we definitely should not get a dog

…but I still keep thinking about it, lately.  A bunch of break-ins in our neighborhood put the thought in my head.  And it would be good to have a guard dog to keep other dogs and foxes away from our animals (we’ve lost chickens to one or both of these).  And, partly, it’s just that enough time has passed since our beloved Samoyed, Kodiak, passed away that I have forgotten how awful the end can be, and can only remember how much fun it is to have a great dog.

What is wrong with me?  Like I need another animal to take care of!  Or another expense in this time of the Ridiculously High Dental Bills, don’t even ask, it’s a nightmare.  But this dog thing, this is nuts.

Still, I keep thinking of a puppy….

I’ve also been thinking of camping at a nearby music festival in the fall—which is SO UNLIKE ME, because I usually hate those things.  Or rather, I get totally overwhelmed in crowds and noise and just want to be home and in the quiet, so what the heck would make me think, oh yeah, camp with the kids in a party of thousands plus four music stages with non-stop NOISE, that sounds like fun.  Wha??

Maybe I’m possessed.

Or maybe it’s a New Chapter, you know that feeling?  Sometimes you know it’s happening because of a clear marker i.e. you finish some training program, you move to a new city, you have a baby.  But looking back I can see other times when I haven’t noticed a new chapter starting until after the fact.  In hindsight I can see, oh yeah, things really shifted when [fill in the blank]. After that, I was a different person.  Sometimes it sneaks up on you.

I went to visit my grandmother not long ago and had this strange experience looking into her bedroom mirror, the same Grandma’s Bedroom Mirror I have looked into my whole life.  I hadn’t been to see her at her house in a few years and seeing myself in that mirror this time—I looked totally different to myself.  Not physically.  Everything else.  It was weird, as if I was looking back on all those other times and that girl was someone else.

I bet everyone has a few moments like that in their lives, when you become acutely aware that your life is moving along, you’re not who you used to be, things have changed.

I am turning 40 in a few months, so maybe it’s a mid-life thing.  Not a ‘recapture your youth’ mid-life thing, because I really feel okay about getting older. Rather  a ‘turning a corner’ mid-life thing.  It’s interesting.

But a dog, that’s just silly, right?  And not only that, I seem to be attracted to these gigantic dogs, a fluffy white Great Pyrenees, what the hell am I thinking?  Well, I can’t afford a shrink, maybe a puppy is just the mood-lifter I’m needing to move into the next piece of whatevertheheck this life thing is that I’m doing, that we’re all doing.

(No, Maya, just step away from the computer and stop googling pictures of puppies.  Right now.  Step away.)