Howling at the Moon.
Well, I seem to have remembered the cure for senioritis, and that’s keeping yourself as engaged in a project as humanly possible. This week I’m working on a really interesting story that’s had me here both early and late every day this week. Of course this is what I’ve been needing. And while my friends say I’m putting in way too many hours, there’s a lot to be said for those intrinsic rewards, huh? I really doubt I’ll ever reach a happy medium: A job I enjoy immensely, but only from 9:00 till 6:00, then go home and forget about. Who does that? What the hell? I prefer working on the stories that eat up your brain and heart. And this leads to the big question, which is of course..Well, you know, I’m a woman of a certain age, so I’m starting to wonder: Is there any way I can ever get a dog?

Because I want one. Bad. My ex-boyfriend got custody of my first dog. (Our dog. His dog, now. Whatever.) This was the best thing for all of us, considering my insane work schedule and the fact that Hunter (the ex) and Otis (the dog) were two sides of the same energetic, puppylike coin, personality-wise. (Last time you’ll see the phrase “puppylike coin” here; enjoy it now.)

At the Risk of Sounding like Grizzly Man…
But now. Oh lord, now, here’s the thing: Some women my age heave great sighs upon gazing into the strollers of people jogging in Piedmont Park. While waiting in line at Kroger, they thumb through In Touch magazine and feel an inward clench of longing at photos of those bored prepubescent stars with their Lovely Baby Lumps.

Henshaw, not to make light of the biological baby urges, but I swear to you, I feel the same thing when I go jogging past people with their Dobermans. I see those lolling tongues and joyous panting in the morning air and have to tamp down the urge to grab the mutts and embrace them. Those cardboard labs on television that retrieve Frisbees in the artificial comic 80s rerun sets? I swear, the very ovaries ache. I meet people outside the coffeeshop with their hounds (Oh, the hounds are the worst), and I make jokes about stealing them. I joke, Henshaw, but they don’t laugh. They see the glint in my eye. The imbalance. I am the one who shouts out the car window at one too many stoplights, “Oh, is he a puppy?” to those passing on a stroll. “You asked us before,” they tell me, picking up their pace and averting their eyes. “Two intersections back.”

Some people want a house, white picket fence, a baby. I just want a house and a dog. House and a dog. As I slink in and out of my currently Very Unsatisfactory housing situation, this is my mantra. As I drive to the post office to return $80 bathing suits purchased in folly from a catalogue, I envision that money going instead toward flea medicine for a mutt that I love at some point in the hazy future, toward a dog kennel. And maybe, someday, a human-sized kennel for me. One that’s all mine.