Marriages

My parents were married on this day in 1950. They had 51 anniversaries together before they died, less than 3 months apart, in 2002. I've been ambivalent about their marriage for many years. Was it remarkable that they were together for 51 years? Yes. Was it good for each of them? I'm not so sure about that.

My parents had 6 kids, all of whom survive to this day. My mom said she felt she probably had some miscarriages in between my next older sister and me -- given that she had her first three daughters at 17 month intervals, and I was born 51 months after that, it seems likely that she is correct. I don't know if they meant to have a lot children or if that is just the way things played out. This was the 1950s and early 60s, so it's not like they were all that unusual in the number of kids they had.

Six kids were a lot of work and pressure, though. My parents were the first generation in their families to go to college. Heck, my grandfather's wish was that my father finish high school. Thanks to WWII and the GI bill, my parents went to college, where they met and married. Their goal was to give each of their children a college education. They paid tuition, room & board; we paid for books, transportation home, and other expenses of college life. All but one completed bachelors degrees, and the last chose to quit school after 3 years since he really didn't like it.

I think this goal is a major part of why my father became an alcoholic, as his increasing use of alcohol seemed to tie to increasing number of kids at or approaching college age. For two and a half years, he had 3 kids in college, on one engineer's salary. I can understand why this pressure would drive him to drinking. He also changed jobs a few times, including the time he quit his old job with no new one arranged and a few months before he had two kids in college. I was there when he told my mom he'd quit, and I had never seen her turn so white or rigid. I was only 11, and my parents did not really discuss finances with us, so I didn't really understand the situation.

My mother later developed an extremely vituperative tongue when it came to my father, and most people for that matter. She could only see the negative and would bitch until the cows came home and about how the cows came home once they were home.

I was talking with my SIL one time about my parents (her father also was an alcoholic). We agreed that my mother had cause for her bitterness, esp. since my father was nasty-tongued to family when drinking, but that either of us would find drinking necessary to live with my mother at that point in her life.

Because they were so miserable together, I often wished, especially as an adult, that my parents would divorce and create new lives for themselves. I think around the 30-year mark would've been a good time for this. Kids would be either grown or in college, so less disrupted. Parents would've been roughly 60 with reasonable health (for alcoholics) left.

They stayed together and miserable for many more years. My father got sober in 1987 but was drinking again by 1995. My siblings and I, sans spouses and children, got together in 2000 to take my parents to dinner for their 50th anniversary. I had mixed emotions about participating since I didn't see the 50 years as something to celebrate. I showed up, though. My brother arranged a small banquet hall for the 8 of us, but my father said he didn't feel well and didn't go. We weren't sure if he was feeling sick because we had been at their apartment most of the day, so he hadn't been able to get to his alcohol or what the deal was. His absence allowed my mother to choose to drink, which could get ugly, too. It was a nice enough dinner, and I caught an early morning flight out which allowed me to get home in time to run my dog in an agility trial that afternoon (my parents lived in ET, I live in PT zone).

Even now, I feel they would have been better off divorced.

Adventures in Bicycle Land

I took my bike out for a spin this evening. First, I start out heading west in the late evening, so the sun is in my eyes and in the eyes of any motorist coming up behind me. That makes me nervous. I don't want to be out after dark, so I can't be out too long. My usual quick route (about 5 miles round trip) has shoulders on it much of the way, but they are sometimes sloped for drainage rather than riding.

It's St. Joe's Sausage Fest weekend, which is a big event in this town. People are parked in MY cycling shoulder for about a quarter mile each direction, so I'm riding more in the roadbed than bikes usually do in that stretch. I also have to keep a sharp eye out for parked cars either pulling out or having their doors open into my space or their once and future occupants stepping out in front of me.

I'm still working on my shifting and getting the gear levers back to the level of functionality they had 11 years ago. I can't remember how one numbers bike gears -- do they increase with the size of the gear or are they inversely related? Anyway, the rear gear lever is happy to go larger gears but sometimes takes 2 or 3 tries to shift to a smaller gear. The front gear has developed a charming habit. It is happy to shift from small to middle and mostly okay shifting from middle to large, although it sometimes tries to hold in the half-middle, half large mode which is rather noisy. What it won't do right now is shift from large to middle. It will bypass middle and go directly to small. I can feel a slight double click, but they're too close to prevent the 2nd shift. Why is this bad? Because I go from pedaling at a normal rate to spinning madly because the small gear is way too easy. The bike shop guys tell me the best thing to do about my funky gear shifts are to shift as often as possible in the hopes of clearing the internal springs of their hardened internal lubricant.

Not knowing what gear you'll be in when you shift adds to the excitement of early evening riding with parked cars and pedestrians. It also is slowing down my learning curve. My previous bike had 12 gears, of which I used 10. This bike has 24 gears, and I think I can use 22 of them. It's not a linear progression, though, where one uses front gear A and runs through rear gears 1-8 with increasing difficulty, then shifts to gear B in front and picks up where one left off with the difficulty and the rear gearing, and so on onto gear C in front. No, different combinations are interspersed. I can't learn these easily if I don't know what gear I'm going to be in with any given shift.

Anyway, I still love this bike, even after all these years. I need to get chain cleaner and lube now, to help her love me, too.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

--My sitbones are accepting my bike. I no longer wish to scream or yelp when I sit on the bike. That took less than 20 miles in 3 sessions, so pretty quick.

--I walked the dogs this morning and came home to find two slugs entwined in passionate embrace hanging from the wall next to the front door. They had some sort of extruded body parts entwined and were hanging from that, in addition to being entwined in the main body. I wasn't up for PDA, so I knocked them off the wall and into the dirt. I feel a little bad about the dirt covering on that extruded, slimy-looking bodypart, but I'll skip picking them up and washing them off.

--My current theory on hypocritical lawmakers who vote against legal marriage, etc. for non-heterosexuals but turn out to be homosexual themselves is that they are afraid the gays and lesbians will take marriage seriously thus reducing the number of people available for extra-marital liaisons for said hypocritical lawmakers.

--Sleek's leaking is not as bad as I had feared it would be after yesterday's dogfood mixup.

Bad Dog-Mom Moment

I think I mixed up the dogs' food this morning. I think Fluff got Sleek's, and Sleek Fluff's. I try to have a double-redundancy where the bowls are different from one another and I fix the food always with Fluff's bowl on the left. I always put Sleek's bowl down first, then I walk across the kitchen to where Fluff eats. Today I noticed I was putting down what is usually Sleek's bowl in Fluff's place. Did I mix up the bowls before fixing the food or did I put the wrong bowl in the wrong place?

For most of their lives, this would not be a big deal. Unfortunately, Sleek is on a bunch of supplements for her heart and to help her deal with urinary incontinence. If she misses a round of the incontinence stuff, the results tend to show up quickly and drippily. Judging from the floor after I left for a couple of hours, they got the wrong bowls. Sadly, it usually takes Sleek's bladder a couple of days to get back in shape. Laundry, here I come!

Oh My

One fixed bike.
One five-mile ride.

I now know where my sit bones are. On the bike seat or off, I know where they are....

(why is that fat I put on my hips of absolutely no use in this situation?)

Bike

Eleven years ago (about 4 months before Fluff came into my life) I bought a bike. It was a very nice bike with carbon fiber tubes and aluminum joints. A lightweight bike. A road bike for doing centuries (100 miles in a single day). A beautiful bike. I had it fitted to me, got the pedal clips fitted properly to my shoes. I bought a cyclometer with the ability to read my pedal rpms so I could protect my knees. All this cost me roughly $1000 (3 zeroes, yes). Then I bought Fluff (for $50 (one zero, yes), and rarely rode the bike. It didn't make sense to go off for 6-8 hours of pedalling knowing the 8-month-old puppy was storing up energy or using it by redecorating the house.

Now, 2 dogs and 30-40 additional pounds later, I would like to ride my bike again (Fluff is 11 and Sleek 13, so their exercise needs are much reduced). I took it out last night to see if I could remember how to shift (bike has different shifters than any other bike I've ridden regularly, plus many more gears), brake, and get the shoes loose from the pedals when stopping. My rear shifter would only shift in one direction, so when I ran out of gears, I was where I was. Since I was on a shake-down ride, I had stayed on mostly level ground, so I got home okay.

I took the bike in today to see what was up with the gear shift. The guy at the bike store was very nice and explained that this type of gearshifter really likes to be used. Without regular use, the grease probably had hardened and might be gumming up the internal springs. Sometimes they can fix them by working them (and maybe adding more grease to sort of dissolve the old stuff) and sometimes they have to be replaced. He dinked with it and says the gear shift is mostly working now but I might have to shift a couple of times to get the thing to actually work.

This may be strong incentive to ride: if I don't get that gearshift used to regular work, it may forget how to shift altogether!

Happy Anniversary, Fluff!

Eleven years ago today I went to the Humane Society to pick up my girl Fluff. She was about 8 months old at the time and had been dropped at the HS by her previous owners 2 days earlier.

I woke up on August 24, 1996 with a voice in my head telling me I needed to go the Humane Society. I was resistant because I wanted a dog of the breed I wanted where I'd met the breeders and the parents and totally approved the way the dog had been raised. For some reason, though, I decided to go. I thought perhaps I would find a German Shepherd dog there, like the one my long-haired friend had found a couple of years earlier. I had loved Greta deeply and was with them when LongHair had to have Greta euthanized due to cancer -- Greta was only three.

