The Racer

On the way to the bus stop a house on the corner in my neighborhood must have gotten new sprinklers because out of the blue they are on every morning now and shooting 6 feet in the air. Well ok, more like 5 feet 5 inches because I’m getting drenched from head to toe when I walk by in the morning. I could handle this ok if it weren’t for my dog running to get past them. Instead of Racer the marathoner he becomes Racer the 50 yard dasher! Racer does not like sprinklers. Oh and did I mention that these sprinklers are also on the corner so it’s right at a curb that we should be stopping at and while we are stopped I am supposed to then leisurely tell my dog that it is ok to proceed forward. Well my dog bolts past the downpour and never stops for the curb because how can he think about an insignificant thing such as a curb when he is trying to save us from a sprinkler attack. It is a residential street so there aren’t any cars around but seriously. It puts me in a precarious situation. I don’t really want to be sprinting towards a curb that I might twist my ankle on. So I guess from now on I will cross to the other side of the street before we even get to this street. It’s annoying to think that there is only 3 minutes during the day when these sprinklers are being a problem to a blind person and it is those 3 minutes that they are on. If the home owner picked any of the other 23 hours and 57 minutes to run his sprinklers it would be no problem.

 

 

“It’s what we’re all trying to do, right? Remember a time that was better. Re-create a moment of that memory as we let the crisp Coke bubble down our throats. Riding bikes on a summer day. Sitting on the curb and watching the streetlights come on. Playing in the sprinklers with a group of neighbor kids. We’re all trying to salvage a time when we dreamed beyond our reality and thought monsters were under our beds instead of peppering our family trees. We’re trying to harness those fleeting moments that turned our ordinary lives into something extraordinary. In the sepia haze of those memories, we are beautiful.” ~ Liza Palmer

 

Pet Smart

We recently went to the Pet Store to get a name tag for Racer’s Collar. The print on his old one was wearing off because we had forgotten to place the protective plastic covering on it. We stood at the machine as it was made and then we leaned over my dog to clip it onto his collar. Racer was standing very still as we hovered over him. Meanwhile a fluffy dog sneaks up and sniffs my dogs butt! Racer turns his head quickly to see who the visitor is. I imagined my dog saying, “excusez-Moi! Do you mind?” Nothing like a cold wet nose in your butt to get your attention. Before any of us could respond the dog and his human darted down an aisle. Racer I guess it was a drive by sniffing!

 

“You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.” ~Alice Hoffman