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

Feline Blindness, American Positivity, Otherwise German

I closed my blind, seventeen year-old cat in the space underneath the freezer drawer recently. He has lost so much weight since his sister died that he fit without causing the door to catch. His meow, which guests routinely mistake for a baby’s whimper, sounded distant, the way it sounded on mornings I used to discover him outside the kitchen slider after a rogue night on the deck.
What is the word that means the same thing as widow, but refers instead to one left behind by a half-sibling? In German, of course, it’s Halbgeschwisterwitwe. Maybe it’s the same in English but just not very common here*.

If it’s true that emotions affect our physical well-being, I ache to think I may have contributed to Garp’s health problems as a sibling-widower by going on and on in front of him about getting a puppy. I wonder if he understands the power of positivity.

A few weeks ago I added both good energy and electrolytes to my physical therapy regimen, and my leg has stopped hurting when I run uphill. For the purpose of running euphoria, I am tempted to have warm thoughts even more often–it seems to work for Kilian Jornet–but I guess I’m a little bit afraid of losing my edginess and my dirty Hendrick’s martinis.

The German word for children-who-are-gradually-getting-more-allergic-to –their- seventeen-year-old-sibling-widowed-cat-while-they-wait-to-get-a-puppy is not used in English because we don’t like to admit the truth of it, just as we don’t read our children the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales. In either case, we hate to see our children teary and bloodshot.

*e.g. Schadenfreude is in Webster’s Dictionary, but we don’t use it very much because the sentiment is so un-American.

Blessings, Bivalves, Blame

Some of my timing was off—I have only two ovens. But I think I came into the Thanksgiving meal as open-hearted as I ever am (period,) and I felt like I meant it when I told the family— both sides, all siblings, all parents— that they were welcome to offer a blessing of their choice before I started around with the platter of turkey, as long as they said it silently, so we could all live and let live, man. I guess I got flustered anyway—I mean, even though my intentions were honest—because I remember being heckled a little, and then, as a result, not allowing people time to be introspective or thankful, and then hearing myself say “amen.” Grandmother Shippy is scolding me gently from wherever she believes she ascended/went/is. But mostly for the texture of the chocolate silk pie—I can’t find her recipe.

Maybe I should have given a toast instead. Not the kind where I lose a $40 bet because Cookie always keeps his wits, and ten minutes is a long time to let a nice Malbec go untouched when you’re eating a hamburger. Probably also not the kind Pete Evans gives at the end of every episode of Moveable Feast by Fine Cooking. (If that is the official name of the show, they just got the extra strong opinions equivalent of the Colbert Bump.) It was hard to imagine why anyone would want or need a non-competitive cooking show not starring Christopher Kimball, but I DVR’d it because I heard Marcus Samuelsson was going to be making his yardbird, and I wondered if I could cut any corners next time. (No.) Pete Evans’ huge, relentless smile, Alex DeLarge eyes, and fake Australian accent make it infomercial-addictive. Well, the internet says he’s fair dinkum Australian, but he sounds like an Outback Steakhouse commercial, and I don’t mind saying something a little biting, because he thinks the Paleo diet can cure autism. After raving to Kay about this guy, and trying out my own Australian accent on her—it cuts in and out, but I can do “nice carrot salad” consistently—I went back to see if I was remembering him correctly. He must go on and off his meds–it seems unlikely his enthusiasm for San Francisco chocolate is simply 1000 times greater than his enthusiasm for New England bivalves. Then again, I suppose the imperative to misappropriate Hemingway at the end of every show was likely not his decision. But if there’s one thing the holidays and family remind us, it’s that it doesn’t matter whom you blame, just find someone close to you.