Forever After Page 9

  All my love,

  C.J.

  Chapter 20

  Forever After-C.J.

  Grant: What do you want to be when you grow up?

  C.J.: [shaking head] For real? I ask you to ask me questions off the top of your head and that’s what you come up with? It does not feel like this interview is going to go very well. A mermaid.

  Grant: Okay. I’ve got a better one. If you had to choose between Bill Cosby or Donald Trump . . . He starts laughing and can’t even finish the last words in his version of would you rather. This is such a guy thing to say.

  C.J.: Neither.

  Grant: No. No. You have to. That’s the game. That’s my question.

  C.J. : I don’t have to choose shit. I choose neither. I choose death.

  Grant: Oh come on. It wouldn’t be that bad, you think?

  C.J.: Yes, I do think it would be that bad. Which one would you chose?He’s actually pondering this like he might answer. Then he looks like he might vomit. This is getting out of hand, I do not want to play this gross game. Can we talk about something else? Ask me about my bucket list or something.

  Grant: Fine. List three things on your lifetime bucket list. Not travel related. I already know those. We should be able to get to those.

  I begin to count these on my fingers.

  C.J.: Hit the New York Times and stay there for a while. Gotta dream big right? Have dinner with Al Gore. This shouldn’t surprise my husband. He would want to go along too. Do I only get to pick three?

  Grant: You can pick as many as you want, sweetheart.

  C.J.: Well then . . . just dreams right? So if they don’t come true I haven’t failed?

  Grant: Of course not.

  C.J.: Stop the slaughter of dolphins and whales, elephants, rhinos, big cats, and gorillas. Pretty much every animal on the planet. Eliminate the use of chimps and apes for scientific and medical research. End dog meat farms—

  Grant: I agree with all of that. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s fucking horrible, but what’s the difference between them raising and slaughtering dogs for food, and us doing it to cows and pigs? Isn’t it kind of the same thing? So if you’re fighting to end dog farms then shouldn’t you be fighting to end cow and pig farms?

  C.J.: Yes. I completely agree. Don’t even get me started on the farm animal thing. You know how I feel about factory farms and animals as food commodities.

  On this Grant and I agree and we have talked more times than I can count. If you can humanly raise and kill it yourself and eat meat sparingly out of need and not gluttony, I can accept that. What I can’t get behind is the billions of farm animals killed each year in the U.S. alone not out of the need to stop a famine, but rather to contribute to overconsumption. Let’s not even begin on the subject of what over farming animals does in terms of energy consumption, methane emissions, land erosion etc. I’ll stop myself here.

  C.J.: Better ask me something else or I’ll go off about animal stuff again.

  Grant: What’s your next book project?

  C.J.: I’m working on like six of them.

  He looks shocked. I don’t keep him updated on my projects. Not all of them anyway.

  Grant: You’ve been busy.

  C.J.: [taking a sip of wine] It’s what I do. I drink wine and I write things.

  We laugh. This is not my line. This is a reference to Game of Thrones.

  Grant: Speaking of, I wonder when the next season comes out.

  C.J.: Not sure, it’s so terrible and horrifying I feel like Satan himself when I’m watching it.

  Grant: Maybe you are Satan.

  C.J.: I hear he manifests in mysterious ways. I point to Kona. She’s laying on the floor between the couch and sofa where we’re sitting across from each other. Maybe that’s Satan?

  Grant: Come here Satan. He speaks sweetly and she immediately goes to him. Yes, you’re a bad girl aren’t you. You eat the kids’ toys don’t you. Maybe we should sell you to a dog meat farm. I give him the look. He keeps talking to her, not me. We would never do that, we’d sell Mommy before we sold you. I give him the look again. Okay get down, Mommy won’t let you be on the couch.

  C.J.: I’m just trying to take care of our things, alright? You want a wife who trashes the house?

  Grant: No. I want a wife who . . . he makes a lewd gesture. I shake my head. It always comes back to this.

