Dogs, Babies and Ladies

I’m not trying to start any fights but I don’t like the term Fur Baby.  It’s okay if you do. 

If my dog, Franny, was my Fur Baby and I was her relatively alopecic mom I could say things like, “We’re not going anywhere, young lady, until you brush your neck!”  Which could be fun. 

But if it ever got out that she’s got body parts stashed in murder holes across the back yard, society would demand that I respond with an emotion other than resignation, and I’m not sure I could. 

My discomfort with Fur Baby stems from how I feel about actual babies.  Here’s how I feel about actual babies: I love them.  This is great because I am baby rich right now.  I get to look at babies in real time.  I get to look at babies on Facebook.  I get to meet my niece baby in less than a week and I am jumping up and down in my chair I am so excited.    

I am a pro-baby candidate.  I want to be an eccentric friend to and holder of the world’s babies.  But I don’t feel called in any profound way to be a baby’s mom.  Evidently, this is strange. 

When I hear Fur Baby it is usually in a meet-and-greet situation and a woman who is trying to size me up says it. 

How old are you?

33.

Are you married?

No. 

Do you have kids?

No. 

Then what are you?

I have a dog?

A Fur Baby!  Hold onto that.  Oh look, it’s Helen!

The distinction I’d like to make is that for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted a dog.  My stewardship of a dog is the outcome of that specific longing.  I did not shove Dog into a baby-shaped abyss in my heart.  There is no baby-shaped abyss in my heart.  Just limitless capacity for Dog. 

I will be fine if Helen’s friend doesn’t understand me.  We don’t burn women alive for being childless and strange.  Not in the USA.  Not anymore. 

My original point (Fur Baby makes me uncomfortable because I think that you think I have shopped for a christening dress for my dog) just took an unexpected and serious turn.  I’m surprised too and don’t really know what to say from here.   I was trying to say something sweet about dogs. 

It’s discouraging to be a woman and feel alien in the company of other women.  That’s what I’m getting at.  That’s where I end up if the beginning of our effort to understand each other involves Fur Baby. 

Happening right now, and a few years ago in Gatlinburg

One self-imposed deadline missed and not very many words a week later.  Instead, here is a video of the inside of my brain during and since my trip to Oklahoma.  It is also two jelly fish. 

Mused

Me and the muses, we’d agreed Friday was the most suitable night for a creative orgy – a real unfettered, sheet dampening release of ideas.  But I was tired after work and a little gassy, so instead we watched six hours of Kimmy Schmidt and I fell asleep on the couch.   

The muses and I tentatively arranged to meet up on Sunday.  But their ride flaked and my plan to not overindulge at India Palace Buffet Brunch With Mimosa Bar veered off course so we decided to reschedule.

One of the muses texted me on Tuesday to see what I was up to but I didn’t reply because I was grumpy.  At the time, I was trying to honor my grumpiness but not inflict it on others.  I still haven’t texted back and now I feel paralyzed because any reply short of a detailed confession of mental illness will sound flip.         

The muses all went off together to this meditation retreat in Maine for three weeks.  It sounds great.  Everyone gets their own mud-bathtub and there are mud-bath breaks written into the schedule everyday.  As far as I can tell from their Facebook posts, the retreat is like 85% mud-bathing.  I’m excited that they get to go.  It must be nice to subsist on flower petal water and get to couch surf in imaginations and be unburdened by the need to exchange your waking life for money.  I can’t wait to hear about it when they get back.   

There’s this one muse.  It’s tense between us lately.  She wants me to write a longer thing, Fiction (!), even though I’ve explained to her, I think rationally and maturely, that it’s not my forte.  And anyway I have this arbitrary self-imposed deadline of posting a thing a week and a long piece won’t fit that mold.  So, she’s all like, “You’re just scared!” and I’m like, “STOP TRYING TO HUMILIATE ME I’LL SQUASH YOU!”  We’re fine, though.  I think we’ll be fine.

The muses skipped town for another retreat.  From the road they called to ask if their cousin could stay with me.  She's been here a month and is awful.  She won’t tell me her name but I intuit that it is Guilta.  Guilta has two hobbies that include sabotaging my access to internet TV and composing ballads about people who died alone and sad before they created anything.  She spends days belting variations of the same lyric “until it clicks”:  So much she never tried; Lo, she never tried; Alas, she never tried; What loss, she never tried; If only she had tried….. Her doleful baritone is least audible from my porch.  So lately, I’m out there with my laptop and I’ll just type for the sake of hearing any other noise.