Day 699: All Change

Mouse

Things I am currently very grateful for:

Dog equipment. When I first got these girl dogs, I spent so much on endless bits of gubb to deal with them. Some bits have lain dormant and have been passed on to other users, but the bits I give thanks for daily are the two secure slip-leads that keep these girls safe, the 15-metre long lead that lets me catch a Mouse when the need arises and the divider that lets me walk them on one lead, long or short, so they can run and chase even when their potentially deathy escapeeism and rabbit-focussed absconding habits mean I can't let them run free (Baba did an A-road on a rabbit chase. Luckily no dogs or humans were hurt).

I'm grateful for the soft blankets they sit on, that I sit on too, and for not having invested £50 in a massive, posho dog-bed for them to ignore and/or chew to shreds. I'm grateful for free bones from the butcher, which keep them happy for hours on end. And I'm grateful for Michelle and her lovely boarding place. My girls have had much too much time there recently, but they wag when they see anyone who works there and they come back healthy and confident. 

A recent visit to London, Ruth and the Ladies' Pond made me ache with Muswell Hill and London nostalgia. I saw the Grundel face to face! Turns out he's not an on-screen chimera like 1980s icon Max Headroom. He's real, and he works in the trendiest office in the actual world, just off Brick Lane. Felt like I'd left my cools at home when I got in there. Hip as tits, it was!

Doctored so nobody can be identified.. just random witches

I swam three times, seeing the temperature dip to 10 degrees by the end of the trip. I took part in the legendary Ladies' Pond Halloween dip and even went to an exhibition by beloved woodcraft genius Jane Ith (with a silent Sm) and lots of other talented people. 

It was in St Augustine's Tower in Hackney, and we walked the curly, windy, narrow, stone steps all the way to the top to gaze at the brightly lit Shard, the curly Olympic tower thingy, the City. I yearned for a bike (next time, I'll bring my helmet and take a hire). I revelled in the Londonness of things. London and me and dogs don't mix so well right now - even if I did have a place I could have them stay, they'd be terrified of all the noise. But so many beloved people are there, and there's so much going on. I feel a little distant in sleepy, provincial Frome. Oh, I just don't know!

 I do love swimming in the river here, with fabulous Lindsey. This was what greeted us this morning (it was 10 degrees, so we both got very interested in taking pictures for a while)

I love my car. It's just been our anniversary together (Halloween). I shall treat her to a long overdue valeting service. She is such a massive gift, a help, a wonder! I love her in her very teeth, my sturdy, sweet, reliable Brunhilde Concepción. 

And I am grateful for the Mediafast, which sees me, finally, writing this blog after months of quiets. It'll be on again in Spring, and there's never any harm in doing it. I've written every day since just before it started. I've been to yoga. I've done this blog. I'll dance tonight. All these things I might have done, and definitely would have meant to, but the temptation of the screen is so enticing... like, like, like me. Do approve. Tell me that I'm worth something! But Facebook likes are cocaine confidence - short-lived and shallow, and you need a few more hits for every buzz. 

Thanks, amazing acupuncturist Karen Cohen and massage/energy magician Krisztina for their help, for the release of heat with pins and the release of all kinds of mish mash with a massage not to be sniffed at (but occasionally to be shouted through). Incredible practitioners, both. 

One very handsome girl, Baba Yaga

Thing is, my time has come. The menopause has started, or been underway a good long while. It's funny, just writing that, I feel a wave of shame, as if it's kind of dirty, too much information, something to keep quiet about 'in company'. The truth is, it's both huge, in emotional terms, for me, and small - it's in the everyday happening of things and in that context, really quite banal. And it's worth talking about.

It means a number of things: 

• if I want to keep my vitality, I have to change my habits - eat less and better, move more and be more mindful of the choices that I make
• if I want children in my life, I have to foster, adopt or something similar
• it's time to work out what it is I want and make it happen. Time is tangibly shorter than I thought it was. I've missed one boat at least... best get my sailing gear on and make my way down to the quai.

This change is real and beyond my control. I feel as if I've left it to this stage of my life to grow up, to move on from the patterns of my past and to 'make something of myself'... if even now. It's time. 

