Hoping

Lately, I can't walk by Bo without stooping down to scratch his head and squeeze his neck rolls. He's so, so, so stinking cute. When I put my palm against his forehead, he presses his face into my hand and the front half of his body collapses onto the floor to be pet. And then nonsense words start pouring out of my mouth, things like "my shnookums-pookums-pudding-pie-dough, you're the cutie-patootiest guy in the world" or "why hello, my sweet little butter lover, Mr. Knees Magee!"

(I had to go pet him just now. I couldn't think of any nonsense words just sitting at my computer. I had to squeeze the neck rolls for some inspiration. And it came flowing out, just like always.)

His facial expressions are so cute and the way he leaps around the house is so cute and the way he jumps into the lake is so cute and the way he chases lizards into the hostas is so STINKING cute. Sometimes when Brian and I are sitting on the couch, watching a movie up in the loft, I'll suddenly miss Bo. Yup, inexplicably, I'll miss him, five feet away on the floor. So I'll climb onto the floor and lay with him and get my fix of neck rolls.

I know this is all foolishness to you, but nevertheless, that's the way it is.

And I say all this because I simply can't believe that I won't feel this way about Bo when we have a baby someday.

Everyone tells me, "Oh, just wait until you have a baby. You get so annoyed with your pets."

That just doesn't seem right. Or fair.

The last time we had our friend J at our house was in 2008, and we were dogless. He and his wife had no kids at the time and they'd just gotten a second dog. J proudly showed Brian a cell phone picture of their new walker hound. "You guys have to get yourselves one of these," he said convincingly. "You gotta get a dog."

And what do you know? Four months later, we had Beauregard.

(And around the same time, J and his wife got pregnant with their baby girl.)

When he visited last weekend, we got to introduce our dog to him for the first time. J rubbed Bo's head enthusiastically, exclaiming what a good boy he was. He looked like he was enjoying petting Bo, so I asked him if he missed his dogs.

He scoffed. "NO. They're so annoying. Now that we have the baby, I can't stand them. There's fur everywhere and every time they're inside, I worry about the baby."

I was so surprised at his reaction. "Are you serious?"

"I mean, I still like them, I guess," he said. "But now we keep them outside in the summer. It is so nice not to have them in the house." Then he added, "Just you wait. You'll feel the same way about Bo."

Bo? My baby, Bo? The one who came to live with us when the baby-waiting had become so frustrating and lonely? The one who made us feel like a family? To heck with those who say that people like me have an unhealthy relationship with their pets. When I wanted a baby so badly, and Brian said no, we got Bo. And all of a sudden, I felt the baby fever easing.

Brian has a hard time, too, with the idea that we won't want Bo around. How could that be?

I hope, hope, hope that's not going to be the case. But I hear so many stories of people who either got rid of their pets after having babies or started seeing them as a mere annoyance. Can anybody tell me otherwise?

Buddy

We had a friend of Brian's here this past weekend. The two of them used to be thick as thieves whilst they were both single, but not long after we got married and moved here, he and his wife moved hundreds of miles west from our hometown. We're lucky to see them on holidays (and Brian, on the occasional hunting trip).

It was really good for Brian to have a buddy around, because let me tell you, while I love Brian and have fun with him, I don't think I'll ever be able to be his buddy.

And bless his heart, Brian never has a 'guys night' with guys around here. The few he's befriended are pretty much all dads (meaning, busy), and besides, when I ask Brian if he'd want to go out to watch a game with guys from work, he just shrugs and says, "Not really, I'd rather hang out with you." And while some women might not like that, I do. I love it.

Anyway, the two of them spent the entire weekend upstairs with a cloth tape measure and a notepad, scoring all the bucks that Brian's got mounted in the loft. When they wanted to take a break, they popped in a hunting video. The comments I heard floating from the loft made me smile. The things they pointed out to each other with astonishment or laughter were things I would never, in a million years, think remarkable about a hunting video or a whitetail buck. I imagined their conversation sounded to me like a conversation between me and my girlfriends watching TLC's Say 'Yes' to the Dress would sound to Brian .

"Dude, you think that's like one-eighty?"

"No way, man! That thing's a monster! I mean, a monster! Totally more than that."

"Naw, I swear he's just holding the rack a certain way."

"I'm telling you, that buck is exactly like the one that guy from my work saw in his uncle's field. He had trail-cam pictures and everything."

"No way, dude. I might not think that buck's as big as you say but there's no way you'd see something like that in velvet. He'd have to be an absolute pig, like a world record or something."

"I'm not lying, man!"

"Dude," (changing the subject) "you think I should get a new rangefinder?"

"I don't know, man, I think you've been hitting kind of high, you might need a new one, or just memorize your paces a little better."

"Man," (turning attention back to video) "I can't believe I drew for elk this year and I can't wait to go hunt 'em, but man if I could only hunt one animal for the rest of my life, it'd totally be - "

(In unison:) "Whitetails, dude."

"I'm telling you, they have so much more character and variation. Plus, dude, no other animal could live in such high concentration and still be so wary and such a challenge to kill."

"Man, I agree with you. Dall sheep or mountain goats or even elk are a challenge to hunt because of environment, but whitetails are just so wary."

"Totally, man."

... and on it went. A different tongue altogether. (I'm sure if Brian read the above conversation, he'd scoff at my misrepresentation. I'm just doing my best to portray the abstractness of it all.)