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Dogs like cookies.

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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.

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Hank

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 the time.”

Tibbit’s eyes strayed toward the kitchen.

Then, “The dogs should have free and open access to all of the food, human and canine.” Response, “Free feeding, all of the time.”

Hank’s furry bottom wiggled around, his seat less secure and his attention wavering. This service was too long!

I chanted, “The dogs should get dinner, and walkies, and cookies whenever they want, all of the time.” Response, “All about dogs, all of the time.”

Tibbit and Hank, filled with the ecstasy of the service, sprang up and pushed closer for head rubs and chin rubs and twisting haunch rubs. “Go to the kitchen,” I ordered with all of my authority as the only ordained priest of the Church of the WideEyedDogs, “and get some cookies.” Their fervor carried them, light-hearted and innocent, into the kitchen for snackies.

InkedTibbit in the pulpit

Miss Tibbit on the pulpit of the Church of the WideEyedDogs.

Get to going!

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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. Still, the proper luggage transforms the airport slog into the carefree adventure. Ah, my eye espied the WideEyedSpouse’s abandoned Crumpler messenger bag. I cackled and rubbed my hands together (alone, in the attic, not at all weird). Mine now. Perfect for the conference dresses, jammies, and spare kicks.

My little travel bottles are lined up on the bathroom counter, tiny travel soldiers, waiting for duty. The wee little toothpaste tube stands proud and unsquashed at the back. The tray table and hand sanitizers wait to save me from the flu, mrsa, and crusty human scurf (Personal rule #1: touch nothing unless absolutely necessary). Library books are downloaded to the ipad, noise canceling headphones juiced up…Which shows will I want to watch? Downton Abbey Season 1 or Westworld Season 1? Bring the knitting project or not?

My heart will ache without the Spouse and the Dog-Pals, but I am so ready to move fast, go far, and fling myself into someplace different. For a little while. Until I fling myself back home.

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Aggressive decency.

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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 green stuff is sprouting in the garden. I pruned the pear trees and the blackberry canes. When the snow melts, hah, it is blizzarding right now!, when the snow melts I’ll trim the ornamental grasses.

But it bothers me every day, who am I to take joy in the universe, in the fresh cold morning, and the coming spring? Humans keep on revealing their inherent awfulness, and I feel powerless to mediate the impacts.

Is being kind enough? Is growing a garden, petting some dogs, and writing to the powerful enough? Here’s what I think: these things aren’t nothing and every positive action, every tiny commitment to decency contributes to the greater good. The plan: grit my teeth, carry on, and smile while I shove decency down the throats of the asshats. Er. I mean that figuratively, of course I do.

Here, look at the picture of the happy corgi with me and we’ll all feel better…

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Be mighty. And don’t bite Miss Tibbit.

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Maintaining productivity in my humor-joy oeuvre proves difficult lately. Sure, I can see the bees in the lavender, the butterflies on the buddleja, the hostas exploding with late summer flower potential. The aromas of the herbs wander through my tiny demesne, especially when it rains after a hot day. City reek, city stress stop at my front walk. The back garden is a place of peace and joy. Except when Crooked Hank the Corgi Puppy latches on to Miss Tibbit’s tail. Not peaceful then. No how.

But…ugh. Threats of nuclear war. Opioid epidemics. Political machinations. Hatred for people different from yourself. Nasty comments on the social media. Crazed news media. Preaching, proselytizing, vituperation.

It wears a body down, trammels the mind, saps me.

I need a plan to keep a daily balance because under the metamorphic existential stresses of each day, my stupid heart keeps breaking through the soot crust and beating hope hope hope-joy joy joy–wonder wonder wonder.

Why does it do that? It actually hurts.

