Moses has been showing up at the dog park lately. He wears a hoodie over layers of other clothes. His face is all eyebrows and a beard the color of road snow. We talk about the economy. He says things like, "When you're an architect, nobody wants to put you on retainer." I nod my head. I have been an architect. Of Web, of stories, of drinks. Nobody wants to put me on retainer, either. Moses speaks a lot of truths, and I like listening to him talk.

He brings Oliver with him—a bounding, white Labradoodle. When Moses wants Oliver to poop, he says, "Mooshy, mooshy, mooshy!" I like that. Honey poops when I say "Business." Now, that seems boring. I wish I had trained her with something more fun. Something like ... "Tucumcari."

Like Honey, Oliver has a lot of energy. But Honey is much faster. She's always beating him to the ball. But she lets him get it, anyway. It's because Honey likes older men. She listens to them. She follows them around. And she'll eventually let them win at games of chase. It's the girls her age she likes to antagonize. She never lets them win at anything. And she barks at them relentlessly. She's alpha to the core.

We like to meet there in the morning, Moses and I, while the temperature is still in the teens. It's mostly quiet then. It's good when there is a fresh snow and it's still white and powdery, before there are footprints in it, and before it's turned to the crunchy, icy stuff. We throw our tennis balls and the dogs fetch them and our fingers get numb in the sharp morning air. We make the first footprints in the snow, and we construct the day. And this is about as real and important as it gets.

"There's no real blueprint out there for how to do this thing," I say.

"Then you need to make one."

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