I know--I’m usually a fount of holiday Deep Thoughts but this year, I’ve kept a low profile because I hate being a buzzkill and that’s about all I’m capable of at the moment. My father’s health is tenuous and nearly necessitated a mad dash to NYC on Christmas day. I got a ticket and spent a couple of hours packing inefficiently between crying spells before my brother called back and said that the immediate crisis had passed and I could postpone. So I changed my ticket to New Year’s Day and spent the rest of the holiday weekend in an anxious funk. I’m still in it and there’s no way out, really. I’m walking around in a perpetual state of near tears.

Movies are good escape, although Rachel Gets Married was not the best choice. Slumdog Millionaire worked well. I highly recommend both movies, but save Rachel for a day you’re feeling sturdy.

And I’m trying to stay busy. The kind of pain I’m in is non-negotiable in its inevitability. All you can do is acknowledge it and ride it out. It comes in waves—like nausea—and you grit your teeth until it subsides a little and then continue what you were doing.

Dad is 90 years old and ill. Man, woman, birth, death, infinity.

Labels: memoir, the meaning of life

Tom has wholeheartedly embraced the new food storage containers. He’s practically giddy.

Our lives improve every time Tom gets completely exasperated. When the rabbit ears fell off the TV in a tangle of wires set for the eight gazillionth time, we finally got cable. When our oddball collection of food containers toppled out of the cabinet onto him for the seventeen gazillionth time, I bought new food containers. Tom has forgotten his look of dismay when I opened my trunk and revealed the giant box of food storage containers. Now, he’s a big fan. I am satisfied but still feel guilty about my callous rejection of our old food storage containers. Are we worthy of snapwear?

I’m going to get sappy with Steve Blow, whose column today are what he calls “pet delights.” I would have been more predictable and called them “pet pleasures” but I’m overly-fond of alliteration. ("Delights" is a newspaper word. Like "sumptuous." And "abounds." If it weren't for newspapers, those words would be obsolete.)

Plus, I have to quibble with Steve assurance that we’ll all know the joys of grandchildren some day.

I like the idea anyway. Counting life's little pleasures is like counting your blessings, but less smug.

Steve says being “in for the night” is good one. I know exactly what he means. My own version of that is those mornings when I wake and realize I have work to do and no pressing need to leave the house. I can fall into my own little routine of oatmeal in the morning, walking Jack at 3, and moving to the couch in the late afternoon, for tea and British reality shows and writing. Delightful.

Jack’s back feet are a pet pleasure.

My Thanksgiving Day walk is a pet pleasure. Our tradition is to cook at home and have people over but I always manage to fit a long aerobic walk amidst (another newspaper word) the cooking and baking. It’s a highlight of my day. (Along with the National Dog Show, which is an inspired new Thanksgiving TV tradition.) Today is balmy and bright and families in the neighborhood were loading pies and kids into their vehicles, tossing footballs on the lawn, sitting out on their patios. Holiday is definitely in the air and I feel fine.

Getting a sleeve set in right when I sew is a pet pleasure. Every time I do it and it doesn't look like crap, I get to feel a little bit proud of myself.

Afternoon sunlight is a pet pleasure. And Texas sunsets...well, I've waxed poetic about those too many times here. You know how I feel.

I have much to do before guests arrive so I will leave you to consider your own pet pleasures. Happy Thanksgiving and all that.

Labels: holidays, the meaning of life

Now that the weather is hot (really, really hot), Jack is having to change his walk habits. No more 3 p.m. walks, even though he still looks hopeful every day around that time. These days, we’re walking at night—usually about 9 p.m.. How nice to have a big, strong, handsome, surly quadruped to keep me safe after dark.

Our night walks are completely different from our daytime walks. I needed distraction during the day. I went from listening to music to NPR to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (my little radio gets TV as well—I love that) to Podcasts, yet I still found myself dreading the daily slog. Is it any wonder? I’ve been walking around this same neighborhood for 15 years.

But walking after dark is entirely different. No distraction is necessary. The one time I tried hooking up to headphones, I disliked the noise and chatter. Few cars pass and nobody is mowing or blowing or hedge trimming. No kids are yelling and horsing around on their way home from school and I don’t have to worry about anyone teasing Jack, as they sometimes do, or asking to meet him, as they often do, forcing me to sadly explain his bad manners.

Nighttime noises are soothing. The hiss of sprinklers. The buzz of cicadas. Dogs bark but they seem somehow muffled and distant. Trees rustle in the breeze, when there is one. Last night the moon was big and bright—not full but nearly so. We pass few other people, although we did pass a woman a couple of nights ago.

“I can’t see you,” she said, her teeth flashing white in the last of evening’s light.
I laughed. “I can’t see you either,” I said, and we went on our way until she jogged by me again ten minutes later, a benevolent shadow. “Have a good evening,” she said as she passed.

Some evenings we get out early enough to catch the last of the sunset. In that case, we walk streets to the west of home, at the top of our hilly neighborhood, along a school playing field, where we can appreciate the enormity of the Texas sky. The other night, for the first time, I noticed a church steeple in the distance silhouetted against the dusk.

Jack and I are seeing the neighborhood in a whole different light.

Labels: jack, memoir, the meaning of life, walking

So you know that old head game, don’t think about a white bear?

No? Well, don’t think about a white bear...

...now, what are you thinking about?

I’m trying not to think of the poor little poochy, but damned if that image isn’t locked and loaded into my head. It. Just. Won’t. Go. Away.

It’s not like I’ve never seen roadkill before. And it’s not like I’ve never seen an animal die before—Tom and I have had to euthanize four pets over the years and we wouldn’t dream of not being right there with them. I was even with my friend Russell when they turned off the respirator. I saw my brother in his coffin (he looked handsome and just like himself) and my mother (not good).

Nothing has haunted me like this little pup.

It was partly the violence of the moment. I won’t say more about what exactly haunts me because I find the thoughts so painful …

But I've been thinking now about soldiers. How do they ever recover from the experience of war? I guess they don’t, not really or completely. They must carry the images forever, if they don’t manage to repress them. (Yes, it's possible.)

This interesting article from Stanford discusses how women’s memories of disturbing, emotional images is stronger than men’s—that women tend to store the emotion of a memory in the same place in the brain as the memory whereas in men, the emotion and the memory activate different parts of the brain.

So I guess that might mean women wouldn’t make good killing machines, eh? Is that a good thing or bad? Discuss.

I am distracting myself as much as possible from the memory of that miserable moment Tuesday night. Lunch with my client yesterday was a lot of fun and productive. I held it together just fine. It’s only at quiet times that the image pops back up. I started crying during the final relaxation in yoga class this morning.(In unrelated good news, my tree pose was fine today so I seem to have recovered some balance.) However, it was good mental exercise to tear my mind away from the bad thought and bring it back to the moment—the music, my own breath. By wrestling my mind back to the here and now instead from the there and then, I felt immediately better.

Maybe little pup’s last moment has a little lesson for me. One I’d really rather have skipped. And so would he, I’m sure. If he’d had a chance to think about it.

Labels: brain science, death, psychology, the meaning of life, yoga

So many wonderful horrible album covers. How to choose?

See them here.

Thank you Ms Krit. Thank you so very much.

Labels: art, elections, humor, the horror, the meaning of life

For some reason, this touches a chord deep within me.

Labels: humor, the meaning of life