Bo-Bo Knows Recovery

The squirts. The runs. The trots. The shits. Whatever your favorite euphemism for diarrhea, Bo-Bo has it. Every hour since midnight. Sure, new parents get kept up half the night, but at least they don't have to take their babies outside and whine at them to just poop already.

We called the vet. The tech at reception told us to collect a sample. We told the tech said sample was liquid. Very liquid. Tech assured us even a smear would do. We collected a sample. Scratch that. I collected a sample. Bo yelped as he went, as if to say, "the burning, oh the burning!"

I took the sample to the vet. Ever drive in a car with a plastic bag smeared with poo? Don't. The tech tested the smear for, I don't know exactly, but it came up negative. I drove Bo home. Bo's pooping went from chocolate fountain to just plain fountain. Shitting water is never a good sign. Neither is barfing bright yellow. I called the tech; the tech called Bo and me straight back into the office.

Injection of antibiotic. Pills. Food so expensive I took out a second mortgage. Fluids administered by IV. Did you know pooches get their fluids dumped under the skin? The effect is remarkably Quasimodo. Tech swore the fluids would be absorbed in an hour. And, although Bo was not to eat again until tomorrow, he needed more antibiotic tonight. Because there's nothing so fun as shoving a pill down a starving pooch's throat.

Bo retaliated by crapping in the house while I tutored. I'm pretty sure it was the aforementioned shits that caused this, though there's an off chance Bo's little gift might have been a critical response to the little song I sang to him while we waited in the vet's office (to the tune of the Oscar Meyer wiener theme song):

My Bo-Bo has a first name
It's B-O-dash-B-O
My Bo-Bo has a second name
It's G-O-T-2-go

He'd like to stay out all the day
And if you asked me why I'd say
Cause Bo-Bo has the shits today
And that is really not O-K.

In my defense, I got nothing but interrupted sleep last night. And when you think about it, who's fault was that?

Bo-Bo Knows Barks are Worse Than Bites

If Bo-Bo were a kid, he'd be the boy raking in candy from strangers. He'd be the first to jump into the pick-up for a ride the rest of the way to school, the one who dives right into the skeevy van for an up-close look at those puppies the nice man promised were there.

Bo-Bo has done busted his radar for stranger danger. In Bo's addled brain, every dog we meet while walking's a potential friend, and never mind the owner straining to keep her 140-pound bear of a dog from launching at us; never mind that this little pug's doing his best impersonation of a snarling beastie. Bo-Bo loves--or at least wants the chance to love--everybody! His greet-the-world-with-open-paws approach is decidedly not cool when we're up against the kind of dog whose prime directive is collecting a piece of anything that crosses his path, but it does have its advantages against the loudmouths on our walking route. Oliver the howling, barking, demon Beagle, I'm looking at you!

Every day we walk by Oliver's house, Oliver summons a deep, hellish, howling bark. He jams his head betweent the posts of the fence when he can, but mostly he follows us, hollering and lunging, with nothing but a bit of white picket between him and Bo-Bo...and me. Now I'll admit it: I jump every time Oliver's hound-o-hell greeting shakes me from my thinks, but Bo just galumphs along, mouth open in his can-you-believe-I-get-to-walk smile. Oh, his ears may perk up, and on days when Oliver's voice is particularly strong, Bo may take a quick stutter step into the street. But mostly Bo-Bo registers Oliver's complaint with the classic ignore-him-and-he'll-go-away stance.

Bo's take on life is devilishly simple, right? Just ignore everything that doesn't matter and bop along with your day. Tell me, how is it that a dog who can't figure out when there's food in his dish can be so very wise?

What if I dealt with those dogs barking in my brain the same way Bo deals with the Beazulbulb Beagle that snarls at him ? What if I just ignored the fear growling around the back of my brain and--now here's a novel thought--wrote the damn end of my book already?

What. What the? Bad boy, Bo! Bad...? 3r8q dfd*&&*(fdafdj90

Bo-Bo here. Had to take over. Couldn't stand it. If my racing homeys talked about running as much as mommy talks about writing they'd have been shot. Well, maybe not shot, but same same. You gets my meaning. Racers race. Writers write. You gots five scenes to the end? Writes them, okay? I didn't win seven races by jumping out of the box and examining the track ahead. I ran like a mother lover. Once I even cutted off the big dog. You gots to take risks, okay? So get onto that stupid clicky thing that like so much and run your damn race already, okay?

Oh and while I'm here, I wanted to tells you that little rhyme you have when you're eating something yummers and I ain't getting any? You know: Nothing for you, Disco Stu? I know you're proud of it, but it ain't cool.

So anyways, type alright. One, two, three: theeeeeeeerrrrrrreeeee gooooooooeeeeess cliiiiiiiiickyyyyyy! Get it? There goes clicky instead of there goes swifty. Aw, forget it. Just writes already, OK? Just not so much you skimp on my walkseses.

