Bubbles for Big Dogs Friday Round-Up

A man at the dog park waved bubbles from a wand for his giant German Shepherd to chase and pop with his nose. I loved this. It seemed like an opening scene in a Disney movie. Otherwise, the dog looked like he was on a break from sniffing out criminals in big scary abandoned buildings. Maybe he’d done that for a living and then the bubble man helped him retire and see the sweet side of life.

I’m not going to have a big video career. I started a Facebook page called “Jan’s Senior Corner” several months ago, the idea being to do videos, raise issues, inform folks about local goings on. It started with a video I recorded while, you guessed it, walking around the dog park. It was sunny and breathless and had a certain appeal, but the novelty soon evaporated – for me and my five viewers. But yesterday I put a video up about the phrase “We’re not going back.” The phrase has a lot of meaning for many of us old women who ran into trouble when we were young. I just watched it. I’m proud of it.

Our beloved Brewers are out of the playoffs. And it was a sickening ending. Top of the ninth, Mets scored a three-run homer and the Brewers, bottom of the ninth, just lost their zip. Three outs within three minutes. The joy of the season evaporated in seconds. Anyway, the whole experience made me think of a piece I wrote a long time ago called No Hope, No Baseball. Perspective.

I am so in love with our cat. In the morning, he sits in the open window while the sun comes up over the lake. He is so still, in profile, he looks to be an old Egyptian cat. When he senses I’m awake, he does a gentle leap on to the bed and curls up on my pillow so his face in less than an inch from mine, so close I can feel his whiskers on my cheek. He would be an excellent death bed cat. I’m sorry. One thinks of these things at my age, especially when beloved people like Kris Kristofferson are dropping off the earth. I wonder if he had a cat.

The thing about writing is that it takes just a little encouragement to keep going. A friend with a long career as a journalist read the second part of my Rennie’s Log Slide Dream story. He says there needs to be a next story. And because I respect him so much, I have been thinking about the next story. Does Rennie leave the U.P. and go to Detroit (which, if you’re from Michigan, is the biggest contrast in the state in all ways)? Does she decide to winter in the woods armed with just an axe and a subzero sleeping bag from REI? I don’t know. I’ll think about this tomorrow morning while I watch my cat looking out the window at the sun coming up.

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Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash