Rural Dreams

Discordant Convergence

Things like this excite me. I get imagining that there is some person out there - not even so far out there, but right here in our little town who needs an apartment and has a truck with a snowplow. I almost wish that I was that person so that I could feel the excitement of stumbling upon something so perfectly suited for me, something that must surely be a gift from the universe, or perhaps a sort of signal that my life is in harmony with it's proper path.

I was greiving our loss of Wes in very practical terms. We were suddenly a family without a dog. We adopted Wes the day I found out I was pregnant with Aidan, because I pictured a dog in our family, because I wanted my child and now children to know how to live with a dog and how to treat an animal in a natural, instinctive way. How was I going to replace this function that Wes had filled so well?

I don't feel like it would be responsible to get another dog right now. We are not financially steady enough. Part of the reason it took so long to have our friends take Wes to the vet was because we couldn't afford it. I had just taken him before we left, to get a heartworm test and to make sure we were leaving our friends with a healthy dog. It was more money than we had spent on healthcare for our whole family for the entire year.

So what's a broke family with dog lust to do? I considered taking in boarders, I would have loved to have left Wes with a family like us when we went out of town instead of boarding him. But we would really need a fence.

There is a free newspaper from the Berkshires called The Shopper's Guide. It's one of those publications that is all advertisements - for contractors, tag sales, lost pets and all kinds of things that people are selling. We got our king sized mattress for fifty bucks through it. We got a free piano for a friend through it. For some reason it makes great reading and somehow I manage to negotiate the big pages while nursing. A few weeks ago I came across one of those ads that felt like a harmonic convergence.

I talked it over with Steve, who didn't like the idea of it at all, but how could I not look into it? It was every little thing that I was wishing we had: a dog for our boys, all expenses paid and extra money to boot. Steve thought I was trying to replace Wes. I insisted that I was only doing it for the money - and for Aidan, who wanted the little dog.

I thought that this must be a dog with a trust fund, or it's owner was going on some kind of tour and couldn't take the beloved beagle. It was neither. It was a woman, not at all rich, who rescued this dog and was too compulsive and neurotic to let a nice family adopt it. She was nuts.

I didn't care, I figured I'd take her money and save it up to build us a fence so we could get our own dog. And we'd give the dog a good home while we had her because we like dogs and we treat dogs well.

It wasn't the accidents in the house, in spite of taking the dog out constantly, that were the deal breaker. The dog was an escape artist. All she wanted to do in the world was run free and we didn't have her even an hour at our house before she wiggled out the back door when Aidan was going out side. I was outside myself, barefoot with the baby, when I spied her busting out. I had to run inside, put the baby down and then track her into the neighbor's yard (who is scared of dogs - even beagles) where she discovered a deer and (yes indeed) chased it into the woods. She was gone.

I tracked her down eventually, after much running around and phone calling and admonishing Aidan (which he didn't deserve), and just generally STRESSING. The whole time I was looking for her I was telling myself, that's it, this isn't going to work out, I have a BABY, I can't be doing this. Then, after I found her, I was so relieved that I got some kind of endorphin rush and decided to keep her.

That is, until she did it again the next day.

So the whole thing was such a disappointment, not only because I had wanted the money, and not only because the poor beagle has to go back to her bizarre sucky existence of waiting in a kennel for another prospective foster person, but because that ad must not have been for me, and I so badly wanted it to be. I wanted to be led down the path of "everything happens for a reason". I wanted the synchronicity. I wanted to feel like maybe my dog's death was part of some bigger plan.

After it was over I started to miss Wes all over again. He was an amazing dog. I don't know how I'll ever get another.

Will Aug 2004

We're still here - just no time to write - I'm working on a long entry. Here's some baby for you. He smiles like this ALL the time. He's a riot.

Summer Days

I signed Aidan up for swimming lessons at a park in our neighborhood. The swimming is in a pond and it's not the most gorgeous swimming hole aound, but it is a treasure as a community gathering place. His lessons started this week and he has two more weeks. The day goes like this - we get there at 10am and there is no struggle to get there on time because Aidan LOVES to go. He finishes around 10:45 and then plays until about 11:30. We go home for lunch and then go off on some other adventure or go back to the pond for more swimming. At this point there are lifeguards there and I can pretty much sit under a tree with the baby and a woman that I know who homeschools. Aidan plays in the water or on the playground equipment with her daughters and their friends and I don't have to worry about him. He's having such a great time - this was him at about 4:30 on Friday. He laid down there while I dug a flower bed and slept straight through til the next morning. (I brought him to bed, of course.)

The pictures above were all taken by Aidan.