Next month, North Carolina is going to have the opportunity to disenfranchise several groups of people, roll back the progress clock, and generally make us look like a bunch of slack-jawed bigots to the rest of the nation. I’m talking, of course, about the Amendment 1 vote, which could add this little ditty to our state constitution:
Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.
Kinda harkens back to this,
dunnit?
One of the libraries at UNC posted on Facebook this snapshot of one of our state’s previous forays into institutionalized prejudice. Ninety-five percent of the commenters were properly outraged and drew the comparison between it and what could happen in May. But, of course, there was one guy who instructed all comers to read Ezra Chapter 9 of the Bible. So I did. In it, Ezra prays about how Israelites who have married foreign women have caused the shitstorm they’re in. Apparently, mixing blood with other groups and not keeping one’s people separate offends the Lord.
And I can say, with all the love in my heart and the conviction that you’re allowed to hold any religious belief you choose, that I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. Even if you extrapolate and take this as a commandment that whites not marry “octaroons”, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY. You don’t get to say whether they get to marry because the constitution of our state, last time I checked, was not the Bible.
Which brings me back to the vote at hand.
If a person votes yes on Amendment 1, it is because of a religious belief that gays should not marry (and, let’s be honest, that gays should not be gay). That’s the only reason anyone has ever given to me for voting yes.
So I say again, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY. Your interpretation of a Bible verse cannot take away someone’s God-given, and yes I just went there, rights.
Stop trying to shove your Bible in my Constitution.
I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE EVEN VOTING ON THIS.
Now everybody go sit around a fire, hold hands, and sing this über-folksy jingle-jangle:
(My only problem with the video, other than the whiff of mawkishness, is the lady at 1:30 who talks about how “many people involved in the arts and a lot of other creative, um, activities […] would be devastated by the passage of Amendment 1”. Just checked the calendar, and yep, it’s 2012. Are we really still under the impression that there are no gay farmers, insurance salespeople, CrossFit coaches, or gas station attendants? Really? They’re still all actors?)
(Why is Ezra’s horse such a fucking racist homophobe?!)
We practice “sit” in the yard on three separate occasions. She sometimes still jumps for the treat but several times executes the move perfectly. Yay, Tulip!
It’s hard work, so we sit on the deck to rest.
This dog is so freaking snuggly.
Day 2
A volunteer picks up Tulip at 6:15am to take her to her heartworm appointment in Greensboro, which is good because I really don’t want to burn $4/gallon gasoline two days in a row.
I drive to Greensboro to pick Tulip up from the vet. She got way cuter while she was gone.
After covering the seats of my new Mazda in old bed sheets, I load her up. Thus far, I have refrained from mentioning Tulip’s nervous tooting problem, but it exists, and she’s always nervous in the car. One hits me as I pull onto the highway.
Rewind a sec: That morning when I post on Facebook about the car, Margo comments, “you bought a new car for 3 dogs to tear up. sheesh.” And I tell her, justifiably so, I think, to
Back in the car, much to my chagrin, I look in the rearview mirror to find that, instead of floating a nervous toot, Tulip is quite literally shitting on my happy. Guess we should’ve taken a potty break before embarking. Thank god I covered the seats. I pull over, clean up the mess, and let her pee. She futzes for the rest of the ride home, giving me tiny heart attacks that something worse will come out of the business end of my foster dog.
We get home without another incident.
She’s pitiful.
She won’t eat dinner, but at least she takes the pills tucked into a glob of peanut butter off my finger.
Two weeks ago, I started a project: get a new car.
The Outback, as I’ve mentioned, was never my favorite, plus it needed a new catalytic converter. I did not want to put a thousand dollars into a car I didn’t like. I’d already dumped so much cash into that beast, goddammit.
And when I say a new car, I mean a new car. My very first new car. Yes. Nobody else’s miles. No major repairs for a few years. Low financing. (I’ve been paying 5.75% to my bank on the Outback for three years, and boy, has that chapped my ass.) So I read through the Consumer Reports magazine my dad bought me and test-drove a whole mess o’ cars:
Mazda3 (My mom had driven a Mazda2 recently and said it didn’t accelerate.)
Toyota Yaris
Toyota Matrix
Scion xD
Honda Fit
Honda Accord (I wasn’t planning on buying an Accord—too big—but the guy had a 5-speed on the lot that he was trying to get rid of, so I took it out for a spin.)
