A Year On,

T'was the night before NaNo and... 

The truth is it doesn't feel like it at the moment. I don't think there was a single moment I could point to where I decided I wasn't going to complete NaNo this year, whether it was NaNo itself or by another name, but the only thing I feel towards it at the moment is a real and complete sadness. 

There has been a lot of things floating around the internet about the accusations and about things which did happen, about things which can be proved and others which can't, and there's been at least some discussion of what MLs feel towards it. I would normally say MLs, both current and emeritus, but I don't know of a single person who has been accepted as an ML by the organisations new order... There has been a lot of people expressing how they feel about a lot of different viewpoints and different actions by the current and former HQs, but the only thing I find myself wanting to say about it is this: 

We've lost something. 

What we have lost is something which can be quantified - we've lost a truly global community that connected people over a passion in a way that I've not seen any other single organisation do in this space - but also not quantifiable, because we've lost a community, we've lost a space, we've lost a feeling and so much more. 

A lot of the messaging currently coming out of NaNo HQ is about how everything is getting back on track, but something feels missing. It's not like a small piece crumbled away; it feels like someone punched a section out and everything that's left is still reeling and trying to figure out how to function without it. 

Personally I have not been writing a lot for a while. Part of it is one of the slumps I get into when something like this happens, though granted the last time 'something like this' happened it was the loss of my novel, not the loss of the whole organisation and community etc. Part of it is my life moving on in a very sudden and somewhat unexpected direction. (No, I'm not talking about it. Possibly that's more of a yet than a not ever, but for now, I'm not.) Part of it is the fact that work has had me spinning like a top and the last thing I want to do when I put my laptop down for the evening is pick up another laptop, and hand writing makes my wrists cramp up. 

I didn't want to write this today because it feels like it's making me more sad, but I also feel the need to acknowledge that sadness on the eve of the anniversary of where it all started to go really wrong. At this point last year I was still hopeful that there was something that could be done to rescue what we as a community once were, but this year I realise that there is no going back.

For only the first time since I was sixteen I have absolutely zero intention of trying to write fifty thousand words in thirty days, and honestly, there are zero words that adequately express how gutted I feel about it. 

The Last Month Has Been Rough,

How It Started

I'm not talking about June - I'm talking the last thirty days, four-ish weeks kind of month, and honestly, I don't think even that covers it, but man it has been rough. 

With one thing and another I have barely been at my own home, which has meant that my house is even more of a disaster area than normal and I need to do something about it, but what I can actually do, when I can actually do it, and also how I can do it, when there is zero motivation for me to actually do it, are all questions which actually don't matter to me too much at the moment, because I have too much else to think about to even get to that. 

Some of it I absolutely bring on myself. I was away camping for some of the time my parents were away, I drove to Wales to collect a kayak and then haven't found the time to take it out, which is annoying and I also now need to find a more permanent storage method for the thing because it's currently back in my living room after it spent MAYBE three days outside, but as I said, I've not been there, and I'm not willing to leave it less than secure, so it's dominating my living room.

How It's Going

This month? This month! It has been a lot more than a month at this point, I am telling you!

As I'm writing this, I still have not "moved" properly back into my own house and though I have been able to spend a little more time there over the past two weeks I can't say that I have always wanted to because of the aforementioned mess. Despite being a miraculously unorganised person at the best of times, it is the sort of thing that escalates quickly when you're just not in the house. How? Because things and tasks accumulate and there is no one to put them away or do the tasks. I realise that things like laundry and washing up need to be done only when there is someone there to cause the mess in the first place, but it's things like cutting the grass. Whether I'm there or not the grass is going to grow and actually I think it grows more when I'm not looking and when Chai isn't there peeing all over it, so now it's at a stage where it is wild, it is full of weeds and my hay fever makes the idea of strimming it back so I can cover and kill it (all part of the plan for the garden) feel like a really horrendous idea. 

