dogs

musings about my dogs

Jesus Loves All the Little A-Holes, Friends are Forgiven, and Serenity is an Incontinence Pad

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I have absolutely no illusions concerning my own lack of patience when people act stupid.   I do not suffer fools gladly, if ever, except for maybe trying to keep from throttling them by making fun of them. I’m not trying to be blasphemous when I say Jesus loves the people we (rightfully or wrongfully) assume to be assholes.  I’m just saying that He has a whole lot more patience than I ever could have.  He is God, I’m not, and that is a very fortunate thing for both the chronically and situationally stupid.

Speaking of the situationally stupid, Jerry enjoyed his Monday night beer and bitch session with Bob last night.  I’ve found that it’s a lot easier for me to endure those bitch sessions if I take the DS and play Freecell or Bookworm or Scrabble while Jerry whines and cries to Bob about how stupid his illustrious co-workers are.   I hope Bob finds it amusing.  I think he and Debbie are just happy to have company- even if said company does whine and cry, fill up the ashtrays, piss on the toilet seat, and leave empty beer cans.  It must suck to be old if that’s the best kind of company you get.  Jerry’s B&B sessions at Bob’s (for me at least) are usually an hour and a half of listening to the pot call the kettle black.  It gets more outrageous and whiny and paranoid the drunker he gets.  It’s painful to observe.    I am one of those annoying people who always has to be doing something- call it a nervous habit.  I like to watch TV and read at the same time, or troll on-line and watch TV, or play the DS while I’m watching TV.  Maybe I’m just hard wired to multitask all the time. 

It’s been way too long since I’ve had an evening of intelligent conversation, one on one with a friend.  It’s been so long that said conversation included a drink or two and not a few chain-smoked cigarettes.  I don’t regret for one moment being set free of the cigarette vice – which I will always attribute to the grace of God- but for a time reference only, it’s been eight and a half years since I’ve lit one up and even longer since I had an evening out somewhere nice with a friend.  I don’t think I would know how to behave.   Jerry’s idea of “dinner out” is either Waffle House or the pizza joint (one of the few places where he doesn’t bitch) or sending me to the Chinese joint for takeout.  While the pizza joint is good, and I do adore good Chinese food,  it would be fun to actually dress nice and go somewhere nice and be treated like a lady for a change.  However, I am sure that those in hell might welcome a snowball fight, and I’m not seeing that happening anytime soon either. 

Some women are treated to candlelight dinners and intelligent conversation from time to time.  I am treated to Captain Wastoid passed out on the bathroom floor, whitey-tighties hanging from the bed post (??? ’cause I was sober and I know I didn’t bother to take them off of him) and if it’s a really special occasion, really bad country music blaring from the stereo just to complete the ambience.  I was lucky last night to be spared the country music, but he managed to scare the living daylights out of Clara, which really pissed me off.

Clara has some issues in her history, one of which is that somewhere in her past- before she was rescued and came to us- she was beaten.  When we got her she was wary of almost all humans.  She preferred Kayla’s company to anyone’s and she felt safer with other dogs.   She was a bit better with women than men, and I slowly gained her trust.  Over time she has gotten to where she will tolerate certain men- generally she is good with Jerry, but she can’t stand to be around him when he’s drunk.  Last night he found a leather whip he had in the closet (Lord only knows why he has a leather whip, but he does.)  If he had actually used it on any of the dogs or even threatened to I would most assuredly beat the living hell out of him or at the very least zapped his ass with the stun gun, and I would do either of those things to anyone who would even remotely think about using a whip on my dogs.  Especially Clara.  But all she had to do was see him take the whip out of the closet and she freaked out.  Clara reads people better than people read people.  She knew he was drunk, and she knows he’s an asshole when he’s drunk.  Even though he did not threaten her with the whip ,(I would have had to severely mess his daytime up had he made that bad a choice) all she had to see was him, drunk, and a whip, and that did it for her.  I am going to make it a point to hide the whip in the same place I hide the stun gun so he can’t find either one when he’s wasted.

Poor Clara made a beeline for the bathtub (?certainly not her favorite place) and was cowering behind the bath curtain.  When Jerry staggered back to his room and flopped on his bed, I ended up convincing Clara to go to my room, where she promptly curled up all the way under the bed where no one can reach her.  She stayed there for an hour or two, until Captain Wastoid was passed out.  Then she got up on the bed with me, and was my personal 65# cling-on the rest of the night.  Clara is one of those rare and special dogs who respond to the most subtle commands and are (for good or ill) exquisitely tuned to their surroundings.  This is why police and military love the Malinois breed. Those dogs can read your mind, they are devoted to their handlers, and they don’t miss anything.  Clara seldom requires correction, and it is not necessary to raise one’s voice with her.  All it takes is a quiet “no” or a disapproving glance for me to correct her.

I will say Clara seemed none the worse for wear this morning, but I don’t like anyone upsetting her.  She is a good dog, and doesn’t deserve to have to put up with stupid shit. 

I shouldn’t find humor in bladder control products, especially as I am at risk for accidents myself, should I sneeze or cough or laugh the wrong way.   I should get some of these for Jerry, but he doesn’t normally just piss his pants, even if he’s really shitfaced.  He just pisses in unorthodox places such as closets, floors or drawers.  I just get to find the dampened whitey-tighties as a reminder the following morning.

Oh, for an evening in the company of adults.  I’ve done my time with those of the diaper set.

All of us are examples.  Some of us are bad ones.

The Gravitas of a Popcorn Fart, Pit Bull Vindication, and the Tyranny of Stuff

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I really had to do a bit of work on this pic to make it legible, but I couldn’t resist this old bumper sticker.  I saw this one  the other day displayed on an old, distressed Chevy “G” series van, and was fortunate enough to get a pic of it as I was stopped at one of the endless traffic lights on Morse Rd..   I don’t have any Pit Bulls (or Am Staffs, as many Pittie owners prefer to call them) but as a person who 1. loves dogs, and 2. owns protection breeds, I have to agree with this.  I’ve said it before, that the quality of a dog is heavily dependent on the quality of care and training it receives from its owner. 

