I promise I won’t write about it forever, but: France was our first vacation since August 2019, when we took a long weekend in Pittsburgh. (Which actually was great!) In October 2020, we booked an Airbnb near the Finger Lakes but couldn’t go because of my littlest dog’s face wart.
In trying to remember when the face wart happened, I searched “wart” in my archive and re-read that post, and, what a fucked time! All of those problems have of course been resolved. (Yes, it took six months to get the right dishwasher.) But it is strange to think of how troubled our little dog was and how troubled we were as a result.
She is so much better now, thanks to time and the largest allowable daily dose of trazodone. Drugs let her be herself, and while she is still much spicier than her brother, she is very dear to us.
I worried about her a lot while we were away: who would hold her teeeeeeeeeeny face? Who would she cozy up to at night? Would the dog sitter remember to give her a treat for going outside, or would she just sit in her treat-acceptance place on the kitchen rug like a little programmable robot forever?
We split the dogs’ time between the kennel (where they go to daycare) and our wonderful dog sitter. The kennel time worried me most of all because, historically, the little one hasn’t handled it well. The bigger one does all right but then tends to fall apart when he gets home (“fall apart” is polite code for “experience severe stomach distress and all that goes with it”). But everything seems to have been…fine.
In Paris, we saw a lot of very good dogs, including an Italian greyhound at a charming dog park in Montmartre. It was a very dainty one. They are all somewhat dainty, but as I watched this little spun sugar dog prance about and kiss his dog friends, I felt certain my relatively robust American versions would have been evicted from this dog park or at least, frowned at very Frenchly.
I would love to be a person who takes her dogs on trips. Had I endeavored to take my dogs on a flight, though, they would probably end up making a movie about it. The movie would be called DIARRHEA PLANE and you can guess the plot.
The dogs have already forgotten we were gone, whereas I am still thinking about vacation every day. Most of these thoughts involve bread and decent public transportation, but some are just about how you always seem to be different on vacation and how you miss that version of yourself when you get back.
*****
Lastly, I will close by admitting that I am now embroiled in a binge-watch of the 2011-2019 USA drama Suits, starring a bunch of people you might sorta recognize and Meghan Markle. I knew people were watching this show again because Anne Helen Petersen mentioned it in a recent newsletter, and when I needed to download several hours of anodyne television to watch on the plane to France I happened to remember it.
Entire episodes of Suits go down like too many servings of Cretor’s cheese and caramel popcorn mix. It is like applying Valium directly to one’s brain. There are no stakes anywhere to be found. The writing, while not bad exactly, is also not that good. People have the same conversations repeatedly, and nobody’s job seems entirely secure. How this show stayed on the air for eight seasons, I have no idea, but I’m in it up to my eyeballs now. The one thing I know about it is that Meghan Markle left the show at some point for what ended up being, arguably, a worse gig.
I neither recommend nor pan this show. My only comment is that it is perfect for a brain that wants to be nowhere for a while, or at least for a brain that wishes it was still on vacation.