Motherhood

Becoming a parent changes everything. Okay. Not everything. I didn’t lose my political conscience, for example. I didn’t lose my ability to recognize that Zoe benefits by being part of a civilization that takes care of its elderly and disadvantaged, provides for the health and well-being of its citizenry and provides assistance programs to help those in need. I want my baby girl to understand compassion, tolerance and acceptance on their deepest levels.

We went for our first big sojourn on Monday past – Zoe, Secret Agent Dog and I – on a four mile trek through the Water District, around one of the reservoirs. Hiking with a 5 week old baby is like carrying a bowling ball with tiny feet. The entire mission of that bowling ball is to lose its socks.

I’m pretty committed to finding a way to get back to a life of some normalcy and integrate Zoe into activities and routines. The first several weeks of her life were pretty overwhelming – not just because she has an absurd schedule of need, but because I experienced some pretty debilitating post partum health complications. Now that my own health is gradually improving, I’m feeling more capable of rising to the challenge of motherhood and figuring out how to create a more dynamic life for the lot of us.

My first observation is that this whole notion of hiking with a baby includes a tragic design flaw. As I set out on our journey I was prepared to push myself physically in order to begin that process of rebuilding my body. I gained about 50 pounds during pregnancy and while I’m currently within about 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight, those previously mentioned post partum health problems laid me up for several weeks and resulted in a phenomenal amount of muscle atrophy. Also, regardless of the added complications, it’s pretty inspiring how pregnancy makes mash potatoes of one’s abs.. That has been quite the surprise.

So anyways – the design flaw. The baby needs to eat about every three hours. It’s important to time activities to accommodate this need. This isn’t just for the baby’s comfort, but also for my own, because I engorge on her schedule. (TMI???) This requires that I keep a good pace on the hike, which is my intent nonetheless. But here’s the kicker – the whole time I’m huffing and puffing, pushing my physical limits, that little bird of a bowling ball, trying with all its might to de-sock itself, is sleeping. So at the end of the activity, I’m spent and she arrives refreshed, nicely napped and prepared to caterwaul for her dinner. There’s no setting her down, catching my breath, regrouping in a serene post-hike haze. To the contrary, she’s spent the last several hours in deep repose categorizing her needs and devising new indecipherable ways to communicate them.

In addition to the little glitch in baby-on-board hiking, we add the variable, the veritable wild card of Secret Agent Dog. The most awesome dog on the planet who has suffered and endured beautifully not only neglect associated with the physical compromise of my post partum issues, but really the prolonged neglect extending into the last month of the pregnancy. Despite it, she’s a champ, even though she’s showing overt signs of anxiety not only over the decrease in activity but also over the stress of the sock-hating interloper.

So it’s near the end of the hike and the bowling ball is getting agitated, making the socks ever more loathsome, and I’m tired, though mentally plotting the challenge in front of me – transfer screaming baby to car seat, drive windy road home, pour lemonade, promptly peel off shirt and shove a breast in baby’s mouth, lay on sofa and drink lemonade. This is where the wild card comes into play.

“Where’s my dog?” is equivalent to “come” in Secret Agent Dog coded language – so as I approach the truck and she’s not on my heels I turn around and call out. She fails to respond with the sharpness of her training – which usually means something’s amiss. I peer down the trail and spy her rolling on her back in distracted, euphoric glee. No good can come of this. No good can ever come of this. Enter the wild card: rancid diarrhea-covered dog.

On the turn of a dime, or a phrase, or however that works, ubermom in training rethinks the strategy. As I pull into the drive, as though on queue, the now hungry and angry sock-loathing, hat-hating bowling ball begins to make its full presence known by exercising her operatic lungs. It’s as though an unholiness has been unleashed into the world and she the only siren of warning. This warning, of course, first pierces the air of the truck, which is rank with the smell of rancid diarrhea-covered dog.

I place the car seat, replete with baby, in the crib, which is really just a staging area given we co-sleep with her in our own bed (the BEST invention!) I haul her highness Ms Princess Honey Bee into the yard for a hose down and washing, all the while, Princess Stinky Buns, Ruler of the Baby Do’s, is busy in her car seat making messy and hollering loose hell’s gates.