Genetics and breeding do play into a dog’s basic temperament, and are essential factors when dealing with a particular dog.  I cannot realistically expect Clara (her predominant breed is Belgian Malinois) to obey commands given by anyone she doesn’t know.  Her inclination is to obey and protect her owner (me) and she will naturally be wary of others.  This is a personality trait of Malinois and most other protection breeds.  GSDs are notorious for being wary of strangers as well, which is a neutral trait in and of itself.  It’s good to have a dog that only obeys one person- at least in certain circumstances.  I can, however, expect Clara to be polite with people when she is properly introduced.  When Grandma was in the nursing home, Clara enjoyed going to the nursing home and visiting with people.  She was comfortable with this, and welcomed people’s attention, as long as I was with her, and she was in her harness.  Lilo is not a terribly social dog (typical of Chows.) She is obedient when she is in her harness as long as people and other dogs keep their distance.  Unlike Clara, Lilo does not allow “strangers” to pet her even when she is in her harness.  I understand that Clara and Lilo both have to establish relationships with people and with other dogs, which require careful introductions, before they will be social with them.  I do not force Lilo to be around children, and I don’t let them attempt to pet her, because she doesn’t like kids.  Since I understand that, it is my obligation to keep Lilo away from kids and out of situations in which she could potentially be dangerous.

Sheena, for all of her bad breeding (the poor girl’s mannerisms and dim-wittedness scream “inbreeding”) doesn’t know a stranger, human or canine.  Anyone can interact with Sheena and likely end up getting leaned on, flopped on and headbutted into loving on Sheena, because that’s how she rolls.  If she gets attention or food out of the deal, she’s your buddy for life, and she’s not picky.  This too can be a beautiful quality in a dog as long as you don’t expect that dog to defend you or your property.  Sheena’s not that bright, but it’s OK.  She looks intimidating.  The poor kids over in the drunk and domestic apartments across from the body shop think she’s a wolf.  They can think that, especially if it keeps them out of the body shop lot and out of our yard.  Clara is the one they really need to be aware of even though she doesn’t look anything like a wolf.  They don’t know that Sheena is as harmless as harmless gets- docile, dim-witted, and the poor girl wore down her canine teeth to little stubbies and her incisors completely to the gum from cage-biting, since the inbred fools who used to have her had no idea how to care for a dog, but I won’t get into depth on that subject.  It still pisses me off to think of it.  Just because they bred with their sisters didn’t mean it was a good idea to do the same thing with their dogs, but again, I really don’t want to get into that.

The bottom line is I don’t blame the dog when someone gets dog-bit.  There are two reasons why anyone would get dog-bit.  One is owner mistreatment or neglect of the dog.  People who intentionally mistreat dogs and try to make their dogs mean and turn them against people and other dogs fit into a category including child molesters and rapists and other despicable individuals.  The other is if you are stupid enough to come into a dog’s domain when you’ve been warned- either the dog itself warns you, (most dogs would rather not attack you- they will give you a warning) or you enter into an area that is the dog’s territory.  Go ahead, jump my fence, or break into my house, and if Clara and Lilo have your ass for lunch, guess whose fault that is?  My dogs are not vicious. They are duly restrained and kept from situations in which they could be dangerous- unless you make a conscious effort to place your butt in their mouths.

I understand that people have intentionally bred for the tendency toward dog-aggression in certain Pit Bull lines.  I will even agree knowing that many Pitties tend toward dog-aggression that they be kept as “only dogs” or that they be raised together from earliest puppyhood with other dogs to mitigate that tendency, at least with members of their own packs.   Ultimately how safe a particular dog is depends on how the owner deals with that dog.  Individual dogs are as different as individual people, even though you can expect certain broad behavioral tendencies within certain breeds.   Responsible owners will have safer dogs. 

I will not say that any dog is 100% safe any more than I will say any human is 100% safe.  There is no such thing as a “safe” creature that is armed with 42 razor sharp teeth that are designed to rip and tear flesh, and that is three times stronger than a human pound for pound of body weight.   If I had to wager though, the dog’s behavior is going to be more reliable and predictable than any given human.  We are a far more violent species.  One’s safety (and the safety of children in one’s care) is dependent upon common sense.  Canine body language is not hard at all to read, and there are some common-sense rules to observe when dealing with any dog.

I love this pic, even though it is only a yawn.  There’s no aggression being shown here at all even though it could be taken that way out of context.  Clara has always had lovely teeth.  She is not an inherently aggressive dog, but she will protect me and she will defend her territory.  That’s what I expect her to do.  We do not use physical punishment to train our dogs- just a simple system of redirection, rewards and simply living with and building relationships with them.  They get a lot of activity and affection.

I know my opinion generally has all the gravitas of a popcorn fart- a lot of hot air and easily missed- but for what it’s worth I simply can’t stand it when people condemn any particular dog breed.  What they’re really saying is that they are too stupid and/or lazy to learn how to deal with dogs, and to have a healthy respect for what dogs are capable of. 

I’ve never been what anyone would call a clothes horse- for the most part I follow the “Three C’s” of clothing acquisition.  Is it Cheap?- not as in poor quality, but as in low price?  Thrift stores and garage sales rule for this very reason.  I don’t like to spend a lot of money on clothes.  Is it Comfortable?  If it itches, if it’s too tight, forget about it.  I’m too old to sacrifice comfort for vanity.  Does it Cover the essentials?  At my age, nobody really wants to see much skin.  As a courtesy to the rest of humanity, I try to make very sure that the essentials are covered.

Shoes are a whole different ball game.  I love shoes.  I wear an easy to fit size (unlike clothes, where the tops have to be one or two sizes bigger than the bottoms.) 99 times out of 100 if I order a 7B  shoe, it will fit.  I do have a high instep, so I have to be aware of that when I mail order shoes (I have to avoid certain boots and certain over the top of the foot styles) but for the most part it’s a wide open vista of foot fashions for me.  I must have over a 100 pairs of shoes and I freely admit it (most of them bought on clearance, but still.)   It is my vice.  At least they’re cheaper than cigarettes, won’t kill me, and are a damned sight more practical.  Never come between a cougar and her shoes!

Cultural Illiteracy, Road Tripping with Clara and Lilo, and Boxing?

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I should have known that Jerry’s co-workers would have absolutely no idea who Vincent Van Gogh was.  He works in a body shop after all.  Since I failed to make any reference to any redneck cultural icons, they didn’t get the joke.  If I had mentioned anything involving NASCAR, other sports, especially football, or country music, then I probably would  have been OK.  One of the guys asked Jerry if I had attempted to do a Mike Tyson on him.  I should have caught that.   Mike Tyson- as a heavy weight boxer, and boxing is a sport- would be much more likely to be in these guys’ frames of reference than a 19th century Impressionist painter would be.  Shame on me for my cultural illiteracy.  If I’m going to attempt to make a joke, I have to remember who my audience is.