I had planned to drive a couple Kias and Hyundais too, but CR gave them an open black circle for reliability, and after all the intimacy with my mechanic lately, it was an orange circle or nothing for me.
Mazda3 was my fave out of all of them. Good gas mileage, SIX (6!) speeds, and cute as the dickens. I might’ve dug the Honda Fit too if they’d had a manual transmission, but apparently those are pretty hard to snag. Folks in Japan have been replacing a lot of the vehicles swept away in the tsunami with 5-speed Fits, so I couldn’t get too mad at being put on a waitlist.
But I couldn’t really wait. My inspection was coming due, and I needed to get ‘er done before spring break was over. I went back to a couple of dealerships and got some numbers. And of course they wanted to give me chump change for the trade—Mazda twice as much as Honda, but as my boss in New York used to say, double bupkis is still bupkis.
So I put up a warts-and-all ad for the Outback on Craig’s List. I noted that I had dogs with whom I had traveled in the vehicle, that one of them had chewed the inside of the hatch door, that the catalytic converter needed replacing. I priced it accordingly, listing the Kelley Blue Book value and subtracting for cosmetic damage and projected repairs. I got five or six bites, one lowball offer, and one solid, but when I took it to the solid offer’s mechanic, his machine spat out “all kinds of electrical codes” in addition to the cat con one, and the guy rescinded. Another dude lived two hours away and wanted me to meet him halfway so he could look at the car. No thanks. I decided to trade it.
Meanwhile, I talked to my friend, Z—actually, you know him already. Remember the ridiculous specimen of male beauty?; yeah, he’s my buddy now. He had recently traded his car. When I asked if they gave him a good deal, Z said, “I made them give me a good deal.” As I’ve stated, he cuts kind of an imposing figure, what with the tattoos and the muscles. I wondered aloud if he might go with me to a dealership or two. He consented gladly.
Just knowing that gave me a boost of confidence. I wasn’t going to take any bullshit. I went back to the Durham Mazda dealer by myself, and the guy upped his offer by 25%. Now we were getting somewhere, but I wasn’t sure about the color. He had only silver on the lot, and meh. I looked online and thought I liked a hue they called dolphin gray. Durham Guy said he had one coming in “any day”.
I scoped out other Mazda dealers in the area and saw that the place in Cary had a six-speed manual transmission 3 in dolphin gray, so I set up an appointment to go check it out and hauled Z along with me.
Upon in-person observation, the dolphin gray lay well on the School Marm end of the spectrum, but the graphite gray which they also had, well, that shore was purdy. The salesman was an odd combination of pushy and pansy. He tried to offer me 800 less than what Durham Guy was willing to pay, and that was after I told him what the number was! I said, “Uh, no.” Z mostly sat in silence with just one hazy emasculation of the salesman when he intimated that the guy drove a girl-colored car. Perfect.
When Pushy-Pansy scurried back to his manager, Z straightened me out on a couple things: (1) it’s worth something to have your dealer near your house, so unless Pushy-Pansy could beat, not just match, Durham Guy in the price department, you shouldn’t do it, and (2) if you’re financing at 0.9%, it doesn’t make sense to put any money down. Oh, yeah. (“Math is hard,” Barbie said.)
Pushy-Pansy was gone for a long time. I told Z my theory: they make you sit there forever, so when they finally come back, you go, “Well, I’ve already invested so much time, I might as well buy it.” I was thinking of walking out, and Z said good plan. Meanwhile, Durham Guy called to let me know he’d gotten a black one delivered, and I set the scene for him: I was at the Cary dealership, and I was really liking the graphite—ooooh.
Pushy-Pansy came back and gave the final verdict: 300 more than Durham Guy. I told him I’d think about it, and we left. Z instructed me to call Durham Guy and gave me some pointers on what to say.
So I did. I called and said, “Look, I like the graphite best, which Pushy-Pansy has, but it’s also worth something to me to have my dealership close to my house, so if you come up with another 300 bucks on the trade, I’ll come take one off your hands today.” (I actually used those words: I’ll come take one off your hands today. Ha!)
He replied without hesitation, “I can do that.”
I pulled into the lot a half-hour later, compared the silver and the black, filled out a bunch of paperwork, and voilà!
(I've never been one of those girls who named her car, but my friend suggested Bellatrix, and I don't know, it just seems right.)
