Ah, dammit.

Woke at 4:50 to the sound of thumping, and figured out right away he was having a seizure. First time in four months. I’d just been talking with the vet that day about how good this was, how he might have years. And he’s seizing. It didn’t seem as bad as previous examples, although maybe I was coming in at the end - I stuck a towel under his head so it didn’t bang on the hard floor - he was half off his bed - and rode it out. Wasn’t long. Mopped up the drool. The post-ictal phase used to last a long while, and he’d be confused and disoriented, barking loudly and unstoppably. This time I tried to bring him back with some food, and then the last Frosty Paws in the freezer. This did the trick, more or less, and he was settled in ten minutes with minimal barking. I let him sleep up on the bed with me, and held his tail and we drifted off.

I knew this was going to happen, but I had come to believe that it wouldn’t.

It’s within the parameters of his condition. One “breakthrough” a month, they said. Doesn’t mean he’s getting worse and it doesn’t mean the drugs aren’t working. It just happens.

Had a dampening effect on the rest of the day. All of a sudden the hopes of getting him a yard seemed diminished. Should I accelerate the time-table? What sort of $ hit do I take getting out of the Fred too early? I don’t want to leave here before the new year - fall and Christmas here, all the holidays. Then somewhere else in the bleak months so there’s something interesting and enjoyable to do, like set up a new place and plan for the spring. And now I fear that’s been derailed.

Not necessarily.

So now we are here at the moment, just existing. (I am dictating this to my phone.)

Gentle sound of the fountain in the middle of the lake; the muted wine of the cicadas; the distant Plush of the paddle boat. An engine running somewhere doing something useful I’m sure. No sign of fall. No sign of Summer’s end.

LATER I went to CUfB for something, and I couldn’t remember what it was. Well, doesn’t matter, can’t be that important. I got Lemonade, the sugar-free stuff, and some refried beans. I wasn’t going to find myself in the situation I faced last week. Oh, I’d bought a can since then, but I needed to double-up to guarantee future bean needs would be met. It wasn’t until I got back and parked that it hit me: FROSTY PAWS.

Dammit. I’d used the last for post-seizure pacification. That’s what I was going to get. I hate going out in the evening because it means trolling in the garage for a spot, but no, I’d risk it. After the evening meal (beans included and enjoyed by all) we took our walk, and I listened to PFM as we traipsed through the thick grounds of Sunderwood Park. It seems to change every day now. A new path opens; an old path is closed. A copse of weedy trees is standing one day, and gone the next. A pond that had gone thick green is suddenly clear. It was a good walk, and at the end Birch hopped the fence with juvenile-delinquent insouciance. We sat down at the Yard where he deposits his sticks - and I realized my little cigar tin had fallen out somewhere. Dammit again. That’s three dammits for the day. I figured it was the place where I had taken out my phone to listen to PFM, so we drove back to the nearest parking lot - I say “we” as if he’s helping me with the pedals - and I walked around in the dusk. Found it in a minute. Off to . . .

I always love the way it all glows on a in hot and humid night. As long as I was here, there were two broken things that needed replacement. Three, if you count the marriage, but that’s not an aisle I’ve ever seen. Birch ripped up the interior doormat one day while I was gone; needed a new one. I’d dropped the spoon rest dish, and it broke. Four dollars. Got the Frosty Paws and headed back. Now I’m waiting for Daughter to call, and thinking that I’ve put on some weight in the middle. Not that I couldn’t stand to gain a few pounds. The Cohabitation-While-Selling-House-and-Divorcing diet was ruthless in keeping off the extra avoirdupois, but now I’m having half an English muffin a day with jam, back to chips with lunch, and so on.

On the other hand who cares, and what exactly am I denying myself for?

		Our subject in the last week of Summer is this confection. This treat is the prompt.

Danish immigrant Christian Kent Nelson, a schoolteacher and candy store owner, claimed to have received the inspiration for the Eskimo Pie in 1920 in Onawa, Iowa, when a boy in his store was unable to decide whether to spend his money on ice cream or a chocolate bar.

Like that had never happened before? I am suspicious of all origin stories, since there’s often some ballyhoo added to make the story more picturesque. We can all imagine a little kid, his face screwed up in indecision, trying to decide. WHY NOT BOTH, Nelson thought, a revelation that had never occurred to anyone before.

By the way, Onawa has two distinctions: the poorest city in Iowa, according to this story, and the city with the widest main street.

No mention of his store’s location. You’d think there would be a plaque.

Anyway: Nelson had an instant hit on his hand, and teamed with a local candy maker to scale up. That man was . . . RUSSELL STOVER.

I had no idea.

Now, you may think? Who? What? Who cares? For people of my demo cohort, that was the name on the box of chocolates your dad or granddad bought at the drug store for special occasions. The Russell Stover Sampler. They franchised the product, and made a pile.

Nelson sold out, tinkered with improvements to the product, died in 1992.

You may think: I loved those as a kid. Do they still make them? Yes and no. The product was sold to Breyer’s, who renamed them Edy Pies.

Edy. Pies. Why?

One of the founder of Breyer’s Ice Cream was Joseph Edy. The name change was made in 2020. As Wikipedia put it:

In wake of the 2020-2021 George Floyd protests, the name was changed to Edy's Pie, in recognition of Dreyer's co-founder, candy maker Joseph Edy. The former name used the term Eskimo, a term considered offensive by some for American Inuit, Yupik, and Aleut peoples.

There’s a post-Floyd knock-off effect you hadn’t considered.

Dryer's website:

		Flip it . . .
		. . . and we get this Pacific Gas and Electric ad. Doesn't look appetizing. Looks like the freezer went on the blink and everything melted.

BTW, the Eskimo in the ads was drawn by Gyo Fujikawa.

Her most popular books, Babies and Baby Animals, have sold over 1.7 million copies in the U.S. Fujikawa is recognized for being the earliest mainstream illustrator of picture books to include children of many races in her work, before it became common to do so.

She worked for the Walt Disney Company in California as a promotional artist, before moving to New York in 1941. Fujikawa avoided the forced internment of West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II as she was living in New York at the time. Her family, however, spent the war in the internment camp at Rohwer, Arkansas.

Nothing is ever clear-cut, is it.

The town has a memorial site, and you are not, I think, expecting this.