I don’t really know a whole lot about boxing, (or about any sport) but it is one of the more interesting sports to watch.  I would never want to engage in boxing, wrestling, hockey or football or any other contact sport, as I had my ass kicked enough times in the first ten years of my life to last anyone a lifetime.  I’ve had my ass kicked enough to know that I don’t want it kicked again unless I have a damned good reason to fight.  Since my fighting skills are pretty much non-existent, I would have to say the only things that would get me into a physical fight would be self-defense, or attempting to defend someone else who is wrongfully getting a pounding.  Then I would be morally and ethically compelled to at least make the best attempt I can.  I don’t want to get my ass kicked for anything trivial.

I don’t mind watching other people beat the hell out of each other though, especially when they’ve agreed to do it.  Boxing is kind of fun to watch because the action doesn’t stop very often.  The rules make sense.  You win when you knock the other guy out.  I don’t see how boxing could be considered a sport one takes on for one’s health benefit though.  The training for boxing might consist of healthy things to do, but then you take that buff bod and go run out and get your ass kicked?  Perhaps this is the effect of testosterone on the brain, but women box too, so that can’t be the whole answer.

I was the loser in enough catfights in my time- courtesy of my oldest sister, the most sadistic child ever dropped on planet Earth- that I really don’t like watching women fight.  Unless of course they are yanking out each other’s hair weaves.  For some reason I think that’s funny.  My hair, back in the day, was of course, attached to my scalp, making the whole hair-pulling bit a hell of a lot more painful.

This afternoon I have to take Clara and Lilo up to the Vet.  Lilo has been mistaking her butt for food lately and I am at a loss as to why she is chewing on it.  Clara also has one bad spot on her leg which I think is another granuloma, but that I want to have the Vet check out since I am making the road trip.  Sheena is (thankfully) doing OK so she doesn’t need to go, and I wouldn’t tempt fate by trying to handle more dogs than I have hands at one time.

At least I’m getting out for a bit.  They like riding in the car and they both really don’t mind seeing the Vet so it should be an interesting afternoon.

All That Really Matters, a Crack in the Armor, and Leash Training

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Sheena is a beautiful dog, but she is as stubborn and willful as she is beautiful.  We decided (or should I say Jerry decided, because I am not at all hyper like he is in the evenings) to take the dogs out on leashes, which we haven’t done for some time.  Clara and Lilo were not too bad, although Clara always does better on a leash with her harness.  I should have taken the extra minute or two to put Clara in her harness.  I refuse to use choke chains or pinch collars on my dogs, although I’ve seen a lot of people who handle Malinois use choke chains or pinch collars to keep the dogs under better control.   Clara simply wants to run.  The aim is to get her to stay back and walk politely which she does when she knows she has the harness on and I can pull her back if I need to.  Lilo was her usual self, laid back and trotting along with her peculiar little bow-legged, sideways gait.  I wonder sometimes if she tracks sideways because she’s cross-eyed or because she’s bow-legged, or maybe a combination of both.

The few times I’ve had Sheena on her leash she has been relatively obedient for me.  She does surprisingly well in spite of her lack of socialization and formal training.  Then again, Sheena is a bit of a cling-on with me anyway, so that makes leash training, even with a conventional collar, a breeze.  Until Jerry takes her leash.

Sheena did not want to be on the leash with Jerry.  I can’t blame her.  I don’t like it either, and he only has me leashed in a figurative way.  I had Clara, and without her harness she was enough of a handful.  So Sheena decided that if she had to be with Jerry, she was simply going to sit and dig her big, splayed feet into the ground.  I never knew this about Huskies until we got Sheena.  They have huge, insulated, clompy paws that are reminiscent of polar bears’.  Sheena is a huge klutz on dry land, but surprisingly graceful on snow and ice.  Sheena, however, does not do anything Sheena does not want to do. It’s funny.  She’s just as stubborn as Jerry is.

Yesterday was a very pleasant day.  Steve-o got rid of that monstrosity of a hoopty Mitsubishi that I had been hoping he would do ever since he ended up with that piece of mess.  Somebody was even dumb enough to give him money for that POS, which I welcome, but fail to understand.   Now all I need to hear from him is that he’s spending his weeks keeping up his GPA, and his weekends cooking up that taco meat and shoveling it into those tacos and burritos.  I don’t want him to work at Taco Bell forever, but a few hours or so on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays- until  he finishes school- is not too much to ask.   If he could do 20 or 30 hours a week at $9 an hour, that would certainly help, and they don’t even have to train him because he’s worked there before.  Then he can worry about buying his own food and gasoline and cigarettes for a change.

Adding to yesterday’s pleasantness, I had an unexpected, but welcome, conversation with an old friend.  I still have a heart in there somewhere after all.  I know, I know, how things could have, should have been. Wish in one hand and crap in the other, which one fills up first- but it’s nice to know that old connection is still there, and that I do have at least one friend that is thicker than water.   Since my true friends are few and far between and delightfully rare, as I have said before, I should take care not to neglect them.

Memory and imagination both serve me well- probably too much so- but hearing a voice from the past and even engaging in surface-level pleasantries was a rare delight.  There are a lot of people I have to talk to and with out of necessity, but very few I enjoy talking with.  I hope sometime in the near future that we can talk in private over dinner and a drink rather than a little too publicly over the phone, but that might be a bit hard for me to take.  I would be the one in need of the leash instead of the dogs, and that’s not a place where I need to go.

Balance is the key word.  Usually I am quite the example of reserve and restraint, but it’s been a long time since- well, a lot of things- but I miss intelligent conversation the most.  I also miss being treated like a lady and not just someone’s housekeeper/babysitter/gofer/indentured servant.   There is something to be said for spending an evening in civilized conversation with a friend versus spending an evening effectively alone cranking up the MP3 player with the noise-cancelling headphones to drown out the lovely infernal racket of Drunk and Stupid meets Boxcar Willie. 

I have to be careful how far I let my mind wander, and I need to set some boundaries on just how much lingering in the garden of memory I’m allowed.  Still, there’s nothing like a bit of an oasis in a very hot, vast desert.

