Monday Wrap

1.  Our Beloved Girl will live to run another beach. The feared recurrence of our dog Minnie’s cancer is a lipoma, a very large patch of fatty tissue across her chest. She still has trouble getting up and sometimes she stumbles on the stairs. But she’s quit giving off the glow of terminal illness that we gave her. We are careful with her and give her extra snacks, the purposely leftover scrambled eggs and a third Milkbone. It’s the least we can do.
2. A few days ago, my four-year old grandson came into the bathroom while I was standing naked looking at myself in the mirror and brushing my teeth. He gaped at me wide-eyed and then I shut the door on him. His mother had sent him up to the house from the beach to ask me for a plastic bag. He returned empty-handed telling her that he failed to get the bag because “Nana was brushing her teeth.”
3. Donald Trump staring at the eclipse with no protective glasses with people yelling him not to look at the sun was quite simply a gift from the gods. How stupid is he? He is this stupid. I’m so glad we don’t have to read through speeches and policy positions to sort it out. We can just watch him looking at the eclipse like he is the one special boy in the whole universe for whom the don’t look rule doesn’t apply. His son was looking at his shoes. He’s no dope.
4. Live and let live is a pretty demanding little adage, if you ask me. If you’re grown, you have opinions about most things. Me, I figure I can improve the lives of strangers walking past me on the sidewalk if only they’d listen. The great discipline of my life is keeping my mouth shut. I swallow so many words, letters get stuck in my throat. Sometimes, they dribble down my shirt. I brush them off on to the floor where they pile up in heaps like toys.
5. I drove our truck around town today. I like driving this truck. Everything about it makes me feel tough and strong like I could set off on a cross country trip right this second if I wanted to, me and my phone and my credit card. I stopped at a light and thought, damn, it won’t be long before my kids, the same ones I loan money to and worry about, will meet up and talk about when to take mom’s keys away. If I hear they are meeting, I’m leaving town. On the back roads.