Day 3: If we were sharing a bottle of wine ...

This is a thing I do when I have too many random thoughts going through my head that I want to write about. I pretend we're sitting on my porch sharing a bottle of whine wine, and I blog about what I would tell you as we rocked and drank and talked. Feel free to talk back in the comments. 

If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd tell you I'm worried about my standard poodle, Crow Cocker. Coraline* and I defeated Fear #2 from Day 1 today and took Crow and our other dog, Sassy, for a walk on this sunny, cool fall day. It was lovely, and Crow managed to hold his poop until we got to the soccer field/track at the school for the arts where I used to teach. It's fenced in so I took the dogs off their leashes and let them run. Crow ran down a hill toward the school, even though we were calling him to come back. Coraline ran after him and by the time she got to him he was limping on his front foot. She didn't see what happened, and I couldn't find a wound, but he couldn't put much weight on it.

We tried to walk home, but after a block it was apparent he shouldn't be walking on his sore foot. Several unacceptable options ran through my mind. The best one seemed to be tying him up at the back of an abandoned church, walking home as fast as we could, and coming back with the van to drive him home. Coraline tried to insist she should stay with him, but I told her she's too young to stay alone by an abandoned church, even with a 115-pound poodle who, even crippled would give his life to defend her.

We hurried as fast as we could, but it was hard to walk away as he watched us, knowing he didn't understand why we were leaving him. We were probably only gone 12 minutes, but by the time I pulled into the parking lot, a woman in a black SUV had parked there and was out of her car taking a photo of him. Great. I hoped she wasn't going to flip her shit about my abandoned dog. We got out of the van and Coraline ran to Crow while I went over to talk to the woman.

I explained what had happened. She lives next door and she was understanding. She hadn't wanted to approach him, so she was going to take a photo and post it to see if anybody knew who he belonged to. After we talked she told me if anything ever happened again to come to their door and they'd be glad to help. We got him in the van and brought him home.

Now he can barely walk on his poor leg, which looks like it might be swollen, so off to the vet he goes tomorrow. Yay. Another vet bill.**

If we were sharing a bottle of wine I would show you this video and say I have so much admiration for people like Cecily King. People who come up with a crazy idea and then they follow through and do it. It's a scary time in this country and it's going to get worse, I have no doubt of that. But we can't give up. That's not an option. So if encouraging messages spray painted on sheets hung on overpasses can help people get through the day, get help, do good deeds for others, then I'm glad people like King are out there doing things like hanging sheets on overpasses. It reminds me to ask myself what I can do to make someone's day better, even in some small way.




If we were sharing a bottle of wine you might ask, like another reader did, why I said "And Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself" at the end of my fear of running out of toilet paper on Day 1. First, it seemed like the fear of being too poor to buy toilet paper was the appropriate place to put it. And second, if you're not on Facebook a lot, you might not know that it's a ... what would you call it? A verbal meme? Rather than explain it, I'm just going to post some examples below and then call it a night. The clock says it's not quite midnight, but my body thinks it's close to 1:00, the bottle of wine has been consumed, and tomorrow is a work day. Gotta pay that vet bill, you know.

The next two are plays on common meme tropes (I think I made up another phrase, Pat). 

And finally, this video, which, now that you know the joke, is the funniest thing you'll see all week. It's worth it just to hear someone scream-laugh off camera.






*Coraline is my 8-year-old granddaughter who lives with me.
** If we were really drinking wine together you'd know that my daughter left four cats and a dog at my house mid August. Three cats have been rehomed, but they needed shots and flea meds; same with the dog. We still have one cat and the dog and they will stay with us. Anyway, the vet bills were unexpected and high for 6 animals. I don't know how people who have multitudes of animals do it.