[Pardon me as I upload, retroactively, some photos taken in the past week or so. I've felt up to pressing the shutter, but that's about as far as I've gotten since the surgery, pretty much.]

By the time Daniel arrived on Sunday, 1 July, I was instructed to walk as much as was tolerable, and I found it quite necessary to get the dogs out of the house, already, what with the JUMPING INTO MY STOMACH. We packed up the brood and headed to City Creek Canyon for walking and working out of excessive jumping-into-stomach energy.

It took Ethel all of about seventeen seconds to realize her job was to love Daniel very, very much. Betsy will love anyone/thing that looks in her general direction and then beg them/it to take her away from me. She certainly doesn’t get enough spoiling here, what with her pink fluffy bed and multitudinous Pedigree dog food.

Ethel partook of the creek of the city, as it were.

She must always keep moving, and apparently was only passing through.

We had dinner and headed home to watch the sun set from the backyard. The view, it just isn’t all that bad.

I sat on the swing and snapped as they viewed.

Crooked horizon. But I am lazy, so tilt your head for pity’s sake.

Several months ago and in the middle of a whole lot going on, the dogs and I loaded up and moved back to downtown Salt Lake City. I mentioned a week or so ago that I’ve moved five times in four years, but I failed to count some more and extend the time to a more reasonable five year—bringing the grandish total to seven moves in five years. In case you were wondering, that is something that is very, very wrong.

The last time I lived on the Hill was back in the beginning of 2004. It was my first solo apartment, except in a house filled with awkward relationship—the landlord wasn’t married to his wife, but instead lived in an apartment in the upstairs of her home. But he was the landlord? Sounds like someone has some authority issues. Also, apparently had some issues with leaving dirty workgloves in my apartment atop a load of CLEAN UNDERWEAR on my couch without notice or follow-up of any kind—except, you know, until I tenderly placed the gloves at his doorstep with a note on which was written a hastily-scrawled, “YOURS?” I managed a raised-brow lowering of the eyes my coworkers call the “Ashley Look,” when he messily attempted to explain the circumstances which allowed him unannounced access to my apartment and, apparently, my drawers.

(They call it the “Ashley Look” and laugh, but are wondering if maybe someone else can go to get lunch next time because they’re downright tired of eating spit. I just tell them to stir up their soups real good, and that maybe someday, the service industry WILL RECOGNIZE WHO IS WRITING THEIR PAYCHECKS.)

(I get that from my Mom, FYI.)

My situation has changed a bit since that first apartment alone. For example, I no longer have unlimited credit and no longer expect several boxes from GAP.com to flow from UPS and find themselves upon my doorstep at any given point in the week. I do still, miraculously, have my car, even with the bumped-up door and pole-cracked bumper, but it hasn’t seen the light of day minus dog food on the floor in quite some time. I’ve changed jobs thrice, and find myself on top of my own contentedness more often than not. I don’t dread phone calls from my family, and seek out conversation from my mother several times a week. I still struggle, but can find my way out more often than not.

It’s a good place to be.

I’m far from coming full circle in four years, but it seems just about right to be back in the neighborhood at this stage in my life, leaving lots of baggage behind and bringing two pups along for the ride. Besides, Ethel just downright giggles every time I let her loose on the Capitol lawn.

I am not sure I’ll ever be quite ready to talk about what happened a week ago on Wednesday-thru-Friday. I will, however, share something I came to know, intimately. I don’t think you ever quite know how a loyal pet can affect your life until you are suddenly struck with the unequivocal realization. I looked frantically around the room Wednesday morning, sobbing, and trying to think of the least painful way to downright end it all, when my eye caught Ethel’s—and I knew she knew things were bad, by the way that wrinkle above her left eye was creased against her brow—and I shuddered and cried aloud, “But then who would take care of you?”

And she saved me. She flat-out talked me down from the ledge and I buried my head into her puppy mullet, knowing I’d never have the courage to do anything so final, but also finding myself acutely aware of how not alone I would always be with her burrowed in the covers at my side.

Things were looking great. After great strides had been made, late last night, Ethel and I entered into a solemn and binding ceasefire agreement. Which ceasefire dictated that I would continue to pry open her mouth and continue to administer the pills if she would CEASE the FIRING of resistance long enough to swallow the pills.

Last night’s dose? Surprisingly … well, it was kind of simple. “Simple,” if you’ll understand that “simple” is kind of like piercing a triceratops’s right horn with a lovely and delicate cubic zirconium bauble, while “difficult” is kind of piercing his middle horn (big) with a silver-plated cork-sized earplug. There are advantages, though slight, to the “simple” side of things, and for those advantages, my dog-tooth worn fingers sweetly thank the universe.

So this morning, it was easier to get out of bed when the time came to medicate the puppy named Ethel. I took her out, first, to avoid bladder infringement. We came inside and I washed my hands and prepared the pills on the bathroom counter. I called to Ethel when I realized she was tossing about a toy I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen listed on the FAA/TSA (that’s super Ashley) list of approved carry-on toys. In fact, that toy bore an eerie resemblance to something one might find outside on the ground and something one might conceal in one’s mouth until one believes the coast to be clear. The kind of “something” that seems to look a lot like goose poop on a stick.

There’s no room for goose poop on a stick on the apartment floor. Let’s be honest here—there’s not room for much on the floor, but definitely not goose poop on a stick. Which, apparently, Ethel knows to be a legally binding and also very gross contracted no-fly item. But you know what else is a no-fly item, ironically? And one that I guess we’d never addressed? And let me turn on the light real quick before I just reach down, all willy-nilly like, to remove the item from your dog-like grip upon it. And what? What is that? I mean it, Ethel. Tell me RIGHT NOW THAT IS NOT A FOOT. TELL ME OR YOU ARE SO NOT GETTING ICE CREAM FOR DINNER.

Yeah. I guess I’d never addressed the prohibited nature of the issue of Bringing a Dead Bird Inside.

A Dead Bird. Inside.

With wings. And feet. And feathers. Like a bird.

FEET, Y’ALL..

SO I DID THE ONLY REASONABLE THING AND I WENT COMPLETELY APE. LIKE A FREAKING GORILLA. AND I SCREAMED THINGS LIKE, “ETHEL IN YOUR BED RIGHT NOW I SWEAR IN YOUR BED NOW BED NOW BED NOW BED NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”

And if you’re wondering what will get your dog or maybe also your children to listen to you when you tell them to go to bed? Yeah, just bottle whatever it is that spewed forth from my mouth and mist that in their direction—because it seemed to have been effective.

Did I mention I may have gone APE? And maybe also hyperventilated? BECAUSE THERE WAS A DEAD BIRD ON MY FLOOR AND OH MY HELL, ETHEL, I DIDN’T THINK THE PILLS WERE REALLY THAT BAD, YOU JERK.

I hate birds. I really do. Some people are afraid of dogs or storms or peanuts (wimps). I am honest-to-goodness terrified of birds. What with their pecking and their flapping and their general unpredictability, the avian group of living organisms are generally far too arbitrary in their peck-flappiness for my obsessive-compulsive need to CONTROL MY SURROUNDINGS. BY MAKING SURE THERE IS NEVER A BIRD ON MY FLOOR.

Please understand. I really am that freaked out by birds.

Also? Not too thrilled about visions of “West” and “Nile” and “Virus” dancing through my head. Internet access is spotty in my apartment (because it is stol—free), and especially doesn’t work when I want it to. So there was no Interneting to allay my WNV fears and questions about how likely it might be that the H5N1 Avian Flu may bypass entering the US by way of a port city or other coastal area and just hop its way over to a small bird in my neighborhood. And that, along with most everything including the obviously quite dead bird suddenly sprouting life and PECKING OUT MY EYES, seems quite possible when—did I mention?—there is a BIRD on my FLOOR.

No one wants a triceratops with a green horn walking around all pissed off and stuff because of a piercing job shoddily done. And no one wants to be responsible for that. And I already had the delicate and lovely bauble in place. And when that bird was lying there this morning on the floor? I felt like the delicate bauble of dog-related peace was gone.

I called a lot of people. I may have text messaged my entire contacts list and also the CDC. I had a brief moment of lucidity when I realized that a call to the emergency veterinary may be in order. And while it was comforting, yes, to hear from Shanna that the only concern is that of worms, and that’s an outside chance even if the dog had consumed the bird, THAT REALLY DOESN’T HELP AT ALL BECAUSE THE BIRD IS STILL ON MY FLOOR.

On the flooooooooooooooooor. Being a biiiiiiiiiiiiird. And having wiiiiiiiiings. And leeeegs.

Shanna suggested that while my dog would be ok, I didn’t exactly seem like I ought to go long without intense psychiatric involvement.

Ha! Crazy? Me? No. Just terrified that THE BIRD WOULD COME BACK TO LIFE AND PECK ME TO DEATH. AND ALSO BE GIANT AND BIRDY.

I knew I’d have to do something. My hands were shaking. I am not even kidding you. And I am not even kidding you when I also tell you I then took an empty soup can from the trash can and I scooped up its birdy, rigor mortised little pecky body into a soup can. And because I was going to bust a CDC cap in its little birdy ass if something happened to the dog especially AFTER ALL THAT CRAP WITH THE PILLS, if I came home to a dead dog or one with wings, I left the canned dead bird in the hallway on a ledge. INSIDE MY APARTMENT. And I went to work.

My “friend” called this afternoon to ask how the whole “bird thing” turned out and thought she was being “funny” when she laughed and said, “Wouldn’t it be GREAT if you went home and the bird weren’t in the can?”

I told her, quite seriously, that No, that would not be “great,” and at that moment, I would be faced with no other choice but to simply retrieve my dog and set fire to the house.

So the triceratops had to go home from work and dispose of a dead bird in a soup can. And the triceratops was pissed.

Or something.