Sasha's Pet Resort: In Santa We Trust!
Sasha’s Pet Resort
by Dan McFadden
Sasha's Pet Resort, over the past ten days, has been a celebratory kaleidoscope of holiday tradition, holy matrimony and just surrounding myself with loving family and friends. And since we significantly reduced our holiday budget from last year, we decided to make meaningful cutbacks in our family exchange of gifts as part of that. Maybe only 10% of what we spent last year on gifts. Both honor and serendipity have favored our results. Honor since we intelligently slimmed our holiday expenses without pilfering the spirit from our traditions. And in that our rug rats are now kicking forty in the ass, our gift giving no longer requires more voluminous expenditures for Easy Bake Ovens, neon-colored game consoles and the latest in Doc Marten boots!
Probably one of the best Christmases of my life! It was far less stressful than in the past and so less hectic. And as chance would have it, my author/son was married four days earlier in the beautiful village of Snohomish, Washington, which had been under flood warnings just the week prior. The entire town had decorated to the hilt with festive lights, carolers, and top-hat English squires clad in silk leggings. It gave Washington’s oldest “Bavarian” village and holiday central, Leavenworth, a run for its money.
As my ability to tell time is sometimes impaired, I arrived for the rehearsal dinner two hours early which provided me ample time to experience the flavor of Snohomish village (a pie shop and tavern on every corner), though I wasn’t prepared for the temperature--cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss. I came away from that weekend feeling blessed in that my son had kissed many a toad before he came upon the love of his life. A stellar find for the both of them and welcome to the family new daughter-in-law!
My younger son and his wife, both actors living in Burbank, flew up for the holiday/matrimonial festivities as well…though their flight to Seattle was cancelled! Fortunately, they were able to catch a flight the next morning and only had to absorb the cost of one night’s hotel stay. They actually flew back to Burbank late on Christmas day and were amazed to find Sea-Tac Airport as empty as a mausoleum!
Finally, not to be outdone, our youngest daughter and her-soon-to-be fiancé saved all year and left the day after Christmas for three weeks in Thailand. They are having an absolute blast, bungy jumping yesterday. I went out of my way to remind her that these bungy cords are manufactured by the lowest bidder! That’s the miracle of communicating with your children in real time on foreign shores!
When I hitchhiked Europe as a teen, my parents dropped me off at the King Street train station in Seattle with a Styrofoam cooler full of white bread sandwiches and Rainier Beer to accompany me to JFK Airport in NY where I’d catch my flight to London three days later. Can you say clickety-clack, clickety-clack? My father was a brakeman for the Burlington Northern railroad and thus had secured me a free sleeper for my trip to the Big Apple. My parents received two post cards, no phone calls and of course no texts or emailed photos for nearly three months! My, how the times have certainly changed.
Of course, it would not have been Christmas without watching The Muppet Christmas Carol, our umpteenth time as far back as we can remember and a valued family tradition! And even after this many viewings, I always find something new each year which I don’t remember seeing previously (could just be age--sometimes I have to really focus to remember what I ate for breakfast that morning). That’s the magic of the holidays!
Before I turn you over to the next installment of the Adventures of Sasha’s Gang (and it’s a cliffhanger this week), I take a dollop of satisfaction in having invented a brand-new word! Not all people can say that.
Just curious as to whether Webster’s pays royalties or simply compensates with copies of their dictionary? Are you sitting on needles and pins telling me to hurry up and unveil my linguistics discovery. Okay. But a word of caution. I’m the first to lay claim to this. The word is (drumroll please): sone. I’m seeking a utility patent. The process would be protected for 20 years. Ingredients required are an iPhone, stubby fingers and a desire to send a text! Invariably, simply due to proximity, sone will become some, and some into sone. But I’m fond of saying it doesn’t take a creative person to spell a word the same every time! C’mon folks. Mix it up! Best. Dan
The Continuing Adventures of Sasha’s Gang!
Chapter 2
Turquoise sat patiently on the floor beneath the horizontal Mama Cass, as both took voyeuristic delight in watching the rambunctious antics of their revolving peers: Bambi, Mark Spitz, John Madden, Socrates, Eisenhower and Hoss. When suddenly, as if children playing the school-yard game of Statue, the dogs were paralyzed, their paws seemingly frozen in time. In the same instant, they all howled mournfully, as if a favorite toy had been pilfered. Even Mama Cass, though Turquoise remained quiet, almost meditative, awake but distant.
