I'm moving on February 12th to a house without much of a name. (I had originally thought I'd just call it by a street name, but now I think that's just wrong.) So what, you say? Well, I'm of the belief that giving a name to the place where you live creates history and gives meaning to your time there. In other words, I'm in agreement with this article from House Beautiful. No, I do not read House Beautiful, but when stumped as to how to name my new home, I found a link to it. Such an amusing problem! What should you call your home? Following its suggestions, I decided on the Sally House. The word sally is sometimes defined as a "sudden rush or leap out, or as a short excursion." Appropriate, don't you think?
Henry is now a prompt 6:25 wake up boy. It's a good time to walk him. It's rare to run into people in the elevator at that hour!
I think about how hard it is for us humans to get into the mind of a dog. Our rules often don't work well in the canine world. Here's an example of something that is completely counterintuitive to me: did you know that it is very inadvisable to raise two pups from the same litter together? There is a high risk of them developing littermate syndrome -- a codependency that leads to aggression, lack of responsiveness to training, and all those things you'd never want to see in your pet. Such pack animals and yet, to thrive, puppies must be separated. But put them in the same place with another unrelated dog? Friends for life.
Breakfast.
My pup rests. His run in the park yesterday, followed by playtime with Goose were grand, but I know he is sleep deprived. Pups his age, and his size, and his activity level need a solid 15 hours of sleep in a day. He and I are not getting our due share of needed rest!
(Henry loves to sleep in a nesting position -- all curled up into a ball.)
I then drop him off at daycare, where they tell me he has a cough. I know this to be true, sort of. He's not coughing out on our walks. He's not coughing at home. But get him overexcited? He coughs. Dutifully I call the vet. Of course they can't tell me anything without checking him out, but my vet tells me that this kind of intermittent cough needn't be treated. It will resolve itself and so long as he's not acting sick (he's not), I can ignore it. Yes, but tell that to the doggie day care people! I schedule a vet visit for tomorrow even though she tells me it's not necessary, but I need her to confirm his healthy status so that he can go back to doggie daycare.
And now I really have to proceed with The List. Call the gas and electric people, visit the municipal offices to start up water and sewer service, go to the farmette with discarded stuff and a box of things that the movers should not be moving -- fragile things that would have to be carefully packed. Waste of time and paper.
More preparations for the move, for the dog. I pick up meds for Sadey. More discussions with the managment at the Edge. This will be my life for the week: plowing through The List.
As I'm driving from one place to the next, I'm remembering an article I read yesterday that talked of an aspect of aging we don't often think about: older people need to spend more time processing events, conversations, happenings than younger people. I've known this, of course. I need that time to not do anything but think and review stuff from an earlier moment. Younger people need this too, but it takes them no time at all to do it. But here's the problem: older people tend to fill their downtime with the same thing teenagers use for their off hours: they click away at their phones and screens, always processing new information instead of reviewing old stuff. As a result, the processing gets pushed aside and it reappears at night, causing sleeplessness and anxiety in those wonderful wee hours of predawn. I can tell you right now, with my busy week, I will have a lot of deferred processing to contend with at night.
In the afternoon I pick up the big two. Sparrow first...
then Snowdrop.
It's all smooth -- we have a routine going, except routines are there to be changed and today we have another task -- to get Sparrow to his Taekwondo class in the early evening...
... which luckily is located just by the doggie daycare. I pick up a happy Henry.
An easy supper for me. In the days ahead I'll cook up big pots of chili and soup so that I wont need to bother with dinners next week. Not tonight though. My pup is tired from a full day and so am I.
with so much love...
