Tag: Serial Fiction

Negotiating with Cookies – Love Is…

Published on by Raud Kennedy2 Comments

Fleegle sits on the couch next to me, his back against the cushions, rear legs straight out, his head between them, grooming.

“Stop goobering yourself so loud, Fleegle, I’m trying to watch my show.”

“They say attention is love,” Fleegle says. “What you spend your time on is what you love, no matter what you say about it. You love television, even if you say it’s stupid, because you give it so much attention.”

“I do not. Who is this ‘they’?”

“Duane at the dog park. When he talks the people listening to him stare at him like they have a biscuit on their nose.”

“Duane the dog park guru? The guy who wears the same Grateful Dead t-shirt every time he’s there? Patchouli oil Duane?”

“Yes, that Duane. I figured if people were listening to him so intently I’d give him a listen too.”

“And?”

“As long as I’m up wind from the patchouli scent, he has some good things to say.”

“Such as attention is love?”

“And love is attention. If you complain all the time and it makes you unhappy thinking about all those complaints, then you must love being unhappy since you spend so much attention on complaints.”

He returns to goobering himself and I reach for the television remote to turn up the volume. “Well, based on your attention we know what you love,” I say.

He glances up from between his legs at the news on the television. “And you love talking heads that tell depressing stories. How could I not love myself more than that? Us Labradors aren’t stupid.”

 

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Negotiating with Cookies – Free Range

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I’m sleeping in on Sunday morning when I hear a faint clicking sound coming down the hall toward the bedroom. Fleegle is snoring on the bed so it can’t be him. I’m contemplating a stray Chihuahua coming through Fleegle’s dog door when I look up to see Georgina, Fleegle’s chicken, loose in the house.

I nudge Fleegle awake. “Why is your chicken out of her pen?”

“Raud, she’s not an industrial chicken kept in a coop. She’s free range, her egg was brown.”

“But is she house-trained?”

“House-training is overrated.”

“Not if I’m in my bare feet.”

“But Raud, in chicken years she’s old enough to drive.”

Georgina jumps up onto the bed and starts poking at Fleegle’s fur for what, I’m afraid to imagine.

“Not poop on the bed too,” I say. “She’s gotten big fast.”

She looks out the window, sees the sun and clears her throat. Moments later the bedroom reverberates with, “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

With palms pressed against my ears, I look at Fleegle. “So Georgina is a cockerel, not a hen.”

“Now you can appreciate my brilliance in naming George, Georgina.”

 

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Negotiating with Cookies – The Endless Chase

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I hear Fleegle’s nails scrambling on the kitchen tiles and poke my head in to see what’s going on. “Fleegle?”

“Busy,” he says, chasing his tail.

“I see that, but why?”

“I need to catch my tail.”

“Does your tail have fleas?”

He stops spinning to stare at me with a hurt look. “No, does yours?”

“I don’t have a tail.”

“Is that because the fleas carried it away?”

“Fleegle, why are you chasing your tail? Are you developing some sort of Labrador tail chasing neurosis?”

“I overheard a man at the dog park say that at work he felt like a dog chasing his tail. I was curious to know what his job was like. He must be tired when he gets home.” Fleegle wobbles on his feet. “Ooo, the kitchen is spinning.”

 

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Negotiating with Cookies – Hair Vs. Fur

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Fleegle gives my new doo a sniff when I get in the car after getting my hair cut

“Ooo-ooo, hair in my nose,” he stammers and sneezes.

“Gesundheit,” I say.

“That’s a good looking haircut,” Fleegle says. “It can’t be any longer than the fur on the top of my head. When you asked your barber for a haircut, did you ask for a Labrador cut? Did you point out the barbershop window at me sitting in the front seat of the car and say, ‘I want to look just like that awesome looking dog out there’?”

“Fleegle, when you sleep at night, I cut your hair so you look like me.”