When I walked into the dog section of the shelter, I knew I was a lost cause. There, in the first run, was my girl. She was an Australian shepherd. With a tail (I am not enthused about the bobbed tail most Aussies have, so this was quite a bonus). She was sweet, even though obviously very upset about being there (her people had only dropped her off an hour or two before I arrived). I tried soooo hard to talk myself out of taking her home. I wasn't really ready. The house wasn't puppy-proofed. The yard was not puppy-proof. I didn't have all the things I needed to take care of a dog. She really had too much white on her face (one of her eyebrows, which should be tan, was covered by her white blaze). I put a hold on her and called LongHair. LH came up, took one look and shrieked, "She's ADORABLE! Of COURSE you have to get her!!!" Left the hold in place and went home to start puppy-proofing. The HS at that time was not open on Sunday, so I had an extra day to work on house and yard.

After work on Monday, LongHair and I headed for the Humane Society. She drove so I could make sure the future Fluff (her name at the shelter was Heidi, but she didn't seem to know it) behaved safely in the car. Fluff was very eager to leave the shelter and loved riding in the car. She sat in the back, peering between the two front seats like Snoopy pretending to be a vulture. LongHair left us so we could begin learning more about each other.

Later that evening LongHair returned because her girlfriend had just broken up with her. I sat on the floor with the sobbing LH. Young Fluff came over to me, laid down beside me, and put her chin on my leg. I fell completely in love with my little dog.

Fluff has been a wonder for me. She changed my life so much. One of my non-dog friends commented about a month after I got her that I now spoke in terms of "we" instead of "me."

You scored as Ron Weasley, You often feel like second best and as a result don't have an awful lot of self confidence, but a truer more capable friend would be hard to find. Ron Weasley 80% Hermione Granger 70% Remus Lupin 70% Sirius Black 65% Harry Potter 65% Ginny Weasley 60% Severus Snape 60% Albus Dumbledore 60% Draco Malfoy 35% Lord Voldemort 35% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

Politics

Here's a quote I need to remember when I think of the current US political situation:

I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

Hat tip to A Word A Day (http://wordsmith.org/words/aposematic.html) for the quote.

Pets and Fireworks

Fireworks Tips for People with Pets

If fireworks are legal where you live (or available and used, even if illegal):

Keep a close eye on your pet to see if fireworks make them nervous or unhappy. Be aware that your pet’s attitude toward fireworks may change with age, typically for the worse.

Keep your pet inside on nights when fireworks are going off. If you need to take your pet outside, use a leash, even if your yard is fenced. Panicked animals may bolt in unpredictable directions and jump or climb fences that normally would hold them.

Indoors, run fans or air conditioning to help block the noise of fireworks. If you play the radio or TV, choose the station carefully. Your pet will not appreciate “Saving Private Ryan” or other war movies – comedies or nature stories are more appropriate. Also, be sure the station will not be broadcasting fireworks. One local station, for example, broadcasts the Local Music Festival AND its fireworks. The big public fireworks in town are televised.

Make sure your pet is wearing identification. July 4th is one of the biggest nights of the year for pets to go missing. Give your pet every possible chance to be re-united with you. Even if your pet is micro-chipped or tattooed, a collar tag with your phone number may help him get home sooner. In case your pet does get loose and you need to post flyers, have recent photographs that clearly show any distinctive markings or expression.

Your pet will need plenty of cool, fresh water to replace water lost through panting.


Other things that may help:

Staying calm yourself, even if your pet is upset. If you become angry at your pet’s behavior, you will only confuse and further upset him

Flower essence blend called “Rescue Remedy”

Tellington TTouch

Wearing a T-shirt (with human supervision)

Playing interactive games with a favorite human

A really good chew toy or bone

Sedatives (talk to your vet beforehand so you have the appropriate dosage on hand)

Some pets are happier in a small, secure space like a dog crate, while others will panic and hurt themselves trying to escape.

You Know....

You know your dogs are getting older and/or are extremely well-trained when you wake up to find you left a package of pork ribs on the floor overnight, and it wasn't touched with tooth or nail. At times in their youth and middle ages, those ribs would have been long-vanished into dog bellies, or they might have re-appeared in the middle of the night in slightly different form with the hurk soundtrack.

Now, though, the dogs simply got a couple of the ribs to consume in the backyard this morning while the rest are boiled for an hour for future dog food.

Right or Wrong?

The family behind me consists of a mother and several children, the youngest of whom is a boy about 13 or 14 years old. I'm not sure how many of the kids currently live with the mom, but this boy seems to be pretty full-time right now.

The kid picked up a new hobby this year. It's axe-throwing. I don't know why he's doing it, but he is. He throws the axe at a large fir tree in their backyard. By large, think over 2 feet in diameter, and correspondingly tall, much like the tree in my backyard. Our yards are about 7500 square feet, btw. At first Axel was not that good at axe-throwing, so the axe tended to bounce off the tree. With months of practice, he's improved a lot, and the tree is showing visible wear and tear to its bark. I can see some of the damage from my backdoor, about 100 feet from the tree, and I can't see the side he most often uses as a target. I think it's probably in worse shape. Mom seems oblivious to Axel's throwing.

Today Axel was in his yard with a couple of buddies. He was goofing around with the axe, doing amusing (?) things like chopping hard at the (much smaller) tree supporting the hammock where his friends were lying. He also jokingly (?) threatened his friends with his axe. Mom is still oblivious.

I'm a non-confrontational chickenshit, but with 2 car accidents in one year, I'm getting a little paranoid about irritating my insurance company. I think they would be annoyed if that stupid tree fell in my direction, even though it (like my car accidents) was not my fault. I, too, would be annoyed. A fall in my direction would do many nasty things including taking out electricity, phone, and cable lines for everyone north of us. The tree would probably hit my house and damage it. It also could hit MY big fir which would fall on at least my garage and car (parked in front of the garage, while the fir is behind the garage) and probably would also hit the Good Neighbors' house and/or their big firs setting off another round of fir tree crashes onto houses. Like I said, I'm a paranoid, non-confrontational chickenshit. And I'm one who doesn't want to find out how the insurance companies would allot blame for this, because I'm certain there will be more blame than money. I can't afford to be out of my house for months while the damage is fixed, either. My nearest sibling is 2000 miles away, so commuting from there is not reasonable, either.

In my passive-aggressive way, I looked up the owner of the property behind me, using the county property records (sidenote: it's kind of creepy how much info they display about one's house there) on the internet. As I thought, Axel's mom rents. So I called the real property owner and told them that the kid was using an axe on the tree and damaging it.

Right thing to do? Wrong? I think it would've been nicer or fairer or something to talk to Axel's mom directly, but I was loathe to do that. She's often home when he's axe-throwing, so how could she not know about it? If she knows about it and doesn't stop it, to me that implies she sees nothing wrong with the behavior. Do I have the right to tell her the behavior is wrong and she needs to stop it? It's a value judgment I'm not comfortable saying to her face, although I'll tell the world via blog that I think it's wrong and she needs to stop it. What's up with this? It's not like we've been close friends ever since I moved in. We rarely speak and those instances have usually been dog-related like the time her kids were teasing my dogs through the fence. I did confront directly over that one to stop it immediately.

How does one become less of a paranoid, conflict-avoidant, trying-to-appear-nonjudgmental-when-I-really-am chickenshit? Suggestions welcome!

Getting Better All the Time

Whew. The good news is that I'm not severely damaged. The dogs' chiropractor let me walk them over to his house for a check (since they can't go in the no-pets rental car), and they're basically okay. I had a precautionary X-ray today of my neck so we can compare it to last year's views. I also had an absolutely fabulous Watsu session yesterday, which really helped me relax and process some of this stuff out of my body. I do love Watsu. Warm, warm water, salt water pool, relaxing music and touch -- pretty close to heaven for me.

The bad news is that Bozo's erstwhile insurance company called today to say they only heard about the accident from MY insurance company, and they are investigating to see if he's even covered by them (I did notice that the insurance card had a 2006 expiration date -- why did I not say anything at the time????). This guy was old enough (looked to be in his late 50s) to know better, which now means I wonder if he should've had his blood alcohol level checked. The only thing they'd've found in my breath or blood would've been a boatload of adrenaline -- I hadn't even had coffee. The collision center called to say the damage to my car will run about $5800 as it is substantially out of square in the rear.

Breathing, I repeat: I am in pretty good shape. The dogs are in pretty good shape. Honda did a good job of designing the car to protect the occupants. Thank you, Honda engineers!

Singlehood

Times when it really sucks to be single:

When you are in your second car accident in 10 months (to the day). Nobody's shoulder to cry on, nobody to coddle you.

The bad news: no witnesses who can say that the fireplacing moron ran a red light at the speed limit to hit me while I was trying to make a left turn on the green light. My dogs were in the car.

The good news: the dogs don't appear to be hurt, although they'll be seeing their chiropractor to make sure. The car accelerated when I asked, so the other driver hit behind the left rear wheel instead of in my door. The other good news is that I refrained from hitting or otherwise hurting the other driver and didn't even say too much nasty stuff to him. Not good to hit my car when my dogs are in it as I get pissed off. The ambulance techs were impressed that my blood pressure was good (124/palpable) when I was so angry

The question: at what point does one's insurance company decide to stop repairing the same car?

