Dog Diaries: Just Tara Things Delve into the mind of a Staffie-Cross. #IvyIsLost #Blog #DogDiary
Title: Just Tara Things
Category: Inner Monologue
Word Count: 516
Dog: Staffie cross.
Music: 30 Days Wild
My humans are not in the same room. I have to keep an eye on them, otherwise they get into trouble. The good human makes a lot of big, scary noises. The ok human makes a lot of noises too. They aren’t as scary but just as loud. She is always happy when I check on her. My favourite human just…
I finally got back around to working on my Bagginshield fic beyond outlining. I’m going to be making a whole bunch of stuff up and it should be fun. For me.
From that day on, Goopy let himself be pet more readily. Even ran towards me when I came home, scuffling on tiny, fast legs.
Because yes, I saw them now – felt them, too. Wriggling on my hand, when I picked him up. Tiny many-eyed, many-mawed critter.
He was, in general, well-behaved. And consumed any and all things I dropped on the floor.
Except dirt. He spit the stone I dropped back at me.
Well, I somewhat deserved it, really. I did test him with that.
He forgave me, though.
After a little bit of cupboard-lurking, scuffling sounds could be heard all over the place. An a few hisses… until he showed up on the backrest. Hissed in my ear… and then placed himself on my lap. Like he belonged there.
Snoozing away happily, being pet while I read.
When I came home a few days later, I found a vial in front of the door. With a note attached to it.
‘Sorry for scaring your little pet’, to which I can only say: Goopy is no pet, Frederik. He simply did not yet recover properly.
But it continued: ‘It’s a present. Wish him good appetite’
It was a liter of liquid. And I frowned at it. I knew the source and it was red.
That didn’t cause much trust. But I brought it in and put it on the table, contemplating if I should risk it.
Soon enough, after I gathered my snacks and gave Goopy his young live rat, I sat down on the sofa and got a lap full of lumpy loaf with eyes, sometimes forming a moth to get a potato chip.
But it did seem interested in the flask, sometimes looking over or physically turning to it.
“You do want it, don’t you?”
It made a tiny noise, then.
“It’s from Frederik. You know? The guy that encased you in glass?”, I grabbed the flask.
Goopy stared at it.
I raised my brows and swerved the bottle: “You sure?”, when his eyes followed, I took that as a yes.
“Alright then, I’ll open t and then we’ll-“
I did open it when I said I would.
And now Goopy was… in the flask.
Like… the red was replaced by black.
Goopy was bigger than that flask. And there had been something in, but… there his eyes were, blinking.
There was a growling sound coming out of it. It sounded happy.
It was the weirdest thing.
And for the rest of the evening… Goopy didn’t get out again. Neither until the next morning.
When I came back from work the next day… the glass was gone.
But there was a being close to the entrance:
It wasn’t a loaf. It was a… being. Still hairless, but vaguely dog-shaped, with a tail. Still without ears, though.
“Goops, is that you?”, I reached out a hand.
A tongue lolled out at the appropriate place for a dog’s mouth.
And leaned into the touch.
“Someone had a growth-spurt over night… you seem quite happy!”
He did.
“Lil mongrel. Gotta pick up better food then, I suppose…
In the second section of her novel, Atwood gives the reader a glimpse into another section of the character’s life. She goes on to describe her teen years and how she matured during them. Her language and overall stories of this time are very relatable to me, being I am a teenager. She goes on to explain certain situations such as her and her boyfriend, Bill, and how “no one understands her”…especially her “outdated” parents. At the beginning of her story “My Last Duchess” she tells about her school. She goes on to write about the serious test anxiety that her and her classmates have, again very relatable to teenagers.
On pages 58-59 she indirectly characterizes herself as a middle class girl in society and school. She is not so poor that she has to drop out and work, but also she is not wealthy enough to have a place in college selected and paid for her. This is very relatable to me because it is sort of the situation that I am in.
Atwood uses repetition again about her “monstrousness” (48). She believed, sometimes, that it caused her little sister to have emotional problems. This was repeated in this story and more frequently throughout her previous short stories in the novel.
Atwood's incredible detail paints a very vivid picture in the reader's mind. Her attention to it really makes the reader picture and feel what is happening. However, at times I thinks she goes a little to far into detail. For instance, "twenty-five adolescent bodies stewing gently in the humid springtime air" (51).
Atwood shows the character's maturity in the short story "My Last Duchess" by one of her class assignments. Her class read a poem that is told from a Duke's point of view after he killed his wife. The character's own diction changed as she marked out more deroggatory terms and replaced them with more understanding terms such as "stuck up" with "proud", and "stupid" with "inexperienced" (67). Her doing this really shows a sign of maturity how she understood the Duke's point of view after really delving into his thought process.
Atwood then writes about the more typical side of a teenager when the character's boyfriend and her had a fight. "Bye-bye love, as in songs. All alone now. It was so sad" (73). All I could think of when I read this was Taylor Swift songs and how every broken-hearted girl thinks the world is over after one little fight with their significant other.
Like teenagers' feelings, Atwood writes about the many experiences of life, as I have come to find out. She writes about the differences in children and how they affect their own childhood. She writes about teenagers and how their are many different personalities, but they all fit together to form out society and our world.
A strange thing about the novel is that I have not noticed the name of the character yet. This leads me to believe that maybe Atwood is writing an adapted novel about her life. The short stories could possibly be her own.