I towel the dog, wash my own hands and proceed to attend to the unholiness in her panties while she squirms and screams – now red-faced and spent. This is truly the saddest moment, when she begins gasping for air, her vocal chords quivering as does her entire chin and lower lip. This is the most heartbreaking and deeply sincere form of baby sign language – her rendition of Hamlet …. “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds that sees into to the depth of my sorrow.” She is profoundly inconsolable. She has suffered her first tragic abandonment by her mother and the world. There is no coming back from the darkness now touched. For the first time, she has seen the abyss.

I try to alter the tenor of the moment by tossing a joyful air into the tone of my voice. I scoop poop off her naughty bits and freshen her with clean diapers and a nice change of clothes and as I change her I remind her, “Change comes from within, Zoe. Change comes from within.” If she had the coordination and wherewithal, I’m sure she’d roll her tear-filled eyes at me. She screams at my attempts to comfort her.

I grab the lemonade and back track to the original plan where I peel off my shirt and stick a breast in her mouth. This is where I begin to understand why new mothers never find time to eat - I’m starving but I can’t wait to feed her – it wouldn’t be right in the face of her all consuming sadness. As we cozy up on the sofa and being the ritual, I’m struck by the smell of Secret’s offense. The longer I sit, the more nauseated I become as the rancid poop smell curls twice around the house and goes to sleep – or rather, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t go kindly into that good night – begins its own rage of life. The bowling ball has had vengeance on the socks and its greedily eating while I spy Secret Agent Dog with unspeakable disdain. It’s the one and only act that makes me lose love for her – and she knows it in this moment.

Eventually I just can’t take it anymore – I can’t take the smell or the idea that she’s rubbing that smell on the loveseat, reclining chair and anywhere else she goes for comfort. She feels my displeasure and is cowed on the loveseat, tucking herself into pillows and throw blankets, making herself small. I cut the feeding short and draw a bath – begin to begin again with more potent shampoo.

Zoe’s needs left incompletely fulfilled, she starts caterwauling again as Secret sheepishly gets into the bath without protest. At the end of the task it’s like an explosion set off in the bathroom – the tub drain clogged with dog hair and water on every wall and surface. Nothing escapes the madness. All the while, we’re serenaded with the melodious crooning of blood curdling screaming baby.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Okay, rewind again to the original plan. I leave the bathroom a mess, throw the blankets from the loveseat in the laundry and again retrieve the baby from her freshly inconsolable darkness.

This time we retire to the bedroom – baby’s sense tension, tap into your mood, as do dogs. We all need to calm down. I made the bed cozy, crawl in, plant pillows all around and recommence with feeding. Breathe, okay, let’s all just love each other. Secret Agent Dog, seeking emotional reprieve, hops up on the bed and I lazily pet her and I start trying to relax and deconstruct how this beautiful day devolved so miserably. I close my eyes and start making a mental list of things I now need to get done before I start dinner. It was 1 pm when we left for our first magical outing together – it’s nearly 6 pm now. Finish laundry; clean bathroom; feed Secret; change Zoe; clean out poop-covered back of truck, etc. And as I’m finding a place of contemplation and calm, I sense Secret starting to shiver. She cowers in the face of disapproval and is in her own way inconsolable until she finds a way to redeem herself. She relies on the love between us, comes to expect it like air, and really, no one could love her better. I pull the blanket up around her and give her reassuring works and gestures. It’s okay. It’s all okay now. And I think it is, until she throws up all over the bed. Which seems to put a cherry on this disaster. I just exhale and let it go.. something else to add to the list… wash bedding, clean vomit off bedframe and floor.. and I just let it go and keep feeding Zoe… so she does it again.

The Itchy Butt

The heat wave continues unabated. Ed worked from home to avoid the pre-Labor Day traffic (which is supposed to be thrice as bad as ever due to an impending Bay Bridge closure – for the entire weekend. The prediction is that Highway 101 through Marin will be a parking lot for three days.) as did LB. At mid-day LB joined me at the pool, she reading and doing the respite thing in the sun and shade, dabbling her toes in the water from time to time for a cool off while I swam a mile. (Yes, a stellar, fabulous, exhausting mile!) I’m going to have to start putting on sun screen because the freckles on my face are darkening and it reminds me of when I was an awkward kid.

