Dear Internet,
Sorry I’ve been so… so… casual about our relationship over the last few days.
I Can Has Library?
Somewhere within the last few weeks, I read a description of a dog’s-eye (or rather, -nose) view of the world. It went something like this: As a dog crosses the living room, it is reading the Doggy Daily News.
Pretty funny.
But since I’ve now had a few months’ practice walking a very olfactorily-oriented dog up and down the street, and around the yard, I think I’ve got to sharpen the analogy a little.
Here’s the way these walks go:
- Trot out front door.
- Sniff exploratorily at front porch.
- Canter briskly up the sidewalk or, if the mood strikes you, detour across the shortcut to the driveway.
- Trot up the driveway to the street.
- Stop. Sniff the air. Look left, look right, turn around so as to look over your shoulder, turn around again.
- Toss a doggy coin and face left or right, accordingly.
- Apply nose to ground.
- Go.
Don’t Embarrass the Dog
As I’ve mentioned (briefly) before, The Missus and I have a recent addition to our household population: a Yorkshire terrier named Sophie. That is not Sophie over at the right — it’s one “Lexi Ann,” from the dogsinduds.com site. But it’s a good place to start this post.
We got Sophie as a “rescue dog,” which is to say that she was extracted from a bad, potentially dangerous situation by our local Big Dog Rescue group. (Yes, big: ha ha.) Many of the dogs in such situations have been in them from the start; Sophie’s case was different, in that her original owners had loved the bejeezus out of her, had taken exceptional care of her. It was just that their situation was about to change, and change radically.
From the evidence provided by Sophie’s behavior, we’ve concluded that she was probably very much spoiled by her original owners. For instance, together with her favorite toys and beds and such, we also got an entire basket of doggie clothes — some at the extreme of the “bad to the bone” outfit in the picture. We have almost never put any of these clothes on her and she seems happy with their absence. (Apparently kinda like the way many humans feel when they first “go commando.”)
The other night, The Missus’s sister and brother-in-law were coming over. Laura had already met Sophie, but Gary hadn’t. In order to give him the full benefit of The Sophie Experience, The Missus decided that Sophie should be wearing something cute when she met him. So saying, shortly before L&G’s arrival, The Missus put the dog into something that resembled a pale-blue pullover sweater.
[Update 7:06pm EDT: The Missus informs me that per usual, I here demonstrate shaky memory of a lady’s wardrobe. Only vaguely, apparently, could Sophie’s outfit be described as a pullover sweater, nor was it pale blue. It was a purple T-shirt… perhaps with some pale-blue trim and/or rhinestones. Please make the necessary adjustments as you continue reading, with gratitude for The Missus’s zeal for accurate reportage. :)]
Here’s what happened:
First, when she saw The Missus get the basket of clothes, Sophie meekly sat at her feet, her shoulders hunched over. She knew what was coming, see? And with an air one could describe only as glum, she accepted the selected sweater.
Second: The Missus brought Sophie out of the bedroom into the hall. However, Sophie would not by herself come into the living room. She lay down right at the threshold. C’mon, Sophie, said The Missus, it’s all right. Come on into the living room.
Nothing doing.
So then The Missus picked her up and carried her. When she placed the dog on the living-room floor, Sophie immediately sank to her belly and slunk around to the back of a chair.
If The Missus hadn’t removed the sweater at that point, we’re convinced Sophie would still be there. Cowering, in the glare of public attention.
But — surprise! — this isn’t a post about Sophie, not really, nor about dog ownership in general. It’s a post about writing.
In her two most recent posts over at the writing on the water blog, Marta has asked two seemingly unrelated questions which, it happens, are actually two sides of the same coin.
In the first of these two posts, she asks a writer’s eternal question:
…how do you know when a story is done?
In the second, the question is thornier (because its answer depends on the answerer):
What do you do if your negative feelings about your work threaten to overwhelm you? What convinces you that a writing life is not so bad?
Now, in the first, she’s asking about a story; in the second, about writing — the process, the career, the life. Yet the questions both boil down to the same thing: How do you know when to stop?
Of the replies to those questions, I think I most liked Shelly Lowenkopf‘s; he was answering the first, but (again) it works for the second as well:
I know a story is done when the things I attempt to pile onto it will have none of my embellishments and keep falling off of their own accord.
That (for me) is exactly the point where I know I’ve gone too far. It’s the point where the Yorkie, having meekly accepted the human’s decision, nevertheless slinks away to a corner — where someone new to it will (if the Yorkier is lucky) not see it at all.
And like I said, if you think the preceding paragraph is talking about a dog, you’re not reading carefully enough.
Apropos of nothing, although I guess if pressed I could say I’m trying to balance doglove with catlove, here’s a poem which will mean a lot to feline enthusiasts — and to any human, really, willing to accept the notion that cats might have something to teach us. It’s from today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac.
They Call the Wind… Fay? (2)
[Continued from yesterday’s brief “We’re still here!” post. All images accompanying this post come from the online “Readers’ Gallery” of photos posted at our local newspaper’s site.]
Dear Family —
I know some of you have been keeping a watchful eye (“eye”: ha ha ha) on The Weather Channel for news of the damages suffered to our neck of the woods.
You may remember a post by my good friend FLJerseyBoy, three years ago (in his long-defunct Where Left Is Right blog), which talked at greater length about TWC:
The point is this: The Weather Channel doesn’t need to scare us. Yes, of course, people need to be warned. They need to watch the skies, especially with the help of The Weather Channel’s (and NOAA’s and others’) undoubtedly informative and beautifully computer-enhanced images. They need to have supplies on hand, and to prepare themselves for the interruption of essential services like electricity and water.
What people don’t need is a bombardment of ever-more alarming reports from shouting jackasses in windbreakers, leaning into the wind and rain as floodwaters rise around their ankles and houses and cars tumble by in the background. They don’t need it for themselves, and their distant families and friends — unfamiliar with the relevant geographic scales, and thus unaware (for instance) that a hurricane’s likely landfall is hundreds of miles away — sure as hell don’t need it either.
I’m with him. There’s no way The Weather Channel’s talking rain-spattered heads can possibly paint a decent picture of every neighborhood’s experience during a storm. So I hope you aren’t even now watching the statistics scroll by on your screens, with voiceovers by grim-faced tight-lipped anchorpeople — watching, and wondering what on earth might be happening with John and The Missus.
So let me put your minds at ease.
