I fell in love with a picture of a grown pitbull on a kill shelter’s site. Joe had been looking at puppies because he didn’t really want a dog who was the age Opal would be. If I wanted her, however, he was ready to go get her. Then she got adopted.

A few days later Joe got a text from Joan, the woman who fostered Opal for the ASPCA. A very young puppy had been abandoned and Joan had her. Did we want to meet her?

Joan had kept Opal’s sister who looked identical to Opal and sent us a picture of the puppy with Opal's sister. Though we liked that there was a connection to Opal I fell apart, not sure I was ready for a new dog. But Joan also sent us a picture of the puppy with her other dog, a pit that looked like the adult version of this tiny pup. The puppy looked so fragile, so exhausted, so sweet. We knew that if we met her we’d take her, but meeting her would also show us if we were ready.

Long story short, we have a new puppy. A growly, grunty, nasally pipsqueak of a pitbull we've named Ginger. My first day with her I panicked – she was so different, so not what I knew and I missed my Opal terribly. Within 24 hours I was turned around. This dog is completely herself – Joan called her a badass and now I know why. She’s a seven-pound chatterbox of a battering ram who plows her stuffies around the kitchen then dives on her bed and throws them into the air. She's a constant sound effect; what I thought was wheezing is her version of gurgling chatter. During the night she snores like a beast, bleats like a lamb and squeaks like a piglet when she dreams.

I have no poetry to talk about her since she’s up every two hours at night howling to pee and we haven’t slept much in days. What I do have is smitten love for this dog. She has a mad crush on Joe and wails every time he leaves the kitchen, but from the looks of things the crush is mutual.

We didn’t replace our Opal; we added to our family. The last few days I find myself asking Opal for help, for guidance, when this little one is dragging her bed across the kitchen floor or wailing because she's been left alone for twelve seconds. I swear I hear Opal laugh - she's been there herself. She says don't worry little one and I don't know if she's talking to Ginger or me, but it all becomes okay.

(photos by Pamela Harris except for the second photo which is anonymous)

About a week after our dear Opal passed we went outside and aimlessly headed north. Near 12th St. we went west and ended up climbing the stairs to the Highline. The Highline is a gorgeous park built amidst what used to be elevated railroad tracks. It runs for about 20 blocks (with more to come) through Chelsea.

Years ago I used to show with a gallery on West 22nd St. and the dealer lived above the gallery. We would sometimes climb onto her fire escape to be eye level with the tracks, which were ten feet away. We could barely make them out under a tangle of grasses, plants and flowers, a wilderness here at the edge of the city. The street below was a gay cruise spot and the dealer and I would contemplate the beauty of this deserted expanse to nowhere, and then look down and watch a guy get a bl*wjob. (I'm not a prude. The server bounces anything explicit.)

Over the past decade every empty lot, gas station, taxi stand and undervalued building in Chelsea got razed or rebuilt. In much of the new construction, the architects seem uniquely interested in manipulating the skin of the building via undulations or unique materials. These buildings also have organic footprints and are constructed out of a mishmash of parts that randomly jut wherever. Some of these buildings are spectacular in how they seamlessly transition from the outside to inside and show the architects complete vision down to the screws. In other buildings, especially residential buildings, the transition is rocky and results in a lot of wasted space where odd angles create useless corners, foyers that are larger than bedrooms, or awkward unusable space between dining and living rooms.

One building I love is the new New School building on Fifth Avenue in the village. It looks like something dropped from the sky and gouged out part of its facade. I never tire of looking at it, a test for a building's staying power. The skyline in Chelsea is all new and chaotic, an architectural free for all that has no rhythm yet. It reminds me of the lines of people I see outside the passport office around the corner where hip hop stands next to Yiddish Theater which stands next to Spanish telenova who's next to Brooklyn hipster in front of the Burmese monk who's robe clashes with the Muslim's Keffiyeh. The only thing this line has in common is how oblivious each person is to whomever is next to them. That's how Chelsea's skyline feels, like each building is waiting its turn for attention so it can do its business then get out of there.

I miss the dog. We're getting another for sure, but today it's raining and Opal would balk at going out so we'd all pile into the living room and eat snacks and watch hours of TV.

Our internet went down for the week of Thanksgiving. Ironically, I was working on a post about how electronics don't last and how connectivity can be temperamental despite an absolute reliance on both. The post started in my head a few months ago, when I read Sheryl Sandberg's book, 'Lean In.' In it she has a throwaway line about Facebook's culture, how the goal there was to make something 'good enough.' Not great, not perfect, but good enough. I get that products can be improved upon and, given how fast technology changes, being the first one in matters. But to me 'good enough' means it's not ready, it's not finished, it still needs work. Right as I was putting self righteous fingers to keys, we lost our connection. For almost a week. And that's what I think of good enough.