I have to find a balance between maintaining those relationships that challenge me and energize me (very few and far between) and tossing the albatrosses around my neck overboard.  I tend to forget when to toss the albatross.

I’m too old to start over even if I could, and whatever fiery passions of youth I once had are pretty well extinguished.  As the old joke says, “In my youth I wanted a nice BMW.” -” Today I’ll settle for it without the W. ” 

Besides, anyone interested in dinner and conversation with a crusty old cougar like me has likely long-since been relegated to the “coyote-style” crowd, so crossing the line in a carnal fashion is highly unlikely to occur.  It’s not as if I am still some horny teenager or twenty-something, and all of my friends are significantly older than me.   Hopefully the POMC is enjoying “Willie on Demand” while he can (even though in conscience I can’t approve of him fornicating) because there will come a day when Johnson won’t stand at attention any more. 

Unless of course, by the time Steve-o gets old, Medicare is still paying for geezers’ pecker pumps.  That would be his luck.

Dingleberry’s Doppleganger, Coyotes, the Tree Hugger Manifesto, and Passive-Aggressive Vindication

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First, a disclaimer.  Jerry (first pic) is NOT Mexican or Hispanic in any way, is 53, not 43, and has never been anywhere near San Jose in his life.  I think the furthest west he’s ever been in his entire life is Indianapolis.  I think he has been to Florida a couple of times, but he’s no regular traveler by any measure.  This being said, in spite of his ancestry (one or two English people- and a lot of Cherokee Indians) he bears a downright frightening resemblance to Mr. Arias pictured in the missing kids hotline ad. 

I’ve gotten my passive-aggressive vindication for the day.

I am glad once I encountered Jerry whilst he was sober he admitted that getting rid of my car is not a viable option to save on household expenses.  I could pinch pennies here and there but my penny pinching would likely be counter productive at the end of the day.  I’m not giving up bathing, shaving, other superfluous hair removal, or hair color.  Nor am I giving up my nails.

I thought about some of the tree-hugger suggestions to conserve resources.  I am thrifty by nature (and almost to a fault at times, out of necessity) which is in agreement with some of the tree-hugger suggestions.  I consolidate errands.  I try to reduce, recycle and reuse when doing so saves me a buck, and it usually does.  I drive the most fuel-efficient  conventional gasoline internal combustion car available (can’t afford a hybrid- neither the initial cost nor the higher maintenance costs, same goes with diesel- too expensive to maintain) today.  However, I can see where some of the tree-hugger manifesto items prove either impractical or too expensive which sort of defeats the purpose.  I can understand the concept of living better with less- that’s just common sense and good strategy.  I draw the line at such things as:

1. Bury your car. 

   Over my dead body.

14. Spend a month tree-sitting.

   Outside with all the bugs, exposed to the sun where my Super White, melanin-free skin tone will turn to blisters, freckles and splotches within minutes?  Bug bites and skin cancer?  I think not.

30. Go to jail for something you believe in.

   Last time I checked, my beliefs (though unpopular in some circles) and activities are not illegal.  Therefore I would have no need, or desire, to go to jail for anything.

31. Don’t own pets.

   WTF????? I think that would be worse than the tree-hugger suggestion to not have kids.  Besides, we humans domesticated these animals.  We are responsible for caring for them- including neutering or spaying our own pets to keep populations in line.

44. Stop using toilet paper or Kleenex, use washable cloth.

  WTF again!  Once I’ve wiped my nether regions with it I don’t want it back even if it has been washed and Clorox’d, which sort of defeats the “saving resources” idea, eh?

47. Democratize your workplace, start a union or collective.

   Unions destroyed my hometown. I can go on ad nauseam on that one, believe it.  Granted, there’s no air pollution there any more, but there are also no jobs.  What point is having a pristine environment when everyone has to move somewhere else in order to work and sustain themselves?  Why did all the Ohio manufacturing jobs end up in southern Right to Work states? 

49. Liberate a zoo.

  Sure…and let’s see how those exotic animals from tropical climes fare here in the Central Ohio swamp– oh I mean, wetlands– against the mercurial weather changes we have here- not to mention the voracious appetites of native coyotes. Canis latrans is in no danger of extinction here anytime soon, even without any tree-hugger assistance.  Liberating the zoos would give the coyotes a few days’ bonus chow, but they really aren’t hurting for grub to begin with.

Sometimes the tree-huggers make some sense, but other times they display the impractical vapid and uninformed idealism of small children.  Who hasn’t heard little kids say such silly things as “Why can’t two boys get married,?” or “When I grow up I’ll never take a bath again.”  Usually kids wise up as they grow up- they learn that in order to procreate one needs involve the opposite sex, and that bathing is one of those means to gain entry into polite society.

Part of the extreme tree-hugger syndrome in my opinion is a refusal to grow up.  The world is not Sesame Street, and even on Sesame Street (I’m amazed I can remember this far back) Bert and Ernie were not married, and they did take baths. 

So there. 

Now that freaking “Rubber Ducky” song is stuck in my head. Damn.

The element that is missing in all the “Save the World” rhetoric is balance.  The reality is that society has not developed a working, viable substitute for the petroleum-fueled internal combustion engine. I don’t say this because my livelihood is in the automotive industry.  There are alternative systems and alternative fuels in development, and I’ll be glad to see it, especially if they involve renewable resources, but they are not commercially viable yet.  This being stated the practical and balanced approach to the oil question should be: obtain, refine and distribute petroleum products using the most cost-effective and environmentally sound methods that are available and practical.  It CAN be done and should have been done years ago.  It is a matter of national security- sorry, tree-huggers- that domestic oil reserves need to be accessed NOW regardless of the litigation happy NIMBYs who whine and cry about it. 

As far as natural selection goes for all you strict Darwinists out there, species have come and gone long before humanity and will come and go long after humans go the way of the dinosaurs.  The species that survive are those who adapt, like Central Ohio coyotes.  I don’t think oil drilling will disturb the coyotes one bit.  Nor will it disturb the hawks or turkey buzzards or the squirrels and chipmunks.  There are species that will go extinct regardless if humans intervene or not- but many species have become far more successful because of humans.  I can think of a few:

Canis lupus familiaris  (easy one- domestic dogs)

Felis domestica (another easy one- house cats)

Rattus norvegicus (not so easy- sewer rats)

Mus musculus (house mice)

Columba livia (pigeons- the “flying rats” of urban lore)

Procyon lotor (raccoons)

Pediculus humanus, also Pthirus pubis (head lice and body “crabs”)

Periplaneta americana (American cockroaches)

and of course, our coyote friends, Canis latrans.

