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Dear Internet,
Today I had to call the ball to kill my very dear sweet friend. Wait, that’s not really quite right is it? Well, no, but it is, in fact, true.
I didn’t want to make the vet appointment. I knew that I needed to make it. Zoey was overdue for a shot, and without being current on shots, the vet won’t sell us the flea meds that work. And the fleas, at this springtime moment in the beautiful Florida panhandle, could, if given free reign, possibly take over the world. So, even though I knew that Zoey was feeble and there was something very amiss with her right front leg, I made her a vet appointment of the kind where you go into the room with your pet and the veterinarian. Because I was pretty sure there would be a lot for us to talk about.
I trust our veterinarians. Our longest standing vet, the one the practice is named for, retired last year. But the other two doctors there are also excellent. Of the medical professionals that our family sees, I think I would have to say that tied for first place in the “Toni’s Trust” department you would see the girls’ pediatrician and the nurses and NPs at their practice, our veterinarians and vet techs, and my dentist and her practice. My dentist is now my longest standing medical relationship, because I think I found her over twenty years ago, while I was still in law school. My sister found her, actually, while my sister was still in undergrad and trying to deal with some dental issues, and my parents were like “Toni, you also need to be responsible and go to the dentist.” And so I did. I’m lucky my sister was looking back then. . . Toni, where are you going with this? Of course you were and are lucky. Yes, even the dogs are lucky. You have done what you can. You have to find peace for yourself as well as keep striving.
***
On Sunday night, I ended up hosting friends. I’m behind on all the things. Truly, almost literally behind on everything from synchronized swimming bills, to work backlog, to idol writing and commenting, to basic household upkeep and maintenance and chores. I’ve always had busy periods in my life where I had to narrow my focus down from the long term to the week-to-week and sometimes day-to-day. But it feels like it has been week-to-week for a really long time right now. I’ve got to shake myself out of whatever this is. I think I have shaken myself out of that dangerous mental headspace of “the world is too much with me” a couple of times recently. But ever since the pandemic it has been harder to frame long-term thinking, harder to pan the camera far enough back to catch the right kind of picture.
Some of our closest friends are about to be in Spain for a little while. T teaches study-abroad college classes for a couple of months there for FSU most summers now, and her husband, J, joins her over there for a short vacation most years. It is great fun to talk to them about it all, in part because J and I did study abroad in Spain with FSU waaaaaaay back in the day. Unfortunately though, those friends have had a tremendous run of bad luck since before the pandemic, losing T’s house where her mother was living to an accidental house fire, and then a string of other occurrences related to aging parents. Every one of us is on the clock, human and canine, I suppose.
Anyway, T is already over there, teaching, and J was looking for social time and then it turned out that some other friends also wanted to share a drink, so we ended up at our place, and even though it kept me from work that I wanted to do on various things, I was glad for the company. The Sunday blues have been strong for me over the last year or so. Each week asks a lot of me and of my girls and I never feel like we’re ready to face the next one. It was good to chat instead of worrying about it. For a long time we talked about TV; mostly the various Star Trek shows that are on now and some of the Star Wars shows, too.
But finally towards the end of the visit, we started talking current events and it felt good to discuss and vent. We talked about the leaked Roe opinion. I was forced to consider the fact that my daughters are very likely to attend college in a state where abortion will not be legal. Unless we can turn things around faster than I imagine, they almost certainly won’t have that right in our home state when they graduate high school, anyway. And we also talked about Russia’s war against Ukraine. And although that seems to be going better for the Ukraine than anyone had any right to expect, I was utterly chilled this week by something I heard second-hand from my mom that I had to share with everyone.
I have an aunt, L, who immigrated here from China. She and her kids, who are actually close in age to mine, spend the holidays with us when it all works out because my mom loves to host holidays for everyone at her house. Because mom is retired now, she keeps us all in the loop and she told me that L and her mother, who is still in Beijing, were having a really hard time arguing over what is happening in the Ukraine. Apparently Chinese media is solidly on the side of Putin, and reports there have him acting against terrorism as a righteous leader in the Ukraine.