Letter to an old Love

Hi old love,

I haven’t heard whether or not you took early retirement when it was offered this time. In case you did, and in case you are leaving at the end of April, I wanted to drop you a line.

I wish you well with the rest of your life. The love is still there, and I want to think I have largely forgiven the cruelty of the silence that ended our association. Forgotten, no. Put up shields I’ve not yet been able to lower, yes. Believe I may understand some of the reasons behind the silence, yes. Agree with them, probably not all but perhaps a few. Curious about whether or not I am correct about the reasons, mildly.

It was a complex relationship between two complex people with a lot of baggage. At least we tried, for a while. Whether or not it’s in this lifetime, I do think we’ll meet again.

If nothing else, you were a good catalyst in some ways. I go up on my roof when I need to, and I have Fluff and all that she means to me. I do wish she could meet you again, because she loved you a lot and I think she would still remember you.

Again, OL, good luck in your future. I wish you joy and abundance.

kabbage

Health Insurance

Right now I have health insurance based on COBRA coverage. Recently I had a few minor blood levels checked (mostly thyroid, IIRC). I just received my insurance statement.

The lab billed the insurance company for $171.35. The discount was $139.30, for a net cost to the insurance company of $32.05. That is a discount of OVER EIGHTY PERCENT! Is this reasonable? Which is the "real" cost of the service: 32 dollars or 170 dollars? I used a lab at the local hospital because it's "in network." Recently I talked to a lab scientist who works there, and she told me that that hospital does over a billion dollars' worth of charity care a year. Is that counted at the "normal" rate or the "discount" rate, I wonder.

If I can't afford health insurance, wouldn't a blood test for $32 be more reasonable for me than $171? How would I afford the blood test to tell me the reason I had such low energy that I couldn't keep a job was because my thyroid was almost devoid of function? Given the blood test and the (pretty inexpensive) natural thyroid, Icould get the energy needed to keep a job and then hopefully afford insurance.

This is a harsh, cruel, stupid system. Would that I knew how to fix it.

Saved by the Receipt!

The phone rang this morning with "Scott" asking me about my car payment (due last Saturday). I said I had made the payment on Friday the 13th, so he said they had no record of it, but okay, and hung up. I called customer service to see if Scott was legit, and sure 'nuff, they don't have me as having made the payment, either. The nerve of me for making the payment at the local branch instead of by phone or electronically directly to the auto loan people! She could not possibly check on a payment made via branch.

Called the branch who said bring down what you have, unless you can fax it, and we'll figure out what is going on. Off to the branch with my receipt, the kept part of the payment voucher, and a fresh balance from my checking account to verify no bouncing scenario possible.

Strangely the branch guy had to call the auto loan folks, too, but after about 10 or 15 minutes they figured out the branch teller had somehow applied the amounts to principle and interest without actually marking it as a routine payment. Very odd. It's fixed now, supposedly with no late fees applied. Teller is probably going to have a review of "how we handle auto loan payments". The branch guy had the grace (and sense) to apologize for the inconvenience.

I am pleased that I was able to find the receipt quickly and easily (although since it was on an end table, probably no one else would've been able to find it), despite the overall disorder of my papers. Yay, me!

Household Horrors, or You're Not a Domestic Goddess, Are You?

Last night I decided to vacuum for the first time in forever. While chasing cobwebs in the kitchen, I took a swipe at the overhead light fixture, a tacky stained glass monstrosity in shades of brown, orange, and cream. You know things are bad when the amount of light in the room noticeably increases as you remove the dust.

Tonight I fixed the dogs' suppers from my leftovers. As I finished adding and mixing in the supplements (old dogs, like old people, get a lot of supplements), I dropped Sleek's bowl upside down on the floor. Quick calculation: she'll get more of the supplements if I let her eat supper off the floor than if I scrape up what I can from the floor and put it back in her bowl, plus I won't waste any supplements by restarting her meal.

And of course the bathroom didn't get cleaned this weekend, despite an obvious need.

Update Monday: the shame of confessing the bathroom situation led me to cleaning the toilet and tub before going to bed. Thank you, blog!

Dogs are Weird

I'm talking food here. Both my dogs love food. Sleek is more discriminating -- she generally wants some form of meat in her snacks -- but Fluff will often eat things like blueberries or apples. I think when she was young she helped herself to some tomatoes from the vine. That's one reason to go with cherry tomatoes: at least you can probably get some toothmark-free tomatoes. Sleek was mad about prune plums for a few years when we had a tree in the backyard. She would eat several windfalls at one sitting, including their pits. All that fiber, surrounding all those very hard, pointy things. I felt for poor Sleek when she said goodbye to those pits.

Anyway, I have leftover Easter eggs and decided to give the dogs part of one of the egg whites. I did a good job with the boiling, so these were very nice eggs. Each dog sniffed her ~1/2inch cube of egg white very suspiciously but took it from my fingers. Fluff laid her egg bit on the floor, where it seemed to be difficult to pick it up again. I handed it to her again, and she mouthed it for a while before swallowing it. Meanwhile, Sleek is chewing and chewing hers. Now, this dog eats a raw chicken wing in about 3 crunches, with none of it touching the ground after its first introduction to her mouth. I have seen her swallow entire four-ounce chunks of meat, but she has to chew 3 grams of hard-boiled egg???? Sleek caught and ate a baby rabbit one time, and I think she chewed that less than she chewed this stupid piece of egg. If she deigns to take a Cheerio, it's the same thing. A single Cheerio must be chewed 20 times. A quarter pound of liver need not be chewed, only inhaled.

I've read that dogs have fewer tastebuds than we do, and that seems reasonable given that most of their diet doesn't stay in their mouths long enough to even leave a flavor. Good thing they have the 10x stronger stomach acid!

Eyebrows

Which is worse? Having a single eyebrow, or finding you've inherited your father's eyebrows in that there was an inch-long, curly hair growing in one (of two) eyebrow?

A new one for the neighbors

Ms. Fluff got a bath and blow-dry today. She was soooo filthy. To the casual glance, she still looked okay, but if you took a second look, those whites were cream-colored. If you touched her, you really knew, because of the residue on your fingers. Yick.

I borrowed a dog blow dryer for the big bath because I knew there was a whole lot of undercoat that would be coming out with the dirt, and even more that would be loose but unable to work itself out during the actual bath. Xena loaned me the dryer and gave me some hints on how to get the dog dry and the dead hair out with less tangling. Most dog dryers of this type don't have heat -- they just blast the water out with a lot of air. Essentially they're vaccuum cleaners turned to "push" instead of "pull."

We did the bath in the tub and the drying on the front stoop. You don't want to blow dry in the house because the hair goes everywhere. I really don't know how much was blown out because it just went with the wind. The stoop gave Fluff an idea of where she was going to be, and she was okay with that. Not much fussing or trying to dart off into the front yard to roll. She was a little surprised that I chose not to let go of her neck fur when she decided she wanted to hoot and holler at the neighbors for coming home. Fortunately for Fluff, only 3 steps lie between stoop and driveway, so she landed okay when she launched and I didn't let go.

She looks, smells, and feels much cleaner. In really good news, I had no allergy symptoms during her bath and dry! Last time I bathed her, I had to use an inhaler and didn't even try to blow her dry. Digestive enzymes and other supplements seem to be helping my body cope with its overall load of allergens.

Peaceful Warrior

I've seen the new movie The Peaceful Warrior twice in 2 days now. My guess is that most reviewers won't care for it because most of the conflict is internal. There is a fairly dramatic car/motorcycle intersection, but any physical action between men and women is understated by today's standard. I'm really surprised it has a PG-13 rating rather than just PG.

I enjoyed it a lot, but I'm into the stuff they're talking about, although I'm much better at reading about it than practicing it. On the visual level, watching high-quality male gymnasts is always pleasant :-) I'm also old enough to see some of the physical cycles. Twenty or 25 years ago, the lead character, Dan, would've been played by Tom Cruise, and his chief physical rival, Trevor, by Val Kilmer. The current actors reminded me much of Cruise and Kilmer in face structure and coloring.

I haven't read Dan Millman's books yet, but this movie will probably work for many people who are fans of Eckhart Tolle and other "new age" authors who believe we will benefit greatly by turning off the mind chatter and spending a lot more time in the present moment.

Equinox Editing

Sorry, I'm trying desperately for alliteration in this title. If you can come up with a better (more appropriate for the ultimate topic), please drop it into the comments.

Today's edit: my hair. I spent two or three years growing my hair out to shoulder length. It was a nasty, shapeless shoulder length, but it was long enough to pull into a respectable ponytail. My hair is very fine but has some natural wave. The fineness means that only the last several inches can sustain wave without the weight of subsequent hair pulling it flat to my head. The wave is also very humidity-dependent, so I could go from pretty straight hair to wild frizz and back in a few hours if I went from inside the forced-air-heated house to the perpetual winter mist/drizzle and back.

As of this afternoon, I have much less hair and much more shape to it. I'm very happy! I look forward to the first hair wash and feeling how little hair is there. Must remember to use less shampoo! I have bangs, I have layers, I have wave and body. Ahh.

Of course, the outside temperature stayed in the 40s all day, so my neck is cold.

I just warned Ms. Fluff that she might be the next one to get a new spring 'do. She definitely needs a bath, and there is always trimming to be done. The girl is part hobbit -- she has the hairiest feet, for a breed who nominally has short hair on the feet.

No Wonder

I thought we were having an awfully long gray spell. According to wunderground.com, the last day we had completely free of rain was February 5. We only had a trace on Feb. 6 and 17, but we've had measurable accumulations every other day since the 5th, with another week of rain forecasted!

I think rain and 42 degrees F (502 Kelvin, if I remember correctly -- that sounds warmer!) can be colder than snow and 30 degrees F. Oh well. Despite their geriatric status, the troops wish to go out for a walk. Who am I to deny them? Off we go!

Update: we're back, and I checked Weather Underground again. Despite having only 3 rain-free days in February, we had almost an inch less rain than an average February! We only had 3.97 inches instead of 4.86.

I started thinking about our rainfall on the walk (since it was raining at the time). We have about the same yearly rainfall as most of the places I've lived in the east and midwest. Like those places, we have about 30-36 inches of rain a year. Let's call it 36"/year or averaging 3 inches per month. That doesn't sound too bad: an average of about 0.1 inches per day, so you expect a lot of days of sun and a few of rain.

West of the Cascades, though, we have some very dry months. Typically we have very little rain in July (at least, after the often damp July 4 holiday!), August, and at least the first half of September. When I say "very little", I'm talking about maybe half an inch during that entire time period.

Let's continue on our very crude calculations. If you round it so we have 3 months with 0 rainfall, that means we have 9 months in which to fit our 36 inches of annual rainfall, or 9 months averaging 4 inches per month. We've just increased the month rainfall by one third. This is when things start to get tough to take. Our winter months actually tend more toward 5 or 6 inches of rain per month beginning in late November and running through February or March. We get about two thirds of our rain in one third of the year.

The other factor is that nearly all of this is rain, not snow. Rain absorbs light, snow reflects it. Four months of clouds and light-absorbing puddles can get to many of us.

On the bright side, the pussy willows are starting to come out, and many of the daffodils are above ground though perhaps not quite blooming yet.

10 Weird Things About Me

I was tagged by Joy for this meme.

1. As a kid I hated popcorn. We had it a lot as a family snack after dinner, and I never ate it. I think I was allowed 3 Bacon Crackers instead. As soon as I went to college, I started eating popcorn. Boy, did I freak out my family that first Christmas break when I oh so casually took a handful of popcorn and ate it.

2. Every fall I become anxious and unsettled and want to move. I think it's a throwback to childhood, college, and grad school. I want to start over with the new school year, even though it's been 20 years since I've been in school.

3. I really became a firm believer in pre-marital s*x after dating a guy with a thing for shoes and feet. It may work for some people, but I am the queen of tennis shoes, Tevas, and hiking boots. Nary a high heel in sight. That turned out to be a deal-breaker for the two of us (among other issues), and I was so glad I found out before we were married.

4. I have 5 siblings with whom I have civil or better relationships. The last time I saw any of them in the flesh was 4 years ago.

5. I studied mechanical engineering because my father was a civil engineer.

6. When we were little, we went to the library every week. For some years they had a limit of 10 books per library card. We all had our own cards, we all took out 10 books, and we all read them before the next week's library day. This includes both my parents.

7. Although I'm extremely messy and disorganized in my own stuff (and in my own work cubicle, when I had one at the corporate cube farm), I really want common areas organized in a sensible fashion. Unfortunately, I'm the only human in the house, so there are no common areas that must be organized or tidy. I do insist on no hard dog toys where I will step on them in the middle of the night!

8. My dog Sleek is a female Belgian Malinois. I was looking for a male Australian shepherd when I found her. Both breeds are dogs, and both belong to the herding group. Physically, they have little in common: Aussies are long-haired, drop-eared, bob-tailed while Malinois are short-haired, prick-eared, and long-tailed. They don't even come in the same colors!

9. My mother tried to teach me to knit multiple times, but it took a work friend to get me to really learn. She had me make an Icelandic sweater (similar to this, but in 3 colors) for my very first knitted project -- no scarves for her!

10. Eleven years ago I spent over $1000 (yes, 3 zeroes) for a bike. It has less than 1000 miles on it now because 6 months later I spent $50 to purchase the divine Ms. Fluff from our nearby animal shelter. Priorities!

Transmission

Today I walked my dogs past Blonde Streaks' house. Her dog is the one who bit my beloved Fluff. Blonde Streaks was out, so I asked her if she still had her dog, because Animal Control said she had told them she was going to get rid of it. Unfortunately, she replied in the affirmative. I will tell AC this and ask them to press for an abatement so the dog has to be removed from the city.

The real point, though, is how much adrenaline and tension flow down the leash. Even having that much of a confrontation (that is, not much of one) with Blonde Streaks is enough to send me into a heightened state of tension and adrenal arousal. Two houses later, the two toy dogs were tied out. We've seen them before, and, although they turn on each other from barrier frustration at being tied, they don't normally bother Fluff. Today, though, she was much more aroused by them and regarded them as a threat. Same deal at the park: even though separated by a fence, she was much more aware and concerned about a couple of golden retrievers who weren't even interested in her.

Emotions are still interesting, and the dogs I love are still wonderful.

Does Life Go On?

A blogger who does not believe in any sort of afterlife recently lost a much-loved but elderly dog. I thought about this quite a bit today, because some of my comments were among those deleted because he found their expression of belief in an afterlife painful.

My personal belief is that conservation of energy works. We may change form at death, including the possibility of going into a state of no physical form, but there is a form of energy in us, that IS us, that will survive the death of the physical form. I believe there is a good chance that the energy may incarnate itself again (and again and again) if it chooses to do so.

The question may be, why do I believe this? On the one hand, I may choose to believe this way because it's easier. If I believe I have a chance of seeing/feeling those I love again, that may make losing their current physical forms easier. Maybe it's the lazy woman's way to put off dealing with some of the grief that might come knowing that those who are gone are simply, irretrievably, gone. Add to that my own not-so-far-off-as-it-used-to-be mortality. Maybe I can't/don't want to face the idea that this is a one-shot deal. I think this may be a very real part of it, because I certainly don't see myself as being spectacularly successful yet in this life. If I believe I'll have addition opportunities for "getting" what I'm not understanding yet in this life, it takes some of the pressure off to achieve, achieve, achieve. I also grieve less for people like my mother, who died unhappy, thinking she'll be back and hopefully in a position where she can achieve some happiness and maybe some other things she would've liked to do or have (we're talking personality or soul development here, not financial).

Mostly, though, I don't think the evidence supports the one-shot deal theory. We describe our friends as being more than just their physical attributes, often in ways that indicate we feel our friends transcend their physical forms. We feel an anima, a spark of life in them. If/when the physical attributes stop, why would we assume that more than those physical attributes stop? Why would the spark die just because the body does? During life, at least part of that anima needs to be with the body at all times to keep it going, but often part of it seems to wander, whether in dreams or daydreams, out-of-body experiences, or deep sleep or meditation. Why wouldn't all of the anima be able to leave when the body no longer needs it? Dead bodies seem heavier than live ones. Perhaps part of the anima also acts as buoyant force to keep the body able to move on its own.

Another branch of my theory is that we all are interconnected on some level. I believe that many of us live and die mostly unconscious of the level of connection, but that education and experience can help us achieve awareness of the connection, or at least awareness of the possibility of connecton, even if we can't quite feel it. Again, because I feel this connection exists, in some ways we cannot die in the finito sense because the whole would be less than whole with bits and pieces of it continually dying and leaving holes in the whole. This gets me to where I have to stop believing in time as absolute. I believe that we here blogging or reading blogs have chosen to act as if we believe in time and that time runs only in one direction (international date line and speed of light travel notwithstanding). In reality, I think, there is no time. I'm always an infant, a teenager, a young adult, a middle-aged adult, whatever age I get to on this round of the mortal coil. I can't really grasp that logically and describe it because I think our language is inadequate to the task. We're too time-tied, or at least I am in language.

As usual, I don't know how to wrap up my thoughts into a tidy package for a conclusion. I guess, I can just say it's better for my already questionable sanity to believe we go on after death than to believe death is the ultimate end. I think the latter would be a hard way to live.

Sainthood

My neighbors tell me that they are nominating me for sainthood. They are heading out of town for a week in an hour or so. I usually feed their cats, bring in the paper & mail, etc. This time is much more “special” because 13 (or more) year old GrayBoy has a UTI. This means he’ll be staying inside, with his litter box, and needs antibiotics in his little mouth twice a day. Have I mentioned I’m allergic to cats and rarely touch them because of that? Have I mentioned that the smell of cat poop makes me want to hurl? And that the thought of dealing with the litter box is one reason I have never really wanted to own a cat? Or that GrayBoy usually tries to bite me when I do touch him? And that the only neighbor I am comfortable asking for help with GrayBoy spends half the week 3 hours away from here taking care of her parents? It’s going to be a long, long week! But, that is why I’m nominated.