It’s “Be Thankful It Isn’t Any Worse” Day!

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With a tip of the hat to my fellow cynics and assorted other ne’er-do-wells like me, I’ve come to the conclusion that I should set aside a day to be thankful that things aren’t any worse.  For instance, if for some bizarre reason I were single and decided to troll the wonderful world of online dating, something like the above picture would be bound to show up, less the dog of course, as the dog would be his only redeeming feature.  I can just imagine the troll that some dating service would inevitably choose for me would actually look somewhat like the fashion-challenged ginger above, but would have a profile picture that looks something like this:

So much for truth in advertising. Of course, if he really did look like this, he’d have to be gay.  Straight men are never that hot.  So I should be grateful that Jerry is not nearly hot looking enough to be gay.  We all know what happened to the ugly gay guy. He had to date girls.

I am also thankful that I am sitting here in beautiful Central Ohio.  The weather here usually sucks to some degree, in some sort of way, but one thing we don’t get here are tsunamis.  If there were ever to be a tsunami massive enough to hit Columbus, rest assured that most of the rest of the world has been knocked out too.  We do get floods (frequently, but localized) and tornados, and snow storms on a regular basis, which can be bad enough, but even in the worst of the recent Downtown floods, I’ve never seen anyone in German Village floating on their house ten miles out at sea.  Granted, the Great Flood of 1913 was really bad, see the pics here , but that was before the Army Corps of Engineers built the series of dams and reservoirs on the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers.  I have seen Infiniti Q45s towed in filled up to the belt moldings (where the window glass meets the door) with poo-filled sewer water, and a whole shipment of used Corollas acquired in a rather shady auction deal with bizarre electrical problems and shift consoles packed in flood mud, but that’s pretty piddly compared to what’s going on in Japan.

There can be earthquakes in the Midwest, but generally the Central Ohio area is a geologically stable zone.  We likely wouldn’t get severe damage if the New Madrid Fault were to generate earthquakes as it did in 1895.  It would, however, really suck anywhere along the Mississippi or Ohio Rivers.

At least I’ve not gotten motivated to get these memos (yet):

I haven’t descended into that dark a level of depravity.  It would be fun to see the expressions on certain people’s faces should they receive such a memo though.

I am thankful for flush toilets and for not having to use them outside.  The thought of having to use an old time latrine or outhouse like we had to do at the Girl Scout camp is downright frightening.  There’s something most off-putting about having to a.) use a flashlight to get to the latrine, then once you find the latrine you have to b.) shine the flashlight in and around the hole to check for unauthorized insect, arachnid and reptile life, and c.) smell the acrid stench of hundreds of other people’s decomposing urine and feces.   To add fuel to that fire, I’ve not entirely overcome my fear of flying and crawling insects or wayward arachnids.  Reptiles never really bothered me, probably because there aren’t very many venomous species in Central Ohio.  Usually on the rare occasion anyone happened upon a snake, it was a small, harmless garter snake.  There are copperheads and rattlesnakes, but both copperheads and rattlesnakes are fairly rare and are found mostly down south.  Nothing terrified me more as a child (and everything terrified me) than flying, stinging insects.  I hated them- bees, wasps, hornets, anything with wings and a stinger- and there is no shortage of any winged stinging insect around here in summer, especially mosquitoes- believe that.  I can thank my sisters for that hyped-up terror, as they found it most amusing to throw flying, stinging insects in my hair.  

I’m thankful that not too many people would find it amusing to throw live wasps in my hair today.  Cougardom has its advantages.  So does short hair.

I’m thankful I don’t drink anymore, therefore I am not subject to hangovers.   I am still subject to Jerry’s “drunk and stupids” followed by the sappy, lingering,  pathos of his hangovers, but there is humor to be found in that, so it’s a wash.

I am also thankful that there will soon be a day when we no longer have to hear about Obama.

I am thankful that there will be a day when Steve-o is out of school, gainfully employed and fully financially independent of the parental units.  The sad part about that is he will probably move down South and then I’ll only see him on holidays.  But that will give me an excuse for a road trip and somewhere to go on vacation, so that has its advantages as well.   I might not be terribly averse to retirement in the South, as long as he doesn’t move into some backwater holler straight out of Deliverance.   I like living in the city despite the crowds and traffic.  You can find things like food and medical care and employment a whole hell of a lot easier in the city.

I don’t get to travel and stay in hotels, therefore I don’t have bedbugs.

I have three nice warm dogs who love me even when everyone else on the planet is screwing me over.  I think I saved the best for last.

Mortality, cont., Simple Thanks, “Sin Boldly,” and Whatever I Fear

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I know it might be considered a bit morbid to troll about in old cemeteries.  As a kid cemeteries used to scare the living hell out of me (along with just about everything else, so go figure) but today I find certain cemeteries to be particularly serene.  In spite of the “buy one get one free” sign in front of the cemetery (Chapel Heights Memorial Gardens) where my grandparents are buried, it’s actually a very peaceful place to hang out.  People fish in the creek that runs in front of the cemetery which could be seen as irreverent by some, but I don’t think my grandparents would mind.  They always enjoyed fishing.

I’ve always loved willow trees.  This is the view of the creek that runs in the front of the Chapel Heights Memorial Gardens.  The peculiar thing about Chapel Heights, as far as cemeteries go, is that the only grave markers they allow are simple flat ones- like Grandpa’s Army marker. There are no obelisks, or statues, or ostentatious carvings. From a distance it simply looks like a park.  The beauty there is more natural than historical.   When the weather improves some (but before the mosquitoes take over) I will need to take another roadtrip up there to just sit and hang out for an afternoon.