So my car payment is more than my mortgage payment. Which is not that much. (When the finance officer asked what my mortgage was and I told him, he looked startled, and then when he saw I was serious, he laughed. He laughed out loud.)
But still, it’s a lot of money for me.
And I’m totally paranoid that something’s going to happen to WHAT IS THAT LEAF DOING ON MY CAR? WHY IS EVERYBODY DRIVING LIKE A FUCKING MANIAC?
But it’s new. And I love it. And it’s mine mine mine.
Auntie Melinda comes over to help walk. Again, it goes swimmingly. Whoopee!
Day 6
Guess who else likes to chill on the picnic table.
Tulip and I head to Phydeaux, an independent pet store, in Raleigh for an adoption event. When we arrive, two other foster pits sit out front. Tulip is ecstatic and practically asphyxiates herself straining against her leash to get to them. There are shnurffles and butt-sniffs. She really wants to play with the other doggies and yanks so hard on her collar that she does that sneeze-cough thing and then gaks a pile of dog food right in the middle of the grassy spot we’re sitting in. I do my best to calm her down, but after a while, two other fosters arrive, both with puppies, and Tulip’s like,
OH. EM. GEE. Puppiiiiiiiies!
Yank. Sneeze-cough. Gak.
I take her for a walk around the block to calm her down. We get back to the spot.
PUPPIIIIIIIIIIIES!!!!!!!!!
Yank. Sneeze-cough. Gak.
We go home. We were there less than an hour.
Day 7
I’m gone most of the day. It’s almost 7:00 by the time I get home. Tulip’s been in her crate all day, and she didn’t get a walk yesterday what with the 45-minute drive each way and all the yanking, sneeze-coughing, and gakking. She needs a walk. Violet and Redford need a walk. I shall walk them. All of them. Together in one combustible pod.
I leash up my two in the kitchen and Tulip on the deck. Because the kitchen door opens into the house, I worry about their interacting while I pull the door to. I take Tulip out to the driveway and shut the end of her leash in the car door, go back inside, get my dogs, close the door, walk with calm, assertive eneryee out to the driveway, and release Tulip. We’re on our way.
A couple of times Tulip kisses the other dogs on the side of the mouth. Occasionally, all of them sniff the same spot. Other than that, they all just walk.
Victory.
(Still too nervous to let them hang out together at the house though.)
Even before I start it, Tulip tries to herd the lawn mower, trembling madly and nipping at the wheels. No verbal corrections work. When I get the machine outside the fence and start to adjust the wheels, she yelps and yips and arfs and awwwws. In fact, I can’t believe it’s just her. It sounds like several dogs at once; I keep thinking my dogs have joined in the cacophony. It appears my foster dog is having an anxiety attack.
In the spare bedroom she goes. I open the windows, turn on the ceiling fan, and head out into the yard to mow. I hear her freaking out from inside, and on one swipe across the yard, I look up to find that Tulip is hanging halfway out the window.
I’m somewhere between that fire hydrant and that pit bull-sized hole in the screen when I see her.
I sprint to the sill and shove her back into the spare bedroom. Back in the house, I shut the windows.
When I leave a little later to wash my car, I close the blinds too. When I come home, I see that
she has, in her fashion, dealt with the blind.
Why can’t I learn my lesson about crating?
In the crate she goes when I head to the gym. By the time I get home, it’s after dark. My headlights sweep over the fence.
Guess who’s back.
Mini-poodle.
Day 2
I read online that one way to help introduce dominant dogs is walking them side-by-side. I enlist some friends to help me. Auntie Erika is the first to come over. Tulip is in the yard, Violet and Redford on the deck. I bring my dogs inside to get leashed up. Next thing I know, Tulip is staring in through the screen door. What is it with my foster dogs and parkour?
We walk up and down my street, Erika with Tulip, me with Redford and Violet. And there is excellent behavior. Mostly, we walk a couple feet apart, but a few times, one of the dogs interacts with Tulip briefly, and it is fine. Going to try this again several times over the next week. Fingers crossed.
Day 3
I babysit my oldest nephew (7) and littlest niece (2). Littlest Niece calls my foster dog Puwit.
Day 4
Tulip is in the yard, Violet and Redford on the deck. I step inside for a second and hear a thud. I peer through the kitchen window. Tulip has vaulted herself over the gate, and all three dogs are standing on the deck, alert, sniffing each other. Calm-assertive-eneryee-calm-assertive-eneryee-CALM-ASSERTIVE-ENERYEE, I say to myself… panicking.
