How many I love you's is too many?

Location: Los Angeles
Pictures: here

I'm bored.

Waaa, waaaa, waaaaa. I know. Life sucks. It's going to be mid-70's this week and sunny and about all I have to do is decide what not to bring with me to Europe, and ride my bike. I get it. This is just a small dose of me getting my own medicine.

I'm just in moving mode and I've been sitting on my ass.

When I realize the TV is on each night I realize that my mind is out of shape. I need a new challenge, is all, but I find myself wanting this layer of paint to dry faster than it was designed to. And that's wishing away time and I am no proponent of the FF button, but I think you get it.

That's not to say that good shit and shitty shit, or life, hasn't stopped happening....

My relationship with Ken, the homeless dude, continues to extend to four days in a row now and we seem to have gotten to the hug stage. Its a bro hug, but it jumped there quickly. And I don't mind, except for the fact that just recently I seem to be feeling more like a pot of gold than a friendly leprechaun.

And I have been writing in the background here and there, but not as feverishly as usual. I did get a bit out last night, because last night was a rough one for me; because it was a rough one for someone I love.

Tucker and Maddie (1998)
and (2012)

I've kept in touch with, and I'm speaking of people I kept in touch with pre-internet, only two friends of mine from high-school. One is Kathleen, my girlfriend at the time. She is married and has kids, but we will talk a couple of times a year, and mostly about our respective dogs, which we both independently adopted in 1998.

My dog, Tucker, died in March of 2010. Her dog, Maddie, died yesterday afternoon. She was a little, sweet, tri-colored Sheltie. She and Tucker shared a bit of their youth together before we split for the umpteenth, and final time, in 2000.

I have been talking to her more often in the last few months, because Maddie was fading. When you don't hear from someone in a while and then all of a sudden you do, it's because you have a particular ear to lend and that's a call you answer.

Try and explain the sorrow of losing an arm to a man born without them....

She called me earlier in the day to let me know that Maddie was in the ER; in an oxygen tank. Her 14 year old heart had given out/up. She was gasping and suffering but she didn't pass without a little painkiller and her mom there with her, stroking her head and letting go of every last molecule of love.

Maddie and Tucker (1998)
and (2012)

And so we cried together on the phone and laughed a little bit and reminisced and I guess that's about the best you can do for someone when they are suffering. You navigate around the "I'm sorry", which I always equate with doing something wrong, and you let the emotion unravel.

So give your best friend a solid hug tonight and don't forget to give back that love on a daily basis, because that first day when they are gone and you look around for them anyway, well, that day will nail you hard and fast if you're not completely satisfied that you gave back equally of everything you received.

And Kathleen did that, and not everyone does, but Kathleen did.

"I'll be there, watching over you,
Your ever-faithful friend,
And in your memories I'll run,
...a young dog once again."