Don't It Make His Brown Eyes Blue

I wanted to come up with something upbeat to write because it seems as though all my entries are total downers, but it's been--frankly--a shitty week. The worst seems over, and what I'm left with now is some residual sorrow for those around me I've had to watch suffering. My biggest concern now, because it's the only situation I have any control over, is Gavin the Diabetic Dog.

Our lovely black lab mix Gavin was diagnosed in May with diabetes. The diagnosis came as something of a relief because I'm of the school of thinking that finds it comforting to imagine the worst possible outcomes and then be pleasantly surprised. Not sure that's working for me in the long run, but it's what I know. At any rate, the family and I have been carefully attending Gavin, faithfully giving him insulin shots twice a day, watching what he eats, trying to get him consistent exercise (we could do better on that one)--but we've yet to get his blood sugar where it should be. We're close, but we're just not there yet.

He seemed happy enough at first because he finally had some energy from the insulin. He's old and shaky, but I could still get him to run up and down the hill with me a little bit so he could feel the wind on his face.

Then about a week or so ago, we realized that he is now almost totally blind. We knew he had cataracts and that his sight was going, but we thought we had more time to get his blood sugar in check and head off the cataracts at the pass. But now he's having trouble negotiating his once-familiar surroundings, and he's timid on his beloved hill in our back yard.

Nevertheless, since that discovery I've noticed that he's already made some major adjustments. I've watched him sniff my footsteps to find the food bowl I've just filled; he's learned his way around the kitchen as long as we completely open or close doors and leave everything in the same place all the time. He's learning his way down the stairs, which are difficult for all of us, even in good times and good lighting. He comes to us for love when he hears us call him, and he still wags his tail when he hears his name and rises to stand at the ready when we say the magic word "outside."

I've been handling these changes rather stoically, until today. In my office is a birthday card my staff gave me with a picture of a black lab who looks just like Gavin. The difference? The dog on the card has brown eyes. So did Gavvy, of course, only now those cataracts give his doggy eyes a smoky blue appearance. And I nearly choked up right here at the office because I realized I miss those brown eyes.

Try Not to Breathe

I'm trying to enjoy our victory yesterday. And I do mean our. If you're too stupid to realize Obama's win is the best possible outcome for this world, that doesn't mean you won't reap the benefits. You will--oh, you will.

I want to leap and shout with all those beautiful young people whose enthusiasm and dedication to their belief in a better world helped to bring that world about. We've said they're selfish and lazy and don't care about politics or participating in real--versus virtual--communities, but we were wrong, dead wrong.

That a descendant of slave owners would one day be giving the ole rebel yell in honor of the United States--that's right, the Union--electing its first black president would surely have been far from the wildest imaginings of those very slave owners. And it makes me yowl even louder inside to think about it.

But there are a couple of storm clouds hovering over this Inaugural Parade route in my head. The first is the fact that I'm holding my breath hoping that the worst, the unthinkable, the unutterable, will not happen. I'm enough of a cynic to know that it could. And superstitious enough not to say it aloud.

The other little cloud is the vineyard where the sour grapes of wrath are stored. For example, one co-worker was so distraught at the prospect of a President Obama that she didn't sleep last night. She showed up at work wearing black and looking like something that was dragged for miles by a pickup truck in Texas, sighing and shaking her head all day as though we were facing the Apocalypse. I suppose I should feel sorry for her in her ignorance and fear--she's actually terrified that she'll lose her job and her house, perhaps through the nefarious plans of our president-elect to give them to, let's say, a crack ho. She called the Democrats in the office "comrades." She said she was going to wear black every day for the next four years. (Sounds like my college wardrobe.) Then--the unforgivable, the unconscionable--she said to a friend, a Jew, that she hoped that friend would "visit her in the concentration camp."

I'm going to try to give this alarmist drama queen a break. But her hot, foul breath, mingling with the fetid expirations of all those who think like her, is causing a miasma that threatens to choke me. So I'll try not to breathe.