Coming home I made Ed fetch me ice cream while I reposed in the back cottage in the cool breeze of the air conditioner and surfed the internet for nothing whatsoever. And then I went and picked up some leave-in hair conditioner to hopefully combat the effects of chlorine and since I was out, you know, a slice of pizza – which just made me hungry for the left over chicken enchilada in the fridge so of course I popped that in the microwave. Which all was chaser to the ice cream sandwich which started it all off before leaving the pool. And I act all mystified and bewildered when I get heartburn. Ha! (Yeah, hmmm… wherever is all this weight coming from, eh?)

LB’s coming over shortly, we’re taking our evening hike a little later in the evening in hopes of escaping the heat. Ms Honey Bee didn’t get a walk at all yesterday (way too hot) and today we’re leaving far later than normal… she likely presumes I’ve abandoned her needs as she’s looking rather despondent and forgotten at my feet. And little does she know she’s getting a bath when we return this evening… she’s got what we call “the itchy butt.”

I’m quite happy to report that I actually had a fairly decent night’s sleep last night. All is good is Zuzuland.

At The Wonder

There were internet cable access problems in these parts today, making work after about 3:30 pm virtually impossible. I left Peter word and we took off into the water district to discover some new terrain. He’d sent me a pdf of a regional map and I’d spied something called Hidden Lake that looked intriguing. Some seven plus miles later we’d completed the journey. I’d say the first five miles were fun, the last two were a bit brutal. My toes hurt like crazy which put a damper on an otherwise spectacular trek.

Hidden Lake was a bit more of a Hidden Pond, but this time of year it was wonderful to see and feel the green algae-covered wetness, native grasses, cat tails surrounded by towering redwoods. It’s clear it’s not an oft traversed path and I like those mysterious little out of the way places best. Peter contends this was the best find, but despite how wonderful it was, I still think the second waterfall at Elliot is the best. (Probably because it’s just so brutal getting there and when I descend out of the dwarf forest, battling brush on what amounts to a rejected deer trail, onto the moonscape vista of the creek and the two swimming holes – particularly in May/June when brilliant splays of wild tiger lilies glow orange against jet black rocks – I always gasp at the wonder.)

But, like I say, my feet hurt. I got home after dark and was able to connect to the internet and send a gaggle of email that sat waiting for the portal to open so they could sail across the wires. Under the stars and moon I sank into the hot tub and bubbled and boiled until I was wiggly and relaxed.

Ed arrived home around 8-ish, and was mostly an asshole. I tell myself, “some days are like that. Some days I’m an asshole.” He’s been on a winning streak lately. On the bright side, he’ll be staying at LB’s house watching her dog for a few days while she’s in Vegas. That will be good – we’ve been too much together lately. Some nights I want to wish him into the corn field – make him go away and have life unfold without him. Other nights, well, I don’t obviously. It makes happily awaiting his return from work rather anticlimactic. I was looking forward to this? Despite his efforts, he really couldn’t ruin the day.

Well, it’s midnight and tomorrow is a crazy mad day, so I’m off with me – to dream about wet hidden places in earth blanketed with soft nettles, a hundred different words for green and Secret Agent Dog running fast as the wind, lugging logs through the forest, drowning sticks and chasing crows. I love her. She’s so cool.

Ante Up

Okay… here’s today. Well, last night first. Went to see Departed at the Fairfax theatre. That was fun. And then the afternoon before the night - went bowling at the Country Club Alley in San Rafael on Vivian. I so totally suck at any sport that involves a ball – but I’m amused all the same. And I must say I kick ass on this Area 51-like shoot’em-up game in the arcade area. And all the while I’m limping around because I hauled my sorry self out of bed at 7:30 on Saturday morning to get back in the grind of yoga and between that contortionist bruha and the bowling I’m limping around today with what I’ve heretofore described as bowling-butt but it’s got a richer, deeper and more meaningful ache as it feels like I’ve torn my muscle away from my butt bone doing yoga (ouch. Could that really be possible??) Why this manifests in some sort of extra added foot cramp, I dunno… but it’s a little icing on the cake of these bones. “Hello,” she says, this body, “I’m here. I’m alive.”

I arose for another early morning conference call – this time I got to sleep in until 7, but again, it turned out not to happen so the Baltimorian (Baltimorani? Baltimorer?) colleague and I used a regular direct land line (it’s so old school) and did most of the work between the two of us. It sucks being one of the responsible ones.

