Rosemary's Puppy
Daylight Savings drooped over us on Saturday night. I'm bad at math, but an extra hour on Sunday morning was fine by me. These last few evenings after work, though ... DARK. The puppy sleeps through the night now. He's moved on from cowering under the bed at the sound of silverware drawers and doors slamming to creating total household havoc. Rosemary's Puppy, I call him, from the hours of 7-11 p.m.
But Durango is a cool dude. I like watching the process of his personality becoming. He's a loving guy that hates loud noises. He's curious. He's bouncey. He has one tall white sock. His brindle coat changes color with the changing light. And like most puppies, he sees with his mouth, not his eyes.
Derek asked me on Sunday, "How many people have called him Lefty?" Honest answer: only me. It happened a few times, accidentally, of course. Calling your new dog your old dog's name is not as much accident as habit. But I think about Lefty all the time. I dreamt about him last night, even—that I'd given him a bath and he had the most luscious, soft and shiny curly black mane. He always did have good hair, didn't he? Anyway, the garden where we buried him is growing up fine in all this rain, and I can't wait to see the tulips and daffodils go crazy there in the spring. Lefty, you are with us.
November To-Do List
1) Teach the puppy to come when he's called, and to walk on a leash without resembling a kite caught in a windstorm, and to not be dead-scared of the trash truck on Fridays, and to let the cat walk through the room quietly with little-to-no accosting, bouncing, or otherwise carrying on, and, and, and ...
2) Unlock the mysteries of the Aeropresse coffee maker. I got one for my birthday. It seems like it should be simple—but it isn't. Beakers. Tabulations. Temperature gauges. It's overwhelming to someone who hasn't had their morning coffee yet.
3) Strip the various linoleums and other ancient subfloors off the stairs leading down into my basement, and then paint them crisp, shiny black. OCD-wise, I get loads of anticipatory satisfaction when thinking about this project.
4 ) Locate, as well as purchase, a new automobile. You see, Volkswagen's buying back my lemon of a diesel Jetta (within the month, one hopes—as several sensor lights have blinked on in the last couple days and money-pit orientated service appointments loom). Wherefore art though, fuel-efficient wagon of my dreams?
5) Pursue enlightenment through brisk outings in the cold.
Puppy Days
Hello to you. Have you met this new puppy? His name is Durango, and he resides, cutely—and with sharp teeth, at my house on 57th Street.
What happened was, I couldn't stand the quiet. I'd come home to the most awful stillness, a house full of nothing but air molecules, of lonesome mental tumbleweeds rolling across the hardwood floors. Life, in the end, is just more life-y with a dog in it.
And so squarely one month after Lefty died, Mark and I took a little trip out to the Yakama Nation in Eastern Washington, where stray dogs are everywhere, anywhere. There, we picked up a little dude, a mystery mutt straight off the rez—part border collie, part boxer, part ???? Maybe panda? Or raccoon? It's all possible.
A note about baby dogs. I'd forgotten that you have to teach them everything. They don't know how to go on walks. They don't know how to climb up or down stairs. They don't know how to fetch a ball. We think that stuff comes naturally, instinctually, but in fact, every last thing is brand new to a wild animal who spent his first weeks living all feral on a concrete slab.
Anyway, here's to a house full of paw patter, here's to wagging tails and wiping pee, here's to slow morning walks holding fast to the leash like it's the end of a kite string in a tornado. I love it all.
The September Report
The mood I've been in for the last week and a half, contemplative you could call it, seems to suit this time of year, when summer floats like a feather to the ground, leaving you with a lovely sort of early fall, cool and clear, the sun inarguably gold—always shining on you at some odd autumn-ish angle.
I've been spending a lot of time at home. When I walk the dog, we walk slowly. It's okay to slow down. And it's okay when things end. Loss is, when you get to thinking about it, just the other side of love. Gah, which reminds me, I was watching the Netflix animated version of that Antoine De Saint-Exupéry book The Little Prince on Sunday afternoon (hey, I find it relaxing to watch cartoons on lazy weekends whilst I cook and tinker, don't you?). Anyway, this movie snuck up and caught me unawares. Before I knew it I was gritting my teeth and the tears were flowing because, as it turns out, The Little Prince, well it's a story about death. Stupid cartoons ...
3 Things
Stranger Things: A new throwback sci-fi for all you E.T. & X Files fans out there. It gets me scared, but it also makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside just like all really great 80s movies do to all humans who grew up wearing velour sweatpants and drinking Tang in the 80s.
Yerba mate: A mild cocaine of sorts for work-day doldrums. I can get lit on a mug of this, plug in Explosions In The Sky, and crush 3 hours of product copy. Magically, I will still be able to sleep later. It's cool.
New roommate: After what amounts to years of living alone, the struggle to not become curmudgeonly was real. But turns out, having someone at the house when you get home is quite lovely, because then that someone is around to open stuck jars of jam, and there's someone to drink wine with as the light falls, and there's someone for Lefty to run and find in hopes of protection from being given a bath—which he won't get because, little does Lefty know, that someone is a double agent who works for me. Hah!
