I’ve taken to addressing the puppy as Puppyfat. She is definitely morphing into her eventual lean sighthound form but her face particularly still looks very puppyish to me, and she is still round and padded in the rump, unlike our older dog who is all rippling glutes and sticky-outy hip bones. Her fur is extremely soft and this, too, makes her seem more like a baby still. So she’s Puppyfat.
Puppyfat did not feel well off and on all weekend, which means I didn’t sleep well off an on all weekend, either. I am not sure why little dogs feel compelled to save their barfs and other gross problems exclusively for the hours of 11 pm to 6am but it isn’t charming. Last night I was sitting on the couch with her at, oh, 3 am and the spirit of my dear departed first dog came to me as if in a dream. "Remember how you used to give me Pepcid almost every day?” my dog’s spirit said. And I did remember and I gave the puppy half a Pepcid, which seemed to make her more comfortable.
Anyway, she's fine, but we did have to go to the vet today. Going to the vet is as weird as anything else these days in that you park your car, call someone to come retrieve your pet, and then wait for the doctor to come back out and explain what's going on. Then someone else calls you and you pay over the phone and your pet is returned to you like a Sonic drive-in order.
Remember when I started this newsletter and I would count how many days we’d been isolating? Hahaha that was cute. Last week my cousin let us know she was postponing her son's high school graduation party because there are still restrictions on large gatherings here. Which, good, but also WTFYD planning a big party right now regardless of what the state of Ohio says? I know I bitch about this every single time I appear in your email box but it remains singularly perplexing to me.
I've mentioned here before that we were supposed to go to Dublin and Paris this summer, a week from today in fact. I am still going to take some of the time off and not go anywhere. I will...probably resist the temptation to stick my dogs in daycare every single day, but there are after all no guarantees in life.
It might have been because I was thinking about our canceled vacation, or it might just be because I wish I was on another planet or at the very least, another country on this planet, but this morning I happened to think of a tiny bakery we visited a month or so before we got married in 2014. We were in Ireland to tour our wedding venue (we'd already booked it online) and to get all the paperwork taken care of, and during the drive from Dublin to Cork I thought I might die if I didn't get to use a restroom.
A thing about Ireland, or at least the parts I've visited: not so much with rest stops. I've pulled over at combination gas station/grocery store/feed store/farms as well as highway service plazas more recognizable to American eyes, but there's not a lot of what you'd call consistency. It's sort of one extreme or the other.
My husband's uncle was kind enough to have driven us to Cork that day and I convinced him to do his level best in finding a suitable (or unsuitable, really) rest stop. He chose a tea room/bakery/retail store/post office (I am not kidding) on the main street of a little town near Cork. As he set about ordering however many scones a person can eat in the time it takes someone to visit the restroom, I asked the woman behind the counter to point me to the ladies'. She guided me behind the counter, through the kitchen, into a storeroom and through a door...into her house where she pointed me to the bathroom. I waved at an older woman who was doing some baking in the kitchen and seemed very unruffled by the presence of an antsy American stranger.
Before we left the tea room, I bought some pastries and a jar of marmalade. As the woman rang me up she asked what brought us to her shop. I told her we were getting married nearby and this launched...just a very long and not un-charming conversation about weddings, men, divorce, dating, her daughter's summer job, and about 100 other topics. I could have stayed much longer if I didn't think my husband's uncle would actually just leave me there, so I thanked her and said goodbye. I saved the marmalade jar after we finished it and now I put my rings in it when I bake.
Anyway: I happened to think of this place today, and I really needed to know if it was still open. It is! It's called Dooleys. I was so very glad to see it. The marmalade is still available, too.