It was during a quiet, sedate reading session that Burke said the most worrying words: ‘Uh oh.’

As per my training over the last years, my eyes went to the dog sleeping at my feet and my brain went to Donald Trump. With the slightest facial movement I ask Burke what the problem is and if I need to do anything. She answers with words.

“I might have a tick.”

My jaw has found a very comfortable resting position which I am unwilling to disrupt. So I give her the two-muscle facial sign that says ‘ah fucker’.

Indeed, a tick has made home on Burke somewhere I am not at liberty to mention. We call it names while we flush it down the toilet. Within a few minutes, I become one of the apartment building’s leading experts on ticks.  

It was pretty flat and had not been there long because we got him out fast. He had not yet gorged on blood. He had likely not transferred any sickness or illness (knock on wood). But man did that little fucker get to me.

It happened quickly. An hour after Burke found her tick, I found myself scratching and prodding my ass. Then behind my knees. Then under my arms. Then I was in the hallway mirror with a flashlight and a bodily flexibility I haven’t known since my weight started with a 1.

Is there anything better than Memorial Day? The weather’s nice, school’s careening towards a close, and the summer season and all its mosquito-laden, sweat-soaked glory is just getting started. Memorial Day is sort of the Friday afternoon of the summer – all the fun, sunburn, and backyard shindigs are ahead. More importantly, Memorial Day marks the beginning of the outside drinking season.

What would become Memorial Day started out as unofficial gatherings by black southerners to decorate soldiers’ gravesites on Civil War battlefields. After a few such events in the early 1860s, what is considered the first ‘Decoration Day’ took place on May 1 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina. On this day, around 10,000 recently-freed black people held a parade to honor 257 dead Union soldiers, who they buried in proper graves which they decorated with flowers.

Like many holidays, Decoration Day’s original intention was quickly back-seated in lieu of parties and hotdogs. By 1869, complaints were made about the day becoming more about ‘banquets’ and ‘pomp’ than honoring war dead. Any hopes of removing the day’s leisure focus were smashed in 1971 when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act took effect. This Act moved Memorial Day to the last Monday in May, perennially tying it to a 3-day weekend. A year later, Time Magazine called it a ‘3-day nationwide hootenanny’, which confirms that whoever wrote that had never in their lives had sexual intercourse with another person in the room. 

Oh, I can understand the complaints, and there’s no doubt that we should remember those who have served and those who have died in conflict. But let’s also keep in mind that America is globally notorious for being stingy with holiday time. So let’s forgive Americans for not fully committing to the rather serious intent of a holiday and instead focusing on the small joy of a free Monday. Besides, do 3 billion people only look forward to December 25 because they get to celebrate Christ’s birthday? No. So let’s chill.

In any event, let’s look at Memorial Day for its role in the year: the onset of the outside drinking season. People have technically been drinking outdoors for eons. After all, when our Neanderthal ancestors Og and Moog ingested some fermented fruit and ended up buzzed and jonesing for a cigarette that wouldn’t exist for 58,000 years, they did so outside. But where did deliberate outside drinking begin?  

Like most things boozy, this tradition kicks off with our lushy ancestors in Ancient Rome. From April to October, barely a week passed when the Romans weren’t hogging down wine in a garden or a villa courtyard and making their servants reenact The Aeneid’s saucy parts.

Mornings can be hard for a morning person. You see, a lot of my universe centers around the fact that I get up early. I get up early, I do my writing early, I work out early. And so before I leave for work, I have accomplished these things. The hinge factor here is – you guessed it – getting up early.

The problem is, I am not necessarily a morning person. I am more not an afternoon person. I write and work out in the morning because I can’t reasonably accomplish them in the afternoon.  

Oh, I enjoy doing these activities – or as Mark Twain said, I enjoy having done these activities. But my day-to-day is pretty tiring, so if I don’t write or work out in the morning, the chances of them happening later in the day are in line with Donald Trump getting a fourth presidential term and me voting for him. With each passing hour and its new mini-soul-crushing defeat, my motivation and discipline take another shot of ain’t-gonna-happen juice at the metaphorical sadness pub in my thorax. And if I go a few days without working out or writing, well I start having gamey fantasies the likes of which would garner the attention of medical professionals.

And so – for my sanity – I do it in the morning.

But I feel cheated, because I don’t have the morning person experience. That experience? Well, let’s imagine a genuine, card-carrying morning person. They’re up before their alarm dancing and singing ABBA songs into one of the croissants they’d baked in the wee hours. Their minds are awake, aware, alert, and ready to create or produce by 5 am. They look good.