Since I was up early, I took my morning coffee in the hot tub. Anything to soothe the bowling butt – to no avail. The sky is relentlessly blue today. The redwoods in the yard next door tower precariously (deliciously.) Talk about a murder of crows – this change of season has brought on a multiple homicide of crows (a mass murder of crows?). They bomb the house with walnuts from the neighbors brilliant tree (I like it more than almost any tree I the hood – and I have several favorites.) Secret Agent Dog climbs the teetering redwood steps up to the hot tub and looks over the edge – she always leans forward to kiss me – I think it’s her way of saying, relax mom, I got the house. It’s all good. What a great way to start a day. The sky, the water, the trees, the dog, the coffee.

So a change of pace.. okay, girls (and boys), who’s doin’ NaNoWriMo this year? I haven’t yet registered but the inimitable, fantabulous, sparkling Alison has raised the flag. Ante up.

It's Wahed

Five in the morning and I’m sitting on hold for the weekly conference call - mute button on, San Pelligrino limonata (with a straw) at the ready, fourteen minutes left on the download for the latest Survivor episode from iTunes. I have every intention of going back to sleep once this call is over, so there’s no coffee brewing, no anticipated familiar or comforting wah of the coffee maker signaling all is well with the world. (That’s often my first question to Ed in the morning, has it wahed yet?)

Ten after five and I’m sitting silently on the call, the lone participant it would seem. Twenty after my Parisian colleague joins and we commiserate for a few moments – me on the early hour, her on her frustrations with the project at hand – and then, like a cool San Francisco fog, I curl twice around the house and went back to sleep.

I wake again near noon, patter about the house mindlessly, take my coffee in the hot tub, walk the dog at Bon Tempe lake in the silver misty afternoon. I’m a little bummed reflecting on how my intention was/is that with this reduced schedule I’d spend Fridays writing, reading, painting, exploring non-work interests, but instead I slept, lounged, didn’t even read a magazine. Next week, maybe next week I’ll do what I intended as opposed to not much. Wah.

Dolphinese

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words used in correct context – no human being has reported to have learned dolpinese. - Carl Sagan

When I tell the above to Ed, he contends I’m entirely wrong about that (or rather, that Carl Sagan is.) He proceeds to cackle out a strange staccato sound and proclaims that it means I want a ball in Dolphinese. Promptly, upon hearing the odd cackle, Secret Agent Dog’s ear perk and she jumps to the quick, runs out the front door, and returns moments later with a Hi-Bounce Pinky ball in her mouth. This proves, we think, that Secret understands Dolphinese and that Ed’s Dolphinese diction is spot on.

Waiting For A Miracle

I went on an ambitious bike ride today – it was a mere fifteen miles, but a brutal fifteen miles. A good mile and a half of that was less than a bike ride and more of a bike push. My back tire started spinning on the loose gravel, the road was so steep, and I couldn’t get my bike shoes out of the clips. I was stuck on my bike when it tumbled. I was virtually standing still when it happened, however, so I didn’t end up with even a scrape – just a bruised ego and my feet stuck on the peddles. I was planning to round Lake Lagunitas, but I was so exhausted when I peaked Fish Gulch – the murderous incline – that I skipped that intention and just took it all back on home. I wish I’d have had the camera with me (I wonder how it would have faired the fall…) I ride through this area with my friend P when we walk our dogs together at Bon Tempe, but it was qualitatively different on the bike – in slow motion, being closer to it. I saw some beautiful things that I guess we pass by too quickly. That’s saying something because I keep my camera out, always, when we drive this road and he stops whenever I ask so I can take pictures – but I just didn’t see the light or the low hanging trees the same way before. And well, I didn’t have the camera so what’s the point in waxing on about it, right?

I took a shower when I got home and rinsed the dirt of the mountain off me. I still don’t bathe very often – I feel like I’m doing good if it’s once a week. Such a far cry from City living where I couldn’t leave the house until I’d had a shower. I’m dirtier here, but it’s good dirt. The dirt we live in.

I tried to stop by the art/glass – stained glass lady’s store. I need to design the bathroom windows before fall gets too much further upon us and the rains threaten to commence. It’s already August. I’ve got to move on that. There was a note on the door that the lady was ill and how she’d be in tomorrow. I guess I’ll try to stop back.

