Hi folks. This is Sophie and I’m checking in…FINALLY! I know. I know. You could make all the jokes that you want because I deserve to be the brunt of them. In fact, you jokesters should just get in line with my mom.
“Sophie, you really need to get writing on that blog. It’s been AGES.”
She’s hilarious. You might call that throwing the dog under the literary bus.
Let me catch you up. It really has been a long time. I have been trying to do as much as I can to help out around here but somedays a dog just wants to snooze in the sunshine and let the world go by.
Sadly, we have lost a few humans since I last checked in, and that has been really hard for the other humans still here in my galaxy. It might be getting a bit less intense, but when certain pictures come across on the digital photo frame my mom still just freezes and stares at the screen.
Sometimes she whispers, “Oh, I miss you so much,” or sometimes she just gets really quiet for long minutes. Depending on the day, I might then hear the Maroon 5 song playing soon after.
“Cheers to the ones that we got. Cheers to the wish you were here, but you’re not…”
I don’t know if that song is technically a dirge, but my mom sings it like it is. Especially the line about the memories.
Mom has made a lot of trips back and forth from Rochester, which is where the lost humans lived and were visited many times by us, even us dogs. But now there is a new little human in Rochester, and she has been a good filler of holes-in-the-heart. Not to mention a good dropper of crackers and cheese sticks and blueberries, so she is much beloved by the canines in our family.
Since we last got together, my face is a bit grayer (“Sophie!” my mom says. “Stop getting so OLD!”). And my sister Ellie’s legs are skinnier (“Oh, my sweet Grandma Girl,” my mom croons.) And The Puppy (officially known as Junie but everyone still calls her The Puppy) is still mostly cute but often annoying and pees on the living room rug at will, which drives my mom crazy. (“I can still give you back, you know,” my mom says, and we mostly think she’s teasing but I told Junie she’d better not push it.)
One interesting thing happed this summer. We (meaning all of us dogs) had a GIANT and PROLONGED sleepover with our cousins when all of our humans went to Ireland and Scotland.
For a WEDDING, they said.
But honestly, for over TWO WEEKS? And they left us dogs all ALONE? Obviously, they didn’t ask us our opinion when they scheduled it.
Well, to be clear, we weren’t actually alone because a nice girl named Izzy stayed with us, but a seven-dog sleepover for sixteen days is a LOT.
Just ask Izzy.
When my mom got back and asked her how it went, Izzy said, “Oh, it was great.” But she said the word ‘great’ like you hear people say things are ‘fine’ when you know there is a lot more to the story if only you had a few hours and a glass of wine to sit and hear what’s REALLY going on. But, as Mom told me in confidence, the important thing was that all seven dogs were still alive when the plane touched down.
That seemed to be a depressingly low level of expectation for our doggy sleepover, but I was just happy to have all of our humans back so I decided not to tell the other participants what she said.
And it seems like the humans all had a good time.
You might be wondering if I still have a couch and if I actually do any work on it.
Hellooo. Of course I do. Duh. I’m on it and I’m here working.
Okay. Seriously. I DO still have a couch. Like any dog worth their weight, I am a hairy sponge for all of the Emotions. Happy. Sad. Anxious. Overwhelmed. Hurt. Excited. Lonely.
We dogs absorb and we absorb and we absorb. So, yes, I AM on my couch and I DO make my touchy-feely rounds and I DO smooth the Emotional Mountains of the people down into manageable mole hills. Albeit mole hills that sometimes look less like cute little insectivore homes and more like muddy amorphous piles of muck and tears and goo.
“But will you now be more present, Sophie?” you ask. “Will you start to show up more routinely?”
Well, to be honest with you, I admit that consistency has not been my forte. I have many strengths (just ask my anxious humans hanging out on mole hills rather than mountains), but I would like to grow this writing regularity weakness into whatever you call the level between strength and feebleness. Maybe that would be called Average? Yes! I would like to become average in my consistency, which is much better than abysmal, which is perhaps where I currently lie on the bell-shaped curve of blogging and reliability.
But hear ye! Hear ye! Don’t we all need to strive for improvement in some area of our lives? Don’t we all have areas where we are AWESOME and other areas where we flounder about in the shallow end of the pool of life?
I have heard the humans say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. My goal is to make the road to Consistent Dog Blogger smooth and passable, even if it is only by way of some crushed rock and “Sit-Still-and-Write!” days penciled in red on the calendar.
So, my friends, I will STRIVE. Even as the shadows stretch across the deck and my favorite sun-bathing spot is slinking off the boards and back onto the lawn where it showed up in the spring. Even as end-of-summer project lists appear and lengthen. Even as our early morning strolls with mom become less about bird song and more about streetlights still shining.
This dog will strive to stay on the road to Awesome.
Or Average.
Or at least Better-Than-Before.
Hey, I’m on the road. Let’s celebrate the little victories.
Love, Sophie
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