Sunday, February 9, 2014

Sign me up to be a hermit, but let me have my dog please.

There are some days I'd rather just hang out with my dog.
I'm going on at least three so far.
Really I'm going on seven but that sounds worse so I'll round to three.
There's something about just having my conversations with him, sitting on the floor, with a mug of coffee, while he's curled up on a blanket, seemingly asleep but really astutely listening that beats having to go out and be around all the people for whom I have very little to say things to.
So we hang, dog and I.
I talk with his head on my head, as my sitting with coffee has turned to slouching with coffee.
I ask him if he thinks we'll have to move back in with the parents. If he thinks we should move in general. We discuss the merits of coffee. We discuss being hibernating bears. We discuss sunshine and how someday we'll be splashing in the pond behind our apartment again, provided we don't move. Maybe someday, I'll buy you another big bag of rawhides, I say. When my bank account resumes normalcy. Remember when we could do that? Go to Petsmart and shop for expensive treats and a new toy from the fancy toy shop? I sigh and slouch lower. I pat his head.
You're a good listener, I say. He moves his head to my shoulder. We talk about going to library school. We talk about having to remember I just turned thirty. We talk about how it is nice that I don't own my farmhouse this year because I'd have had to plow or shovel a long driveway. Unless we were bears. Then we'd have been hibernating and wouldn't be bothered by the long untouched snowy driveway.
There are just some days, it's better for me to hang out with just my dog. Zachary, my old neighbor, would say I must be having an artist day--the kind where I'm meant to be alone. He'd have been right, but it's harder to tell adults what my nine-year-old buddy grasped in a moment.

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