Today I will get Blue again.

Blue is the anxious Italian mastiff that I dog-sit on Wednesdays while his owner, Bill, works in the office. The new procedure is that I walk down to Bill’s house, fetch Blue, and bring him back to my home. This seems to work better than having Bill drop him off. When Bill does that, Blue hangs onto Bill’s legs and tries to avoid coming in my house like a petulant 4-year-old trying to avoid day care -- which is exactly what he is.

When I go to Blue’s house, Bill has already left, but he’s not been gone so long that Blue is tempted to eat any of the furniture.

The first time I went there, I was a little concerned. Blue is a very large dog with massive jaws and a loud bark. I didn’t want to open Bill’s door if Blue thought I was an intruder.

So, as soon as I got into Blue’s backyard, I started singing, “Blue! Oh, Blue!” in my most endearing singsong voice. By the time I got to the door, Blue was waiting, tail wagging. When I reached for his leash, Blue was over the moon. “She’s come to rescue me!”

I went from evil babysitter to emancipator just like that.

Once Blue gets to my house, it’s a nonevent. Blue lies on his bed and sleeps most of the day. His eyes flicker open when I walk around the room and every so often, he sighs loudly. I imagine he’s letting me know that I’m a little dull, but my company is better than nothing.

I like having an animal with me when I work. For several years I had a cat named Lucy. Lucy was with me during my divorce, when I lived alone and cried a lot, and we became very close. Lucy was deaf, which made a lot of folks pass her by at the animal shelter. I didn’t mind that Lucy couldn’t hear. I talked to her anyway, and when I wanted her attention from another room, I just flashed the lights and she came running.

Lucy was my constant companion but, like office mates everywhere, she could be troublesome.

I distinctly remember the morning I left my computer on overnight. I came downstairs and saw Lucy at my computer. She had managed to open Excel and had a document populated with strange symbols and numbers. She had opened Word and somehow made it so that if I opened any document in a file, every other document in that file also opened. Finally, she had a Google search going and was looking up the meaning of the word, “Itgy.” I am not making any of this up.

Of course, the last action is the easiest to explain. It is said that every cat has three names: a familiar name, a fancy name, and a secret name that only the cat knows. I could only conclude that by sneaking up on her as I had, I had uncovered Lucy’s secret name -- and it was Itgy.

Blue doesn’t seem likely to mess with my computer and, even if he’s sleeping most of the day, I can tell he likes having me talk to him. The truth is, I’d be talking whether he was there or not. But it’s good to have some company while I work.

Every so often, I write something that surprises me or that I like. I read it aloud and say, “Blue! What do you think?”

Blue heaves an enormous sigh. And he’s right. It still needs work.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I get stomachaches. I get them with regularity and always have.

“It’s just gas!” my mother says, and, of course, she’s right.

My mother tells me I get stomachaches because I have the “Benson stomach,” by which she means that I have the same stomach she has, which is the same stomach her mother had, which my grandmother inherited from her mother -- who was a Benson.

It seems a little sad that the only time the Benson family comes to mind is when I have a stomachache. Seriously, I know almost nothing about the Bensons except that they were Swedish farmers prone to indigestion. It’s not much of a legacy.

Yesterday I had a doozy. It started during my hike. I had eaten nothing recently and eaten nothing different so there was no logical reason to suddenly get a bad stomachache shortly after I started my hike, which typically takes an hour and forty-five minutes.

“It will get better soon,” I said as I walked. It did not.

I got to the halfway point in my hike and somehow felt the stomachache should realize that I had hiked for nearly an hour and respond appropriately. It did not.

Whenever I get a stomachache, I remember stomachaches of the past. I distinctly remember my 16th birthday being ruined by a stomachache. I went to a restaurant famous for its spareribs. I haven’t eaten spareribs in years, but I can still remember how I was looking forward to those.

My family and I were served our spareribs and I had to leave the restaurant after what seemed like a single bite. I’m pretty sure my family packed up the meal and joined me almost immediately, but I still remember being in the backseat of the car with an awful stomachache on my 16th birthday, overwhelmed by the unfairness of life.

By now, I should know something about stomachaches. I know, once one starts, I must not eat anything. If I eat anything, I will make it much worse and it will last much longer.

In spite of knowing this all my life, I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down to eat, felt a stomachache coming on, and decided “just this once” I can eat a little more (usually really fast) and everything will be fine. Everything is never fine when I do this.

So, now I tell my husband, Peter, “I’m getting a stomachache. If I eat, I will suffer.” Somehow, saying it aloud to another person makes me more accountable. If I then go back into the kitchen and fill my plate, I am proving to Peter (and myself) what an idiot I am.

I can go for months without a stomachache. I can persuade myself that stomachaches were something that happened a long time ago and have nothing to do with me anymore. I start to think they will never happen again. It’s nice thinking this. It’s also not true.

But maybe dwelling on pain isn’t the best idea.

Surely, in my life, I can expect a lot worse than a stomachache to come my way. Intellectually, I know this, and yet I spend almost no time contemplating future pain. Maybe living in denial isn’t the worst thing I can do. It isn’t fun to anticipate pain and I’m not sure it’s useful.

Instead, I try to notice all the days I feel good and I try to be grateful. Yes, there will be more stomachaches because I come from a long line of gassy farmers. But today, I feel fine.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Yesterday, I had a nice long Zoom chat with an old friend.

I know this is nothing remarkable these days, but it was the first time my friend Andrew had used Zoom and I was frankly a little surprised.

Andrew isn’t on Facebook. “It’s none of anyone’s business what I’m up to!” he tells me.

I don’t think Andrew is “up to” all that much, but he takes a particularly fierce view on privacy. He won’t buy groceries with his credit card if they are going to track what he buys.

“Why would you care if someone knows how much broccoli you’re buying?” I ask. “Maybe they’ll give you a coupon.”

“It’s none of their darned business how much broccoli I’m buying!” Andrew tells me.

He still has the same email account he’s had since the ‘90s. He still has the same telephone answering machine. He recently got a cellphone, but he doesn’t text. Andrew answers emails, but they take about as long as standard first-class mail to arrive and get a response. Still, it’s all worth it because he is a good friend and he always has a lot of interesting things to say -- once I get ahold of him.

Like nearly everyone else, Andrew has been a little lonely. He lives alone and his work doesn’t involve much human interaction. I usually see Andrew a couple of times a year when we go to visit my family. But that hasn’t happened this year and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for a while.

I was contacted by a mutual friend of ours on Facebook about having a Zoom chat with a bunch of high school buddies. I told him that would be fun and he should invite Andrew -- by email, of course. Andrew thought that sounded great and we decided to try out this Zoom thing in advance. That turned out to be a good idea.

Andrew didn’t use his real name (of course) so, for a time, I was looking at a blank screen that said, “GREAT.” But then he got the video working and he appeared in front of his bright kitchen window.

“Unmute,” I messaged him. He did. I still heard nothing. I called him on the phone. “I can’t hear you,” I told him. Then added, “Your hair is really short.”

“I cut it myself.”

“Well, your mic isn’t working.”

“I know I’ve used this microphone before!”

“Let’s see it.” Andrew waved the headset and microphone in front of the camera.

“Andrew, that is a really old headset.”

“It is not old!”

“Yup,” I told him, “that’s a collectible. I think maybe you should call up the folks at ‘Antiques Roadshow.’ I bet they’d be interested.”

“Ha, ha!” Andrew said. After several more tries he reluctantly admitted that the ancient microphone might not connect to his current computer.

“I guess I’ll need a new microphone,” he grumbled. “But we can still talk on the phone.”

And we did. We put our phones on speaker and we looked at one another in our monitors and we talked for a long time. I realized, once again and with force, how essential this connection is. It was so good to see my old friend’s face -- even if his camera was a little fuzzy, even if the light was shining rather brightly behind his closely shorn head.

“Oh my gosh! I’ve got to go,” I said, when I realized how long we’d been talking.

“We should do this again,” Andrew said.

“Yes!” I agreed.

We definitely need to do this again.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION