Bo-Bo Knows That Sometimes He Takes a Backseat to Forces he Doesn't Understand

It was a rare moment of calm. The ball was holstered. The kids temporarily paused in their never-ending marathon tracked in a loop from the living room, down the hall, and around the kitchen of our 1100-square-foot-ish condo. Bo-Bo chose this as the moment to merge from the den where he'd retreated after the kids started whooping somewhere around lap 213. The way he figured, it was finally time to return to the excessive fawning he enjoyed as guests arrived. He figured wrong.

People use the phrase, "it's a dog's life" to describe a lifestyle that falls somewhere on the spectrum between lazy and nirvana. Clearly the person who coined that phrase never watched the worried dance of a dog's eyebrows, never saw the bowed head of a dog who knows his place in the alpha-to-zeta pecking order is nowhere near alpha. The way I figure it, a dog's life is plagued by nearly constant worry. Bo can't talk, but I've been watching his body language carefully, and I've figured out that the top three thoughts rattling around that canine brain of his are:

1. Food now?
2. Walk now? and
3. What about me?
   

I say Bo can't talk, but that isn't because he's not trying. Barking? No. Bo only barks when I'm being lazy about getting him out to pee or he thinks we forgot to feed him because he wasn't actually present when we put the fool into the bowl—this particular canine code red requires a physical show and tell: we trek into the kitchen, rattle the doggy dish, and tell him, "it's in the bowl, stupid." No, barking is too normal for this one, but Bo-Bo's a champion whimperer. He whimpers when there's a person he wants to greet, a dog he'd like to lick inappropriately, a balloon he'd desperately like to run away from (this week he's been particularly traumatized by a parrot-shaped Mylar balloon tied to the sign of the ice cream parlor at the end of our street). He cries when we leave and when we're standing outside the door fumbling with our keys. And lately he's started to hmm-hmm-hmm when I take the turn for our 25-minute walking loop instead of continuing straight along the 60-minute loop he loves so. This has been happening a lot lately because Bo-Bo's mommy (that would be me) has been prioritizing writing her novel over just about all things—her health, Bo's sanity, housework, prompt personal hygiene, paying bills, sleep, and any work that doesn't have an immediately looming deadline.

Don't get me wrong. Bo's been nothing but supportive. So long as his bladder isn't ripe, he's at my feet, whether I'm at my desktop computer in my office, curled up with my laptop on the bed, or commandeering the kitchen table. But there's something in the way he watches me that screams, what the hairy heck is it you're doing exactly?

The trouble (or maybe it was no trouble at all) was I enrolled in a novel workshop this summer to inspire myself to make good on my promise to finish this novel (my first) by the end of the summer. But instead of being content setting a private bar, I announced what I had in mind during the introductions at the first class. The class ends on August 28, and I've been working in a fever, but it's unclear whether I'm gonna make it. But, dammit, I'm going down swinging.

In the last three weeks I've written 128 pages—62 of them last week alone. For those of you who don't know about these things, that's not just a lot, it's the fucking mother lode (at least for me, anyway). On my best weeks I usually do somewhere between 10 and 25 pages. Somewhere the literary police are plotting to test my blood for all manner of banned substances: speed, excessive caffeine, more sugar than iron in my blood, latent mania, etc. But really, the answer is simpler than that. I blame Michael Phelps. Here he was collecting medals like mushrooms after a rainstorm, and I was pretty much missing it all playing with my imaginary friends. To make up for it, I staged a literary Olympics of my own. Last week I challenged myself to write 70 pages in 7 days, and I came close enough that five days in Bo-Bo sat on his pillow with his paws over his ears, screaming, the clacking, the clacking, will someone stop the clackity, clackity, clack, clack clack? I chronicled the whole business via Facebook status updates. Here's how it went down (slightly abridged):

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16
10:26 am— Catherine is honoring the Olympic spirit by setting a ridiculous goal: 70 pages by Thursday night.
3:21 pm— Catherine has 3 pages done...67 to go!
4:23 pm— Catherine has 5 done...65 to go!
6:47 pm—Catherine has 7 done...63 to go!
10:25 pm—Catherine has 10 done...60 to go!
11:14 pm—Catherine has 12 done...58 to go!

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17
12:43 am—Catherine has 15 done...55 to go!
8:23 pm—Catherine has 16 done...54 to go!
10:29 pm—Catherine has 17 done...53 to go!
11:32 pm—Catherine has 21 pages done...49 to go!

MONDAY, AUGUST 18
2:18 am—Catherine has 26 pages done...44 to go!
1:27 am—Catherine has 31 pages done...39 to go!
2:00 pm—Catherine has 32 pages done...38 to go which means she's closing in on the halfway-to-goal point....

TUESDAY, AUGUST 19
12:16 am—Catherine has 34 pages done...36 to go (and she's boring of this update conceit but feels compelled)...
9:13 pm—Catherine has 36 pages done...34 to go.
10:45 pm—Catherine has 40 pages done...30 to go.
10:53 pm—Catherine thinks it's time for a change of venue...come on laptop, let's me and you find a new place to camp...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20
12:37 am—Catherine is falling behind: 43 done/37 to go...
9:10 am—Catherine is falling behind: 43 done/-27- to go... (thanks to Lisa B for the catch!).
11:10 am—Catherine had 45 done/25 to go...
12:34 pm—Catherine had 48done/22 to go...
3:07 pm—Catherine had 51done/19 to go...
7:54 pm—Catherine had 54done/16 to go...slowing down only to outline the end...the END (which unfortunately still feels pretty far away)...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21
11:13 pm—Catherine has finished her experiment. 62 out of 70 pages completed. That's roughly 89 percent. But I get bonus points for outlining to the end. Definitely A for effort.

Suffice it to say, I'm pretty damn exhausted. The trouble is that outline I mentioned on Wednesday? It was for six chapters and an epilogue. There are seven days before class. With round numbers like this, it's like the universe's egging me on. Bo-Bo just raised his eyebrows at me and released one of those doggy sighs he usually uncorks when he's pouting. The message is clear: Get on with it so we can get back to our regularly scheduled walks already.