My favorite cemetery (now that does sound morbid, but what the hey) from a historical perspective, is the Marion Cemetery – right across from the Harding Memorial on SR 423. The Merchant Ball is there, and you can see where it rotates on its base even though no one can explain how or why it does.   Some of the best examples I have seen of maudlin Victorian era gravestones anywhere are in the Marion Cemetery.  I have taken pics of a few of them (the one at the top of this page is one of my favorites) but I don’t have enough space in my memory card for all the really good ones.  I could literally spend a week in there wandering about and taking pics of cool old Victorian headstones.   There must have been a lot of people in Marion back in the day with a LOT of scratch to spend on their dead relatives from the looks of the monuments in the Marion Cemetery.  Today the place is so poor I’m surprised that anyone who dies now gets a burial or a grave marker at all.  If I would have to make an educated guess, cremation has probably become the dispatch method of choice for the dead, simply for the cost effectiveness.  From another practical viewpoint, I have to wonder about the wisdom of burying dead people in a reclaimed swamp.  Burying people in the ground- even in concrete vaults and steel coffins- doesn’t strike me as being terribly sanitary considering the high amount of rainfall and the poor drainage that is inherent to Marion County- and the rest of Central Ohio.

I am thankful the dryer works.  It can dry a large load in about 90 minutes which is encouraging.  90 minutes is a lot faster than 3 hours plus.   It feels good to have the laundry caught up. It is a relief to know that if I want to wash the dogs, or wash all the living room quilts that cover the furniture, I can.   I washed my bed sheets and blankets yesterday.  Since the dogs like to sleep in the beds I have to wash everything often, otherwise it ends up covered in hair and smelling like dog funk.  I’m glad that Lilo is really the only one of the three that ever gets much of a funk to her.  Clara has almost no odor, likely because of her short coat and sparse undercoat.  Sheena I can’t really explain.  She should reek to high heaven with her thick undercoat,  (Heidi and Kayla were purebred GSDs- and they both reeked no matter how often they were bathed) but for a dog with such a thick coat Sheena is remarkably clean-smelling. 

As far as my ongoing quest to live authentically (which is how I understand Martin Luther’s instruction to “sin boldly”- here is a link to a better theological understanding of that instruction) I can only appeal to the grace of God to overcome my fear.  I can only trust that He will give me the courage and the discernment to do the right thing- and the forgiveness I inevitably need when I screw up.

I’d like to have a spontaneous and unfettered approach to life.  Not being dead broke all or most of the time would help, which would require me to (somehow) get Jerry to pay for his fair share of things instead of just footing the bill myself because I know he throws major fits every time I request money.  He can go to the hell hole and blow hundreds of dollars and to him that’s quite fine, but if Steve-o needs $50 to pay his electric bill and I don’t have it, it’s a Federal case.  Jerry can be generous when he wants to be, (especially to his family, except Steve-o of course) but he simply doesn’t get it. No matter what method I use to explain it to him- spreadsheets, calendars, letting him see my bank statement, etc. he just doesn’t get it that I’m not randomly blowing money on frivolous and unnecessary things (such as beer, cigarettes or gambling, but I digress.) 

One time when I asked him for money because I was dead broke after paying the car insurance, he actually accused me of having an illicit drug habit!  I don’t.  I can’t even drink with the medical issues I have. Most of the illicit drugs out there would probably kill me outright.  He should thank God I’ve never been into crystal or the white powder, or I’d probably ripped his head off and shit down his neck hole years ago.    

Technically one could say that I do have a “drug habit” – but all the drugs I take are prescribed by my Dr.- and are pretty much essential to keep me vertical and above ground.  Otherwise I wouldn’t bother with expensive (though non-frivolous) things like blood pressure meds and insulin.  It’s not like I have the Dr. write me scripts for high dollar face Nair and that stuff that’s supposed to make your eyelashes grow.  (WTF?)  I simply don’t make enough money to pay for everything – stuff like car payments, the exorbitant amounts for various insurances, scripts, groceries, gasoline, etc. and so on- for both of us.  If I did have enough money to pay for it all, believe me, I wouldn’t ask.  I would just pay and keep my mouth shut.

I do draw the line at a few of Jerry’s vices.  I refuse to buy his beer, smokes, or to support his gambling habit. 

In his favor he does pay his own truck payment, and he has to buy his own beer, smokes and lottery tickets. 

Very few things terrify me and stress me out more than arguments about money.  I’ve never been a person of means, and I’ve had to scrape and pinch and rob Peter to pay Paul my entire life.  My parents were never people of means either.  Their most heated and (verbally) violent arguments were always centered around money and (almost always) the lack thereof.  Nothing would send Dad into a rage quicker than anything involving money.   I can’t blame him.  There were times when we were growing up when he had to make the choice between paying the mortgage and utilities or buying food or medical care. 

As a kid I remember weeks of eating pretty much nothing but Cream of Wheat or no-name Mac & Cheese to get by because there was no money for food.  I remember going without things like glasses or dental visits for years at a time, because there was no money in our household for preventive care. Before I could drive it really didn’t matter if I had glasses or contacts or not, so I just dealt with it.  Ignoring my health is likely how I ended up with rheumatic fever too, (you get it from untreated strep infections) because it came to a point when I would refuse to tell anyone I was sick, and I’d even try to deny it even if I was clearly deathly ill.  I knew they couldn’t afford the Dr. visit or whatever scripts he might prescribe- and I didn’t want to hear their fight about how much it cost and how they don’t have the money after the fact.  Now I have permanent heart valve and joint damage.

I should know better at this point in my life.  It’s not about lack of money, but how “household” money is being used.  Right now Jerry pretty much pays his truck payment and sustains his own vices and thinks that’s all he needs to do- while I’m footing the bill for Steve-o,  as well as Jerry’s scripts, Jerry’s food, all the insurances, etc. he insists on having even though it’s overkill, and so on. 

I am dead afraid of letting him get a taste of reality because I know he will do anything he can to punish me for it.

Why I am browbeating myself for expecting Jerry to act like an adult and take responsibility for his fair share is beyond me.  I’m glad he bought the dryer, because I really despise crunchy clothing and I’m not going to the laundromat, but in perspective, that dryer cost less than one month of all the various life insurance that gets deducted out of my checking account- on his insistence- every month.  The dryer is also a replacement for the one I bought for $350 back in 2000 that he has had the use of for the past 11 years, if you really wanted to play tit-for-tat.

I don’t think I owe him obeisance for anything.  For all intents and purposes I kiss his ass to keep the peace- but I of all people should know that feeding alligators only makes them hungrier.  Appeasement is Obama’s foreign policy and it’s not working for him either.

