March 7, 2021 – Having a blind dog is a crazy experience. I think most people would feel bad, and I do, but I’m not sure my dog does, so I try not to. A little while ago, I was talking to my sister. I was sitting in the living room, and when I say that, I mean the living room with the two couches at right angles and the fireplace. That room is actually a connecting room to every other room in the house, except the bathroom. I watched my dog. I watched her purposefully walk up to one couch, then touch her nose, then curve around the pirate chest I uses as a coffee table, again touching her nose, then walk up to the other couch, touch her nose, then move on to the corner where I have a box, touch her nose, then walk into my room, then out, then lay down just on the other side of the coffee table. It’s as if she wanted to make sure everything was as it was. Perhaps she could hear me putting up things; I had a collection of shoes on the coffee table; my new habit instead of leaving them in the floor where she would normally walk around them, but now I’m afraid she would trip on them, so they’ve ended up on the coffee table-chest. I know, I know, I should put them up and not let them accumulate, but two of them were undergoing leather treatment and were drying. The couch is undergoing washing too – making use of my Bissell pet cleaner, so maybe she thought I had rearranged. I haven’t, but that was a reasonable assumption on her part; I do that a lot.

I do have a crazy habit though that has developed from Jasper’s blindness.

Jasper walks towards me, kind of deliberately, so instead of making her go around me, I straddle her and walk over her. I started saying I’m stepping over you when I did that, and not realizing it, my mind would trigger me to sing thought you’d never miss me till I got a fat city address, or sometimes just the phrase size five dress. I could not figure out why I kept launching into those phrases, mentally, or out loud, both, actually, then I realized I was actually singing the I’m stepping over part, perhaps not the you part. It’s crazy, but the warning to my bling dog has become a song, complete with rhythm.

My dog’s blindness has now become associated with the Van Halen song, Unchained. Probably forever.

I thought too, how funny that something like a lyric used in a sentence that has absolutely nothing to do with the song or even what the words are applied to can trigger a song. I can’t think of any other examples, except perhaps using song lyrics themselves in other songs. Crimson and Clover, that’s an example, many songs I can think of, even one recent Lana Del Rey song, have those words. I don’t know if there are others. I don’t know if anyone else breaks out into lyric fragments of Unchained when talking to their blind dog, but I thought this would be fun to talk about. Now to leave my little study, which is really the laundry room, and do something else. Jasper? She’s always right at the door or next to the desk, so just as soon as I’m done posting this story, be sure I’ll sing-talk, I’m stepping over.

Be sure to look at Jasper’s necklace. I woke her up to take that picture; she wasn’t wanting to model, but too bad!