Summer

 It's summer. It's a weird one. The day after school ended, Cook and Skipper went to Detroit, realizing a longtime dream of Skipper's. They watched three baseball games at Comerica Park, and of course the Tigers lost every game badly. Fortunately, Cook and Skipper were emotionally prepared for that outcome, and took it in stride. They did some other touristing - they saw the Little Caesars global headquarters, and looked across the lake to Canada. They seem to have had a very good time. They even got to attend a game with one of my excellent cousins, who schlepped up from Champaign for the occasion. He's a White Sox fan, but Cook and Skipper forgive him. While they were gone, Duchess and I ate snacks for dinner. It was delightful.

Once the dust settled from that adventure, Duchess started work (as a camp counselor at the Dungeons-and-Dragons-in-the-wilderness program she used to attend herself), and moved into her boyfriend's family house to dogsit for them while they were in France for 2 weeks. She found this much more taxing than she expected - long days of non-stop child-wrangling followed by dog-wrangling and house-keeping feels like a lot. And then a crow got stuck in the chimney at the house, and died slowly and horribly over three days (in a heatwave) while we slowly figured out a) that something was in the chimney,*b) that it was a crow, c) that it couldn't get out, d) which organizations/companies will remove a live crow from a chimney,** e) that the company that WOULD remove a live crow from a chimney couldn't come onto the property without signed permission from the homeowner, who was asleep in France at the relevant time. It was awful. And then their refrigerator died, and Duchess and Cook spent hours cleaning up the mess. The lesson here is NEVER HOUSESIT.

And then we sent Skipper to Sweden. By herself. For a MONTH. She was very clear-eyed in the planning that it would be challenging and lonely for her, but she wanted to do it. However, as the date approached, she felt increasingly terrified, and so did I. But she set her shoulders and got on that plane, and launched into the unknown. She is spending a couple of weeks couchsurfing with our generous relatives, including a long stint at the family summerhouse, and then attending a 2-week Swedish language camp in Stockholm. (I'm going to Sweden for the last week of her tenure, to see friends and family and do some touristing in Stockholm before retrieving her.) Here she is (photo courtesy of my mom) with another of my excellent cousins. 

And here is that same cousin with me and my brother at the summerhouse a long time ago.

And here she is with my mom (photo courtesy of my excellent cousin).

We miss her terribly, and it's really weird being without her. Duchess is still housesitting, and Cook and I are getting a preview of empty-nesting (except that Duchess comes over for dinner and drops off her dirty laundry, and needs our help with crows and other crises). It is clear that I need something to do with myself in the post-children-in-the-house era; I think I need to invest over the next few years in figuring out some hobbies.

* Please, for everybody's sake, CAP YOUR CHIMNEYS.

** Chimney sweeps, for example, won't remove a live bird.

MORE vacationing close to home

We went to Herron Island for the weekend - a weird private island deep in the crevices of Puget Sound. We did a lot of not very much. We read, we watched movies, we played dumb games on our phones (well, I did, at least), we walked around the island, we admired the probably problematically friendly deer, we messed around at the island's park where they have pickleball stuff (we do not actually know how to play pickleball) and a big field full of deer poop, and we paddled about on a flotilla of paddle-things. It was pretty great.

Dogs #10 and #11

 We're done with long-term fostering, but we're keeping the door slightly ajar for very occasional short-term back-up fostering. We have had two dogs pass through, recently. The first was a lovely older gentleman who adores people - but dislikes other dogs on and off the leash and has a mighty desire to kill small animals. He's been in foster/boarding for a looooooong time, and we were asked to give him a break from the boarding kennel. 

The second is a young dog who also adores people, wants to murder small animals, and is unpleasantly leash-reactive to other dogs. Her foster family had an emergency and had to leave town for a few days on a few hours' notice. This girl is the snuggliest dog we've ever hosted, desperate to crawl into everybody's lap and nibble on your ears. 

When I packed up her crate and food so she could be picked up by her foster family, she got really worried, and lay down and moped (not her normal state), clearly alarmed by the prospect of yet another abandonment. (She was super-happy to see her foster people and their dog, though, when they arrived.) 

One of the things I've learned from fostering is that while dogs are resilient - some more than others - they are damaged by abandonment and neglect and that damage doesn't go away. You can help them work around it, you can heal them up a bit, and it fades over time, but it never goes away. I think the kids have learned that, too, - I hope they will never make the mistake of getting a dog without committing to the whole dog and the whole dog's life.

We're still okay, pretty much

 I've developed a new facial twitch, and I stayed up till midnight last night finishing the Hilary Mantel trilogy. (Was I sobbing loudly in the bathroom at 11:45, sitting on the step stool, hunched over Thomas Cromwell's execution? Yes I was.) And tonight I attended a video conference meeting hosted by the principal of the middle school, learning about how Skipper will experience her 6th-grade fall. It's really sad and shitty, and I am feeling angry and sad about all of this. 

