06/02/2026
After a very intense, hard and fast marriage that lasted all of six months, I've found my life soon there after so satisfyingly dull in all of the best ways.
My husband had a pit terrier type dog with short, white, wirey fur that would rather securely needle it's way into any sort of fabric, and it drove me nuts. However, other people are often quite disturbed by the shedding of my black lab mix whose longer hair, never once having stuck to a couch cushion, nestles itself in tufts along all the baseboards and bottoms of furniture in what I've always called tumbleweeds.
Seeing that tumbleweeds are found in nature, and I have a housecleaner that comes every other week, his collecting fur has simply never perturbed me in the way it has others. I could easily spot clean it in a couple of minutes if company who did not care for dog hair were coming over announced. Unannounced guests who feel the need to call it "disgusting" are gently but promptly reminded that they don't live there - I do. They are very much welcome to continue vacuuming their house five times a day for their dog's hair, and I promise not to intervene.
An aunt very close and dear to me is an animal lover of the similar sort to whom errant fur is not inherently a grave concern, nor does it ever devolve into an existential question of how we should live our lives. I do not believe I have ever actually sat and brushed my dog at any length in the decade he's been with me; he gets the occasional grooming at boarding when I go on vacation. On occasion however, my aunt has borne witness to me plucking endless clumps of molting hair off my dog if for whatever reason I felt the particular need in that moment to unburden him of a little extra weight. On observation of the large gathered bundle of hair, perhaps around like six inches in diameter, she always finds it humorous to make an exclamation about my new puppy, and is always sure to ask, "what shall we name it?"
This week, perhaps in his old age, the unthinkable happened. He seemed to suddenly be dispelling copious amounts of hair even from the most delicate touch from me. As my house cleaner had come today, I found that I, supposedly an individual who has always held dog hair to be the very least disconcerting thing in life, now did not want to release my dog back into this sterile environment to defile it in mere minutes with his fur flying off his body in every direction. So, I sat out front on my stoop, and brushed him at length until the fur stopped coming off.
I know I prefaced this all by emphasizing how entirely dull my life has become - but what happened on my front stoop was so utterly scintillating, I'm not sure if this post even belongs in this group. Finally, I can ask with all sincerity, "what shall we name it?"
F 37 New York; did not want to disturb the new pet by stepping over it to look to see if I had a banana inside.
