Autumnal Awakening

 If you have never read Kate Chopin, let me highlight a little about her and her book "The Awakening".  Chopin wrote feminist literature in a time where all that was required of women was to be feminine and play their part.  Chopin couldn't play her part as her husband died and left her penniless so she wrote and she wrote about what interested her and what interested her was women living a life bigger than they were currently allowed to. In "The Story of an Hour" the main character dies of a heart attack upon learning that the husband she thought was dead was really alive.  Boom, dead.  That is a fun story to read with 16 year old students.  In "The Awakening", her main character has an affair with a younger man (scandal!) and then commits suicide by walking into the lake with her heavy dress' pockets filled with heavy stones.  No weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth like Flaubert's whiny Madame Bovary.  Just a straight walk into a cold lake with heavy pockets and a heavier purpose.  In between the affair and the death part, the character experiences her awakening.  Her sense of purpose in the world and what it meant to be a woman in her time and place.  I find that as I live up north for the first time in decades, I too am having some kind of awakening here.

Younger man?  My person is a younger man! (highly recommend).  Suicide in the sea? No, thanks.  If I am not 98 and wizened and holding a sharper tongue that I do now, I don't want to know. Three hairs left on my head and four on my chin sounds about right.  (I imagine my person reading this right now and sighing.) No, my awakening is coming with the splendor of autumn all around me.  

The splendor!

Texas does spring really well but there's nothing to say about fall down there.  Hot until November, sweaty til December, two brown leaves fall down, and it's over.  The visual cornucopia of reds, and oranges, and yellows of autumn in IL just batters my eyes until I want to weep for the stunning beauty of it all.  It is afire!  It is resplendent!  It is glorious to behold and I am beholding it! I am driving to work and want to beep my horn for the joy of the tree-lined streets of yellows and orange and red. I do not because we only beep our horn up here for impatience or anger, not joy.  I want to stop and take a picture of every tree I am finding beautiful, but that is every tree!  The prairie grasses also change color!!!  Who knew?!?!? 

This little guy tried to turn every color!

It's not just the visual either.  It is the pleasure of kicking through leaves and hearing them skitter ahead of you on the sidewalk.  The crunch as you step through them.  The sweet smell of decaying leaves and grass and somehow a little apple released and swept into a nose used to dusty grass and ragweed.  The crisp taste of apple cider that matches the crisp feel in the air.  The air that feels clean and bright and crisp all at once.  Where a soft layer is all you need and all you want.  You want to feel that fresh fall air fall over you.  Autumn is assaulting all of my senses and I am awake!

I know.  I know all this autumnal beauty is the precursor to winter. I remember. I know that both the sky and earth will be grey and muted and dead. I know the sun will barely rise before it sets and I will hibernate in the house and eat all the carbs and feel pale, and lumpy, and misshapen.  I might wear the same hoodie for days and feel that scurvy and rickets are only a day away if the sun doesn't come out again soon. I know that the air will be biting and brutal.  I know the snow will  a pain to clean off of a car and scary to drive in. I know and yeah, I know.  None of that matters because after 30 dormant years of no fall at all, I am having an autumnal awakening of epic proportions.  I am so excited about this autumn that I would hang up one of those "Happy Fall Y'all" signs and mean it.  If my kids were here, I would drag them into the woods in matching flannels to have a picture taken.  But only after we picked apples and sang some kind of autumn song and sipped cider and carved a pumpkin and had a leaf fight and smiled. (I am picturing my kids reading this and thinking how glad to not be here right now.)

If you are in a place that does autumn like this, get out there and have your own awakening!  Smell it, see it, feel it, taste it! It is too good to not carve some time out to revel in it.  Let it wash over you until you are smiling at leaves and grinning into the wind.  If you live in a place that is still flesh-eating hot, I am sorry.  I am trying to send you some of my autumn through my words.  If it isn't working, come and visit me next autumn instead!  We will crunch through leaves and eat apples and wear flannel and behold all that is autumn and feel really, really happy inside.  Oh, we will also smile while singing at autumn song, so come prepared.

