For Beulah, 20?? - Jan 16, 2024

 ...whom I love.

Trigger warnings: pet loss, maudlin self-indulgence, LONG rambling.

It's not like other people haven't mourned pets. 65 MILLION households in the US have a dog. For me this week, there is only 1 dog, and now she's gone. And it's not like she was a PERSON, right? People have lost way more important relationships in their lives. Haha! trick question! Dogs are far superior to people and the grief is just as bad.

I always said I'd get a dog when I had a yard. I was a dog nut as a kid, knew every dog in our neighborhood, read every dogly book in the library. But our family dog, ostensibly mine, for whom I begged and begged, and who arrived in my Christmas stocking when I was 10, always gravitated to my mom (who was home, and fed her, and let her out regularly.) She was a judgey and clannish Cockapoo (the dog, not my mom), and as I grew up and out of the house she protected, she waned, dying after my college years.  I was sad when I heard, but not unduly sad. I don't think I mourned her for long. Maybe that meant I was just in love with the idea of a dog. What did I really know about dogs at 10? or at 20?

A dog is fluffy and nice to pet, and will play with you in a yard. A dog and her person starts to look and act alike, haha. A dog must be exercised and fed regularly, and provided clean water. A dog is a commitment and a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. A dog dreams of running. A dog can smell 10,000x better than a human. A dog is an engine of love: put love in, get love out.

A dog only gets so many springs, though, and not as many as we do. This is an inherent cruelty in the dog-person relationship, one that must be accepted if you want the rest of the joy that comes with dogliness. With these rules in mind as I made my way to adulthood, I realized the itinerant lifestyle and late rock shows of my 20s were not conducive to having a dog. Nor were grad school or the dinner-and-karaoke-years, nor roommates, nor solo apartment living, of my 30s. Nor consulting in my 40s. NOT having a dog was in the theoretical dog's best interest, I thought - some might manage, but I am too lazy/forgetful/broke to care for another creature like a dog should be cared for. 

Fast forward: 2020, COVID, consulting travel skids to a halt.  Thus grounded, in July I buy a house, with a yard. Three months later, after a repost from a friend on FB with this mugshot, I get Beulah. 

The face of sheer boredom, October 2020

I was pretty sure I was down for a bully breed, so numerous in the shelters, and I was forewarned by the shelter that Beulah's dog reactivity meant she'd always be a solo dog. Reasonable....I am a solo person.  A senior should not be waiting in a shelter to die. A senior would also be a shorter term commitment for a commitment-phobe like me. The scars on her face and her legs were accompanied by checkered, uncertain past, a fear-aggression towards other dogs, a cautionary tale about a run in with a Husky at a dog park that led to her being returned by a foster to the shelter. Silly, I thought - anyone who knew her for 10 minutes knew she was not a social dog to take to a dog park. Setting about the task of getting to know her, I dusted off my Rules of Dog and conscientiously fulfilled my solemn duties. They didn't seem like duties, though - just accommodations anyone would make for a new roommate. One who depended on you utterly.

 

Meet cute

 

Gotcha day (cr: S. Talbott)

A dog must have a bed to dream in. Probably a few beds, for optimal dreaming. A dog must have a fenced yard, and be walked at least  2x a day for at least 30 minutes each time. A dog must have the finest fresh foods your disposable income allows. A dog should probably have a bone-shaped pillow. A dog needs a fuzzy pink waterproof blanket on the couch. A dog should be free-ranging, full-access, and provided a window to look out of at all times. A reactive dog should be helped to understand that she didn't have to fight anyone anymore, and that turning around and walking the other direction was the best course of action. A dog's environment should be managed so that she does not eat a tampon and go to the vet for a $500 "intestinal misadventure." A dog should be effusively applauded for managing the back yard bunny infestation. 

Paw Patrol

A dog only gets so many springs, though, so you should allow her all the time she needs to whuffle in the new grass, lay for awhile on the warming concrete, and sniff the delectable March breeze, ripe with cow manure and the diesel from the neighbor's lawnmower. While you're waiting, you can wonder at how much more information she's getting on that breeze than you are. She usually faces west, so you try it, focusing on the air. You both sit like that for 20, 30 minutes sometimes.

