Red dog

 April 11, 2025

Days of cold and rain. Some spirit led me outside to cover the callas and bring the potted geranium inside against the freeze predicted for tonight. Desultory weeding as I waited for appointments. 

Rehearsal last night turbulent. I forgot the basses had a sectional, missed it, but it didn’t matter since we worked one song all evening and that was the same song worked on during the sectional– and we never got to the end of it. A good thirty minutes were spent in anecdotes, in correcting pronunciation that had been correct the first time though not mannered enough to suit, in stating at least six times each time where we were starting, as nobody paid attention. I counted six iterations of who was going to do what line in the divisi. Sat a few rows back this time rather than in the front, so I could not be seen weeping. The man I sat beside did not make an audible sound all night 

Wandered to the river. Talked to the owner of High 5 while he was conferring, I guess, with his contractor about bringing the café back from the dead. He seems determined. I told him I was at a loss without his café, as in fact I am. Moved down the river and met a woman with two dogs, a huge husky and a big (though not huge) red something I forget the name of. The husky barked at me and shoved her head under my hand because I was paying the other dog too much attention. The red dog was very playful, and we wrestled for a while. During the roughhouse, the dog took my leg in his jaws. I felt the teeth, but he made no effort to clamp down, so it was a sensation rather than an event. The woman was horrified and apologized copiously, however calmly I assured her that nothing had actually happened. I told her I’d invited it by roughhousing like that.