Survey says, I feel:
a) like shit
b) like shit, compounded by the guilt of knowing my suffering isn’t remotely on par with what other people are going through right now.
c) great! joe and kamala, pfizer and moderna (whose vaccine effort was in part funded by dolly parton—can that woman pick a winner or what?)—look at those tunnel lights dilate!
d) misaligned with the universe because are these my only options?
I’m gonna let you all comment for free this *one* time. Actually, I don’t really understand how to monetize this substack because I’m too lazy to read all the best practices and stuff.
Me: I got a dog. A puppy. His name is Lego. Here he is:
The first week I brought him home, I took him to a local vet. Oh man. This guy is 77 years old—been practicing for 40 years. He’s like Dr. Pol, minus the money to make what he does look intuitive instead of criminal. This vet—his storefront looks like one of those massage outfits with the widows painted in soap scum. Inside isn’t much better. He takes hand-written notes and has no filing system. He asked me twice if he’d already given my dog a rabies shot—I’m like, how should I know? In that first week, my dog got his face into something, and it swelled up like a giant potato. The vet tells me it might go away, it might not, do I want a shot (this reminds me of when I was doing a round of IVF and, as I was WALKING INTO the implantation room, the doc asks me if I think we should wait a day or two more for the embryos to mature. I dunno, doc, do you have any expertise here by chance?). Then my dog got a tapeworm and when I brought the worm to the vet—I’m now a dog parent who carries Worms in Poop in my pocket—he picks up the sample with his fingers, smears it on a slide that kinda looks covered in polio, then rinses his hands with water. Where’s the soap, you ask?
This guy has glowing reviews from hundreds of people on Yelp. Experience over frills. Which really has me thinking about the virtue of a frill. Is hygiene is frill? Are digitized records a frill? Am I ageist? Snobbish? I feel like I don’t care about frills. But, imagine that, it’s pretty hard to live your values when something might actually be at stake. Like your soul. Or your puppy.