Freckles...

...sends her regards. ;-)

Of course she does…when she’s not moving back and forth in that dangerous territory between entitled and disgruntled! :)

If you’re planning on sticking around and helping me track THE E-POSTLE’S literary journey (and I hope you will!), then you’ll need to know a lot more about Freckles. You see, when we added her to the family, we forgot to tell her that she was a dog. By the time we thought of doing so, well…it was too late; damage was done.

I suppose I should back up a bit.

Freckles was not my idea. My daughter Eryn turned twelve the summer before the pandemic lockdown, and getting her first pet was an on-going assumption for some time leading up to her special day.

I wasn’t shocked when my better half Leslie and our daughter told me on that day in May (2019) that they were headed to Kentucky to pick up a dog, who would probably be named Freckles. They were waiting for me to volunteer to go, so I did. And we did. My son—Master Seth—stayed in Tennessee.

Oh, I’ve never been anti-animal. Growing up on a dead-end gravel road in Kentucky, we had all sorts of dogs and cats around the house. I was navigating through these memories while traveling north of the Tennessee/Kentucky state line. I can never return to (or through) that state without shaking my head at a lot of the things from my upbringing.

Anyway, this was on my mind when we reached the basset hound breeder in rural Kentucky, so rural that I still don’t know where we went. (I was riding and daydreaming, not driving.)

I should have known we were not going to bring home any ordinary basset hound by the answer the breeder gave when I asked, “What’s the best dog food to give her?”

“Well, she’s partial to biscuits and gravy,” the professional replied.

And that started my relationship with Freckles.

All these dog years later, I hadn’t considered myself an animal person. As an adult, I assumed that I didn’t have time to care for a pet properly; it’s a big responsibility. Plus, I had heard so many financial horror stories from friends about their pets and vets.

But we all—including Freckles—returned home.

And in the blink of an eye, we were home in a big way…along with everyone else on this rock with the pandemic lockdown of March 2020.

While we humans were testing the limits of the coronavirus by spraying our groceries on the front porch with disinfectant, Freckles was on the inside testing her limits with every child-proof gate and jack-leg contraption used to confine her to pre-determined spaces within the house. She became a professional in the guilt-trip game with her series of moans and grunts and snorts…moving her eyebrows up and down, in concert with the right amount of head tilts. Room by room, she gained ground and expanded her free-ranging territory.

My office was the last room to remain Freckles-free. I was a remote worker a year before the lockdown, and I already had the home office up and running with monitors, computers, laptops, printers, iPads, phone chargers, and on, and on, and on.

My concern?

All those power strips and cords and whatnot.

But as we entered the long, boring days of the lockdown, Freckles sulked on the floor on the other side of the baby gate, separating her from whatever magic might be going on in this office. Day after day. Weeks. And then months.

I gave up.

I baby-proofed this office and removed the last gate in the house. The free ranger was able to free roam.

And deeper into the lockdown, Freckles integrated into our repetitive daily lives. We on the inside. Everyone else and the grocery bags on the outside.

Much less than a year old, Freckles was not large, but she—suddenly—was in charge, and she had organized we humans into four tiers.

For some mysterious reason, Freckles designated Leslie as a Tier One human. This status entitled the person to premium affection and top tier attention.

The birthday girl was a solid Tier Two, reaching oh-so-close to premium membership into Club Freckles.

Rounding out this trifecta of affection was Master Seth, at Tier Three.

And then, bringing up the caboose, was ole Tier Four himself, Roy. When everyone else was either gone or asleep or huddled behind locked doors, Freckles would green-light me and wave me in for belly rubs…but there needed to be treats and snacks, of course! (Nothing much has changed…since.)

The onset of the pandemic prompted two events that brought Freckles and I a bit more together.

About the time that she arrived, I decided to stop drinking. I suspected that being locked inside with two teenagers for goodness-knows-how-long was not something to combine with “O Captain! My Captain!” Morgan. It took me a while to shake the habit, and Freckles was there to distract me when I needed distracting.

And second, I was let go.

A strange phrase, “let go.” After all, it wasn’t my decision to go. So, no one let me do it. In fact, the company required, demanded that I go. And since I was a remote worker already, there was nowhere else to go. I was already at my destination.

But I wasn’t alone.

A big fat chunk of the country was “going,” as well. And we were all trying to collect unemployment benefits at the same moment with a virtual waiting queue that stretched in an imaginary line around the block, out of the neighborhood, through the city, and far into the countryside.

So, I wasn’t gonna get paid anytime soon. (More on that in a future post!) Plus, no companies were advertising jobs or conducting interviews. No nothing to do…other than to clean and re-clean the house, goof in the garage and yard, and…wait! There was something to do.

It was time.

The time had arrived to dust off an aging manuscript on the shelf, my MFA creative thesis, THE E-POSTLE. Well, an early version of it, anyway.

Over the years, I watched it gather dust knowing that bad prose and terrible stories never age well. Once a year or so, I would open the cover, flip through the pages, hold my breath, and spot read sections. I knew it needed A LOT of work, but I was relieved to realize that the story still “worked.” And as long as the skeletal structure and the bones were strong and “worked,” then it could be rewritten, cleaned up, and polished…if only I had the time.

Well, the day arrived when I had all sorts of time!

Where was Freckles all this time?

One place she was NOT was outside…even though we had replaced the screen door with one that contained a doggy door.

“No Thanks,” she said.

Yep, you guessed it: She talks! Well, she communicates so well with me that she doesn’t need to talk.

Anyway, she understood instinctively what it has taken humanity many years to admit: We’ve screwed up the planet.

It’s way too blazing hot in the summer, and the winters are a blend of snow and monsoons. After way-too-many flash droughts, bomb cyclones, atmospheric rivers, derechos, polar vortexes, and thundersnows, Freckles had given Mother Nature the middle paw.

Oh, she’s nosey and curious and wants to see what’s going on “out there,” but if she does “end up” outside accidentally, she’ll run inside to the puppy pads when the occasion arises.

And I have finally arrived at the second event that brought Freckles and I a bit more together: Structure.

I found myself in a world with neither weekdays nor weekends. The only pattern I could identify was my taking the trash cans out on Tuesday nights and dragging them to the backyard on Wednesday mornings.

That was my structure.

So, since Freckles was hanging with ole Tier Four anyway, I decided to take her photo each evening at the end of my work shift on the novel and post it to social media. And it worked. In fact, I kept it up each night after we all left our homes and returned to day jobs.

And deep into the evenings, I have continued to read and write. Most of the time, she’s either here on a little bed next to my desk, or she’s lurking nearby.

She has learned that a nightly after-writing-session ritual is a few snacks on the couch and my only television time of the day, which is about thirty minutes before I fall asleep. (That’s more television than a working writer needs, anyway.)

And with that, Gentle Reader, consider yourself introduced to Freckles. Trust me: She will appear more and more throughout this Substack experience! ;-)