Granted the weather not being great isn't helping get anything done. There is a whole plan around the garden now, and for the kayak to be stored (thinking about that has just reminded me that I forgot to put the cockpit cover on it before the last time I left my house and now it has rained like the days of Noah, so I can't do it until the boat is at least SOMEWHAT dry!) but all of those things require the weather to be dry and not the kind of baking hot that means I burn almost the second I walk out of the house. 

The good thing is that I did manage to find the time to take my lovely kayak, Jellybean, out on the water for a 'quick' inaugural paddle, and because the person who was helping me get her back onto the top of the car is not a kayak person (not that I consider myself a kayak person - way too early for that) she went up there still full of water, which meant when I braked going down a hill it all got thrown all over my windscreen in a way that was ridiculous enough to make me laugh like a hysterical person. 

So this month has been more 'balanced' but has also brought about more time in the office, more family issues to be dealing with and the unhappy development that when I gather my things to be leaving my mother's house, Chai doesn't even try to follow me which is pretty heartbreaking. I know she's learnt I'm leaving and she's generally not able to come with me, but it somehow makes me feel guiltier than the earlier version where she would run to come with me and then look at me with her big, sad eyes when I was telling her to go back in the house. I'm really hoping that some time over this week and weekend I can just get us back into our own home and she can realise I do absolutely adore her. If it weren't for the fact that I have no idea if she would even like it I would be planning a holiday for just me and her for 'when this all blows over'. 

It's a Cutlery Problem,

Except its not.

You may or may not have heard of Spoon Theory and how it is used to describe life with a chronic condition or disability, and honestly, I think it's brilliant, but at the same time there is such a lack of understanding of it that means it fades into being less useful than it should be. 

Why am I talking about this? Because I just found my holdall from when I stayed at my mum's last weekend. It's part of the floor-drobe in my room, and sadly the pyjamas I took with me are still in the holdall, so they have not been washed. There is laundry in the machine that has been washed at least twice, but my pyjamas are not in there, and the set I have been wearing is going to need to go into the laundry soon, too. How does this relate to spoons? Because I need to do laundry and make sure I have a clean and dry set of pyjamas, and that is going to steal a lot of my spoons tomorrow, and I still can't guarantee it's going to happen. 

I've finally found pyjamas that I love. They've by Oddballs, they're funky patterns and colours and they're comfortable. The pants are a bit long and I am yet to convince myself to rehem them, but they're comfortable and I love them. They're also expensive, so I have two sets and that should be adequate - I'm doing slightly better at this limiting impulsive spending thing - but only if I keep on top of chores. Which I never do...

So these fantastic dopamine giving pjs are not able to make me happy and give me a boost to do other things because I don't have the spoons to keep them clean and available, let alone the presence of mind to get through the process of collect the laundry, put the laundry in the machine and set it going, turn it off at the end of the cycle AND empty it into an appropriate receptacle, then hang the laundry somewhere that it will dry, so it sits in there for days then needs rewashing with something to make it smell better, or if it gets hung outside I forget about it and it either rains on it, and then it smells bad and needs rewashing, or I have to take it in when it's dark, or there are spiders or bird poop on it, and then it either needs rewashing or I just hate it because it has spiders on/in it, and that makes me want to puke... and then it either hangs on the airer until I need to wear it, until my mum comes around and folds and puts things away for me (that doesn't happen that often to be fair) or until I have another wet load of laundry that made it to the same room as the dryer and it needs to find somewhere else and more often than not, that is not the wardrobe! 

Basically, I need more spoons, or another person to come and help me do things. Or a decent laundry service in the area which takes away the dirty things, brings back clean, folded things and then all I have to do is take it out of the bag and put it into the wardrobe. Though of course, that still will not happen. 

I Need More Time,

 I realise this is a thing that a lot of people say, but my God, I feel like I need more time. 

I spend however many hours a week working, whether that's in the office or at home, and then outside of that I'm involved in a Scout Troop and a Cub Pack at two separate groups and have all of my own hobbies as well, I have my dog, I have family to spend time with, I have my friends to try (mostly fail, but still try!) and keep up with and somewhere in all of that find time to do things like cooking and cleaning and laundry and all the other gumpf that people have to do and sometimes I feel like I'm meeting myself coming backwards. I get that most people would say drop some of the hobbies or the Scouting or other things, but I don't want to because at the end of the day, that's my life. 

I like my job, I enjoy it, but it's not the sort of thing where I think 'this is my absolute passion and if I did nothing else, that would be fine'. Being completely honest, I go to work to do my job, earn my money and then come home and do everything else. I know that's most people as well, and unfortunately that's just the way that life works out; not everyone can spend their life working in a field that they are passionate about, because ultimately there are some things that not many people are going to have that kind of passion for that still need to get done. I accept that completely, but it means that I need all the time I can have outside of work to make me feel like I'm actually having a life. Without it, it's just eat, sleep, work, repeat, and that sounds awful to me. I realise that might sound privileged, but it doesn't sound like much of a life at all to be forced into that pattern. However, I also know that when I'm doing as many other things as I do, other things fall by the wayside, as they have to, because everyone only has a limited amount of time. 

I mentioned about working towards a qualification in yesterday's post and I am working towards it and doing what I can for it, but somehow I have to magic up a lot of free time out of seemingly nowhere to practice the skills I need for it to have any chance of passing and the thing I'm working towards right now is only level 1, with the potential for a few more levels after it if I decided I wanted to go for it. I've not really made a decision that far just yet, but that's partly because I want to get through this bit first before I even let myself think about anything further. Trying to find the time for myself, and it be time when other people are available, is more than a challenge and honestly, it's a bit infuriating. I almost regret moving out of my flat in London only because there were services to keep up with some things (like laundry services) just on my doorstep and honestly there are quite a few tasks I would love to be able to just pay someone to take off of my hands. There's this whole theory of how it's not just money that means different things to different people but it's time as well. If you're a person who can afford a cleaner, to pay for someone to wash your car, tidy your garden, walk your dog and do all those sorts of tasks that take up time but might not bring you joy (I mean normal poop walk kind of dog walks, not big walks where you get to have a bit of an adventure - my dog can't do those every day since she only has little legs) an extra hour goes straight to either something like wellbeing or hobbies or something you want to do, but if you have all of those things to do, an extra hour disappears in a flash to all of those jobs and little things, and honestly, it's maddening! And the best answer anyone can give to it is, that's life. Well, I get that, but it doesn't make it any less irritating knowing that when I take time off of work a lot of it goes onto either errands or jobs in the house instead of things like sitting in a kayak and going on an adventure. 

You're Being Rather Quiet For Someone Who Can't Shut Up,

Usual reference to ADHD because yes, I'm still talking about it... 

I've spent a long time not knowing that was the thing that was different in my brain than a lot of people around me so people have made a lot of comments about me talking too much, or repeating myself, interjecting into conversations and my general lack of patience when other people are trying to get to the point and seeming to take the longest way around possible, and honestly, I think that all of that has probably added to the feeling of RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) that I think is the biggest reason for me not posting things on the blog as often as I write things. Through March I either wrote or started to write a few different things and either stopped in the middle or didn't post them because a little bit of my brain with a very loud voice said 'Urgh, no one cares Charlie!' It's frustrating, but other than keeping fighting against it when I can, I don't really know what else I can do. 

In the time since I have been away from writing this a few things have happened, and honestly, it's been a bit brilliant. I've managed to get through a couple of courses that I have wanted to do, which has been fantastic because there is nothing worse than me getting bored and sadly things at work have been a bit quiet so I've been really bored with that and it's been driving me a little bit crazy. Trying to find things to do has been challenging, but it has allowed me to do a couple of things during the day which I have needed to and has been encouraging me to take a proper lunch break, go out for a walk or go and get certain errands done.

But in true ADHD style I've picked up a new (well, kind of) hobby and I've been getting all of the things for it, which include the qualifications I'm doing, and that has meant a few trips around the country to be picking up kit, and until yesterday, I haven't been able to actually take part in said hobby since about last October.

The upshot is, still here, still me, still writing, but only posting when I can get past the negative voices in my head.

