For the last two months, I’ve been carrying my dog up and down the stairs. We have tall stairs, and a lot of them. Maeby has arthritis and an aggressive slipped disc. So about thirty times a day, when I want to go down to the kitchen for a cup of tea, or when I need to follow Juno up the stairs, or when Hudson forgets his shoes, I heft my 30 pound dog up and down, up and down, so her separation anxiety doesn’t compel her to bound up the stairs on her own and slip that disc even more.
Author: Sierra
To the Privileged Witness of History
Posted onI wrote last about a transcendent snuggle between Juno and myself.
Tonight, I rock her back to sleep after a bad dream, but unlike last time, it’s depressingly hollow comfort. The snuggle is full of gentle, whispered breathing, and tiny hands, and all the normal comforts of contact. But mentally, I am elsewhere.
Start here.
Posted onJuno, age 1 and a half, has confidence in her convictions.
That’s a euphemism. More plainly, she knows what she wants. Even more specifically, she knows what she doesn’t want.
I suppose we lacked a little foresight giving her a name that literally includes the word “no” in it, because she’s so proficient with it. Like a burgeoning mastermind, she’s experimenting with pitch to see which version of “no” achieves the ideal outcome. When her drawn out, vocal fry, plaintive, “noooooooooo” mostly succeeded at making us laugh, she changed tactics. Right now she’s really vibing with the whole body, staccato, “No! No! No!”s whenever we approach her with a hair brush. She’ll pitch her body —off your lap, off the couch, off a cliff if needs be—if you so much as have a secretive hair elastic between your fingers.
Look Forever
Posted onJuno has the emotional range of an 88-key grand piano. It is large and it is loud except when it is meek, and squeaky. Her emotions strike chords, beautiful ones that you didn’t know existed. Her ‘happy’ is loud and bouncy, staccato and ebullient. She babbles around middle C most of the day, before going full Beethoven when you take away her yogurt (which, yes, it’s crusting her hair into dreadlocks, it’s under her fingernails, it’s clinging to her face for dear life no matter how many passes you do with a baby wipe) too soon.
The 900 Point Turn
Posted onThis morning, I found myself locked in a turn so tight, it needed basically 900 points to get myself out of it; and that still didn’t even do the trick. Jeremy’s new car and I are having some growing pains. Its turn radius is different than our handy dandy 2007 CRV, and it has all these fancy features that feel rather restrictive. For instance, it won’t let you back up over your neighbor’s recycling bin that’s got you locked in the 900 point turn from hell, even if you really really want to. Instead, it just halts the car abruptly with a ping that makes you more irate because someone is telling you no while you really just want to say yes, YES IN THIS MOMENT I DO ACTUALLY WANT to plow over my neighbor’s recycling bin, send debris into the collective alleyway, ruin relationships with my neighbors forever, and dent the new effing car. Damn this smart car for denying me this freedom.
Juno Moon
Posted onI put dinosaur decals all over Hudson’s walls at Christmas-time. I actually wondered if they might scare him, and made sure to put only herbivores close to his bed. The ROI has been minimal, particularly since we recently put an offer on a house down the street, and if anything, the decals probably distracted from this home’s showings.
My recent C-section and the immediately subsequent birth of our daughter, Juno, has kept me largely bound to the top floor of the house we just sold, so I was there when Hudson recently announced with utter glee that when you turn the lights off in his room, the “dinos move a little!”
Barraged, but Not Under Siege
Posted onHudson, age 3.75, is currently fixated on being “the good guy.” He suits up with imaginary bows and arrows, sticky splats, and “shooters” (his workaround because I don’t like guns) and goes to imaginary battle with all ranges of bad guys all day long.
For the Average Person Living Exceptionally Hard History
Posted onOne time, too late, I tried to ask my grandmother with dementia what it was like to live during WWII. Either because of her imperfect memory or mine, I don’t remember her having much to say about it, except, “oh well, times were tough.”
“Love Matters”
Posted onBefore I got married, I’d never said “I love you” to someone who didn’t choose me.
And for years into mine and Jeremy’s marriage, the words didn’t tumble out organically when speaking to my in-laws.
Let me be clear. I always liked my in-laws a lot. And in some ways, I had the privilege of choosing them where they really only had the option to accept me.
Tired Conversations
Posted onI’m not a victim of gun violence any more or less than we all are.