Not me, no. When my alarm goes off, I let out a whimper and evolve myself out bed like the creature of the Black Lagoon. I put clothes on backwards; I retrain my body how to walk and reach for things. Then I stumble around and question my life choices. Good morning!

We have a dog. It’s a shih tzu with crooked teeth who sleeps in bed with us where she grooves herself around things – pillows, legs – like a hairy jigsaw puzzle piece. Long ago, I noticed that this dog awoke each morning as though someone had snuck in and injected her with 1000 ccs of whatever acts as doggy caffeine. My alarm goes off and she jumps up and hops around and licks us and just seems to be in a state of absolute and utter joy.

I am walking up to the building up the road from me. It’s almost exactly the same as my building. Along the ground-floor are a string of small businesses mostly focusing on body parts – hair, nails, sore backs. Now and then an accountant or an interior designer surprises us and in one spot near my flat, a leatherworker blew our minds.

I have arranged a hair appointment for our dog with one such business lady named Eliska. I love Eliska for several reasons, first of which being that she is a badass. She works in a one-room no froufrou salon which looks as though it was previously used to torture people into handing out their secret gulas recipes.

The door swings open, the dog has already anticipated the arrival of Eliska (strong noses) and she dancing on her hindlegs and her tail is wagging in a frankly upsetting way. The room has one bed that would be home in a doctor’s office. Next to it is a pair of clippers and a box of cookies that our dog would cut our throats for. We agree that I will return in an hour and I leave. The dog grants me one pity yelp of sadness at my dismissal, but we both know it’s a lie.  

Every two or so months my dog’s hair gets all matted and her fringe hides were eyes. She’s pretty wily to begin with, and the fringe just makes her look shifty and untrustworthy. It’s at times like these that she needs a haircut. And when she’s getting her haircut, I get mine. I walk a few buildings over.

The mellow Vietnamese dude waves me to the chair and I sit. Behind me, two women work on another two women’s nails. I zone out and go to a pleasant little sunken place wherein I can only grunt monosyllabic sounds to my barber and hope he doesn’t shave me into a mohawk. It’s one of the most trusting relationships I’ve ever had.

Once I wake up and get back to the groomer, she comments: ‘Jste dvojčata.’ You’re twins.

I’d love to claim her incorrect, but I’m not great at lying in Czech. We take out leave. More than a few people point out our twinness. At first, I resist, but once the dog forces me to pick her up and carry her – presumably because she’s traumatized from her haircut – I just lean my shoulder into it.

And why not? Once you get matching haircuts with a dog, there’s no going back. We could get matching leather jackets and ride a motorcycle through Hungary. She would of course sit sidecar. We would naturally wear goggles. Maybe we could start a rugby team.

By the time we get home – me sweating, she asleep – there are some reckonings to deal with. Do people think I’m weird? Am I going to develop my twin dog’s wonky eye? But these questions will have to wait until after our gristle byproduct cooking course next week.       

Before you get a dog, you get a lot of input on what it’s like to have a dog. This input comes from memes – which suggest that owning a dog will fix all your world woes and give you understand second only to the pithy understandings of Marcus Aurelius. The dog-human relationship in movies and TV is often so chummy and sympatico that it’s easy to forget that the studios have a fleet of well-trained dogs ready to hang out with Brad Pitt.

But these depictions hardly cover the dog-human relationship in all its gory glory. Oh, I’m not saying the depictions are wrong. I am indeed best buddies with my dog. And my life has been infinitely enhanced since we welcomed her into our home. She is a pure lapdog – originally bred by Tibetan monks to be pleasant towards people (royalty and other monks) and keep them company. Her job was to hang out and be delightful with a side gig as a bed warmer. So those depictions are correct, I’m just saying they leave some stuff out.

What they leave out is the part where you learn maybe too much about your dog. Burke and I discuss our dog’s poop and regularity more often than people who aren’t sociopaths should. I notice when she’s licking too much. Ticks seem unfairly attracted to her eyes, so I spend more time than I’d like to admit scouring through her face and looking for ticks, the world’s little dickheads.

It’s my keen eye that ends us up in the vet’s. Being a vet is another world completely misrepresented by movies. In the movies, vets are beloved by all things with four legs and they give off a certain St. Francis of Assisi vibe. In real life, vets are the pet world’s grim reaper. Once we get close enough to the vet for my dog to understand that’s where she’s going, she tries her best to get the hell away. Once in the waiting room, she shivers the whole time – as do all the other animals. We get in to the office.