I knew that there were certain elements here in the US that sympathized with Putin, but it chilled me more that the Chinese state appears to be coming down on his side. There are going to be a lot of ugly battles between dinosaurs here in the US in the coming years, and I feel like I’m braced for those end-stage capitalism woes. But I had somehow thought that China would stay on the sidelines for things like Putin’s war and some of those dinosaur battles. I don’t know why I thought that. A lot of dinosaurs still have a lot of legitimate power.
Anyway, it was nice to share that shock with friends, and nicer still that one of them was like “So what do we do about it?” Because I think that question gets to the heart of how someone could actually feel better about any of what’s happening now.
The painful part is that I don’t actually know what we do about it. I told him what I thought, which was basically just “Stay the course. Keep writing and calling the elected representatives, even when you know that many of them are so closely allied with the dinosaurs that they’re sure to ignore you. At least some staffer will have to tally your dissent. At least then you’ll be trying within a system that they’re actively dismantling around you.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still have a lot of hope for democracy. It’s just that from here, in Tallahassee, a lot of that hope is pinned to democracy in India more strongly than it is pinned to the voter-disenfranchising politicians that run things here and now. I also told my friends that I really think an awful lot is up to China and India now. Because just as Putin may have already started world war three, I think there are far too many signs to ignore that we are also already in the starting years of the global climate crisis, and we’re too hamstrung in the US to do much to contribute to setting good policy on that.
Ugh. They are all such big worries. And I am so very privileged and lucky to have enough space to pan that camera back and worry about them. And so very privileged and lucky to have friends to bounce thoughts back and forth with about all of it.
***
And in the end perhaps the biggest privilege for my family and for our pets is good health care. Dr. S sat with me this morning, down on the floor with Zoey, smiling a sad pretty smile, as we went over all the possibilities and then I choked out my question; Was there anyone who could provide euthanasia at home for my sweet Zoey dog? There was. Dr. H will come tomorrow evening. We’ll get one more moonlit walk together tonight if Zoey’s up for it, but she won’t suffer another painful night tomorrow night.
Texting with my friend E after the decision was made, I lamented that human health care didn’t make as much sense as veterinary medicine when it came to the end and palliative care. And she agreed it was true. But we are moving in the right direction, I suppose. That arc of the moral universe just bends damnably long sometimes. And we definitely live in interesting times.
Today I had to call the ball to kill my very dear sweet friend. Wait, that’s not really quite right is it? Well, no, but it is, in fact, true.
I didn’t want to make the vet appointment. I knew that I needed to make it. Zoey was overdue for a shot, and without being current on shots, the vet won’t sell us the flea meds that work. And the fleas, at this springtime moment in the beautiful Florida panhandle, could, if given free reign, possibly take over the world. So, even though I knew that Zoey was feeble and there was something very amiss with her right front leg, I made her a vet appointment of the kind where you go into the room with your pet and the veterinarian. Because I was pretty sure there would be a lot for us to talk about.
I trust our veterinarians. Our longest standing vet, the one the practice is named for, retired last year. But the other two doctors there are also excellent. Of the medical professionals that our family sees, I think I would have to say that tied for first place in the “Toni’s Trust” department you would see the girls’ pediatrician and the nurses and NPs at their practice, our veterinarians and vet techs, and my dentist and her practice. My dentist is now my longest standing medical relationship, because I think I found her over twenty years ago, while I was still in law school. My sister found her, actually, while my sister was still in undergrad and trying to deal with some dental issues, and my parents were like “Toni, you also need to be responsible and go to the dentist.” And so I did. I’m lucky my sister was looking back then. . . Toni, where are you going with this? Of course you were and are lucky. Yes, even the dogs are lucky. You have done what you can. You have to find peace for yourself as well as keep striving.
On Sunday night, I ended up hosting friends. I’m behind on all the things. Truly, almost literally behind on everything from synchronized swimming bills, to work backlog, to idol writing and commenting, to basic household upkeep and maintenance and chores. I’ve always had busy periods in my life where I had to narrow my focus down from the long term to the week-to-week and sometimes day-to-day. But it feels like it has been week-to-week for a really long time right now. I’ve got to shake myself out of whatever this is. I think I have shaken myself out of that dangerous mental headspace of “the world is too much with me” a couple of times recently. But ever since the pandemic it has been harder to frame long-term thinking, harder to pan the camera far enough back to catch the right kind of picture.
