A Winter Dog Walk-About…

There’s something wonderful about winter walks with the dog – especially on a Sunday afternoon, when it seems like no one else in the city is out and about.

We almost always go to the same place every time – a field across from a ball diamond just a few blocks from home. We usually pop across the road to the ball field, too, but it’s almost all I can do just to get around in there, as the snow is knee deep and Kaylee spends most of her time there “swimming” in the snow – which she LOVES to do – and is much less likely to break a trail for me, like she does very generously in the spot where these photos were taken.

I think the wonderfulness happens partly because I feel like, except for Kaylee, I’m all alone in the world; every other person is, for some reason, just gone and for an hour or two at least, I really like that feeling a lot. I can forget about everything else and just think weird and strange and wonderful things…

Things like, “I wonder what it would take to buy this little shed. I’ll bet I could live in this thing – it’s plenty big enough for me… I could put a loft for my bed up in that top section, and build a little kitchenette and bathroom underneath it.

I wonder who in town I would call to see about hauling it out of there in one piece…? Hey! If I could fasten it permanently to a trailer base, that could be my “Tiny House” already built! Well, except it would have to be insulated and wired and gutted, but yeah!

Hmmm… where would I haul it to, though…? Sigh…* Nice dream, though.”

I marvel at the sky in winter. It always has a really eerie feel to it, this time of day, at this time of year, especially in juxtaposition with a very normally ordinary-ish building such as this.

I must have taken twenty photos of this exact same building today from exactly the same angle, trying to duplicate that eerie feeling. This is the closest I came to it – hope you can feel it.

I have time to get up close and personal with the flora when I’m alone. Walking with anyone else (other than my daughter’s extraordinarily patient dog), I dare not linger taking photo after photo of uninteresting objects (“Seriously?! It’s a tree!”)

Kaylee is usually the one to point out the uninteresting object in the first place, and once done inspecting it herself, happily amuses herself nearby until I’m ready to carry on again. Dogs are good people for me…

I can freely be amazed that something dead can still be beautiful, somehow…

…especially when it’s wearing “jewelry”.

Sometimes, last season’s things just make me sad, though. This little berry lying all alone in the snow was one.

Sometimes, seeing Kaylee’s prints make me want to cry; remembering other dogs long gone, and knowing that someday (hopefully long years from now) I’ll see some other dog’s tracks in the snow, and suddenly cry a little bit, missing her.

But not today. Today, I can still laugh, because she’s still here, and I would not be out here taking all these fun pictures, if not for her.

Tonight, being Sunday, was “Dinner & a Movie Night” with Ruby. It’s usually “story-time” between the dinner part and the movie part, but lately, the stories are few and far between. I sometimes get a new one – but more often than not, I hear a story that she’s told me before.

If I haven’t blogged it yet, I’ll take copious notes: I’m terrified that the day will come that I finally set about writing down a Ruby story on the blog and I can’t find my notes, and that Ruby won’t be here anymore to set me straight on the details.

Or that she is still here, but isn’t able to remember them anymore. That might actually be worse. This has happened with some of my parents’ stories – I’ve lost notes and recordings and my parents are both gone now. I hope those stories aren’t gone, too, but so far I haven’t found them, and I don’t trust my own memory. There are too many stories, and not enough brain in my head.

Ruby will be 89 in May. She’s still sharp as a tack, other than not quite remembering which stories she’s already told me, but I’ll gladly listen to the same stories over and over and over again, if she’ll just stay here and keep telling them. I don’t want to think about what it will be like once she’s gone. She’s the only story-teller I have left now.

And she’s fading, just a little bit.

Shhhhh…. you didn’t read that. I didn’t write that.

Have a gum drop. Ruby shares. 🙂

Random Song-for-the-Day: “Love Runs Out” – OneRepublic