Immeasurably More

Dear Reader, They say that dogs don't have great memories for the mundane.  For example, you can't punish a dog for a mess made on the floor earlier in the day.  By the time you get home and step in it, he's already moved on.  But for Greyhounds, trauma sticks around.* People are like that, too.  We filter out the unimportant stimulus and information in our lives (what did you have for breakfast last Sunday?), but we remember the details of things associated with strong emotional reactions.  (Where were you when you heard about 9/11?) I'm not sure how the memory thing works for rabbits.   I know that when I was a kid, I had a pet rabbit.   (Cottontail, cuz she was black with a white tail.  Clever, huh?)  My parents swear that one day they heard her scream when a loose dog attacked her hutch.  I wonder now if she had flashbacks of that day when, on a day years later, she met her end at ...

Dear Reader, Of course, I should have taken a photo, but Pony doesn't belong to me; he belongs to LandLady and when he jumped the baby gate, I panicked and didn't think to reach for my camera. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As previously mentioned , before I moved in with LandLady, she had agreed to let me adopt a dog. But not just any dog - specifically, a retired racing greyhound.  Because they are quiet and gentle and sleep about 18 hours a day.  Kind of like cats, but you can teach them to do useful stuff, like "come".* Over the course of my first two weeks here, as we discussed arrangements for the dog - Where to poop?  Where to eat?  Where to sleep?  How to train? - LandLady got more and more interested in the breed and increasingly excited about having something to pet.  I suggested that she could get her own dog, but she demurred, claiming she preferred to use my dog as a test of her own emotional and physical preparedness for dog ownersh...

Dear Reader, Because I have a second and unexpected summer in Maine, I would like to begin introducing you to the people who are likely to be mentioned in future posts. It seems proper to begin with my LandLady. I met LandLady last summer when I rented a furnished apartment from her.  When I needed to extend my stay in Maine past the end of my rental period, she let me stay in her spareroom for 2 weeks free of charge in exchange for watering her plants and making coffee in the morning.  She generously shared her fascinating circle of friends with me, one of whom greeted me today with cookies and the remark, "See.  I told you you'd be back." LandLady rents out her apartments as a form of income, but also for the opportunity it affords her to meet interesting people.  She seems to think I am one of these.  She herself can certainly be considered an interesting person.  She is a sculpter and writer.  Also a licensed hypnotherapist, and she told m...