Waking up with a small, soft boy…

Pugsley is a sleepy head. When I get up to go potty, too early to really get up, but too late to go back to sleep, though God knows I try, I finally turn on the light to read for awhile. Pugsley moves over when I get up to go potty but plants himself squarely in my lap when I settle back in and he goes back to sleep. Soundly. All snuggled up like the sweetest boy in the world, which he is. I might read for an hour or two, he doesn’t budge. Finally I need to get up. I rub him and croon gently to him, then I bother him with kisses. He will kind of open one eye as if to see if I am serious, but not until I click the remote to turn on the big overhead ceiling light and say, “Hey buddy, let’s go out to the potty and get breakfast,” does he realize that I am. Grudgingly he will get up, grudgingly. I think he would stay cozied in sleeping all day if I let him, this little old man of mine. I simply adore him.

Once up we go outside, and then back in where I make his breakfast (His meds are sneakily rolled into little cheese balls on top of his food and he gobbles them up like treats!) and while he is eating I make my coffee. I am still having trouble only making breakfast for one. Delilah is gone only a week today. With my coffee made we come in here to my work table where I first feed Vincent the Beta fish who is right beside me here, and turn on the computer, first turning on my desktop fireplace app that pops and crackles and looks and sounds so real it hasn’t ceased to delight me in the 2 years I’ve been using it. I light the candle beside me, currently “Pumpkin Bread,” and while I take my first sip of coffee I pull my notebook over and start making notes for the day.

Right now I am hyper-aware of everything. A hurricane sweeps through causing, in many ways, irreparable damage, and the landscape is forever changed, leaving in it’s wake so much that is broken and in need of repair it will take months to sort it out. I heard yesterday that so many people’s fences, like mine, were damaged in the hurricane the fencing companies are giving estimates of 3 months before they can get to you. This feels endless. And then a tiny girl dies and your whole world is ripped asunder. The world both outside and in our little home have been so ripped apart by a natural disaster and the death of my little girl that it is hard to know how to go on. Right now I am focusing on Pugsley, and the little things that make up our daily lives.

While I work here he is right beside me. We are up and down and in and out throughout the day. I took the trash and recycling barrels out, even that felt like an almost impossible task to accomplish but I did it. At 12:30, having been up since before 8, and done a lot here at my desk, I was so weary and sad and overwhelmed I took Pugsley out, turned out the light in the studio, and curled back up with him in our big recliner. I read May Sarton off and on for 3 hours. (I just finished rereading her journal The House By The Sea and started right into Recovering. I am rereading all of her journals, then I will reread her novels. Sarton is saving me now.)

When I wake up in the night and can’t go back to sleep I read May. I read until I can go to sleep at night to begin with and when I wake up in the morning. May’s books and my small boy Pugsley are what I am clinging to just now. When I recently found among books that survived the fire a book that she had sent me as a gift with a letter she glued in the front cover and a note I cried. May and I, as I have written, became very dear friends in the last years of her life. We talked on the phone a lot and we also wrote each other a lot of cards and letters. She sent me photographs, books, many gifts. I thought it had all been lost in the fire, but this one book remains. It was a special edition printed just for her, Writings On Writing…

(In the years I knew and was close to May I was still married and had not changed my name yet, I was, for most of my life, Marcia Tyson Kolb, hence her notes to me…)

When I couldn’t nap and was tired of reading I got up with Pugsley and made a lovely keto lunch (Of course he got bites of chicken!). For ease from time to time I buy a hot roast chicken at the grocery store. It makes a number of meals for me and I always shared bits of chicken with Delilah and Pugsley. When I would walk in and say “Mama got chicken!” they would practically be doing backflips! Oh my tiny Delilah loved her chicken, and of course so does Pugsley. I tore lots of chicken pieces off and put them in a big bowl. Grated one of my favorite cheeses I always have on hand, the Irish Kerrygold Cheddar that comes in a big block, on top of the chicken. Poured a bit of heavy cream over it and salt and pepper. Added a small can of sliced organic mushrooms. Tossed it all and put it in the microwave just long enough to heat it and melt the cheese. This will make at least 3 meals. Pugsley was wide-eyed watching me and when I took it out I said to him, “We’ve got a TREAT!” It was so good. We both loved it, or rather he loved the bites of chicken that he got.

All day long, off and on these past days, I have been making notes. Some time in the new year I will open the Patreon page that I have been planning for most of the last year. A place to put my various works and projects, a place where artists are making a living being supported by “Patrons” at different price points from very inexpensive on up to higher and higher monthly sums called “tiers.” At each different tier the patron receives more and more pieces of your work. I am working out in my mind what I will offer, everything from these posts and other writings, to daily, 5x a week, short morning videos called “Morning Coffee With Maitri,” to eBooks, my writing classes, and more. Lots of ideas. Nothing is written in stone I am just making notes to help me focus on something other than the hurricane mess and my lost girl.

I have wanted to do this for a long time, other friends are supplementing their income and some supporting themselves completely with Patreon. I have wanted to do it and believe it is in my future but I wouldn’t begin to work on it soon, I couldn’t, still, it helps me feel like I am planning a life, planning for the days past all this hurricane mess, and past this time when I am helping little Pugsley adjust to being an only dog both with my loving presence, a new supplement from the vet, and homeopathic drops that are supposed to be very helpful for dogs with anxiety. My therapist Helene recommended them to me as they really helped one of her dogs. We have to get through the holidays, Pugsley and I, and settle into life, our new life, just the two of us. Then we will see what will happen. (And after the holidays I also have to start working with getting Medicare. That’s a whole different blog post!)

What needs doing is never-ending, but it is called life. It’s what I want to talk to people about in my short morning videos — taking life one day at a time, how the way we live our days makes us who we are hence the need to be mindful about how we move through the hours, doing our best, implementing self care. I will also talk about growing older — Coping/Surviving/and Thriving. On living alone, and solitude vs. loneliness (Of course they are both present in varying degrees changing day by day.) and of course living with mental health issues and making the best life that you can in spite of it all. These are some of the things I have been making notes on.

It’s 5:00. With the recent time change it is already almost dark. Some people don’t like it when it gets dark early but it has always felt soothing to me. As though one can hunker down and get cozy because the bright lights and busyness of the day have passed. In an hour I will walk Pugsley and feed him his dinner, clean up the kitchen and get the dishwasher going, and then tonight is one of my favorite nights. On Thursday nights I have my video call with my darling friend Bekah whom I adore. She is one of my closest and dearest friends and we have talked every week for years now, always on the phone until the last year or so when we started Skyping and it just changed everything. For a friendship you’ve had even for a long while with someone online, talked to for 2 or 3 hours at a time weekly, it doesn’t touch really seeing one another. It is magic! And last Christmas Eve Bekah and I spent the whole evening on Skype wrapping our Christmas presents together until just after midnight. She was the first one I got to say “Merry Christmas” to. It was one of the loveliest times I’ve ever had with a friend. And then I had 3 little pugs around me as I wrapped. How could it be that I could have lost 2 babies 6 months apart? It is such a cruel blow.

But now Pugsley and I are here, and we are finding our way into a new kind of life. It is very sweet, and tender, and dear. I will never stop missing my lost babies but as I woke up with Pugsley this morning, just after taking that picture at the top of this post, I was profoundly moved by the powerful relationship that exists between a human and a dog, just the two of us, he and I, there is something very special here. I hope I am blessed to have him in my life for a good while. I love him so much.

A day is made up of moments, and these moments make up our lives. I am trying to wade through the pain and loss as best I can and make the moments that I have each day count, I am trying to make a life worth living. I am doing my best.

This is my day today. It has been a good one.