(photo above by Henry Chalfant)

Since May I've been leaving most of the galleries I work with. This weekend I took my work out of the last one on my list. My work is changing, their programs have been changing and contextually we no longer fit.

I've been exhibiting work since subway cars looked like the photo above, and it's not something I take for granted. Working with a gallery can be great, being represented can be, too, plus they sell work. I was never a great fit with the galleries I just left and was staying out of fear, out of ego, and a tween of laziness. I've been too busy to sit and really figure out what I want, and it's time. It feels great to have these exits behind me.

Right now I don't know what comes next. The art world has changed in every way possible since I started showing and selling work and I don't know what the next right step is. I'm going to see some friends over the holidays, see some shows and get through a deadline. It's so funny how life goes. Ten years ago I would've thought I was crazy to leave galleries and today I'm really excited to not know what's coming.

Every year on Halloween, our block and those surrounding it get cordoned off as the staging area for the big Halloween parade. The night before we watch police and others come around to bolt all the mailboxes shut and lock down all the manhole covers. By mid-afternoon, floats and groups working on the floats and groups working the giant snakes and dragons that take 10-30 people to maneuver show up, along with a few hundred police. Barricades go up at each end of our block and getting home means having to show ID. (A restaurant on the block bribes the cops with coffee and clean bathrooms, and in turn the cops let diners through.)

By 7:00 p.m. there are about 2 million spectators lining a mile worth of blocks, and about 50 thousand costumed participants ready to march in the parade.

The bottom picture shows how quiet the day begins. I went out early for a meeting midtown, then walked home and stopped by Citarella to get cockles and parsley (we made linguine with clam sauce to celebrate the parade). By 10:30 p.m. the last of the disco floats pound their way uptown and the neighborhood slowly gets back to normal. For years I'd watch it in the village and go to parties after, but now my favorite thing is to head out as the first organizers show and snap a few pictures.

The day after Halloween you'd never know it happened, except for the bits of glitter and fake fur and a shoe here and there that the street sweepers missed.

(photo by Joe)

Today Opal would have been one year old.

Two weeks ago, early morning in the midst of our stream-fest, Joe came through the living room and saw me staring at the computer, frozen. I was weeping; I had impulsively gone to a shelter site, saw a puppy and froze. I hadn't meant to go to a shelter site - it was like I was possessed. "Close the window," he said. I couldn't. He came over and gently closed the window and the puppy disappeared.

A few minutes later I went into the kitchen to find a snack and there he was scrambling to close his laptop. On the screen was a dog. "I saw that!" I yelled. For the next week we went down the rabbit hole of shelter dog sites, then at almost the exact same moment we realized that though we missed having a dog, what we really missed was our dog.

We quit looking, then Joe found how to access the website for the local kill shelter's 'At Risk' list. Two legs, three eyes and deaf and blind? We have to go get him, I pleaded. 12 years old, incontinent, bites kids? We can make that work. We watched dogs get adopted off the list, saw new dogs move on to the list. Then we saw a puppy we had our eye on get marked 'Adopted!' I knew it was for the best, until it showed up for adoption on a no-kill shelter's website. Were we ready to get another dog?

We got out a pint and as we dug our way to the bottom we realized that any dog we got right now would be a rebound dog. Let's get through her birthday, get through the holidays. We've definitely entered the food phase of mourning - we talk about what we'll eat for dinner as we're eating breakfast. For now we'll see how life goes.

We've watched 207 episodes of 'The Office.'

16 episodes of 'Arrested Development.'

40 episodes of the original 'CSI.'

We saw 'Game Change' and 'Mud' and 'Zero Dark Thirty' and 'Now You See Me' and 'This is the End.' I watched the last five episodes of 'Breaking Bad.'

We polished off roughly 56 pints of ice cream, though Joe would dispute that, since a tub of Häagen-Dazs is 14 oz., not a full pint and I eat mostly Häagen-Dazs.

Last night we were able to add +1 to our pint/not pint score while watching 'The Italian Job' and when we finished that we watched 'Arrested Development.' Make that series score 17 episodes, not 16.

And that's what I've been doing.

The finale of BREAKING BAD was incredibly satisfying. To see Walt lovingly touch his meth making apparatus while dying is to suddenly make him a scientist at work in his lab. Add to this his admittance that all he's done, he's done for himself because he liked it makes me question his morality, i.e. is there any? Yet the writer of the show, Vince Gilligan, makes sure Walt provides for his family in the most egoless way he can. Walt also saves Jessie and kills the one group of characters in the series who have no soul to lose. To want redemption means a heart beats inside, and that this show came full circle, and went back to its very beginning gives it a complete sense of closure.

