Doing the Day

Morning smooches

I overheard a friend talking on the phone to her boyfriend before work one day this past month.  I know you all are thinking I was eavesdropping, but I wasn't doing so intentionally.  Really.  I was just in the same small room and I can't exactly close my ears.  Regardless, she was saying goodbye to him and told him,

"I've got to go, Babe.  I've got to go do this day"

While I never said anything to her (Sarah - you know this is you if you're reading this) that day, her words have rung in my head like a tolling church bell in a cathedral tower.  What a statement!  It wasn't a whiny complaint about trudging through another monotonous day.  It wasn't a complaint at all.  It was a statement of intent and purpose. I was impressed with her sense of purpose and engagement.

Arwen and Nyxie do every day.  They don't crawl out of bed, struggling to shake sleep and dreading the day's events.  They meet each morning like an old friend.  They wake and are ready to dive into the day.  I suspect that they're also quite interested in me making breakfast, but that's another matter altogether.

Maybe dogs are just happy to have made it through the long dark of night as a pack - all the members safe for another day of hunting and community.  We'll never truly know, but I do know the girls are what you'd consider "morning people".  They do their dogya stretches then prance about with tails wagging, giving kisses to all who'll receive them.  This seems like the right way of going about things, even if I don't have a tail to wag.

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Please check out my article on canine heat stroke - how to recognize and handle it.

Also, please check out my latest HelloDallas article where I advocate for folks to bring in their outdoor dogs, poor kiddos...

Genius

Here in Texas, we are hopefully going into the final days of a heat wave that would singe Satan's eyebrows.  Yup- it's really hot here.  I've lived in quite a few different places in my life both in the north and the south, and had grown accustomed to the heat of the day eventually giving way to the relief of an afternoon storm.  Like lifting the top off a pot of boiling water, the heat slips away, only to start building again early the next day.  This was the natural order of things, or so I thought.  Not so in Texas.  I had a lot to learn.

And learn I did after the 75th consecutive day of heat that climbed to over 100 degrees this summer.  Ok, well maybe not 75 days, but that's what it feels like.  The heat here is the kind that you have to take a short breath after a regular breath just to fill your lungs properly.  Feeling light-headed happens fast and you seek shelter in any structure with a/c as fast as you can.  Not to be an alarmist, but this heat is really dangerous.  Crime-inducing, even!  I, for one, am having treacherous thoughts about the weather man...

The girls pant away in the afternoon, feeling the heat outside bake the sun-drenched facade of our home.  I've found Nyxie in the bedroom, panting away in relative darkness, tongue lolling out of her head, trying hard not to move.  Poor Arwen has simply stopped moving at all in the afternoons.  Her eyeballs still follow my movements, but even they are hot.

While watching TV this evening, Arwen was laying on the ground in front of the couch a seat away from mine.  Nyxie was laying on the couch just above Arwen.  I leaned over to love on Nyxie and discovered the most lovely, cooling breeze on the back of my neck.  The air vent behind us was blowing directly across Nyxie's cushion and eventually onto Arwen's spot on the floor.  They had positioned themselves right in the coolness path!!  Those little stinkers!  Meanwhile, I am not totally uncomfortable just a foot and a half away, but still perspiring slightly.  Well, I suppose if I wasn't smart enough to sit in the cool spot to begin with, I'll let them have it.

Wait a minute.  Nyxie's spot was where Matt was sitting just a few minutes before...No wonder he's always getting to the couch first!