Surreality calls

When Jay and I met, it was Christmas and it happened because he was home from California for Christmas, and my then-boyfriend Sean wanted to see his old high school buddy.
Sean called this morning while Jay and I were laying on the couch, and listening to Sean ask about me what um, sort of surreal.
"How long was Mars out there?" he asked.
"Oh, she's still here," Jay said. "We're finishing brunch, laying on the couch."
Silence. Then, "so did you see the new posting on urbandictionary.com?"
I talked to Sean the day before I left, and when he asked me how long I'd be out here, I said, "oh, 'bout a week." I didn't want to tell him how long I'd be out there, why was it any business of his? More than it not being his business, it's just me feeling sort of strange about being somewhere in between these two now, even if they both act like I'm not, really. The whole thing felt weird to me then, when I talked to Sean, but laying on Jay's lap and listening to them talk about me was a moment of surreality unlike any other.

Bernie

I am falling in love with this dog.
He's got this great, bigger-than-life personality, which, for a dog, means that he says things to me just by shooting me a look.
Like last night.
I was trying to get him to scoot over on the couch, and I told him to move his ass, because "that's my spot, buddy." He looked at me, the pink of his eyelid standing out soft and bright against the dark brown smudge shadowing his right eye.
"Your spot? Buddy? This is my house. My couch," he seemed to say back, squinting at me in a vicious stare-down.

With Jay at work all day, Bern and I have had some good bonding moments too, and I'm pretty sure we're going to get in a run at the dog park today, green squeaky ball and snacks in tow. I'm also pretty amazed at myself, how much I don't mind this routine, this new sense of responsibility. God, is this what happy parents feel like?
Sure, letting him out at midnight because Jay's fast asleep sort of sucks, and I didn't like seeing him hunker down on someone's lawn this morning, after I conveniently forgot a bag at home, but there's some sort of silent thing between a dog and a dog-lover that makes it real easy for me to adapt to him, even if he's not my dog. It's the way he lays down sort of behind me, sort of on me, when I'm watching TV, curling his neck around my ass so he can look up at me over it. Or the way he has to sleep on top of me, now, at night.
And perhaps scariest of all, the way he hovers around me in the kitchen, snaking between my legs while I'm mixing up a marinade for ribs or sitting on my feet while I'm shredding cheese. Yeah, yeah, I know, he just wants the food. Of course.
But this is the most endearing thing to me, I think, because it reminds me of being little and hanging out with my mom in the kitchen. I'm sure that my constant afootness was irritating, as it is with Bernie and I, but it's also so damn cute and erm...heartwarming.
Fuck. Did I really just say that?

This is my job

I am incredibly lucky.
For the past eight months, I've worked in my pjs, on my couch, in bed; coffee shops have been my office outside my home and business meetings have been conducted on the phone, never in person with anyone.
I am incredibly lucky, and it took a soft beam of early California sunlight for me to see this.
I'm in Cali on a whim, f'chrissake. Working. At my leisure. I have taken advantage of this situation as fully as possible, yes, but I have Taken Advantage of it.
When I started this project, this book, this healing, I meant to work on it for at least 5 hours a day.
"Even if I delete everything I write today in six months, I told myself, "I've got to treat this as a job. Write something for this book every day."
And for a while, when it was new and glamorous and exciting, I did. I even put in a few eight-hour days at the beginning.
But then I got comfortable and six months of time between me and my goal felt like such a long time. So I dicked around with my goal, barely meeting it. And maybe not meeting it at all, if you count the fact that I still have interviews and such to do. But whatever.
The point is, I realized this morning that my next goal is quickly approaching, even if September feels like a long ways off.
I've promised myself that by September I will have the interviews transcribed, stored, analyzed and integrated into the content of my story. I have no idea how that will come together or the formatting for it, but I have the commitment to it.
I think.
And that's why, dressed (no, not in my pjs!) and still focused on the sunny day outside, I'm devoting this day to really knocking out some usable, revised content. If this is my job, and I've only got until September to do it, I better get after it, because who knows what kind of work I'll have to do then.