“What the hell…” I started, the second insane moment of my day. Within seconds I felt it…even through the thick insulation of the rubber flooring. A slight tremble soon followed by the roaring indigestion of an angry earth.
“What is it? Spouse’s head twirled about owl-like, eyes wide open. She lifted off the wicker couch, shared with the Rottweiler Mama Cass—while the night wrangler, paralyzed, uttered not a single word, standing still in the moment.
Peering upward through the dusk of the two-story ceiling, the recessed light bulbs bounced epileptic, blinking erratically, as Sasha’s threatened darkness. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Turquoise curled up about my feet as the trembling became more pronounced, physically threatening. A commotion with more hamstrings than just a passing truck or the rumbling to life of an ancient oil furnace.
Frantically, I reached downward for stability, my balance a few degrees out of plumb, as my hand alighted upon a bobbed tail, a cul-de-sac of fur! Though with neither nudge nor sigh, I still knew it had to be Turquoise as the euphoric flow reignited, lava flowing upward in my arm, stirring a narcotic calm deep inside me. But none of the cacophony which haunted me earlier that day. It was eerily quiet other than for the faint crackle of white noise and the bewildered stirring of our collective breathing, human and dogs panting in frightened unison. No longer barking!
“Earth….quake…” I stuttered, as the lights dimmed past ebony, the ground’s movement accelerating, this terrestrial tsunami washing over us.
“Dan?” Spouse’s voice was diminished, apparently throttled by a sudden tightening of her throat.
Meanwhile, our little amusement ride had escalated into a cheap vertigo-inducing roller coaster without lights. I didn’t know which way was up and which was down. Nor did it matter. I was experiencing an out-of-body astral jet ride that was pulling about seven G’s. No reverse or fast forward. Just a moment stuck in time without parole or pardon. Maybe vomit.
“Just ride it…out,” I continued. “We’re safe here.” I said so…but didn’t necessarily know so. Sasha’s was constructed using massive 6-inch by 12-inch cedar beams…and maybe 20 feet in length, any one of which could decapitate or kill (most likely both) if it suddenly dislodged from the upper reaches. Arms over my head weren’t shelter. They were simply obese jay walkers, vulnerable targets, as this bucking bronco sped through the intersection, without a brake light of mercy or defensive driving.
“Stop…pleas…se. Stop!” were the only syllables the night manager could extract from her trembling dentures, never having experienced a tremor before in her life. Surprising since she spent three decades of that life in wriggly California--the epicenter of earthquakes!
I detected only slight movement from the dogs, their faint outlines motionless as they surfed the whitecaps of the new moon which reflected off Sasha’s wheat-colored walls and crimson steel roof.
Out of nowhere, a molar-rattling blast erupted! I reasoned it originated in the registration area of the ground floor—though it reverberations were disfiguring, a gaudy and brassy explosion that could have been birthed from any corner of the building. A snarly man’s voice took to the air--both terrifying and boisterous, outshouting the quake’s growl. “…a blue Christmas…without you…”.
“Please…” the night manager xeroxed her panicked plea, as the voice didn’t so much rattle and roll as it liquified Alexa’s gonads. I recognized the distorted voice as that of the King, in his best holiday spirit. Alexa on a rampage, likely triggered by the earth’s uncontrolled salsa. But I could have been wrong. Nothing seemed to be what it appeared. For all I knew it was a demon clad in blue suede shoes, a snow-white jumpsuit and a low-hanging guitar.
“Dan!?” Spouse shouted out for a second time. Yet, the shaking intensified. You’d have thought that we’d put out a welcome mat for Jehovah’s Witnesses!
“Hang in…hon,” I hollered over the ruckus. Turquoise, seemingly unruffled, was tethered at my feet, my hand now traveled to the top of her fluffy head. I could hear the collective blaring of car alarms…and see the branches of our leafless maple tree adjacent our large window induced into a subtle blur of a charcoal sketch--or my eyes had suddenly gone sour. And the gyrating streetlights flickered before shutting down like illicit cigarettes in the boys’ room.
