Missing - One Mo-jo

Not quite sure what's going on here but there's something up with my writing mo-jo. It could be that my time and energy is currently being sapped by the new naughty dog, or the sponsored walk I've just organised or the world's biggest school jumble/garage sale I'm working on every morning this week, but I don't seem to be doing much writing. I mean, I have only written one PowderRoomGrafitti rant in the last few weeks. And that's just not me! If there's one thing I can do, it's rant.

Anyway, the dog is doing quite well considering we've had her less than two weeks. She sleeps all night in her crate/cage without a peep and even goes in there before we go to bed. Since I'm out of the house every morning this week, we' have managed rigged the kitchen up so that she doesn't have to stay in her crate/cage. 
American houses are not really conducive to non house-trained pups in that there are very few doors to close. Ours has more than most and one exit from the kitchen to the family room is a door, but we have stairs up to the dining room (basement kitchen - very Ab Fab) which she can bound up, thus reaching the rest of the house.

We dutifully bought gates(why didn't we keep the baby gates?), and found that she's a pretty good jumper even from stairs. The Ball & Chain was like Bill Murray in Caddyshack as he tried to come up with ways to outfox the canine. Eventually we took both gates and tied them together to make an extra tall gate. Although she couldn't jump it, she found that hurling herself brought them down. Ta-daaa! Now we have the double gate with a dining chair on the other side as an extra barricade. It's a real palaver when we come in and have to take it all down again. (The tea towel in the picture is to stop the gate gouging holes in the wall.)

She's not properly housetrained but has a regular pooping spot in the back IF you remember to keep letting her outside. For some reason peeing seems to be more of an indoor sport right now. Good job we have a lot of wooden floors really. For this reason, you have to keep an eye on her at all times so it's rather like having a toddler again. The other day I had to take her up to the bathroom with me while I had a shower, and she didn't go for the towel tied turban style much. The neighbours must have thought I was murdering her.

Anyway, I'm sure once things have settled down around these parts, my mo-jo will resurface. Sometimes I wonder what on earth I've done!

.