Little thoughts are everywhere.

They cover pieces of paper in winding scrawl and fit in between lists for laundry dinner shopping and things I have to remember. There isn't enough room for Lily here so I start someplace else. Magazine covers and notebooks from work. I even have a few words crowding items on a receipt.

One torn page shows off the deep maroon crescents of wine stains where I rested my glass the night before the trainer came. I had questions questions questions.

Lily pees in strange places. I read the sentence and wonder again about the random squat on the tile the rug the tile or outside if I catch it in time. How do I send the best message? I wanted to know how to juggle all these dogs. Sixteen legs both large and small hurrying around me waiting for the right message. Four snouts eight ears eight eyes watching and asking me what do I want them to do? What do I want?

Dogs need jobs to do, they need to behave in a way they think pleases me. They need my approval.

On a third line that is too long for the page I read my meandering thought: be sure they are all OK with their place in the house. Be sure they are safe.

Sitting at work Monday I make calls to the vet and ask what we should try next. I want to try pills that help her pancreas. The vet wants to try treating inflamed bowel syndrome first. Since I am just someone who read something on the Internet and he is the vet, I say OK.

OK.

Despite the worry and rolls of paper towels that I endlessly deplete as I pick up after Lily, Lily who can't hold it in, Lily who eats and eats and stays so skinny, there are teeny moments when I am hopeful. I flip a page in my book about drug addiction about agony and the unrelenting compulsion to drink. As I let the page fall I hear a gentle scraping. Below me on her pillow Lily is all folded up in sleep and her back paw twitches as she dreams.

Turning back to the book's pages I again trade my plight for an alcoholic's horrible and enlightening and painful and vital days in rehab.

Often when I am unsettled I am also spooked. I took over my shoulder when I read, wondering what is causing my skin to tingle as if something stares at my vulnerable spine bent in a lazy slouch as I read.

What is coming? What will happen? Will I ever come home and feel like this is a welcoming place where peace is easy and sleep is fast?

Tension. It's a hateful and patient thing that slaps itself on you in clear layers that tighten as they dry. They squeeze and grow heavy. I look in the mirror. I hold up my hands. I stare at myself and realize I just don't have the right tools for this job. One day last week the tension got me. Crouched down on the floor with my head pressed between my palms -- again -- I was crying and babbling and taking those long pitiful breaths and finally I just screamed this long and exhausted sound of frustration. Then I went to work and looked at Nancy, John, Curtiss, and tried to imagine any of them crumpled on the floor squeezing their head. I laughed. It's always funny unless it's happening to you.

Lily. She has taken over my thoughts my attention and my house. Completely.

She is no thinner but no better.

I mop the basement again and go down to read my book. Lily sits with her body curved, feet out, and her head pressed flat on the floor between her front paws. Looking at me, I imagine that she is a spirit trying to see how she can stretch the stuff of soft-hearted people.

Up early this morning and my head and body are heavy with warmth and left over sleep. I want to nestle back into the pocket of sheets and blanket that held my body all night. Warm and dreaming. My dreams were all anxiety. Once upon a time I had this affair. He wanted more more more more and became obsessed and eventually a source of some serious stress, one broken windshield, spying, and a real concern that there would be a confrontation one day. At last the terrible fight came in the middle of our office. Shouting and swearing. I think they asked him to quit or leave or something because a week later he was gone. The notes and strange phone calls and angry stares and sudden silences when I entered the room were all gone, but the anxiety left a dent in my subconscious that flexes when I am upset. My dream: Brian has my notebook and I desperately need it. My notes and interviews and contact numbers and things I JUST NEED are in his hands. I have to get that notebook.

I wake and leave the bed's hypnotic warmth that tells me to sleep a little longer and I get the hiking shoes on.

I step outside with Lily on her pretty red leash and we run stumble walk, make long strides up through the rocks and trees. I am warm out in the woods without a jacket on January 25 at 6:45 in the morning. By the time I get home and get in the shower and get in the truck for work I know I am going to be late.

Lily, I am trying.

Thank God for my parents who will come walk her and talk to her and be her friends. Thank God for Jerry who took the dogs out in the woods before I got home.