Parental Warning: Mom, this post might have just used a bad word, and it may even contain a not-so-graphic sexual reference.

See what I did there? I kept the commas out to make the title of this post (already well on its way to being regrettable) a little puzzle. Is this a command? It is a dog blog after all. Is he talking about actually eating feces? (Told ya, dog blog.) Or is it a series, the big events making up the majority of his day now that he is being trained by a puppy?

And ah yes, it’s all of those. My little shit poem. Everything’s a tad blurry today. Up at 4 to take the astroturf out so our little sapling could have her second accident-free night in a row! Progress, I guess.

Baker has written some stuff I would definitely not recommend to your or my mom.

But about those commas. I’ve honestly never read Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and probably won’t. Readers –both of you– might recognize the ripoff in the title here. I will confess that I did go on a Nicholson Baker reading binge one time and remember his extraordinary little book, Room Temperature, in which his narrator slows down time while bottle feeding his little daughter, Bug. Mike, the narrator, does this Baker show-offy thing where he both goes into his deep knowledge of the comma, and compares little Bug to a life-comma, giving him pause to investigate nose picking, pooping, punctuation, and marital bliss. I’d like to think my Cedar-bug is giving me similar opportunities, although she may be more of a question mark or exclamation point than a comma.

Here’s Baker (you can go straight to the pictures, Mom) on how even punctuation evolves:

Even the good old comma continues to evolve: it was flipped upside down and turned into the quotation mark circa 1714, and a woman I knew in college punctuated her letters to her high-school friends with home-made comma-shapes made out of photographs of side-flopping male genitals that she had cut out of Playgirl.

Nicholson Baker, “Survival of the fittest,” NYT 11.4.93

And so we evolve, me and my little comma-dog. Good weekend of leash training (with more monk than thrasher, I’m happy to report), and even a trip through the old growth. Maybe one thing I’ll accomplish with these posts is a futile but necessary resistance — a comma in the big sentence–to the fact that my life is devolving into a list, on repeat: Eat, Shit, Play. Good work if you can get it, even without the side-flopping.

P.S. I’m afraid the “eat shit” part is a thing. Lots of cat snacks in the yard, and the pic of Cedar in the frost: She’s frozen not by the cold grass but by a sweet deer treat underneath. I had to drag her chomping head out of the grass and carry her to the trail.

P.P.S. Cedar turns 10 weeks today.

  • There’s gold in them thar hills.
  • Setting off on the trail behind the house.
  • Not amused by the old growth photo opp. Once a big tree. Her paws are at my eye level.

Oh and last thought on edibles. It’s not all recycled protein. Occasionally there’s a salad in the mix.