I called P and asked him if he was willing to try a walk with me, the gimp, to the waterfall at Elliot. I haven’t been walking or hiking lately and it’s driving both myself and the dog insane. I wore open-toed sandals and just hobbled slowly. I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do or not. The feet hurt like the dickens – but my spirits are lifted. How does one weigh the relative value of these things? Or perhaps more importantly, the relative harms? It was beautiful and Secret Agent Dog was sooooo happy to be trekking as opposed to stimming on the same blasted ball all the time. She needs the diversity of activities – she gets kind of tweaky when it’s just fetch day in and day out.

I have to push myself to be a bit more creative than I have been of late. I find myself waiting for something – this sense of waiting. I sit back and I wonder what I’m waiting for. I’m often filled with this pensive sense of anticipation. It’s driving me a little nuts. I have this inner desire to just let go in a big bad way. Part of me says, just do it! and another part asks, sure, but what the hell does that mean??? Let go of what, exactly? Just do what, exactly? No more waiting…

The Savaging of the Butterfly Bush

I could describe the day yesterday, the beach, the blood, the puke, the paw. I could tell tales of the tragedy, the vet, the sutures. But why mince words on the mundane when I could remember the errant rat (did I say RAT?!?) gnawing it's way through the screen window to get out at 5 a.m., or the Fellini-esque dog that the rat happened on in the yard outside the bedroom window. And how the rat and the dog caused a stoned pup to rouse and pee herself, on the bed and a day that started with more laundry in the wee hours of the morning.. the key term being wee. Or perhaps, just then as we're ringing out the pee and decide to remove the bandages on the good leg when we reveal a forgotten catheter sticking out of the vein. The Zuzu-McGiver trick of cutting up tampons to put on the bleed. The unwillingness to eat or drink. Then the willingness. Then the urgency to unswallow like a bolumic on a mission.

No... why waste a spectacular morning on tales such as this, when you could simply enjoy the savaging and ravaging of the butterfly bush.

Souls In The House

There are no soles in the trees today.

Night before last there was a mighty racket in the back of the house.. or was it in the house? There was a clatter and a bang… we have a cast iron bathtub. It sounded like someone tossed a few rocks at it – it echoed in that hollow way. Ed and Secret Agent Dog sprung to action, checking the doors, surveying the house and were preparing to check the perimeter out doors when a cloud of skunk oil came pouring through the house like nuclear bomb. You could feel it like a wave washing over everything. I swear it moved the air, stirred up a kind of wind with it.

The really fucked up thing, as the investigation was slowed, was that this skunk smell wasn’t particularly notable anywhere outside the house. (Secret Agent Dog, having been skunked a number of times, just getting a preliminary whiff of it, before I smelled it or had any idea, came running from the kitchen, jumped into my lap, curled into a ball and hid her nose beneath her own body.) We suspect, after careful and cautious investigation, that the smell came from under the house.. from under the bathroom – likely from under the bathtub.

Remember that the only room we really haven’t addressed in the new place is the bathroom. Here we can’t use the bathtub or shower because the numbnuts who build the place didn’t use waterproof materials around the tub. We’ve ripped up the linoleum but haven’t laid anything new – so there’s simply exposed subflooring with its cadre of cracks and the what-not, pretty much letting things like spiders and well, the SMELL OF SKUNK, come right on up through from under the house.

I’ve suspected that something suspicious is happening under the house. Since April I’ve been complaining that there are a few areas around the perimeter of the house that are open, where we’ve taken the siding off for access while doing this or that project. They need to be closed back up so that rodents can’t get under the house. I think it’s too late. Last week Secret Agent Dog took to barking at the bathtub in the middle of the night. I think rats are living under the tub. Night before last I think the rats were displaced by a rogue skunk. I’ve got a guy coming at 3 pm today… I’m not gonna tell him about the skunk.. but I’m gonna send him under there and have him close it up. I haven’t yet thought through how we’re going to go about trapping all that have made homes under there yet. I don’t think kindly on the smell of dying things wafting up through the subflooring either.

So there are no soles in the trees today. But it seems there are other reasons to be a little dissettled.. a little shaken from the regular routine. And one is the smell of skunk that permeates the big house sort of like a ghost.. lurking in every corner. There’s no escape..

