Walking The Dog

[Charlotte has seen fit to enact part of her mostly benign midlife crisis by spending this week on Mexico's Pacific coast with her girlfriends. She turns 40 in nine days, and except for a new fascination with the bass guitar and a spectacularly successful stint in Weight Watchers, this Mexico trip is her only manifestation thus far. Pretty good.]

[Control freak that she is, Char made sure the love of her life, the Dog Bruno, would be well looked after in her absence by breaking down her sitter rota into morning, mid-day, and afternoon sessions, and recruiting all and sundry to fill in the slots. I've been assigned morning and mid-day, today and next Monday. This involved bringing Bruno to work with me, which is fine since he comes with Charlotte most days anyway. To make the duty simpler, I slept last night at Dolores House, where (as I've explained possibly enough already) Char, Bruno, Allen and Carrie all live. Oh, yeah; there's the Cat Olive there as well.]

[Up this morning before the sun; coffee, toast and NPR with Allen; gather up the leash, the poo bags, my little possessions, and off Bruno and I went. Char usually walks a straight route thru the Mission District, up the Vermont Street steps to Potrero Hill, and into work. Well, Char's been doing a lot of running work lately (I guess that's part of her midlife acting out - silly girl), and those steps present little problem for her. Me, I'm more the contemplative, sedentary type, so I decided to take the route that would involve fewer densely packed, squiggly lines if it were charted on a topographic map. Yes, I opted for the streets less steep, and that made some kind of difference.]

[We had our first rainfall since April yesterday, and the streets looked as though the rain fell all night as well. Asphalt shone, palm fronds expired on sidewalks, debris clogged sewer grates, and a fresh smell warred with the usual rot as Bruno and I trotted across Valencia, Mission, South Van Ness, Folsom... We zigzagged from 23rd to 18th streets, going from the heavily dense, mostly Latino inner Mission thru the industrial-lofty northeast Mish/Potrero Flats. The going was slow since Bruno needed to smell every plant, tree and flowering pavement square. I tended to let him; everything was so new! He heeled and sat at every corner, and gave those cholos hanging outside the market at 20th and Folsom an aloof, "I'm half-pit bull and I don't need to deal with you" look while moving fast.]

[Crossed the 18th Street pedestrian bridge spanning the freeway, puffed that last jot up the hill, and we'd arrived. I gave Bruno some treats to reward him for being so good. Now I'm looking out the front door at what appears to be a warm monsoon. I hear it's raining up and down the Pacific coast, including where Charlotte's on holiday. Well, even when it's raining in Mexico, it's still Mexico.]

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