It’s pretty boring having a Mom that’s broken. When we’re not working, all we do is catch up on our sleep. It’s nice that Mom tucks me under the blanket while she clacks around getting ready. I just snuggle with myself and sleep until it’s time to go to work, but sometimes I sleep in so long that I don’t have time to eat my breakfast and leave it in my bowl where it is lonely all day for me to come back to it at night.
At work we don’t even get our long walk from the car kennel because Mom has a magic charm that she hangs from her mirror that makes her invisible to the parking demons. So we park as close to the office door as we can, and then she just gives me responsibility and lets me walk to work with my leash dragging behind me. I’m always so excited to get to work and see all my collies that lots of times I even forget to go to the bathroom and I have to wait for someone to get frustrated enough with their computers that they need to take me for a walk to get some life coaching advice and calm down.
Mom mostly stays in one place and isn’t very interesting to watch, so I’ve been patrolling the office and getting to know the rest of my pack better. They don’t all have doggie telepathy like Mom and me, so I have to speak real simply and slowly to them so they’ll understand.
When I arrive in the morning, I charge across the room to get butt scratches from the woman who is always running up and down the stairs, doing the things that no one notices. I run to her first, barking, “Never fear! Doggo here!” so that she will know that she is the most special of all the people. And then I do a little jig so she can pet all my parts at once without having to run around, for once.
When my collies arrive in the morning, tired from their journey to work, and worried about all the work sitting in their computers, I sprint across the room to greet them on their way to their desks and I shout, “DOGGO HAPPY YOU’RE HERE!” And then they pat me and start their day with a smile.
I sit next to the quiet lady who works so hard on the couch and with my eyes I say, “Hi. You need doggo?” And then I put my butt on her feet so she can scratch it while she thinks. That way she’s not lonely.
In a meeting, I go to the man who is always answering questions, and so never smiles or talks to anyone when he doesn’t have to. I wait a respectful distance away until he’s done answering questions, and then he taps his leg and I come. “You need doggo?” I ask. And he smiles and rubs my sides and says my name so quiet that no one but me will hear.
During the tired part of the afternoon I go sit by the desk of the lady who is always afraid she doesn’t matter. I watch her eat jerky and I say, “You need doggo. I no want you choking on jerky. Give me big pieces for safety.” And then she knows that someone cares.
When the Boss Man is tired of being nice to the people that make him want to scream, I tell him, “Hang on, you need doggo.” And then I go jump on the couch so that he can yell at me to get down.
I find the man who doesn’t know why everything he says always makes someone angry, and I roll over and let him rub my belly and I say, “I love you just the way you are. All you need is doggo.”
And when everyone is sitting together at lunch time and they don’t know what to say to each other, I go under the table and poke my nose up into their laps in case they drop some lunch and I say, “You need doggo?” And then they have something to talk about.
But lately, since we haven’t been running or even hiking I have extra ants in my pants. When people tell me it’s not doggo time, I just stand in front of them and shout, “YOU NEED DOGGO! DOGGO! YOU NEED! DOGGO! YOU! DOGGO! NEED!” until Mom makes me “go to my spot,” and I forget about the barking and run to my bed where I sit nicely and get a treat from the jar on Mom’s desk.
Sometimes I even keep barking when my people are giving me attention. The man with the big muscles and the gentle face keeps cheese at his desk and always smiles at me when he sees me, so I’m happy to see him. But even though I love him and his cheese very much, I still shout at him. “YOU NEED DOGGO!” And then I jump back a step. He smiles and says, “What is it, buddy? What’s wrong?” “NOTHING WRONG. YOU NO SEE TAIL WAGGING?!” I bark so loud that the walls bark back at me. “You want some cheese?” he says, almost whispering. “ALWAYS WANT CHEESE! DOGGO LOVE CHEESE!” I bark so loud my hackles come up. “PLEASE, DAMMIT!” I bellow. But then he doesn’t give me cheese, because he doesn’t think I’m being polite and I don’t understand why.
Mom says it’s important for us to keep busy while we’re stuck in place and that will help with the ants in our pants. “We’ll take walks down memory lane instead!” she said. “Yay! We get to go for a walk?!” I barked. “Well… no. It’s an expression. It means to remember things so much it’s like living them again. We’ve had so many great adventures this year, but a memory is like a book, it doesn’t do any good if you never open it and let it tell its story again.” “So we’re supposed to walk while reading a book?” I asked. “That seems kind of dangerous with your 3 legs and all…” “No, the walking is a metaphor. Never mind, what I’m suggesting is that we take the time when we would be running and go back through all the old photos and blog posts from our adventures this year. We can not just re-read them, but also make sure that your words are all the right ones to describe what we saw and did. The oney way to relive something even more intensely than reading it, is to rewrite it.
“But what would we do with all those words? All my fans already know my stories.” “I don’t know… we could put them into a book and then they would be all in one place with a beginning, middle and end. That’s called a memoir.” “And I will become rich and famous like other mom-woir authors like Maya Angelou, and Dean Karnazes, and Michelle Obama, and Keith Richards?” “Well, probably not. Especially since I’d rather do more hiking and running than marketing, wouldn’t you? But we’ll definitely sell at least 2 copies: the pawtographed copy we’ll send to my mom, and that lady that always comments that you should write a book might buy one.” “Oh yeah! She’s nice, but she doesn’t know how lazy you are.”
So every morning Mom and I wake up early and instead of running we spend an hour writing my mom-woir. It turns out that writing a mom-woir isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I’ve already done the hard part by adventuring and exploring. All I have to do is snuggle up to Mom so that she feels love while she types the right words. That’s called editing.
Oscar the mom-woirist
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