However, Skipper and Dog #4 and I went camping! It was fun.

Dog #4 and actually all the dogs

I feel I should correct the record on Dog #4, who turned out to be affable and relatively low-maintenance. He arrived with the name "Rocky"* but since he was a stray, we can call him whatever we damn please, and there's nothing about this dog's personality that calls for "Rocky." (Dog #1 was an owner surrender whose owner didn't have time for him, which is ludicrous because that dog just wanted to sleep in your bed all day, and his name was "Maddy Boy," but we didn't have the heart to take away the single point of stability in his life.)  I'm pretty sure Dog #4's name should be Kevin or Jason, because he feels like a midwestern junior in college in the '90s who's the nicest guy in one of the lower-key fraternities. His soul wears khakis every day. However, the kids outvoted me, and we're calling him Teddy.

Teddy is a sweetheart. He knows no commands, and his elbow calluses suggest he's spent a lot of time sleeping on concrete, but he doesn't act like a yard dog. He loves being petted, lets you take food right out of his mouth, sleeps uncomplainingly in his crate, is easy to walk on a leash, and adorably insists on pawing all his blankets and cushions into a complicated nest. He's got a few negative points. He peed in the house once. He's un-neutered (which the girls find embarrassing and horrifying), so he actually drools and licks obsessively when he smells plants that lady dogs have peed on, and he will hump people if you let him get both paws up on any body part, but we've learned to head it off by never letting him get both paws up on any body part. (And he's got a neutering appointment in two weeks, which should temper the humping a little.) The vet thinks the sad raw skin on his back and sides is a bacterial infection secondary to a flea infestation, but he has no fleas now, and his skin is healing up nicely. A few ticks have come off him - after Dog #2 we're pretty sanguine about ticks in quantities smaller than fifty. Duchess is a pro at tick removal, and we keep them in a jar on a shelf. 

Conclusion: a week in, Dog #4 is giving Dog #1 some strong competition for Best Dog Yet. We'll see how he shakes out. 

I've learned a lot about fostering since signing up. It has been rewarding, but I don't think we'd have signed up for it if we knew then what we know now. It makes a very very (VERY) tiny dent in all the overwhelming awfulness of the world, which feels both good and wildly inadequate in the current state of things. I didn't realize that dogs come to you in a state of physical and emotional distress - even if they're not coming off of years of neglect, they are coming off of weeks or more in a stressful shelter environment and then a long trip. Even Dog #1, who had a naturally confident and even-keeled temperament, and whom I don't think had been abused or even really neglected, spent a lot of his first week with us just sleeping in his crate, doing what the dog rescue fanatics call "decompressing." You're supposed to keep your house very calm, keep the dog confined to a small area, only interact with them when they approach you, and more or less ignore them otherwise. It takes weeks (or longer, for the worse-off dogs) for them to feel safe enough to start to relax and be themselves. And then, if you're successful, they get adopted and you cry.  (I have high hopes for Teddy, whose awful-looking skin was making him a very unattractive adoption prospect straight out of the shitty under-resourced shelter he was living at - I think he'll be very adoptable once he's neutered and his fur grows back.) And then, unless you've had enough, you start all over again with another dirty, exhausted, stressed out, bug-infested, bacteria-infected, peeing-in-the-house, sad-eyed beastie whose personality and history is a total unknown.

*As far as I can tell, every pitbull who arrives at any shelter is given one of maybe six names- Rocky, Champ, Blue, Missy, Sadie, or Nala. 

Frayed around the edges, but let's talk about pets

We're fine. Not thriving, but fine. Cook and I are still employed. Kids "passed" their distance learning classes (though I'm pretty sure they learned nothing). Here they are, in a rare moment of being together and not actively crying or yelling at me or eachother.

But I'm here today to tell you about the pets. 2020 is the year of Pandemic, Social Collapse and Pet Adventures at Our House.

1) Regarding Guinea Pigs. Snufkin is dead. He got bladder stones and started peeing blood and crying in pain, and we had him euthanized. There was a whole ethical crisis around this (we COULD have gotten him expensive surgery and a lifetime of medicine with no guarantee the stones wouldn't recur, leaving me awake at night pondering the ramifications of holding a small life in my hands and whether I was euthanizing him because he's never liked us, etc.), but we did it. RIP Snufkin. (He got to eat a last meal of treats that we'd never given him before.)

And then we set about trying to replace him, because guinea pigs do not like to be alone. We went back to the guinea pig rescue fanatics and tried speed-dating Momo with a couple of potential buddies. She was okay with one of them, Fracas, so we took him home. He was really charming - much more curious and friendly than Snufkin or Momo have ever been.

