Ozzy is sprawled on his back with his legs like chicken wings jutting up from his body. He snores.

Words rush to the surface like carbonated bubbles and jam up at the bottle's top, which never twists all the way open. Under the plastic they burst and scream and shake but no one hears them.

This afternoon at my computer where the words tingle in my fingertips and a few make it onto the keyboard, my eyes pop open when I see Ozzy's belly soar over my head and out of view. Once I lose sight, I think he is actually gone. Never there at all. Unless dreams are three dimensional, even dreams as I nod off at work, everything is temporary and without weight or substance. If you are in my dream and I see you walking toward me, you are gone if you pass from sight.

I watch Lily dream. With most of her body on the pillow, which is slightly deflated with tufts of stuffing missing, her head and legs drop off the edges. Her legs jerk a little and she snorts like she is sniffing in the woods. Whatever she sees now will disappear. She will wake up whole.

When I wake in the mornings I pray for the illusion of reprieve. I wish I were waking at 3 a.m. and welcomed by the promise of a few hours more to sleep.

I only write the news, and I am feeling adrift, like If I walk past you while you're dreaming…

I need to feel like I mean something. Jerry means something. He is a dad, and what is a more looming and perpetual responsibility than raising a child? Dragging her through the pits of adolescence and intense drama of young adulthood is a hill much too high for some, with its peek shrouded in clouds. Will things turn out OK at the top? Will we, the parents and children, be able to slip through this grueling keyhole without damage? Anyway, I am not a mom but I can tell you that parenting is so much more than lots of baby snot.

I need to do something with Lily that matters. Maybe I can see if there are any volunteer citizen's programs for a search and rescue dog. Something to put us both to work at something useful and helpful.

She puked tonight. That moosh came out like a garden hose. I hear her tummy squish and gurgle a few times, then went back to the laundry. She was moaning and groaning.

What's that noise? Jerry asks. I think something outside is bothering her, she was just out barking, I answer. With underwear and shirts in a pile I head up to the bedroom. When I get back down I see gallons and oceans and seas of vomit.

Lily lily lily. Lily. Stop lunging and barking at cars Lily.

Please?

I need to take a week off from work and go to a dog and owner training camp.

Instead Lily and I put a couple miles on our shoes in the afternoons, then run through the woods with everybody else.

Rather than dealing with my life, I close the door on it, literally, and walk down to the truck to go to work.

That night a budget referendum finds me in the middle school gymnasium with thick varnish sitting like years and years of honey over a wooden floor. I remember eighth grade and the smell of the first day of school, when the halls and floors and gym all glistened and My hands and face were damp with fright.

Back in the middle school as the polls closed I learned the budget failed by 51 votes. Sorry I left you home for this one Lily! What's 51 votes? Not a margin or a sweep, not a gap. It's not even big enough to fit a piece of paper through it.

Lily, if we can scare up 52 friends and explain to them that for roughly the price of a large pizza per household, and maybe a large bottle of cola, we could have afforded the budget. Taxes hurt less than cuts.

I would write, but I'm tired. I would talk about Lily, but I am tired.

I run a lot with the dogs and hardly dream at night as I yank cold covers over worn out legs and knees and a stupid twist in one ankle. Just a few steps past sleep, a heavy curtain crashes down inside my head and my imagination doesn't even struggle. It stays there like a motionless lump. Even the curved baked bean shape of it is boring.

At home after Lily and I jog down the road, then run in the woods with the other guys, Jerry calls from Long Island. The hotel is crappy, just like anywhere, he said.

Do we have oil? I ask. That's my favorite question in the last few weeks. I am too wimpy to shine a light on the oil tank and see how close we are to E. Well, if you run out, just get a few gallons of diesel. I'll be home tomorrow, he said.

The vet took $100 bucks off the cost of our 12 ounce bottle of enzyme stuff for Lily, I tell him.

Why?

Who knows? I say. I didn't ask them to do it, but initially the girl sounded surprised and sort of sympathetic when she asked if I knew the cost.

It's, like, $320, she said in a voice saved for phrases like, Oh, my God!

How much was it then? Jerry asked me. $220.

I wonder why they did that, he answered.

My vet Marc Reynolds in Oxford is a great guy. We drag our mutts screaming and slobbering through his little lobby too often. He has at times just waived the whole visit for us. Oh, that lump on Lily's belly? One peek and squeeze and the vet tech there knew it was a harmless, but herniated something or other. Don't worry about it, he said as I tried to pay. Oh, He knows my diminishing wallet and I will return. Often.

Anyway, I tell Jerry that the vet's office is decent to us. Maybe they know we'll be buying this stuff forever, I tell him. We say goodnight.

A few minutes later as I glance past the flashlight's wimpy yellow beam into the oil tank I see the gauge. It's floating at a least whole millimeter above E.

I am not washing any dishes tonight. I want warm feet in the shower tomorrow after trudging through the early morning rainy forest with Lily while tree limbs toss chilly drops down my back.

In case I have not thanked everyone including Jerry mom dad aunt neighbors friends….thank you. Unlike fear or apprehension, worry or frustration, motivation is one of those things you've gotta muster.

I am driving the Bronco and the road's green fields of spring grass and flowering borders become steep gorges as I round a corner. Shifting or slowing down are impossible. I feel like pillows are stuck under the pedals and rubber bands keep wiggling the steering wheel away from me. I peer over the familiar curved hood with one rust spot flaking away and wait for that roller coaster twinge to grip my stomach.

Just a dream. Anxiety dream?Yes.

A friend asked if I would want to give Lily away to another home where the family can love her and I can have my life back and a little peace and maybe snap back to normal, except the line of scrimmage is gone. The announcers went home and the cheerleaders have not shouted my name in a long time.

