Oh—and incidentally . . .

Okay, so I went by the post office the other day and waited in a HUGE long line at a counter that had six registers and only one human behind it.  We joked around, the other waiters and I, dark jokes about dying in line before Christmas, never mind worrying about delivery dates.  Then a second human came and we all stood up straight and eager.  Then the first one left.  Hisses, all around.  When I finally got up to the window, I said to the very harried looking guy, “So they’ve left you all alone to face the angry mob?”  He gives me this disgusted, resigned look. “Thanks to the post office and its regs,” he says.  “When a person who works here retires, they don’t replace him.  There used to be six people working here full time.  Now there are only three. Permanently.”  Yeah, and who wants to apply to a place that doesn’t let you put a picture of your family on your desk?

“Oh, please,” I say flatly.  “I want the government to run the healthcare system.”  Now I really get a look from him.  “Don’t even get me started,” he says.

————-=0=————-

I promise you, for weeks I have been wanting to write stuff.  Political stuff.  Seasonal stuff. Puppy stuff.  Answer comments.  Answer email.  I have had the best and most earnest of intentions.  But junk keeps happening to me.  Incidents that bury all my epiphanic wit under a snowbank of urgent logistics.  Like this:

Incident One: I am peacefully wedged into my corner of the couch, which is really my desk, and which I can foresee as my eccentric old lady operation center, piled around with books and felt and needles and yarn and paper and glue and beads and bits of glass – anyway, there I am with my laptop in my – surprise – lap, just loosening up my fingers for a peaceful session of correspondence, when out of the tail of my eye, what do I see?  The gangly brindled puppy lugging a  huge water dish across the living room carpet.  The dish, which lives in the front hall, wedged under a plant stand from whence no puppy should be able to unwedge it, is full of water.  Was full of water.  Now, as the puppy hauls it along, water is coming out of it in waves and fountains, which makes things difficult because now we can’t tell which spots on the rug are water and which are puppy mistakes.

Who—us????

Not that we let the mistakes go.  It’s just, you’d be surprised how innocent a puppy can look – look you straight in the face – as he pauses for a millisecond and releases a gallon of nuclear waste onto your carpet.  Which is going to be thoroughly cleaned – again – next week.

Incident Two:  Same puppy, who has just stolen somebody’s sock/shoe/boot/glasses/journal/utility bill/last will and testament/vial of nitroglycerine, is diving under the wingback chair in the corner of the living room to chew on—whatever it is he’s got.  This is the same lair once used by Piper himself, pirate-puppy supreme, when he was a young thing.  Piper’s favored booty: anything out of the dirty clothes.  Picture us on all floors, nether ends way up in the air, snatching at our stuff as the puppy backs away, chuckling heartily.  The truth: what he wanted was to be chased.

Incident Three: I get to the pasture three days ago in the freezing cold, and Sophie is lame.  First I think she is resting – horses stand still with one foot cocked when they are resting – except her ears are pinned back to her head and she is hissing swear words at any other horse who so much as twitches an ear.  So I suspect something, and when I get in there and make her move her feet, find that I am right: the cocked foot is not restful, it is injured.

This is when the possibilities flit through your mind and all end up in the question: is this the day when I find out what it’s like to have to put down a horse because of a broken leg?

But I know this horse.  She’s a big ninny-whiner-princess-wuss.  So I say to her, “You better be walking on that when I get back here.”  And I feed her on the driveway, locked away from the kibitzers in the barn.  We check on her a couple of times during the morning.  Three hours later, she is still not putting ANY weight on that foot.  So I am sunk.  I am worried.  I am wringing my mental hands.  I finally call the vet, make the appointment, drag G out of the studio—because he’s the guy who can extract the Mighty Suburban out of the tool-cocoon that is the garage.  It’s even colder now, and we are wondering how you load a three legged horse.  I race down to the place to open gates and secure the patient.  Which I do with the red halter, which is my favorite.  Once I have it on her head, I begin, very gently, to lead her.

And she just follows along behind me like nothing ever happened.  I know something happened because her ankle is the size of two tennis balls, but she’s evidently forgotten that it hurts because her head isn’t even bobbing as she walks.  Calm as a summer’s day.  So I call the vet and cancel and stop G in the middle of doing the trailer prep and that’s the end.  Idiot mare.

Incident Four:  This one is more complicated.  It involves planning a renovation of the house (including adding storage by throwing away the junk that’s stuffing up all the drawers, closets, cupboards and hidey-holes—and necessitating the finding of, scanning of and drawing all over the old house plans), trying to buy a house for a son, making Thanksgiving, buying, classifying, de-tagging and wrapping stuff because half the family lives in Rhode Island and we have to stick it all in boxes to mail, finishing the ornaments, shipping stuff, meeting with my new writing partner (more about that later – it’s about some middle grade books), putting away Thanksgiving, hauling out Christmas (I remembered to make Cam help G retrieve the tree from the attic right after turkey – ya-HOO), making lists, checking them twice (actually: re-writing them every three days), running errands, taking things back, finding receipts (in that order), doing the year end book-keeping, recovering from the year-end book-keeping (haven’t yet), mailing (and I don’t even do Christmas cards anymore), sneaking around, sending to M, preparing Sunday School lessons, remembering to shower, hitting the treadmill and moving furniture around.  Replaced all the outside lights with LEDs before I found out they were paying $5 for old light strings at Home Depot (that would have cleaned out the garage loft and perhaps sent Chaz through graduate school).

I’m sure there was more, but I’m turning stupid just remembering this much.

This is why I have not answered comments.  Why I appear, at almost any angle, to have died and vanished off the face of the planet.

So I am going to try to do several blog posts today, including the promised giveaway:

I am doing a

GIVEAWAY!!!!

In the time honored spirit of G’s barbeque apron, which reads:

I’ll get an audience, even if I have to FEED them,

here are the rules—

1. All readers of sympathetic heart may enter.  Even if I don’t know who they are.  Even if they aren’t sympathetic.

2.  You must leave a comment, and in that comment, tell me your most wonderful holiday tradition.  It doesn’t have to be clever or wonderful or creative or spiritual.  Just your favorite one, sweet and simple or crazy and out there.

3. And that’s all.  Then I send you the prize, assuming your number comes up (no discrimination on the basis of traditions described).  Since I am expecting no more than three brave souls to actually work up the courage to enter, I will drop numbers in a hat and have the puppies choose one.  The puppies will wish I had fifty entries, so please, for the sake of the puppies, do not hesitate.

And here is a picture of the prize:  Just like the middle one, except a little bigger and actually cooler.

4. I will wait till Thursday for all entries.  Let’s see – Rachel, you can have today. Ginna will enter tomorrow.  And  . . .  no, fill it up, my dear ones.  I worked log and hard on this crinkly but absolutely cool in the window star.  I will mail right away.

YAY!!  Another thing on the list marked off!!