But when we took him home, we realized pretty quickly that he was also peeing blood. I told the kind guinea pig fanatics that I could not do this again, and they took him back. (Turned out he had a bladder stone and an enormous kidney stone, so he's now in hospice care at the rescue.) We tried speed-dating again, but Momo, as it turns out, is too passive to manage most males, and wasn't compatible with the few females available. They don't adopt out unspayed females, and spays are non-essential procedures, so we're waiting until they have some more spayed females ready for speed-dating. Hopefully we'll get Momo a buddy sometime soon so she doesn't die of loneliness. Pro tip: Guinea pigs are terrible pets.

2) Regarding The Dogs. We have had a series of foster dogs. Cook does not particularly enjoy dogs, so this has been a sacrifice for him, and they have been a lot of work, but they do provide something to think about that isn't us, which I do appreciate.

Dog #1 was a lovely, mild-mannered giant American Bulldog mix who was confident and able to self-regulate. He loved tug of war and lying in very soft places. In retrospect, we can see that he was exceptionally easy. (Pro tip: by all accounts and our anecdotal experience, American Bulldogs are excellent pets.) We had him for maybe six weeks, and then he was adopted.

Dog #2, an old boxer mix, arrived late at night, straight from a 14 hour drive in a van full of dogs from a shelter in Northern California. She also arrived infested with ticks and with a burgeoning case of pneumonia. She was quite fat (thyroid issue) and had very limited mobility. She also didn't much care for people, but defended our house and me (as her food source) with unpleasant barking, growling, and snarling. None of us much liked her, but we all felt a lot of sympathy for her because of the neglect that brought her to the situation and condition she was in. (Old dogs, apparently, make up a lot of the shelter population because nobody wants them.) We had her for a couple weeks, long enough to get her over the pneumonia and ticks (Duchess was our expert tick wrangler - life skills!). When she snapped at Skipper, we asked the dog rescue fanatics to move her to another foster home, which they did. (She subsequently was moved to another home, one free of dogs, cats, children and stairs. Not an easy dog, and I can't imagine she'll ever be adopted.)

Dog #3 is a subfoster from another foster household who went on a dog-free weeklong vacation. He's our first dog under 85 pounds, a medium-sized pitbull mix who would like to spend all his time in your lap. He's our most people-loving dog so far, coming up to people wiggling and smiling and wanting love. He also is horrible to walk, because he pulls a lot is distracted by everything, forgets there's a person at the end of the leash, and lunges hard at passing bicycles, motorcycles, squirrels, and other dogs. Also, he occasionally marks pee in the house so he has to be supervised constantly.

Dog #4 is about to arrive tonight, a few hours after Dog #3 leaves - he may be the last for us for a while. He is a medium-large middle-aged pitbull, infested with fleas and with some kind of skin condition that's probably mange, and he's unneutered, so we'll be making some vet trips (and probably cleaning up a lot of pee...).

So there we are. Maintaining at one dog and one guinea pig. I hope you and all your pets are well, and that nobody is peeing blood right now in your home.

Welp

Still at home. Kids have no school for the rest of the year at least. I don't know if I'm going to have a job after six months. Cook is furloughed for a tenth of his time. Everything is crazy. And there's still no toilet paper on the shelves half the time when I grocery shop.

Our temp dog got adopted on Monday, and we are feeling sad about it. He had been cuddling with both kids a lot (they let him on their beds, and he LOVES a soft place with people on it), and they miss him most. We told the foster people we're ready for our next dog RIGHT AWAY.







































































I administered quarantine haircuts last weekend. Verdict is still out.

Working from home is hard. Like everyone lucky enough still to be working, I'm struggling with distinguishing work from personal; it all swirls together. Cook and I did invest in some office set-up equipment (headphones!) and time, acknowledging that we're not going back to any "normal" office commute any time soon. The bedroom is now my office, with an old piece of kitchen furniture repurposed as a standing desk. Cook shares the study with the guinea pigs. The TV is now in the basement. I know my way around all the video conference software, and roll my eyes (with video off) at people who still can't manage to "raise hand" in Zoom. I attended a two-day virtual conference this week, complete with networking sessions.

We watched every single one of the Star Wars movies. (Okay, I didn't actually sit through all of them with full attention. You got me. Lots of them aren't very watchable.) Skipper and I have developed shared escapist/vegetable habits of playing Stardew Valley on the Switch and watching Parks and Recreation.

I just feel really, really tired. So tired. I just want to live in Stardew Valley and plant parsnips.

Temp Dog

We're fostering a dog! Sent in an application ten days ago, had a phone interview with the coordinator last Monday, got a dog on Tuesday. (He had arrived from a shelter in Northern California last Saturday.) He's enormous, but he's crate-trained and house-broken, doesn't lunge on the leash, doesn't bark, and is generally a nice guy. He'll get listed on the shelter website next week, and then we just wait for adopters. It's nice to have something else to think about (though my work has suffered this week), and he gets me out of the house. And sometimes when he's asleep, he wags his tail because something awesome is happening in his dreams.

Spring has really sprung.

This is Duchess after returning from her regatta.
























We're dogsitting again! She helped Cook lounge in the hammock, and Duchess do her homework.