Dress code in the Bay Area means wearing jeans and an OCBD shirt and having coworkers repeatedly ask why you’re wearing fancy clothes.

I saw a little hummingbird this morning and it reminded me of how much Mom loved them. I thought about texting her about it, even though she wouldn’t receive the message anymore. Then I thought about getting an “undeliverable message” reply, and I don’t think I could bear that.

I realized that my entire career seems to be built on saying, “huh, that can’t be right…”

The homeless guy next to me on Muni was very upset. I asked if he was OK and he said someone pepper sprayed him, then went on to lament. “Things are going good! I just got a bike that works” [note: don’t go there] “…and a met a good lady who gave me nice shoes. Why’d this have to happen?”

Now you know as much about his back story as I do, but it put things in perspective. I’ve had some ups and downs lately, but never to the point that the highlight of my month was simply having working transportation and a good pair of shoes. I have so, so much to be grateful for, and yet I haven’t shown as much gratitude for it as this guy did, this guy who just got pepper sprayed for who-knows-why.

Therefore but by grace go we. I hope that if I’m ever in a bad place in life that I can dwell on the good things I still hold.

I’m carrying a pot full of homemade macaroni and cheese to work today. I’ve successfully navigated the first 2 of 3 legs of public transit. A worker came by and asked what I had in this giant pot. I showed him the cheesy goodness and he asked if he could join us for lunch. I said I’d save him a seat and he laughed.

Commute step 1: Leapt onto Muni as the doors closed.

Step 2: Waited 2 minutes for BART.

Step 3: Waited 30 seconds for a bus.

This was the most efficient trip I’ve had in months.

Ugh, “walkable” cities. 🙄

To get dinner, we had to:

• Walk a couple of blocks
• Pause for my wife to pet a dog
• Watch sunset at a table behind a taqueria
• …where my wife had to pet another dog
• Stroll past the monthly outdoor fest with live bands and a bunch of vendor booths
• Wait for my wife to pet a dog again
• Walk back past the European market, where we walked in to get dessert snacks
• …and for my wife to pet the owner’s dogs

Simply intolerable.

I’m heading in to staff the booth at a convention. That’s far outside my comfort zone, so when my boss asked me, I immediately said yes to commit myself to doing something new.

This has traditionally worked out well for me. I highly recommend everyone do this to extent they can.

You know how sometimes you come to decide that an entire niche market is so filled with awful and overpriced alternatives that you’d rather just write your own and give it away for free?

My toes are on the precipice.

I knew the conversation wouldn’t be easy when the veterinarian asked if this was a good time to talk.

I still think of her as a puppy, even though she hasn’t been one for many years. People are surprised to find that this tiny little dog is a full-grown adult. Although she’s shaped like a miniature version of the real thing, it’s hard to wrap your brain around something that small being anything other than a baby.

The years don’t care about her appearance, or that she sometimes sleeps on my pillow next to my head, or that I remember how frisky she use to be. Even little bits wear out and start to fail. As her vet translated the numbers from the lab results into things I could understand, I began to realize what they meant: my wife and I will have to make difficult decisions soon.

It’s hard to know what’s best for her, and harder yet to separate that from what’s easiest for us. Those aren’t at all the same things. If I could throw the finite resources available to us at the problem and put it off forever, I would. But that’s not how time works. We can delay things, but only for so long. And the delay has its costs. The analytical part of my brain imagines that she has a fixed amount of happiness left. Do we let her spend it all and then lay down for a last nap, or do we spread it over years (or maybe just months, who can tell) of uncomfortable treatments and procedures? I don’t know. And not deciding is the same as deciding: time won’t give us the luxury of pausing until we can choose what’s right.

My heart knows that this is tougher because of how much we love her. If these sorts of decisions were easy, that would be sad in a different way. Many years ago, we came to care so much about our little puppy that it made the inevitable so painful, but I wouldn’t change that even if I could. And until then, I’m going to make her remaining time as happy as I can.