On the Move with Chesty and Rocca - on the Plane

I read an excerpt from this book at Ozark Writers League this weekend and folks said they liked it.  They laughed out loud, and that's all the encouragement I need.  

You can catch up by going to the previous post, of course, but to the gist is: Two clueless gringos move to The Republic of Panama with two giant service dogs, Chesty and Rocca.

We pick up the story as my husband, Jack, and myself board the plane to begin our journey.

  My husband is telling his new friend and fellow traveler about the history of the Cane Corso breed and how these dogs were trained by Italian ranchers to grab the bull by the nose and hold the huge animal while the farmer cut the throat at butchering time. Jack pays no attention whatsoever to me, his panicked wife. Rocca and I are pushed forward into our assigned seats. I am against the window. Jack has the aisle seat.

 I instruct Rocca to lie at my feet, wedged in between the seat and the bulk head, with her head facing toward the outside of the plane. My feet rest on Rocca’s back. Chesty lies with his head sticking out the aisle. The dogs are butt to butt. Okay. This is uncomfortable, but it might work. If the flight from Tucson to Houston isn’t any longer than ten minutes.

   “Jack,” I say in a quiet voice, trying to keep the panic smashed down where it will only eat a hole in my stomach lining instead of leaping out my throat and spilling all over the inside of the airplane. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

   “What? See, nothing to worry about. The dogs fit just fine in this space,” he says with his usual enthusiasm for impossibly difficult situations.

   Maybe it’s just me. Flying with both of these dogs in the passenger section at our feet, this is a sane idea?

   Now the situation moves beyond difficult and I am absolutely positively sure we’ve crossed that demarcation line into full-fledged-screaming-crazy-land-wacky-this-can’t-be-doneville. The head stewardess tells Jack that Chesty’s head cannot extend out into the aisle. People might trip over him. Which means that one of the dogs is going to have to lie on top of the other dog.

   No way Rocca is going to allow Chesty to lie on top of her so we maneuver ourselves out of our seats. This proves the most difficult for Rocca as she is stuck and has to grunt and groan and look balefully up at me until she manages to wiggle her way out of this predicament into which we have placed her. Once in the aisle, we think our way through this arrangement like those big footed clowns at the circus trying to fit into the Volkswagen before the start of the greatest show on earth.

   Chesty has to be able to see out the aisle. He’s had far too much training in watching Jack’s back to handle anything else. Rocca has to be the dog on top. The dogs have to be placed so that Chesty can’t look at Rocca and stir her up into a froth of irritation. 

All right, let’s try this. 

I squeeze into the tiny space between the seats and the bulkhead wall with Rocca and she sits while Chesty and Jack get into position with Chesty’s butt extending to the front of my seat. Then Rocca lies down with her butt on top of Chesty’s hunches. 

Yeah. This is just perfect. I can’t see why this isn’t going to work for the four hour flight to Houston. 

Both dogs look as though they are going to begin, the moment we get off the plane, a serious search for new owners. My feet are now perched on Rocca’s back which is on top of Chesty’s back.

   Then things get interesting. 

There is a passenger in the aisle who claims to have a ticket for the middle seat, the seat between Jack and me. An older woman who’s on her way to visit her grandchildren for the week. There are no other seats available. Jack gets up, Chesty goes with him, Rocca sits up. The poor woman seats herself in the middle seat. Rocca lies down. On the woman’s feet. I have Rocca get up, freeing the woman. The old lady puts her feet up on the seat.

   “See how this is going to work out!” Jack says, “Who’d have thought we’d be so lucky as to end up next to a woman agile enough at her age to sit with her feet perched up on the seat like that.”

   Jack sits and then backs Chesty into his space. Rocca lies down, wedging herself yet again into her allotted space on top of Chesty. Chesty looks goofily around, his rump pinned, his tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.

   “Are we having fun Dad? Is this the adventure you’ve been telling me about? Huh? Is it? Huh?”