Some of our closest friends are about to be in Spain for a little while. T teaches study-abroad college classes for a couple of months there for FSU most summers now, and her husband, J, joins her over there for a short vacation most years. It is great fun to talk to them about it all, in part because J and I did study abroad in Spain with FSU waaaaaaay back in the day. Unfortunately though, those friends have had a tremendous run of bad luck since before the pandemic, losing T’s house where her mother was living to an accidental house fire, and then a string of other occurrences related to aging parents. Every one of us is on the clock, human and canine, I suppose.
Anyway, T is already over there, teaching, and J was looking for social time and then it turned out that some other friends also wanted to share a drink, so we ended up at our place, and even though it kept me from work that I wanted to do on various things, I was glad for the company. The Sunday blues have been strong for me over the last year or so. Each week asks a lot of me and of my girls and I never feel like we’re ready to face the next one. It was good to chat instead of worrying about it. For a long time we talked about TV; mostly the various Star Trek shows that are on now and some of the Star Wars shows, too.
But finally towards the end of the visit, we started talking current events and it felt good to discuss and vent. We talked about the leaked Roe opinion. I was forced to consider the fact that my daughters are very likely to attend college in a state where abortion will not be legal. Unless we can turn things around faster than I imagine, they almost certainly won’t have that right in our home state when they graduate high school, anyway. And we also talked about Russia’s war against Ukraine. And although that seems to be going better for the Ukraine than anyone had any right to expect, I was utterly chilled this week by something I heard second-hand from my mom that I had to share with everyone.
I have an aunt, L, who immigrated here from China. She and her kids, who are actually close in age to mine, spend the holidays with us when it all works out because my mom loves to host holidays for everyone at her house. Because mom is retired now, she keeps us all in the loop and she told me that L and her mother, who is still in Beijing, were having a really hard time arguing over what is happening in the Ukraine. Apparently Chinese media is solidly on the side of Putin, and reports there have him acting against terrorism as a righteous leader in the Ukraine.
I knew that there were certain elements here in the US that sympathized with Putin, but it chilled me more that the Chinese state appears to be coming down on his side. There are going to be a lot of ugly battles between dinosaurs here in the US in the coming years, and I feel like I’m braced for those end-stage capitalism woes. But I had somehow thought that China would stay on the sidelines for things like Putin’s war and some of those dinosaur battles. I don’t know why I thought that. A lot of dinosaurs still have a lot of legitimate power.
Anyway, it was nice to share that shock with friends, and nicer still that one of them was like “So what do we do about it?” Because I think that question gets to the heart of how someone could actually feel better about any of what’s happening now.
The painful part is that I don’t actually know what we do about it. I told him what I thought, which was basically just “Stay the course. Keep writing and calling the elected representatives, even when you know that many of them are so closely allied with the dinosaurs that they’re sure to ignore you. At least some staffer will have to tally your dissent. At least then you’ll be trying within a system that they’re actively dismantling around you.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still have a lot of hope for democracy. It’s just that from here, in Tallahassee, a lot of that hope is pinned to democracy in India more strongly than it is pinned to the voter-disenfranchising politicians that run things here and now. I also told my friends that I really think an awful lot is up to China and India now. Because just as Putin may have already started world war three, I think there are far too many signs to ignore that we are also already in the starting years of the global climate crisis, and we’re too hamstrung in the US to do much to contribute to setting good policy on that.
Ugh. They are all such big worries. And I am so very privileged and lucky to have enough space to pan that camera back and worry about them. And so very privileged and lucky to have friends to bounce thoughts back and forth with about all of it.
And in the end perhaps the biggest privilege for my family and for our pets is good health care. Dr. S sat with me this morning, down on the floor with Zoey, smiling a sad pretty smile, as we went over all the possibilities and then I choked out my question; Was there anyone who could provide euthanasia at home for my sweet Zoey dog? There was. Dr. H will come tomorrow evening. We’ll get one more moonlit walk together tonight if Zoey’s up for it, but she won’t suffer another painful night tomorrow night.
Texting with my friend E after the decision was made, I lamented that human health care didn’t make as much sense as veterinary medicine when it came to the end and palliative care. And she agreed it was true. But we are moving in the right direction, I suppose. That arc of the moral universe just bends damnably long sometimes. And we definitely live in interesting times.
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