Taking stock

It has been a strange, and sad, week without our lovely Archie-boy. Kris said, beautifully, that losing a dog is so hard because they are 'part of how our families knit together and how we practice love and happiness in them'. This has been so true for us. However, sad as Mark and I are, the greatest loss is really Bessie's. She and Archie were such close and loving companions - Archie really understood just what a strange dog Beebs is and totally embraced that. He went along with her weird idiosyncratic games (including the infamous Hump-matic), one eyebrow ever quizzically raised in a lovely, knowing aside to us. He patiently endured her barking...and barking...and barking... until he could stand it no longer, handing over whatever it was that she wanted (a bone, a game, a particular place in the sun) and disappearing under the house for a for a bit of quiet and a nice lie down. He knew that she needed to sleep on the bed with us - no problem, he was quite happy with his spot in front of the fire. Most of all, he just understood that she was Bessie, and that was OK. But Archie is gone, and Rhumba is here. And from Rhumba's perspective, being Bessie is just not OK. We're not sure what to do. Do we stick it out for another week, hoping these two miserable dogs will find some way to be happy together? Do we take Rhumba back and hope and hope that she finds someone else to love her? Do we get a third dog? This is sounding like a choose-your-own-adventure but you get our dilemma. I wish dogs could talk. I'd really appreciate their advice on this one.


Perhaps in part because everything has felt so unsettled and illfitting this week, we also found ourselves embarking on a general stocktake of 'where we are at' with money, work and dreams and to what extent these intersect with reality, responsibility, and general adult-ness. We discovered that in our case it is less an intersection than a dusty, potholed, kind of scary looking cul-de-sac of dingy looking houses with no letterboxes. Reality and responsibility, as I know them, anyway, don't live here just now. So, things are going to change. Basically, income must go up, expenses must (somehow) come down. This is always a pretty intimidating topic of conversation, especially when parenting is in the mix, and the last few times we tried it it was kind of messy and inconclusive. But now, I think we're getting somewhere. A new job direction for Mark (going 'back on the tools': I always loved him in a King Gee work shirt), a shift in working style for me (less work, but hopefully more evenly distributed over the month) and best of all, finally, a commitment to at least trying to be self sufficient. Sadly, we also agreed that that lovely, restorative, relaxing and probably life span enhancing glass of red each night had to go, as do the disposable nappies, the second car, the mobiles, and chocolate. I have committed to baking all our bread (I used to, before Martha, so am hopeful I can find it in me to do this again), shopping with the utmost thriftiness and spinning up some of those dusty old fleeces rather than buying any more gorgeous and delectable yarn with which to make elegant yet slightly eccentric knits for me and my daughter that will tranform us into paragons of style. Which of course I have never actually done, so I guess this is more of a virtual saving. I will miss it though. We already do live basically from the garden although we do buy some staples (potatoes, carrots, bananas). It does mean that our diet can at times be quite constrained (at the moment, it's all about eggs, chard, parsley, lemons, rocket and celery) particularly if I'm not in an imaginative or inventive cooking mood (um, savoury mince anyone?) however this is a trade off that we're more than prepared to make. It means we can eat good quality food that is not permeated with fungicide or pesticide that costs us less than poor quality food that is. The challenge is to get more variety for more of the year, and to ensure that we can keep up a constant supply of the staples. I can't wait to expand the garden and orchard - plans are already afoot. I am looking forward to frugality. Although, a glass of wine would taste good with that.