So here is my plan – each step to be repeated as needed. Feel free to adapt for your circumstances:

  1. Mix a late summer cocktail and play with the dogs. I recommend the gin sour.
  1. Practice a craft, one that doesn’t drive me bananas, like Chinese watercolors or knitting but not lace knitting because the point is to feel good not incite rage.
  1. Smile. To myself. And not because of any establishment discriminatory nonsense about women should smile etc etc. Smiling relaxes the stress garbage and breaks the mean. For me it does. I smile for myself not for anyone else.
  1. Practice saying in a relaxed, non-confrontational way, “I’m not comfortable with what you are saying, please excuse me,” and also practice my saunter so I ooze implacable, indefatigable confidence of purpose walking away. Deploy my hard-won new skills. Be mighty.
  1. Keep watch for someone who can use my help. Help them.

There it is. If you hear a bunch of barking and laughing coming from the WideEyedBackyard, well, I care a lot about the troubles of the world, but I can’t help make a strong healthy society if I go numb or break. None of us can. Peace, friends.

Provisions

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We ripped through the night in the Mighty Pathfinder, Enrique Iglesias’ Bailando thumping from the speakers, windows open, warm winds blowing. The WideEyedSpouse didn’t slow for a mad-big construction bump and the Mighty P lurched and waggled excitingly. “Bailandoooo!” the Spouse wailed.

An old man on a porch swing creaked back and forth in time to the song when our crazed journey paused at a traffic light, and a flashing neon sign wanted to be on the beat but couldn’t get there –an electric version of me trying for the rhythm but never finding it. Cracked sidewalks sketchy bus stops stinky gas stations barking dogs blatting broken muffler cars – they are all better in the languid warm of long summer evening.

I smiled out into the evening air, crumpling my reusable grocery sacks tight to me.  My heart felt full and light and easy. Buoyant. Which was nice because there hasn’t been much joy in the WideEyedHomestead since my pal Hamish the Corgi died a few weeks ago.

It’s my big question, my conundrum again, from where does this mad joy come? And why do I feel it best when I’m faced with the outrageous complexity of life in this world?

 

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Garden avatar

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With a near supernatural restraint and indomitable force of WideEyed will, I did not buy new plants for the front garden this year. Ok. I did not by many plants for the front garden – only two sedum tiles which I cunningly split into a few pieces each resulting in six new plantings. Hah.

Instead, I hacked bits from the Shasta daisies to fill in holes. These bits are droopy excuses for plants. I stare at them as the dogs and I stroll past them. I am distracted by them as I pull into the driveway after a long day of being Chained To An Office Chair.  They better perk up or I’m hitting the garden store down on Main Street. (Sounds charming, right? Like Main Street is some kind of throwback with interesting shops, flowers, smiling people. Uh. Nope. Major traffic artery right through the city. Lotta red lights and screaming and enormous potholes. The garden shop is nice though.)

I tiled inferno weed zones with flagstone scraps and bricks reclaimed from a sadly deceased neighbor’s defunct garden patio. (No. I did not reclaim these bricks in the dead of night after her funeral, if that’s what you were thinking. Her husband and sons removed the patio and graciously offered them to me. I promise. That’s how it happened.) Maybe pretty weeds will grow between the new stonework. Maybe the nasturtium seeds I threw down will produce delights. The WideEyedSpouse added an inukshuk – or more correctly an inunnguaq I guess – to the garden. The little stone person had dignity and gravitas until the birds visited this morning. Now the WideEyedAvatar needs a bath.

The gardens awaken. The sun beams down on us all. Winter doldrums are fading into a dim memory of something that happened to someone else.

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Cats and Plants

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Maranta 2017Yep. That’s a Maranta leucomeura. A scraggly specimen, too. The WideEyedSpouse espied it lurking on the back of a table at the Home Depot. “Special Buy” the tag said. I snorted. What a mess.

The Maranta lives in the WideEyedHousehold now.

You may be unimpressed by this prosaic moment. So would I be except for one extraordinary and upsetting fact. The Maranta can live here because Ancient Wiggins the Cat no longer does.  Old-struck, life-weary, that creaky, foul-tempered and steadfast pal of mine left the building on Saturday morning. By Sunday afternoon the Maranta had moved in, that opportunist.

