This week 2 injured kittens found their way into the Dogtor's clinic from the shelter.  One was hit by a car, and the other had his paw slammed into a cage by accident.  But both are in casts.  

Cats in casts can still play and run.  This little guy is a purr monster.  Here's to strong spirits, resiliency. 

x
M

I've always been interested in vanity, my own especially.  I explore the idea in my story from BOLP, "Saving Face."  In "Saving Face" a female veterinarian has her face bitten when a dog wakes up early from anesthesia - weeks before her wedding.  She has a crisis of confidence, worried her fiance now feels more obligation than genuine attraction to her.  She's aware of the power of her looks, how they are changed, and how the world responds differently to her now that her face is severely scarred. 

As the mother of two girls, I already find myself aware of their looks, and I try very hard to ignore them.  Some days my girls are the sweaty, booger-faced kids on the playground.  Some days, like today, they go to school with garden dirt underneath their nails and cat hair on their clothes.  I let them both pick out their outfits in the morning, and sometimes F prances downstairs in a blinding array of patterns that make my eyes bleed, and yet I'm proud of her for wearing what makes her feel good, even if it is a too-small pair of grass-stained shorts over striped tights, paired with cowboy boots and a second hand t-shirt.

Me, at hair time:  Tell me your vision.
F:  I want pig tails, three ribbons, and a clip in my hair.
Me:  Let's do this.  

This weekend F got stung by a black fly.  Three of them, actually.  And one bite made her right eye swell COMPLETELY SHUT.  She looked like Sloth from the Goonies.   She kept her good eye VERY WIDE OPEN, maybe so that it could work extra hard; I'm not sure.  

Come Monday she still couldn't see. 

Me, overly happy about the idea:  You can stay home with me!
F, annoyed:  No.  I want to go to school.
Me:  But you can only see out of one eye?  And you're hopped up on Benadryl. 
F, eating yogurt, staring me down with her good eye:  I don't care.
Me:  People might ask you about it - is that okay?
F, rolling her good eye:  I don't care!

I worried, briefly, that she'd get made fun of at school, and had to fight the urge to "save" her from this.  But I felt so proud of her for not worrying about it, and I wanted to honor the pluck, the lack of self-consciousness.  And I knew I had to shut my mouth before I gave her that self-consciousness.  What a nasty gift.

At F's age (4), I'm learning, a wound is collateral.  Battle scars are cool, conversation starters, rites of passage.  The more grotesque the better.  I cringe when I remember going to school after the orthodontist, wanting to wear my "head gear" orthodontics, which were really supposed to be worn at night.   What the heck was I bragging about there?  My suffering, I think.  Oh world.  Look how I have suffered and endured.  Look at my gear.

And the fact that F's swollen face happened to land on school picture day?  Even better.  F's wonky eye - but most importantly her pluck - is immortalized.  

One of the occupational hazards of veterinary medicine is the fact that you will come across dogs in need.  Weekly.  Sometimes these dogs are very cute.  They might, for example, have big eyes and a smushy snout and long curly ears and Muppet feet.

They might also be deaf, have a UTI, exhibit separation anxiety and snore like a train.

Introducing:  Little Edie Bacon, who was found wandering in Bennington, VT.  Shelters, groomers, and vets have been called - no one knows this dog, and no one has come looking.  Edie Bacon was not thriving in the shelter, and so we scooped her up and are getting her well.  Who knows if we'll keep her or simply foster her until another great home is found, but she is loved, receiving good care, and has a couch to sleep on/stink up. 

Working with a hearing impaired dog is a new experience for us.  When she wanders off, we can't call her.  When she yodels and whines we can't shush her.  When we leave a room, she can't hear us, and she worries.  Edie B is particularly in love with the Dogtor, and when he's out of sight, her world is destroyed, and she sings what F and I are now calling:  The Sad Love Song of Edie B.

My friend T over at Wing and a Prayer Farm hosted us for a round of lamb cuddling, and the Dogtor took some great video footage of the impossibly cute, 2 day old Shetland lambs.  (Focus on the lambs and not my weird runner-farmer outfit).   

Warning:  the wholesomeness of this video may be too much for you.  Do not watch if you have a dark soul.  Or do watch and be temporarily cured.  