   I apologize to the woman, who tells us that this will be a wonderful story to tell her grandchildren. Sure, as soon as the feeling comes back into her legs and she can actually exit the plane. Jack tells her the holding-the-bull-by-the-nose story and I don’t even interrupt to ask why in hell the farmer would be butchering a bull. Wouldn’t it be a steer he’d be killing? Somehow this detail just doesn’t seem like a relevant point at the moment.

   Remember those treats we brought so the dogs would be chewing and swallowing at takeoff and landing? 

These turn out to be a really bad idea. First of all getting anything out of my little daypack, which is on my lap, means moving around at least a little and there really is no room to move around. No room at all. But, more importantly, Rocca has decided in true female fashion, that all of her difficulties are the fault of this stupid male dog on whose butt she’s being forced to lie. She not only does not believe he is worthy of a treat, she doesn’t think he should be allowed to live. 

The instant I break the seal and she smells the liver, she starts one of those low elephant rumbles of which I am all too familiar. I correct her, stuff the liver treats back in the backpack and beg the stewardess to put the pack in the overhead compartment instead of on my lap where the smells are going to waft down and cause a scene I am desperately praying to avoid. Rocca settles down and, in this fashion, several lifetimes later, we make it to Houston.

   The old lady’s grandchildren are there to greet her at the gate and she introduces us and the dogs to everyone. How else would they possibly believe her story? After meeting her family, we make our way to the gate for our Continental flight out of the country, to Panama City. We check in and again, not one single official person blinks at the two dogs with whom we’ll be boarding. 

Evidently, as long as something, anything, is on the computer screen, it’s no problem. Now, sitting in those plastic chairs that are all attached together and to the floor, in the Houston airport, we lose our concentration for a moment and Chesty turns around and LOOKS AT ROCCA.

   Rocca, already madder than the proverbial wet hen, leaps up and jumps into the middle of this stinkin’ male dog who is the cause of all her freakin’ problems. Every single damn one.

   Chesty wiggles his tail and does his “Aren’t I the cutest thing you’ve ever seen” routine and I correct Rocca and move her away from Chesty. 

The whole episode takes no more than three seconds. It clears all the seats around us for a good thirty feet. Jack and I act as though this is no big deal. Nothing to worry about. We move the dogs and go right on with our conversation about who should go and get us a Starbucks coffee. 

Amazingly, it works and the stewardess let us board the plane with both dogs where, the good news is, there’s no one in the middle seat between us and the bad news is, Rocca has now decided that that freakin’ boy dog had better not even THINK of looking at her.

The Saga Continues--On the Road with Chesty and Rocaa

I hope you enjoyed last weeks interview with Claire Croxton.  If you missed it, just drop down and check it out.  It's a fun interview with a wonderful writer. 

Now, we continue with the adventures of two clueless gringos immigrating to The Republic of Panama with two giant service dogs in tow.  You know the drill.  If you missed a post, just drop down and read what you missed.  Sort of like demand television. To catch you up on story, my husband, Jack, and I have sold our house in Arizona and are flying to Panama with two service dogs in cabin with us.  Yes, in fact, I did say IN THE CABIN WITH US.

Read on, this just gets better and better:

  My best friend Mona drives us to Tucson on Halloween. We’re scheduled to fly out the next morning at what Jack calls dawn-thirty. I hug Mona good-bye. She takes our picture. Two beat-to-crap suitcases, two scared leather daypacks, two large bright-eyed dogs, and two old fools standing in front of the Day’s Inn, as ready as we’re ever going to be for yet another adventure.

   I can see Mona crying as she drives away. I’d love to join her but I need to concentrate on getting safely to our room with my suitcases and Rocca, the dog for whom I’m responsible. Jack and I have worked daily with the dogs. Their behavior has improved, but mostly, they’ve trained us on how to handle them in tandem. Rocca has transferred some of her allegiance from Jack and to me. This is good. It means she now looks to me for guidance instead of to him. Most of the time. We’ve learned to seat the dogs, whenever possible, back to back, not facing each other.

   This is the move that all parents recognize as the old, “You look that way and you look the other way. Don’t even look at each other!”

   The problem with this solution, as all parents know, is that, sooner or later, you’re going to hear the dreaded words, “He’s looking at me!”