I know what I’m doing.  I don’t like it, but I need to find the courage to change it.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (Yeah, Right…)

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Cooking, I don’t mind.  I am a good cook, thanks to both of my grandmothers (God rest their souls) and the fact that I did the cooking and cleaning at home from the time I was 12, when Mom had her bad back injury and couldn’t do much of anything for several months.  I sort of ended up responsible for meals and laundry and cleaning by default.  My sisters were pretty much always out either playing sports or socializing.  Since I was forbidden both by health issues and by abysmal coordination from participation in any type of organized sport, having a good excuse for getting out of the house was a lot more difficult for me.  I couldn’t actually live at the library even though I spent plenty of time there. 

As an aside, I truly wonder if my heart valve damage would have been bad enough to make me drop dead from playing basketball like that poor kid in Michigan.  Is a “sports physical” for middle school or high school sports really anything more than simply checking to make sure you can breathe and have a pulse?  If that’s all that’s done, I probably could have passed a “sports physical” had I attempted it (not that I would!) because my valve defects are not always audible.   Even if I would have kept my mouth shut about having heart valve damage from rheumatic fever and went through gym class in spite of having the Doctor’s Note (oh, thank God for the Doctor’s Note that released me from that humiliation) would it really have made a difference?  I’d probably sat on the bench most if not all the time anyway.  I should have asked the cardiologist who did my echocardiogram back in 2001, just for my own personal curiosity.  I’ve been warned about getting my heart rate too high because I have an irregular heart beat and I’ll pass out- but I’m allowed to do all the swimming, walking and bike riding I want.  Unless I pass out, that is.

I didn’t do too much socializing either, other than avoiding getting my ass kicked, until I got a car.  Having a car- even one as distressed as that poor Subaru DL- afforded me both protection and people to party with, which was nice.   I am thankful for spending a good part of my teen years learning how to cook, fry, stew, bake, and make decent gravy. When it comes to acquiring Life Skills, nothing facilitates learning like being tossed in the trenches.  I know when I moved out Dad really missed those home-cooked meals.  Taco Bell just isn’t the same.

Cleaning is not one of my favorite things by a long shot.  There’s something about being awakened to way too many of Mom’s late night cleaning frenzies that has put me off of power scrubbing forever.  Especially because she is one of those types who worries about the crap you can’t see.  I am not going to lose sleep over dust bunnies under furniture, dog hair under the carpet, or that sort of thing.  I like clean laundry, a clean bathroom and kitchen and relatively clean floors, but I don’t have to Clorox the entire house every other day like she used to do.   I have a job and a life.  I also have dogs.  Large dogs.  Large dogs with hair.  The only time the dog hair issue really gets disgusting is in Spring and Fall when they blow their coats.  Sheena for some reason- probably due to the stress of her spay/partial mastectomy surgery- blew her coat in January, so I don’t anticipate her Spring blowout to be terribly severe.  Lilo is always an adventure because of her intense hatred for either bathing or brushing.  Thankfully she doesn’t have a really outrageously thick coat like Sheena does.  Clara’s seasonal coat blowings are barely even noticeable (gotta love that Malinois coat) and even if she were a heavy shedder, she adores being de-haired with the blade.

For those unfamiliar with the use of the shedding blade, it’s not cruel.  It’s actually a Godsend for short-to-medium haired dogs.  You glide the serrated edge of the blade with the grain of the dog’s coat, and all the loose undercoat, etc. is just peeled right off.  If Clara had her way, I could brush her out with the blade for hours on end.  The blade does not work well with long haired dogs, or dogs with heavy undercoats, such as GSDs.  GSDs, Huskies, Chows- (i.e. Sheena and Lilo…)-heavy coated medium haired dogs- require the rake.  That sounds like a cruel implement too, but it’s not.  It just digs deeper in the coat to remove all the loose undercoat.

Sheena is quite fine with being raked out, which is nice, because she has that ungodly wooly Husky undercoat.  Lilo also has a thick undercoat but she is incredibly body sensitive so I let Jerry go after her with the rake, and with the bathing.  None of our dogs like water.  I find it funny when we take the dogs near any body of water.  They all avoid getting wet, as if the water was hot acid, especially Lilo.  That is particularly amusing – our dogs cautiously avoiding the water- as we watch other people helplessly getting dragged into the drink by their Labradors.   Never take a Labrador to a body of water unless you are planning on either you or the dog or both getting wet. 

Sometimes the girls just plain get gamey. In spite of their dislike of water they must be bathed on occasion, which inevitably ends up with me, a boat load of towels, and the entire bathroom being thoroughly saturated. (Another reason why I need a working dryer!)  Clara tolerates her bath.  Clara is compliant, but she doesn’t like anything to do with getting wet, and she’s very glad when it’s done.   Sheena is mildly uncooperative with her bath and requires a little elbow grease to keep her contained.  Lilo positively despises being bathed, and has to be physically picked up and placed in the tub, but the last time I was able to keep her under control and get her reasonably clean. 

This is the reason why I never, ever touch the undersides of tables or desks- or the sides of bathroom stalls for that matter.  I remember way too many study halls in high school watching the gross kids scrape their boogers under the ledge of the desk. 

We had a particularly sadistic English teacher (thankfully he wasn’t smart enough to teach AP English, so I never had him for class) who was also a wrestling coach.  When he monitored study halls he liked to slam books on the desks to wake anyone who thought about sleeping.  I wonder if he quit or if he was fired for (allegedly) knocking up those cheerleaders.  That was back before DNA technology could scientifically pin him down as The Baby Daddy, as opposed to being maybe one chance in five, so I would assume the former.  I doubt if those dingbats even knew for themselves who the baby daddies really were.  The key to blaming one guy for being The Baby Daddy is to only do the horizontal mambo with one guy- unless you’re up for DNA tests on Montel, which was not possible back in the mid 1980’s.

I usually occupied myself by reading or drawing on the rare occasions my schedule allowed me a study hall.  I was very good at hiding my National Lampoons and MAD magazines inside of Scientific American (which I also read) or other serious-sounding techie type magazines, to enjoy throughout a mind-numbingly boring study hall if I wasn’t already in the middle of a Stephen King novel or other “recreational reading.”  Teachers generally left me alone as they just assumed I was reading above their heads (sometimes I was) and therefore was not into “contraband.”  I liked humor and smut as much as the next person. Unlike other people who were too stupid to change the covers on risque books, I got away with reading them whenever I wanted.  I read anything I could get my hands on, but even with a collection of smutty literature that would have made a trucker blush if it were illustrated, I could not completely ignore the depraved humanity around me.  The sight of assorted unwashed losers picking, examining, and then scraping their big slimy greenies under the desks is still enough, even after all these years, to keep me from touching anything under a ledge with my bare hands.