  C.J.: You done?

  Grant: Yes. You want me to ask more questions or are we done?

  C.J.: At this point I don’t care. Only if you’ve got something good.

  Grant: But I already know everything about you. What am I supposed to ask? He’s got a point here. Dude knows what kind of tampons I use and buys them for me without complaining. He knows a lot. I don’t have a question, I just still think you need to release that numbers book.

  C.J.: That’s a terrible way to describe it. It’s not about numbers and I will. I’m thinking 2019 for that one. It needs some time and I can’t come up with a title. I’m thinking about dropping all my projects and writing a book about the rescue and donating the profits back. I haven’t decided yet when or if I should start.

  Grant: Honey that’s a great idea. You should do that.

  Chapter 21

  Forever After-Dog Rescue

  In 2013 I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my car when I had a compulsion to write something down. All I had was a dirty paper towel and a sharpie. I wrote the following question.

  What makes you think you can be a writer?

  My mind answered. Nothing. You can’t. Everything you write sucks or you’d be published. Knowing that I have tortured artist syndrome, I pushed all that aside and tried again.

  I asked myself why do I want to be a writer? I needed to answer this clearly, honestly for myself. I don’t just go off and do shit for no reason. I don’t like to waste my time. There were three answers I came up with. The third answer I wrote on that dirty paper towel.

  1. Because I like to. If I’m good or bad it doesn’t matter because it’s just for me. I like to vomit up words through my fingers and watch them as they appear out of nowhere onto a screen from left to right.

  2. Because I have to. Something forces me and won’t leave me alone until I write shit down. I have no idea what this phenomenon is. Multiple personalities, restless finger syndrome. I’m not sure. It just is.

  3. Because writing offers me a platform to speak about the things that matter to me.

  I stuffed that paper towel under my garage door opener in the visor above my head. It’s still there today. I look at it from time to time even though I don’t need to. I am very aware of why I spend time writing.

  At the core of who I am, I am a naturalist, an environmentalist, and an advocate for animals. Most importantly, I am passionate about the things that matter to me and I believe passion has the ability to ignite fires. Fires that are unstoppable and spread far and wide.

  I applied to be a writer for PETA awhile back. You know, that organization you hate or love that does shocking things to stand up for animal rights. They declined to take a serious look at my application. Do I persist and figure out another way in? Yes, generally I do. However, not long after the rejection email came back, another opportunity presented itself. I couldn’t have known that over the course of the next two years I would make a difference and find a home for my need to write in a way I could never have imagined.

  Grant used to tell me to go volunteer at the humane society, go help walk dogs, do this, do that. All that is great, but none of that ever called to me. It never jumped out and grabbed my heart swallowing it whole. I guess to get my attention that’s what is required. Which is exactly what happened.

  I accepted an offer to go with a friend to a surrender event. I had no idea WTF a surrender event was, but I said yes. She picked me up at the butt crack of dawn and I slid into the heated passenger seat of her spacious silver Explorer. For the next four hours we ate hard boiled eggs and drank coffee on our way to a little town up n
orth just below the Canadian border.

  We arrived at nine o’clock in the morning and four hours later we were driving back with fifteen dogs and puppies sleeping in the neatly stacked kennels behind our seats with one more on my lap. In all, with a group of other volunteers we had rescued more than seventy unwanted and stray dogs—in four hours.

  How is it that I live four hours from this little patch of land thirty-one miles by thirty-one miles that has just spit out that many starving, dying dogs and I never knew about it? My mind was blown. I’ve lived here all my life. This town is wealthy. There are jobs and the economy is good. How long has this been going on? Why doesn’t anyone know about this? WTF has just happened to the world I thought I knew where dogs suffer in some place south of here that I’ve never heard of?

  Houston, we have a problem. A big BIG fucking problem.

  All I knew was that after that day, I could not look away. I had to figure out a way to help. Because one of my passions, compassion for animals, already had a pilot light ready for action and now it had been ignited. What I didn’t know was that there was about to be an inferno.