Meanwhile, the ascent up my arm continued unabated, though I was certain the sherpa amperage powering this offbeat trek would cripple poor Turquoise, tripping a breaker or something equally debilitating. But no, she remained steadfast, unfazed, on the cusp of meditative. No trembling or apparent stress. An extraordinary canine indeed.
While Elvis continued his holiday crooning at damaging decibel levels--further fueling the pandemonium that had taken possession of Sasha’s— Turquoise remained calm, in full control.
I didn’t know how long we’d been rocking and rolling. Fifteen seconds? Or fifty? I was fairly certain it was nowhere near four and one-half minutes, the duration of Anchorage’s Good Friday quake in ’64! For me time had ceased to exist, at least as I knew it in its primal form. Altogether a different epicenter when filtered through near total darkness and one’s transient foothold on a convulsing mother earth. I surfed the rubber floor, my knees flexing and unwinding as if navigating a mogul field.
There wasn’t a single utterance from the dogs, Mama Cass and Turquoise included. Just the roar of the earth and the grind of Elvis’s hips. I didn’t know if I was going to fall, vomit or both. But with the stealth of a midnight bandit, the quake suddenly disappeared riding upon a vanishing curtain of silence--other than for the multitude of car alarms and the nearly indecipherable slosh of water in the dogs’ closed bowls. Even Elvis had left the building.
Still, my arm reverberated with Turquoise’s inexplicable sway, a tangle of voices cross-breeding themselves out of existence, leaving in their wake a faded (and I might add pleasurable) white noise.
“Dan!” Spouse shouted again.
“I’m good,” As non-chalantly as my quivering voice would allow. “Earthquake,” I added, and smiled for no reason, though it couldn’t be seen.
“You think?” Spouse’s sarcasm had survived her pummeling.
“Oh my God!” the night manager exclaimed, her brunette wig askew, as she hurriedly nudged it back into place.
“It’s okay,” I assured the room. I had not heard any glass breaking, which supported my theory that the quake might have been (at maximum) in the six point something range. Not likely any stronger than that. Maybe a few deaths. Power probably out for a few days, outlying areas for a few weeks. I was breathing easier. This could have been so much worse. As I turned to head for a flashlight in our reception area, a voice magically took to the air. Or so I assumed.
“Hi Dan,” It was a soft reassuring female voice. Strangely both alien and familiar in the same breath.
“Who’s that?” I assumed a neighbor had hurried over to check on us.
“Just us,” Spouse replied in the dark. “We need to make sure the gas is turned off.” Her stint as a first-responder RN emerged. She was spot on.
“I miss you dearly,” the voice, light as mist, soothed me, though I didn’t know its origin nor the genesis of its magical poultice.
“Who are you?” I blurted aloud.
“Who’s who?” Spouse questioned, caution slackening her words.
Apparently, neither spouse nor night manager had heard the gravity of the siren call—one which was tantalizing and beckoning me towards…I don’t know where. I was stumped. Towards where I had no clue. But it felt like such a warmer, softer place.
“It’s me. Sasha. Love you guys…”
I ceased breathing. This was my girl who had also ceased breathing--but five years earlier, as we frantically sped down to the animal ER in Redmond! But far too late, her lips and tongue a deadly shade of blue as she struggled to stand. And for ‘reals’ as I explained to our daughter.
Spouse--a hopeful spirit and early advocate for reincarnation—emboldened an overactive imagination that possibly could have instilled more life into our girl, Sasha. But that didn’t appear to be the case as spouse mumbled, digging out from the spider silk of a bewildered yawn. “Bill Haley,” she made no mention of Sasha’s words. Just the holiday flotsam of a dying King.
“Huh?” My confusion was Darwinism in action. Evolving from pedestrian chatter to a Twilight Zone script in a single breath.
“Wasn’t him,” Spouse’s words drifted through the dark, the earth tranquil in this respite. “Bill Haley and the Comets…was a cover.”
Reluctantly, I unplugged from Turquoise, as I heard the faint scratch of dog talons coming to life on the rubber floor. And then I saw it across the room! An extremely faint, nearly translucent glacial-tinted outline of a dog. But it shed no illumination upon the others…
(To be continued. Click here to sign-up for FREE email updates on the ongoing Adventures of Sasha’s Gang)
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