My scintillations,

This letter comes apropos of nothing, which may be the point.

Every time I write, it seems, it carries a certain sense of (melo?)drama: Jadie’s birthday, Charlie’s adoption, your first swim.

There is nothing dramatic here. Save, of course, for everything.

For here, under the historic Western Heat Dome, where dog days have baked September into the new August, you have somehow sidled into doghood.

How did that happen? When did that happen? And I want specific dates.

Make no mistake: You are not even teens in our years, and that is occasionally obvious. Say, when a Barkbox shows up. Or you see a leash. Or when I microwave popcorn; YOU AIN’T GETTING ANY — DEAL WITH IT.

But you have lowered your bark, slowed your gate, begun to see this as your home, one you’d die to defend if I were in it and in peril. Or at least so I’d like to think.

But what do you think of monotony? I imagine that for most days and nights, life may seem to churn, over and over. Boring, perhaps (and I’m looking at you girl). Maybe without point. Maybe without purpose. Beware that deception! Boredom means you are free of hunger and most likely pain.

More vitally, being is purpose. Never forget the reason you are here in the first place: Nothing short of being the conscious representative for your patch of the cosmos, and all the duties implied therein.

In other words, keep doing what you’re doing. Which appears to be enjoying our one go-round on the Great Carousel.

You know what? Move over, would ya?