Every day or so I get an email generated deep inside the Martha Stewart Industrial Complex. The email usually contains 11 Chicken Recipes We Love or How to Clean Your Shower So It Sparkles but yesterday it wanted to tell me how to do my laundry during COVID-19. Omg please stop it. WASH YOUR CLOTHES, end of story!
I had a rough weekend with the puppy. She snapped at my husband’s face but in fairness to her, he was repeatedly getting in her face. You could roll our older dog up in a blanket like a burrito and put a bonnet on him and cover him in kisses and he would just let it happen and ask for more. The puppy is a different dog in this and many other respects.
I’m not sure if some of the bad behavior and backsliding is due to her age (rotten teenager stage) or the fact that I’m using new training techniques she may not necessarily like. But I also feel very alone on this island, like I am failing her because she has such a hard time functioning in the world and also failing my husband and our other dog because she is still such a pain in the ass.
In spite of all this, I am her favorite person. Last night as I fell asleep during a movie I put her little warm body on the couch with me, right up by my face, and she sighed with complete contentment. When she rides in the car with me she puts one paw on my forearm and I don’t know if she is reassuring me or herself (or if my arm is just convenient). Anyway it remains a struggle, her entire existence.
The movie I was drifting off to was Celebration, a sort of behind-the-scenes documentary of Yves St. Laurent’s final collection. It’s not a talking-head sort of documentary, for instance if you watched McMillions, this is an entirely different country. You might be hard-pressed to determine if the footage was filmed in 1972 or 2002 (the appearance of model Laetitia Casta clears this up somewhat).
The footage goes between black-and-white and color. Lingering shots of the designer’s dog would not look out of place in a Saturday Night Live parody of a Fellini film. And in some parts of the film there is an inexplicable and jarring electronic klaxon noise that will have you rooting in the couch cushions for your remote. It’s a little sad, because Laurent was not well when the footage was made, but if you’ve ever wanted to poke around in the YSL archives this is probably as close as you’re going to get.
I can usually keep my eyes open for any kind of fashion documentary but after being up half the night before with the puppy, who decided to rip the stuffing out of her bed at 3 a.m. for some reason, I simply could not hold my shit together one minute longer than necessary. My husband cleaned up the dinner aftermath and emptied the dishwasher and took out the recycling – in other words, every single onerous Sunday-night task that I hate! – and I listened to it all happen while drifting in and out of a Yves St. Laurent-tinged haze.
Last night was better. I did have to take the puppy out in the middle of the night but truthfully this is so vastly preferable to how she used to be that I absolutely don’t mind it. We had Bialy’s bagels this morning for the first time in months, maybe since the beginning of the year. I can’t really remember anything that happened in January or February now. For one thing I was sleep-deprived and for another it all seems like it was 100 years ago anyway.
Today it is beautiful outside and the dogs are both at school. I have a grocery order coming this afternoon and my Wine.com order is being delivered, all in all we have the makings of an okay Monday. And it’s June, which seems insane! I wonder if time will continue to slip by practically unnoticed or if it will start to drag again like it did in March? Whoever is fiddling with the controls of the space-time continuum needs to stop drinking and get a grip.