The insulated dog house is a floor right now. It's not a terrible thing because this winter has been warm and Rex has three-sided shelter and so adding an insulated floor is a good thing. Getting just that much done was tough though.

My friend and I argued, not light fight argued but you know  I was like, "I think we should do it this way."

"Well, I was thinking we should do it this way," she said.
Back and forth we went for about three hours, whereupon I reached my threshold for behaving like a woman....so I punched her. Just kidding.

To understand what I mean, let me illustrate something about how gender influences how we communicate. So, psychologists do experiments but they also do observations. A famous experiment plus observation is putting a little kid in a room with candy. The adult then leaves the room after promising more candy if the child does not eat the candy until the adult returns. The adult then goes out and times how long until said child to loses impulse control.  Generally speaking, the younger the child, the faster the candy is eaten. Now that I've told you about that study, let me tell you about another study of playground behavior.

In observing boys and girls on the playground it has been found that there is a significant gender difference in how children play. When a group of girls want to play a game, the game doesn't start until everyone has agreed upon the rules of the game. If a misunderstanding happens during the game, the girls will stop and not continue play until all members of the group agree. If a member's feelings are hurt, the group does not continue the game until girl is okay.

Boys on the other hand quickly discuss the rules, then set about finding loopholes, pause the game to argue about cheating, allow rules to be altered during the game. If the game does stop, it's because the disagreement has escalated. A fight may or may not break out, but the overall effect is that boys return to the game, as quickly as possible. Agreement is not necessary, but rather a general acceptance that the solution is good enough for now.

Learning this in college was an epiphany moment for me because I tend communicate more like men do than women. My feelings don't get hurt if someone does agree with me and we don't have to agree to move on. So, after three hours, I told me friend I didn't care, I just wanted to cut some wood.

This was followed by, "what size do you want me to cut?"

Well, we've had more serious bickering over building a fire than this so she rolled with it and started the calculations. Then she got a call from family so I told her I'd figure out what size to cut. I figured she'd be gone a while and I'd have the frame finished by the time she got back. She's been known to abandon me at the farm for hours while she goes to pour soap or make cosmetics for her business.

However, I knew she was reticent to leave me to my devices when she was back by the time I moved Rex so I could get in his dog house and cut two pieces of wood.

We were both amused by this and she thought my cut was too short so we cut again, she doing the calculations me doing the cuts. Soon we had a rectangle but there was one problem. We didn't have enough nails the right size. Off we raced to the woodshop where the guy who sold us our chainsaw... no, not that. I don't remember. He sold us something kind of big so he was like happy to see us and even happier when instead of a hammer and nails, we bought to nail tuckers and an air compressor.

A girl needs her nail tuckers, what can I say.

Anyway, my point is that sometimes instead of trying to figure where you're going before you start, sometimes you have to start to figure out where you're going. Sometimes you just have to cut some wood.

I've been angling for a position in the R&D department of my company. About six weeks ago, i was given an opportunity. The first set of tasks was to find videos related to topics of a book. They had to be easy for ESL students, about a minute and lenght and... well they didn't exsist. Try as I might I could not find them and I could not make them. it was grunt work, not really research or development but a foot in the door. As my dream job flashed before my eyes, I accepted, albeit slowly, that I coudln't produce what was wanted.

However, I was given a second chance, this time to write some passages. Yeah! I mean really, really, really. Getting paid to write anything is just awesome. Well, to be honest my writing skills have gotten rusty. There is a link between insomonia and writing for me. I mean, usually insomnia advice is to write a bit until you fall asleep. But when I write my brain goes all Daffy Duck and ideas pervade into my sleeping hours. My brain litteral writes and edits stories, which means I don't really sleep. But I'm not awake enough to stop this from happening.

Alsas the insomnia returned with avengence and a head fog as I started to write this passages. But they needed to be short. Less than a hundred and fifty words. This was good because at least my aberant brain couldn't fixate the way it does when I write longer stories.

In the meantime, I contuned going to my friends house on the weekends and riding horses. I even took a week's vacation. Our table saw had arrived about a month prior to said vacation, along with welding tools and a chain saw. I suppose it must be strange to buy co-own tools with a friend, but it works for us. First thing, we're going to build is build an insulated dog house. Then we're going to make a chicken feeder. eventually we'll put in some retaining walls and build a jungle gym for her son.

I guess what I'm saying is, though I started this blog as a writer, perhaps I have to let go of it for my sanity. Sleep is important. I can sleep with visions of wood working dancing in my head, but not with visions of plots. Well, actually this problem is my fault. When I first started writing and discovered I could plot in my sleep, I was like, "cool." I suppose I trained my brain to work this way. I believe I will return to writing, but with care. I have to untrain my brain. Sleep is important.