Bo-Bo Knows Bad Poetry

So many of you know that when a special occasion intersects with a certain brand of Cathy punchiness, you're apt to get a limerick in your (birthday, retirement, thank-you) card. This may seem like harmless goofy fun, but it's actually a sickness. I offer my March 7 "Bo-Bo Knows Weird Al Yankovic" post as exhibit one.

When Mike and I went to a wedding last month, we sent Bo to doggy jail. Oh, it's not much of a prison. The space is a big warehouse. There are no cages. Potential guests are screened to make sure mostly sane pooches like Bo don't have to deal with crazy, violent, idiotic dogs (so chiuahuas, Jack Russel terriers, and that demon Beagle who lives three doors down need not apply). This outfit is probably about as close to doggy nirvana as Bo's gonna get.

That is, until we have the colossal gall to abandon him there.

To retaliate, Bo does what any self-respecting, submissive sissy must do in this situation: he curls up in a ball for two days and doesn't pay any attention to us. His antics inspired the latest Cathy Canine romp to the tune of one of my favorite Elvis rockabilly songs, "Blue Moon of Kentucky." I'm imbedding the music video below for those who aren't familiar with the tune; Bo's lyrics follow.

Bo-Bo of Our Condo
(With apologies to Bill Monroe)

Bo-Bo! Bo-Bo! Bo-Bo pouts the day away.
Bo-Bo pouts all through the day;
'cause he thinks that'll make us stay
Bo-Bo pouts through the day!

I said Bo-Bo of our condo keeps on pouting.
Pouts on because we left him overnight.
I said Bo-Bo of our condo keeps on pouting.
Pouts on until his mama makes things right.

On a lonely Friday!
Mom went away!
Slipped through the door!
Orphaned forever more.*

Bo-Bo of our condo keeps on pouting.
Pouts on because we left him overnight.
Bo-Bo of our condo keeps on pouting.
Pouts on until his mama makes things right.

If the preceding doesn't convince you that my phonetic tinkering's a sickness, know this: I've moved on to bigger phonetic challenges. Behold my first (and likely my last) villanelle (this is the poetry form made famous with "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas) :

The Critic

On days like this the sky's a burden, too.
Air pushes, pushes down until I'm small.
I choose to hold it up for me, for you.

It's not clear why they call this feeling blue.
My busy, cluttered mind slows to a crawl.
On days like this the sky's a burden, too.

The doubt that was a seed took root and grew
into a beast that hides all but his growl.
I choose to hold him off for me, for you.

My thoughts turn to a mottled, ugly stew;
the beast and reason ready for a brawl.
On days like this the sky's a burden, too.

The critic arms himself and starts to spew.**
Protect the dreams you don't want him to maul.
I choose to hold him off for me, for you.

And though I know the beastly barks aren't true,
they clog like dirt in motors and I stall.
On days like this the sky's a burden, too.
I choose to hold it up for me, for you.

Bo just grunted and rolled onto his side. That's Bo-nglish for "why don't you call this post Bo-Bo Knows Bad Poetry's No Way To Finish A Novel." I whole-heartedly agree. So I'll close with my Bo-inspired Haiku:

Bad poems are a
painful procrastination;
someone stop me now.

* The first draft of this line read "Mom's a dirty whore." I've decided the revision's more in keeping with Bo's character.

** This rhyme caused my husband physical pain.

***Alternate title: "Take THAT Writer's Block!"

Bo-Bo Knows that Sometimes the Things We Want Most Scare Us Senseless

As previously mentioned, Bo-Bo is more of a whimperer than barker. And also as previously mentioned, Bo-Bo's hmm-hmm-hmm is often a signal that there's a canine someone lurking that Bo wants to say meet and greet. Bo's crying teamed with his pricked ears and prancing paws is what I've come to call Bo's I've-taken-a-vow-to-leave-no-bung-hole-unsniffed dance.

But about once a week, the ecstasy backfires.

Bo prances, prances, prances, but when he gets too close to the object of his affection, he decides, oh hell no! His spine impersonates an overgrown elbow macaroni, and he darts clear away. Sometimes into oncoming traffic.

There are times Bo's skittishness is warranted: when that dude in a wet suit decided two feet in front of Bo that right then would be a good time to swing his surfboard in a vaguely weapon-like fashion, when the man who looked so wholesome from across the street actually reeked of cigarettes and sized up Bo like he was a turkey in November, or when a button of a dog turned into a ferocious (but bitsy) beast who barked so hard he hopped backwards and bared his sharp (but pint-sized) teeth.

Most of the time, though, Bo cowers for no good reason.

What if Bo's apparent skittishness was really shyness? What if Bo finally worked up the nerve to talk to the brave and beautiful Cleopatra only to realize this Afghan Hound is so far out of his league Bo can't even remember what made him think this was a good idea a few seconds ago? What if he'd desperately like a turn with the red Frisbee that Meghan-the-cattle-dog carries in her mouth, only Bo can't figure out how to ask her to share? What if he sees a kid he'd love to fawn over but just can't get past that fearsome stroller the kid's trapped inside?

