Dear Curiosity Journal,
I awoke from a fitful night of “sleep” in a bit of a petulant mood. Balio had a particularly overzealous shift of barking beneath my bedroom window, which pierced my consciousness and suspended an acceptable state of peace for dozing off. He was wet, but I was desperate, so I put him on the porch. He continued to bark, so I brought him into the house. He promptly laid himself down on the couch, but I didn’t want to fight him. “Fine”, I told him and tried to go back to sleep. When Rufus got up a little bit later, he let Balio out, and the barking started back up. I called for him to come back in. After a lot of shouting, he finally came back to his post on the couch, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so finally, reluctantly, I got up, giving Balio a hard look on my way to the coffee pot. If you have a nocturnal livestock guardian dog, perhaps you’ve been here before, and of course, we have no one to blame but ourselves. It was basically in bold print at the top of the page of every breed description we read, but we sped right past that, blinded by their lovable puppy cuteness that vanished almost immediately, leaving us with some sort of Beethoven-like beast with unlimited barking capacity. Spitefully sipping coffee, I had to press past my annoyance because there was parsley to be picked. I pushed myself through the motions of counting ties, squatting in the garden, slicing herbs, rubbing my fingers together to bring back the sensation, bundling stems, smelling the spice, hearing the birds, noticing the resilience of the plants that survive the cold nights, counting how many ties remain, kneeling in another garden bed, hunting and pecking, looking for nice fronds, feeling the warmth flush into my extremities from repeatedly bending over, watching the sun start to sparkle, and suddenly realizing, my mood has shifted, the combination of caffeine and sunshine, movement and beauty, presence and purpose, I was back to myself, forgiving the dog, for he only acts according to his nature, and hitting reset on the day.
~Joy