I flap Redford into the yard. Violet is being naughty, circling the porch furniture in an effort to stay out of my grasp. Finally, I drag Tulip into the house and hyperventilate a little bit. OK, I think, that wasn’t so bad. Maybe it’s time to introduce them. I put Violet away and take Tulip and Redford into the yard. Same as last time: glee from Tulip; romping; nerves; in the end, bared teeth from Redford. Sigh.
Tulip goes to the vet to make sure she’s healthy enough to go through with the heartworm treatment and gets the thumbs-up. The treatment is scheduled for next week.
Tulip eats her breakfast without much prompting from me and actually ASKS for supper. (She picks up Redford’s bowl and carries it around the kitchen before nosing the food bin.) Yay! She eats!
She hates being alone. She just wants to be with everybody, not stuck in the spare bedroom by herself. She’s so mad
In the evening, I have some friends over to hang out on the deck. My foster dog shnurffles them.
Day 6
The fur is growing back on Tulip’s ears.
I alternate my dogs on the deck and Tulip in the yard with Tulip on the deck and my dogs in the yard. They sniff and bark at each other through the fence railing.
Then sometimes, they’re on the deck and she’s in the house or vice-versa.
She hates being alone. She just wants to be with everybody, not stuck on the deck by herself. She’s so mad
she eats through an extension cord.
Day 7
I go to the gym in the morning and perform poorly. When I get home, I’m determined to give myself some sort of victory for the day, and I decide it’s going to take the form of introducing my dogs to Tulip. It’s been two weeks, it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be great, goddammit.
Betting on the fact that things will go more smoothly if all parties are (as they say where I’m from) plumb-tuckered-out, I take Redford and Violet on the 2.5-mile loop around the neighborhood, then take Tulip on the same loop. Violet goes in the spare bedroom with a rawhide, Redford in the kitchen, Tulip in the back yard. Violet protests loudly from her prison cell.
I let Redford onto the deck, and he and Tulip wag. No hackles. I open the gate. She immediately jumps on Redford’s back. He’s clearly less than comfortable with it but doesn’t show his teeth. I walk around the yard, encouraging them to follow. They romp a bit. Nobody’s being mean. Tulip is digging it, Redford less. There’s rrrring, but it seems friendly. I’m trying to exude a “calm, assertive eneryee” like César Millan says to do. Having trouble, though, because I have to pee. Two minutes, maybe, and I decide that’s enough for now.
I take Redford into the house, pee, and check my email. Try again. Tulip is overjoyed. Redford snarls at her almost immediately. I cave and bring my boy back inside.
Sadness pile.
Tulip and I go to my sister’s house because my dad‘s in town and it’s part of my evil plan to get Bubba to adopt a dog. “Not a beautiful mug, is it?” he says as he looks at her, but he scratches her chest and my foster dog shnurffles him. It’s true, she’s not a beauty like Buffy was, but she’s so cute and shnurffly!
My nephew and I throw a tennis ball for Tulip in Magical Fetchland. I guess she wasn’t plumb-tuckered-out because she spends nearly five hours frolicking in my sister’s yard.
She’s really great around the kids, even the two-year-old. Yay, a plus to go in her bio!
The transport and I plan to meet in Burlington, about a 40 minute drive for each of us. She pulls Tulip from the shelter, which takes much longer than it should have, and then gets stuck in traffic. I wait in the Barnes & Noble parking lot for an hour and a half.
When Tulip jumps out of the truck, she’s nervous. She pulls and pulls against the nylon lead, nearly asphyxiating herself. She is, you might say, a hoss: low and beefy and strong as shit. I take her to go potty on the grass and try to lure her into the car with some leftover turkey from my lunch bag. She enjoys the lunch meat but won’t load up, so the transport heaves her into the Outback.
She circles, circles, circles in the front seat and tries to jump out the passenger window. I’m attempting to do three things, hold her lead, steer, and shift gears, with two hands. It takes some doing. Eventually, she climbs into the back seat and curls up in an adorable little ball until we get home.
She enters the house nearly flat. Boonie did that once, flattened himself to the ground, when I made him ride on a ferryboat, and Violet’s been taking that stance on bridges lately. Tulip is terrified.
