Please note that Kinsley is carrying her little stuffie Spirit, who unfortunately lost one of her eyes when a certain playful dog in this house confused Spirit with one of her toys and nipped off the button eye. Nevertheless, Spirit perseveres. Also, notice what hand she is carrying Spirit in. The girls are down at a music festival this weekend.
Up here in Portland things are quiet, the sky is blue and there's just a little bit of a breeze tonight. At night when the lights are out you can hear a train in the distance. The whistle. Do you remember hearing trains at night at 423 South Main? In the summer when the windows were open in my room I could hear the traffic moving along both Highway 36 and across the Acme parking lot to Highway 35. I'm surprised that no one's sold those sounds as background sounds to lull you to sleep. It has accompanied me to dreamland for years.
In the middle of the afternoon Joan suggested the dog park. Izzy was a little confused but once she realized all four of us were getting into the car she was all in. It was a nice half hour. We mostly sat on the bench with other dog owners. All of the dogs were smaller than Izzy today and some were a little intimidated (also smaller than Gilbert but Gilbert doesn't intimidate anything). But none of the dogs were very much into chasing or being chased, which is what The Iz lives for. I'd trot for ten feet and try to hide behind a tree but Izzy saw through it. But even an uneventful day at the dog park is great for the dogs. When Izzy sees Joan and I moving towards the gate she runs up to me and sits for me to put on her leash. And every days she's a little less fearful about her surroundings. Tonight while we watched TV Izzy laid down on the little dog bed on the floor, fell asleep and was dreaming. She'd move her paws and whimper. No way to know if she had good dreams or bad dreams, but she felt safe enough to dream with us. Previously, if she was sleeping next to you she always had an eye cracked.
I had a good dream last night. I was in college and the coach invited me on the team. The quarterback quit right before the game and the coach told me to go in. We won 17-0. I threw two touchdowns, one to a running back who worked his way through the gridiron and the opposing players to the end zone. The other TD pass was to an end running along the sideline. Usually the dreams I have are about something stressful that could happen in a post office. For instance, having a dream of delivering mail in a heavy downpour, and the ground is so wet that I am sinking into the lawns up to my knees. True slogging. So it was nice to wake up having been the hero in a football game as opposed to delivering mail in a monsoon, the sun disappearing, up to my knees in mud. Anyway.