  I reached out to the man who organized the surrender event. A deputy at the time, who lived in that area. A man who had decided not to look away from the hundreds of starving animals and was trying to help. How can I help? I asked. Help had been offered dozens of times. I would have to prove that I would stick around long enough to support this man and this community to offer whatever help I could. I too was soon overwhelmed and feeling helpless by the size of the problem and the lack of resources to help. The problem is too big. There is no money, state or federal support. There are brick walls at every turn with private land considerations, bad blood, neglect, poverty, no jobs and a meth epidemic.

  How can I help soon turned into something rescue organizations don’t generally think of. You can write! Yes! Yes! I forgot, that’s IT. I can WRITE! I like to write. I have to write. And I want to write about things that matter to me.

  So how exactly do you write and save dogs? I didn’t know. What I did know was that somehow the stars had aligned to make sure I was available when the right opportunity turned up. So I began to write. The stories of rescue, the stories of the dogs, the hero who decided to stay in a forgotten place no one else had ever lasted before. This man opened his home sacrificed his sanity and blood to save these invisible dogs. I felt it was my duty to tell the world about it.

  I write success stories. I write to raise awareness and funds so we can one day build a shelter instead of rescuing out of a garage and cars. I am one cog on a wheel that helps run a well-organized machine. I’ve officially traded all the time I used to spend failing at DIY projects and now devote that time to writing and helping with the rescue.

  Follow us on Facebook @Turtle Mountain Animal Rescue. Or check out www.TurtleMountainAnimalRescue.org

  Don’t be surprised if I stop writing about smut and eating plants for a while and churn out a rescue book.

  I cry some days.

  I laugh more.

  I love more.

  Rescue Matters.

  Chapter 22

  Forever After-Grant

  C.J.: Are you satisfied with the way your life is right now?

  Grant: I am. Sure. Of course. But then. There are caveats there.

  He looks relaxed. I love to see him like this. Kona is curled up under his arm, he is propped up and looking at me, thinking, sipping. Not stressed. What are you talking about exactly? Our personal life, work, family? I think things could be better.

  C.J.: What would you like to be better?

  Grant: Well if I wasn’t so pre-occupied with work that would improve things.

  C.J.: I’m sorry honey, we need to fix that. You really need to have a schedule more like mine.

  I see clients for weight loss and wellness twenty-five hours a week. For the first time I actually feel like I have time for a life. Time to volunteer, time to be with my kids, my husband. Grant owns a small business in the security sector.

  Grant: I’m working on it. It helps when we go to hot yoga and I go to the gym.

  C.J.: Yes, count me in. It’s just getting free from the kids at the same time is hard.

  Grant: I know.

  C.J.: What else would you like to be different?

  Grant: That’s the one thing I will stick with in terms of stress in my life. I think that even if you eliminate the stress that keeps you up at night, you find a way to fill the vacuum.

  C.J.: What are the top three things that stress you out?

  Grant: One, work. Two, all things work related, and three, not being able to sleep further adds stress. But in the scheme of things I don't have a ton of stress.

  I get up, fill up his glass then bring it back into our bedroom. He’s lying on top of the white comforter letting the dog lick the stubble on his neck.

  C.J.: That’s the only bitch I’ll ever share my bed with.

  He laughs and holds up his glass. I pick up mine and we toast to nothing, to everything, to drinking wine on a Sunday night when all the kids are in bed and we have an hour of uninterrupted time to be together. I sit in the corner of our room on the chaise I purchased so that I have a writing nook. Above me are paper lanterns and in front of me is a panoramic canvas of a picture we took somewhere along the north shore of Maui. I love our bedroom. I love our life.

  Grant: I can tell you things I’m not stressed about.

  C.J.: Yes, what’s that?

  Offering up information without me prompting? Sure! He must be drunk.