For eighteen years the household could harbor no plants without inevitable hoorka, hoorka, hoorka noises and slimy green piles on the carpets. Always on the carpet, never on the tile. Eighteen years of raptor intensity attacks on even ears of corn from the farmer’s market left unguarded on the counter. (We once hid them in the oven to prevent the hoorkas, forgot them, found them two weeks later moldering, warm, soft.)

“As soon as that cat goes, I’m getting some plants,” I may have said, staring dark thoughts at his whiskered and smug face. On Sunday I stood among hundreds of lush limbed and tasty looking leaves. My heart ached – I couldn’t do it. Choosing a plant meant admitting that Ancient Wiggins was never coming back. Pathetic and saggy, the Maranta was desperate and sorry enough to be admissible.

I don’t look directly at the Maranta. I approach it sideways, water it here and there, move it around from table to counter back to table because it keeps getting in the way. The Maranta hasn’t made it more than six feet into the house.

This morning several shoots appeared under the torn up, mildew speckled leaves. New growth.

Wiggins for Blog

Taller fencing.

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When my neighbor’s daughter giggled at me, I thought to consider our situation.

All I did was flap my hello-hand at her when she got into her dad’s car less than 10 feet away from me and Miss Tibbit – who was taking an eternally long sniff at something along the fence line. She found half a sandwich there about a month ago and she can’t let the memory go. Miss Tibbit found the sandwich, not the daughter. The origin of the half a sandwich remains unknown.

It was 10pm walkies and the entire WideEyedHousehold was outside, except Ancient Wiggins the Cat who could be heard yowling for a snack in the kitchen.

I waved my hello-hand and the daughter said hi but she said it through a sort of shocked-involuntary giggle. Weird.

I pushed the side flap of my furry bomber hat out of the way and looked around a bit to see what was funny. The dogs weren’t up to anything. The WideEyedSpouse was…oh. The WideEyedSpouse was standing in the driveway in his own (matching) bomber hat, blue yard coat, blue long underwear, and crocs. His glasses gleamed at me. He looked, well, interesting.

I took stock of my own self. Fuzzy bomber hat, glasses, blue yard coat (matching), leggings with umbrellas printed all over them, crocs (matching).

Sigh. You can’t buy that kind of style.

Fortress of Wintertude.

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Nothing is quieter than a university office during winter break. I can hear my own heart beat between clacks on the keyboard.

Not much is grimmer than a 1970s, brick built state school campus during winter break. Here looks like joy is something that happens somewhere else.

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One wall of my office is 25 feet of glass and I perch in my little office box, gazing out at the blowing snow. It blows in a wee baby cyclone, lifting up from the ill-designed courtyard 50 feet below.  No matter how vicious the winds across campus, how bitter the air, outside of my windows the puffy snowflakes dance and spin in mad joy.

Battle the dark.

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I ride to work in a late fall pocket of peace. The smooth ride shifts in tiny increments, only the push of gravity and receding traffic tells me we’ve accelerated. Through mad, alchemical witchery, phone and car share intelligence and only my favorite songs play on the sound system.

The dim and grim winter days are flirting with Buffalo. Moody cloud formations flow over church spires and behind the neon bright signs of Main Street tattoo parlors and take-out shops. Pedestrians turn to moving bundles of dark coats, dark pants, dark boots. Campus is funereal: black leggings and dark jeans clad, bruised-eyed, and stressed the students approach finals week with the sick feeling that something has gone wrong. Wretched regret and infrasound wailing pollute the air of Memorial Library.

I wore my sheep socks today, in defiance of the dim, the grim, the end-of-semester foreboding. Gamboling pink and white sheep ought to keep my feet light and my mind happy. But looking at them now, I think the sock-sheep might be in states of meditative cud chewing. They look pretty calm down there on my feet, ruminating the day away. Ha. Get it? Oh well.