Dax stared at me in disbelief. I am the Treat Lady, and I had no treats. It was inexplicable.

Dax is one of my regular customers. He is a young black dog with a lot of energy. His sister, Zia, is a little older and has the uncanny ability to find me with or without her owner anywhere in the vicinity. On this particular day, Dax was with his owner on a run and he was beside himself to suddenly encounter the Treat Lady, without even the help of his resourceful sister. Dax was over the moon. That’s when I discovered I had no treats.

We’ve had the kind of weather that makes it hard to dress for my daily hike. If the wind is blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, the temperature becomes irrelevant, so I’ve been dressing warmer than necessary then peeling off what I don’t need. That’s what I was doing when I lost my “treat bag.”

In reality, my treat bag is some sort of tattered old passport bag, I believe. It hangs around my neck and is the perfect size for a little notebook, a pen, a couple of business cards, and a small Ziplock bag just large enough to hold eight dog treats. A seven-dog day is the record, so I feel safely provisioned with eight treats.

But somehow in the shedding of my bright red sweater, the treat bag went flying and I didn’t even notice. I continued to walk until I encountered Dax and discovered, to my consternation, I no longer had any treats.

I was not going to walk back 2 miles to fetch that old bag.

I had already harvested all the good ideas out of the notebook. I would lose six treats and a serviceable pen. I knew, with those treats inside, some critter would likely make off with my bag. No great loss, I figured.

“I’ll give you an extra treat when I see you next,” I told Dax. He was still staring at me uncomprehendingly. The Treat Lady was failing in her one and only duty.

An hour after I got home, my phone rang.

“Is this Carrie?”

“Um, yes.”

“This is Laura. You know me and my dog, Miley.”

I searched my mental database for a Laura and Miley and came up blank. This does not mean much. I have been giving out dog treats for 10 months now. I usually remember the names of the dogs, but I frequently forget the names of their owners.

“I’ve got your bag!”

“My treat bag!”

“Yes! My son-in-law found it on the trail.” We arranged for her to hang it on her doorknob so I could pick it up the following day.

I picked up my bag and two days later, I saw Dax again. He was with Zia and they both got a treat from my old treat bag. (Although I reneged on my promise of an extra treat because Zia would never have understood.)

And I realized that, while my treat bag has seen better days, its worth is hard to measure.

The dog owners think I am doing something nice for their dogs when it is entirely the other way around. I don’t have a dog. And yet, every day, dogs kiss me on the face and nuzzle my hand and smile at me in that way that only dogs can. I am enriched beyond measure -- all for the price of a treat.

I left Dax and continued my hike. It ended up being a six-dog day. It was a very good day.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

My 2021 calendar is hanging from the closet door.

Every year I’ve lived in this house, I’ve gotten a cloth calendar, hung from a dowel. My mother’s mother always had a cloth calendar hanging in the farmhouse kitchen. As soon as the year was over, the calendar would be conscripted into use, usually to cover cinnamon rolls as they rose, to keep them moist until they were large enough to put into the oven.

Arriving at the farmhouse and seeing “1963” covering a pile of soon-to-be-baked sweet rolls was a wonderful sight and I will forever associate those cloth calendars with the anticipation of sweet things. I guess that’s why I have one now. It’s good to anticipate sweet things in the coming year.

My 2021 calendar is from Sweden. This means all the months are written in Swedish, surrounded by wildflowers identified in Swedish. My grandmother was a Swede, so I thought this was appropriate. But the real reason I ordered the calendar was that it was the only one I could find with legible dates.

Cloth calendars have apparently come into vogue and I had more choices than in past years, many in jazzy and colorful patterns. Unfortunately, the graphic designers responsible for these works of art did not seem to expect that a person might use the calendar for actual reference. I use the calendar to find the date -- an apparently antiquated idea.

All the calendars I found would require a strenuous search to locate the month of April amidst all the artwork and no easy way to tell how many weeks there were from April until a date in May. And so, while they were attractive, the calendars wouldn’t be very useful until they were used to cover sweet rolls.

