A lot of mistakes, big pictures take patience.

We made a lot of mistakes over the weekend in Santa Rosa. Here's what it looks like, warts, open sores, and all. The sun was out, I sequestered the dogs in my car near a little grassy park spot where they could jump out all the time and run around, and it wasn't an unpleasant weekend. We had a boring night at Motel 6, me and the dogs huddled in one bed, and I made some new friends by talking to strangers at the Amy's vegetarian diner for dinner.

Our friends went to a dog show in Pennsylvania over the weekend. They made mistakes too. It's less worse to send your dog in the wrong tunnel a couple hours from home than an airplane ride's away, that's for sure. We all just try to get better, no matter where we're at.

The Ghost Ship fire happened while we were there. I know those warehouses, I didn't have direct ties to this building and it's people, but I've known ones that came before. They are important places, not scoured and exfoliated, open festering spaces full of things, with room for ideas inside, not a vacuum seal for sucking the life out of interesting brains. This one went up in flames and killed everyone left inside.

The Ghost Ship is a personal tragedy to everyone involved, I am just one person removed from some of the lost lives. It's a black omen for what may start to happen come January. Progress and forward motion may come grinding to a painful collapse in the darkness. Something will rise out of the flames, but it will be ugly and a lot of grief first.

December is a month of waiting. It should be a month of action, I'd like it to be, but something told me to just wait it out. The smoke of the Ghost Ship confirmed it. Even the dogs get it, they're pretty good with laying around right now, spending the day draped over the furniture. Peering through the windows out of almost closed eyes for the scores of Amazon delivery guys driving up and down the street in giant golf carts filled with Prime deliveries of instant Christmas cheer. Ho ho! Beanie babies on the stoop as if by magic, shrink wrapped and hermetically sealed guaranteed germ free.

When we were running this weekend, I had some pointed goals. Win the Grand Prix. Get the last Q's to finish Banksy's ADCh before the end of the year, a Championship while she's two. Neither of these happened. I did however, think back to one year past. This trial last year she was afraid of motel rooms and tried to bite me at the end of the runs. She couldn't lay down quietly outside the ring while she waited her turn and I never knew if she'd hit her dogwalk contact. She did win her first Grand Prix one year ago and took two extra tunnels in her Grand Prix this weekend, but I can see tremendous difference in the confidence of our running looking at those videos. I am very sure we're not moving backwards, which is more than I can say of our country. I was wearing the exact same outfit this weekend, although I think it fits a little more tight and there are a couple teeth holes left in the sleeves.

Big pictures take patience. There's movement forward and back. We can't lose our minds on the backwards, we need to take a moment and think and plan, then get to work and fix it. December is our thinking month. Think about how to not go in the tunnel. How to not lose health insurance. How to have a startline. How to not watch progressive democratic society go down the shitter. Then go try to go forward, not backward.