Saturday, March 21, 2009

Forgetting the Important Stuff

Tonight I forgot whether or not I fed my big old dog Cyrus. I know I fed him at least once today, but I'm supposed to feed him twice a day and give him his thyroid and pain pills. I don't eat on a schedule, but Cyrus does. But I was lying in bed trying to find something worth watching on TV when I realized I might have missed feeding him. Not that he was begging, and it wouldn't kill him to miss his dinner, but the pills. The pills matter. I don't know whether or not it's worse for him to have too much of his medication or too little.

I used to have this problem with myself. I do not eat if I'm not hungry. So that gives me clues about the food thing. But the pill thing is always the same. I take the same pills or thereabouts at roughly the same time every day morning and night. And sometimes I think I took them but might not have. It is a mindless routine. Finally I had to start putting them in pill minders for a week at a time. Now I can know for sure if I took them or not. Sometimes I still forget to take them. I will eventually discover the error. But I never double dose myself like I used to. I have no daily pill dispenser with morning and evening measured out for Cyrus. Am I finally losing it? Do I even deserve to have a dog? So in guilt I fed him just in case. But I might have dosed him twice. That's bad. And in guilt I probably won't tell the House Call Vet.

Editing

I have posted these three chapters as they would appear in a book. The most recently posted chapter (chapter three) is posted last in the series, for anyone who has been reading along.

I've taken some very good advise on the first chapter edit from MRMacrum, a very fine writer and generous reader/editor.

La Belette Rouge reminded me that the "show don't tell" rule is a good one to follow. So all history of how this family came to be has been cut from chapter 2. I now begin it with the rape of the child, Judy.

Chapter 3 is very short and is the scene in which the Maggy takes Judy in the middle of the night and runs for it. So far, there have been no edits on chapter 3