Startling

I keep leaving way too late for the Honey Bee’s walk and finding myself in the forest in the dark without a flashlight. It’s spooky. We’re walking at dusk when supposedly the Mountain Lion’s hunt and we’re walking in pitch blackness – only the white tip of her tail to lead me onward. I hear things. In the rain last night mostly I heard the swoooosh, swooooosh of my rain gear and it left me with the impression that we were being followed. And once I really let that impression sink in, even though logically I confirm it’s very unlikely, I’m just left spooked until I get home. Coming upon the stables in the dark is equally haunting – the dim stable lights, the breathy banter of horses, the tap and scrape of their hooves, the mad dash of a stable cat coming out of nowhere and returning to blackness. And then out of nowhere a buck rushes by – startling us both.

It's a (bad) Dog's Life

I’m agro today. Can you believe it? I’m launched into day two of a sixty day respite from work and I’m agro. What the fuck is up with that? I should be dancing in the street, flitting about, happy as a clam, without a care and fancy free.

Instead I nearly had a melt down in Trader Joes whilst in search of Scharfenberger chocolate. An elderly woman in white Capri pants kept moving her cart in front of me, blocking the flow of all traffic and wandering away. Every time I turned around this woman was pushing her skinny ass in front of me. I wanted to pop her one.

A gaggle of friends met for the noonish showing of War of The Worlds. Tom Cruise is not my favorite. Or rather, he was just stellar in Magnolia. That was the right role for him. I’m not saying this wasn’t a fun movie. To the contrary it had the suspense thing happening, was true to the story, fun special effects and a great little alien. Of course it’s Marin and a woman in the bathroom insists that since the environment killed the aliens there was indeed a message for humans in that – you know, about our toxic environment. Big eye roll…. It’s about evolution and adaptation… duh.

I bought four bars of chocolate and sweltered in the heat, despite the air conditioning in the car, all the way home to greet the Honey Bee. You know.. the Honey Bee who ate an ENTIRE frillin’ chicken carcass out of the trash while we were gone. I called the emergency vet and they say to just watch her. I ask, “well isn’t the issue here that the bones are brittle and can slice her insides?” They assure me I’m on target about the concern and well, damage done, nothing can stop it if it’s going to happen. I guess in most cases nothing happens but we’re to bring her in if she starts protecting her stomach, vomiting or having G.I. symptoms. I think, why bring her in, to watch her die?

This all follows her fabulous skunking of night before last. “Did you remember to shut the front door?” I ask Ed as he sleepily stumbles to bed after staying up to the wee hours watching some DVD or another. “Oh yes,” he assures. And at 3 a.m. I hear a scuffle on the deck outside our bedroom window and then that sickly creosote smell of fresh skunk oil wafting into the bedroom and sticking.. well.. pretty much on everything. And then the proud instigator comes loping in, hops on the bed and finds her spot on the pillow by my head. She’s foaming at the mouth where she seemed to catch the lion’s share of the spray. A few hours with the de-skunking enzymes… which work for shit… and we’re ready to settle in for two friggin’ hours of sleep before my last day of work.

But here we are… and I should be chipper as a June Bug (why are June bugs chipper?) but I’m irritable and agro and my massage therapist can’t see me until tomorrow and while we had a fun time at War of the Worlds we’ve made no headway on Hell’s Kitchen and I’m just… very… bothered by everything right now.

Hell's Kitchen

Where are we going and what am I doing in this hand basket?

I have commenced into the kitchen, the final room before the move (okay, I might do the mud room before the move too, but compared to everything that has come before that feels like a menial task, a throw away, a wink and a nod…) It’s my third day in the kitchen. I’m a bit stunned at how hard the work is and how slow going. My body aches and I’ve paint dust in every orifice and pore, between each strand of hair, in my ears and even in my dreams. The random orbital sander rocks, but I’m convinced it’s not paint but some kind of cement on the walls. Three days and I’m not even half way done with the sanding… and it’s not a big kitchen.

In the rooms we’ve painted, despite getting top of the line Benjamin Moore paint (despite paying an arm and a leg and a kidney and a portion of my liver for the paint), it chips off. It’s been infuriating. In the kitchen, however, a jackhammer wouldn’t take that old paint off. I hit a cupboard with a hammer and it dented the wood, not the paint. What the hell is in that stuff?