Side note: I have no idea what an autumn song is, so come really prepared.

Sigh.

It's All Good

I guess because I am in a new state and working towards making new friends, I am thinking a lot about the first friend I made the last time I moved to a new state.  I was much younger then and working my first full-time job at a Harvey Hotel in Dallas.  I am not sure if I had a title other than Office Helper and I gathered faxes, filed, made copies, sent things UPS for guests and answered phones.  I do know that I did not have a desk and spent most of my day standing in the small copy room in my JCPenney dress and hose and heels.  Most people who came in would give me a smile and make their copies and go but one person from Accounting always talked to me.  I remember Mark wearing a brown suit and peach shirt and tie a lot and I remember him always commenting that maybe one day I could also have a desk.  It was never mean-spirited, just a pleasant way to remind me that I didn’t have a desk and it soon moved us onto other things to talk about.  Three months later, I was promoted to Accounting (despite claiming in the interview that I was not good at math) and sat next to Mark for the next eighteen months and that was it; first new friend made.

We were young and dumb and poor and working hard to prove we were real adults.  We talked about everything and nothing and I proved I was indeed bad at math as Mark proved he was really good and started to climb the management ladder.  We soon grew from work friends to meeting out.  We drank and danced and Blue Oyster Cult raged in the background.  The thing I quickly realized with Mark is that if you were his friend, his circle of friends became yours as well.  He would talk to me about his other friends like I knew them and by the time I met them, it was like I had always known them.  He was welcoming, caring, and constantly upbeat.  He created this world of interesting, funny, caring people and if he knew you, you got added to this world.

Mark is a giver.  Like the most generous person I know.  I really know this because at loose ends, he let me live with him in a one-bedroom apartment for eight months.  We had both moved onto different jobs and he traveled all week and home on the weekends.  I slept on the couch when he was home and when I did finally get my own apartment, I declared I would never sleep on a couch again.  Mark taught me not to be sad on a Friday night with nothing to do.  It was a night for a party of one.  We would go to Eatzi’s and buy a healthy dinner, a bottle of wine, and either ice cream or cookie dough and eat/drink it all while watching a movie and talking through most of it.  (The party of one came in when I realized I could do this on my own as well).  We lived together and still went out together and the only time I remember Mark being mad at me was when I couldn’t lift an entertainment center up three flights of stairs with him and we had to flip it end over end to get it up there.  

Mark is gracious.  He has sat in lawn chairs at a table to eat lasagna I made and didn’t tease me about it until years later. He brought me to Easter at his Nonna’s house with his entire family, who, like Mark, took me right in.  Except for Nonna.  She did not like the look of me and any time I asked anything, she would reply that “there was more sweet tea” in the kitchen.  I drank a lot of sweet tea that day.  Mark went trick-or-treating with me and my kids when Will was very tiny and cried the entire time we were out and it was not much fun at all.  He went and stayed and said it was “all good.”  Because he loved me, he loved my kids and they loved him and Uncle Mark has been their friend too.

Mark is funny.  We did couple-dinners once a month for years with other friends and our table would drink a lot of wine and laugh and laugh.  Laughter until you can’t breathe.  Laughter where tears pour out of your eyes and you look around with blurry vision and think ‘this is life.” Laughter where other tables close by either hate you tremendously or wish that they knew you and were laughing too.  Mark’s humor is a lot of self-deprecation, saying things you wouldn't think would come out of his mouth, making the best out of the worst, and just his delivery.  There is only one time I think his humor failed and maybe the only time I remember being mad at him.  We ate a lot of free cake at the hotel we worked at and after a year of it, I looked like I ate a lot of free cake.  I was describing the bathing suit I had just bought and said it showed my stomach.  Mark, a forkful of cake an inch from his mouth, wrinkled his nose, sneered, and said “Girl, I have seen your stomach.”  As I write that, I realize I might still be mad at him for that.

Feeling cute, might drink some beer, high-kick a bee....

For thirty years, Mark Miller has been my first friend and my always-friend in Texas.  He has been there in all of my good, bad, dramatic and I know he always will be.  He will call me and talk about this or that or anything and I will laugh and do the same.  Recently, he texted to ask if I had a few minutes to talk. I was instantly nervous.  I thought it must have something to do with his parents.  (Side note: no matter how many times I move, his mom sends me a Christmas card and handmade peanut butter eggs at Easter and I love that woman).  I guess I forget how old we are and that bad news can be about us now too.  I called and listened to Mark tell me he had cancer.  Probably renal cancer with a tumor and nodes and other gross cancer words.  And I froze thinking about how this wonderful, beautiful person could be filled with this.  Alternating between tears and laughing, he explained what had happened, what would happen, and when.  He is, of course, upbeat.  He will have his kidney removed on Monday and more treatments after that.  “It is what it is,” he says.  I want to instantly fix it for him.  I tell him maybe being down a kidney will equate to a good 5 pound weight loss.  I ask if he needs me to come down to Texas and he tells me he has all the good-intentioned, overbearing women he needs right now.  

So all I have is my words to tell Mark, and everyone, what a joy he is in my life.  What a difference his friendship made to an out-spoken, brash young girl from Buffalo.  I hope that everyone has a Mark in their life and if you don’t, I will share mine, because if anything, Mark has shown me there is always room for one more friend.  And if you do have a friend like Mark, you remember how special that is and how good this world has been to you.  I told Mark I would call him every few days and tell him weird things that happen teaching middle school during his recovery.  This week alone, a student told me he was allergic to my talking and I tucked my dress into my underwear and didn’t notice until I was out in the hallway.  I really hope that when I do tell him that story that he sneers and says “Girl, I have seen your legs.”  I won’t be mad this time; I will laugh and be thankful that he is there to listen and keep me humble.  

 

Shiny and New

 Today, I went to the DMV to trade in my Texas license for my Illinois license.  I was unable to do so because I needed my birth certificate or my passport, both of which I somehow threw out while purging for this cross-country move.  Yep.  Tossed them along with my SS card, the kids' birth certificates, my marriage certificate, and divorce decree. I am still mad at myself for doing that. I could have gotten an ID, but not a verified ID, and everyone needs a verified one by May and why on earth would I come back to do this again in a few months?  I was also unable to change my plates over because I needed a ridiculous amount of paperwork I didn't have.  The woman looked me in the eye, sighed, and said "Welcome to Illinois."  I went to my car and sighed and then cried and missed Texas.  My heart was wailing like Sandy Cheeks in a Spongebob episode, "I want to go h-o-o-o-o-o-me, to Texas."

I am very glad to be here with my person and doing this adventure with love and laughter and a beautiful partnership. The part with him and being new and doing this together?  Beautiful. A+. Chef's kiss.  The flip side where absolutely everything in our life is new?  That is where it gets sticky.  New is exciting!  New is an adventure!  New is scary!  New is also exhausting.  Where should we eat?  We don't know!  Best place to grocery shop?  Still can't tell! Should I grind my teeth into oblivion at night or find a dentist?  Obviously, I made an appointment but I did spend some time thinking about how I don't want to find a new dentist and that this one better not try to pry all my old fillings up and tell me I need new ones like the last new dentist.  Scary was finding a new hair person and eyebrow threader.  I'm no more vain than any other middle-aged woman whose body is falling apart, however,  I was moved into action by not wanting to look like a sea witch with a unibrow.  I am loyal when I find good service and I have had my eyebrows threaded by the same amazing woman for at least fourteen years. I felt like I was cheating on her even if she is 1000 miles away.  My hair turned out and my eyebrows did too. I am sure the dentist will be fine and the new doctor can sign their name on my much-needed Zoloft refill as well as my last doctor.  