   In our case, we would hear a low rumbling growl that sounds more like the noise an enraged lion makes than anything that should come out of the throat of a dog. This would be Rocca. Chesty would be peeking over his shoulder at her. Every time. His stubby tail jerking away, his eyes round and sparkling. The boy loves this game. I have learned that once we hear the sound of the ground shaking with Rocca’s warning, we have less than two seconds to prevent her from jumping up and into the middle of Chesty, giving him the exact feedback he seeks. You’ll notice I said, “I learned.” Jack, on the other hand learned that my nervousness and insistence on anticipating problems is causing the dogs to misbehave.

   All right, so for now, we’ve gotten the dogs through the lobby and into the room at the Day’s Inn in Tucson without incident. Jack wants to take the dogs and go down the street to Burger King for dinner. I’m not leaving the room with both dogs unless I’m forced to do so. We compromise. We do it my way. He goes and gets burgers, I stay in the room with the dogs and attempt to convince myself that the shaking that overtakes me periodically is probably just excitement over the trip.

   Cane Corso mastiffs have been bred as guard dogs for centuries in Italy. Our two have been raised on a five acre patch of desert with the nearest road a mile away. People walking past their front door in the night, bumping suitcases into walls or doing that loud whisper common to all drunks are the equivalent, to Chesty and Rocca, to a band of trained guerrillas sneaking in to execute us in our big queen size hotel bed. Rocca, like me, is a light sleeper. I spend most of the night sleeping with my hand on her head, ready to grab her snout and whisper “No! Enough! Leave it! Stop! SSSSShhhhhhh! No!”

   It feels like I never close my eyes, but truthfully, the snout grabbing thing probably didn’t happen any more than a dozen times in this, our first of a long line of nights in hotel beds. Jack and Chesty, both able to sleep through a mortar attack, wake bright-eyed and bushy tailed and ready for the day. Rocca and I shake ourselves into a blurry sleepwalk and away we go.

   The dogs fall into formation in a heel beside us as soon as we buckle their working capes on them. Jack leads with Chesty, who’s trying already to turn his head to look at Rocca, and Rocca lumbers along beside me, she and I grumbling at each step. Onto the shuttle bus we go and are delivered to the terminal just as the sun’s light is beginning to reveal the silhouettes of the many armed Saguaro Cactus and desert palms around the airport. Inside, at the Continental check-in desk, the agents don’t even blink at the dogs. Jack has spoken with the manager several times and also, as luck would have it, Randy Todd, who works in air traffic control and is the breeder from whom we bought Chesty, is at the check-in counter.

   Besides this lucky occurrence, many people at the Tucson airport are familiar with both Chesty and Rocca as we’ve brought them here often as part of their training over the years. Several of the security guards come over to say good-bye. Chesty takes all this attention with wiggling dignity until the stewardesses arrive. Then he throws himself on the floor, rolls over on his back, and presents his best side for rubbing. Rocca and I stand back and watch this foolish display of unprofessional behavior while Jack’s voice booms around the terminal announcing to everyone that we’re moving to Panama. Yes, the country, not the city in Florida.

   This is as good a time as any to tell you that while Jack loves to be the center of attention, I am happiest when I can come and go and no one even notices I’ve been there. Taking the dogs with us everywhere, puts us firmly in Jack’s glory and my discomfort zone. Having taken not one, but two giant dogs with us every single time we’ve left the house on absolutely every errand and excursion for the last month in order to accustom them to working together has left me a tad grumpy. All right, let me modify that self-assessment, I’m already a flaming bitch and we haven’t even gotten on the plane yet.

   By the time we line up at the boarding gate, it’s full daylight and I’m saying a silent goodbye to the clear blue desert sky under which I’ve lived for the last six years. Jack is explaining to the passenger in front of us in line about how he’s going to breed these dogs in Panama and sell them to rich Latin Americans who will pay any price to get them as guard dogs. Chesty is prancing along in full handsome working dog mode.

   Rocca is looking up at me and asking with her big ole eyes, “So, last chance. Are you absolutely sure this is a good idea?”

