Yesterday I went to a friends house to write.  I like to try out new locations in hopes that every novel (pun) place I whip out my laptop may be the elusive "perfect writing environment" I'm looking for.

It this particular instance, I chose the friend's house in question both because she's awesome and, at the moment, she and her family are caring for 7 vizslas and 2 goats.  Yes, they have a fenced in yard.

First the goats.  The goats live outside.  Goats will eat pretty much anything , and in this case they're primary function is to consume any and all poison ivy on the property.  Goats are the Honey Badgers of eating whatever.  They no give no fucks.  No fucks at all.  My friend's goats hop along the wooden railing along the outside of the porch so as to avoid being harassed by the multitude of dogs they occasionally share the yard with.

My friend has had two female vizslas since I met her years ago, Bounce and Fi.  About 6 months ago, Fi had puppies, and from that litter, they kept two of her girls (Kitty & Ms. Hudson).  About 2 months ago, Bounce had puppies. Seven more rugrats tooling around the house.  Two of those little boogers have already been adopted, leaving five soft sacks of puppy energy are still wiling around the house.

Sometimes you start with a group shot and end up with dog butt

All up that's 7: 2 Moms, 2 almost full grown hell-raising old pups, and 5 gumby bumbling puposaurses -- who are edibly cute. I want to eat them up.

Holy crap they have endless energy.  Pretty much everybody plays with everybody, dog wise, except Bounce still just wants to sit in a human's lap (big dog - little lap) and Fi is so fed up with puppies of any size or shape that when indoors she locks herself away in a different part of the house.   Mom needs her alone time.

Puppies of various sizes

A few hours later, the dogs finally seemed tired.  We put the puppies back in their pen, and they cried about it for about 7 seconds until every single one of them was asleep in some uncomfortable position atop their brothers and sisters.  Even one of the older puppies sat down to snuggle.

What I realized a short second later was that not only were these dogs exhausted, but I was too.  It is hard god damn work chasing after all those critters -- and I wasn't even the one wiping up their indoor pee pees.  No writing was getting done with these monsters around, and that's a shame, because holy crap was it fun to get bit, sat on, and thoroughly licked and manhandled by such loving pups.  If I could somehow combine those activities with productive writing practices -- I think I could make a lot of money selling that technique.  But lets face it, I'm not a writer for the money, I'm in it for the glory.  This kind of glory:

Momma looks on from her laptop (on my lap) perch. Chaos is the new normal.  Glorious.

"Wait for meeeeeeee"

Happy Hannukah