Update: in the 6 hours since his owners left, GrayBoy has puked 2x on the carpet, used the litter box (solid only, should I be concerned? Esp. with a cat with a bladder infection? Or assume he's found another "convenient" corner to use, which I know he sometimes does?), and had most of one dose of antibiotic, almost destroying the dropper in the process. His sister sneaked into the house and had to be escorted out as she can be destructive. The week is looking longer.

Bits & Pieces

The publisher did not answer her phone at the time she had suggested we talk, nor has she responded to my email asking her what time on Monday I could reasonably expect to reach her. I sense this is not going well.

Despite my allergies to horses, spent much of the day at a horse expo. Fortunately, I didn't have to use my (new) inhaler. I did some EFT at one point which took the fluid level in the lungs down to manageable levels and kept me from feeling asthmatic. Going for a second, longer day tomorrow should be a trip. It's quite a hoot parroting what people have said about the saddle being sold in our booth.

I've been trying to eat a bit better quality of food (more veggies, less processed sugar), and my body is starting to adapt. Tonight at the grocery store, I looked at my usual sugar highs and really didn't feel like buying them. And I didn't buy them! This is pretty big news for me. Of course, I still have to come up with a gluten-free dessert for our women's group meeting Sunday night.... I'm thinking about coconut sticky rice, which has the added benefit of being vegan (this is a tough crowd to cook for!)

Being stuffed up renders Greek salad tasteless. I can taste the onion if I really bite a piece of it, but the kalamata olives and feta cheese are remarkably taste-free. Sad, really.

Time for bed. I got 5 hours of sleep last night, spent close to 8 hours on my feet on a concrete floor, and can't breathe. I need some rest!

Longer than I Thought

I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted (thanks, "Joy" for your note -- I'll try to reply later, although this may answer some of your concerns).

Things are going okay, other than no money coming in. I will be talking to a woman about a part-time editing position. It's only about 1/2 to 1 day per week, though, so not much money. The good news is that I should be able to continue it even after getting a "real" job. I still don't know what I want to do for a real job, although I'm not interested in going back to engineering or major, major corporations (I spent nearly 19 years working for Fortune 100 companies). I have an idea for a business of my own, but there are a lot of unknowns in getting started. I'd love to have a partner, but it couldn't support two people at the beginning (how soon before it can support one is still a question). I also don't know anyone right now that I think would be a great fit for me as a partner, both in terms of knowledge and compatibility.

Anyway, I've started taking yoga which is very nice in terms of stretching, relaxing, and learning to be present in the moment. My instructor had a great quote yesterday, but I can't remember from whom. It was something along the lines of "The gift of a lifetime is to be with yourself." That's not right, I know, but it's got some of the right words in it. I will try to get the real words and author from her. Update: The quote is from Joseph Campbell and reads "the gift of a lifetime is becoming who you are." The instructor is a really sweet woman, and she makes me smile every time she says the word, "belly" because she says it with the same inflections (beh-LEE) that I use when I'm telling Fluff how cute she is with her pink and white and spotted belly.

I've also gotten back in the swimming pool which feels good, although they do use a lot of chlorine in that pool. Keeping my skin in good shape is a little tough with that added to forced air heat at home. Today I had an interesting experience. I wanted to join a woman in a swim lane. I tried to ask her if she minded, but either she didn't hear me or she blew me off. She was swimming counterclockwise laps, going up on the right side of the lane and then back on the left side (from my POV outside the pool). I got in on the left side since she had all her stuff stacked on the right side and made sure she saw me. I then start swimming up the left side of the lane. At the end of the first length she asked me what I was doing and why I wasn't swimming circular laps. I told her from what I had seen, almost everyone in that pool swam parallel laps when only 2 people were in a lane. She told me she felt that wasn't very welcoming, but added "whatever" and took off swimming. To me, her one-person circular laps had felt very unwelcoming, like she was firmly establishing that both sides of that lane were hers, all hers. Apparently she felt otherwise. Maybe she's done more "official" training swimming. I've never done that much group swimming, but it seems to me that it takes time to figure out when you can or cannot pass in circular swimming or to make sure one particular person is in front because s/he is known to be faster, etc. Parallel is much simpler when it's just two people.

I'll be helping out at a TTouch booth at a local equine event this weekend. Must remember business cards!

Oh, I forgot to mention that my girl Sleek seems to be getting worse in the heart murmur department. She's up to a grade IV out of VI. I'm looking at over $500 in diagnostic testing next month (soonest we can get into the local canine cardiologist) to see what is the thing to do. Ugh. The symbology of Sleek's heart being her weakest link is fascinating. She loves the people she loves very intensely and is very loyal. On the other hand, cats and small varmints would consider her to have a very black, evil heart because of her desire to pursue and kill them. Frankly, I don't think there's any malice involved. She's not interested in torturing them. She just loves the hunt and the kill (for those of you with cats, to the best of my knowledge she has never actually killed a cat, although she did catch one once and when young had gone over 7-foot fences to go after them). In some ways, she is a very primitive kind of dog who could have gone feral successfully. On the other hand, she can go downtown in large cities and just look at her surroundings with calm, confident interest. She's well-behaved in almost every circumstance (probably would have been ill-behaved in a cat show) and a favorite with vets and their staffs because she does not bite or threaten to bite (one time a tech was trying to get a blood sample from Sleek's front leg. Sleek twitched and threw the syringe across the room. When they came back with another syringe, Sleek tucked her head under the arm of the holding tech so she wouldn't see and twitch again). I think she'll see 13 (her birthday is in late April), but I have my doubts that she will see 14.

Power of Reflected Light

I just took the dogs out. It's a clear, clear night, unusual for us in January. Moon is about 2/3 of the way to full.

I noticed the moonlight is bright enough that the power line to the house is throwing a shadow tonight. Moonlight is reflected sunlight. If the moonlight is that powerful, what kind of metaphor could that be for me? Even if I'm still fearful of letting my own light shine, maybe I can let a little reflected light from the rest of the universe shine through or past or off of me.

Watching Animal Control Court

I went to Animal Control Court today to see how it is run, since there is a good chance I’ll be going there next month to testify about the neighbor’s dog Sadie attacking mine. Sadie is owned by Blonde Streaks. Blonde Streaks had to go to ACC today because of a complaint made by Mr. Volatile, another neighbor. This session promised some interesting emotional outburst possibilities because after Sadie attacked Mr. Volatile’s dogs, Mr. Volatile followed Sadie home and kicked a hole in Blonde Streaks’s front door. That part is a whole ‘nother trial, not in Animal Control Court.

The hearings officer is a lawyer with a strong interest in animal law (and who happens to own several Belgian Tervuren – perhaps my case would be even stronger had Sleek been the one Sadie nailed, esp. because Hearings Officer is Sleek's co-owner's personal attorney). Dress among most of the defendants and complainants was distinctly casual. Hearing Officer wore professional clothing, and the Animal Control officers wore their uniforms.

Blonde Streaks slumped into her chair and made a number of comments that led Hearings Officer to tell her to wait until it was her turn. AC read the appropriate parts of the statutes into the record. Hearings Officer asked for clarification on the definition of “vicious behavior,” which was given from other statutes. Mr. Volatile told his story and mostly stayed to the facts, rather than the emotions. Blonde Streaks had her time for rebuttal and had to be drawn back to the issues at hand (e.g., the door kicking is not relevant to the AC case). Blonde Streaks admitted Sadie had gotten loose and accepted responsibility for that. She said they have gotten rid of their second dog (neighborhood rumor says this dog was Sadie’s puppy) which she said belonged to her son (aka “Wheelchair Man” to the neighborhood). AC mentioned that in terms of legal responsibility, because Blonde Streaks is head of household, she was the owner of the second dog. Blonde Streaks thought about protesting that part. Blonde Streaks mentioned how Sadie could not be vicious because she lives with and has not harmed 18-month-old twins, and children aged 9, 8, and 4 years. Blonde Streaks also mentioned that if Sadie was going to be considered having shown vicious behavior by fighting with Mr. Volatile’s dogs, then shouldn’t Mr. Volatile’s dogs behavior be considered vicious because Sadie could’ve been hurt by them. Hearings Officer was unimpressed and soon cut the discussion off. Blonde Streaks’s appeals were all rejected and her fines were held at the initial levels (total of $200). Blonde Streaks replied that she had no money to pay, and Hearings Officer told her to work that out with Animal Control.

Blonde Streaks stomped out, and Mr. Volatile, his wife Bleached Blonde, and I left a few moments later, accompanied by an AC officer to ensure there was no altercation between Mr. Volatile & Blonde Streaks in the building. Fortunately, Blonde Streaks was gone by the time we reached the elevator.

We all are hopeful that at the next hearing, when my case comes up, that Sadie will be declared a Dangerous Dog and Blonde Streaks will be told to remove her from the city. The timeframe for that is 96 hours.

Keep your fingers crossed! Meanwhile, Fluff continues to grow her hair back and is doing okay around other dogs. (You will notice she was not invited to attend the big dog show this past weekend!)

Choice

In honor of Blog for Choice day, here's today's off-the-cuff writing.

I believe in choice for a number of reasons:

A woman's body belongs to her. As such, she has the right to determine whether or not she wishes to become a mother and when.