Appliance FAIL, Older, but Not Dead Just Yet, and Clean Clothes Rule

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I really don’t know of a suitable requiem for a clothes dryer- it was 11 years old after all- but mine finally took its final puke yesterday.  Of course, with a full load of wet clothes in it. So guess who got to hang up various items all over the basement in the hopes that they will dry before they mildew.  The good news is when I came home tonight everything was dry and not mildewed- but stiff as a board because the clothing items were denied their tumble dry with the dryer sheet.  Nothing like crunchy undies.  Jerry’s going to bitch about that!

The dryer had been singing its swan song for some time.  About three months ago we put a new bearing in the drum and that helped for awhile, but for the past two or three weeks the drum would barely turn.  Then the spring on the belt idler pulley came off and the drum would not turn at all .  Jerry managed to get it back on.  It ran for about another ten minutes, then the belt broke and the pulley assembly more or less disintegrated.  The drum won’t turn, and without replacing the pulley assembly, the belt and assorted other goodies it’s not going to.  By the time I order the parts and fart around with it yet again, I might as well buy a new one.

I have to do shit tons of laundry around here between Jerry, the dogs, and the fact that I am totally anal about having clean clothes and bedding at all times.  As I have told Steve-o many times, if you wore it and it’s not been washed, it’s dirty.  No sniffing the crotch to see if it passes the “smell test” or anything like that.  You wore it, whether I can smell the funk or not, it smells like your bits and pits, and it needs washing.  If it’s bad enough for me to smell the body odor funk- with my seriously impaired sense of smell- it probably needs Clorox’d and/or burned.  The only thing I want to smell on clothing is the slight hint of Febreze and/or fabric softener.

I did the laundromat thing for five years which was five years too long.  I am not doing the laundromat thing again.  Especially these days when it is not safe for a woman to be out after dark anywhere for any reason, let alone while nice and vulnerable schlepping laundry baskets about.

I finally got some better pics of Sheena.  She is not that enthused about having her picture taken so I have to sneak them. She has a lovely coat.

I’m older, not necessarily wiser, but at least I don’t look like President Ford in drag. Yet.

That’s what really got me about this painting, although Quinten Massys- the artist responsible for it- died in 1530.

People didn’t bathe very much in the 16th century. Queen Elizabeth I was quoted to say that she bathed once a month whether she needed it or not.  For the time she was considered a frequent bather.  One could only imagine the pits and bits funk on Renaissance period clothing. No wonder they all had the lice and fleas and God knows what sorts of parasites and critters living in and on them.  The royalty and nobility would have smelled worse than dingleberries on a goat’s ass.  Just imagine the common people who lived in the streets and probably never bathed or changed clothes.  Nasty.

I need a new dryer in the worst way.  Just thinking about not being able to do laundry makes me want to wash everything in the house again and to be able to dry it in the dryer with a dryer sheet so it isn’t crunchy.

 

Need clean clothes…soft clean clothes….

Who Wants to Go to Dog Shit Lake? Springtime in Central Ohio, Sort Of

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This weekend it is finally supposed to be above freezing here in lovely Central Ohio.  I know only too well what that means here in Whine Country.  My back yard, which is currently encased in layers of ice and yellow snow, will be transformed.  It will become Dog Shit Lake. 

We have a fairly large back yard, but we also have three large dogs.  The back yard has not thawed out since some time last November.  When it does thaw I know exactly what I will encounter, and it neither looks nor smells good. 

The problem with picking up after the dogs during the winter is that the poo is hiding beneath the snow and ice.  Since it’s hot when it hits the ground (fun fact: normal body temperature for a dog is 101.6 degrees F) dog poo melts through the snow and settles on the ground.  Then additional layers of snow and ice freeze over it so that it is impossible to see.  The dog poo only becomes visible again as the snow- and the poo itself- melts, leaving a noxious cocktail of thawed snow and partially melted, soggy turds.

I’m not shoveling that up.  It really doesn’t help to shovel it anyway, because even if you get the big pieces, you’re not going to get the melty poo water, so it’s still going to reek.

Ahh, the delight of spring in Central Ohio.  The pisser is that even a few days’ thaw is not really spring.  It’s just enough to get the young kids to go back to wearing tank tops and flip flops, but it’s only mid-February.  It will get cold and go back to permafrost for a time or two more at the very least, and the possibility of extended freezing temperatures extends well into April and sometimes even May.

I have to wonder whose dogs are eating in the bathroom.  I know some dogs have a taste for toilet water, and no dog alive will refuse the opportunity to snarf down cat shit should it be made accessible, but one really has to wonder.  I wonder if the author of the note understood that “canine” refers to dogs.  Infestations are usually attributed to pests or vermin such as insects, rats or mice.  Obviously I don’t regard dogs as being pests or vermin, but who knows?  Maybe this person thought “canine” refers to squirrels or rats or some other sort of critter.

Theoretically it could be said that the human gene pool is suffering from a huge infestation of stupid people.  That’s not a nice thing to say, but not everything that’s true is always nice. For anyone who hasn’t already noticed, I am NOT politically correct by any stretch of the imagination.

Sometimes the obvious must be made painfully clear, however, can we assume that a person who needs a sign to be warned not to drink urinal water may not necessarily be literate?  What good is a warning if you can’t read the sign?

Some things should be common sense, but common sense isn’t terribly common anymore. 

Not whizzing on the electric fence sounds like a good idea, no?   There is also an educational song (though the video for some reason shows scenes from Lion King) to remind people of the hazards of tinkling in bad places.  The scary part about Ren and Stimpy is that the older that cartoon series gets the more intelligent they appear to be.

Perhaps in a thousand years, if there is any human society left, they might view such downright stupid humor in the same reverent light as we view the literary works of Shakespeare or Emerson or Faulkner.

Ren!  Enlighten us with your wisdom!  Stimpy!  Share with us your awesome brain!

In a thousand years I won’t be around to witness the madness and depravity that humanity will have devolved into, which is probably a good thing.