“She’s been peeing a lot.”

“Do you have some of her urine?”

“I do,” I say, extracting a test tube from my bag like it’s a bottle of water. “Here you go.”

I’m not sure, but I think another aspect left out of the movie version of the dog-human relationship is the collecting of urine for a pee sample. Don’t remember seeing Brad Pitt running around behind the dog with a test tube. Nope.

“So, she has a slight urinary tract infection. You will give her antibiotics for this.”

“Okay. But she also has a very slight yeast infection – that’s why she’s licking so much.”

“Okay. What do—”

She takes out a tube of ointment and it suddenly dawns on me how I will treat this one. She points out the area – exactly the area you associate yeast infections with – and then applies the cream. The dog accepts her fate with a mixture of gratitude and probably humor.

Let me tell you one thing they leave out of the dog-human relationship in movies: applying ointment to your dog’s yeast infection. But it’s what we do for our little buddies. She is after all delightful and my bed warmer. But what I wouldn’t give to see Brad Pitt do this in a movie.    

The shortest and longest successive parts of my day are the period following the moment I put on my workout shorts and the workout itself. Once I put on my shorts and the could-stand-by-itself T-shirt, time shoots by like a city bus on the way to the garage. Once I start the workout, time moves with the speed and dexterity of a raging arctic glacier.

I have heard this time perception is an age thing. As we barrel towards out great reward (which I hope consists of tacos) time moves faster or slower in a situation based on factors such as newness of experience, cognitive speed, and how badly you need to go to the bathroom.  

In any event, for about 30 minutes a day, I try to convince the gods of the rapidly aging that I am living responsibly. Same goes to some degree when I try to convince the gods of cholesterol that I am living healthy by eating salad-colored candy.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t hem and haw. In my workout clothes, I have written full emails, a partial story, edited 20 pages of text, cooked a chicken, and cleaned the entire apartment (windows included). There is virtually nothing I won’t do to try and delay the inevitable.

While I do this pre-workout regimen, Burke works and the dog sleeps or lounges, her bangs acting as a curtain to her current mood or actual state of awareness. I pull out the workout mat and can hear my downstairs neighbor groan aloud. I assume she is worried about my health and the sounds I make – something between a seal jumping out of the water for treats and a seal being bludgeoned by a polar bear – upset her.

Dogs are smart. Or are they? Is it that dogs are smart or do they just become aware of routine? When I take the leash off the door, the dog hops out of a deep sleep to play the game where she runs away from her leash. It’s very similar for when anyone goes into the kitchen. When I take out my exercise mat, she gets up and goes to her box of toys. She pulls the lid off of it and drags a few toys out onto my mat.

I like beer. Unfortunately, beer views me as a ship to whom they may barnacle and stay on for a number of months or years. A Saturday night of beers can mean tighter pants on Monday. It’s very distressing. Something had to be done.  

If I could just take a moment to bemoan the unfairness of age. At 22, I could drink 20 beers a week and still maintain a good weight. At 29, oh maybe the pounds were there because of beer, but I could go for a light jog three or four times a week and my pants would fit again. It was like a magic trick. Even in my early 30s beer was a manageable friend and foe.

But somewhere in the 4 decade this changed. In this decade I overhauled my lifestyle. Cooking involved buying ingredients and making things rather than opening packages and adding water. I began working out instead of relying on a morning sprint to a tram with half of a hotdog sticking out of my mouth. I relegated beer to once a week – any other night I wanted a drink it had to be wine. Despite all the wine, and the vast sadness that comes along with it, I began feeling much better, could pee without sweating, and clothing starting fitting better. Buttons on pants exploded less and less.

For a time, things were good. But in the later part of that 4 decade, I noticed that despite my better habits, weight loved me. it crawled from near and far to attach itself to my behind. And it would sit there. The sad realization was that it was mostly due to beer. But it wasn’t too bad yet.   

When I signed up to become a teacher, I knew more or less what it entailed. My holidays were suddenly relegated to the summer time. No matter what is happening in my personal life, I cannot let that show in the classroom. And occasionally, body functions become a (not so) silent member of the class.

