While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

Pug worries, or what to do when your dog starts having seizures

by 36 Comments

When Cubbie was a younger pug, I took him everywhere I went. He was my constant companion, a rotund, game-for-anything, kindhearted creature with an infectious grunt.

I took him to bars. I took him to restaurants. I took him to stores that were cool with dogs. I took him to ice cream shops that were cool with pugs. Each week for four years, I took him to the bank to make a deposit and get a bone. At the mere mention of the word bank, he’d pounce off the couch, run for the door and hop into the passenger seat of my car. It was our Monday morning ritual.

I took him to our wedding. I dressed him in a tuxedo and a top hat. I tied a little white pillow to his back and asked him to carry our rings. He obliged, as he obliges to most things most of the time.

I took him to the top of a mountain in Colorado and to the bottom of a valley in Idaho. I took him to Graceland. I took him to Chicago. I took him to the Oregon Coast and let him run without a leash into the Pacific Ocean, the memory of which is so fresh in my mind I can still smell the salt on his fur as I smuggled him past the front desk in a no-dogs-allowed hotel.

I can still see the wild look in his eyes when, after spending three weeks on the road, sleeping in a tent with me, I let him crash on a pillow in a queen-sized bed. King Cub.

[Read more…]

Pregnancy Confession No. 4

by 10 Comments 

[I've always loved dogs more than babies.]

I'm an unabashed dog lover.

When I see one, my heart leaps. I get younger. My mind quiets.
My instinct is to nuzzle the dog. To let the dog nuzzle me.
I know not all dogs are people-lovers, as all people are not dog-lovers.
But it doesn't matter. I turn to mush. Dog putty.

I want to curl up in a ball on the floor,
surrounded by fur and paws and dog saliva
and not communicate with people.
I know this sounds disgusting to non-dog lovers, but it's how I feel.

Give me a yellow tennis ball and a chocolate lab
and I'll be out of your hair for hours.

My affection for dogs is pure and addictive.
I'm like a boy at a monster movie,
cupping a supersize Coke, guzzling and burping.

No need to come up for air.
In the presence of dogs, I boil down to my purest self.

Most four-legged animals make me feel this way.

I wish I could say the same for babies.

Babies and I operate on a different level.

My insides don't turn to apple sauce and cherry cobbler
in the company of babies.

It's an honest admission from a pregnant woman.

I'd rather watch a two-hour Discovery Channel documentary
on the mating habits of otters
than tune into some TLC reality show
about 25 screaming kids and their tummy-tucked mother.

[Read more…]

The tent diaries 6

by 5 Comments

“On such a trip as mine, so much there is to see and to think about that event and thought set down as they occurred would roil and stir like a slow-cooking minestrone.” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

I was wrong about Wednesday’s post being my final tent diaries entry. I remember I wrote this kind of sloppy epilogue after I returned to Sarasota.

People who had followed my journey in the newspaper said I ended things so abruptly with no tidy conclusion or rewarding epiphany. Of course by then it was too late. I had hogged full-page spreads in the newspaper for six weeks. So for myself and my friends I wrote this, a little thank you note.

I was feeling pretty sappy and as usual, verbose.
—

The tent diaries 5

by 8 Comments

Just before I left Florida, my friend Ricci gave me a dragonfly, with this message written on the wings:

“All that glitters is not gold. All who wander are not lost.”

I’m sleepy now as I write this. Uninspired for the most part, sneezing in an auto repair shop, where I’m getting the oil changed in Joe’s car. It’s 9 a.m. on a Wednesday and I’m drinking Timmy Ho’s out of a plastic travel mug. Mechanic’s coffee is always too black and too dank for my taste buds, so I usually bring my own.

[Read more…]