Day 698: Brunhilde's Full

Other Brunhilde 1 of 3

I just filled up my petrol tank. How bloody lucky am I? I have a car. Not just a car, but Brunhilde Concepción, a car with strong thighs, personality and a hare staring at the moon on the back. This car works. it's reliable and even quite cute. Admittedly, it smells of dog piss and fox shit (thanks, girls) but it's functioning and i don't have that many passengers (unsurprisingly). And I have the affluence to fill my car right up and give thanks for it. I really am very grateful for it indeed. 

Thanks to the lady in Sainsbury's who's letting me hide in a corner using the internet in the cafe, even though the cafe is closed. Not very glam, but until I get my broadband sorted...

I'm grateful, once again, for my girls, shit-covered as they are. I love their little bodies, all lean and sinewy. I love Baba's curly howls and Mouse's Lady Diana looks out from under her meek little brow (while the canny little nut steals your credit card and buys a year's supply of liver).

I'm grateful for them being here and being mine and having chosen me through the ether to come and wag their ridiculous, skinny bottoms at, and stretch out their lizard bellies with their tiny niplets. 

They are covered in fox shit (I may have mentioned this) but today, I applied de-flea potion for the first time in advance of them going into boarding for ten days, so I can't wash them. 

I'm also grateful for the bright pink 15 metre lunge lead that arrived yesterday, allowing the Mouse to run and chase and play and me not to run and chase and hunt her down for an hour and a half before she'll allow herself to be taken home. We are both happy. 

And thank you for work. I needed some and some has come. I am full of thanks. 

Day 697: Thank You

Thank you. It's that simple. Thank you. 

Thank you for these two beautiful dogs, who test me and teach me every day, and who fill my heart with love and soften my fingertips and face with their furbodies. 

Thank you for the fine men in my life, of whom I'm particularly conscious. Thank you, Adam, for swinging by and being all manly at me, helping me move my bed, smiling and laughing and eating vegetables and being a handsome ball of lovely... and then, in a flash, going on your way. 

Thanks, Fin, for showing up at my house today with lovely Aaron - two twenty-something ninjas making light of life big ideas and lots of action. Thanks, Domingo, for calling me from Ecuador on a whim, and lighting up my evening with wisdom, love, laughter and the best accent EVER! I feel inspired and excited. And new friend Neil... great chats, let's make it real. 

Thanks for friends across the world, both near and far. Domingo called from Ecuador, and Fin is a friend from Peru. In the last few months I've had delicious chats with Laura in Madrid, Dutch Sophie in Lima, two Swiss Mirjams, both in Zurich, Sandra in Buenos Aires, British Beec in Melbourne, Clubba who lives in the US, Jochen (NZ/Denmark), Copenhagen Steen... and many more. I love you all and I am grateful for you. 

Inbetweenies Ralph and Mo' Unisa of Germany, Russia and Hebden Bridge... And of course lovely Kate from just next door to my last place, and Rebecca, Lindsey, Bo, various Karens, neighbours in my new place who have introduced themselves just like that, Margot, so patient, and family, who I love and appreciate more with every second.

Having experienced just ten days this time of homelessness, I give such thanks for my home, for this place of safety for me and my furgirls. And for my bed, which is, I think the phrase is 'fucking lovely'. Premier Inn standard, king sized, solid. 

The simple things: love and friendship, shelter, means for food and water. I have these and I'm fucking lucky for it. Now to share. 

Day 696: Proud Like I Birthed Them

Oh, it's started. I am so proud if my two little girl dogs, it's almost embarrassing. On Saturday, we ate a chicken. An actual chicken, roasted in the most nose-tantalising way, left out to stand (sending beautiful chickeny wafts throughout the house). We served it up. There was another dog in attendance, who lay right by the table. And those little hungry, scaredy girls lay snibbling on the sofa, wrapped in each other, as if there might never have existed such a thing as a stinkydelicious chicken in the whole of the world. They didn't whine or beg, they didn't even wag. They just lay there. Bless them SO hard.