Zen and the Art of Sniffing to the West

So Beulah Belle - or BB, so named by the dogwalker who saves you both when you break your ankle - becomes an expected, comfortable part of the fabric of this new sedentary life you lead. At some point, she'd had all her ambition and moxy abused or neglected out of her, so every interaction with the world is cautious and reserved - why bother emoting if no one's looking, or if it just draws attention?  The arthritis in her back also means it's probably painful to wag her tail, so she saves that for very special occasions, when she's VERY happy to see you, or reactive enough not to notice the pain. She has no use for toys and is a little offended you keep asking. She diligently chases the rabbits out of our garden, for which she is handsomely rewarded with butcher bones and booty skritches. The fur on her booty is a different texture, more coarse and wavy than the rest of her.  It helps you orient to the part of her back that is tender vs the part she appreciates a good double-handed skritch on.

Booty waves

She oversees the comings and goings of all the furniture you buy, then return, then replace, as you fill up the house with things for her to lie on. She eventually stops snapping at buses coming up from behind you as you walk, stops redirecting aggression onto the leash upon seeing another dog (usually); but her sweetness to people never waivers, to the delight of a small army of neighbors, visiting friends, tradespeople, all surprised when her rippling physique is belied by her hopeful, derpy fatalism.  The velvet geometry of her impressive jaw matches perfectly with the curve of your ankle, when lounging on the couch, drifting to sleep, or when she regrets to inform you, in her quiet, insistent way, that you are done quilting for the night.

 

And as it turns out, an old dog CAN learn new tricks. To your complete surprise, she makes some dog friends: another bully girl, sweetest landseal on stocky legs, breaks the ice with her sunny nature and intuitive respect for a nervous old dog's space.  The unthreatening neighbor puppy, desperate for companionship, is safely behind a fence and easily left behind if he gets to be too much. Your brother's enormous chocolate lab, literally twice her size, is uncomplicatedly delighted by his tentative new friend. She follows him around like a white shadow. She buries her bones in the couch, her snorting and biting and arranging of the cushions making you laugh with the ridiculousness and rejoice at her growing confidence; that she can interact with her world and change it to suit her, that she knows she can come back to this bone later, that she belongs here forever. She likes to lounge on her back sometimes, feet in the air, looking like an Easter ham but as relaxed as she could possibly be.

 

Her farts could fell an elephant, but you don't really mind much. Hey, you're no prize to live with either. You suit each other: two old snappy, farty broads, sniffing the breeze on the patio, sharing the couch, maintaining a cheek on a foot or a paw on an leg, to anchor.

Bed #4

The changes are so gradual when you live with someone day after day. And then they are SO fast. You can't see a frosty face as much on a white dog, but you might catch a hind leg lagging behind its fellows, or a huffy reluctance to get up on the bed. If you impatiently yell at an aging dog, especially one feeling vulnerable with failing eyesight and stiffening joints, the wounded confusion in her clouding eyes might stab needles in your heart for weeks afterwards. You might suddenly realize that the vet's persistence as respects pain meds is no longer a suggestion for a future eventuality.  A dog needs some stairs to get up on the bed now. A dog needs blander food after that pancreatitis scare, help cleaning where she can't reach to lick, a heating pad for the arthritis. A dog needs you to be vigilent for signs she is ailing: a new lump on her belly, a shorter distance she can go before panting, an accident she tries to hide.

Still, though, there are days so good you can breathe easy.  It's coming, but it's not now.  Today she jumped on the chair to bark at those goddamn corgis across the street.  Today she ate her whole breakfast in one go. Today she ran in the yard like a puppy through the dying leaves. 

Today when she was napping, you heard a noise you've never heard before and look over to see her thumping her tail happily in her sleep. A dog dreams of running - but not of running away. Not anymore.

