UNITED STATES—Here we initiate the season of feasting and giving, hopes and expectations. Thanks, must be given for lovable Lupe who ever catches us off guard. Now let us praise those forces that keep us off guard: they season us for seasons both of caviar and champagne, and those of Doritos and fizzy water.
This repeatedly has been underscored this week. Lupe I’ve been babysitting off and on ever since she got the alley-oop from domestic flight in Burbank. She did finally make it to New York for a couple years, after being certified as a service dog. Since then, it’s been a long, surreal sojourn in Los Angeles. She’s a fiercely loyal, irascible pit bull lab. Not once has she awarded me the deference of leashing her up. Then taking her outside for a normal session of evacuating the bladder would be an option. That privilege belongs to her master, my daughter.
The best I. can do with Lupe is grab her chain, and prevent her from mauling, or frightening the heck out of bystanders.
As a result, this has conditioned in Lupe a habit of leaving a yellow liquid pool on the white tiles off the kitchen floor. This is an unpleasant discovery when I get back from a good day’s work and a spring in my stride. Just last week I was still cursing about it. This week I got back from exotic suburbia of Santa Clarita, a dizzying potpourri of drive-in franchises and their carnival-colored signs KFC, Wall-Mart, Red-Hot Buffalo Wings, Golden Arches, Auto Zones, Walmarts, 7-Eleven, you name it.
From that American phantasmagoria, juxtaposed against the breathtaking desert vistas the pioneers had to cross before getting to Encino. Once in the kitchen, the sole of my shoe skidded and some oleaginous substance in the white tile. Oh yes, it was the partially dried shore of Lupe’s puddle made hours earlier.
I did manage to curb a cry of “good grief” and seized on the important action. Grabbing a gnarly washcloth, soaking up all the canine micturation. Then go over it with the washcloth, now rinsed. Dried everything with old newspapers. Then a final wipe over with vinegar. One of the formalities. Who’s to say if it repels dogs, but it least it imparts a stark new scent where Lupe had to go… yet again.
Thanks be given for being able to roll with the expected unexpecteds that come with life on this planet. Thank you, Lupe.
To be continued…