It was so hot and dusty and dirty. I sat in the shower for a half hour drinking a Corona with lime when I was done for the day. Then off to the waterfall at Elliot with the Honey Bee. She’s getting more dog-like and I fear it’s a result of neglect. Oh yes, she has her walk in the morning and we still do a monster hike every evening – but near every other moment I’m working in the front cottage while she’s making due on her lonesome. I miss her and she’s becoming a real dog when I’m not looking.

The town gardener and other keepers are readying the town for the annual parade and festival this weekend. They’re prettying up the paint on the streets, a brand-spanking new 15 MPH in the alley, and setting up a stage in the park in the middle of town for this or that feature of the festivities. Everyone’s buzzing with excitement and anticipation, myself included, for the fun to begin. We have our habit, our perch, where we’ll nestle with Ms. Secret and friends and take pictures and chat with neighbors and watch the parade. And then, well, back to the kitchen.

Hate With Me

The broader and deeper our capacity for love, so the breadth and depth of our capacity for hate. It’s like an expanding universe with two interdependent elements, each growing (and shrinking?) in direct proportional correlation.

An asshole on a mountain bike collided with Secret Agent Dog. He and people like him are the reason why responsible cyclist are now banned from using trails. He collided with her while riding his bike across a playing field. The incident occurred about ten feet from a posted sign saying that bikes are to be walked across the playing field. Bikes are to be walked across the field because dickheads like him don’t grasp the concept that they need to yield to people (and their pets, which ARE allowed to be off lead in this particular field.) The egotistical, materialist dickwad with his four thousand dollar mountain bike (because he needed to announce this several times – you know.. “I’m an asshole with warped priorities”) felt that while he saw the dog that the dog should have gone around him.

While blood spilled from her nose and nostrils, the jerk wants to chat about his bicycle and how wronged he felt… as he stood spitting distance from the sign instructing him to STOP and walk his bike. Everyone, hate him with me.

She moved off to the distance and sat with the patience of a saint while he complained. She waited her turn and when I finally left him chattering on about his four thousand dollar bike, she rolled on her back and cried, trying to scrunch her body into a ball and climb all fifty pounds of her into my lap. She’ll be okay. Everyone… hate with me. It’s because I love her so much that I’m able to hate this man so deeply, profoundly and fiercely.

Big Brown Eyes

She looked at me with her big brown eyes and all she felt was that for reasons she couldn’t comprehend she was enduring relentless punishment.

On the day she was got her stitches out I’d planned a celebration in the park with a cadre of her pals. Within an hour and a half of the sutures being removed the wound had re-split and we were starting all over again with the restriction, the cone and the pills. She’d just finished the course of antibiotics for the Lyme’s disease as well. All this bum luck plopped in her paws at once. I was in the vet office when they re-cut the skin to make rough edges for healing and held her while they sutured her again – that is until I felt faint and sad and asked the vet tech to step in.

And then Ed slammed himself in the head with a tire iron – a huge Harry Potter-style scar runs the length of his forehead (now showing some kinship with Secret whose own scar has now acquired a heel and looks suspiciously like Italy.) He achieved a concussion and to top off a stellar week his car exploded on 19th Avenue and he had to spend near $100 for a taxi home. (This would turn out to be a small blessing as I found him a new vehicle on Craigslist – a fabulous Isuzu Rodeo. I make him drive me about and I say things like, “Whoa.. did you see that cow!?” or “Hey there now, be careful for that horse.” These things happen in the Rodeo you know…. Or “Did you know you have the most dangerous profession on land – you know, a rodeo clown…” It’s been a few weeks, he’s not so amused anymore.)

No Amount Of Love Can Set It Right

Lisa is in Oregon at a job interview with the kids and the dog. I did a Haz Mat clean up on the yard so that we could perch up front and pass out Halloween candy to children and wine to adults. I picked up an entire kitchen trash bag of shit and I didn’t get it all. I was ready to call the humane society and CPS myself – it seems like there ought to be something reportable about it.

