Freddie Mercury is about to learn something, we think, maybe.

It seems like a lot of people have moved on from Game of Thrones*, so having a direwolf is not as chic as I thought it was going to be when I first started wanting one, and dying my hair blonde and eating stallions’ hearts.

But our Freddie is 95 pounds of fur and love. She’s a little bit of a biter, if you count her feisty on-leash behavior, and both Tom and I have some sweet little teeth marks to show where she loved on us harder than she meant to when we couldn’t let her cross the street to lick a Yorkipoo.

It’s emotional for me to be away from her for a couple of weeks while she’s at obedience camp, since our souls are linked for eternity, and every morning I find myself going over to her bowl and filling it with water out of habit, and every night I find myself instinctively hunting down my siblings’ enemies, since she’s not here to do that sort of thing. I think it’s good that we’re sending her though, even if it changes her personality a little bit, which is Tom’s big fear. If she comes back in a couple of weeks able to control her impulses on a grade school level, and still able to relish ripping the squeaker out of her monthly shipment of plush flamingos and then flop over for a belly scratch, I will call it a success.

*another casualty of the global pandemic

Curiosity, Politics, Shhh…

The daughter I mentioned having in another post, who was, in that one–for narrative purposes–almost eleven, is, as it turns out, actually eleven now and has started acting more–yawn–socially aware. The other day she asked me if there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. I have no idea where this came from, unless it’s that darn Montessori again. At home, we make a point never to discuss politics, calories, or Jon Snow’s parentage, but children develop curiosities all the same. You are likely not eleven, and I don’t want to be patronizing, so here’s an abridgment of what I told her:

Federalists, Abraham Lincoln, some of my best friends, blood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Religion, things that frighten people.

I voted, you know, but I did not discuss it. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that because I’m an airhead who falls down a lot that I’ve completely checked out.

Hey, can I get sentimental for a moment? Because I’m just remembering another time my daughter asked me about the differences between people. We were living in Vermont, so she couldn’t have been two yet, and she and her little friend [boy] were playing in the river. When his mother was changing him out of his wet swimsuit, my daughter observed that [N.] “has a different bottom”. I was sure I was out of earshot of my grandmother in Virginia, so I decided it would be all right to be kind of Vermonty and open, and not just change the subject and offer her a maple candy. “Yes he does,” I said. Not an easy conversation, to be sure, but, I mean–now that I have an eleven year-old, I’m feeling pretty smug that I got it out of the way when I did!

Dream Animals, Chris Farley, I Lie

My teenage whininess forced my mother to join a Jungian women’s group, where she learned her Dream Animal is a giraffe. Maybe it was a book group and a Jungian analyst? It’s possible I’m conflating some things. When it comes to personal minutiae, the responsibility for keeping track flows more from parent to child than the other way around, eh?

Anyway, this blog, which I started as an assignment for a class I’m taking, got leaked a little bit because of @kplawson9’s enthusiasm for social media, and I was reminded why I have always liked to write a once-a-year Christmas letter on a typewriter, glue a Polaroid or a candy cane to it, and mail it via USPS to anyone whose address I might still have in my little red planner from the Coach outlet, Senior Skip Day, Norfolk Academy, 1994. Remember when Chris Farley used to interview celebrities on SNL and then immediately berate himself for whatever he said? I think it’s kind of obvious that I live like Chris Farley: balls out, immediately regretting almost everything I say.

So I wanted to make it clear that in my previous post I meant “Dream Animal” in a Jungian sense, to the extent I remember, or ever knew what that means. I don’t dream of owning a German Shepherd in the same way I dream of being able to kitesurf, or being a bartender/ski bum in Aspen with no children. Though I do seem to do a lot of daydreaming about it, and to friends who’ve apparently heard a little much about the potential unrecommended dog, it’s become known as my direwolf, and I don’t even know if those exist outside of Game of Thrones. Don’t tell me, because I enjoy imagining myself as Daenerys, with my big loyal direwolf following me to Whole Foods and Montessori. I know–Daenerys has dragons. But that’s not very likely to happen is it? The last thing I want is to end up with an unruly, un-furry dragon, and the whole de-clawing issue again. All I meant was, when I’ve taken the right combination of sleep medications, or performed my yoga fire breaths–this second thing is an aspirational lie, ugh, and an unintentional pun, which I hate but now I’ve said it and can’t un-type–to dream vividly, the animal most likely to appear is a wolf-like dog. But I will do my best to remember not to get one, even though I’m sure they are available online.

I lied about the babies, too. I’m not going to talk about babies.
Next time: I explain my first post, about Austin, which was really more of a Tweet, or a Tumbl? Fingers crossed the topic will be covered in my next class.