westie in the west

Shermaine (see picture) the friendly westie that never barks (we all think she's a mute, we haven't even heard a growl) is the latest addition to leo's family. This two-year-old is such a dear and she quite loves me! Haha. Well, that's cos I haven't disciplined her yet, until today when she pooed on the carpet in the living room for the third time in a week!

This is truly a mystery. She knows the toilet is the place to go, but there're these few times when she unexpectedly let it out on the carpet. It always happens either when the family is asleep, or when no one is at home. We think it's cos she wants attention? But really?

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Going west...
I'm quite tired of travelling from Punggol to NUS for class. The journey is one and a half hours and I'm so not used to it! Thank goodness I've my books for company. In fact, I finished one in two to-and-fro trips this week.

It's a really delightful read by Zimbabwe-born Alexander McCall Smith called Morality For Beautiful Girls. This book is part of the series headlined by the popular The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Precious Ramotswe is the owner of Botswana's only detective agency for the "concerns of both ladies and others", and she goes around solving mysteries, well actually, more like other people's problems. Humorous and easy to read.

Have started on another book called A River Runs Through It (and other stories) by the late Norman Maclean. Although I've just begun, I'm liking what I'm reading. In his acknowledgements, he wrote something that I think writers (and bloggers!) might appreciate:

It was my children, Jean and John, who started me off. They wanted me to put down in writing some of the stories I had told them when they were young. I don't want, though, to put the blame on my children for what resulted.

As is known to any teller of stories who eventually tries to put a few of them down in writing, the act of writing changes them greatly, so none of these stories closely resembles any story I told my children.

For one thing, writing makes everything bigger and longer; all these stories are much longer than is needed to achieve one of the primary ends of telling children stories - namely, that of putting children to sleep.

However, the stories do give evidence of retaining another of those purposes - that of letting children know what kind of people their parents are or think they are or hope they are.