Perhaps a dog needs a companion? Someone else to get her through the tough times ahead?

Enter Bix, March 2023. He is supposed to be 6 or 7 years old - turns out he might be like 18 months. That was not the match you were thinking of, two seniors tottering their way through their golden years. He is energetic in a way she'll never be, now. But he learns that his play style scares her, learns to sniff politely and leave her alone. They reach detente quickly, both eager to avoid any trouble. We work out where everyone eats and sleeps, establish separate walk schedules, fall into a new routine.  You are a ridiculous dog lady now, have made dogs your whole personality, buy them the special bones they each like at different stores and scrupulously give them the precisely same number of treats and pats.  You can't help but wonder if you've made her life a little worse, though, by bringing him home. She was fine: it was you who needed backup storage for your heart. Because you know.

A rare cuddle - you can almost hear the long-suffering deep sigh out of BB

Popcorn vultures on movie night

But.

A dog only gets so many springs. And an old dog might not see her next. 

Sniff Westward, Angel

The lump you found was metastatic, after the first surgery wasn't enough to catch it. She won't make it through another anesthesia. You weigh chemo with its side-effects and realize with dawning horror it does not add time appreciably to her future. Her laggy back leg stops supporting her entirely. Embarrassed, she is slower to get up from the faceplants during your walks, which are down to a minimal 10-15 minutes. She doesn't even notice the accidents in the house now. She needs help up the stairs to the bed, sometimes prefers to just sleep in the living room where it's easier for her to pace, drink water, pace at night. Bix sniffs her surgery scar - interested, concerned - then her swollen lymph node, then her head. One day you look up from your phone to see him, who knows she prefers her space, touching one paw to her and looking directly at you. She doesn't even protest. This seems portentous and sad, even as you argue with yourself that you anthropomorphize your pets too much. He was probably just stretching.

A dog's sense of smell is 10,000x better than a human's. And they probably aren't living in denial.

She hasn't, you realize, stretched out on her back in some time. Weeks. Months, maybe. A rabbit freezes unnoticed as she limps by.

Now, when she puts her head on your foot, she is asking a question. Or maybe answering one. You've lived with her longer than any previous roommate.

Last day

You had her for three springs and she didn't make the fourth. 

You curse yourself for missing the first 10 or so springs she had without you, without knowing, maybe, that she was safe, that she didn't have to fight anyone, that she could bury her bones if she wanted and they'd be there for her later. 

What do I know about dogs?

A dog is a bottomless heart you pour your love into, without expectation, because she must be loved. A dog is a wounded glance that excoriates your shithead soul. A dog is a tail wagging, happy to see you, even when it hurts. A dog is a tentative nose boop, light as a spider, reminding you to put your damn phone down and go to sleep. 

A dog needs a space to dream of being happy, and a foot to nestle and a rabbit to chase. She needs someone to witness the time passing. She needs someone to love her for all the springs she has left in her, right up until the second that her impressive velvet jaw goes heavy in your hand and she finally doesn't feel the arthritis anymore. 

A dog is brief as a good dream, and you must skritch it with both hands while you can.

Miss you forever, Beulah Belle. Thank you for teaching me to walk a little slower, and love a little faster.

besos,

Astrid

Grace Under Fire: A Quilt for a Comrade Going Through It

 ....being a master class in handling bad news, and a love letter to another work colleague but not THAT kind of love letter, please don't call HR.

I've mentioned the crowd I've worked with at a past client when I wrote about Ronnie, my non-boss boss; and how there is a tendency to seek out the teams that we know work well together, and try to rebuild those high-functioning (or at least highly fun) teams, especially when times/clients are tough.  Avengers assemble, if you will.

image stolen from internet

So it comes as no great shock that when one of our cohort - in this case, data strategy wizard (and explainer extraordinaire for his, ahem, less technical colleagues), destroyer of legacy systems, west coast Cub fan, and stalwart dinner companion, KB - started going through his own individual hell last year, the collective still wanted to assemble somehow: tricky, though, because if it were a work shitstorm we could all just pitch in and take some of the weight, and help him shake it off in time for beer at his favorite restaurant (Kordyshack tonight, anyone?).  In this case, all we can do is sit around in our respective zip codes, sending crappy, morbid jokes by gchat, approximating normalcy, and hoping for the best......our way of showing KB that we love him like fried chicken and we are thinking of him all the time, basically constantly, I mean 24/7, in a way that would be uncomfortable and weird if he weren't a liberated progressive man (despite also being a salty and phlegmatic Canadian, +/- one tam-o-shanter).