Two months ago, a protein bar I had eaten caused an unexpected – yet loud and continuous – grumble in my stomach. One of the women in class suggested I visit the bathroom. I tried to explain, but it was no use. A few years ago, a lingering stomach flu caused me to completely change my classroom behavior. That is, I normally walk around class and squat or kneel next to students to get or give feedback. During this class, with a bug shooting around my innards like a pinball, I sat at the front, gave instructions, held the back of a chair and maintained. My feedback contained mostly: ‘sure, sounds good. Stay over there.’

Today, the question is straight up Shakespearean: to prd or not to prd. Prd means fart in Czech, and since I hate the word fart (the way others feel about moist and panties), it will be heretofore referred to as prd.  

See, the prd is a tremendous bodily function. Unlike its expellant cousins, the sneeze or the cough, it’s regarded as a major social faux pas if done in a public place. The smaller and more enclosed that place – like, say, a classroom – the worse it is regarded by those who didn’t do it. And this is why it can be tricky for a teacher who has to be in a classroom with six students for 8 hours on a Saturday and who on Friday dined on prunes and cabbage.

Getting older is great in a lot of ways. Saying ‘no, thank you’ to invitations without offering an excuse feels so good it should be illegal. Going to bed early, recalling the actual 1990s, your doctor talking to you as if your chums.

With the good comes the bad. I am stiff and sore for a full day after workouts. If I don’t write something down immediately, it disappears like it does for that poor fellow in Memento. (I will start tattooing my body in shopping and to-do lists.) There’s also the rising list of medicine. I am not on any prescribed medicine yet, but I do take a bunch of supplements and vitamins to help my fifty-something body run smoothly and not crumble like an empty egg carton.

Due to this, my day is punctuated by vitamins. Creatine and vitamins B and D and a baby aspirin in morning. In the evening, omega-3, magnesium, and zinc. These are suggested for old(er) dudes to keep alert, mobile, and alive.

Last week, prunes joined the daily diet when my body suddenly decided it no longer wanted to rid itself of waste. (see above: getting old body changes). I spent a day or two uncomfortable and then prunes and magnesium came to the rescue. They really are a wonder of nature – as an osmotic laxative, they bring water into the intestines and gently guide everything out. I now know why prune juice is a staple in every old(er) person’s fridge.   

The side effect of this wonder fruit is that you can get a wee bit gassy. ‘A wee bit’ here means that you will lose 4 pounds of body weight an hour.

Yesterday (as always), I look the bus home from school. Buses are sort of the kneecaps of Prague’s public transport system. Trams and metros have space to stand and sit. Buses, on the other hand, appear to have both, but in fact can only seat about 4 people while rendering all standing people in the discomfort of a Roman torture device. And so, yesterday, thirty people waited to see which 4 of us would be comfortable.

Amazingly, I was one of those people. (I threw an elbow at a woman distracted by the pram she was hoisting.) I tucked myself into a corner and pulled out my book for 12 minutes of bliss. Nobody needs me, I can’t be asked any questions, and it’s just me and 12 minutes of Ancient Celtic Europe. What more perfection could there be for a man after a long day of Englishing.

Something is pulling me away from Celtic Europe. But what? My eyes wander. There’s a gaggle of girls in the four-seat area ahead of me. They’re young and lithe and thus incapable of discomfort. They lounge upon each other like ferrets and speak with the confidence of those who think they know everything but don’t know shit (i.e. teens).

But it’s a sweatshirt that catches my eye. The back of a girl’s shirt reads: Few orgasms would probably fix everything!

On Friday, we order fast food. It’s Good Friday, after all, we have a long weekend. There are a lot of reasons that justify ordering fast food. It’s 9 pm. All is well – for the last time this weekend.

Around 11 pm, Burke complains of feeling too full. Since we’ve just eaten the better part of a cow and forty potatoes’ worth of French fries, ‘too full’ is not out of the realm of possibility.

Nature decides to take care of Burke’s too full problem by engaging in the most viscous and violent vomiting campaign a body has known since The Plague. The dog and I wince and listen and wince some more. I am the bringer of water and buckets. Someone in the hallway must think we’re putting on an off-off-off Broadway production of The Exorcist. Her last visit to the toilet is at 4 am. After that, mercifully, she sleeps.

Effen Easter. Easter around my house never goes well. I don’t know what it is about this particular spring festival, but a quick scan of Easter memories calls to mind illnesses, ER visits, personal issues, and work troubles. Easter always finds me sick, unhappy, or stressed. Based on the entire brochure Easter puts out there, it should be quite the opposite. But, alas, no.