Claire Croxton Interview

Summer Leigh reminds me of somebody I know.  Somebody funny and wonderful and snarky and vulnerable.  Who could it be?  Well, while I’m ciphering it out, go ahead and read this interview with the stunningly talented author Claire Croxton.

1)      I just finished Redneck Ex and love it.  Which, and don’t take this the wrong way, surprised me just a tiny bit.  Because the novel is definitely a Romance and I don’t usually enjoy that genre. But, in the case of Redneck Ex, I found the main character, Summer Leigh, absolutely irresistible. She hooked me from page one. Tell me, please, however did you come up with this glorious character?

You know, I didn’t think Redneck Ex was a romance. I thought it was women’s fiction or its own groundbreaking genre. I was very surprised when The Wild Rose Press requested the manuscript and even more surprised when I was informed it was indeed a contemporary romance. 

As for Summer Leigh, the experts all say write what you know. I know neurotic, snarky, confident-in-the-boardroom, yet hopeless-at-love women. If a man landed naked in Summer Leigh’s lap and asked, “Want to f***?” she would have to analyze the question and poll her friends before she’d understand what he meant.

When folks ask me how I managed all of Summer Leigh’s insightful internalization, I’m stunned. I have to admit that I was quite surprised that not everyone has an ongoing snark-fest playing in her head. Summer Leigh is flawed and she knows it. Every once in a while, she’ll try to do something about it, but she always slips back into her neuroses, which is why she has to think: what would Mama do? Mama always does the right thing. Summer Leigh? Not so much.

2)      Part of the novel is set in Arctic Alaska.  I’m one of the millions of people who are fascinated with that part of world while knowing I’d die within the first five minutes if I ever ventured into that land of snow and ice.  Please tell me more about living in Barrow, Alaska. What was a typical winter day?  Summer day? Tell me about the polar bears, Claire, tell me about the bears.  Are you planning more books set in the Arctic?

Like Summer Leigh, I moved to Barrow, Alaska after I got divorced. (I really have no idea where I got the inspiration to write Summer Leigh.) It was August. I’ll never forget flying over the Brooks Range and watching the terrain change from mountains, to rolling hills to flat as a flitter. I was fascinated. It looked like the surface of the moon—flat with craters of water everywhere (well, if the moon had water that is.)I fell in love the second I stepped off the plane. It was surreal. It was at least seventy degrees cooler than the mind-melting heat of Arkansas. I taught high school. The first day of school it was 30 degrees Fahrenheit and there was enough snow on the ground to result in school being closed in Arkansas. Students showed up wearing shorts and flip flops. I knew Barrow was my kind of place!

I always worked government jobs so I never had to spend much time outside, so the weather didn’t bother me much. I do remember fighting a blizzard when I lived in Kaktovik—a small island in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with a population of around 225. I worked for the City of Kaktovik and it was my job to update the bulletin channel on the city-operated cable system. I had to bundle up, walk into 80 mph winds to the shack that housed the equipment so I could post a bulletin that it was cold and the National Weather Service advised everyone stay indoors. Yep. Had to alert the local Iñupiaq (Eskimo) population that it was cold and windy. I believe the ambient temperature was hovering around minus 57 degrees.

The hardest adjustment for me was the sun not setting. The 60 + days of the sun not rising above the horizon was no problem. It was too cold to go outside anyway. I’d just burrow under the goose down comforter, read and mainline chocolate. The summer though, yikers! Drove me insane. I had to put foil over my windows so I could block out the sunlight and get some sleep. I’d wake up at 3 a.m. with an overwhelming need to bake something. It was ridiculous.

  

Polar bears. Oh, the lovely nanuq. Kaktovik is known for polar bear watching. The remains from the fall whaling season are dragged to the point and left for the bears. You could drive down the runway (when planes weren’t approaching,) sit in your truck and watch the bears feasting on whale carcass. Simply amazing. They are 

magnificent creatures.

My current work in progress is set in Barrow as well.  It’s about a woman who escaped an abusive marriage and is in hiding in the Arctic.

