Just me and my 84-year old friend here
It is very hard to explain to a dog that it is his birthday, but is in fact, Dexter's 12th birthday - marking his ascent into adolesence (human years) or further into arthritic elderliness (doggie-style). So how did my elderly friend celebrate? A quiet night in of course, watching a
better-than-last-week-but-still-less-impressive-than-week-2 American Idol. I made him a steak, we went for a walk, and now, like always, he's asleep. He's actually responded to my parents being away very well, I was afraid it was going to kill him, or me. He's kindly changed his body clock to fit my schedule. He doesn't wake me up in the middle of the night to go outside and this is the least picky (in terms of eating) I have ever seen him. Mind you, this dog cried incessently and turned his nose up to whatever what presented to him when he spent two days at Middlebury, and nevermind that he woke my sister and I up every two hours to take a pee. So maybe he's just over-eating because he's depressed and would rather sleep through the night than be reminded that his Dad is away, but so help me, I like it. Maybe I can be a dog owner after all - as long as he's not a fussy eater, likes to sleep instead of complain, and can take care of all of his business in the backyard. Yet again, the qualities I look for in a man are strikingly like those I seek in any canine companion.
You know that phrase
no news is good news? -- by my accounts, it is really stupid and untrue. No word on the job, grad school, or publisher's clearinghouse front. Just a wasted day in terms of what I could be producing for the universe or bettering humankind. Yesterday I talked to several "distant" friends and felt like I was really on the ball - moved a giant tree with my bare hands (okay, I had gloves on), coordinated insurance efforts to fix our two bruised and battered cars, tracked down my parents in Sin City, went to a job interview, had a beer, went to the grocery store.... but today was far less heroic. I brought my Dad's car in to have the backglass replaced (new vocab word - backglass means rear windshield) started reading a book about Mexican avant-garde cinema, "celebrated" my dog's birthday, and brought the trash out. So today I digust and dissappoint myself - c'mon already, can I get a job up in this piece? I am really on the verge of becoming a complete couch potato or a hard-miracle-working grant writer or new favorite 6th-grade teacher. It's like I am on a perfectly balanced teeter-totter - so please fat kid, get on or off already, I am sick and tired of balance, it's boring.
I sent some overdue emails today to friends in far and not so far off lands.... in all of this, I've been prompted to do a little of that guilty nostalgic thinking. I am a little bummed to know that this will be the first summer not spent in New York. I was reading through some of my old posts, something you shouldn't do, but just the same, thinking about hot steamy days in the city, about greasy chinese noodles, about tsing tao beer... about air conditioned museums, about the smell of the train and the New York Times. To look outside the window onto the Connecticut tundra, that world feels so far away, but it's amazing how quickly your memory can take you back.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:21 PM