So often the things we want like hunger scare us into staying starved. Last week I set myself up as a literary Olympian, averaging roughly ten pages a day. I made peace with the "rough" in rough draft. In that mindset, I didn't have to remind myself that the journey toward a finished book started with finishing a first draft. I wrote without fretting, and I wrote a lot. I came off of that week with the end of the book clearly in sight. But embracing the "rough" in rough draft felt like an exercise in naivety when I considered the revision to come--jettisoning thousands (upon thousands) of extraneous words and condensing tens of thousands more. I may want a draft more than anything else in my world*, but I've slowed down because (let's not sugarcoat this, shall we?) I'm scared shitless about finishing. And really, I don't have to tackle the revision if I don't finish, right? Well, yeah, but living with unfinished business is so much worse than wrestling the mess. That hunger will start to feed on itself eventually.

When Bo cowers, I put one hand on his back and pet the other dog until Bo comes around. If the threat's human, I stand between Bo and the offending bi-ped until Bo creeps closer to check him out. The way Bo inches closer and closer still until his tail starts whipping around again is no different than the inching, inching, inching I have to do, first toward the draft, and then toward the revision.

Fear has its place (urging us to jump out of the way of oncoming buses, avoid darkly lit alleys, and keep medical appointments), but beyond physical fitness, fear isn't a call to retreat. When it comes to our psychological hungers, fear's a sign that we should press bravely on--no cowering or jumping into oncoming traffic.


*My wishlist for the world at large includes a McCain drubbing in November and a national education policy that recognizes that true intellect is a marriage of pedagogue and poetry, that scores of children get left behind when schools prioritize core academic skills at the expense of the arts.

Bo-Bo Knows That Way Lies Madness

Bo-Bo hasn't really been curling up at my feet this weekend. I blame a mean case of the writing blues. The particularly nefarious, unwarranted strain.

On Friday, I shared my madcap triumph from last week. I also shared the fact that I had set August 28 as my personal deadline for finishing the rough draft of my novel. Unless I have another week like last one, I'm not going to make it. And I don't have the kind of schedule this week that will allow for another week like last one.

The completest in me is bummed about this. At the end of May, I bought a pair of cowboys boots while Mike and I were visiting Nashville. They cost more than my wedding dress (which actually isn't as bad as it sounds because I'd be damned if I'd pay that much for a dress I got to wear for about two minutes). The point is, the money I shelled out for the boots was the most money I'd ever spent on a single article of clothing, so I made a deal with myself: the boots stayed packed away until I finished my rough draft.

So I was picturing strolling into class on August 28 with these handsome babies complementing my favorite bohemian skirt. And being that I spend a good part of my day cooking up fictions, in my mind this grand entrance involved climbing onto the classroom table and doing a little victory boogie. Or maybe a Texas two-step, in honor of the boots.

Clearly, missing my deadline is for the best, because really, how would I even manage climbing onto a table in a skirt without flashing half the class and the students in the Emerson dorms next door? At this point I'll confirm that your suspicions about my fictional life being way more exciting than my day-to-day, real life are 100 percent accurate. Well, maybe 90 percent accurate. I once convinced a wee Scotsman to twirl around a bar with me, traveled to Vegas to research the skin trade, and braved my sister's wrath when I not only taught my 4-year-old nephew, Ryan, the word scrotum, but traumatized him with the intel that he had one, too (this after he pointed to Bo-Bo's recently-neutered floppiness and informed me that Bo had a poopy).

But back to the blues. Because of recent mania-level outputs this weekend's page total has fallen a little short: I only wrote 10 new novel pages.

Only? ONLY?!! There was a time when my weekly writing goal was 10 pages a week (2 pages every weekday). Measuring my progress against my 62-pages-in-six-days mania is like a marathon runner deciding that the only worthwhile training schedule is 26.2 miles a day. That way lies madness, indeed.

Especially when you look at the rest of my writing weekend. I wrote not one but two blog entries. And perhaps the most wonderful writing weirdness in a long time: a short story poured out long hand. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to sit down, write for a while, and stand up with a first draft down.

So my failure to repeat my (ridiculously Olympian) goals this weekend is nothing of the kind, just as missing my (completely arbitrary) August 28 goal isn't really a failure. For a little while, I'll be switching back to a more manageable two-to three hours a day schedule (I'm not a full-time writer, after all) and see where that takes me. The way I figure it, getting to class on Thursday knowing that I have as few chapters to write as Bo has paws on his body is cause to go ahead and dance on that table...even if I have to do so without the boots.

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.

Bo-Bo Knows Daddy Wears Aprons

Washing Bo in a tub that I can stand beside: $15.

Treat for Bo following traumatizing bath: $0.10

Bag of those same treats to bring home:$4.99

Getting the Globe to publish a photo of my husband in an apron: Priceless.