Tag: Blog

Writing Daily or Writing Crazy

Kitt RyanLeave a comment

I type this post with a dog sitting on my feet in the comfort of my post-workday living room. I’m just missing a cup of tea and a slice of toast (a habit I have regretfully picked up from my mother, the queen of toast-eating). I decided a little while ago that I wanted to publish some kind of post every day, but finding something interesting enough to share about my standard work, home, feed dogs, cook, eat, wash up, watch TV and go to bed life proved rather tricky. The only update I really have to give at this stage is that I am totally bogged down by the gruelling process of a house purchase (wouldn’t recommend), but once that’s done I should (haha) have more time to write!

Anyway, after that meaningless ramble, the point I was getting at is that I’ve decided to write and publish on my site (as well as Twitter, Instragram and Facebook – please check those out too for extra content) a poem every day. The majority of these are syllabic, meaning that I am quite restricted, which is great because anyone who has read my poetry on this site will notice that I don’t know when to stop.

I’ve already almost forgotten on some days, and while I have the privilege of scheduled posts on here, there is no such thing for the rest of the accounts I try to keep up to date. Still, here we are, I have committed myself and for once I am determined to stick this one out and not fall behind on it. I’ve always loved writing and this is something I can look forward to doing each day, from my sofa, with my feet up, with my dog.

I hope you enjoy reading the daily poems, or spam, depending on your perspective.

Remember to surpass those expectations and eat the lemons life throws at you this week. You can do it.

Saturday Summary

Kitt RyanLeave a comment

I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of blog content I should write for quite a while, and got nowhere with it so far other than sharing poetry and fiction. With a lot of my spare ‘sitting around’ time taken up with novel writing, the daily blog entries I’d envisaged when setting up this site never materialised. So, a weekly summary of one thing or another it is.

Scrolling through social media recently, I saw an article about things that people have seen but have no proof of, many of them being completely unbelievable things that not many people really believe. I don’t have many stories like that, and the ones I have are going in a memoir which may or may not appear in the future, but there is one that I think is worth sharing.

The story begins when I’d recently got my second dog. The first one was a timid little Jack Russell x Chihuahua (she’s a rescue so there’s probably a lot of other breeds in there too), who didn’t have a lot of personality. Even now, she behaves more like a cat than a dog, and is impossible to read. Her behaviours aren’t always typical, so figuring out what she wants or what she’s thinking is next to impossible. Training her went out of the window within a week – maybe the saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks really is true (she was 8 years old when we rescued her).

The Xbox dog

Anyway, there was one day that she and the second dog had a minor disagreement, and she’d snapped at her. She’s tiny and absolutely harmless, and there was no fight, but we needed to do something to teach her that she can’t go round snapping at her dog housemate. We put her in the crate next to the TV, which was only really there for the second dog. She stood there, seething. She was practically shaking with some kind of anger, her beady little eyes staring right at me. If she could talk, she’d have been saying “who do you think you are to put me in a crate”.

We decided to give her until she’d stopped trying to cast a spell with her face and had calmed down before letting her out. It took a good ten minutes or so, but she eventually did and we opened the door. Her little head popped up and back came that expression.

I was using my Xbox to watch a DVD at the time, and this dog seemed to know that. Without breaking her creepy little eye contact, she waltzed over to the Xbox, turned her head as if she was flicking her ears like hair, and turned the Xbox off. With her nose. Dead on the power button. Then she did her ear flick back round, looked me dead in the eye, and walked off.

I do actually have a witness to this, but even so the whole thing sounds ridiculous. I imagine it was a bit of a coincidence, but I can’t fathom any real reason why she would do that. She’s never had any fascination with an Xbox or other console of any description. Plus, how did she know to press that button, on that console? She had the other Xbox, the Virgin Media box and the retro Nintendo Wii to choose from.

Believe it or not, coincidence or not, it happened.