The 8th Nerve

Pets getting screwed over by babies!  This must be the trend of our generation.   Since many of us are more likely to wait longer before having kids, we start accumulating pets first and treating them like first borns.   There was a time when I would come home from work and run or walk Lucky in the cold and the rain and the dark.  I would pet my cats.  I would write entire ENTRIES about my cats. I would water my houseplants every Saturday, give or take.  I would lavish all the living beings with maternal affection.

If Casper didn’t return home by 11 pm, we were out on the deck calling his name.  My worrying would lead to imagining Casper getting into a vicious battle with a woodland creature down by the river and there would be no way I could go to sleep until he was back safely in the house.   Now, if he were to saunter back in the morning we say “oh, he must have been out all night.”

All the sudden it can be a lot of hassle.  Walk the dog?  are you kidding me? Maybe he’ll go if I just open the door and let him run around the yard.  Scoop the litterbox?  I guess I better, because eau de cat litter is now traveling all the way up the stairs.  When’s the last time I watered the plants?  Baby has taken over.   I bet this is happening everywhere, pets falling from the top of the hierarchy when 30 somethings finally decide to reproduce.

Ah, the guilt!  We’re lucky they forgive us.  At least I think they do.  The cats were using Emmy’s picture as a dartboard above their food dish, but they said they were just kidding.

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Jan 7th 2010Pets

Yep, face bloat is here! One day I look fairly normal, the next day I look like Garth Brooks in a wig. Except I don’t have a goatee in an attempt to give my jawline any definition.

Or better yet, Britney Spears. Awesome.

Face bloat, face bloat, wheeeeeeee!

We had a great vacation. It never ceases to amaze me how immediately our dog Lucky knows what it is all about. As soon as we get there, he does a prolonged joyful dance and then plunges into the lake. His intuitive response seems to deepen his (and ours) unconditional joy the whole week there. I especially craved swimming in the lake, which was smooth and clear as glass.

It didn’t even feel like a week to me. It was suspended time where we existed in a different mode punctuated by sun and water and the call of the loons. A mode interrupted only by the twenty minutes of sheer terror where we tried to follow google map directions to Littleton, NH and ended up on “Old County Road” which actually translates to “being thrown wildly back and forth on a narrow unmaintained mountainside ATV trail in the middle of nowhere with mud and boulders that make horrendous destructive noises underneath your vehicle.” Steve, however, thought it was great fun and suggested that we take it on the way back too, in the rain and the pitch dark. To which I half- jokingly gave him the Wifely Stare of Death.

More than once I thought about how little time remained before we have a new being in our lives. One that will fundamentally change our routine, our amount of free and quiet time, and just about everything else. However, it seems like at this point in the pregnancy, this close to the end, the reality of it becomes blunted. I can conjecture about these things but it feels like there is a wall there that keeps me from fully and completely getting it.

While on vacation I dreamed that I could feel even more detail through my belly. I could feel her hands and fingers and deepen my connection with her, even though we are still separated by skin.

The other day I got some baby head to toe body wash and lotion and imagined washing those hands and limbs for real. For a second, I almost, almost got it, with help from the memory of the dream. But the mental boundary is persistent. Perhaps it is there to not get hopes up or because it is an unknown experience so far removed from any other in your life to date and the mind can’t be wrapped around it. There is also the deepest down fear that OTHER people’s babies might be normal and cute and healthy and human, but YOURS on the other hand.. don’t dare hope too much. Don’t fully believe it until it really happens.

I bet the ultrasound tomorrow will help. I just hope she’s turned head down!

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Jul 20th 2009Everyday life & Pets & pregnancy

I want to put a new picture up at the top but I can’t figure out how on this newfangled Wordpress. Hmm…

Where to begin recapping the last few weeks? Let’s make a list.

-A couple weeks ago, a friend’s dog suddenly and inexplicably attacks Lucky after getting along with him all afternoon. Lucky’s lower eyelid is punctured and torn and bloody, missing his eye by the width of a hair. The attack is brutal and I go weak at the knees, fearing for a moment that Lucky has lost his eye. Standing by helplessly while Lucky is brutally attacked and screaming like a human was shockingly traumatizing. I fall asleep that night wondering how people EVER have the courage to bring children until the world.

-After a trip to the vet and lots of antibiotics in various forms, Lucky’s eye now looks as good as new.

-I begin to think it might be ok to bring children into the world, someday, afterall, as long as children can be wrapped in plastic bubble wrap.

-We take a trip to northern Vermont for Christmas with Steve’s family. We snowshoe in landscapes out of Vermont Life. A winter forest is blanketed in heavy snow with a stream roaring through the landscape in an almost surreal fashion.

-We all binge eat. Delicious.

-A few days later our friend Felix flies in from Germany. He is here with us for a couple weeks.

-We rented a log cabin near Smuggler’s Notch for New Years. We ski, snowshoe, hot tub, binge eat, binge drink, and set off fireworks.  The snow falls down the whole time. Fantastic.

Happy New Year.

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Jan 3rd 2008Family & Friends & Pets & Trips & Vermont

A brand new blog!  Kind of.  Steve moved me over to some new system where uploading pictures won’t be a tedious chore.  I can also make categories and organize things.  So I am in the process of categorizing over 600 entries from the last four and a half years.  This newfangled blog thingybob also informs me that I have 36 drafts of entries that I didn’t publish.

December is flying by.  I’m in the middle of five books.  I have most of my shopping done.  The Norton Anti-Virus screen keeps popping up all month long, telling me how many days I have left before it expires and my computer combusts.   I still need to send out Christmas cards.  I need to clean the house.  I want to make cookies.  I need to mail a Christmas package.  I love all this snow.

Lucky drives me crazy sometimes.  When I get home from work, I just want to unwind.  But Lucky looks at me the whole time, with eyes that say “walk me.”  I get up from the chair and he heads to the door “walk?  walk me now?”   NO NOT YET.  When I finally do make the move- putting on my hat and my coat- he goes nuts.  Barking, bouncing three feet into the air repeatedly.  Invisible pogo stick time with this dog.

I get bundled up and we head out.  My annoyance ebbs away and instead I appreciate how this dog gets me out of the house and into the darkness and the cold when otherwise I would never step foot.  I admire the stars, the twinkling Christmas lights, the brightness of Mars.  I walk into silence and inner glow of snowstorms.  I appreciate living in a place where I can walk alone in the dark and feel safe.

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Dec 13th 2007Everyday life & Pets

I know. It hasn’t been too exciting on this site lately. Even so, life has been full of get togethers and rock shows and road trips and art hops and new job rope learning.

We forged a new, wider path to the river. This has become the best way to walk Lucky- just head out the door without having to hook him up to a leash. Lucky’s response to a leashless walk is to go here! from there! as fast as I possibly can! all with the grace of a charging hippo!

Run!!! OMG!!!

go! go! harrumphharrumph!

Definitely looks as if he has recovered from the bout with Lyme disease, despite our use of Frontline (if your dog ever starts getting tired and is limping badly for no reason, don’t wait. Take him to the vet and get antibiotics!)

For the past month the path has been lined with goldenrods and tall white flowers. This week there has been an explosion of blue and purple.

Life is good.

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Sep 11th 2007Pets & Pictures

Yesterday I went kayaking at Arrowhead Mountain Lake, a fancy name for “we done gone and dammed up the Lamoille in Milt-ehn.”

Luckles has been recovering from our trip to our friend Rachael’s camp on Lake Champlain, where he got to run around with 8 other dogs while the rest of us ate, drank and played volleyball.

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Sep 3rd 2007Pets & Pictures

casper…

aschi…

lucky…

steve…

inspired by i can has cheezburger?

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Aug 23rd 2007Pets & Pictures

I attended an amazing training two weekends ago. I am still processing and haven’t found a way to write about it yet. The thing that strikes me most perhaps is how comfortable I felt after telling my story, and after everyone told theirs I felt like I knew them better than most of my friends. I wonder about everyone’s story. I wish this kind of in depth engagement and realness occurred regularly.

Other than that I have been kayak shopping and driftwood painting and getting back into running. After work Lucky and I head out and the stress melts away as we walk the peaceful, tree lined roads. Everything is green and blooming and alive and the walk back overlooks the hills and the wide river.

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May 15th 2007Introspection & Pets & Pictures

Mud season is here. We have a 1 year old golden retriever. No one is safe.

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Mar 25th 2007Everyday life & Pets

Tonight we took Lucky out to run around in the front yard in the snow, under the lights. We throw a ball and he grabs it and runs around. We say “Lucky, come” and he comes over. We say “Drop!” and he knows we mean for him to drop the ball. But at the word “Drop!” he takes off again, purposefully cavorting in a circle in the snow. This happens again and again- we call him, he obediently comes over, runs tantalizingly close, then he eludes us at the last second. He capers about in a circular show of doggy taunting and then waits for us to call him again. One time was followed by a run around behind the truck and purposefully hiding the ball from us.

I could not stop laughing at his jubilant parading and bounding in the snow. Life became full, a moment like the sunset over Scotland, just the two of us and a puppy full of joy.

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Feb 9th 2007Everyday life & Pets