Bake-off

Another incongruously gorgeous day. Going through boxes of my parents' stuff, talking, checking the Net. Let’s do the malls in the area, my son suggested, to take a break. There are lots of them. At Barnes and Noble, I stocked up on Wegmans calendars, in honor of my wonderful Weim Homer.

Max and I went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. The place, usually full, Max said, was almost empty. "It’s been slow all week," said the Chinese waiter, meaning ever since September 11.

During the day I had had this strong urge to BAKE something. It’s life-affirming, I suppose, the need to bake, produce fragrant odors, make the kitchen and the apartment alive with good smells. So I made brownies. Had to buy the pan and the eggs and more butter, but the result was a sense of homeyness and warmth in my son’s otherwise spartan, sterile box of an apartment.

Bloat-viating

But bloat is common to big dogs. It involves twisting or torsion of the stomach with a subsequent blockage of the esophagus at one end and the intestine at the other. It happens quickly and can be fatal. I’d been warned about it in connection with Weims so I wasn’t surprised. But still.

"It’s not possible that he was poisoned? That he picked up something on the ground? Homer is so fast that I worry about that possibility all the time."

She shrugged. "Anyway, we now have another dog. A Labrador, a female. She is four months old, and just lovely."

Talking dog

Two days after I’d dreamed about Mom, I had another typically realistic dream. This time I was taking my dog Homer to the vet’s for an annual check-up. The vet looked exactly like Dr. Lorenzo, the woman doctor who is our "medico di base" (like a GP) here in Busto. She was examining Homer in a perfectly ordinary way when he started to talk to her. He didn’t talk like Mr. Ed, unrealistically, perfectly human. He talked in a difficult way, as one might imagine for an animal who isn’t supposed to talk like a human but finds a way to communicate. His voice sounded like someone who has had a tracheotomy.

Finalities?

As for Homer (my beloved Weimaraner), if something were to happen to me I hope my family wouldn’t abandon him. Homer is eight years old but looks and acts less than half his age; he still has a long loving life ahead of him and I would not want him to spend the rest of it caged in a kennel somewhere, unloved, unaccompanied. I would die without having had the facelift meant to ease my way through middle age, the fulfillment of my mother’s dream. It wouldn’t matter much though, would it, if today were my final day?