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All the World's a Chew Toy
Aug. 17th, 2025 04:36 pmPuppies chew. A lot.
Today, I spent some time sweeping up the debris from the floor into a giant pile of Ruby hair and things that Calvin has chewed on. If nothing else, this will improve the appearance of the place. Gretchen has also spent a lot of time getting the kitchen back under control.
Getting a puppy during the same week that your oldest child is heading off to college is perhaps not the *best* advised choice that we've ever made, but the puppy is very cute. When not chewing on something. Or peeing on the floor. We are trying some different housebreaking tactics, because clearly what we're doing isn't working well. Part of the problem, of course, is that we have three people here now, none of them early risers, and one puppy with firmly different ideas on the subject of when the wake up call is.
But things are looking better, so I'm going to take that as a win.
In other news, I was driving home from Muncie after dropping K off and working on strategies for staying awake, having gotten thoroughly tired of Sirius XM for the moment. Although I had already written a song for this year's OVFF Songwriting Contest (Theme: "Steer By the Stars"), that song is set in a particular universe of my creation where I had already written two songs. And I said to myself, "Self, what if you set out to write a completely different song?" It was at least likely to keep me occupied while keeping the car on the road, so I started singing at the topic and not a little bit later had a perfectly good chorus.
I was about 40 miles short of the place where I intended to stop for gas. I *really* wanted to write this chorus down, but that would require finding a reasonable place to pull off the road and do so. Indiana has not helped in this process by being in mid-renovation for all of the rest stops on this stretch of I-65 save for the one that is just one mile further than the place I intended to stop for gas. Southbound I-65 in this stretch is in a similar state. It's a joy.
Rather than pull off and slow the process down, I just kept driving and singing the chorus over and over again. This continued for roughly half an hour, by which time all of the rough spots had been ironed out of the chorus, and I was *really* ready to pull off and buy gas.
Which I did. And I transcribed the chorus into my phone for later use.
On Friday, I put chords to the chorus. On Saturday morning, lying in bed, I constructed a verse, which I chorded later that afternoon, then adding two more verses and a bridge, and having crossed that bridge, I now had a complete song.
So now I have two songs for the OVFF Songwriting Contest, which is one more than par.
I just need to decide which one to enter. This is harder than you might expect...
Time to find a different song prompt, I think.
Today, I spent some time sweeping up the debris from the floor into a giant pile of Ruby hair and things that Calvin has chewed on. If nothing else, this will improve the appearance of the place. Gretchen has also spent a lot of time getting the kitchen back under control.
Getting a puppy during the same week that your oldest child is heading off to college is perhaps not the *best* advised choice that we've ever made, but the puppy is very cute. When not chewing on something. Or peeing on the floor. We are trying some different housebreaking tactics, because clearly what we're doing isn't working well. Part of the problem, of course, is that we have three people here now, none of them early risers, and one puppy with firmly different ideas on the subject of when the wake up call is.
But things are looking better, so I'm going to take that as a win.
In other news, I was driving home from Muncie after dropping K off and working on strategies for staying awake, having gotten thoroughly tired of Sirius XM for the moment. Although I had already written a song for this year's OVFF Songwriting Contest (Theme: "Steer By the Stars"), that song is set in a particular universe of my creation where I had already written two songs. And I said to myself, "Self, what if you set out to write a completely different song?" It was at least likely to keep me occupied while keeping the car on the road, so I started singing at the topic and not a little bit later had a perfectly good chorus.
I was about 40 miles short of the place where I intended to stop for gas. I *really* wanted to write this chorus down, but that would require finding a reasonable place to pull off the road and do so. Indiana has not helped in this process by being in mid-renovation for all of the rest stops on this stretch of I-65 save for the one that is just one mile further than the place I intended to stop for gas. Southbound I-65 in this stretch is in a similar state. It's a joy.
Rather than pull off and slow the process down, I just kept driving and singing the chorus over and over again. This continued for roughly half an hour, by which time all of the rough spots had been ironed out of the chorus, and I was *really* ready to pull off and buy gas.
Which I did. And I transcribed the chorus into my phone for later use.
On Friday, I put chords to the chorus. On Saturday morning, lying in bed, I constructed a verse, which I chorded later that afternoon, then adding two more verses and a bridge, and having crossed that bridge, I now had a complete song.
So now I have two songs for the OVFF Songwriting Contest, which is one more than par.
I just need to decide which one to enter. This is harder than you might expect...
Time to find a different song prompt, I think.
