It doesn’t take long for the dog to like it. To look forward to it. I know that might sound like wishful thinking or projection on my part, but who’s to say that even if I am projecting that the dog doesn’t actually like it in there? The two ideas aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. I might be floridly demented in thinking the dog likes being carried around in a giant diaper, but the dog might really like it in there. Because seriously, what’s not to like? It’s warm, there are snacks, and for a few hours every day she doesn’t have to walk or sniff or chase or make any decisions of her own. It’s like a vacation, a stress-free state of suspended animation that I sometimes wish I could replicate for myself.

Those hours when the dog is in the sling are restorative for me. Like a new drug, it’s helping me taper off an old one, overlapping and masking the side effects of withdrawal. By which I mean, wearing Charlotte is helping me get through the end of Teddy’s childhood. By which I mean, instead of turning to my husband with that overwhelming sadness and longing, I’ve turned to our dog.

No wonder we’re separated.

Well/er

I wear the dog around the house while I do my “content-generating” work, writing short engagingly shallow online posts for Well/er, a health and happiness website run by a small local startup with national aspirations whose management team has a median dude-age of twenty-four. Well/er believes in tiny incremental gains in physical and emotional wellness (hence Well/er, not Well), instead of big ambitious ones: DOING JUST ENOUGH IS ENOUGH TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE is the website’s actual tagline. As a fundamentally lazy person myself, I can’t say I disagree: sometimes less is more.

There’s a bank of article ideas and suggested due dates on the content-management system (CMS), as well as an updated list of timely topics that I can pick from every morning—maintained and sent out by Eden, the content manager who is based in Atlanta and whose avatar is a blue female Avatar from the movie Avatar, even though people refer to Eden with male pronouns in email chains. Whatever. We’re occasionally supposed to “meet” via Google Chat or Skype, depending on which platform has working sound or video, but since I started a year ago our team Skype calls have mostly been without video. Which is fine with me—I’d rather not remind people of how old I am if I don’t have to, which is the unfortunate effect that staring at my turkey neck on a Skype or Google Chat call—and the occasional and deeply humiliating interruption of my AOL “You’ve got mail!” alert—has on people. I’m certain that the second the call is over all the twenty-year-olds whisper sweetly among themselves about how I remind them of their moms. I’m certain because that actually happened once before we all got disconnected.

As a contractor paid by the piece, I’m expected to submit three to four “articles” a day, each one no more than three hundred to four hundred words, written in short paragraphs and in a snappy style, nothing too taxing for our attention-span-challenged readers, but always including links to “scientific” “studies” that back up whatever dubious point I’m supposed to be making, even if the research sounds made up to me. People love neuroscience now, how it can support almost every single bad habit and instinct we have, whether it’s for spending too much money (money buys happiness if you spend it on experiences instead of things) or earning less money than you need to (income has a positive impact on happiness, but anything over $75,000 is only mood gravy), or inherent laziness (tiny changes in habits are better and easier to maintain than big changes). I’m not sure any of this is true. In the years when I earned a fair amount of money, it made me quite happy actually, no matter what I spent it on.