3)      One of the scenes in the book I loved was when Summer used a tractor to gently move the paralyzed Dwight. How did you come up with that?

 Naturally, I think every scene in Redneck Ex is pure genius J, but there are a couple  that are particularly special to me: the tractor scene and cousin Trixie at Kitty’s wedding.

As a writer, I could’ve made things much easier by making Dwight’s cabin at ground level, but where’s the fun in that? I’m not a plotter. I write by the seat of my pants. I had Dwight and Summer Leigh arriving at Dwight’s cabin in the backwoods of back-of-beyond and as soon as the car pulled into the yard, I realized I’d made a mistake. The house could only be accessed via stairs. I had two choices. Remove the stairs or use redneck ingenuity to find a way for the wheelchair-bound Dwight to get inside.

I pondered, which resulted in naught. My dad was just outside my house cleaning turnip greens in the garden, so I moseyed out there to help. I explained my dilemma to him. I was going to use plywood to build a makeshift ramp. Summer Leigh could run up the ramp pushing Dwight’s chair. Pops then started doing some calculating. You know, being reasonable and all that? Using trigonometry, algebra and his alchemist powers, Pops deduced that I’d need 14 sheets of plywood (or something like that) in order to build a big enough ramp.

He could tell I wasn’t thrilled with being bothered with logistics and said he’d think on it and let me know. In all my *cough, cough,* years, my dad called me a grand total of 3 times. Seriously, 3 times. As a matter of fact, now that I’m thinking about it, this is the last phone call I ever received from my dad. Now, I’m crying. Thanks a lot Pam.

Anyway, Pops asked, “Does your boy have a tractor?”

“He has a tractor if I say he has a tractor,” was my smug, author response.

“Well, she could use the front-end loader to raise him to the deck.”

“Daddy, you’re brilliant!”

I wrote the scene that night and gave it to him to read the next morning. Pops wasn’t much for talking. No need for words when you can convey all you’re thinking with a twinkle in your eye and a slight grin. I knew I nailed it when he said, “That’ll do.”

Pops passed away one year (almost to the day) before I got the contract for Redneck Ex. There’s no doubt in my mind, he was grinning at me from the banks of the giant catfish pond in heaven.

4)      The military hospital in the book where Summer’s “bull-riding, tobacco-chewing, coon-hunting, banjo-picking  ex-husband” is taken after being injured in Fallujah is the same hospital where my first child was born forty years ago.  Coincidence?  Probably.  But, still I’m curious as to whether you’ve actually been there?  And, also, I just want to say, anybody who can imbue  a military hospital with hot sex really deserves some type of special writing award. So I guess this is a two part question.  Are you planning on doing any marketing to military hospitals or V.A. wards.  Redneck Ex would certainly go a long way in bringing these guys back to life.

I have been to military hospitals and I’ve been to Germany, but I haven’t been to Ramstein where Dwight is sent. Summer Leigh’s realization that all the patients in the hospital were military personnel was based on my reaction to visiting a military hospital. It was a sobering moment for me. I was smacked upside the head with reality. I didn’t like it. The world in my head is such a nice place. It’s filled with hot, able-bodied men, calorie-free chocolate and free pay per view.

I’ve known several soldiers. My uncles fought in Korea. I worked with guys who served in Vietnam and I have close friends who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t get it. I honestly cannot comprehend the mindset of a person who joins the military. But let me tell you this. Regardless of what I think of our government’s reasons for our involvement in any of these “conflicts,” I am thankful from the bottom of my heart for those men and women who fight for my right to write what I want, watch what I want, and say what I want.

If Redneck Ex would buoy soldiers’ spirits, then heck yeah, V.A. hospitals can have my book.

As for “imbuing  a military hospital with hot sex,” the hospital is filled with sexy men who can’t get away. Hello. Captive audience. Who better to woo? I’m irresistible to men who are under the influence of morphine, so I decided Summer Leigh should give it a go.

5)      Redneck Ex is your debut novel.  What’s next?

