After a two-week break, the re-entry into the classroom was turbulent. I had had a fantasy that my fourth graders would spend their vacation days thinking about how their behavior affected others, what they could do to make the classroom more positive, and in what ways they might be more respectful to me.
Nerp.
By lunchtime, I was asking Facebook for career suggestions.
My sister offered astronaut. I’m getting kinda squirrelly about flying in my old age, and that’s just between RDU and Laguardia. A trip to the International Space Station might make me a little wheezy.
Some friends wondered about my being a professional dog rescuer or dog-sitter. Those I could go for…Do they come with health insurance?
Suzanne mentioned pole dancer. Well…I mean, that requires a lot of upper-body strength, doesn’t it? Also, I forget, how do strip joints feel about hip-to-knee cellulite?
Are they pro- or anti-?
Anti-, right?
Moving on.
Though I really like Steve’s recommendation that I become a guru-on-a-mountaintop, that sounds like I’d have to be, you know, wise or something, so I think my sister-in-law had the best idea: bajillionaire.
Now all I need is one bajillion dollars. Pony up, folks.
I often hear a rhythmic thumping and look over to find you, asleep, wagging your tail. Thwap, thwap, thwap it goes against the floor. I don’t have to wonder what you’re dreaming about that’s making you so happy. Everything makes you happy. I mean, food, of course. Treats. Toys.
Mostly beings, though. Humans, you love humans. And other dogs. But really anything with a soul. When we’re hiking, sometimes I can hear Violet’s thoughts, “Bird! Deer! Bunny! Human! Bug!” and yours, “Friend! Friend! Friend! Friend! Friend!” What a sweet baby.
You’re very much the antithesis to your mother’s self-absorbed skeptic with a propensity for depression. Thank god for that.
You love going places in the car, but you hate the car. I think you have motion sickness. You spend all your time, if you’re in the back seat,
with your head out the window
…and, if you’re in the way-back,
draped halfway over the back seat.
I know you’re uncomfortable, but it’s pretty cute. And your motion sickness reminds me that you’re mortal. You seem invincible much of the time—bashing your head into furniture and not even blinking, for example. There was the time at the end of our trip to Massachusetts when you got all listless, and I was freaking out. Turns out you had frolicked in the sand so much without rinsing out between your toes, that the area between your paw pads was all raw and bloody and scabby. I didn’t figure it out for a few days. I felt like a bad parent, and I’m sorry you had to go through all that pain.
Something only a mother could love: You poot audibly. I’m always surprised when I look over and don’t see a pile of crap on the floor because it smells that bad. Seriously, I want to be mad at you because the stink burns my nostril hairs, but the sound is so funny, a little “pfft” or a “thoo”, and you look so cute lying there with your eyebrows arched and your upper lip flaps hanging over your lower lips, and I just have to go kiss your silly forehead. Oh god. I worry about the Pavlovian response you’re developing.
Actually, scratch that. I think, had you been there, you might’ve effed up Pavlov’s experiments. You don’t so much “learn“. Mr. Carlos and Ms. Kathy, the Spanish teachers at my old school—well, we used to joke about which teachers our dogs would get if they went there. One of Ms. Kathy’s would have done well in my class; alas, you would’ve needed Ms. Berry. Because you’re special.
But you’re my baby. You’re more than a year-and-a-half old now, but you’re still a big, gallumphy baby. My baby.
OK, I’m in. I closed on my 747-square-foot manse on Friday afternoon. Signed, sealed, delivered, it’s mine.
I was walking the dogs around my new neighborhood in the afternoon rain on Saturday, and guess what I found. A stray dog. He was a big, black, Shepherd/Scaredy-dog mix, skinny, faded collar but no tags, not fixed. He and Redford got along swimmingly. (See what I did there, with the rain and the swimmingly.) The stray followed us a couple blocks back to our house and into the back yard. He took a biscuit but only at ten paces from me.
I called Animal Control, but of course, they were closed for the weekend. The message said for animal emergencies to call 911. I figured that my temptation to adopt yet another dog was an emergency. If I kept him until Monday when the office opened again, I wasn’t gonna call. I was going to have three dogs. In my might-as-well-be-a-mobile-home. The four of us would have had 186.75 square feet each.
When the animal control officer came, the poor monkey kept circling the shed and darting away from her. At one point, he ran up onto the deck and poised himself to jump over the railing! I managed to grab his collar, and the officer got that loop-on-a-pole around his neck and rassled him into the truck.
I wanted to call out, “Wait! No! Forget it, I’ll take him,” but I bit my tongue. The officer called me about 20 minutes later—between you and me, I think she might have had a little crush on me—and told me he was fine and calm once he got to the shelter.
Man, I hope he finds a home. Him and my gentle beast from a couple weeks ago. (I haven’t had the balls to call the shelter and check on that little guy.)
