A lovely Fall day. I’m just going to say that it didn’t rain. That’s it, reset the clock at zero.

I had an early morning meeting and then Dot and I went to the dog park. We met our friends Ted and Lieka, peed, pooped, picked it up, bagged it and threw it away. We talked about books and sniffed some butts. The red dog with the hot dog tail showed up but his owner didn’t come into the compound. He had a barking fit when he got a sniff of Dot and they both took off. I’m convinced the red dog with the hot dog tail, (RDWTHDT) just needs to come in and they will work it out. But I learned that RDWTHDT is the woman’s daughter’s dog… so this adds a whole other layer of protectiveness to the situation. Which I can understand. Daughter is probably working and Mom, bless her, has agreed to exercise this wound up dog for her, and daughter is probably protective. and Dot looks like a gang banger so…. it may just take some time and some kindly outreach.

This weekend is a holiday, yet we have not plans to get together with friends. I’m going to pester all my friends on the phone I think. Jan is doing great and seems happy with her walker, she is scooting around all over on it and loves the security if gives her. She is smiling through her split lip, but she has no other injuries from her spill yesterday. No real swelling or bruising. Last night I had crawled into bed and was just about asleep just on that cusp of dream and reality. Just lifting off, from my bed into the cool azure of the night sky where dreams live. When Jan called to me from the bathroom.

“John will you come and cut skin off my lip?”

I couldn’t help myself. The words just lept out of my mouth. “No, I’m not going to cut skin off of your lip!”

“Come on, I just have this flap of skin on the outside of my lip and it bugs me and my hand shakes.”

“I’m asleep. I’m blind in one eye. I’m likely to cut your face off. It will be fine until morning. I really don’t want to.”

Silence in the bathroom. Now I’m thinking that my poor sick wife is lifting a long pair of shears to her damaged lip with trembling hands. Huge sharp shears, like what they use to cut hedges, the action big enough to cut your head off, each scissoring blade honed to a razor sharp gleam. Jerking towards her nose and lips. But do I get up and help her? Nope.

I’m a terrible person. I fall sound asleep and I wake up with a jerk at about three in the morning. Dot is in my bed giving me a Stanley Cup style hip check, trying to push me out of bed. Her kibble breath right in my face. She was sleeping at the end of the bed last I remember. Now I’m worried that If I go into the bathroom I will find Jan’s head rolling around like a dog toy on the heated floor, and a deep pond of warm blood just beneath the sink where her torso has fallen. Yes I know I have a vivid imagination, but still, do I jump straight out of bed. Hell no. If get my prints all over the scene and the shears and blood on my hands then I call 911 what am I going to tell the cops when they arrive… that I just wouldn’t help my wife when she asked me to cut some skin off her lip when she asked me last night and hence she cut her head off? They are NOT going to buy that! Yet I am now in prison, and my cell mate is a thug with a hairy body who will not let me have the whole body, and the buzzer in the jail is ringing… ringing… ringing…

I get up with Dot licking my face and the alarm clock going off. Jan is in bed with her head on the end of her neck and her breathing apparatus for her sleep apnea humming peacefully. Dot is up and ready to greet the day and to go downstairs and pee in the yard. I go over to Jan and bend over her headgear.

“I’m sorry I didn’t cut the meat off your lip last night. Are you okay?” She smiled at me and opened her eyes.

“I’m great.” she said pulled her tube off her nose, then pulled me down and kissed me. “How’s it look?”

“Your lip?”

“Yes?”

“Really, a lot better than I imagined it,” and I kissed her again.

“You better take that crazy dog out before she chews up the carpet pad or pees on your bed.”

“Did you perform surgery on yourself last night?”

“No… I just pulled it off. It’s fine. Go. take Dot out.”

Our rain gauge. This weeks accumulation.

So we wandered around in the yard at six thirty in the morning, we peed, and jumped over the circus jump. I shoveled some poop, and I planned my morning. I had a meeting over the phone with our son Finn Straley and the writer Kim Rich in Louisiana for our super secrete project that now the three of us are working on. I’m just really acting as the trail boss, giving suggestions for how to keep moving, Kim and I are making Finn do all the heavy creative lifting, Because he is younger and smarter. So after the poop scooping I had to do that. Then I would drink some tea, and take a look at the emails I have to answer, I needed to take a shower and get some cash down town, mail out some more copies of Nels’Biography to friends, I had to get dressed and do two loads of laundry… go to the mail box, buy some gas for the lawn mower, and meet Ted at the dog park.

As I swung the gate open to let Dot back into the house early this morning, I was thinking most importantly, what I could do to be a better person for Jan, and wondered if I had been a very good creature in some past life to have deserved her now.

Morning: long wet grass.

The green apples are small

and very sour.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading poems of the Nobel Laureate: Wislawa Szymborska