American war poster, 1942, demonstrating howAmericans have long needed things
to be spelled out for them when it comes to geopolitics. 

Anyway, KB sent a group of his past-team Avenger A-listers an email awhile back outlining some pretty craptastical medical ish he had just discovered and was coming to grips with: and despite the fact that it was Very Bad News indeed, he impressed me deeply for just how gracefully he conveyed it - directly to the point, specific where it helped to understand, practical in envisioning the murky future but not dwelling morbidly on any of what was at that time some upcoming heavy weather he would have to endure.  I can only assume that the zen approach he'd developed over multiple decades of explaining data strategy to complete fucking morons came to his aid in this, his darkest hour, as he brought to it the same unbelievable patience, the same knack for breaking down and summarizing of the strategy into smaller digestible pieces, and the same spirit of polite inquiry that I have always benefitted from in my time in his august shadow.  Whether he was doing it for his benefit or ours, I managed to admire the approach through, I freely admit, some bitter tears on his behalf.

So it was to this same A-team email group, minus KB himself, that I sent out a plea in turn - would anyone like to write KB a note that I could include in a quilt for him? And the answer there was a resounding yes: in part, I think, because we were all feeling that same sense of "Well shit, how do we help on this one?"  So I gathered up these sentiments, scribbled on post its or envelopes or index cards and captured on phones and emailed from all over the globe, some from folks I haven't worked with but whose signature I can probably now forge (KIDDING) and transcribed them on to some squares embedded in this simple pattern, in the same way signature quilts  were collected for life-changing events in days of old.  Back then, it was usually a gift to a leaver: "we're packing up the Conestoga wagon and will probably never see you again, community I was born and raised in!"  In this case, of course, we hope very much it is a gift to a stayer - at least, a stayer for a good long time, which is I guess all any of us can really hope for anyway.

The signatures/notes are in the 3x4 grid, alpha by first name
which is probably really annoying to a data strategist. :)

Here we are! Though this red is almost as hard to read as the handwriting, sheesh.

Close up on a corner to show the faux flange binding, ie, that little purple
stripe, which still delights me even after, I don't know, 6 or 7 quilts
I've done this way now.

(I should mention, too, that some of these signatures are ones you'd find in, like, a book of the history of Agile software development, and most certainly in a book of the history of this company, which added a little archival shine to these proceedings - KB has some friends and supporters in high places, is what I'm trying to say.  And now he has proof.)

As any of the quilting community can tell you, our first impulse ALWAYS is to wrap someone in crisis up in physical fibers as a proxy for an extended, heartfelt and possibly unwanted bearhug. And as anyone who knows me can equally attest, I'm prone to attempting a grand gesture when maybe a better, more useful show of support for someone whose world is turned upside down might be a constant stream of terrible jokes and tasty casseroles delivered with heating instructions. Of course I would never cook for anyone I care about, that would just be disrespectful, bordering on lethal.  

But  also just know, KB, that if you were feeling the quiet was a little too quiet - feeling any strange absence of gallows humor or noxious puns - that I was THINKING of them, and you as I poked every stitch of this quilt over these last few months, and making a mental note to send them along to you before I forgot them, and then forgetting them anyway because my brain is still damaged from that one time you tried to explain applied data mesh to me. But I certainly have not forgotten YOU, or this shit hand you've been dealt, one which you are nevertheless playing with such utter grace and equanimity; and neither have your other Avengers who are assembled here to provide you with that heartfelt bearhug/casserole in fabric form, captured  in allegedly fabric-safe marker that will nevertheless probably bleed and fade over time, as will we all.  Rest assured, though, that our regard for you will not. It could never.  

