We’re dog-sitting this week, for the first time in ages, and it’s a little dog…more of a cat/rat than an actual dog, if you ask me, but I’m partial to big dogs. Or at least bigger dogs. I knew someone in college that called little dogs “dropkick” dogs, because you could, well, you get the idea. This one is a little too big for that and she’s too sweet for dropkicking even if she’s a little weird. She’s a miniature Pinscher, which is kind of a mini-mini-Doberman, isn’t it? I always though of Pinschers as kind of little Dobermans. She’s 16 years old and you can tell she used to be brown but now she’s mostly white all over from age so only the tip of her tail and a bit of her ears and the very end of her nose and a little of her back are still sort of tan. She has big dark eyes and bat ears and spinky legs and she can just manage to jump up on the sofa and ruck the blanket around until she’s comfortable. She sits at my knee and taps me if I don’t pet her. At least I hope that is what she means, and not that the tap is morse code for “I have to go out again or I’ll pee on the Persian rug”.
She’s so old that she doesn’t want to walk very far and it’s so cold out right now that I don’t either. Mostly she just goes around the house so it’s a pretty easy dog-sitting gig. Karin has been doing most of the work, even coming home at lunchtime to take her out so she doesn’t have to stretch her bladder for 8 hours, but Karin and Anders ditched me tonight to go skiing up at Vallåsen, were they have night skiing on Wednesdays. Since we got a lot of snow the past couple of days, I assume they had the real stuff and not just the produce of the snow cannons.
I wrote a post yesterday, or tried to, to explain my lack of posting…not excuse it, though it’s a little bit that, too. I’ve been so lame about posting regularly the past few years that I kinda feel nothing excuses me any longer and I also don’t think anyone wants to hear excuses. Just post, or don’t post. We’ve been dealing with a computer issue where our PC suddenly freezes and restarts with ridiculously frequent intervals and no warning other than the blue screen of death. We’ve been researching the issue and have tried several things with no luck. SO very aggravating. Even if I save constantly just to be on the safe side, it invariably catches me out and I lose what I’m working on or am in the middle of, constantly. Right now, I’m on my work laptop, and the dog just came over and put her feet up on me as if to say “I have to go out again or I’ll pee on the Persian rug.” so I’ll be back in 10 minutes.
I’m back. Did you miss me?
She moves pretty quickly for such an old lady but she’s pretty much just out there to do her business and get back inside where it’s warm. I kind of wish she had little booties and an overall as she shakes so much in the cold. We have a lot of snow and ice on the ground; most of the snow is actually ice, too…it’s all frozen quite hard. It came down thick and heavy a couple of days ago, but the majority has melted again and what’s left is very pretty and very icy. Slippy, as I tend to say. It’s slippy out.
An author I like linked to this poem today, which really struck me. Maybe it will you, too.
Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
—Maggie Smith*
“a thousand, delicious, ill-advised ways” …isn’t that spot on? We could make this place beautiful, right? We could make ourselves beautiful. Why do you think, so often, we choose the ill-advised ways to live instead? Laziness, convenience, thrill-seeking, ignorance, willfulness. I don’t think it’s necessarily a lack of caring. It’s a lack of action, of motivation, of motion. We’re all to easily able to look past, or glance over, or turn a blind eye to what we OUGHT to do, in favor of what’s easier, more convenient, more delicious. Life is short. A good reminder.
*not the actress