Today’s weather is rotten. Damp, raw, gloomy, a presage of things to come, and a day that doesn’t make my summer loving soul happy.

Maverick doesn’t care. He loves outside, no matter what the weather – well, thunderstorms are the sole exception, he hates them.

It’s Sunday. Sunday means we get to walk at the park because daycare is closed on weekends, in spite of my best efforts to convince the owner that she really should be open every day. Yesterday I badly wanted to sleep in, I haven’t been sleeping well – I rarely have nightmares but when I do, they make up for all the nights they missed. I woke Bear up twice screaming. (It was bad enough that I was afraid to go back to sleep – and I didn’t get the title “Queen of Sleep” for nothing!)

Maverick had other plans. He got up with Bear at 8, after doing his usual sneak attack on Mommah’s hugging pillow – he steals it every morning, and I usually don’t even know till I actually wake up. Bear let him out to do his morning business, apparently there was an uninvited deer in the field and Maverick decided to bark for a solid 15 minutes. Under our bedroom window.

After that little episode, Bear brought him inside, whereupon Maverick ran upstairs and flung himself onto me, rolling around madly and then licking me. I refused to get up. He went downstairs. About 1/2 hour later, we repeated this. I gave in and got up, annoyed and tired and crabby.

I took him for his walk, he pulled like a tank and this didn’t improve my mood. When we got home, I put him outside, where he promptly decided to increase the size of the bomb crater he’s been working on all summer.

Bear had gone out for something and as I was bringing Maverick in, he came home, took one look and said, “what’s wrong?” I probably sounded like a 2 year old in need of a nap – “I’m exhausted, I wanted to sleep in, he’s digging a hole again, I’m just exhausted!” Bear said, “take a nap.”

So I slept all afternoon.

This morning, when the Bear got up, I closed the bedroom door behind him and slept till 11:30. As soon as I got up, the relentless dance to go to the park began. After my coffee, because I don’t do anything till after my coffee, we went to the park. In the cold, damp, dreary nastiness – Maverick dragged me around. I was heading into grumpiness when we got to the pavilion, and Maverick pulled me over to the young man who was sitting there, playing Pokemon on his phone. I gave Maverick a drink and the young man started talking to us. He told me about his college classes, I mentioned that I teach accounting and we talked about how awful tax class is.

It was a random chat with a young gentleman – and he’ll never know how he lifted my spirits and made me smile. My heart is lighter – sometimes all it takes is a random encounter to make you remember the world isn’t such a bad place after all.