If a woman doesn't want to have a child, why would one think she would be a good mother to that child? Eighteen years is a long time to live with someone who would rather you had not been born.

Birth control education and availability is a disgrace, especially for those who are young or of limited means.

Abstinence works for some people, doesn't work for others.

Abstinence is not an option for those who are raped, forced by partners, etc.

Faintly Stunned

I've received two emails today from people who've just lost their dogs to hemangiosarcoma. Both dogs were in late middle age and much loved companions valued for their beautiful souls. It's time to go hug my dogs and be grateful that I am watching them go into old age.

Friday will be Interesting

In the morning, it's a trip to Animal Control to make a formal report on the dog that chomped Fluff. After talking to a few neighbors, we need this dog controlled or removed from the neighborhood. Although it will be my word against theirs, the number of complaints and visits from AC is likely to go against them. I'm also willing to parade Fluff's background if that helps make the point. She's been responsibly handled since I got her. She has earned titles in 3 sports (obedience, agility, and canine musical freestyle). She's 11 freakin' years old, for heavens' sake -- she is not out there looking for trouble!

In the afternoon I finally will meet Sleek's breeder. The breeder and Sleek have not seen one another in at least 8 years (since I've had Sleek). I'm curious to see if Sleek remembers her. Some say they never forget their first human "mom," and she certainly remembers her previous owners from before me. Whenever the 3 of us are in the same room/area, Sleek is not happy until we're all in conversation prximity. Then she smiles with satisfaction at having so many people she has loved close together. Since Sleek has developed a heart murmur, I want to ask her breeder about Sleek's mom's medical history. More information would be good!

Gold, in a Black & White World

Sleek, January 16, 2007

Sense of Betrayal

I've been feeling like death warmed over for the past couple of weeks. I did pretty well, moodwise, through Christmas, and then I started to slide. Even the past week of cold, mostly clear weather (both temperature and lack of precipitation are unusual for us this time of year), which I love, hasn't been enough to bring me to functional. I had blood drawn for a thyroid test last week and received the results today.

My thyroid, which has been slowly meandering downhill in function, has pretty much tanked. T3 was at the lowest point of "normal," and T4 was so low it was out of range.

I feel betrayed by my body. I know it's an irrational reaction, but it's there. I should be happy. But no, I'm pissed off because my body says enough is enough, you are gonna have to give me a pill pretty much every day for the rest of our life. Meanwhile, low/non-existent thyroid (even with non-prescription supplements, btw) is possibly a major contributor to my depression, effortless but unnecessary weight gain, lack of energy, scattered thoughts, easily broken and prone to falling out hair.

In some ways, with a low thyroid diagnosis, all those things are no longer my fault, no longer my character failings. Everything up there, except maybe the hair, I have taken as signs of my weakness, my not-worthiness. I'm having trouble grasping this emotionally. For anyone else, I could say, "Yes, of course. You're low-thyroid, so of course those things would happen to you. How exciting that you've found a cause and can do something that will help you feel better." With myself, I get pissed off that my freakin' thryoid gland had the nerve to up and quit on me. On me! And then another voice insinuates itself into my head asking, "So, what did you do that made your thyroid quit? Must've abused it, huh? Didn't take care of yourself, did ya?" Meanwhile, yet another part of my brain is trying to figure out ahead of time how to act when the thyroid level rises. What will it be like to have energy? What will I do with it? What should I do with it? Is that what other people would do with it? How will I relate to other people? Will I want to? Where will I get the skills? What if I'm still depressed afterwards? That part of my brain is not keen on living in the moment, because it's hard to meet everyone's expectations if it doesn't plan ahead.

Welcome to my head, land of "you can't win." Well, I can't win in my head, and normally we don't let too many other people in. There's not much room what with all the observers of thoughts and observers of other observers running around.

Fortunately, I had a counseling session set up for this afternoon, so I was able to deal with some of the crud written above. Even if you can't tell, a lot of that was written after much of the emotion had been released. Now I worry about the emotion coming back and tackling me again. That's in addition to the whole "I've been unemployed for 9 months now. What do I plan to do short-term and long-term to develop an income?"

I guess we know whose blog had better remain anonymous to the IRL folks. I'm pretty much a "know me, know my dogs" woman, so the pictures are pretty much a dead-giveaway to the IRLs, anyway.

I would like to receive feedback on this post, if you'd be kind enough to leave it. Writing style or content or both, your choice. If you can't comment here for some reason, my email address in my complete profile. Thanks!

Sensitivity

I took the girls for a walk tonight, about 8pm. We headed up the street to avoid going by Sadie's house, then walked around the park. On the way back, I chose to go in a way that would have us go by Sadie's house.

When we were about one house away we heard some voices there and then some jingling that might have been dog tags. Fluff stopped, then came back to me and pressed up against my leg while I assessed the situation. We turned and walked a block out of our way rather than risk another altercation. Fluff looked much happier about that choice than she did when she heard the tags.

Tone of Voice

As I said, Fluff had to go to the vet yesterday. Fluff is kind of a nervous, timid little dog in real life. She's not too bad, but she is not a very confident dog.

It's interesting to see how Fluff reacts to tone of voice. If the vet techs or the vet comes in cooing and telling her in soft, sad voices meant to reassure that she's okay, this won't hurt a bit, etc., she becomes much more nervous and uncomfortable. She can tell a lie as well as anyone else.

If, on the other hand, the vet or tech comes in and speaks to her matter-of-factly, "Hi Fluff, this is what we need to do with you today. It may be a little uncomfortable, but I'll try to get this over with as quickly as possible," then she's much better. She is more cooperative and less squirmy than she is with the babytalk folks.

I've started telling the vet's staff this as soon as we go in and as each new person comes in the exam room. It's helped a lot. I still remember one time years ago when a couple of vet techs wanted to take a blood sample and started creeping up on Fluff and cornering her. She threatened to bite until I asked the techs to back off and let her cool down. Once they went to her in a calm, controlled way, she was fine. I think that was one of the last times she felt threatened enough to try to defend herself. These days she will try to dodge the people but her mouth is firmly shut. She never threatens, even on the day she had to have 3 grass seeds removed from one ear. That meant about 6 trips down the ear canal with either the light or the forceps or both. Her ear really isn't big enough for that to be comfortable for her.

Chomped!

Poor Fluff got chomped last night. We were walking down the street toward our local park so we could play in the snow (Fluff and I love snow, short-haired Sleek not so much, but she was up for a walk). Three doors down, the neighbors kids were out playing in the street. They dashed across the street in front of us as we passed their house, apparently bolting into the house for whatever reason. Unfortunately, they didn't shut the gates to the yard or the door to the house, and Sadie got out. Although we were past her yard, she charged us and Fluff rose to the challenge.

Sadie, for the first of the many times she's challenged us, came in for the bite. Fortunately for her, she backed off when I bellowed (note: if you are going to scream during a dog attack/fight, use a low-pitched, high-volume voice. This is definitely a time for the alpha bitch roar. A high-pitched shriek is more likely to be heard as wounded prey screaming). You don't want to be attacking my dog when I've got on boots and heavy clothes. I will kick another dog in the gut to try to get it off my dog, and I will kick to injure/incapacitate. I'm glad that wasn't necessary here. As it was, I had a sore throat afterward from the bellowing.

The kids came out to apologize, although no adults did. I let the kids know that if there were vet bills (and there are), the bill would be coming to them. That rather stunned the oldest kid (probably about 10), but one hoped it would make a point. Alas, I drove past the house this morning, and the gate the dog came through yesterday was open, leading me to wonder anew about this family.

The bite was on Fluff's face. There are multiple puncture wounds through her lip (some are completely through the lip, into her mouth), although it's not as bad as it could have been. She has very thick hair on her face, and nothing came very close to her eye. The bad news is that she's more convinced than ever that other dogs may be out to get her, so she starts warning them away from her in a belligerent manner that makes her look aggressive. It looks like it's time to start desensitizing her again. Sigh.

The question now is what to do about this. The dog (Sadie) does not appear to be human-aggressive, although a person certainly could be bitten trying to break up a dog fight. I feel bad because I think she's an American staffordshire terrier, and I hate to feed the hysteria that these dogs can arouse. She's big enough and strong enough that she could kill a good many types of dogs. I know I'm more cautious about walking that direction, knowing there is a decent chance she's out and unrestrained, than I would be with many other breeds of dogs. The fact that I've seen her loose so many times calls into question the responsibility level of the humans in the household.

I fear I'm signing the dog's death warrant if I report the attack to Animal Control, esp. given our local Humane Society (which shares space with AC) has a notorious bias against her breed. I also fear her owners would just get another dog who might be less willing to break off when someone bellows or who is more interested in getting something started in the first place. I believe if this is the first reported incident, then AC will lecture the owners. If, however, other people have experienced and reported incidents, then the likelihood of confiscation and destruction increases. Again, she's not a bad dog. She has irresponsible owners. I don't like that she will be the one to pay the price for those owners.

What to do, what to do.

Meantime, Fluff went to the vet today. No stitches necessary, but she'll be on antibiotics for 5 days. It turns out that the punctures going fully through the lip are a good thing because they'll drain better while healing. The vet is a little concerned about the possibility of an abscess because there are salivary ducts nearby and not much skin/flesh around to work with if an abscess develops. Fluff is generally healthy, though, so I think she'll pull through just fine. Her face is a little puffy, but she's eating and drinking normally (although I'm cooking her food instead of feeding her raw food this week), and has a normal temperature.

