This one began in the Lake Oswego neighborhood around where I used to live. I was out for a jog with a couple ladies.  One was closer to my age, like a peer, and the other was more senior, perhaps around 60 years old.  As we were climbing a gentle slope on the side-road that connected to the more public road, the conversation topic became about the potential for some kind of romance between myself and the older lady.  It was shrouded in innuendo but quite obvious.  The younger girl was doing a typical opportunistic thinking-out-loud, noting that the older lady was single, and I was single, and it was clear that there was some mutual platonic appreciation there, so the sentiment was like a rhetorical question “Why not hook it up?”  I just smirked with a wry smile, and tried to carry on the nuance or innuendo established before, which was some metaphor about tapping on her door.  So I said something like “Next time I guess I’ll have to pound the door harder!”  It was a way of jokingly indicating that I had already been thinking on those lines and tried subtly to pique her interest but then turned it back on her for not recognizing my advance.

So then we looped around through the neighborhood and arrived at the house I used to live in.  In this case it was like my parents still lived there.  I was feeling pretty sprightly, and did a freestyle-walking jump into the air with a full 360 degree rotation in the compact crouch (cannon-ball) position.  When I landed, I looked over toward the house and saw some Christmas lights, but it wasn’t clear whether some fixture or installation was being prepared, had already been put up, or what — I just got interested/anticipatory of the coming winter holidays.  As I got closer to the house I noticed the garage door was open, but no one was around, which was somewhat unusual.  I went inside and discovered the house was a mess.  There was just a lot of clutter everywhere, stuff hadn’t been put away, and the house was drafty.  I went around to the back deck (through the kitchen), and discovered two Bernese Mountain dogs; one was an older boy who was really overweight, and a girl puppy.  I greeted the dogs but was confused about which dogs these were, as I did a mental accounting of us having had three of them, Bruno, Bella, Sophie — all of which had since passed.

All of these clues made me suspect that my mom had ‘fallen off the wagon’ again, like she did in 2009 when she fell into a depression and didn’t manage alcohol well at all. It was a typical tendency of hers when in this state to start a lot of projects but not finish them, such as not folding clothes, or suddenly deciding to reorganize a drawer by taking everything out but not putting anything back for a week.  Also during these spells I believed the animals would get somewhat neglected, so I figured it would be a good idea to take the dogs for a walk.  I found some leashes.  Interestingly, one of them had a clasp that was a red climbing carabiner, so I had to unscrew the twist-lock to get it open.  Just as I was about to secure it to the larger dog’s collar, my mom appeared from around the back of the house, looking like a total wreck, like she’d been on a bender for two weeks.  She had on an old tattered bathrobe (it was like 4pm), was just moving in a slow lumbering fashion, and had an expressionless face.

I tried to ask about where these dogs came from, but she didn’t respond.  She just looked angry then said “Don’t buy me any fucking lotion!” When she spoke she had dark black stains between her teeth.  I was like WTF have you been doing?! Trying to make yourself more disgusting? Taking up smoking I see?  I noticed she had a fat cigar hanging from her mouth, which was bent and beginning to come apart.  She just blankly said “Yeah, cigars…” and walked past me back toward the rear sliding door of the house.  I turned to catch up with her, then stood next to her so she was on my left side between me and the back sliding door.  I saw her more from a profile view, and noticed that the cigar was now more like a cigarillo, narrower than the fat stoagie I had noticed a moment prior.  I told her as if giving an order, something like “Get your fucking life together!”

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