Today, instead of messing around with a difficult part of my new work in progress, I went for a walk. I also let Cricket off the leash. She bounded through a tangle of branches into a tilled corn field and I followed, trying to step in places where I didn’t sink to my calves in mud. I pretty much failed, and she watched me slog from forty feet away while she devoured the rotting remains of somebody’s Halloween pumpkin.
I used to own a dog that came when called and I was angry that I had let nostalgia interfere with the common sense I should employ on a naughty new puppy. One of my shoes was sucked off and instead of putting it back on my foot I pried it from the deep and threw it. Cricket came tearing towards me, grabbed it and ran back to a point slightly further into the field than she had been before. She began to eat the shoe.
I thought about just hopping home and climbing back into bed. This didn’t seem to be a day for authorship or dog walking. Maybe Cricket would get lonely and follow me. Maybe the farmer who owned the field would adopt her and give her a better life than I could. The problem with the plan of just abandoning her though, was that I was already a mile and a half down the trail, a pretty long distance to go on one foot, especially in the middle of November. I flailed further forward in the mud and made it to the pumpkin.
Cricket was interested in why I wasn’t coming after the shoe. She raised her head and sniffed the air. I pretended that I was really glad to have scored something better out there in the middle of the cornfield.
“Yum, rotten pumpkin,” I said out loud.
Her ears sprang up.
“Delicious,” I added.
She inched forward. After another minute, she had slunk close enough to the pumpkin that I was able to snag her collar and my shoe. I almost lost both raising my arms in victory.
Later, when I returned to the computer, I came to the Zen conclusion that it was okay to be optimistic once in a while, but I shouldn’t be greedy and I should know a good thing when I see it. Writer’s sometimes need profound thinking to get them through rough spots, that’s why I take walks.
Meanwhile, Cricket stared longingly at my feet.
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