New choice after new choice after new choice is not as liberating as one would think.  Last week, we found an amazing Indian place to order food. We were thrilled with dinner and I obsessed about the cauliflower all week long.  My person mentioned it was expensive but I was chewing in bliss and missed that, I guess.  I went to order it again last night and sucked all the air out of the room when I saw how much it was.  That is a once-a-month treat, tops, not every Friday.  I sat there and just wanted food I knew.  I wanted tasty, inexpensive Tarka.  I wanted a Chicken Fundido taco from Taco Deli.  I wanted to sit with a bowl of Torchy's queso on my lap and swim tortilla chips through it and ingest 10,000 calories before I even opened my taco.  New is fun, but after a long week of work, sometimes you really just want to eat your weight in queso.

School is all new too.  We have gone from teaching high school to teaching middle school.  Honestly, some days it feels like teaching in an entirely new language.  Yes, my personal children were once middle schoolers and I remember that age.  However, I was never in a room with 26 of them following their lunch and trying to get them seated, not touching each other, and not yelling weird words they made up across the room as I tried to impart directions.  The transition time is a nightmare and don't ever, ever let them have a moment of downtime. They can also be very sweet and I am enjoying how they actually listen to what I have to say one-on-one.  That is really nice.  And that most of them actually read during silent reading time!

I am also getting used to knowing everyone I worked with very well to being the new person no one knows well.  It speaks a lot to my school that so many people have been there 10, 20, 30 years. It also makes me feel very new and finding where I fit.  Everyone is welcoming and kind and I eat lunch with people but I miss the sense of familiarity that came with working in the same place for eleven years.  The way I knew students and staff and they knew me.  I am not saying I was a rock star but a B-list celebrity for sure.   I feel very lucky with my school because my person's school is not as lovely as mine and he has to do a million more new teacher things and all that new is exhausting to even hear about.

I realize I haven't mentioned my kids.  That is not a new missing; I've been missing them for a few years now.  But I do miss them in a new way.  I am trying to decide how to do the holidays and when I come back and where I will stay and should it be right at Christmas or before?  Do I fly to Dallas and get the boy and drive to Austin?  Or fly to Austin and have him choo-choo train there?  All new choices.  All new feelings to the holidays and they aren't even here yet.

I know that things will get settled.  That we will find a place for queso and another for Indian that isn't so pricey.  We will find dentists and doctors and all the service people we need.  And we will like some more, some less, and everything won't be new, new, new. Things will start to feel familiar and comfortable and not as exhausting.  Until then though, I will just let all the newness swirl and swirl and swirl until I am overwhelmed and then cry like Sandy Cheeks when I need to. Because after I had a good car cry, I took myself to Starbucks and got something familiar.  After that, I came home and crawled back into bed with my person and told him about all the things and ended up laughing and that felt very right.  

 

This Ain't Texas

 Overall, many things about this move have been so very good.  I am with my person, we both have good jobs, and the weather is GLORIOUS.  I know, I know, my time is coming, but right now, OMG!  I open the patio door each morning and am greeted with a cool breeze that seems to say "I am glad you are alive, here is some fresh air".  This is much nicer that the air in Texas in August that yells "Suffer for the sins of the world" while blasting heat non-stop, day and night.  I will take this.  Also very good are the neighborhood walks.  We can both walk and drive to beautifully maintained trails that circle ponds and lakes and rivers.  The flowers right now are insane and the wildlife is abundant.  

See?  Pretty!

Also good was my dinner last Friday night.  I do try to eat healthfully most of the week but it was a long week with back to school and all new work people and students and a treat was in order.  Look at this plate!  This is my dinner!  Is that Cheez-Whiz squirted into a cup as a condiment?  I think it was and I dipped each fry into and thought two things: processed cheese and yum.  The Italian Beef Steak?  Nothing healthy on there.  White bread, red meat, salty and vinegary peppers.  I may have cried a little each time I had a bite.  So, so good.  I was very proud of myself for not eating it all at once and finishing it for breakfast.  All about the balance.

Thank you, Portillo's.

Many new things to still try and see and do but I am really stuck a little on three things that remind me every day that I am not in Texas.  First, driving.  Everyone driving here is in a terrible rush.  Got to go fast!  And if you are not driving fast, or on two of four wheels, or dare to make a complete stop at a stop sign, the honks begin.  I have been honked at more in the last two weeks than in the last ten years.  No exaggeration.  Traffic is always heavy here and I guess everyone is going so fast to make that one light, that one turn, in the hopes of getting just a tiny bit ahead.  In Texas, they also drive fast but no one honks.  They might flip you off or run you off the road but all without touching the horn.  

Alongside driving is gas.  Shoooooeeeee the cost of gas!!  Is there not an oil reserve in one of the Great Lakes we could tap into up here and reduce the cost of gas?  Also, all the signs at gas stations lie.  You think you are paying the giant number displayed but you really pay the tiny number underneath it.  The savings is for their members.  The hell I am going to be a member of a gas station.  I pledge my allegiance to whatever place means I don't have to change lanes or get across the street.

$4.29!!!! A gallon, not total.

Next up on my "this is weird", people throw absolutely everything away in the dumpsters.  I am used to Austin where it takes a signed letter from the governor and two donated pints of blood to put anything in a dumpster besides a bag of trash.  As I moved in at the end of the month when people were moving out, the dumpster teemed with all kinds of furniture.  Like furniture, furniture meaning entire couches, living room sets, etc.  My absolute favorite day was when the piano made it to the trash pile.  A piano!!!  I was so tempted to roll it inside and proudly show my person that I got us a piano just to see his face.  Imagine coming home to me playing Chariots of Fire on a piano that was not here when you left.  (Chariots of Fire because I memorized it at age ten and can't unlearn it:DGABAF#.) Too much work for a moment of silliness, so I didn't.  But a piano!!

Piano proof!

The final thing that really almost has me in an uproar is that I cannot get a library card anywhere!!  We apparently live in an unincorporated area that no library will claim.  I am unsure what unincorporated means and keep waiting for Doc Holliday to stroll by saying, "I'm your huckleberry."  (Actually, I am kind of always waiting for that.)  I can get a card at the closest library to our apartment but because I am unincorporated trash, I have to pay a portion of one month's rent.  It would be about $300 for something that should be free! I think that is usurious and I won't do it.  If I was an e-reader it might not be that big of a deal.  I like a real book though. I need to crack the spine and dog-ear the pages and hold it close to my face and smell the paper and glue and author's sweat and tears.  So, don't tell me about the good books you are reading, send them to me so I can start my own library.

Big moves mean big changes; good and different and bad.  I am really only putting the price of gas and no library card under bad though.  I love the dumping dumpsters!  What freedom!  The end of the month is coming up and I am going to be on the lookout for treasures.  And this time, if I find another piano, I will absolutely roll that thing in the house just to be funny.

There's a Tear in My Beer

In the past few weeks, I have noticed that I have been listening to country music a lot.  Spotify suggested it, I clicked on it, and that has been my go-to car listening for weeks now.  I haven't listened to country music since the first year I lived in Texas and most songs seem to revolve around the artist spelling words out for us or songs about fun rivers and county fairs.   This Spotify-made list has classic songs from Dolly and Willie on there as well as new artists.  I cannot get the song "Last Night" by Morgan someone out of my head.  The song starts with the chorus!  Bold move! "Last night we let the liquor talk", I mean who can't relate to that? "I can't remember everything we said...".  Can this man see into my troubled soul and know that when I wake up hot and sweaty in the middle of the night after drinking too much I immediately wonder where my purse is and what came out of my mouth?  "but we said it all."; that is me any day of the week, drinking does not have to happen.  As I wondered why I was listening to this song yet again, I began to put it all together.  I am coming to the end of my Texas era, it is only natural in would be country music playing me out.

