Life on more than one level

 

All I want for Christmas is that my assortment of hellcritters stop acting like morons about each other.  Arrrrrgh.  The people at the pet shop say it took (variously) six or nine months for their old dog to get used to their young one.  NINE MONTHS?  Oh . . . dear.  I tell myself that at least the hellhounds have offered no violence to the hellterror—there are all these great stories people are eager to tell you about prying the puppy back out of the gullet of the old dog and how the bloodstains on the carpet have never come out—but there’s precious little evidence of an evolution of relationship going on chez McKinley-Dickinson.  Darkness still barks any time she’s running around loose, and gets positively frenzied if Chaos decides to go relate—and paaaaaaaanics if she comes anywhere near him.  He still bolts for the stairs as retreat of choice, but this isn’t going to work much longer.  She can now climb stairs but she’s not very good at it, so I can grab her before she gets very far—my style of puppy-raising is rather labour-intensive—I’m also waiting for the Puppy May Be Permitted to Climb Stairs release from Southdowner.  The stairs up to the front door of the cottage are little low things* and I have to snatch her up QUICKLY on our way back from a puppy hurtle because she knows there will be FOOOOOOOD as soon as we get inside.  But the indoor stairs at the cottage are tall, and turn 180° in about as much space as a twist of yarn and she hasn’t sussed them out yet.  But if she ever stood still you could see her legs growing longer and one of these days I will have stopped to pull dog hair out of my mouth and when I look up she’ll be at the top of the stairs.  Possibly I will be galvanised into rapid rearguard action by the screams of Darkness trapped.

But Chaos, while he is at least willing to engage the hellterror, is chiefly interested in her butt, and that has GOT VERY OLD.  MOVE ON, HONEY, MOVE ON.  And she will not learn that he doesn’t like being bounced on, and cannot resist trying to hook her forelegs either over or around his neck so she can suck on his face which he does not appreciate either.**  DOMESTIC ANIMALS.  WHOSE IDEA WAS DOMESTIC ANIMALS?  I’d like to have a little chat with that bright spark 40,000 years ago who thought that roast wolf-cub was a short-sighted use of resources.

Domestic animals do however serve to ground you.  I do not recommend the experience of your first Christmas as a Christian, at least not if you went the road to Damascus route and you’re old.  I feel like I’m made of oatmeal and wet string.***  I went back to the monks last night and sitting quietly in the twilight before the psalm-chant started was a little comforting.†  I went to two carol services today, one at Aloysius’ church†† and took Peter to one at Tabitha’s church.  I cried through the first one—fortunately I’d had the sense to sit in the back, because I suspected I might kind of lose it—you make very strange noises if you try to sing while you’re crying—and then both Aloysius and Osbert, the vicar, were at the door and you couldn’t escape without speaking to them first.  Maybe my red jeans made it look like my eyes were just reflecting their colour.  Snivel.

Aloysius and I have been pelting emails back and forth:  he suggests stuff for me to read and then I go what? †††  I mean, of course there’s going to be amazing amounts of stuff out there about a popular 2000-year-old religion but . . . golly.  And to the extent that I come from anywhere, I come, a little, from Zen:  I may have told you already that during one of the roughest periods of my life I was getting up at 5 am‡ to sit zazen with the local community.  There’s a meditative tradition in Christianity as well, which I knew nothing about.  I was gerbilling on in my last email about book tours—I thought I’d already told him what I did for a living—and being an introvert, and today he said:  I googled you.  You’re famous.  Oh.  Um.  Well.  But I went home to three hellcritters who chiefly wanted hurtling and attention—I’ll give you famous, what do you mean you don’t have TIME for a sofa?—and then Peter and I shot off to Tabitha’s gigantic, totally packed-out church, where I had to drop Peter at the door and go on a quest for a parking space . . . in Dorset.  It was still a no room at the inn experience:  we were out in the hall with the video link and I shamelessly brought out my knitting.  At least I didn’t cry.  Much.

I suppose I’d better get the tree and the Christmas stuff down from Third House’s attic tomorrow, hadn’t I?  And maybe wrap some presents?  Although I’d better also make time for a sofa.  Critters aren’t big into human religious ritual.  Hey, we’re performing our function (they say).  Remember?  We’re grounding you in a reality of refilling water dishes and picking up crap and dropping chicken crumbs for us to cruise for.

* * *

* For which I’m very grateful every time I take delivery on twenty-seven kilograms of the gold-plated kibble hellhounds get for their final meal—27 kilos being the cut-off point for free delivery.  Remember I’ve said that I can carry Chaos around if I have to, who is a pound or two under forty (eighteen kilos) but Darkness, who several pounds over, is a strain?  Yes.  Maybe I should be glad that they’re not big supper eaters.  But the delivery man pretty well invariably comes when I’m not there, which means he leaves the parcel behind the greenhouse gate.  And I get to schlep it down the TERRIFYINGLY steep greenhouse steps . . . and then groan my way up the cottage stairs which are at least short, even if there are ninety-four of them.

** I see teenage couples behaving a lot like this.  He’s a little old for her though.

*** How am I going to survive Easter?  I know the point is he rose from the dead, but . . .

† Although what is more comforting is that the monks’ rubber soles squeak on the floor, and sometimes one of them may SNEEZE AND BLOW HIS NOSE.  HOOOOOOOONK.

†† I know it needs a name.  But it has to be the right name.  There are a lot of female saints out there.  I haven’t found the right one yet.  Women’s history being what it is they were mostly abbesses or martyred.  Or both.  For Aloysius’ church I want one with a story.

††† Hands up anyone who knows what Hesychasm is without googling it.

‡ No, really.