Carolina Care Bullies advocates something called The Two-Week Shutdown. Basically, you don’t train the dog, walk the dog, give the dog any freedom, or introduce the dog to other household pets for two weeks. It allows the dog to become comfortable, learn rules, and understand pecking order.
When I introduce Tulip to Redford, she is delighted, wants to play immediately, but the little bastard bares his teeth and arfs at her. I am perplexed.
Maybe the Violet thing will go better. Again, Tulip is ecstatic; Violet is absolutely not. They have words. It is scary.
When Redford and Violet set boundaries with Buffy, she dropped to a crouch and waited for the moment to pass. Tulip does not believe in that sort of your-house-your-rules diplomacy.
I shut her in the spare bedroom with me. She wags and curls up next to me on the couch, covering my arms and chin with kisses. She’s really cute.
Day 2
I go to work, and worry. What if she escapes like Buffy did? She doesn’t.
I want everybody to get some wiggles out before I try any meetings again so I walk Tulip for a half-hour, lock her in the crate, and take the others for a loop too.
I let Redford and Tulip out into the yard together. She wants to play; he keeps avoiding her. She doesn’t let up. They have words. It is scary.
I resign myself to the shutdown. I don’t exactly live in Windsor Palace; it requires a mad shuffling of dogs in order for them not to interact. It’s going to be a long two weeks.
She just wants to be with everybody.
Twice she gets a shoe from my room. Twice I rescue it.
As I sit at my desk and work at my computer, she begins to give my knee kisses. After a minute, I realize they’re becoming more amorous. She puts her paws on my knee and starts making sweet love to my leg. I tell her no ma’am.
Day 3
I’m stressing out about tomorrow’s storytelling gig. This is the real deal, a curated show, not a put-your-name-in-the-hat shindig. My story is not coming together. I need some time to think. Tulip keeps absconding with my flip-flops. I lock her in her crate, with Redford and Violet outside. She whines nonstop, and they keep banging on the door to come back in. I let Redford and Violet in, close them in my room, put Tulip outside, let Redford and Violet out of my room, sit in the green chair, and breathe. Violet noses my elbow up, like a seal with a beach ball, one of her cues that she will be requiring some affection now, thank you. I clamp my arms to the chair. She starts a wrestle-battle with Redford at my feet. I JUST NEED A MINUTE TO MYSELF.
I don’t know how people with children do it.
Nobody gets walked. I get nothing done on my story. Instead, in an attempt to create order out of chaos, I clean the house and mow the lawn. It does make me feel better.
Day 4
Tulip doesn’t want her breakfast, as usual. I pour chicken broth on it. Nope. I microwave it for ten seconds. Still no. I stir peanut butter into it. Two licks. I take her on the 2.5-mile neighborhood loop.
We run into the next-door neighbor kid, who is a total delinquent. Been in juvy a coupla/three times. He’s walking down the street with two other boys, smoking a cigarette.
“You got another dog?” he says.
“This is my foster dog.”
“You gon keep her?”
“Nope, trying to find her a good home.”
“How much you gon sell her for?”
“I’m not selling her.”
“You giving her away? Can I keep her?”
Absolutely no fucking way in hell would I ever let this dog into your home, with your crazy-ass mother who has semi-weekly screaming fits and you who smokes and skips school and does god knows what else.
I don’t say that out loud.
“Your little dog? She’s female, right?” I ask him, and he responds in the affirmative. “The organization won’t put two female dogs together.” (Lie.)
Tulip is better on the leash than she was last time. We get home, and she eats her food, a third at a time, checking in to make sure I still love her at each break.
Day 5
The never-ending dog shuffles are tiresome, and I feel like I’m neglecting Redford and Violet.
When my friends ask how Tulip is doing, I tell them she’s a grunty pig. She roots around me and the couch while we’re snuggling. She grunts and groans and moans when I pet her or when she’s just, you know, existing. She snorts when she eats.
Erin: So she shnurffles?
Me: She totally shnurffles! She’s a shnurffly monkey!
Erin: She’s a shnurffly hump-monkey!
That’s my Tulip.
Day 6
As I rub Tulip’s ears during one of our couch snuggle sessions, I notice that some of her fur falls out. I google ‘mange’, and peruse the images. I think my foster dog is a shnurffly, mangey hump-monkey.