Update: I did call Animal Control, and apparently I'm one of many in the neighborhood who has called. Now we're getting into another dilemna. This is where draconian anti-dog legislation begins -- with the ineffective enforcement of existing laws. If they're not going to enforce existing laws, how are they going to have the money and people to enforce the new ones? The draconian legislation only hurts those who will abide by it, and they're the ones who generally were responsible and didn't need it in the first place.

Associations

I took the girls up to the agility trial at the fairgrounds today. It's been several years since either of them competed in agility, but we went to a fair number (ha!) of trials there in the days. We weren't competing, but I took each dog out to walk around the site individually.

Sleek went first. She was bred and born to dog shows, probably going to her first ones when she was 3 or 4 months old so she'd be comfortable there when it was time for her to show. She loves walking around looking at the other dogs and trying to solicit petting and/or food from people. Even though it's been years, Sleek still was very happy to be out and about and watching everything. The building is unheated, so we mostly had to keep moving, although we did sit long enough to watch our friend Camera Woman run her dog. Then I took Sleek back to the car and took Fluff into the building.

Fluff definitely remembers the place and remembers agility. She was quite aroused going in, pulling hard on her collar and with her tail somewhat raised and stiff. She was good enough around the other dogs. We talked to CW briefly before she got ready to run her next dog and again after they ran. It was funny to watch how Fluff fell back into behaviors she had done when at trials in the past. Although I'm sure she could smell that I didn't have treats with me, she reacted to any movement of my hand toward a pocket with behaviors we used to practice, like sitting, lying down, giving strong eye contact. Her response to cues was very good, too. This behavior on her part was sustained for probably 10 minutes or more, which is a long time to have premium behavior without a reward beyond, "What a good girl you are!"

They both are very good girls.

Doug Firs

I took the girls for a walk today at the state university extension. They have a really nice area where the dogs can be off-lead semi-legally. There is a wide path that leads from the upper open field to an area that is being restored to a more natural mix of plants. The path between the two areas goes down a hill with many large Douglas fir trees on it.

Last month we had a bunch of windstorms on top of a very wet November. This combination led to several of the Doug firs deciding to lie down. They just uprooted themselves, big trees about 1.5 to 2 feet in diameter and 60 feet or more tall. Often two side-by-side trees went down, probably because the first took second with it. First, it's startling enough to see half a dozen very large trees down in a short walk. Second, the size of the root balls is shockingly small for such big trees. These big trees had rootballs that were maybe 10 feet in diameter and 6-8 feet deep. That's it!

I think perhaps the Doug firs are pack trees. They like to grow together, and they support one another. Does the one in my backyard get enough support, I wonder. My neighbors have several dougs, so I hope that is enough to keep mine happy. Certainly it's grown quite a bit in the time I've lived here.

Things I'd Like to Post About

Rather than actually writing a post on one of them, I'll make a list of topics.

1. what I've learned working at the department store
2. what I've done and learned this year (2006)
3. Christmas lights and luminaria
4. Hopes and dreams for 2007

Letter to a Friend

Hi Bud,

How are you doing with the snow? Socked in? We had a grey, grey, grey, grey Christmas, to Elvize it. Not too much actual rain on the day, which was good because my friend and her 3 dogs came over for the day. Yeah, 2 people and 5 dogs in the kitchen every time the turkey was touched or might be touched or looked at or when any other food might fall. It was fun. Today was clear and bright, so very nice.

Thank you for the luvverly Christmas gifts. This is another late, late year for me and my gifts. I was still assembling my friend's gift when she arrived, so the thrill of it was a little limited. Sleek got her new bed a few days early, and she is very happy with it. Eggcrate foam, a crib mattress vinyl cover, duct tape, and polyester fleece make for a happy old girl. Fluff is a little P.O.ed that hers has yet to make an appearance. The gargoyle you sent makes me feel very grandmotherly, since it makes it look like my larger dog gargoyle has had a puppy (albeit a very mature in shape puppy – not much of a neonatenous look to the little guy!) (is neonatenous the right word? Should it just be neonate?) They have similar features, so possibly are related? The juggling dog is the type of thing Ms. New Orleans has wanted to find for me for years. It’s very cute. The frames are, ah, interesting. Thanks for all of them! Nextdoor neighbors were appalled by my utter treelessness, so they got me a dog-related tree, about a foot tall. It’s made of doggie bones with a dog at the base with one of the bones in his mouth. I gave them lots of cranberry chutney (and not even the batch I burnt!) and supply them with stories about the weird next door neighbor to discuss at work. mpita tried to send me fish oil capsules, but the company confused the order and sent her the fish oil and me the book & DVDs on strengthening your back.

Working at Department Store over Christmas was interesting, even if I did manage to avoid the customers themselves (I don’t dress well enough to be a sales associate). Shoe department of all places. Had an interesting talk with one guy who was waiting for his family to finish shopping somewhere else. He was looking at a pair of platform soled shoes with about a 4” or more heel and asked me how women wear them. I had to say I didn’t know. We went on to discuss the effects on the body of wearing such shoes, choices in America (he sounded as if he is of Middle Eastern origin), kids & chores & entitlement, work ethic, etc. Let’s face it: I was in love from the moment he said he couldn’t understand why women would wear such shoes

The girls send their love, and Sleek wants more pics of your small furry animals. She got to taste a guinea pig at Thanksgiving although she knew she was not supposed to damage it.

This letter should have you scratching your head. I’m OK. I did much better moodwise than I have for several years at Christmas. I hope you guys are safe and happy.

Love,
Kabbage

Different Slice of Life

Right now I'm working at a department store as holiday help. I put the tried-but-not-bought boxes of women's shoes back in the store room. This job, my first hourly job in over 20 years, is an eye-opener. I know I've been sheltered from many things in my life, but this job helps expose me to people who've been much less sheltered.

One young woman came in to work all happy because a close friend of her family had been arrested. This meant, to her, that the friend would have a chance to get off meth, since a couple of months of jailtime were expected. The next day, however, the young woman was upset because the jail lacked a doctor. Apparently detox had begun and wasn't pretty. Another day, one of the sales associates was planning some surgery. Another associate asked her what pain killers she'd be getting because she had a potential market for them.

Today we started having holiday meltdowns with ugly language flying at probably audible to customer levels. Fortunately, none of it was directed at me. I just go in and start putting boxes away. When I'm caught up on boxes, I put display shoes back out (I am a little confused why the sales staff often sits around instead of putting shoes back out. Do they not realize they are less likely to get commissions if people don't buy shoes because they don't know the store has them?). When that's done, I take a small section of the stockroom and re-organize that. I pretty much see the job as a 4-hour nonaerobic exercise session. I don't talk much there.

I'm learning a good bit about myself. My house is very messy, and my cubicle, when I worked in one, was very messy, too. That was okay with me because those were/are my spaces and no one else had to live or work in them (we won't talk about using a messy house as a way to shut people out of one's life). Having the stockroom messy and/or disorganized bothers me. If multiple people need to use that space, then it should be set up to be organized so all can find what they need to find with the least amount of fuss. I suspect this is part of the caretaker part of my personality coming through. And that's probably due to environmental factors (aka "nurture") when i was a kid.

Birthday

Today I am celebrating Fluff's 11th birthday. I don't know her exact date of birth, but this day 11 years ago was a very special one to me, so I use it as her birthday. Here are some pictures of her from the past year.

Here she is playing her own invention, the "Silly Stick Game," where she takes a large stick and scoots it around. This game is only played near water, preferably in sand. She almost always plays after she is wet, so her skirts and tail can hold the most sand possible. And that's a lot.



After playing the Silly Stick Game, she has to swim again to rinse out her skirts. She loves big sticks, but sometimes they're so big I'm afraid I'll hit her with them when I throw the stick. Fluff loves retrieving sticks from the water. Only when she was 10 did she decide that maybe the water (much of it snowmelt from the Cascades) is too cold in December & January for retrieving to be fun.



This is the intent Fluff face, hoping I'll throw the stick into the water again. She locks her eyes on mine when she wants something.

These are pictures of us at an obedience trial. We only went to support a friend and hadn't practiced in years. Our performance was overall hysterically funny, but these shots show the kind of attention she can give me when I ask for it. Ironically, I dislike heads-up heeling, when dogs have their heads cranked like while moving with the handler. These two pictures are courtesy of brisbeethewhite.

Sleek

This is Sleek, at 12.5 years old. This picture makes her look heavier than she really is. I think she's one of the most beautiful dogs I've ever seen. Watching her move, in her prime, across an open field just took my breath away, no matter how often I watched her. Fluffy is the girl of my heart, but Sleek is beautiful to Fluffy's pretty.

Christmas Day will mark 8 years since Sleek came to live with Fluff and me. She's lived longer than either of her parents did, and at least two of her littermates are gone, too. I do hope we have another Christmas or two together after this one.

Nose seriously out of joint

Ms. Fluff's nose is seriously out of joint. Our nextdoor neighbors now have a dog. She wasn't thrilled when the son, DIL, and grandkids moved in *and* started using the backyard, but she learned to adjust. It's not like she had access to their backyard, it's just that since no one else used it, either, she took to watching over it, as well as ours. Now the neighbors and their new dog are using the backyard!

