Where a little wind, and animated fox puppets help clear away the fog.

This week I went sort of brain dead for a too many days of busy-ness. Work gets busy and life gets busy and I am sensitive to busy. It affects my constitution. My brain pores get clogged, and anything of lofty, empirical value becomes foggy and congealed, sort of like you are looking at things through a coat of pineapple jello in a haze of finely shredded corduroy. I like to have blank spaces in every day to think about important things.

I can't think of any of these important things right now for an illustrative example.

Maybe, like, where are my sunglasses?

No. More important than this. FOCUS. Big picture things. The delicate relationships between human and animal behavior. Nostalgic reflection, Chloe Sevigny and do the people who write little poems for Hallmark cards wear those really high heeled platform shoes and pencil skirts? FOCUS. Can dog agility handling systems be described using words from French deconstructionism and which is more relevant if you just feel like making cupcakes? Why didn't I think up the Fantastic Mr. Fox?

These are poor examples but I am still brain dead so if you have any better ideas just let me know. Like this but better. And really, where ARE my sunglasses?

You get the picture. It's still foggy in there. Where was I?

Also, I left the dogs home for a few days. I felt bad for Gary. He was held captive of knee surgery and no driving or walking or anything good, so what would someone held captive need at home? Their own Team Small Dog! My sidekicks got lent out for their therapeutic value. He didn't ask for them, but it is my belief that the presence of these dogs make everything certainly better.

Usually, I take the dogs everywhere. Even work. Even the grocery store. Because you never know if there could be a detour to the forest or the beach or just a walk down some railroad tracks somewhere. The feral in me is easily called to distraction, and missed opportunity, so sad. Opportunity, fizzled, shizzled down the drain. So we just go every place, together. We are all attached at the hips. I am never alone with a whole Team Small Dog riding shotgun, as we roll from one sunset to the next.

Driving down the freeway with empty dog cages in the back, I tried the car stereo on really loud in the back speakers with that little button you wiggle under the volume. Something I wouldn't ever do with the dogs in the back of the car. I am not one of those free range, cage free, dog drivers. My dogs get held captive in plastic airplane crates in my car. Ruby and Otterpop share the blue one, and Gustavo has the bachelor version. I put stickers on them to make them look cool, like skateboard decks but actually this doesn't help. My car is hopelessly full of geeky, plastic dog cages. But the dogs like them ok. Maybe not Gustavo. He stares at the back of my head through his door all the time. Ruby and Otterpop just sleep.

Listening to a Meat Puppets songs blasting out from behind empty dog crates, it didn't really sound any different. My car is missing one of the speakers anyways, so stereo is sort of a misnomer. The mono. Have you ever heard David Bowie songs played mono? It sounds weird. But it's how me and the dogs enjoy our music, all the places we like to go in the car. From the front speakers so sensitive canine ears, that usually twitch at the tiniest sound from far away, don't get blasted out; I like to listen to music really loud in the car.

When I got home every night, there were stories about Otterpop and the mailman, and dogs sleeping outside on the sun, and everyone together during knee icing on the bed. Big happy freakouts when I got home. I sat on the floor, throwing Ruby's ball for her and tug of warring with Otterpop with her soggy Christmas doll, and throwing bits of fluff in the air for Gustavo, which I suspect he stole out of a couch pillow which is something I should be cross about except actually, I kind of don't care. Did they miss me? Did they notice I was gone? Gary thought yes, but we aren't really sure.

The next blank moment I had, we had a walk to the whale skeletons, where the North coast winds are already drying the green grasses into foxtails. Gustavo turns into one of the animated foxes out there, like they modeled the puppets on his face. His eyeballs quiver and spin, running through the scrub brush, under delicate bridges of tough old wood and tiny spring buds. Those North coast winds, slam loud into your ears when you walk straight into them. If your ears are sensitive like dogs, you have to drop your head and maybe walk sideways. But if you get down low, crawl on all fours down into the brush, and just lay low for a while, all you'll hear is the prettiest sound of grass blowing. Much better than one stereo speaker chugging out Dark Side of the Moon from behind empty dog crates in a car. For a while, we all just sat out there, where no one could see us, under the bushes. Listening to nothing but the wind sounds. And this helps clear away the fog.