Halloween would have been quite fun had it not been for the mishap that left me distracted. It all began as an innocent walk in the park – as usual. Exactly what happened is a little unclear, though we all agree that she tried to jump up the cliff because the log in her mouth was too wide for the pass, which was flanked by the hillside and a tree, causing her to attempt an alternate route. There had been a sighting of paws on the ledge of the 12 foot rise - proof of a valiant attempt to achieve the impossible – and then she disappeared out of site. She reappeared at the bottom of the waterfall and without a peep or any sign of injury ran with grace and fury to rejoin us.

I was just being my doting self when in the clearing at the top of the hill, before the truly strenuous part of the hike commenced, I decided to check her from head to toe. That’s when I saw it - a gash, a chunk missing really, quite large on the left hind leg. At that point there wasn’t any blood – though by the time we walked the mile back to the car there was plenty of blood. She never limped and she’d never made even the slightly sight or sound of injury.

I think her heart stopped after I got home and I was in the shower – because suddenly she felt very far away and frightened and I was overcome with grief. But then she felt closer and I knew she’d be okay.

We were up most of the night tending to her after we brought her home from surgery. She was afraid and whimpering and not at all liking the cone she will wear for the next twelve days. She urinated on herself and the sofa in her delirium and she was afraid.

Today she woke up timid and disoriented but as the day wears on her eyes look clearer and sometimes she resembles herself. Ultimately she’ll be okay but these next two weeks don’t promise to be her most joyful. She has this look about her, as though she wonders what precisely she did to deserve this punishment. It feels like no amount of love can explain things to her and set it right.

Cozied Up

Here I sit, on the other side of that moment I talked about in my last entry. I’m a little dizzied and dazed. When I arrived home yesterday I went to see the lovely Tatiana – she’s magical. An hour and a half massage later I felt all wiggly and right. Then I cozied up on the sofa with Ed and Secret Agent Dog, which is where I awoke this morning – san Ed.

Secret Agent Dog smushed up against me all night and we vied for the pillow whilst ensconced in fleece and down blankets. It was a happy way to sleep and a happy way to wake up.

My Honey Bee's Ennui

Breathe, breathe, breathe. I’m totally freaked out. I have a big work-related event this weekend – and I’m overwhelmed. I’m trying to keep my freak out right-sized. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Whoa, there it goes again, expanding to fill the size of the space available to it. It’s a greedy bastard. Damned freak out.

Yesterday, enroute to my mountain with Secret Agent Dog, she stopped. We’d walked all of six blocks and she stopped and lay down right there in the middle of the street. She wouldn’t walk on no more. She was done. I’ve known something’s not right. She’s been lagging behind on the mountain, fatigues easily and seemed stricken with a general malaise. Since she needed booster shots anyways, what better time, I thought, to just have her looked at all over – the toe, the weepy eye, the whole kit and caboodle. Yes, yes, a terrible infection around the nail bed and what’s this… Lyme’s disease. The cause of my Honey Bee’s ennui is Lyme’s disease.

Bedtime

I wonder what to say at the end of a long and weary day. I love you. I love you, world. Thank you for summer, potato vines, agapanthus, dirt, rose petals, grass, dogs, my dog, pillows, feather comforters, slippers, oleander, manzanita trees, moss and rivers.

It’s time to curl up into my big bed, my prize among prizes, my most holy sanctuary, my solace and comfort. It’s time to curl up into my bed, surrounded by pillows – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight pillows – too many pillows, soft pillows, hard pillows, pillows with tattered cases and ones with crisp white grandmother’s hands embroidery. It’s time to curl up into my bed, surrounded by pillows, Mr. Finley – my bear among bears, distinguished and cuddly - tucked behind pillows with arms gently flailing but wrapped around Einstein, my stuffed Little Thinker. It’s time to curl up into my bed, surrounded by pillows, Mr. Finley and Einstein readied for dreaming and whistle.

She lopes. She plops off the sofa. I can hear her gravity and a crack as she stretches and a sigh and then a soft rhythm of loping. At the edge of the bed she rests her chin for a moment like a parenthetic embrace, an aside, a pause. Then I say okay, and she lingers, hesitates. She listens, but on her terms and it makes me giggle. She pretends this was her idea and doesn’t notice me – saunters up to the pillow and curls herself up. Her nose accidentally hits mine and she sighs heavy again – her whiskers tickle my chin. I nestle my hand between her front legs amid the soft fur on her chest and scritch her chin. She makes soft noises and we fall asleep.