But the Swedes have a reputation for being a practical bunch and this calendar looked more legible in Swedish than any I found in English, so I ordered it.

It wasn’t until it arrived that the problem became apparent.

Instead of seven columns for the seven days of the week, there were eight, with an additional column on the left for half the months and on the right for the rest. Someone finally explained that this column told me what week of the year it was. Saturday is in red, so it is possible to get one’s bearings -- but not without considerable effort.

But even before the calendar arrived, the year seemed filled with more uncertainty than any I can remember.

There is a careless confidence that comes with the making of plans. In the past, I have looked at my calendar on the wall and imagined I had some idea of what would happen in the weeks to come. Because the dates were neatly lined up, I couldn’t imagine life becoming disordered.

This year, that whole idea seems a little preposterous.

Because I never really knew what would happen in the coming week -- that was the lesson learned in 2020. This year, I won’t be nearly so confident as Januari turns to Februari and then Mars.

Of course, I am optimistic, as I always am. I am hoping this new year will bring sweet things. But now I’m thinking having my weeks laid out oddly -- with the months written in a foreign language, surrounded by flowers I can’t identify -- may be an appropriate way to look at the coming year.

This year may require some translation. It may require a little study. This whole year is a big Swedish surprise, waiting to happen.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

A fellow I know was grousing about the past year.

His birthday was coming up and he felt, once again, that this year failed to meet his expectations. He was unhappy with the year, unhappy with himself, unhappy with the fact that he’d even allowed himself to hope that 2020, of all years, was going to be better than the previous ones.

“My caring isn’t going to make any difference in how things work out,” he told me. “When I step back to accept that reality, maybe I’ll stop thinking any of it matters.”

He was unhappy with the idea that he’d gotten his hopes up at all. He seemed to feel that expecting something better in the coming year was a sucker’s game and he was determined not to fall for it again.

I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t make any chipper remarks because I knew he wasn’t looking for advice. He was looking for commiseration for what he saw as a lost and wasted year. But I did spend some time thinking about his complaints, and I decided that if I had offered my advice, I’d have told him to go clean out his refrigerator.

I know I’m not the only one who lets the refrigerator fill up with plans that didn’t work out, ideas I lost interest in, unfinished meals I always thought I’d get back to. The new year is an excellent time to take a peek at what’s lurking in the corners and drag it all out and look at it under a good strong light.

Throw out the sweet and sour sauce of frustrated expectations. Pitch that packet of expired yeast for the hopes that will never rise and, instead, take out the sourdough starter and get something new going, something you can pass on to your friends.

Quit saving the fancy mustard for a special occasion. Today is special. Put that mustard on a hot dog tonight and call it a party -- even if you are all by yourself.

Take out those empty containers that used to be full of the things you liked. You’re not going to enjoy those things anymore. Get rid of the reminders. Throw out the empties.

At least once a year, I have to take a good hard look at all the stuff that has accumulated on my shelves and ask myself, “Does this make me happy? Or is it just a leftover idea of a meal I am never going to eat?”

If I can still imagine the person who might eat it, then I’ll clean up the bottle, wipe down the shelf, and place it front and center where I won’t forget it. But if I can’t imagine ever wanting that bottle of whatever it is again -- I’m not thinking twice. I’m going to throw it away and get on with my cleaning.

But, most importantly, I’m leaving room in my refrigerator for new stuff.

I can’t get excited about cooking something new if my refrigerator is piled high with junk I no longer need or want or care about. The new year is a good time to be honest about this. I used to be a grape jelly kind of person. I’m not anymore -- and that’s OK. It’s no crime to admit things have changed.

I’m going to clean those shelves until they shine and leave a little room for all the meals I cannot yet imagine, for all the tasty treats I’ve been promising myself one day. The day has come. I’m going to need some shelf space.

Till next time,

Carrie

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

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION