Black Sheeped

1. Cab is turning into an awesome dog. Still dumb, but much less annoying. And more friendly. And somehow more brawny looking, and yet cuter. And happier. My friend sent me a text message, the friend who stayed with us, and it said, “Thanks for letting me stay! It was great to see you. I love your dogs.”

2. This morning, at work, I was busy and I felt so tired. I thought it was 11:30, and I checked the time to see if I could eat lunch soon. NINE-OH-SIX. 9:06.

3. Sometimes I am startled to think about where the people I care about have ended up, what they do. I think about the people I cared about years ago, and I think about where they wanted to be. I think about where they are now. The people I grew up with, at various stages of growing up, are scattered around doing wildly different things. People I’ve met briefly, people I’ve known for years, they are everywhere doing everything. I don’t know why the few minutes I spent yelling to a stranger at a show that I got my coat on Amazon or the way an old roommate and I would meow at each other across the apartment to see if the other was awake and ready to dish on the night before seem so big and important. I don’t know why the other day I remembered pulling on short shorts with my best friend, in fifth grade, and stuffing our training bras with socks. I don’t know why I remembered that I put on blue eyeshadow and she put on brown, I don’t know why I remember how we smeared on lipstick, looked in the mirror, and laughed and laughed. Expired mascara and dirty band-aid covered knees, pushing salt grains into piles on tables at restaurants, my two best college friends cheering me up by dancing to Herb Alpert way longer than anyone should ever dance to Herb Alpert, locusts loud at evening softball games in high school that we attended just to buy a certain type of sucker offered only at that particular snack shack.

All these people! All over the place. One is a middle school special services teacher, one is a 9th grade dance coach. One is going to L.A. to write television shows. There’s a pharmacist, an accountant, a radio DJ, a few engineers, writers, a physical therapist, a to-be doctor, a police officer, a film maker, a preacher, a website designer, someone who does something at Purdue that I don’t understand, a postal carrier, a farmer, musicians, researchers, an animator, a guard at a prison, parents, editors.

And those evenings with our sandaled feet getting dirty as we sat on bleachers, eating candy with the heavy smell of hay pressing in on us, don’t go away.

Love,

black sheeped