Santorini Sunset will be released in May, 2012. I love the main character, Caroline Clayton. Talk about a neurotic mess. Her fiancé, Albert, dumped her for her thinner, younger sister Gabriella who just happens to be a supermodel. Then, Gabriella asks Caroline to be maid-of-honor. There’s no way Caroline is going to let anyone know how heartbroken she is, so she agrees to be in the wedding. She’s not about to go on her own though and she recruits her sexy co-worker, Raul Sobrevilla.

I think the inevitable battle between Caroline and Gabriella is one of the most fun I’ve ever written. Let’s just say that everyone gets what they deserve.

6)      The final question, which is a blatant steal from Ruth Burkett Weeks, is: If you could spend twenty minutes with anybody - historical, fictional, or living person –who would it be and why? 

That Ruth Burkett Weeks is one clever gal. This is a tough question. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad or Zoroaster? Think about how much fun it’d be to learn from the very creators of our religious worlds. Shoot, can you imagine sitting down with them and playing a hand of poker? I’m pretty sure they would’ve all gotten along. No suicide bombs or burning crosses at that party.

Sure, I’d like to meet some of the greats in history. Attila the Hun—was he really the fantastic lover they claim or where the women forced to embellish his attributes? Cleopatra—come on, how could anyone really look that good in a snake headband? Catherine the Great—you know my question there!

But I think that if I had twenty minutes with anybody in history, I’d go back to 1888 and have tea with Alois Hitler. Accidently, of course, I’d spill battery acid on his privates rendering reproduction impossible. As a result, I’d completely rewrite the 20^th century.

On the Move with Chesty and Rocca

Back to your regularly scheduled programing.  If you're just tuning in, you might want to scroll down, and read the previous four entries or so.  The gist of the story at this point is that my husband and I are selling our house in Arizona and immigrating to The Republic of Panama with two, count them two, giant service dogs.
                                                                     Here we go . . .

   Ten days on the market and no one has even looked at the house when the realtor calls and tells us a woman has called from Scottsdale. She’s seen the house on the internet visual tour and wants to buy it. We immediately envision 100 dollar bills overflowing the pockets of some fool who wants to live in the high desert. Two hours later, the house is sold. The only catch is that the buyer wants to move in on November first. Just under a month away. Jack feels this is providence as, what a coincidence, that’s exactly the date of our tickets for the planned reconnaissance trip to Panama. I, on the other hand, am starting to feel the definite rumblings of danger in the landscape.

   I vote for putting the dogs in a kennel for two weeks, making the planned trip with just the two of us and then, having set up a place to live temporarily, returning for the dogs. This is how that conversation went, to the best of my recollection.

   “I’m not spending another $2,000 on round trip tickets to come back and get the dogs.”

   “But, if we have the dogs with us, how are we going to explore the country?”

   “I can take those dogs anyplace.”

   “You can take them in a taxi from the airport to a hotel?”

   “Won’t be a problem.”

   “You can get a room in the city with two giant dogs in a country that has never heard of a service dog or the concept of taking an elephant-sized dog with you everywhere you go?”

   “Won’t be a problem.”

   “How are we going to fly them from Panama City to Bocas del Toro?”

   “We’ll buy them tickets if we have to. It won’t be a problem. Why are you being so negative. Trust me.”

   Except I don’t and Jack knows it and his reaction to that is to get angry and my reaction to his anger is to get more frightened and increasingly anxious. So, you can see where this is going, right? Can you almost hear the shifting of that rosy boulder?

  

   The dogs are accustomed to working one on one with Jack in any public situation, but they have never worked side by side. Jack is, predictably, sure this won’t be a problem. However, former Marine, big tough warrior, whatever, like all intelligent men, he’s a little afraid of his wife so he humors me by bringing both dogs with us when we go out. I have Rocca, he takes Chesty.