“No you don’t, and it’s fur, not hair.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Hair makes my nose itch, fur doesn’t. Hair keeps growing and growing, thus your need for barbers.” Fleegle points his nose at the barber in the shop window. He’s a big guy pushing 300 pounds, with no neck and a crew cut. “I bet he has an English bulldog at home.”

“He does. How did you know that?”

“Dogs don’t look like their people, people look like their dogs. That’s the real reason people go to barbers. If it weren’t for English sheep dogs and those dogs with the dreads, Komondors, there’d be no reason to sell hair extensions. Dogs are simply the dominant presence in the relationship.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Dogs are consistent. People are not. What they like one day, they’re bored with the next. Where as I’ll always love you. And my ball, of course.”

 

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Negotiating with Cookies – Pinecones

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“Do you ever think you want something, but then when you get it you realize you don’t want it?” I ask Fleegle.

“Like kitty Roca that turns out to be a dirty pinecone?”

“Not something that turns out to be something other than what you want, but is exactly what you thought you wanted?”

“Like a burrito that remains a burrito even when you eat it and doesn’t turn out to be a stale hot pocket?”

“Close enough.”

“Well if you don’t want your burrito when you get it, then maybe you didn’t want it in the first place, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t want a burrito. We’d eat them for breakfast if you’d only listen to me. But I’ve often noticed people think they want things that they don’t. That’s what makes garbage day so fun. People fill those big rubber bins full of all the stuff they thought they wanted and drag them out to the curb for everyone else to see if they want it. Why do you ask?”

“The older I get the more it seems that I don’t want the things I’ve spent so much time in the past thinking I wanted. It must be a change in priorities.”

“Well, if your priorities about your burrito have changed, I’m pretty sure I’ll want it. The key is to think with your stomach, not your head. Your head will tell you it’s a pine cone, but your stomach will tell you it’s Roca, which would you rather listen to?”

“The one that doesn’t lead to you hacking it up on the bed at 2:30 in the morning.”

 

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Negotiating with Cookies – Adult Binkies

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As Fleegle and I walk through the park, a young woman is pushing her baby in a stroller ahead of us a few yards when her baby drops his sippy cup over the side without the mom noticing. Fleegle spots the cup first and retrieves it.

“Yuck, it’s filled with some sort of citric juice,” he says as he spits the cup out into my hand and scrapes his tongue repeatedly against the back of his front teeth.

We catch up to the mom and return her baby’s cup.

Later we pass three people carrying Starbucks cups topped with whipped cream and big green straws, leading Fleegle to observe, “Look, they have sippy cups too. Did they forget their babies, or are they the babies? They sure are big babies.”

“These days almost everyone has a sippy cup in one form or another.”

Fleegle snorts. “And a pacifier.”

“You mean their cell phone?”

“Yep.”

“Well, you have your tennis ball. You carry it everywhere you go just like they do their phones.”

“Not always. I leave it at home sometimes.”

“Only because I ask you to so you won’t drop it and forget it somewhere when you stop to sniff and pee on things, then insist we go back and find it. Remember that time you set it down to sniff, forgot it, then we had to backtrack at least a mile before we found it?”

“That was a good tennis ball. I’d just popped it and it was almost at mushy perfection. But I chew on them, I don’t consult them for advice on the weather when I can simply look up at the horizon.”

“But you chew on them like a pacifier.”

“And people would be better off chewing on their phones instead of looking at them every time they experience a gap in their attention being occupied.”

“I can’t imagine what you’d say if you ever went to Starbucks with all the people there glued to their laptops.”

“What’s a laptop?”

“It’s a tabloid size computer people take everywhere.”

“Like a portable television? They’re never without their entertainment. And the phone is electronic gravy for their laptop. If electronics were food, people would be bedridden with obesity. Never a gap in their minds being occupied, and never a chance of having a thought of their own. I may chew on my tennis ball like it’s a baby’s pacifier, but your electronic devices do a much better job of pacification.”

 

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