In four days, I will move to IL to be with my person!!  I am so excited!  We both have jobs!  A nice apartment! He has spent the summer finding hikes and walks and places to shop at and go.  I can't wait to be there with him and do this life with him.  I am giddy, and anticipatory, and excited!  SO excited! But, I am also sad.  And I know I can be two things at once because my friend Liz has told me that two things can be true at the same time.  And because I am.  I have lived in Texas longer than I lived in NY.  Like a decade longer.  I am not one of those people who say, or have cross-stitched on a pillow in my home, that I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.  I don't say it because it is annoying and I don't have it cross-stitched because the only thing cross-stitched in my home says "Sucks to Suck", because it does.  I also don't quote Davy Crockett and say "You may all go to hell and I am going to Texas" because that is such a sick 1800's burn only Crockett should say it and because, well, Texas didn't end so well for him.(ahem, Alamo)

I am sad I couldn't put picture with Crockett and sexy eyebrows here instead, but it wasn't free.

So while I am SO excited, I am also taking time to see how I will miss Texas.  I will miss its tacos and BBQ.  I will miss its beautiful spring weather and wildflowers.  I will miss how everyone is always speeding.  I will miss a lightning storm that lights up the sky.  I will miss a glorious sunset spreading itself over a soccer field. I will miss my cozy classroom on the third floor.  The thing I will miss most though, after tacos, is people.  People I have been friends with since my kids were little.  People I have worked with.  People who have seen me at my best and my worst.  People I shared beers and stories and holidays with.  I cannot even start to think about how I will miss being close by for my kids.  

I have spent a good portion of the last week running around town and seeing people before I leave.  We talk and laugh and cry a little.  We hug and say "see you soon".  I didn't get to see the first friend I made in Texas so long ago when we were both paid $6/hr to dress like we were going to a funeral and work in a hotel, but Mark will always be my first friend in Texas and will always be my friend in Texas.  And I realize that all these people I am hugging goodbye will still be my friends in Texas.  And I can come back at any time and see them and eat tacos!

It is hard to close out an era.  It is sad to not see people you are used to seeing.  However, you can't have adventure if you stay in the same place.  And in this case, adventure also means love.  Sigh.  Swoon!  One friend said "it is like a fairy tale!" and another said "Man, you really wore him down".  Again, two things true at the same time!

I came to Texas a 20-year old kid with big bangs and believing that Taco Bell was Mexican food.  I have learned and grown and moved from all around Dallas to all around Austin.  I have marveled at a beautiful Texas hike and cursed the August sun.  I have raised my kids here.  I have really lived a good portion of my life here and a good life here. People have asked why I moved to Texas and I tell them that it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Thirty years later, I can say it was a great idea.

Trip, Trap, Trip, Trap

On a trip to see my sister and family in NC last week, we went on a very sweaty hike.  It was a pretty NC hike forested with green trees and carpeted with pine needles. There was some incline and decline and a lake and a whisper of a breeze off the lake which we needed desperately because while it was not incredibly hot, it was insanely humid.  There were a couple of small bridges to cross and as we got to the first one, I did what I always do when crossing a small foot bridge: I said "Trip, trap, trip, trap" and my sister laughed right away and knew I was talking about the troll from "Three Billy Goats Gruff".  (which if you have not read this amazing piece of literature daily to children from the ages of 2-5, you are missing out on a grumpy old troll and some very smart goats and the compulsion to say "trip, trap, trip, trap" any and every time you cross a footbridge.) We hiked on and at the end of the three miles everyone was glad we had a small adventure and I said I only hated five minutes of that hike and we got ice cream to celebrate all the calories we had sweated off.  A perfect Sunday!

At the airport the next day, I was thinking about this trip and other trips to see my sister.  It is always a good trip.  We eat good food and drink great wine and do small adventures and, as it turns out, a lot of sweating.  Hot yoga, hot hikes, etc.  On a trip prior to this one, we drank alot, alot of red wine at night and the next morning went to aerial yoga.  There I was, hungover, and hanging from a silk scarf from the sky while contorting my body into weird positions.  I would file that experience under "do not recommend."  That trip, like this one, was a good trip where I spent time with some of my favorite people.

