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Saturday, July 28, 2018

"Dog"

I look at my curled up lump of a dog at my feet and search for inspiration.  She sighs.  An ear twitches.  She sinks deeper into sleep and twitches a foot.  I watch her belly go in and out with each breath.  That's it.  She isn't offering any more inspiration than that unless it's for me to take deeper breaths and relax too.  Course if I got up and said "Let's go for a walk", she'd be up and bouncy in a split second, which I think is pretty incredible since she's ancient.  I hope I'm doing as well when I'm her equivalent age.

I couldn't think of what to write next so I got up to refill my glass of iced tea.  I bashed the glass on the doorframe, sent glass and ice flying in a noisy crash, and my puppy lazily got up to see what I'd done.  She sniffed an ice cube and wandered outside.  The glass didn't break, thankfully.

I was making a sandwich when she came back inside.  She hovered hopefully underfoot.  I dropped a bit of cheese and pointed at it before carrying my sandwich back to the computer and everything became as it was before.  Old dogs are so easy.  We have a rhythm.  We understand each other.  She leaves my art piles alone.

Lacking any blog inspiration, I go back to watching her breathing.  In out, in out, I match my breath to her's and get myself into a dopey hypnotic peacefulness.

In this relaxed state, I remember recently painting a portrait of my cousin's cat.  A cat is close enough for a "dog" post, right?  I sent the painting as a congratulations gift because she recently finished her law degree.  I'm impressed.  She's roughly my age and clearly is still tackling new challenges.  That's inspiring.  Makes me want to quit watching my dog breathe and do something inspirational too.

I also painted a portrait of my niece who recently graduated with her masters degree.  She likes Asian things and bleaches the ends of her hair blonde, or blue, whatever.  This isn't my usual kind of painting, but I enjoyed making it.  I hope she enjoys having it.

Shaking myself out of my hypnotic dog watching, I did have weather excitement this week with a microburst of tornado like winds, hail, and thunderstorm.  Trees and branches came down.  The top of a tree came down next door, flying over their garage but stopping short of their house and cars.  Really, it could not have come down more nicely.  It even just missed flattening my gooseberry bushes and hibiscus.

The neighbor next to them had a tree take down the electrical lines and we were all out of power for a day.  When the electric company came they asked to saw up my next door neighbors' downed tree so they could bring their equipment in the back yards to rescue the electric lines.  This was a huge relief as they're 2 older sisters who don't do chainsaws.

I thought the excitement was done, but no, I woke up to fire trucks and lights flashing.  The grounded wires sent electricity into the ground which traveled into the garage of the neighbor 3 doors down.  The garage smoldered and smoked, but no serious damage.  Really, I think everything turned out as luckily as it could for a micro tornado and it caused the neighbors to socialize when they were out with their dogs.


8 comments:

  1. Wow! That's some exciting weather! Most dogs don't enjoy those kind of storms--hopefully your old friend wasn't too bothered.

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    1. She can sleep through about anything. Sometimes she acts deaf, but other times I think she just won't be bothered with noises :)

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  2. I love that the prompt is "dog", and the first thing I see is a lovely cat illustration!
    Sounds like exciting weather. We've had some of that ourselves - nature's wrath and all.
    Your dog is so cute! I'm wanting to get another since our old dog went to dog heaven. Old dogs ARE so easy. New ones, not so much.

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    1. Sometimes I can be contrary :) You could always adopt an adult dog if you don't feel like breaking in a puppy?

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  3. Enjoying your ramble. I need to get s fog so I can do some hypnotic dog watching of my own.

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  4. They've got videos of everything these days. You can probably watch a youtube of a dog breathing :)

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  5. Aww Linda how sweet is your dear dog. I love your artwork in this post, both are fabulous and must have been so appreciated. I'm glad there was not too much damage from the weather xx

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  6. Too much excitement on one day I'd say! I have no dog, but I wonder if I can watch myself in a mirror and get the same effect out of a human hypnotic watching...

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