Here we are driving to Turlock on Sunday morning. When the alarm went off, the idea was to leap out of bed and jump into the car for a 2 hour drive through a potential rainstorm arriving in time to run jumpers without walking the course and staying til the end of the day, perhaps huddling all damp and clammy under somebody’s tarp if the downpours did indeed occur. Except that, when the alarm went off, I decided to throw $59 hard earned dollars of entry fees down the toilet and go back to bed and wait for the light, to go and see what had happened in our forest from the rain.

The dogs liked this idea. A rainy dog show just sounded like a lot of wet dog car car car wet car. The forest has streams now! Newly fallen tree rootballs! Tiny ponds with quicksand! The rain is back and walks are an adventure. Maybe not as exciting as finding taxi cabs in New York City with dogs in the snow, carrying massive blue ribbons the size of dog heads, but probably nearly as good.

I have these boots now. The outside has the wet look but they are dry and warm inside. Even when you step in a quicksand pond. I never knew there were shoes such as these. I got them when doctors number one and two were telling me my foot was broken and doctor number three was saying it wasn’t. During their fight, I went out and got some boots and carried on as if nobody was stabbing my foot with a knife all day. The final doctor answer for the win, which I have indeed paid for, doctors who love to keep on billing forevermore, is that part of my foot has nerve damage with tendonitis mucking up the other part, and that doctor number two was a nearsighted dummy. I don’t really care because my foot feels better when I pop loads of pills, and these boots are a super nifty item for walking around in the rain.

A thing about winter is that what is up comes down, maybe on top of our heads. Whole trees fall down, old friends we used to know as standing only the day before, now laying down across the path. Even with no wind. The downers are pine, madrone and bay, I can identify exactly 7 breeds of trees with my bare hands. It was dry, then it was wet, and the trees don’t know what to do except come crashing down to the ground. We keep our eyes up and ears open and hope this doesn’t occur at the very moment exact we’re walking underneath. An online quiz of which David Bowie Are You says that I am a Ziggy Stardust. This is the David Bowie who is never crushed with a limb.

It sounds different up there when it’s wet. We listen hard, listening for a downer. The streams are moving, everything has a drip. Nobody minded missing the dog show, not hardly at all. Maybe a little. But not all that much.

Maybe not even at all.