Answer #38 - We're all the dog and the deer

7 degrees as I was driving in this morning.  Thinking of Jane, the title character in a play I started writing about 3 years ago.  Jane doesn't like the cold, nor wearing much in the way of clothing for that matter.  She's eccentric.  She's eccentric and obsessive.. and unsettling.  But charming.

She's complex.  And, in her generally semi-clothed state, she wouldn't like to be in Indiana this time of year. 

And who among us isn't, I'm thinking, a little complex? - at 7 degrees as the black and white dog stands in the middle of the road, patiently watching my car speed toward him, unimpressed, unmoving.

I slow down.  He sniffs the headlight.  This is why I think of Jane. I couldn't have predicted the dog's response.  I can't predict hers. 

People know to watch for dogs.  It's the deer that take you by surprise.  Another one hit our hood the other day, on an icy downhill- came sprinting out of the snowy woods.  Practically leapt onto the hood, flew a few feet in the air onto a snow bank and ran off.  Hopefully without internal injuries.

Not the first time.  Won't be the last. 

Jane is the dog and the deer. This is maybe why I haven't visited her in 3 years.  Left to her own devices, she might not survive.  And look at me, I'm Virginia Woolf, but there's something to it - there's something to knowing that a character might not survive that makes you slow down all the more on the icy roads that lead home.

Maybe I'll see her this year.  Maybe.