Let me tell you, there are few things better than cuddling a lamb.  You should seek out this opportunity right away.  I left feeling more at peace with the world, and to a woman with skyrocketing environmental anxiety, that's no small thing. 

I also want lambs.   God bless their gentle, wooly souls.  

Just get outside.  It solves nearly everything.   

Sprinkler jumping is a quintessential way to fall in love with outside time, right?

I had to work hard this winter to show my girls a positive relationships with the outdoors, teach them to love the natural world.  Now that the sun has been out and the garden is growing, we're all having an easier time with it.  

Always in the back of my mind, a quote from Stephen Jay Gould:  "We will not fight to save what we do not love." 

Ploughshares put up a lovely piece about me, the Dogtor, and our pets.

As an aside, I should admit that I really played that "pregnant women shouldn't change the litterbox" card, and, two years after having my last child, may still be playing it.  

Ever imagined what havoc climate change might wreak on hospitality?  Picture me serving you up a slim portion of turkey jerky, or in the near term slapping your wrist with my spatula when you run the water too long. 

What to do with all this environmental anxiety?  Tune it out or take it in?  What to say to your daughter when she dreams about becoming a mother, and you worry that the quality of her life on earth may not lend itself to such a decision?

My thoughts here, at The Rumpus. 

There's also a gorgeous essay by Charles Mann up on Orion about the "success" of species and what it means for homo sapiens that we've become so "successful."  The last paragraph, to me, is such an achievement:  

Our record of success is not that long. In any case, past successes are no guarantee of the future. But it is terrible to suppose that we could get so many other things right and get this one wrong. To have the imagination to see our potential end, but not have the imagination to avoid it. To send humankind to the moon but fail to pay attention to the earth. To have the potential but to be unable to use it—to be, in the end, no different from the protozoa in the petri dish. It would be evidence that Lynn Margulis’s most dismissive beliefs had been right after all. For all our speed and voraciousness, our changeable sparkle and flash, we would be, at last count, not an especially interesting species.

So the Dogtor and I went to a 90s party last weekend.  Doesn't he make an amazing Slash?

The best part happened on the way to the car:  

Axl:  Slash, do you think you could hold the deviled eggs?
Slash, method acting:  (grunts yes)

The weirdest part of the 90s party was hearing Fiona Apple's Criminal, because it reminded me of this, uh, girl I used to know who drove around South Carolina in her rattling blue Honda, worrying about everything, so full of angst, ideas, and rage.  Just on the verge of explosion, every day.  I just want to give her a hug and say:  

Honey, it's all going to work out okay.  You can drink a little less vodka, cry fewer tears, fight with less people about the theory of evolution.  And get this?!  You actually become a writer.  No, really.  You do.  No, not a poet, so you can stop writing those heinous poems - your mom is totally going to find them one day, or maybe your kids, so just stop leaving humility-bombs in your personal records.  Stop now.

And get this too - you're going to have a weird moment, like fifteen years from now, when you're dressed as Axl Rose, listening to what used to be your high school rage song, eating a deviled egg that came out of your hen on the farm you own twelve hours away from the place you grew up. You're talking pre-school politics with friends.  Your husband is dressed as Slash and eating macaroni and cheese.  Your two kids are with the babysitter.

The girl in the blue Honda rolls her eyes, is secretly interested and amazed, and goes back to writing dark poetry, and plasters the Darwin fish on the back of her car, and loses another decade to self-doubt.  

Girl!  I told you!

Also, the mom in me totally wants to feed Fiona a pie.  But if she released that song tomorrow, I'd go crazy for it all over again.
x
M

Before I moved to Vermont, I didn't notice these things:  bird calls, migration patterns, the day the barn swallows or robins showed up in a yard.  Maybe it's because I was estranged from nature; maybe it's because I hadn't yet moved to a place where you become all-out desperate for spring.  But for the last four years, the return of the peepers has been an important milestone for me, and yesterday "our" swamp (everyone should have a go-to swamp) came alive.   A chorus of peepers and red-winged blackbird calls.  

And my unstable cinematography.  

xo
M

I was just admiring an artist friend's picture of Putin the other day, only to discover I had attempted the same photo, un-ironically. 

I don't know what this says about me.  But I think Putin is soul-searching with his chick, and I think I'm merely admiring this chick's head-puff.