5 Things that Happened This Week

Ginger came in for a visit to work. She's Denise's shelter dog and she's a cross between something and a Pomeranian.  I usually prefer medium to large dogs, having developed a certain disdain for yappy little dogs, but Ginger proved not to be a barker and behaved well. She also has a foxy little face and is fluffy, so it's like Denise brought a stuffed animal to work and made it come to life. She let's you carry her around as an accessory as well.

My cat has been dead for over six years now and I still miss her sometimes, like this mrning. I mean, I don't feel sad about it every day; I don't have a shrine to her. I don't keep her ashes next to my bed (though I do have them in this wooden box that's like a recipe box. The vet mailed it to me and I'm certain it contains many different lost cats, mixed together).  With cats, there are really only a handful of stories you can recall about things they did or things that happened to them---it's not like they're constantly interesting or like they can rescue you from wells. but she was my first pet. First pet at age twenty, unless you count aquarium fish, which I do not.  And she meowed constantly and was just always around in a good way.

 

I started reading Tana French's newest book, Broken Harbor and would like to take the next three days to finish it. It's literary detective fiction and so smart and interesting (more interesting than The Interestings, which I think I'm giving up on. I know the book will probably gain momentum, but I don't have the patience or the interest to read a book that starts slow with a bunch of awkward teens at summer camp).  I am trying very very hard not to skip ahead in this book to see what happens.

We get out of work early today because of Monday's holiday, so I'll leave for NJ on a 3-ish train. We have no plans; just the regular weekend in Princeton, where all the magical people live and where you can buy great only slightly used books at the library for $2 and where sometimes, you can pet a rare breed of dog on the street, and where there's also a store that has a fake sheep out front and I always fall for it, thinking it's a Great Pyrenees. Maybe we'll take a ride out to the Orchards, where you can buy apple cider donuts and feed the goats and where the cats run free and don't mind if you pet them.

You can see there is a theme in my life and that theme is animals.

A bunch of gals from work and I went to a free yoga class on Tuesday in a small little conference room and my self-worth was tested yet again by prolonged plank poses.  Since then, I've decided to work on my upper arm strength by doing mini-push-ups in the morning, and I mean mini--like, using about as much force as I employ to bring a glass to my lips. I also realized that, hey, my boyfriend teachers yoga. Why don't I ask him to do a class with me every time we're sitting around watching another episode of Dateline? Instead of eating marshmellow oaties, I could be working on my downward Ginger. We might not even fight about it.

You are caught up. This is all that's going on in my world, my brain, today.