Now that I have a dog I have to talk to my dog. I talk to my dog the way people talk to their dogs. It feels strange. One thing I’m focused on is that I don't want to say I'm her Mommy. That seems weird to me. So I tried using other referents for myself besides Mommy. Instead of, Mommy doesn’t want you to do that I said, Your female owner doesn’t want you to do that. Female to differentiate myself from David, her male owner. He is trying so hard to have a good relationship with the dog, and I didn’t want to sabotage it. You see how crazy it gets, right away. Anyway, I said, Your female owner doesn’t want you to do that and then it sounded so strange that I thought I needed to explain things to the dog, so I tried to explain my discomfort, to the dog, about being called her Mommy and then I just tried to walk a while without saying anything, which also seemed strange, and then I took her for too long a walk so I had to end it by carrying her home in my arms. I was worried about her.

She’s very beautiful. I think she’s very smart.

Mom called from Rome to ask about the dog and in passing noted that her dog is my dog’s uncle, which sounded fine until I figured out that this was because he is my brother. According to my Mom. So do you think that I don’t want to say that I’m the dog’s Mommy because I’m acting out some kind of Freudian drama? I don’t think so. I think I’m just being a jackass. I think it’s like the time I went to a small town in France for a wedding and there was some old tradition in the town having to do with cows and weddings that had, over time, become a tradition in which a plastic inflatable cow was brought onto the dance floor and people had to dance with it. I fled the dance floor but one American woman, trapped, danced the hell out of that cow. Sometimes committing oneself to idiocy is the only honorable thing to do.