On November 17th, I Made Bread

It's a quiet Thursday morning, and I'm making a loaf of bread to have to lunch. It's whole wheat with olive oil and rosemary. Baking bread is something I'm no longer able to do without being reminded of a piece of ancient Roman graffiti preserved at Pompeii: "On April 19th I made bread." Me too, Roman dude, me too.

On an altogether less fun note, I have a dog, Felix. He's an old dog and not doing so well. The Final Appointment has been made for next week. Today is his last Thursday. It's the mundaneness of that that strikes me. It's not a big milestone of finality, not his last walk, last time iwth his favorite toy, etc. Just Thursday. Don't worry about me. It's sad, but I've been here before and I'll be here again, that's the nature of dogs. I'll be okay, in time.

I'm thinking about the Roman and his bread. It's a nice example of how little some things change across even thousands of years. His graffiti could just as easily been a post on Twitter (or Mastodon). Did he ever have a dog? There's no way to know, but supposing he did, he knew the same disparity between our lives and those of our dogs.

As I write this, my old dog is napping in a sunbeam.

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