm going to have to wrap this up for some one-on-one time with The Sausage. As the first blog of 2009, I didn't intend to spend the time talking about my dog but, well, he's adorable.

Just as long as you're not a chihuahua.

*Note: The perfect qualities of Ravensburg are not entirely fictional but are a result of being forced to spend a large amount of time with slightly insufferable German relatives one Sunday afternoon who could talk of nothing but how perfect their town of Ravensburg was. So, yes, this is slightly sarcastic. But then again, would you expect anything else?

Snow, Writing and Other More Lyrical Musings Than I Had in Mind When I Sat Down to Write This

So, I told you yesterday it was snowing. It made me very happy. Happier still was the me that got to drive home in the twirling, whirling cascading snow that threatened to settle but never did. By the time I got to my apartment, it was snowing quite hard.

I've been waiting for it to snow since last year when I stood out on my parent's deck on Christmas Night, looked up at the snow and told myself that I had to come back to the Midwest. I missed snow. I missed my parents. I missed my brothers and sisters. I missed my nieces and nephews. I felt like it was time to come back.

When I left Indiana to move to L.A., I had a dream of being a screenwriter. I think almost any writer who does move to L.A. has the same dream. It wasn't an easy path to take but I tried anyway. I didn't get very far in my quest. I learned to write dialogue by writing screenplays. I entered contests. I got an agent to request a script but I didn't get further than that. And then, one day, I got stuck on an ending to a script. It wasn't working and I needed to rewrite it. I brainstormed how to do it, thought of everything and nothing worked.

So I decided to try writing a novel. I'd just read Stephen King's fantastic book, On Writing, and he made me think I could write a novel. So I tried it. And it was good. You know in movies where the hero or heroine has a sudden ephiphany and you hear the "Hallelujah!" chorus to signify the magnitude of the moment? That's how I felt when I sat down to write a novel. I could hear the Hallelujah chorus in my head. It was like a rush of air, a feeling of warmth slowly flooding through me. I always compare screenplays and novels to lying in a bed. A screenplay is like lying in a small twin bed in which you have a limited space. You have to show a story and convey it in dialogue tightly, concisely with nothing extraneous. And then, with a novel, it's like moving up to a king size bed. You can spread out, take your time to explain things, describe things, the dialogue has to be good but it doesn't have to be rushed. For me, it was almost like coming home.

And so, I wrote a novel. Then another one. Then three more in the series. After that, I took a break but I heard Green Day's "American Idiot" album and I needed to write again. I took that album and I let it guide me through a story, not stealing from the album but, rather, letting it weave through my story like a silent, invisible spiderweb. After that, I wrote a few query letters but nothing happened. I buried my disappointment in another novel, one that was supposed to be light and fluffy but ended up being somewhat dark and twisty. I took another break and wrote short stories but again, got disillusioned by rejection, becoming slightly bitter.

I wrote another novel. This one darker and drier than the other fare. I have a dry sense of humour. It tends to show through in my writing. You might have noticed that.

And that's where I am now. Eight novels under my belt during a seven-year stint in L.A. That's not a bad effort but it's also a good place to stop and wonder if I had to live there. And I realized I didn't. I could live anywhere.

So I moved. I'm back in a place where it rains and snows. Where the trees turn beautiful colours in the Autumn. When the dark, cold days of January and February bleach the world of all colour and show a landscape of barren nothingness, often coated with ice or rain. But it's also a place where, in March, a few balmy spring days let the crocuses and daffodils that have shyly and bravely pushed their stalks up into the cold frozen ground suddenly decide that it's time to bloom. And so the world begins to change into a spring landscape; the ice and snow melt, the flattened soggy ground begins to dry and spring hits, full force.

Last night, I stood on my balcony, my hands wrapped around a mug of Williams Sonoma Peppermint Hot Chocolate (SO worth the splurge) and let the snow fall on me. Snow is peaceful to me. There is nothing more tranquil than looking out onto a world covered in freshly fallen snow, sounds are muffled, the light is brighter in reflection. Seeing the snowflakes fall eased the back-of-my-mind worries that I'd done the right thing in leaving the friends I'd made in L.A., the life I'd carved out for myself. I miss them a lot. I miss my routines, the restaurants, the movies, USC football...everything that defined my life there. But standing there, watching the snow, calmed those worries and eased the last of my doubt.

This morning, I got up and found that the sun was shining but the telltale signs of the snowfall were still around, encrusted onto my windshield, patches of unmelted flakes clustered in the shadows. I woke up to a song on the radio that actually inspired my first novel, a song that fills me with the remembered passion I felt while having that epiphany that this was it. This was what I was supposed to do. And now, with the first snowfall of the season melting away, it's time to begin again. To write again. To stop looking at the things I left and look at the life I have now, car wrecks, speeding tickets included.

It's supposed to snow again on Thursday. I hope it does. I love this time of year. I heard that it's in the '80's in L.A. I like this weather better.

Ask me again in February though. I never said I couldn't be fickle.

Happy Tuesday.