As some of you might know, we adopted another dog about a month ago. Athena had been at the adoption facility for almost 3 months. Most of the time, she is a sweet, loving thing. But as she gets more used to things, tries to push her boundaries, and continues to adjust to our routine, we sometimes have frustrating set backs.
She's still at a point where we have to give her a lot of supervision; she rips up toys, tries (and often succeeds) to get into places where she's not supposed to go, and we're still trying to figure out the difference between her "I want attention" whine and "I have to go potty!" whine.
Because of her still needing so much supervision, Jason and I have switched up our schedules a little bit. He usually plays video games with friends on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights. Those used to be the nights I reserved for writing, so that we could do stuff together on other nights. But now, the nights that he plays I watch Athena, and the other nights, he watches her while I work on writing. That's actually working out pretty well; I've gotten a substantial amount done since we've been doing this new schedule the last week or two.
But that also means that the nights I'm watching her, I'm not getting a lot of non-writing things done. Housekeeping stuff, various follow-ups I should be doing... It either takes longer 'cause I'll have to pause when she wanders out of the kitchen to go see what she's doing, or because she's in a mood where she wants attention and sits down on me. Plus, Baldur is... not exactly jealous, but he is aware of the time and attention she's getting. Often I am sandwiched between two doggies on the couch and both of them want to put their heads on my lap, which means I can't put my laptop there. (I don't know how people with kids ever get anything done...)
Also, for almost a year now, I've been taking my laptop to work with me, to use on my lunch break to get things done. But lately - between frustrations and not sleeping well with Athena, and with it being busy at work (we're in the middle of registration for the Fall semester) I find at lunch that I just don't have the mental energy to concentrate on doing something useful. I spent pretty much all of my lunch break the last week or so just putzing around on the internet.
And that's OK - because sometimes to get things done you have to give yourself permission to not get things done.