Running in Circles

Don't.

I read this on the Alcoholic Poet's blog this morning. I keep thinking I should stop reading her poetry. It is sometimes brilliant, but never uplifting, never hopeful. Then, when I am about to erase her from my blog roll, I find another grain of
truth in the sand box in which she plays.

Here, from her poem about wicked witches ....

The dog chewing its tail. Caught at last. After years of running in circles. It's such a terrible disappointment. To get what you want.


So stop running in circles.

I think that is what despair is ... it is running in circles ... it is chasing problems around in mazes rather than seeking solutions.

Kenya runs in circles sometimes ... and sometimes she too catches her tail ... and cleans it of burrs. But more often she chases her tail when I don't respond quickly enough to her pleas to go outside. The message is very clearly, "I really, really have to go out NOW!"

She has also checked out her hind end when someone has farted. She always assumes it might have been her.

On Sunday might she and Shea lay near us while we ate Tamarak's dinner. We were all ankle deep in water ... and the two dogs foolish enough to stay close were lying in a few inches of water. When Kenya got up the water poured out of her luxuriant bush of a tail and sounded for all the world like someone peeing from a height into a pool. It startled her so much that she immediately turned toward her tail, mortified that she might have lost control of her bladder.

It was one of the lighter moments on Sunday night.

Today before the rains start again, Kenya and will go up and try to clear the stream above the road so that the water stays in the creek bed. If it tries to come straight down my hill it could flow over the retaining wall into the area in front of the front door.