going in to day 70 of this year's winter, our area was once again covered with not just wimpy dusting but decent snow.
during near blizzard condition yesterday, a woman took pains in walking her dog who took his own sweet time. the well insulated dog stopped to sniff a giant plant stand near the grocery nearest my building then cantered to the nearest pole where he finally decided that was where best to pee.
despite the near freezing conditions, the dog's pee runneled towards the gutter, carving a shallow, feebly orange tinted gorge in the snow.
growing up, i had a mutt, a bitch, her provenance i never cared to know.
at that time, we have three other dogs duking it out for our affection. her entry to our already dog crazy household, well, you could say she never was star material. not even after she was hit by the coca cola delivery truck one afternoon.
after cleaning her wounds, our cleaning lady just wound her gashes with swatches ripped from a yellowing blanket and that was it. her wounds healed although her gait was profoundly altered, her right front paw crudely foreshortened.
reduced to walking on three legs, she started growing on me. that time, we had a sleek black, heavy balled barker, a piebald, squat slobber and a lazy, chink eyed dozer. and during those rare times I was openly affectionate with our dogs, she, in her cringe inducing hop and skip gait, would come towards me, looked me in the eyes and demanded, like she meant it, her share of pats. and almost always she could eke out a hug from me.
she could well see our partiality, open and undisguised, towards our other healthy dogs. but she would not relinquish her right to be petted.
yesterday, too, I got an email from my friend in manila. he told me he ran into my former boyfriend in a mall and they ended up having dinner. through it, they must have talked a little about me.
towards the end of his email, after several lines of disclaimer that it was not his business at all, he told me rather wistfully that my ex and I should have strove harder to make our relationship last longer than the year and seven months that it went on.
three more long weeks until spring. and it seems, this winter just won't quit. on the tv, the local meteorologist gleefully predicted another slight snow shower for tomorrow.
getting back to my bowl of soup, I thought of things - what I sometimes catch myself calling real stuff - to tell my friend why that relationship was bound for the dogs.
washing the bowl after, I could slightly see my face, surprisingly sad, in its belly. this image bothered me. after the warm meal, i felt quite contented, happy, to a degree.
i started composing the email and just out of facetiousness, perhaps, i wrote, we were never good together because whenever he smiled at me, i felt that he never meant it.
i went on to write about some other real stuff - my planned trip to florida, a ticket to an alvin ailey show - conveniently forgetting not to erase the line i wrote earlier.