Pictures of Gia

Hello, Friends,

I thought I would post some pictures of Jared and I and our new puppy, Gia!

Copyright: David Mejias

 

One Month Later

Greetings, Friends!

It’s been far longer than I care to admit since last I wrote you.

There is no very good reason, other than that August was Congressional Recess, and I’m an absolute tyrant when it comes to separating business from pleasure! As it was, I’d had quite enough of traipsing back and forth from Colorado to Washington, and I was dead-set on being absolutely frivolous. Part of that frivolity included, in no uncertain terms, the negligence of my e-mail. Leaving my blog to languish was not so much a part of the official plan as it was an inevitable result of too much relaxation! Indeed, such a thing exists! It happens when you’ve thoroughly unwound. With stress banished from your life, your days lay before you unpunctuated by plans of any kind. You relax and you relax, and you either cease to see what is noteworthy, or else seeing it, you ignore it. There was a great deal I could have written in that month about the move into our new Boulder home, or the adoption of our new puppy, or the completion of a short story I’d been working on. I could have detailed my partner’s trip to Israel, or the visit his parents made to Boulder! Alas, all went unremarked, until now…

So…where to begin!

The house! The apartment! As many of you, my friends, know, we had lived for nearly five years in downtown Boulder. It was a beautiful location, overlooking Boulder’s Central Park, with the Flatirons squarely in sight. But there was an inconvenience to the place that, try as we might, we would not ignore. It had no guest room! This, along with other complaints, compelled us to search elsewhere for a home that we could grow into. And we found it! Just three blocks away, in a slighly less ideal situation, but with all the features we (or at least I) had ever dreamed of owning. The process of designing it encompassed the better part of a year and a half. I oversaw every aspect of its construction from the ground up. We now have a guest suite in which to entertain friends! We have a beautiful kitchen in a custom color that I chose over the course of many weeks and in the passage of many sample paintchips. We have a wonderful bathtub and a designated office space (which, in our former apartment, was no more than a converted master closet!) Most importantly, we have a commodious deck on which to play with our new puppy!

Aye, aye, you read it correctly. We adopted a new puppy in the final week of our stay in Boulder! Her name is Gia. She is a Terrier Mix. And we found her at Petco adoption drive in Englewood, Colorado. At first I was nervous to bring an animal into our home. Strange, indeed, I know for a self-professed Animal Rights person. But let me explain. All through my youth, my family enjoyed the company of cats. We had many over the years, and my father and sister still have two. But I found it so crushing when we lost one of them, either to natural causes, or to a car quickly speeding down our street, that I vowed never to put myself in such a situation that I would have to deal with loss. It was an amateurish stance, but I determined that I could easily take care of animals so long as I wasn’t so invested that my heart could be broken when something happened. Well, that’s all done now. My partner had talked for many months about getting a puppy, and the day had finally arrived.

It’s been quite a learning experience, taking care of something other than myself. I am so used to the routine of my own survival that I never stopped to think what would happen if I introduced another living creature. Now, as I wake in the morning, I take little Gia out to the bathroom before I ever set foot in the shower. I work with her at my side, and stop frequently to take her out, for a walk, or to feed her. My own life effectively starts 45 minutes after I wake, whereas it used to begin the second the alarm went off. And having a pet has reminded me how much I am able to change when I thought I was quite set in my ways. More than ever, I see the merit in challenging oneself to leave behind one’s comfort zone.

As always, I’ve more to tell, but I’m running short on time, so I’ll leave it for the next post. Hopefully, some of you are still out there!