Why Did You Call Your Dog Something So Stupid?,

 I can imagine that a big question from the last blog post would be "Why Did You Call Your Dog Something So Stupid?" and honestly, I would a hundred percent understand why anyone asked that question, because it is a really dumb and ridiculous name, but I guess the first answer is it's not actually her name.

Chai wasn't Chai until she met me. Her name was China, and honestly, I like the idea of changing a rescue dogs name as something of an ending of a chapter and to try and help them partition in their mind that when things were like X I was called Whatever... I know that that is way too over complicated for a dog, but I kind of hope calling her something different she associates with something good, if that makes sense. Honestly, the intention was just to call her Chai and that was that. 

Except for sone reason, I called her Chai Pants once, and it stuck. And then a couple of weeks later I was packing a bag to go *somewhere* can't remember where, it's not like it matters, and she was on my bed (must have been a few months later because I wasn't worried about accidents at the time) and I was putting out things on my bed that I needed to pack and that included pants. And I'm setting them out on my bed and I go back to the drawer, turn around and see she's toddled across the bed to the pile of pants and she has a pair on her head. I honestly couldn't stop laughing. I don't know if it was something in the universe saying, well if you're going to call her something loopy she's going to have to earn it, but it was brilliant.

Then another time, I called her Chai Bean. And I have referred to her as just Bean a few times and she knows I mean her. Maybe it's just my tone or something, but she will occasionally answer to Bean, although I have also called her Chai Banana before and she doesn't answer to Banana in any tone. 

I picked her up at one stage and was playing around and jamming all of the names together and one of the things that came out was Chai Banana Vanilla Coca (I think I'm spelling that right, but I'm spelling it phonetically to how I was saying it so it doesn't matter) Bean, and it amused me, so it stuck. What helps with that is that she didn't care. I mean, obviously she didn't care, she's a dog, but some dogs get upset if you laugh at them, particularly if you dress them up for Hallowe'en and then laugh at them, but Chai isn't like that. She has this incredible expression that is like, what on Earth are you doing to me now you weirdo, but when I dressed her up in a dog safe doctor (or dogtor) costume and laughed, she wasn't fussed, and I honestly think her Percy Pig hoodie is her favourite thing in all the world, and honestly, it's mine, too, especially with the hood up. She's not a dog, she's a living ball of fur that I make ridiculous, but she's the light of my life. 

Chai Banana Vanilla Coca Bean,

 Out of all the silly titles I have ever given my blogs, this one is probably one of the silliest and that's because it's named after a few of the silly names that I give to my silly little girl. 

This blog has been morphing in my head as I've been trying to get to write it (it's been a whole process - do not judge) and I have to admit that I think I've written something close to being like this before but decided for whatever reason I was not going to publish it and I don't know if I actually deleted it or not, because when I searched the blog for Chai's name, precious little actually came back, but I did find this little gem from around 2021 (note to self, write reference to the thing first before closing the page the thing is on so you can go back and check dates etc)

"She came from a breeding farm, peed all over the carpets and crawled her way into my heart when I wasn't looking, but she's wonderful - except when she is barking at three o'clock in the morning, at which point, she's a lot less cute. She petrified of everything, but getting braver, meeting the family and starting to have a life that doesn't involved producing and looking after puppies, and I couldn't want any more for her."

I stand by almost every word of this, but the thing I can't stand by is the 'I couldn't want any more for her' because honestly, I want her to have a sibling, and there is a big reason for that. 

This whole post has come about because I saw a beautiful and broken dog on the page of one of the rescues I really need to unfollow for the moment, because I know there are things I need to do before committing myself to getting another dog, and it's not fair to Chai, to me, or to any other dog to even think about rushing that because I've seen 'the perfect dog' on a Facebook page. This isn't going to make a lot of sense outside of my head, or has the potential not to anyway, but here goes nothing... there is no such thing as THE perfect dog, because every dog is the perfect dog, what there is such thing as is the perfect home for each dog. I know that Dogtor Chai (she was dressed up as a dogtor for Hallowe'en and it is still the funniest thing I have ever seen bar one video about flags in the Six Nations) and I would both love to have another dog living with us, and I also know both of our minds would be totally blown and worlds would be turned upside down when the new girl (because let's face it, we're probably going for another girl because we're an all girl household/ Coven of Bitches) arrived, but we have plenty of love, blankets and tuna to spare and I think we could help another traumatised girl to find herself again, but this time it might not be as hard as it was before. 

What do I mean? Well, the topic of conversation which cropped up around aforementioned beautiful and broken dog was this "unfair" stipulation of having to have a resident dog to adopt dogs with certain backgrounds and issues, and how *IT'S NOT FAIR*. Firstly, any adulting using that phrase makes me want to sarcastically ask ARE YOU NEW? and secondly, that depends who you're trying to be fair to, and the rescues are trying to be fair to the dog, and that is the right thing to do. It might make you feel all happy and special to think, oh, I can nurse this dog back to whatever with all my love and affection, but there is a reason that they need another dog. I say this as someone who is one hundred percent a dog lover and not anything close to a dog or animal behaviour expert, but also someone with first hand experience with dogs who are shut down. If someone is saying 'must be homed with another dog' it's not to stop you owning a dog, it's not to be unfair to those without a dog and it's not discrimination, it's putting what the dog needs first and not producing a situation like Chai and I.

I'm not going to get too much into the circumstances Chai was in before I got her, because it's not fair for me to do that. I got a snapshot of her life, I don't think the people had her were bad people at all, but she was a part of a business and the product they were selling was her pups. Being a breeder does not make a person inherently bad; not by a long chalk. What I will say is that she was not lead trained, didn't wear a collar, wasn't socialised with people and she had had multiple litters of puppies.

I turned up to get her with a gorgeous new collar and lead (yellow and bees, a thousand percent me, definitely not something the dog gave a single sh!t about. She was running around the garden refusing to come near me or the person who who had just transferred her ownership chip to me, but eventually they got ahold of her and I clipped the collar on, and bingo, we're off to go home. Except we're not because it took her less than two seconds to slip the collar and go back to playing the game of Round and Round the Garden. So we try tightening the collar and go again. Same result. No dice. Thankfully, they had a spare harness, which despite a lot of wriggling in protect, Chai couldn't slip, but not for lack of trying, and at this point both the humans are thinking this is taking an age and we're getting nowhere, so she's carried to the car by them and then my mum drove me and Chai back to my place for the simple reason that I can't drive and when I said to my mum, she's nervous as hell, just don't engage with her, don't try and stroke her, just don't even look at her if you don't need to, because she's going to need time, my mum does just that. She drops us off and she leaves me to it. 

It's mid August, but not the hot kind of mid August, and my house feels pretty cool, but this scruffy little ragamuffin is panting like she's being cooked and I know enough to know she's terrified, because she's in a new place with a new person and she doesn't know what's happening, so I just think, screw it, I'm going to sit on the floor in the same room, I'm going to put on some easy background noise (didn't think about the fact that she wasn't used to a TV) so Beauty and the Beast live action on, and I'm just talking to the air occasionally, calmly, quietly, just to let her get used to the sound of my voice. When I tried to take her outside to see if she might pee outside (I was trying to save the carpet - it didn't work) she found the dip in the grass (she says as though there is one single dip and not a multitude of them) and sat in it, and she didn't want to come out. If I had a jar that I had to pay every time I thought 'What the DUCK have I done?' for that first day, week, month, probably four months, I would be simultaneously rich and poor, because all of my money would be in it and I would have a heavy reliance on IOUs. 

