Never long enough, not really

Two weeks ago, HRH Lady Lucy Waddlesworth, died unexpectedly.¹ We remain heartbroken but the grief is less fresh. My brain no longer insists that there should be two dogs at mealtimes and at outside times and at walk times. This morning, I dropped her very frozen remains² at the pet crematory³ in a very small town about 20 minutes from here. We struggle on.⁴

This piece from Blair Braverman, who has known a few dogs over the years, is a great comfort. Bookmark and save if you too have pets in your life. This grief is the price for all of the joy they bring — and it’s well worth paying.

Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?

Now that I’ve brought the room down, I’m going to attempt to pivot to some shameless self-promotion because I know how to market myself.⁵

SS-P 1: I wrote about running my last Seneca 7 for Another Mother Runner.

SS-P 2: I had the opportunity to write about the Ancillary series for Tor.com⁶ and how what most people first noticed about it isn’t nearly as notable ten years later.

In other news:

• This NPR story about a woman who was trafficking in body parts is a ride.

• Two from the NYT (gift links): Building a Better Colonial Williamsburg and Five Stagecraft Secrets from Tony Nominated Shows.⁷

• How fun are these mocktails?

• I want to go on one of these retreats and also do not want to go on one of them.

  

  And finally.

Because of the whole grief thing, I found myself rewatching season one of America’s Next Top Model, which was one of the few shows I could follow with any accuracy when my children were preschoolers.⁸ The series premiered 20 years ago and the first season very much shows its age. But it shows something else: how far we've come in 20 years.

See — one of the big teachable moments in the first season⁹ is that there’s a model who is a lesbian and that being a lesbian is just like being any other kind of human with inherent worth and dignity and stuff. Which reminded me how quickly we can forget how quickly things can change.

I had the same response when I finally listened to the You’re Wrong About episode about Sinead O’Connor and all of the late night jokes about her ripping up a picture of the Pope.¹⁰ And during the HBO doc about Woodstock '99 where I suddenly remembered what it was like to be young and female in the 1990s. And when someone reminded me that women couldn’t easily get credit cards in their own name until the late 1970s.

We can only see how much has changed in hindsight, especially when the battles we’re fighting now feel like they’ve been going on forever. Sure, yes. Progress will always be a one step forward two steps back kinda deal.¹¹ But it is progress, even if you aren't aware of it at the time.

One last picture of Lucy doing her second-most favorite activity. Her first favorite, of course, was barking at us when we weren’t meeting her demands.

1. She didn’t seem like herself the day before. She perked up a bit the next day, then simply died right before bed.

2. Long story; short version: she died so suddenly that we weren’t immediately certain what to do with her body and wanted to give our oldest, who was away at college, a chance to say goodbye. Fortunately, we have a big chest freezer in the basement. This morning, when the pet crematory owner and I unwrapped her, we discovered that she’d frozen with a look of such displeasure on her face, like, “you put the Queen next to the hot dogs?” Man, I miss her so much.

3. The woman who owns/runs the pet crematory also owns/runs a funeral home for actual humans. I have never before been so skillfully and kindly questioned about all of the details the business needed to know, like the animal’s name and age and weight and our address. If law enforcement had any sense, they’d take lessons from her. She was good — and it was only later how much information I’d told her during the course of chit-chat about my dog.

4. There’s not much more to say, not really. A dog’s death is a universal pain (at least among the universe of dog owners). I don’t know that anything I have to say about my specific pain sheds any new light on the experience. Living with a smart and bossy corgi is an EXPERIENCE. Even when I wanted her to stop being such a pain in the arse, I loved her to bits. I don’t miss the barking but I kinda do. There ends what I have to add to the discourse.

5. (I do not know how to market myself)

6. Ann Leckie is one of my favorite writers. Her work just keeps getting better, which is amazing given how good it was from the jump.

7. Both of these stories are highly relevant to my interests. A) I work as an historic interpreter at the Farmers’ Museum and we are constantly thinking about this kind of thing and B) I worked in technical theater for years and years.

8. which isn’t to say that it’s a good show, mind, but that is another discussion.

9. Sorry. “Cycles.”

10. Including one by Joe Piscapo about smacking her that got a big laugh from the SNL studio audience. Can you imagine a joke about hitting a woman getting a laugh on network TV now?

11. The Supreme Court can suck it.