19 July 2005

Ista is sleeping under the desk, which is good, because she didn't sleep much last night. (Ask me how I know.) Even when she's been awake and playing this morning, she's clearly been pretty tired. She loves to sleep curled in one of the sections of my desk chair feet: it's a pentagon on rollers, and she sleeps in one of the wedges. She would love to do the same under Timprov's desk chair sometimes, but we're trying to gently discourage that behavior without making her think she's bad: he needs to move a good deal more than I do, with his back spasms, and running over the wee dog is not a goal. But making her feel like she should entirely avoid the Timprov is also not a goal.

(Oh, now she's gnawing on my big toe. LicklicklickGNAWGNAWlicklicklick. Puppy affection is lovely. Sometimes when we're playing, she will gaze up at us with this adoring expression that says, "I love you so much I want to BITE ALL YOUR TOESIES BITE BITE BITE so much love!")

Most of my days right now are defined by training the puppy: where is the puppy, what is she doing, have we taken care of everything recently enough? I wake up in the night smelling to make sure she's okay, and I have dreams that she's gotten into bed and been squirmy in the pillows and I have to get her out of the pillowcases before she gets squished. I dreamed that my folks gave me a fence for a birthday present, and it was such an overwhelmingly great gift that I cried with gratitude. (Which pretty much tells you that calling the fencing people should move up my list this afternoon, doesn't it?) My world is filled with puppy, puppy, puppy.

While I'm still clearly her alpha dog, she's less clingy, and for that I'm immensely grateful: there is some whining if I leave her, even if Mark or Timprov or CJ or someone is with her, but it's much less than it was, and she also sometimes whines for them.

I woke up this morning fussing about Thermionic Night revisions instead of about the dog, so that may also be a form of progress. And this morning she was trotting around exploring but mostly not biting the wrong things. So. We're getting there.

And I meant to post this yesterday, but life interfered, and so here I am. I'm hoping for more tomorrow, but don't worry if you don't hear much from me: it's getting easier every day, but things are pretty intense around here with the puppy, seeing people from out of town, and trying to get normal stuff done. So I'll be back when I can.