Mental Meanderings

Why won't they sleep? Mutts and Blah Chapters

Why won't they stay asleep? It seems like my mornings are getting earlier and earlier. This morning, it's chilly but still the kids want to be up and at it. Why won't they stay asleep snuggled in their beds until I'm ready for them to be awake? Just another hour or two, please.

It's enough to make me want to tie them down to their beds. Kaylie is ok, I can send her away to go back to bed or to play quietly in her room but when she and Josh get together there is trouble. This morning I couldn't even send Kaylie away to take care of her brother.

I've got the dog locked inside the house with designated toilet breaks on a leash because he gets under the shed and escapes into the street. He's been terrorising the neighbourhood and being an agressive little mutt, not to mention getting the neighbours dog pregnant. I had him desexed him a month ago thinking that could help things but it hasn't done anything (except in preventing all the dogs in the neighbourhood having his puppies). So he's locked inside until I get the shed blocked up enough that he can't keep escaping.

Anyway, this obviously means that I've got to get up and check for little presents that might have been left during the night. I don't want Josh coming across these deposits and thinking they look mighty interesting and tasty.

I also had to get the fire started and put some warm clothes on Kaylie because it was so cold. So I'm still tired. Josh is very fussy, either he's still teething (he's cut two teeth this week) or he's coming down with something. He's dozing, fitfully on my shoulder at the moment.

I did get my writing done this morning. In fact I did it early since I was up anyway. I was writing away but all I could hear is the voice of my critique going, "Your readers won't care about all this. You should only put in the stuff that's important." But I don't know where to break off.

I mean he drives her to her sisters, they gather her stuff and he follows her car back to her place, takes the kids inside, puts her son to bed, gets stuff out of her car blah, blah, blah. None of it really means anything except character development. We get to see what sort of father figure and husband Jake's going to make and we get to learn a little more about Emma's life. But it's all so boring.

I expect it will be cut from the draft. That decision is for later. At the moment I'm only worried about getting it all on the page. If I start rethinking what I'm writing I'll stop being able to write anything. I think one of the reasons I'm struggling at the moment is because I didn't outline Sunday enough. What could they do on Sunday? They are going to spend the day together and then have dinner at Emma's house Sunday night. But I don't know how to fill up the day.