Storm

Here I am, up with Lucy at 4:15 as she shivers and pants her way through the storm that's plowing through here this a.m. It's raining cats and frogs and there's nearly continual thunder and lightening.

The power is out.

I'm hoping that the stuff I gave Lucy will take effect some time soon. I am beginning to wish I hadn't stopped work on that ark. And forget the equivocation on the "nearly continual" thunder and lightening. It's an all the time thing.

I presently live about 2/10ths of a mile from where my grandmother used to live when I was a kid. I used to stay with her a lot in the summer. I never had any fear of thunder and lightening but I guess she must have had some. Whenever there was a thunder and lightening storm she used to wake me up, get me more or less dressed (like, I'd have a coat and socks and shoes plus my pajamas), and she'd get us out to the car, having unplugged everything in the house. Then she'd drive around - my grandfather never went with us on these drives - until the storm had passed.

She drove around town, what there is/was of one; we never stopped to watch the storm action and we almost never talked during the drive. She just drove. Then the storm would be over. She'd drive back home, fix some Lipton tea with milk, and we'd go back to bed.

This storm is moving off as I write. Sounds like to the northeast. It should be quiet enough in less than an hour, if it continues to travel at its current speed, for Lucy to settle down and for me to go back to bed.

Ah geeeez. Another rain band barreling through.

I've unplugged my computer and the other electronics. The sky has lightened and morning is here.

'scuse me while I go make some tea.

D/DWWMSG Recommends One Nation Under Dog

I came home late from work recently - as I am wont to do too often lately - to be greeted by my faithful canine, Lucy who was all excited and very insistent that I pay full and immediate attention while she told me, in detail, about that night's proceedings of her Dogs/Doodles With Working Moms Support Group (D/DWWMSG).

She felt especially heard, she said, with this group. Way more nourishing than her reading group (which meets on the nights I teach creative writing) and her chess club (which meets on the Sunday afternoons when I must attend meetings of Downeast Farmers' Alliance).

It seems that some of the dogs (she's the only Doodle) in the D/DWWMSG are also in the reading group. All are excited about One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics, and Organic Pet Food. http://www.indiebound.org/book/0805087117

She has long been concerned, Lucy said, about the elevation of canines to their new status which, she believes, robs them of their rich and most essential dogness. But only recently, thanks to her support group, has she been able to put her thoughts into words. It's been a real breakthrough. Perhaps you can relate.

She believes that many canines who are taking prozac, for example, feel that the emphasis placed by human keepers on things like facials, counseling/channeling, high-end dog care products, and so on have, by their insistence on anthropomorphizing the dog they live with, deeply disenfranchised their dog from the pack.

In essence, no one has sought to ask dogs what THEY want! (Except for those who represent that they channel dogs but Lucy says most in her circle wryly assess that humans who purport to channel dogs are really channeling their own chemical imbalance.)

So I feel like I got a good overall sense of her concerns - she couldn't go into detail because of confidentiality expectations - and I promised that I'd pass on to this group, and to others who live with dogs, about the book and the website.

The bottom line, for Lucy anyway, (she wisely insists that she does not and cannot speak for all dogs everywhere) is simply this: It's The Toys, Stupid!