I don't own a TV and watch shows on my computer, almost never when they air. We stream a lot and since the dog passed we've been ripping through the America version of THE OFFICE. Streaming means no break between seasons, no weekly pause between shows, no extended cliffhangers or to-be-continued's, so the viewing experience takes on a whole new dimension. Up until this year I watched BREAKING BAD weekly, but this season I missed weeks here and there and watched a few episodes back to back. What was amazing is it didn't matter how I watched it. The show was seamless, a slow build of expectation that in small beats circled back on itself before revving forward. BREAKING BAD could've ended a hundred different ways and the choices the writers made resonated for me far off the computer screen. When the final credits came up, I felt a real pang and couldn't watch anything else for a few hours.

If you need your BREAKING BAD fix forever, a lot of the props are being auctioned off, including the pink teddy bear. It's $7600 and rising, and you have 5 days left to bid. May Gus's Hazmat Suit be with you.

(photos by Joan Sowma)

The dogs in our building know. It started with Relic the Rottweiler, Opal's best friend. Joe ran into the big dog downstairs and Relic was all over him, excited. It wasn't excitement in his usual head ram in the pocket, gimme a treat kind of way; it was a weird nuzzle in the gut mixed with a full body I cheer you up wiggle. Later I ran into Bowser, a lovable boxer/pit nut who usually body slams me until I pet him. This time he leaned against my legs as if he wanted to pet me and wagged his tail furiously. Even Duke, a lazy grump of a mutt who disdainfully sighs when he sees us, got animated and hopped and wagged his tail wildly. Thinking about it, it's the tail wagging that's different in all of them. It's like they're sending love and want us to know it's for us, not them.

Opal's foster mother got Opal and her siblings when they were barely a month old and she sent us these pictures. I gotta tell you, the void this dog left is massive.

On Saturday summer changed to fall, my favorite season. The photo/combine above, by Anthony Ayiomamitis, clocks the passage of the sun for almost a year. A website I like to hit each day for photos of what goes on up there offered this description:

'An equinox (equal night), this astronomical event marks the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the south. With the Sun on the celestial equator, Earth dwellers will experience nearly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. To celebrate, consider this remarkable record of the Sun's yearly journey through planet Earth's sky, made with planned multiple exposures captured on a single piece of 35 millimeter film. Exposures were made at the same time of day (9:00am local time), capturing the Sun's position on dates from January 7 through December 20, 2003. The multiple suns trace an intersecting curve known as an analemma. A foreground base exposure of the Temple of Apollo in ancient Corinth, Greece, appropriate for an analemma, was digitally merged with the film image. Equinox dates correspond to the middle points (not the intersection point) of the analemma. The curve is oriented at the corresponding direction and altitude for the temple, so the Sun's position for the September equinox is at the upper midpoint near picture center. Summer and winter solstices are at analemma top and bottom.'

It sounds like the photo is a digital manipulation in two parts. When it comes to science or solar or documentary photography, we don't need combines. Reality is good enough. I'm posting it because the path of the sun is real and I love the symmetry of it.

This weekend we went to a surprise party celebrating a wedding anniversary for Joe's second cousin. It was held in a catering hall on Long Island: I had some eggplant rollatini, tomato and cucumber salad, zesty three bean salad and two pieces of yellow wedding cake that had a cannoli filling and buttercream frosting. I couldn't eat the frosting on the second, but when we came home I had some cantaloupe.

A few hours later I got a shooting pain in my left arm and pressure in my chest. Heart disease runs in the family and ten minutes later I was sure I was having a heart attack. Joe started his career as a Paramedic and I could see in his face even he was worried. I have the constitution of a tank and have never had indigestion or heartburn, but I probably could've skipped the cantaloupe. My appetite hasn't been great and I'm queasy after I eat, and what this turned out to be was stress. Or more specifically, panic.

The last few days have been filled with moments where my head spins and catching my breath is tough. For the first time ever I'm sighing when I sit down, sighing when I finish a task, sighing when I decide to watch tv or crate a drawing. Opal used to drop to the floor when she laid down - there was no gentle descent to the carpet but a collapse and grunt and then she'd conk out seconds later. My sighs seem to have taken the place of her grunts and I told Joe that if he sees me barking out the window I want the boar treats, not the cheesy things.

I miss her. We miss her. A family member is missing and I'm realizing that she is not coming back.