Callie Mae Meads was my mom’s Catahoula. She was a marvelous dog – brave and silly and clever and kind. She got my nephew over his fear of dogs, and when my mother broke her ankle, Callie Mae was there to take care of her. She kept my step-grandmother company in the last years of her life, too.

Big dogs, as anyone who’s ever had one knows, just don’t live as long as smaller animals. But Callie was bucking the trend. She blew out a knee a few years back, and she’d gained quite a bit of weight, with the reduced mobility. When NovySan and I went to Wyoming last Thanksgiving, though, she’d slimmed down, and she came bounding across Mom’s lawn to greet us. I hadn’t seen her move like that in years.

It didn’t last long, though. In the past few weeks, she’d stopped eating, and then she stopped drinking, too. Today, Mom fed her a last few spoonfuls of whipped cream, and my stepfather, Sam, took her to the vet for the final time. The vet said she was in pretty good shape for a 94-year-old lady, but her organs were shutting down, and it was time.

I’ll miss you, Callie Mae.

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Mine never was.

As far as I know, I only lost one tooth at school, and I’m not quite sure what happened to it. I can’t remember now if it came out, I put it in a pocket and dropped it, or if it came out on the playground and I didn’t notice that it had happened. I do remember, though, that I spent what felt like hours looking for it. I combed the playground methodically, walking slowly across the width of it, then turning at the end and walking back a few inches to the right. When my mother came to get me, I tried to convince her that I had to find my tooth before we could go home. She made me get in the car.

I was half-hysterical and sobbing. I’m sure I had plans for that tooth money. (I got a dollar. Eventually, it occurred to me that most of my friends got considerably less, and I began to question whether a real tooth fairy would pay differing ransoms for different children’s teeth.) We had some elk teeth, though, and a human tooth with a gold filling in it (which I believe had been my grandfather’s). “I’ll put one of these under the pillow!” I thought. “She’ll never know the difference!”

Mom didn’t think that was such a great idea.

Eventually, I settled for putting a note under my pillow, explaining the lost tooth.

In the morning, I got a dollar.

And I thought, “Hey, maybe I could just put a note like that under my pillow every night.”

Mom didn’t think that was a great idea, either.

Damn her, always being right.

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My stepfather, who “doesn’t like sweets,” does in fact like Angel Food Cake and Marshmallow Peeps.

He doesn’t like cats, either.

I think he’d like this one.

(Pimp and the Peep discovered via Wall o’ Fluff.)

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