As in the past, when any student of mine has gotten lice, my head begins to itch. I google ‘can humans get mange?’. The answer: Yes, but the parasites cannot reproduce on humans, so you’ll only itch for a couple of weeks until they die out. Only a couple of weeks?!
Goddammit.
Later, I take her to my sister’s house. Good news: Tulip shows no fear around the older kids (the little one’s napping). My sister tosses a tennis ball. Tulip sprints after it, picks it up, and runs back. She doesn’t drop it—I have to wrestle it from her jaws—but when I throw it again, she runs after it again. My sister’s yard is Magical Fetchland.
Tulip sniffs, and snorts, and cavorts around the whole yard. Watching my foster dog frolic, my sister says, “If everybody could see this, they’d have a different opinion about pit bulls.” Preach, Wa.
Day 7
I supervise the eating of breakfast, as usual. Tulip’s not interested, as usual. I once met a dog at the dog park whose owner was trying to train her but was struggling because the dog was “not food-motivated”. What is that I don’t even.
During one of our seventeen daily dog shuffles (Tulip outside, Redford and Violet inside), Violet takes two shoes from my room and starts to chew them. Somebody’s not getting enough attention. Guilt.
Tulip will go tomorrow to get spayed. I commence fretting.
Last week’s shipment got stolen off my stoop. Or so I’m inferring since the P.O. said they delivered it but it wasn’t there when I got home. (By the way, fuck you, thief. And haha, I hope you were crossing your fingers that it was an iPod, when all you got was l-tyrosine and mucuna pruriens. Motherfucker.)
I called the company, and they replaced the shipment free. (Note to business owners: Vitacost bought my never-ending loyalty for $65.)
The replacements arrived on Tuesday, but I missed probably eight doses of one of the more important ones. I know it’s important because I’ve tried to reduce the dose before with negative results.
And I don’t feel good.
Probably doesn’t help that I’m stressed out from various first-world problems, e.g., an upcoming storytelling event; the new foster dog (who is a sugar booger, but there are challenges); a persistent cold which could I suppose be a sinus infection at this point; 500 bucks in tree limb removal so my ancient pin oaks don’t drop them and crush my car, which I hate and want to replace but don’t know if I can afford to, now that I’ve given so much money to the tree man.
I know I need to STFU, but I just wanted to let you know, if the blog doesn’t get updated, it’s because my robot-vacuum doesn’t get the corners of the rooms and I have to sweep them! Wah!
I pee by myself for the first time in six and a half weeks. It’s lonely.
When I bring them inside, Redford and Violet run to the spare bedroom to see if Buffy‘s there. (They will continue the practice for three days, at which point they resign themselves to the facts.)
I sit on my hands all day, trying not to email Jane to find out how Buffy’s doing. Jane emails me in the evening, letting me know that Buffy is settling in, although she does “spend the first few hours staring at the door” waiting for me to come back. She thanks me for my sacrifice, in the time it took to foster her and the “selflessness it took to give her up”. She says they’re really grateful and look forward to doggie play dates in the future.
I write back and thank her profusely for the update.
I feel guilty for loving the part about her staring at the door.
Day 2
Carolina Care Bullies posts a plea for foster families for two full-grown pits, one male and one female.
I ignore the post.
Day 3
I get an email from a CCB rep with the subject line, “Fostering again?” The rep explains that the two dogs from the prior day’s post, both two to three years old, had been confiscated in a cruelty case. They were taken to the shelter along with a dead puppy that was found with them. The female had had a prolapsed uterus but, after undergoing medical treatment, was recovering well. Would I consider fostering her?
I ignore the email.
Day 4
I run into Buffy and her two mommies at the Marry Durham street festival. Buffy is nervous and at first doesn’t realize it’s me. When I squat down and speak to her, she begins to wag. Wag, wag, wag. Her whole body wags. And then she presses herself into me. I start to cry. I’m so happy to see her. Jane and her partner tell me she’s doing great. Going for runs, totally fine in the kennel, no going potty in the house, no chasing the cat. We exchange promises about future play dates and say goodbye. I don’t want to say goodbye.
I send a message to CCB and say I can’t foster again right now. I’m too emotional. The rep responds that she understands.
Day 5
My friend, Kate K., emails me in the morning to see if I can do lunch. That reminds me I’m supposed to be trying a new modus operandi: Say yes and see what happens.
I email the CCB rep six words: I’ll do it. I’ll take her.