I’m not a praying person, but if I were, I’d be on my knees tonight.
You are a booger. You are made entirely of boogers. I just love you.
I love it when you sit up, prairie-dog style. You look so regal. And beautiful. Not many people comment on your beauty. They’re too busy ogling your brother. Believe me, I know what it feels like to have a brother who’s better-looking than you. But you are so, so beautiful. Your face is so solemn, and you have those eyes, those dark eyes that blend into your face in photos, but up close in person—uh, in dog?—they’re deep and brown and soulful.
I love it when you start breathing heavily with the anticipation of petting, “Hol hol hol,” which shifts into a light, stoned-eyed panting as I rub your cleavage.
I love that you don’t pee on yourself, which is more than I can say for your brother. Redford has decided that sometimes he likes to lift a leg, others he’ll crouch, and most of the time, he wants to do something about halfway in between, which results in his pissing directly on his front foot. No, you’re always careful in your bathroom habits. You have a bladder and bowels of steel, sometimes waiting 20 hours to go, just because you hadn’t found a spot that suited you, or because you’d been on leash. You really prefer to have privacy. I don’t blame you. I’ve never been one of those bathroom-door-wide-open kind of girls.
I hated to start crating you again a few months ago, but after years of not chewing, you ate the shit out of my L.L.Bean clogs. All of ’em. So now you’re in the kennel when I’m not home. I kind of miss coming home to find a warm, furry indentation in my bed, sometimes decorated with a bra or flip-flop, and you, wide-eyed, feigning innocence.
I hate that you’re still terrified of your Uncle Erik. I have no idea why. You’re even more scared of Erik than you are of Nate. Nate was the one that I found, at age three, kneeling in front of you, you who were pinned up against the kitchen cabinet, quaking, and when I asked Nate what he was doing, he said, “I wath petting huh eyebaw.” Why is Erik the one that makes you tuck your tail and run off to the far side of the yard? He’s never petted your eyeball. Wa says it’s his manic energy. Maybe it’s that; maybe he reminds you of whoever earned you the Cruelty/Confiscation label at the shelter. I don’t know.
I hate that you limp A LOT these days. And it’s not your hips this time. I think you’ve got some shoulder funk, mama. A few hours after hiking or other off-leash adventures, you walk around and your little head jounces up and down. You look like a carousel horse. The months of glucosamine have done nothing. I’ve got to take you in to get x-rayed. Please, god, let it be easily treatable. I need it to be easily treatable. For one thing, I can’t afford an expensive procedure, but mostly I need you to be healthy. I need you to be healthy for a long time. I need you to be healthy for at least ten more years, because I can imagine my life up to about ten years out, and if that life doesn’t include you, I’ll just hate it.
Yesterday at 3:00pm I learned that I would not be closing on my new house at 4:00pm. My buyer’s bank had screwed the pooch on her paperwork, thus she had not yet bought my old house, therefore I did not have the 10% that I needed to put down on my new place.
Fantastic.
This, after I agreed to pay twenty-eight hundred bucks for her closing costs. This, after I replaced the water heater and the sub floor that the leak had rotted through for over a grand. Then the $985 termite treatment and the mold guy who came and said, “Well, I don’t see any mold, but I’ll spray the stuff they probably think is mold.” For $125. And after that, when I, like an asshole, put a kitchen chair cushion in my washing machine, and it shredded it to bits and blocked up the pump. That’ll be 80 bucks for a service call, thanks.
This, after packing up all my shit over the past month and renting a truck and getting my crew to schlep it out on a 100-degree day last weekend. This, after living out of a suitcase at my lovely friend Erika’s house for four days.
They think they’ve got her loan package redone, and they think we can close tomorrow.
They better think that shit into existence because I don’t know how much more I can take.
And as if I wasn’t stressed enough…Erika and her girlfriend left for the beach this afternoon, and when I came home, I accidentally set off their house alarm. Christ Almighty, it was like I was peeing on an electric fence while someone smashed wine bottles in my ear canals. Like, it actually physically hurt.
I called Erika in a panic and somehow finally got it shut off. Right then, E’s friend came to the front door with her dog. My dogs were going buck-wild so I stepped onto the stoop. And the door shut, thipp. Locked. My key—the spare key—was inside. My phone was inside. My wallet was inside. Most disturbingly, my dogs were inside…with all of Erika’s lovely things. Things they could shred in a hot second.
I fucking lost it. I sat on the steps and sobbed into my hands.
One of E’s neighbors was lovely enough to look up a locksmith’s number and let me use her phone. The dude said he’d be twenty minutes. I called my sister and asked if she’d come sit with me to wait, and she left her 8-year-old and her 5-year-old and her 9-month-old at 9:00 on a weeknight to come listen to me boo-hoo and rub my back and say Shhhh.
