Tigger’s very expensive and back-ordered supplement arrived.\u00a0 I opened it; it’s a granular and good-smelling (to me) brown stuff with lots of good-for-joints in it.\u00a0 It has a measure.\u00a0 (Everything has a measure, and you have to dig for them in the plastic tubs these things come in.\u00a0 Yes, we re-use the tubs.\u00a0 My favorite feed-through wormer came in a 5 gallon bucket useful for SO MUCH, but they “improved it” by making it more concentrated and putting it in a much smaller square tub, too small to sit on comfortably…BUT perfect for storing extra sacks of dry beans, so there’s always a good side.)\u00a0 ANYWAY.\u00a0 I put a measure of the new supplement in with Tigger’s pellets and stirred it around, and then poured the liquid supplement (for other things) in striped across the top and added almost a cup of water to blend…he likes the liquid supplement and likes having his feed a little wet…and let the boys into the barn to eat.\u00a0 Tigger went to his feed pan; Rags went to his feed pan.\u00a0 They started eating.\u00a0\u00a0 I waited to see how Tig would do with\u00a0 his new supplement.\u00a0 He sniffed it.\u00a0 Looked at me.\u00a0\u00a0 “It’s really good,” I said.\u00a0 “And good for you.\u00a0 And it costs the earth, so like it!”\u00a0 Sniffed it some more.\u00a0 Shuffled his feet.\u00a0 Put his nose in and shoved it around a little.\u00a0 Shook his head.\u00a0 Finally nibbled….<\/p>\n
ICK, said Tigger with a curled lip, open mouth, head tossing. He tried again.\u00a0 Looked at me in shock-horror, again with the open mouth, head tossing.\u00a0 “It’s NOT GOOD.\u00a0 It’s HORRIBLE.\u00a0 I can’t eat this!\u00a0\u00a0 I’m going to eat Rags’s supper instead.\u00a0 Off he went to displace Rags, and Rags immediately came to eat Tigger’s, which would be bad because Tig gets a little more and Rags had eaten enough to make a combo of the two way too much.\u00a0 Also HE wasn’t prescribed the second supplement.\u00a0 I chased him away, with loud “NO!\u00a0 OUT!\u00a0 DON’T!” which upset Tigger (though he had started in on Rags’s feed) so he ran out of the barn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I then picked up the feed pan and carried it out, closing the west gate behind me; as soon as Tigger went out, Rags returned to his own feed.\u00a0\u00a0 I offered the pan to Tigger.\u00a0 NO!\u00a0 NEVER!\u00a0 HORRIBLE BAD STUFF!\u00a0 I put it down, and he did try again but I could see more clearly\u00a0 (the sun had set but there was some light in the sky) that the texture was part of the problem.<\/p>\n
So I fetched a bucket with some water and watered his feed more.\u00a0\u00a0 He shoved it around and ate a little but then Rags came to the west gate, somewhat upset that things were not the same.\u00a0 I went back through the gate, fetched Rags a flake of hay and put it out for him and watched Tigger.\u00a0 Not eating.\u00a0\u00a0 I fetched out the smaller watering tub, took that out, and started filling it with water (if he drank would he like that better?)\u00a0 He kept walking around picking at the nonexistent grass and then looking at me as if to say “Traitor.\u00a0 You ruined my supper.”\u00a0 What could I do?\u00a0 An idea came.\u00a0 He liked molasses.\u00a0 We had a fresh (small) jar of molasses in the house.\u00a0 And carrots.\u00a0\u00a0 I went in the house, chopped a carrot, put two spoonfuls of molasses in a bowl and diluted it with a little water, shoved the carrot pieces around in it to get well coated, found a small scraper, and went back out, bypassing the barn and going through a different gate into the lot where Tigger was not eating his supper.\u00a0 (This avoided Rags trying to mug me for the molasses and carrot!)\u00a0 Tigger came to me to complain again and smelled the molasses. “Not yet” I said.\u00a0\u00a0 Dribbled the molasses here and there in the feed pan, then filled the bowl with water from the hose that was in the water tub and rinsed it out into the feed pan.\u00a0 Tigger was already going after the carrot pieces.\u00a0 “This isn’t bad!\u00a0 This is actually good….o noes!\u00a0 There’s some of that horrible stuff!”\u00a0\u00a0 I added another bowl of water and stirred everything with the scraper (one of those smaller, narrower silicone scrapers on a stick)\u00a0 until it was well mixed.\u00a0 Tigger slurped at the molasses flavor (all the carrots had been found!) and then just stood there.\u00a0 I moved away, back through the barn gate, then the aisle gate, and left the two alone for a half hour.<\/p>\n
And lo!\u00a0 Tigger had cleaned his “plate.”\u00a0\u00a0 I praised him, opened the west gate (Rags went out to be with Tigger) and took hay out to them both.\u00a0\u00a0 And later took them night hay.\u00a0 Tomorrow I will feed earlier, at their usual time, and will have pre-slopped Tigger’s feed pan with the molasses and enough water to make it soupy.\u00a0 And re-think the routine that had been working so well.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I have the chronology of the book–sequence and intervals–firmed up to about halfway through, sufficient to import the additional structural elements, the bones of the story.\u00a0\u00a0 One of its problems (at the basic level) was its episodic nature, which I’d finally realized toward the end.\u00a0 This happens, then this happens, then this other happens, but the deep logic either wasn’t there or was buried too deep to show up in the reading.\u00a0 Some episodes have disappeared; others have been shortened.\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve re-read Cold Welcome<\/em>\u00a0 yet again, this time trying to connect to my original ideas for the VATTA’S PEACE books, the stuff that vanished with the concussion.\u00a0 I can’t reproduce it, but I can work from the clues I left myself, including in the computer background files made while writing Cold Welcome<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Partly because of a lack of writer\/editor connection in the earlier books (mostly and maybe entirely my fault) I felt hobbled at times and did not do as good a job as I should of setting up the turnover in the second book for a three book arc.\u00a0 So this book has to be the keystone or hinge,\u00a0 and it must be placed with a little more (or a lot?) more emphasis to make up for the visible structure of Into the Fire<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I had not intended to use the day by day emphasis in that one because I knew it needed something else.\u00a0\u00a0 Editor disagreed and our lack of connection meant we were not understanding each other’s reasoning.\u00a0 At least I think that’s what was going on, looking back at it.\u00a0 Anyway, working on the new structure and making progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tigger’s very expensive and back-ordered supplement arrived.\u00a0 I opened it; it’s a granular and good-smelling (to me) brown stuff with lots of good-for-joints in it.\u00a0 It has a measure.\u00a0 (Everything has a measure, and you have to dig for them in the plastic tubs these things come in.\u00a0 Yes, we re-use the tubs.\u00a0 My favorite Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,16,10],"tags":[49,17,7],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-horses","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}