The sun angled into the car wash entrance this morning, making the falling bubble curtain into a solid wall of thousands thousands thousands of rainbows. I watched the hood of the smooth ride disappear into to rainbow wall as the car wash rails drew us in and held my breath, hair a-prickle and fingers tingling, to learn what was on the other side. (Nothing, just the rest of my day, but my heart still pounds with rainbow potential.)
Yeah ok, so yesterday I saw my snow boots propitiating to who knows what and this morning there was snow on the ground. I’m not saying cause and effect exactly, but one second your Joan of Arctic Sorels are sacrificing to something and the next morning you are out there with the Evil Snow Shovel? More than a coincidence. The lesson here, at least the lesson here at the WideEyedDomicile, is that you don’t get the boots out before the snow comes. The big furry pac boots live on the boot tray next to the ice grabbers and the Rieker-cold-but-not-bad boots. They’ve been waiting there, not-so-patiently since I extracted them from the back of the hall closet in November. Evidently they felt unappreciated, bored. I don’t know, what do dusty unused snow boots feel like when the weather isn’t snowy? You tell me. Whatever, their plan worked. Today the Joan of Arctics tromped me on dog walks, around campus, to the store, and clumped around on the Smooth Ride’s gas pedal. They insisted that we …
A year and a half, more or less, of stress and misery masked by smiling fortitude. Yuck. I’d rather wail and screech. Family deaths, an unjust nation, job hunting, and illness. The horoscope writer in the newspaper hates Sagittarians because every day I’m told to keep my head down, trust no one, stay close to home. I drag on my cheerful stripy socks and live each day like it isn’t preceded by something wretched. Miss Tibbit the Useless, Crooked Hankie the Corgi, the WideEyedSpouse, and I walk the three block walkies circuit most evenings. Christmas lights are going up all over the neighborhood and legions of bagged leaves line the strip between the sidewalk and the street. Hank pees on as many as possible, his stout corgi body rushing to the next leaf bag each time. I can tell he loves marking up the captive yard parts. After each leg lift, he gives me a sideways look and a grin and then accelerates to the next, ears aflap. Tibbit ignores the leaf bags and gathers …
The WideEyedSpouse had a haircut this morning. “How’re you getting it cut?” I asked while backing the Smooth Ride out of the WideEyedGarage. (And I should not have been talking while doing this. There is a 1 cm gap on the driver’s side and a 4 inch gap on the passenger side with lawnmowers and doorframes and stuff so…concentrate!). The Spouse did a little dance step. “You know, like the guy in the movie with the dancing.” I hit the brakes. It was mesmerizing watching this in the dim garage, his just out of bed hair waggling around unpredictably. “Huh?” I had nothing. I leaned partway out of the car window, trying to see and hear better. Did that just happen? “The movie with dancing, you know.” He did another little dance step with some jazz hands to the side. The garage keys in his hand jingled. I had the sense he couldn’t really get into it because he was stuck in the small space between the Smooth Ride and the Mighty Pathfinder. “Wha?” I …
Crooked Hank the Young Corgi and Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog arranged themselves nearby while I put on the Superga kicks this morning. (Note: this is the first day suitable for kicks rather than snow boots, rain boots, hiking boots, or warm-knee-high leather boots in living memory. Sing praise and joy to the kicks.) I held each sock for Hank’s inspection, prior to getting my foot inside of it. Tibbit sniffed shoelaces and inspected soles. I cleared my throat and leaned back, the aging settee creaked and the comfy pillows squashed around me. I smiled to the congregation before me, and opened the liturgy of the Church of the WideEyedDogs. I chanted, monophonic, “All the dogs should have cookies, all the time.” In my mind I heard the congregation chant the response, “Cookies all the time.” Hank and Tibbit sat up, ears perked in a participatory manner. And, “The dogs should have the good kind of cookies with liver and bacon, not the cheap wheat flour ones.” Response, “The expensive liver cookies, all …
It has been 352 days since I stepped onto a plane. Outrageous. I’m not saying I’m a jet-setting travel-mad wanderer, but I go here and there. Lately, it has been all here with wheels-on-the-ground there exclusively. Two weeks ago the WideEyedSpouse and I were so desperate to get out of town and move at more than 40 miles an hour that we drove 57 miles to a mall in Rochester to return a mail-order pair of pants that fit so poorly I wonder if they were even engineered for humans. Rochester. Surely you feel that pain as keenly as I? Numbed by the inconceivably boring stretch of the 90, we didn’t speak out loud for the whole return journey. Clinka-clinka-clinka every now and again as I wolfed among the the highway herd (baaaah!), signaling my intentions. Soon though, soon I fly again! Saturday I stood in the attic examining the luggage options as though I were preparing for an expedition. I’m going somewhere for three days. I could take a toothbrush and a credit card. …
Most days I tell myself, today feels good. Birds chirp during morning dog walks. Hankie Smalls the Corgi and Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog – innocent and protected – are untroubled by politics, economics, or impending societal collapse. They are cheerful and hopeful every single morning. Interesting adventures in the confounding universe await. They smile at me and expect love back. So I smile and feel good, breathing deeply in the cold, hydrocarbon scented city air. Then comes the newspaper. The morning news on the car radio. The news synopsis emails. The Facebook feeds. From them I learn who died and how. Who was assaulted, harassed, or disempowered. Who has had their legal rights, access to medicine, or control over their own bodies stripped from them in the night as our political leaders sneak sly, lobby-fueled, religion-fired legislation into the system. The senators must be tiring of my letters. Ugh. I grit my teeth and work through it, distracting myself with the minutiae of academic program management and research. Time is passing and …