The picture that is supposed to be "artfully tossed over a chair" but ends
up usually more like "someone forgot to put the laundry away again."

So, to sum: in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "When you're going through hell - keep going!" With much love, KB, and extended, heartfelt, and possibly unwanted bearhugs from the whole gang (whether they got their squares in on time or not).  Miss you bunches, and looking forward to assembling with you again soon, at a Kordyshack-to-be-named-later. 

Besos,

Astrid

PS...one for the road....

hahahahaha

(Technical quilty notes for anyone wondering)

• I copied everyone's handwriting through the simple expedient of pulling up the JPGs onto my laptop, heightening the contrast where necessary, and then painters-taping pre-washed quilt squares to my actual goddamn screen, which acted like a lightboard and made tracing everyone's notes quite easy. This also made it simple to resize the signatures until they each fit their designated square.  There are some tracing goofs where the contrast wasn't great so each signature looks a lot like my own handwriting if I were practicing to become a check forger, WHICH I'M NOT, so I sent along a paper copy of each note to KB as a guide and/or for posterity, and so that if my tracings aren't legible you'll know who said what, and that "Carlos" is not "Carbs", for instance, even though I kind of fat-fingered that one (sorry, Carbs.) Unfortunately, I lost the pictures of all of the above in a terrible I'm a Fucking Idiot phone accident - if they ever surface I'll add them.
• The pattern is Squareburst by Running Stitch Quilts, and I think it ended up being like 72x86 or so? This pattern is pretty easy to increase size on, depending on whether you can stand to have the top/bottom and left/right rows NOT be identical
• The fabrics are - well, started out being, anyway - an off-white Grunge, Kona Limestone, and an old French General forest green that has a pleasant striation to it while still being wholly solid.  I say "started out being" because then I used a rather violent purple as backing (it's Kimberbell wideback "Connected Stars" in Purple) which bled like a motherfucker DESPITE both prewashing it AND throwing the finished product in there with a whole phalanx of Color Catchers....it pretty dramatically turned that Kona Limestone into a pinky beige which, while still okay visually, was not at all how this started out.  Good thing I didn't at all stress out for weeks about which colors went best together, hahahah! haha! ahem.  The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft quilty, etc.

The bleedin' purple culprit....

...turned that Kona Limestone (the lighter green swatch on top) into the
lighter pinky-beige color in the quilt itself.  Look at that Color Catcher! (The fuschia thing
at top, which started out white). The darker green didn't change too much.

Another view of that astounding color change, woopsie.

• Quilting was a pretty basic "holy shit it's been 6 months and I haven't sent this fucker out yet" stitch in the ditch around the basic star design
• Batting was a thin, pleasantly drapey bamboo, because let's face it, we might want to give KB a bearhug, but he doesn't need to be smothered by it. He lives in a tropical rainforest, for chrissakes!

And just because progress shots are always fun:

A Placeholder for Hands2Help 2022....

 ....being a way to share what I have sent out this year at a moment when I don't have time to write a whole screed about how they happened, and Instagram is kicking me off for not giving them a copy of an ID card proving I'm over 14, to which I say to them: fuck right off.

Not so much to share this time - hoping to join the linkyparty for the annual Hands2Help event, sending quilts all over the country/globe for charitable causes. This plus quilt went to Mercyful quilts:

The flimsy on my design wall....

The front after quilting...

...and the back.

And this low-volume strip-pieced diamonds top went to Victoria's Quilts:

Harder to see, but at least sewn together here...

A little easier to see but in pieces (strip pieced on a small phonebook-sized page) on the pleasantly cold concrete floor of my brother's basement, my temporary sewing quarters when COVID broke out.

And I wish it had been many more, but if wishes were horses, that would be really weird, as the old saying goes. 

Besos!
Astrid.