This was two and a half years ago, so the exact details of every day that happened between then and now is obviously not seared into my brain like the lines on a steak, but there were some highlights. She seems a bit more chilled so introduce her to the person who was my intro to the person I got her from. She's a woman, so not someone Chai will be immediately terrified of... except I then needed to get the sofa cleaned because she went from sat on one side of it to jumping across it and over the air to the floor, peeing all the way. She would hide behind the sofa if there was even a small gap for her to squeeze through, she peed all over me because a motorbike went past when we attempted a walk, she tried to get through the fence at the park to get away, she got away from me on a walk once and ran across every exit of a five exit roundabout and nearly got hit by two cars. I was screaming her name after her, crying my eyes out and I couldn't find her, so I called my mum devastated and not sure what to do. One of her best friends is decidedly not a dog person (both my dog and my mum's get called Mutley by this person and I'm not sure it's a compliment) but when I called my mum because I had found her - her lead got caught up in brambles that I cut my hands to ribbons getting her out of - was just about to drive my mother to me so they could both help me search and find her. I felt like the worst dog owner for losing her in the first place, and in my head it just meant that she didn't want to be with me and effectively saw me as her captor. I know that was daft, but I was spiralling.

There were times where I sat on the stairs with Chai in the living room, and I cried on the phone to my mum because I felt like I was failing her. I felt like the worst dog mum (and yes, I do call myself a dog mum) in the world and like everyone else was so put together and it was so easy, and here I was with this little fluff ball who thought I was the devil. I said a few times that if she had been from a rescue I would have taken her back. It wasn't a lack of love, because I did love her, but I just couldn't cope, I didn't know how, and neither did she. The big turn around, the part where I thought MAYBE I can get through this, maybe we can get through this, was having my mum's dog stay with me for two weeks.

All she wanted was to be close to him, to follow him, to do what he did, and although they both had accidents, during those two weeks, we got the hang of toilet training and there was a significant amount less p!ss on the living room carpet, and it felt like I could breath again. Not just because there wasn't the cloying smell of piss coming from a fresh puddle, but because there was light at the end of the tunnel. When Ted went home she did backslide a bit, but not so much with the toilet training, and honestly, I was thanking the gods because it got to me far more than I thought it would. When that carpet went, I wanted to throw it on a bonfire, but also felt like it should go into an incinerator for toxic waste because it was disgusting (I spot cleaned it thoroughly as things happened, but some things will never come off of a carpet, and I'm so glad I now have a solid floor there). As she's been out more, been to cafes and pubs and things, she's grown more used to people and noise and different smells, and whilst she isn't completely food motivated (giving her sausage won't make her like you, if she's scared, she won't eat it) she's started to understand that people aren't all bad, that noisy cafes might serves sausages and she can swim. She's been on holidays, she's ridden up front in the car (with the airbag turned off and appropriately restrained), she's been paddle boarding (wearing a life jacket and with me refusing to try and stand up so I don't knock her in without the ability to pull her out again) and there are a few things lined up for her to do this year which will mean she's done even more. It's a big life, but she would be more comfortable with another dog to share it with, because she is always happier when she has Teddy with her, and they spend A LOT of time together. 

I'm glad I didn't give up on her, because it would have broken my heart to do it, but I also know that it very nearly broke me keeping her, more than once. She was a lot for one person, with no other dog, and she has learnt so much and become so brave, but when I think about how challenging it has been for me, I can't help but think what I put her through to be with me, and to an extent I do feel really guilty. She could have been homed with someone else with another dog or with a pack of shih tzus and whilst she wouldn't have the life she has with me, she would have maybe been calmer quicker, and maybe she wouldn't have needed to be learning to love pubs, like paddling and maybe more. She might never have had to get used to kids, which is the really challenging one at the moment. There are reasons why I decided I needed to take her and they were mostly good reasons mixed with maybe a little bit of selfishness and a lot of misunderstanding of what it was going to take to look after her and help her, but I would like to think she wouldn't trade me for anyone else, and I definitely wouldn't trade her, but if we can one day adopt another, and she can be a big sister to a girl who is recovering from what she went through, I will be glad, because for as long as dogs are treated this way, I would like to help, and I know now what it takes and how much it takes to do that. 

So why did I write this? Because no one should feel entitled to rehome an ex-breeding dog, and because the thing to remember is it's not about you. I know when Chai and I are ready, there will be a dog out there who we can help, and that's what it's about. We can help them, not a we need them to come and live with us to help us be more of a family or whatever.