Progress

There is a hard Swedish cookie, or cracker, Dad brought home from a Swedish store that sells Swedish furniture and pillows made from highly flammable synthetic fibers synthesized in Sweden. It is round, with a hole in the center and reminds me of something you'd toss to someone in distress, probably in a pool, or like, an ocean, except it is very flat and brittle and would do no good except soak up a minuscule amount of water, which is pointless in the grand scheme of things. That is part of the reason why it is deceptive.

Perhaps, I thought this morning at the table, the first thing I should do is call the kennels to find out about Regrette and Warden. I started making a list of questions that would be appropriate to ask over the phone. Questions that were short, without double meaning, and ones I could enunciate, if I was asked to repeat them. Questions like: How are you? Then: How can I find out about the dogs I did not want?

But I was hungry because I started writing this list before I had had anything to eat. Then I saw the cookie, or cracker. I wonder if in Sweden, a cookie is something that is not so sweet. Because, the cookie or cracker I had was not sweet, but it wasn't salty either. I wonder too, if in Sweden, a cracker is not so salty. I felt like a cow, because cows eat grass, which I imagine tastes much like this Swedish thing and now I understood why Dad never ate much of it after he had brought it home, along with a bookshelf that was a giant square divided into many smaller squares, like a graph.

What did I find in the fridge? Cream cheese.

I broke off a piece of the Swedish cracker, or cookie, and skimmed it along the cream cheese and what I ate was much better than how it had been, and I felt like a person again, and not a cow. And I found I could continue with my quest in reattaining my dogs, thinking of these questions.

Everyone has his or her pet peeves. My father's, I remembered just then, was that he hated when there were crumbs in his cream cheese. And there were a ton of crumbs from the cookie, or cracker, that I had stupidly dunked into his cream cheese. This made me upset. I broke off another piece of the Swedish cookiecracker and tried to fish out the crumbs, but things only got worse.

In short, I finished the cream cheese. I ate the entirety of the Swedish cookie, or cracker, and felt like a cow again. These things happen, I guess. Progress is slower than one often thinks. Look, over there, although you cannot see it, the bookshelf is nearly empty.