Go say hello to Jennifer at Lattes and Little Girls. And look! What a pretty blog design! Who could have created something so spectacular? Hmmm…

Molly and I have already established a firm Saturday-morning routine. First, we stop by Starbucks for some hot liquid breakfast. Then we drive to our local off-leash wonderland and spend the morning running free with dozens of very happy dogs. After that we come home and we both get a scrub down to wash off all that mud/poo/slobber that comes home with you after a trip to the dog park. Molly and I both love this routine, as it gives us a chance to unwind after a stressful week and start the weekend off with some great exercise. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to keep it up though. I don’t know if we’ll get to keep Miss Molly.

This darling pup, who is so sweet and gentle with me, strongly believes that she is more bad-ass than pretty much every other living creature. Including my children. And she believes that it is her job to let everyone know what a stud she is by growling her little face off. Cat walks by? Grrrrrrrr. Visitor stops over for an afternoon? Grrr-snarl-grrrrwl. Child climbs up in my lap? Jump-push-grrr-snap. This is very typical dominance-aggression, but when you have small kids it needs to be taken extremely seriously. Even one tiny warning nip could rip a toddler’s cheek off. As you can see, here she is scaring the crap out of a poor Great Dane puppy this morning. This lumbering giant was terrified of my squat little fireball:

On the positive side, Molly is highly tuned in to me and seeks my approval, so any discipline from me is met with immediate obedience. On the negative side, she’s a terrier mix. Which makes her stubborn, smart, and stealthy. This dog knows how to sneak behind my back to carry out forbidden missions (such as silently climbing up on top of the table to steal food when my back is turned). Although I try to keep an eye on her as much as possible to correct unwanted behaviors quickly, I can’t be everywhere all the time. I just don’t know what to do. She’s an amazing dog, and I already love her with a big smooshy gooshy love. I can’t send her back to the shelter- she was so sick when we brought her home that she had to be hospitalized for 48 hours. She needed IV fluids and antibiotics to ward off a nasty bout of doggy pneumonia. We had to give her three pills a day to keep the infection under control, and after all that she still sneezes and coughs every day. She needs to be bathed with a special skin-soothing shampoo in order to clear up the dry, flaky skin that stress and a bad shelter diet caused. Putting her back in that environment, to endure all that scary isolation and be exposed to all those germs again, is not an option. But I don’t think keeping her is either. As our vet so wisely says, “You can always get a new dog, but your kid can’t ever get a new face.”

In my heart, I don’t think she would actually bite on purpose, but my children’s safety has to come first. Ugh. This is a sad and lame and very sucky situation. Any and all advice freely welcomed. Unless you’re going to be mean to me. Then I shall delete you.

I spent a wonderful, relaxing weekend up at our family’s beach condo. I was able to leave the kids at home and spend two days in the fabulous quiet of solitude. It stormed the whole time I was there, so I didn’t get to spend as much time on the beach as I would have liked, but it was still beautiful and totally worth going. Molly loved the sand, but was terrified of the waves and much preferred lounging around inside. Here are a few photos from the beach:

Reluctant Beach Dog

Wave Over Boulder

Stormy Sea

This is Molly.

A few days ago I dropped by a nail salon that recently opened up in our neighborhood to take advantage of their $10 manicure offer. I brought Babs with me, who ended up being a gigantic hit with the manicurist, who couldn’t get over how pretty she is. “She’s so beautiful,” the manicurist told me. She then scrutinized me closely and remarked, “She must look like your husband.” Despite this blow to my sweet little ego, she did a very good job with my nails, painting them a nice, modest peach. The color looks quite pretty with my skin tone and if it weren’t for the bitten-off, swollen cuticles rimming the base of each nail, my fingers would look lovely indeed. I’ve been struck by moments of contrast like this lately, something as ridiculously simple as a manicure launching my mind into a theological comparison of beauty versus pain.

On my walk late this afternoon, contrast was everywhere. I live in a unique part of the Northwest, just on the verge of civilization. If you look at my house on a map, everything to the left of me is densely populated, suburbs rolling into towns which brush shoulders with large cities. Everything to the right of me is wilderness, lush and beautiful forests that lay at the foothills of the great Cascade mountain range. Living here, just on the edge, gives my neighborhood an almost bi-polar personality that feels at once tame and rebelliously wild. Strolling along the trails near my house you can almost convince yourself that you’re completely alone, tucked away in the trees and bramble where no one can find you. Then you come around a bend and you’re faced with someone’s meticulously manicured back lawn. But as I walked today, I tried to lose myself in the bits of wildness that surrounded me. I closed my eyes and breathed in the thick, pungent smell of almost-Spring, that deeply mysterious odor that only mud can create. My nostrils prickled and twitched with pleasure until I was suddenly accosted with a breeze that was laced with someone’s artificially fresh dryer vent smell. My clean, responsible neighbors were just doing their laundry but I felt poisoned, and I sneezed.

I tried again, focusing in on the staccato voice of a frog who was singing somewhere nearby. His croaks echoed in the quiet, mingling with the gentle rustle of the pines and a distant robin’s melody. It was perfect, primal and beautiful. And then a semi truck tore down the road from which my path had branched off, growling and roaring and silencing the timid forest creatures. Deeper into the woods I was startled by what appeared to be the most enormous snake shed I had ever seen. We’re talking Anaconda-sized here, and for a brief moment I was delightfully terrified at the thought of such a fierce creature. Looking closer however, it turned out to be nothing more than litter- a long strip of plastic netting half submerged in muck.

Considering the countless hours of therapy I have devoted to allowing myself to see the “gray areas” in my life, suddenly being aware of all this contrast surprises me. I’m supposed to be finding my comfortable middle, to stop defining my life with harsh contstants like good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. The middle is a kinder place to be, so much gentler and more forgiving, so much more flexible. But lately I have been faced with some particularly painful choices, and I’m frightened by the middle ground. It feels unsteady and dangerous. I find myself wanting to stand firm on one side or another as long as the answer, whichever side it falls on, is clear. But I think my recent fixation with contrast is more than just a desire for clarity. One of my favorite scriptures talks about the necessary transgression in the Garden of Eden. It says Adam and Eve would have “remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.” I find that immensely comforting. Because I know my life will be filled with misery and the pain of wrongdoing. And if I wasn’t so absolutely sure that this suffering would make the good times feel even better, and the happy times seem more beautiful, I think I would just about lose my sanity. I need to know that if I’m down there in the muck, stuck with fraudulent snake skins and horrible diesel engine rattles, and the air smells like a laundromat and my cuticles are all torn to bits, after all that, there is something seriously wonderful on the other side.

I think it’s called hope. Or maybe faith. Whatever it is, I need it.

That need drives me to look for grace in dark and sour places. And it turns out I would rather live the kind of life that drags me through those frightening places so that my breath can be taken away by something unexpectedly beautiful, than wander through the middle untouched.

reflection in a mud puddle