Yuck and yum
Larry was having seizures yesterday and asked me to drive him in his car to urgent care around 9 pm, and when I went over there nobody was answering the door and Larry wasn't answering his phone. He had fallen asleep with Maverick who'd passed out drunk in his bed, and when he woke up he didn't remember calling me, so I had him call his mom so she could fill in the gaps. I mostly wanted to know his insurance to make sure we hit an urgent care that accepted it, which becomes increasingly difficult after 9 pm. But Larry didn't know his insurance, and neither did his mom. Apparently his mom was the one who told him to call me and he didn't remember who I was. As I stood there with him, he did start to return to normal and just wanted to go to sleep. I was telling him how nice his porch is and how I got to enjoy it when I was taking care of Roxie over the weekend, and he was confused about why I'd been there while he was in Tennessee. William had left Roxie unattended while Larry and Maverick were in Tennessee and I have a key, so I went and walked and fed her and Mr. Kitty and cleaned up her piss and shit. I brought Pinky and Geppetto, and they had a ball sniffing through a strange animal house with no humans and a fenced-in dog run. At thirty-five I've finally learned that the secret to dog ownership isn't to train them to behave a certain way it's just to trust that they have a good reason to do what they're doing, because dogs need to sniff and shake to decompress, and run and sleep and scavenge and play.
Fast forward to today and I'm at the dog park talking to Monica about patrolling stations for anti-immigrant activity during the world cup. Larry pulls up with Roxie and Lily and they come in wrestling like they do, and this overexcited 1-year-old dog named Nova got worked up and laid into Roxie, who came out of it with a bloody lip and her tail between her legs. It was bleeding a lot and looked like part of her mucous membrane was dangling off her lip, but an animal nurse just happened to be there and took a look at it. She said he wouldn't need to take her to the vet but needed to take her home and clean it with hydrogen peroxide. He signaled for me to get Nova's dad's number on his way out, but I already knew I wasn't gonna do that. Nova's dad had acted quickly to pull her off Roxie and he had Nova on a leash and seemed sorry and embarrassed, so I went over and told him Roxie was alright. Honestly, if a dog's lip is bleeding, it's just as likely they bit it themselves.
Anyway, Larry had invited me over for burgers, and I'm a glutton, so after I finally took the dogs home I walked over. It was my first time meeting Maverick and he was zombie drunk, like late-stage alzheimer's confusion, with a touch of the golden retriever trying to hug me across the counter and telling me he loved me. I felt bad for Larry, because this guy was reminding me what a pain in the ass drunk people are. But then I stopped feeling bad for Larry because he invited me in his room (where Maverick had finally passed out) to watch an ai video of Krishna spinning records, accompanied by a reggae kirtan. So I thanked him for the delicious burger and told him it was past my bedtime. Then I took a walk around the block and did some thinking and felt like I came home much wiser than I'd left. It's breezy and warm and wet out there after it rained until mid-afternoon. The other night I harvested my first peas and put my mail-order worms in their new in-ground worm bins layered with damp cardboard and food scraps. I transplanted four tomato and three basil seedlings too, and I hope they make it through the week without drowning. The cucumber, pumpkin, and watermelon seedlings are almost ready too. I'm starting them early this year at the advice of a garden club elder who'd told Daryn and me that our cucumber woes might be avoided by planting earlier in the season. I hope he's right, because I'd really love to have homegrown cucumbers again.
I'm currently deep into a Lost addiction. It's a hot bed of immortal tropes and archetypes, it makes me want to rewatch every referential tv show I've ever watched. It's also notable how much older and skinner and more distinct all the actors looked in the early 2000's. I feel like a visitor to the colonies in Brave New World watching this show. The actors' foundation is much more visible, which kinda tracks with what I remember foundation being like, but evidently it's come a long way in recent years to become the dewy natural complexion-matching screen it is now. The makeup, hairstyles, and clothing of Lost are exemplary specimens of the period.
On my walk I decided that if I find another therapist, the pain point I want to tease out is the overnight formation of distaste for a friend, always a particular friend, only one at a time, and apparently no friend is safe. It's a difficult feeling to predict or control. When I make a new friend, I try to imagine myself getting an ick for them, and I can't, but inevitably I still do. I suspect it has something to do with an inability to observe my own boundaries. A person with weak boundaries is helpless around other people, so they only feel free and safe when they're alone. They don't resent people for asking too much of them, they resent people for putting them in a position where they have to say no. On my walk I was also thinking about what a stupid idiot I am for getting married, but still I don't regret it. I can't resist selling myself out for a joke every time I get the opportunity. If I could, I wouldn't be me. And I thought about Izzy and his Peter Pan syndrome, and the crystallization of his idealized self-image.
One last thing- I found a metal cartoon Pauly Shore with his leaning tower of cheeza in the dog park today and took it home. I can't tell what it came off of, but the back was definitely welded onto something previously. They don't make heavy merchandise like this anymore and it shows distinct signs of aging.
And since I smoked Larry's overpowering pre-roll from Tennessee all these scenes came to me as complementary beads on a thematic strand.