Lily gives me purpose. I have no children or spouse or car payments. Aren't all adults issued at least one of each immediately after they see their first tax bill? I am not working to send anyone to college or keep a child happy. Car payments are a $200 expense that I was never able to afford, and after a peek inside a new car you can't talk me into that sheath of plastic and electronics.

I am not being cheep, I am being picky.

Spousespousespouse. Jerry and I live together, but if I call him SPOUSE! he may greedily gasp his last. He knows enough not to marry someone unbalanced who takes pity on random scrawny dogs, plants, and worms trying to struggle free from puddling rainwater. I also veer wildly into another emotional octave where everything is intense and I cry get angry rant rant rant and question my job life future past and everything that I can drag into it right then. I smash and throw things. I am blowing up miserable unhappy and really just drained and determined to find an exit. There has to be better stuff out there, I think. Why can't I see it? Then the blame. I start blaming myself because Jerry says, DON'T BLAME ME!

I fix air conditioning, Kendra.

Oh. Uh oh.

I have Lily. She is too much work and worry. She needs to be out and running or at all times occupied. She needs a companion and to be a companion. She needs to think.

My friend asked me, why do you think she needs a job to do?

It's her expression. She looks at me like an empty vase waiting for me to fill her with her own purpose. She wants to learn. I can tell by the amount of energy she spends on her curiosity. It has infused her posture and habits. Despite her questions or my answers, we still speak different languages.

Why do people stare at train wrecks behave badly in cars shout unimaginative profanities out passing windows and in general behave like it's a game of musical chairs in parking lots? Would they act this way in line for coffee, or do they reach into the back seat and dust off the rumpled cloak of common courtesy for a trip into the store?

In other words, my neighbor called the police because my wheelbarrow was in the road where I have parked it for the last five years when I rake up by the street. Thanks neighbor, I appreciated all the nice shiny and colorful lights. Are you the homeowner, he asks.

Yup.

Wanna move that wheelbarrow, I mean, if someone hits it … the liability, you don't want that …

I wonder to myself if my neighbor called 911 for this. I would love to send copies of that call to my friends for Christmas. What a criminal.

Why am I telling that story? Isn't this about a dog?

I just needed to sweep the heaps of cluttered thoughts out of the way first so I could get to Lily. Everything I do think work shop drive see hear pretty much has Lily etched on it somewhere. She may be blazing or faint, but I always see her.

Since December 26 everything about my days is different, beginning with the moment my eyes open.

I am tired and have not been to work for 8 AM in almost four months. My head promptly turns to stone where I sit at my desk and is just too heavy to hold up. I am a train wreck. Why do people stare at train wrecks?

Because they feel relief. The person sprawled on the tracks with a Game Over sign flashing in the background isn't them. They are somehow absolved from disaster by proximity. They can look on from safety, since this isn't something that can touch them. Nope. Are they responsible for their good fortune? Nope nope nope. They just arrived a bit too late and will have to wait for the next train.

I hang on as Lily gets better and more animated and clumsy and eager to burst through the door for a walk.

Plotting the next hour and struggling to drag myself from bed, I stop. I open a drawer in my imagination where all the necessary things are and I stuff in the earplugs. I just don't want to hear it coming.

Lily is lots of work and I hate to leave her without a job to do. She needs a task. She is supercharged now and needs to focus on a lesson or a tennis ball, stick, other dogs. Considering the way she tilts her head sideways I am sure she was bred for brains. Nothing on earth can mime confusion the way an intelligent animal can. Her ears perk and her head twists as her posture sets -- rigid and still. I can hear her ask, What the hell did you say?

Good girl Lily.

Saturday I saw the trainer that I had called in February. I promised to call again and one day I'll be less derailed.

We're looking for cheaper enzyme treatments to feed her since $100-ish bucks a week is stiff. It's either that or pancreas straight form the pig. Think about that for a bit.

Ask me another time about Lily's little early morning dash on Tuesday. All I can say is thank you to my neighbor for recognizing that the dog in the woods behind her house was Lily.

At times the words are gone. Writing about Lily has somehow turned my stash of clever self-expression into a deflating balloon. Where once a mesh of thoughts and emotion nestled in a tightly wound ball, I now have this unraveling frayed string reaching off into nowhere.

My sleep is not restful and dreams remain just too far into the fog to discern.

Today Lily and I ran down the street practicing our Hold It! We stop. We wait. I say, Come! We'll do a few rounds of that before returning home where Ozzy's barking awaits us.

This weekend we trekked to Stratford to try enzyme supplements that produced only diarrhea. Oh well.

Confessions confessions, such tiresome and lead-weighted confessions. I tell Jerry that I think it's too much. I am having one of those moments where I realize I have been missing the spring's buds-turned-blooms and aromas of flower-scented mornings. I am tired and I pray that Lily is getting what she needs from me. Fingers crossed.

I remember days years vacations holidays birthdays by the bad mood I was in when we got on I 95 headed for Maine, Florida, Wherever. A meltdown on Christmas Eve left me silent and withdrawn on Christmas day, or Easter was not pastels and light but tears where nobody could see me hiding in the basement bathroom.
Stress. It’s a funny thing and sinks in like a stain that permeates thoughts and heartbeats and words that stumble and jam up rather than coming out in pure expressions. Between my brain and my mouth the evenly spaced letters fall over a cliff and are rearranged in a demented heap of nonsense at the bottom.
How in the world will I take care of Lily? I have not yet felt that relief of knowing she’ll survive. That bright face with its glistening eyes and eager panting are a challenge rather than signs of happiness. In my mind is a voice: can you run enough to make her happy? Can you teach her enough to satisfy her intelligence and need for a task? Is she happy in the basement with Hershey and Bandit but Bandit scares her?Am I worrying too much? Why can’t it be like the bar where you fix a bad day with a beer?