The lock man arrived. Sixty bucks and three minutes later—two of which I think he was just pantomiming so it didn’t look like he was getting paid sixty dollars a minute—I was back inside. And the only thing Redford had eaten was my sneaker.
Well, hell, what’s another fifty bucks on new Nikes?
A week ago, I flopped on the sofa, feeling melancholy about leaving the house. My house, my first house. The bead board, the crown molding, the 18-inch square tiles in the kitchen. The screened porch, the porch swing. The yard, my Amish-built shed, the fence, the butterfly bush, Boonie.
The heat recently—my god, the heat: unrelenting, punishing, angry. The air conditioning slowly evaporated beads of sweat off my upper lip. The sun slanted through the panes of the west-facing window in the living room. Violet lay frog-dog on the hard wood. Redford stood in front of the couch, jovially commanding affection. I patted his butt. The beam of late-afternoon sunlight suddenly became swirlingly opaque.
And I thought, “That’s a lot of dirt coming off my dog.”
At 7:40 this morning, I walked the dogs up my country road, trying to get us all some exercise before it got too hot. Fail. We were all panting five minutes in. I blinked away sweat, and the dogs bulldozed their noses through the dewy, tall grass.
About a half-mile up, there’s a farm. Or a ranch. I’m not sure I know the difference, actually…OK, I just looked it up. Turns out, a ranch is a kind of farm that raises horses, cattle, or sheep. So this place is a ranch because it raises cows and horses.
I just love looking at cows. I love their soft eyes and their improbable shape—how do they carry that tank on four, spindly legs?!
One of the cows in the herd took a break from his munching and swung his head toward us. His eyes were hard. A companion stopped and looked as well. Within moments, two dozen cattle were staring, rigid, at me and my dogs. We walked a little faster.
I’m not sure which one moved first, but all of a sudden, the herd was shifting toward us. I looked at the three pathetic wires that separated little me and my two pit mixes from six tons of bovine heft. It was clearly electrified, but somehow I didn’t think that would matter in a stampede. We picked up the pace, and those beasts trotted after us.
I was just starting to worry in a serious way, when Redford turned around and barked. Miraculously, every cow paused. Then they lurched forward again. He shouted at them several times, and they slowed.
I couldn’t tell whether Redford was scared or happy because his tail was flopping madly the whole time. My question was answered when we passed the ranch’s property line, and Redford squatted immediately and crapped his pants.
Hey, little buddy, no worries. I almost did the same thing.
Navigating her trusty barque through the Sea of Overwhelm, our protagonist finds her gaze diverted to the shore by a gentle beast who appears to be in distress.
Gentle Beast
“What ho?” she cries, and pulls alongside the struggling animal. “It appears thou hast a mighty thirst, young one. It is nigh 100 degrees of the thermometer today.”
The creature lowers itself to the turf and flops upon its side, exposing a pestilence-ridden underbelly.
“Oh woe, little dude, the mites that plague thee! And there is no flesh to cover thy ribs! Here, have a stale biscuit that has been in my satchel for perhaps weeks now, I don’t remember.”
The wretched thing accepts the morsel with gratitude. Thump goes the mutt’s tail against the ground. Crunch, crunch. Thump, thump.
“Well, I cannot forsake thee here. Should you attempt to cross this turbulent ocean, some Ford Squarerigger or Chrysler Schooner will surely run thee over. Nay, you must climb aboard my Subaru Barque, and I will carry thee to safety.”
The beast hesitates. Our heroine attempts to lure him into the vessel—alas, he is too fearful. She finally hoists him up in her arms and deposits him on the thwart. They set sail.
“Beware the Dragon of Cynicism to the east—see it there! It rears its head to spout negatory comments! Listen.”
“You will never find a home for that varmint!”
“You dastardly naysayer! I shall slay thee with my Harpoon of Hope!”
The varmint looks skeptical.
The duo arrive at their destination, and the beast is offered a plate of chopped fowl. He devours it and gulps from a flagon of sweet water. Our valiant protagonist is exhausted. She sends her messenger to the shire’s Lord of the Beasts. The officer sends word back that he will accept this animal temporarily, but should it not find a permanent residence, he will banish the wee one to the Isle of Lost Souls….
Our heroine coaxes the beast toward his fate, through the Forest of Abject Guilt.
“I would like to keep thee as a companion, friend, but I have two mutts already that I tend. Plus, I’m trying to sell a house and buy a house and I just started a new job and broke up with my boyfriend and my grandma had a stroke yesterday. No can do, buddy.”
The Lord of the Beasts meets the pair on the trail and whisks the animal into his carriage.
“Remember my words, Avid Bruxist…you must find a home for this creature.” A tear slips down our heroine’s cheek.
Then another. And pretty soon she’s bawling like a little bitch.