  Grant: I’m not stressed about the strength of our bond. I don’t worry about it at all. And it’s not because I’m so comfortable that I don’t need to worry about my hygiene, appearance or the condition I’m in. Things like that. I shave my body hair a bit and I’d like to have a more regular schedule at the gym.

  C.J.: I support you in having a more regimented gym schedule. We should really go to hot yoga more than once a week but I always have a headache after, like now, I still have a headache tonight.

  Grant: Me too. You know what cures a headache?

  C.J.: Advil?

  Grant: Maybe we have heat exhaustion?

  I look up the symptoms of heat exhaustion.

  C.J.: Shit. Maybe hot yoga isn’t so good for us. I think we both have heat exhaustion.

  Grant: Let’s just go to regular yoga then.

  We look at each other . . . Nah we love hot yoga.

  C.J.: Describe the perfect day?

  Grant: Oh goll. He actually said “oh goll.” I’d say today. Today was a perfect day. We got outside. Kona got exercise on our hike, kids got exercise, we got exercise. We get time to talk and reflect and walk outdoors. I mean we have the means to do pretty much whatever we want but we choose to go out to hike and not spend money. And today no one was crying or complained that it was too cold and too far to walk. I’m going to add that. There were minimal complaints today. That made it a good day. However, it’s not always as smooth. You have to agree.

  C.J.: Let me think. Did no one actually complain today? Not even once?

  Grant: Well maybe once. But they were pretty good.

  Chapter 23

  Forever After

  Two short stories about life, love and losing your mind.

  This’ll be fun. Not.

  “Let’s go on a little hike,” he said. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “The kids will love it,” he said.

  “What about naptime?” I said.

  “They’ll be fine without a nap today. They can go to bed early tonight. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  Let me just state right here that my idea of fun is being in a swimsuit near the water with a drink in my hand. Sure I have fun with the kids and love to hike and do family things, but Grant’s idea had tantrum written all over it.

  “It won’t be a long hike. We’ll just go for thirty minutes.”

  “Then we can get the kids lunch after?”

  “Of course.”

  �
�Because it’ll be almost one o’clock by the time we get back. We all know what happens when they go too long without eating.”

  With our kids aged two and four skipping and falling along, we set off on the hiking trail. All went well for the first four minutes while it was all still new. There was wonder in the air of the coniferous forest as they gathered pine cones. Grant and I walked side by side behind them, watching them with adoration, talking about all the good times. Reminiscing about our favorite life moments and how much we love our babies.

  A little farther, we held them when they asked. Picked them up a dozen times after they tripped on sticks, then it began to drizzle. It was fine—at first. Stick your tongue out! It’s just a little rain we told them and pushed onward. Until the drizzle turned into actual rain, of which was fine as long as we stood under a grove of trees that kept us dry. We did. For at least fifteen anxious minutes as the storm hammered down around us. The temperatures plummeted ten degrees in just a few minutes and we had to kneel down and warm our offspring under our wings while reminding them that this is fun. An adventure.

  The squall eventually passed, but if you’re keeping track of time here like I was, we were now over the thirty-minute mark. The mark at which we were supposed to be back to the car so all would stay right with the world before the kids melted into separate puddles of whiny, crying, low blood sugar aliens that have become so unreasonable and irrational they decide not eat.

  “Let’s walk to the maple forest. It’s just a little ways. Then we can turn around,” Grant says.

  Yeah maple forest! The kids erupt with joy and we begin the next leg of our uncharted adventure. Minutes into the maple forest, thirty minutes from the car, things begin to fall apart. Starting with the words this is taking too long. Closely followed by, when are we going to be there?

  At which point the meltdown clock inside my motherly chest begins to count down. While it ticks nonstop, my personal emotional state of low anxiety begins to creep up at a steady pace equivalent to the melt down clock which started with a five-minute timer. It’s incredible how fast a fun outing can go from Disney Spectacular to resembling a National Geographic special about how mothers in the wild eat their young.