if you feel that i'm difficult and obtuse, just imagine what i feel. [ed.]

mister started out all springy, when i said the word renate, he got all excited and pointed toward the island. then he zoned after the meadow as though he had passed through a cloud of soporific gas or pollen from the past, and renate said, he shadows you, or rather he mirrors you, you're both in your own zone, and i said yeah, i wish he would shadow me in my zone and stop distracting my distraction to retrieve the retriever, gnome sane. anyway 
she had a point there, and i need to wake up.

when we came upon the fragments of an ice sculpture behind the museum he got excited again and lay in the mud happily crunching. i grabbed a hand size chunk and he gnawed it in my hand all the way home.