Day 15

My bus driver this evening drove as if she were trying to work the gas pedal and a yo-yo with the same foot, simultaneously. Lurch, brake, lurch, brake, lurch, brake. I disembarked and came reeling home like a drunkard after a six-month sea voyage.

Tomorrow Mr. Thel and I are heading over to Port Angeles for two nights; his band has shows there on Friday and Saturday. We have engaged our lovely neighbors to take care of Chloe while we are gone, and I'm nervous as a mother about it. I wanted to write out a detailed list of all the instructions and suggestions we'd already discussed with them, but Mr. Thel convinced me that as competent, dog-friendly adults they are unlikely to forget to feed her. (To be callous about it, she could stand to lose a few pounds anyway. When I took her to the vet two weeks ago the assistant noted approvingly that Chloe had lost about three pounds since her last visit. Then the vet came in and started to lecture me that Chloe is getting slightly chunky. Fortunately, the assistant leapt in to note that we're "heading in the right direction, actually." Mm-hmm!)

I'm not as worried about the neighbors neglecting her as I am about her getting into some kind of trouble between their visits, including but not limited to:
--having an attack of diarrhea and tracking it through the house
--chewing on an electrical cord
--chewing on something of ours in resentment at our prolonged absence
--knocking over a bookshelf, OR! --having a bookshelf fall on her in an earthquake!
--Or having the whole house fall in on her in an earthquake!
--Or having the whole house fall in on her in an earthquake, surviving the house's collapse and fleeing the scene in terror, ending up in the greenbelt on Beacon Hill where the coyotes are rumored to live and, believing herself abandoned by her people, insinuating herself into the coyote pack, until one day getting into a poisoned chunk of meat set out by a coyote-hater and dying a slow and terrible death.

This is why I don't do well at "thinking through the potential outcomes" of my choices. Too many appalling possibilities. Better to leave the vet's phone number, our cell numbers, and a new bag of dogfood on the counter and zip away before I talk myself out of it.