   For our first outing we go to the coffee shop where both dogs have been dozens of times. All the waitresses and regulars know them, this is familiar territory. This little trip should be a breeze. Both dogs act like untrained jackasses. Chesty shows off for Rocca by being hyper-alert to every little spoon drop, cough, and loud voice. Rocca, trained to protect Jack, isn’t happy about being next to me instead of within touching distance of the object of her devotion. She growls to intimidate Chesty. Chesty jumps up, stubby tail straight out and wagging, and barks. Rocca leaps up and growls and jumps in the middle of Chesty to show him who is the real working dog around here. We leave the restaurant in disgrace.

   Well, actually, I’m the only one with her tail between her legs. The dogs have no regrets whatsoever and Jack is impossible to embarrass. So, now we know. Working the dogs in tandem is a completely different deal than working them individually. Jack is pleased that we’ve found this out while we still have, let’s see, 24 days before we lead them into the passenger section of a plane and fly to another country.

   Did I not mention that these two dogs, because they are service dogs, will be flying in the passenger section of the plane with us? Take a minute and picture that. How would you like to be the passenger next to us when we board the plane with these two massive dogs? U.S. law dictates that a disabled person can bring his dog on the airplane with him. Because both Chesty and Rocca are service dogs and because I will be flying as a designated trainer/helper, both dogs will walk right up the ramp and board the plane with us. Jack is delighted with this, I am less so.

   The next twenty four days go something like this:

   I lie awake all night listening to Jack and both dogs snore, and imagine all the ways this adventure can go terrible, irretrievably wrong.

     The airline can, once we’ve arrived with the dogs at the check-in counter in Tucson, announce they’ve come to their senses and, of course we can’t board the plane with two monstrously large dogs.

      The dogs can break away from us in the airport in Tucson, or Houston, or Panama City and run amuck through the terminal, frightening old ladies in wheelchairs and spilling Starbucks coffee on men in business suits talking on cell phones with those stupid little earphone things.

     On arrival in Panama, customs can refuse to clear the dogs and take them away from us, where someone will steal them and enter them in dog fights. Chesty will be killed in the first fight as he tries to play with his opponent and misses completely the concept of the whole fight to the death idea. Rocca will become the heavy-weight champion and we’ll hear rumors of her from time to time as we search ever more frantically for our furry baby girl.

     We’ll be unable to find a hotel in the city that will take the dogs and we’ll be spending our nights on the mean city streets of a foreign country, cuddled together in a big wadded mess of fear against a moldy cement wall.

   Each dawn I’m just about asleep when Chesty wakes me up.

   “Did I hear a rabbit in the yard? I’m sure I heard a rabbit. Open the door quick so I can catch him and play with him. Hurry! Get up! Get up! Come on. The rabbits getting away.”

   And another day begins.

   Time to get rid of more earthly possessions. Salvation Army, friends, rummage sale customers, they all help us empty the house. We need to get rid of this crap and fast. We will be leaving with two suitcases each and two dogs. The biggest suitcase is already packed with dog food, dog harnesses and leashes, vitamins, glucosamine for their joints, and a couple of their favorite toys. My carry-on bag has liver treats for the plane to keep them entertained and to help with clearing their ears at take offs and landings. Every day is the same -- keep moving toward the goal. Plenty of time at night to review all the things that can go wrong.

   Here. Right here, is where an interesting thing begins to happen.

   I edge beyond worry and begin to think, somewhere in the back of my overtaxed brain, that if I can anticipate all the things that might go wrong, I can prevent them from happening. This is when the jagged rocks directly above us begin to shift. You know the boulders I’m talking about, all those ordinary bits of life supporting that bone crushing chunk of pink granite just waiting for gravity to instigate its descent.

   If I hear it at all over all those wheels turning, turning, spinning faster and faster in my head, I interpret the rumbling of all that shifting rock as the grumbling of a nervous tummy.

   Miss the warning completely and take a flying leap directly into that chasm named Obsessive Anxiety.

   At this point I mostly travel this rocky path in the dark. During the day I do all the things I have to do to rid myself of all the stuff I thought I couldn’t live without at varying times over the last six years when I accumulated it. By the way, standing at an airport in the pre-dawn hours with nothing to your name but two small suitcases, a day pack, your confident and smiling husband, and two large dogs, is an incredibly freeing experience. It’s also absolutely terrifying.