Teasel (aka Weasel aka Maureen)

And when I fed them later, they were freakishly quiet and calm (that's not the way, normally - they're frantically anxious and wolfish in their eating). To give the other dog, Rhubarb, credit, she was comatose on the floor having bits of chicken dropped on her head and didn't bother to wake up, so not begging either. 

Last night, they managed to walk on the lead Quite Well for Quite A Long Time. It's the tiny steps! Today too, and although shaking with fear and dragging their little bodies as close to the ground as possible when they first got into the pet shop for a car harness fitting, they calmed and breathed and by the end were wagging and going up to people, all not bothered in their new harnesses. 

The little black one, Mosca/Moshka/Martha* maybe... she gets all the pretty colours because she's got black fur and bright colours look brilliant on her. Fluffbucket Teasel (nee Lija, then Crumpet, possibly Maureen) gets mostly black, because it stands out against her dark-lighted blondness and many of the other colours are a bit unpleasing. Not that they give a shit, obviously. They're dogs. All for my own viewing pleasure, the colours. 

Mosca/Moshka/Martha/Bintface/Janet

Yes, of course they're child substitutes, but with the bonus of being able to leave them and feed them nothing but biscuits, and not do nappies, and although there's no escaping excrement, at least it's usually fairly firm and manageable, unlike the poonamis and poomageddons that babies aim at you. No school either, but bugger me, the training is exhausting. I'm not saying I wouldn't still love a child - it's not a binary choice - and possibly not an entirely influenceable choice at all, on the baby front... and this dogness is good. 

It's amazing how easy it is to love these creatures. They don't need anything except what they need. They are not dissimilators. They can't do pretending very well, or if they try, they do it with such obvious clunk that it's funny to watch. When they machinate, they show it with the very wag of their machiavellian tails. The human equivalent would be a person self-narrating 'I'm lying to you.. .ha haaaa. heeee! Look at me lie! Oh, going to do a lie REALLY WELL now.. .just you watch!'.

Also mosca... fly/sky raisin

I particularly like Teasel's paws - she has big, sandy feet with spaces between her toes that a yogi would have un-yogi-like attachment to. She has the softest eyes and short, very gingery-blond eyelashes. She is pretty, and she has a glorious, curly howl on her. She sounds like the Stranger Danger cat, Charlie, from the Actual 1970s.

And Mosca, with her tiny head and her wriggly body. She licks like a ninja - take your attention off her for a second and she'll have her tongue in your mouth. She is flirtatious and writhey, more apt to throw herself into a stranger's arms if that stranger smells good. She has the most pleasing legpits, if that's what they can be called - the stretchy skin in the armpits of her back legs. And a very fine, lean little belly.

And twattish ears on both of them. Hooray!

Also teasel

They're all official now, these two. They have tags, car harnesses (harni, Catherine?), a vet. They're becoming who they are. Training tantrums have stopped for the moment. They were barking at night and now they're not, because I put some curtains up. Must have been shit going down outside! 

And in other flavours of the world, I'm grateful for beautiful sunlight, wise friends, gentleness and candour. I'm humbled by the luxury of my life and touched, even in less easy moments, by the love in it. 

* Mosca/Moshka, not Moksha, which is of course liberation from Samsara. Noble, but not entirely fitting. I'm not sure Mosca is liberated from Samsara so much as simply to engaged in licking and hoarding and elbowing in. Maybe she IS Moksha after all. 

Day 695: Dog Bore

HA! I've been wanting to revive this blog, so rather than start another, I'm going to continue it... if you want to see pictures of my hairy wonders (now THAT doesn't quite read like it sounded in my head), then follow this blog... there'll be other things too.

I realise (as does anyone who has had the misfortune to have anything to do with me recently) that I've "become" a dog bore. I always was one and having dogs of my own will obviously make it worse, but it's not a new thing. It's a latent condition that's always been there, just waiting to surface. 

And now it has. What I have not been is a dog trainer (I say this as the little black one, who may become Magda, Maureen or Uncle Janet) is sniffing my elbow like it was made of sausage. I'm starting and bloody hell, it's harder than just fussing them and petting them all the time. I know it'll work out, though. 
x