I am back in Dallas for a day and night and some sad memories came flooding back:

Broken hearted.
Struggling financially.
Alone.
Cold.
Chemo type treatment for endo.

Putting my 2 old doggies down.

I walked through all the Uptown shops, picking up things, setting them back down.

Looking for something.

Everything looked the same. Bohemian etherial. Meant for a teen, short, size 00. Still too expensive at $245 for a shirt.

What was this puppy-sized hole I was trying to fill?

My mind went to an imaginary shelf with a blue box and blue bow marked “2008-2010 sadness “.

In the wee hours, I took it down and opened that box.

Sasha, my Chow Chow girl doggie, was blind and suffering at age 13. I walked past her ashes and a homeless man at Turtle Creek. It’s still so hauntingly beautiful there.

Ollie Bunny Boy Newfie mix lived on beyond Sasha a few years and I would take him on walks and to the State Street Grill. He had bunny-like ears that were soft and made me laugh. He would cry for cucumbers when I sliced them up in my little kitchen.

Mostly, he was naughty and threatened to eat mini Uptown dogs.

A lady （Uptown Prairie Nymph） who would walk her mini purebred dog off leash would ask “what KIND is he? Is he a RESCUE?”

I should have said “no, I am.”

I surely didn’t expect the grief box today but a kind person once told me “sometimes we have to take it off the shelf, unwrap it, look inside and feel those feelings. And that is okay. Then we tie the ribbon back on it and put it back on the shelf.”

It’s 4 AM here.

I expect the box will be back in its place by sunrise.