As I waited at the gate for my plane though, I couldn't help but feel a little trapped.  Trapped among too many people, trapped waiting for things I was not in control of, trapped waiting for a restroom.  I only fly Southwest so I was in trappings that I knew, but traps nonetheless. Trapped waiting for my letter and number.  Trapped waiting for people who haven't flown in twenty years to board and stow their luggage.  I like to sit closer to the front so I often take a middle seat and am trapped between two people I have never seen before.  On both flights, both sets of people were real armrest-hoggers so I felt even more caged. 

Squished between two healthy strangers, I closed my eyes and thought about my Western adventure last year.  A trip to see family and then trapped with the rest of America to seek adventures.  Trip, trap, trip, trap.  I didn't want to experience the beauty of nature or national monuments with other people and especially not hoards of people who obviously hadn't left their own home in ten years and were raising feral children.  I am not sure when the rest of America became so abhorrent to me but it does make me wish I could plan trips when everyone else is too busy to go.  As I write this, I realize I am very similar to the grumpy old troll wondering who is trip, trapping over his bridge.  In my case, I am wondering why all of these people are here too.

Trip, trap, trip, trap.  In order to take a trip, you risk the trap.   Maybe it's the trap of the interstate, or plane delays, or forced small talk with a chatty seat mate.  Maybe it's overpriced food or wondering why you can't have an entire can of Diet Coke and only get that Dixie cup full on the plane.  Maybe it's too many people wanting to do the same things or the hurry up and wait that makes you feel trapped.  In those trapped moments, I like to close my eyes and think of the trip ahead of me or behind me.   When I open them, I can see good things happening in the sea of humanity ahead of me and that helps: people helping strangers, families laughing together, an older couple still holding hands.  

When I fly to Chicago next week to see my person and am so impatient with the trap because I just want to be there and with him already, I will try to think more of the TRIP than the trap.  Because, really, the TRIP always outweighs the trap.  TRIP, trap, TRIP, trap.  Time with people you love, some minor inconveniences, taking adventures and making memories, crying kids on planes, wanting to die at aerial yoga, no arm rests.  I think that in addition to saying "trip, trap, trip, trap" at every footbridge in my life, I will also start saying it as I walk down the jetbridge to my plane.  If nothing else, it will make me think of reading to my kids when they were little or my sister.  And, if I say it out loud, people might think I am really weird and not sit next to me and I can get an armrest!

Always worth the trip and the traps.

  

She's a Good Girl

One day, about twelve years ago, I left my house to go to my part-time library job.  When I left, I had one dog and when I returned, I had two dogs.  To be fair, I did receive a phone call about maybe a puppy with excited kids clamoring in the background and I believe I was neither excited that it should happen or adamant that it not happen. Ambivalent, I guess you would say.  Until I got home and saw this face.

OMG. And those ears!!

And just like that, I was in love.  I loved her stinky-sweet puppy breath and her fat little belly, and the way she would bound through the grass outside. I loved how she snuggled in tight and the way she shouldered disappointment when the older dog wouldn't let her snuggle in tight; she would just go look for a person instead. She brought laughter and merriment and alternated crazy puppy energy for sweet puppy naps.

Austin Pets Alive said that she was found in a farmer's field all alone and we sighed about her rough start.  Poor Bailey!  We wondered if that was why she was so afraid of rainstorms and thunder.  It did not explain why she hated balls being tossed at her.  She did not love a game of catch, that is for sure.  We tried.  She would watch our other dog, Grommit, catch and return and looked like she wanted to join in on the great dog fun.  You would throw it to her, she would watch it fall close to her, and then run.  Grommit would look at her with complete disapproval.  Maybe her abandonment in a field also made her the nervous girl she was.  In addition to rainstorms, she didn't like other dogs, a lot of people, being pet with two hands, car rides, anything thrown in the air, or being alone for too long.  

Austin Pets Alive also said Bailey was a lab mix.  I think every stray they have in there is labeled lab mix.  Bailey was definitely a German Shepherd and something.  Probably some kind of herding dog.  She had a nose that would poke you from here to tomorrow, or her favorite, from bed to her food bowl.  Poke, poke, poke.  100% of her strength was concentrated in her nose.  She would use it to poke open doors, to poke on doors, to poke you where she wanted you.  Poke, poke, poke.  She eventually learned not to poke her nose and head into bushes on a walk when she poked her nose in and got a cat scratch to the eye.  For a time, we even thought she must be part cat because her favorite place to lay on a couch was along the top of it.

Just lounging.

Bailey took over our home with her sweet face, love of being pet, and ability to bring joy.  She became a reading buddy to Will and would lie next to him patiently as he read to her from a book.  She became a confidant and consoler to all.  Kids could confess their heartaches to her and she would lick away their tears.  She was my constant companion and ready for a walk at any time for as long as I wanted.  She loved all food, especially popcorn, and loved to be in the way in the kitchen.  All of my recipes included the extra step of "Step over Bailey".

The thing she hated more than thunderstorms though? Squirrels.  Oh, she waged a war on squirrels when we had a backyard.  Bark, run, bark, run, bark, climb trees, bark, run.  No exaggeration!  This dog climbed trees on her hunt to eradicate her home of squirrels.  It was always a shock to look out a window and see her casually coming down a tree.  Twice, this dog went into the backyard whole, and twice she came back with terrible cuts that needed stitches.  Both times, we had no idea what happened.  The second time I took her, I am sure the vet was going to call the CPS version of animal care on me.

Only tree-climbing dog I have ever known.

Bailey moved and moved and moved one more time with me.  Always my constant companion.  She slept at my feet every night and would move until her toes touched mine.  She was comfort and familiarity in every new place.  She would melt into the kids when they came back to visit.  Just sinking into them and sighing and I knew exactly how she felt.  Bailey accepted it when we got two kittens.  I don't think she was ever excited about them but she was very tolerant.  The boy cat loved her so much and followed her everywhere from day one to the  point where we now believe he thinks he is a dog.  He answers to his name and comes running when the door opens.  I thank Bailey for that.  

It had become apparent this last year that Bailey was slowing down.  She was losing weight.  She didn't want to go for walks as much and definitely not as far.  I commented it was like living with an old woman who was very furry and surprisingly agile at times.  And she was an old woman.  She was 12.  She had raised kids and watched them go off to start their lives.  She had moved and moved and moved.  She still hated squirrels but now it was harder to get up and bark at them.  

It is always hard to know when it is time to help a dog move on.  My own selfishness of wanting Bailey with me probably delayed my decision a bit.  She is eating and pooping and all is well, I told myself.  Until I left for a week and came back and saw her.  Really saw her.  Frail and small and hurting.  This dog who had brought us endless joy was now suffering and that wasn't fair at all.  And so it was decided, and it was done, and I am just so sad.

I know it will take awhile to get used to a house without Bailey. I hold my breath a minute as I turn the key in the lock to remind myself that she is not running to greet me. I dropped food on the kitchen floor and as I bent down to pick it up, I cried.  I haven't had to pick food up off the floor; Bailey was always there to eat it up.  I haven't vacuumed yet because her tumbleweeds of fur will be gone and no more will be dropping to replace them.  The boy cat is taking it hard too. He meows looking for her non-stop.

Dogs give us so much in this life.  They give us that constant companion, that built-in best friend, that touchstone of belonging.  They make us interact with other dog people or people they sniff inappropriately as we walk.  They teach us patience, they help us keep a schedule, and they teach our kids responsibility.  There is no dog without a lot of poop to pick up.  They bring out what is best in us because they see it.  They love us when we look bad, feel bad, and even smell bad.  They fill a house with their muddy feet and fur and toys and treats.  They fill our hearts with joy and laughter and love.  They show us what unconditional love looks like.

Everyone talks about dogs and cats crossing the rainbow bridge after death and leading an idyllic life.  No pain, no sadness, just them living their best lives.  When I am not being selfish and thinking how much I miss her, I do like to think of Bailey living her best life.  I know for her it would mean finally catching a squirrel.  So maybe tonight when I go to bed and stretch out my feet and don't feel hers push back, I will think of her in a tree, catching her squirrel and feel a little less sad.

Constant companion.  Best Girl.