Ok, sometimes we have a little time to do nothing but navel gaze. For instance when it rains and we don’t want to run outside for a free shower or when Marjo makes dinner. Then it’s time to reflect, to let the mind wander, not hindered by work stress demanding brain time and other trivial matters.
So what comes to mind then, I hear you ask. Well for one: after feeding the dogs dinner at around 5 pm (you should know they start ganging up from around 4 pm and make innocent tracks close to our chairs or sit and look smug) Nossi is lost love and wants to go inside the bus and sleep, preferably on our bed and if possible under the doona but Dotti, Dotti is a mystery. She does her own thing for a while and then comes and sits really close. Pretty similar as she does before they get dinner and has that intense stare.
After this intro, I will enlighten you now with one of my thoughts when I navel gaze: “what does Dotti wants when she stares like that?”
Oh, here I should say that the after-dinner stare is not unique. She also does it quite often when we drive along and she lies in the passenger footwell; somewhere Marjo’s feet are too. She can lie content looking out the little footwell window, or she can lie as if being very uncomfortable against the window washer liquid container, or…..she can do the stare. And again the question is: “what does she want when she stares like that?”
Because this has been going on for quite a while now, I’ve tried several things with mixed results:
– asking “what do you want”, is answered by silence unless asked several times and with some intensity is answered with “Woef” which doesn’t bring us any closer
– saying “go ahead, do whatever you want” only makes her shuffle closer and when said several times and with some intensity is answered with “Woef” again
– giving a treat such as dried roo meat (from a package for Pete sake, I suggested to Marjo that we have seen enough roo karkasses to fill our trailer and more) always works; that is, until she finished it and the staring starts again.
I have thought that perhaps she is getting old and she has conveniently forgotten about dinner and I mistake her stare to be a post-dinner stare where it’s actually a pre-dinner stare. But that would be at odds with her footwell stare. Or does it? She is always hungry.
Perhaps I’m just over thinking this and she’s looking at me filled with love. That must be it. It’s nice to be loved.
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