Weekend Roundup

"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semihuman.  The point of it is to open oneself to the possibilityof becoming partly a dog." ~ Edward Hoagland

Wolf and I are continuing to work on "down."  He's doing well; he's a very smart little boy.  I was taking him for a walk on Saturday morning and a fellow dog-walker stopped to ask me if he's a wolf.  I picked the right name for my little guy.  I tried to take some photos this weekend, but we were unable to get him to sit still long enough to do that.  He's just a whirling dervish.

As for me, I look like I've been on the losing end of a bar fight or something.  Hubby let Wolf out of his crate Saturday morning (I think it was Saturday; life is just one big blur for me these days) and, not being a morning person, I groggily walked straight into the door.  I've got a very nasty cut on my foot and a four inch scrape/bruise on my thigh.  Wolf chomped down on a finger by accident last week and chomped down even harder on the same finger this weekend.   The entire top part of my finger is purple and swollen.  I've got various bruises and cuts everywhere.  Hubby's always afraid people are going to think he's inflicting the damage.  Everyone who knows me knows that is most definitely not the case. 

I came by to feed the office kitties this weekend and found my beloved big gold cat hanging out.  I always used to call him "Good Boy, " so I started calling him that as I slowly moved towards him.  Every time I said "good boy," he rewarded me with a meow.  He was too afraid to let me get too close to him, but that's okay.  I'm just so glad he's still alive.  He's been gone for months, which isn't all that unusual, but I can't help but worry a little about him.  My mom kept telling me she thought he was fine and I agreed--he's definitely a survivor.  Still, I dreamed about him regularly and called his name every day for months.  I had to say a little prayer of thanks for his wellbeing and his return.

Friday, I cried most of the hour in therapy.  We talked about my dad.  Even though the rational part of me knows that there was nothing I could do, there is still a part of me that hangs onto "if only I had...."  That sentence has hundreds of endings.  There's a whole range of things I might have done, but without a doubt, some of them may have resulted not only in his suicide, but in my mom and me dying, too.  The truth is that there was nothing I could have done.  My therapist suggested that it might have been the best thing that could have happened for him.  That's certainly possible.

Meanwhile, I'm still lost in my own darkness.  I would never kill myself, though.   I know too much about how it feels to be a survivor.  I'm still unable to get beyond this profound sense of hopelessness.  The upcoming surgery is a part of it and it's also the source of random anxiety.  There's been so much pain this past year and there's more to come.  I try not to worry.  Worry doesn't help anything.   

There's more to say, but I have to get back to my project, which is one of the few things in my life that's going well.

America held hostage day 1711

Bushism of the day:

"I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me," ~ talking to key Republicans about Iraq, quoted by Bob Woodward