The Dog

I keep telling myself to hang on one more week, 8 more days to be exact. School will be out and the days will be mine to regroup, reorganize, take care of things, sleep.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, they say. And, yet, it was only a straw that broke the camels back, they say. Ambiguities. Truths. and yet, lies. Life is hard if you choose to live it black and white. Lived in the gray, it can numb, null, void.

Small stuff: broken drawer, insulin vials instead of insulin pens complete with a “we can’t fix that until Monday”, the hair flip and eye roll of a preteen, forgetting my coffee for the twenty third time, or my insulin or my phone, dog pee, broken glass, or the fuse that keeps flipping me off every time I try to start the dryer. The list is endless and constant like a slow drip from a ceiling tile on a rainy day. Small but damaging if left unattended.

The bigger stuff pulls at my attention leaving the small stuff to pile. I imagine it will come to life one day, transform into an arch nemesis, with my detested android phone for a mouth.

And, what about the outrageous antics of a child who “just wants everyone to like me”? It was just one event. She’s such a good girl. Small? Large? Typical? Or the weight gain that comes on one single fast food trip at a time, one single ounce on top of another; it’s just a small thing. The mole hill mountains against my body.

It’s 3 am. I’m awake because I’m worried about the dog. The move to another rental property in a few weeks is the conversation I’m now having with her. I tell her one box at a time is all I can focus on. One box will stack onto another and another until it’s all ready to go. I tell her she’ll have a yard with a fence. She raises one eyebrow, snorts and curls into a ball, confirming that she will not lift one paw to help me pack. Matter of fact, one lazy lid offers a slant glance, “I might even pee on the boxes as you stack them.”

If I can hold on 8 more days… but my mind wanders. The ex just bought a 4 bedroom house on the NW side of the city, with his younger woman, it backs to the junior high he hopes our daughter will want to attend. I will be moving into a smaller, less expensive rental property with our daughter and the dog who has now pee’d on every fabric covered piece of furniture I own. The dog, who’s previous owner assured me, straight faced with tears in his eyes that she would not run off and only occasionally pee’d on her own bed, has nosed her full body under a blanket beside me and sighed. She’s more than done with me.

The dog did run, the first time I tried letting her out without a leash. I reached into the jeep for a small piece of trash. When I raised my head, I saw her tail just as she sped full throttle, completely out of sight.… down the middle line of a country road known to have 50 mile an hour horse filled trailers fly by. She came home by herself, while I was in the jeep driving a mile this way and then a mile that. She came home, this time. She doesn’t know we’ve lost two cats and a dog on this road. I never believed the teary eyed owner. A small voice inside me said, “don’t do it. you know better”. Another said, “why can’t you just believe people at their word?” This is why.




The dog won’t eat. She’s losing weight. I’m getting ready to move. I need deposit money and moving money and she needs a vet visit. The dog who passed a health check, with flying colors only a few weeks ago…. Why couldn’t she have waited 8 more days, when I could have sat with her, studied her, gotten her to the vet without losing time from work? She lays here dreaming. Her legs jerk and her breathing quickens. It must be a grand gallop down the road she’s having. I pat her thinning body.

I remember the dishes piled into the sink. How do two people not manage to load a dishwasher? We haven’t been home for more than an hour here or there to let the dog out, feed her, play with her. We let the small stuff go, for her. And, now, when I could load the dishwasher, I sit with her wondering how much this will cost me.

I see good blankets in a pile on the floor, because the dog bed is in the washer and the dog needed soft things to lay on. She’s betraying me. All the while, she’s scooting closer to me on the sofa, she’s betraying me. She should know, I won’t beg for her to love me. I won’t beg for her to stay. I won’t chase after her or spend my life wondering why she didn’t want me, why I didn’t make her happy. I won’t wonder what’s wrong with me, what I did wrong. I won’t feel a failure. I won’t cry. She can’t make me.