The worst part for Fluff is that the dog is a Lab. Fluff doesn't care for labs, because Fluff is a Princess (i.e., not a dog), and Princesses have personal space that is not to be encroached upon by the peons. Unfortunately, Labs have no personal space of their own nor do they recognize that anyone else might have personal space. They also don't realize that a Princess is not a dog, so they treat Fluff like a dog. Shocking! Fluff only weighs about 45 lbs, so an on-rushing lab can easily knock her off her feet.

This afternoon the New Dog was out in its yard with one of the owners. Sleek went over to meet it through the fence. Fluff took one look at it and very pointedly would not look at that side of the yard again. I find her hysterically funny when she decides she cannot see something. She tries it with grooming tools (If I don't see the brush, I cannot be brushed, I am not being brushed....), the leash if she wants to go for a ride instead of a walk, and definitely the vet. She also does it with me when I say mean things like, "You have to stay home this time." Apparently if she doesn't see me say it, she can't hear it. Interesting.

Dogs are frighteningly similar to us sometimes. I know I had no genetic say on this animal (didn't even pick her parents for her), didn't meet her until she was 8 months old so the early puppyhood conditioning wasn't mine, and yet she mirrors so many of my behaviors that it can be creepy. (Yes, I sometimes carefully do not look at the neighbors since the one is most likely to want to talk to me when it's getting dark and I'm trying to get the grass mowed before full dark.)

Spelling Kabbage with a K

This is why I spell Kabbage with a K. This is the "real" Kabbage, aka "Fluffy." Since I don't know exactly when her birthday is, although it probably was December or January, since they told me she was 8 months old at the shelter from whence she came, I celebrate it on the Solstice. This year, she turns 11.

Why do I call this dog Kabbage? Her real name begins with a K, and occasionally I've gotten a little frustrated with her. At that point, she comes "K___-you-bitch" which slurs into "K__-yuh-bidge" and eventually the polite company-usable Kabbage.

She has many other names and has a number of titles on the end of her name, but her real title is "best girl." I knew getting a dog would change my life, but I didn't know it would change my perceived values, too.

Before I got Fluffy, no dog would ever sleep on the bed or get on the furniture. That held for a while. Then I decided that since she hadn't yet started ruling the house, she could be on the bed while I read at night, but she would have to get off when I turned out the light. Then we started traveling for agility trials. Fluffy is true to her breed when it comes to guardian instincts. She didn't approve of other people walking past our low-end motel room when we were trying to sleep and let them know. She got moved up to the top of the bed so I could easily grab her to stop the 2a.m. barking. Since she was sleeping on the bed when we traveled, why not at home? Now she must wait for permission to jump on the bed, but she can sleep there once she's invited.

While arguably I saved Fluffy's life (as cute as she is/was, I'm sure someone else would've adopted her if I hadn't), I know she has saved mine once and possibly twice. I adopted Ms Fluff because I was in a relationship that made me feel truly loved, so I felt I had enough extra love to add another life to mine, in terms of this dog. When the relationship ended, I was devastated. For days, I dragged myself to work only to come home afterward and curl up in the fetal position on the living room floor. Poor Fluff was quite young at this time and didn't really know how to handle my distress. She just pressed herself as hard as she could against my back, letting me know I always had someone there for me. Every once in a while, she'd get a squeaky toy to offer me, because a good squeaky can help a lot of problems. If I didn't respond to the squeaky, she'd go back to curling up with me. I was in so much pain, I think I would've tried some drastic methods to stop the pain. The thing was, I had to find a way out of the pain that wouldn't lead to Fluff going back to the pound. That ruled out the lethal "cures." And in the meantime, I had to let her out of the house, feed her, and generally take care of her. I got on with my life, putting the relationship behind me.

A few years later, Fluff and I were on our way home from agility class when a car behind us started blinking its lights and motioning me over. Eventually, I pulled over, although I retained enough common sense to have the doors locked and the window barely cracked. The driver asked for my license. I countered by asking for his ID. He flashed something I couldn't see clearly. Fluff, by now, was bored with the car being motionless. She announced her displeasure with a few sharp barks. Instantly, the man spun on his heel, got into his car, and drove off in the other direction. Good girl, Fluffy!

I do love my little dog. You'll read more about her, I'm sure.

An Alphabet Meme

Peripatetic Polar Bear wrote:
Mindyhas a meme where you get assigned a letter of the alphabet and have to come up with ten things you love based on that letter. Since I really should be sermonizing, I figured I'd play. I got S.

I asked PPB for a letter and received this reply: "Kabbage, you get a C, for cabbage---the way we spell it in Illinois."

Here goes.

1. Cup, as in mug. A container for hot beverages. One of my previous employers gave out a lot of mugs for different company events, and I still have a number of those. I still have my Bell Atlantic 1-1-84 mug, for the first day of life without Ma Bell. Bell Atlantic is now Verizon, but I left long before that happened.

2. Car, as in my beloved Honda Element. Best darn dog car ever. Cute-ugly, but no carpet to get soaked with dog spit.

3. Checks that I sign on the back, not the front.

4. Cranberry chutney. Even people who don't like cranberries like this stuff. Despite burning a double batch of it this week, it's really pretty easy to make. I must make more to give as gifts this Christmas season.

5. Cooking for friends. I don't much like cooking for just me, but I do enjoy cooking for/with friends. I even kind of like cooking for the dogs, although I try to pretty much keep from cooking with the dogs.

6. Candles, which I'm probably going to need soon. We have a major winter blow going through, with rain, and the lights are flickering every once in a while. Cable connection, too. Give me real scents, though, not artificial ones!

7. My CD player. I bought it in 1989, and it's still spinning those discs whenever I ask (assuming we have power). It was a bonus to myself for breaking up with a certain doofus.

8. Chinese food. Thai is really yummy, too. The abundance of Thai restaurants where I live amazed me when I first moved here from the Midwest.

9. Canada. Fun people, beautiful places, cute way of saying "aboot" instead of "about."

10. Chocolate! Dark chocolate. Good chocolate. Hot chocolate. Chocolate-orange ice cream. As soon as I publish this, I'm going to brave the wind for a trip to Trader Joe's for more truffles.

I'm struggling over how to get my dogs into this meme. They are the things I most love these days. How about....

11. Cat-chasing dogs! Sleek used to have really bad intentions toward cats, but she's mellowed now that the body can't deliver what the ego demands in terms of speed and jumping ability. Fluffy chases until the cat stops, then she becomes fascinated with some object that just happens to be close to said cat.

Thanks, PPB!

A Useful Post -- Shoo-Fly Cake (Vegan)

This is a Pennsylvania Dutch treat which just happens to be vegan. My sister called a week before Thanksgiving to see if I had the recipe. I sent it to her so she could make one for Thanksgiving with my brother and his family and some of his wife's family. To the best of my knowledge, everyone there would be leaning strongly to the carnivorous side. I suggested to my sister that when she unveiled the cake, she should let everyone know it's vegan, (explain vegan if necessary,) and say she got the recipe from her Left Coast, nuts-n-flakes, Birkenstock-wearing sister. After the stunned silence was broken, she could add that I got the recipe from our aunt who actually lives in central Pennsylvania, near PA Dutch country.

Warning: it is tactful to tell people beforehand that the cake is not chocolate. It looks like chocolate, and sometimes people spit because the molasses flavor is so different from what they expected. It's messy. On the other hand, the cake itself is the easiest cake recipe on the planet. I love it!

Recipe was expanded for my sister's benefit, although she still missed the reserving crumbs for the topping step. She doesn't cook much.

Shoo Fly Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In bowl #1 (medium or large) mix
2-1/2 cups of boiling water,
1 cup of molasses, and
1 Tablespoon of baking SODA.
This will froth up when the soda hits the molasses, so be sure there is room in the bowl.

In bowl #2 (large bowl) mix
4 cups of flour,
1 lb dark brown sugar,
½ teaspoon salt, and
¾ cup cooking oil.
Use your hands to mix this up until crumbly. Reserve one cup of crumbs in a (smaller) bowl for topping (I probably reserve more than a cup because I grab a couple of large handfuls).

Mix together the contents of bowl #1 and bowl #2 so the final mix is fairly smooth. Pour the batter into an ungreased (why I really love this recipe!) 13x9 in^2 (sheet cake) pan. Top with the reserved crumbs. Bake for ~45 minutes at 350F.

Conversation with Solicitor

Tonight I got a solicitation phone call.

Hero: Hello?
Villain: May I speak to the lady of the house?
Hero: We don’t have one of those.
Villain: Well, then may I speak to the man of the house?
Hero (offendedly): We CERTAINLY don’t have one of those!
Villain: Then are you the adult of the house?
Hero (pausing): Maybe.

Villain decides this part of the conversation is going nowhere productive, so opts to go into canned spiel, which deals with television and ratings. Hero lets Villain run for a bit, then when Villain pauses for breath, Hero strikes.

Hero: None of us here watch TV.
Villain (realizing this is a lost cause): Thank you for your time

Blue Meat

You’ve heard of blue catsup and other travesties of food coloring, but you’ve probably not heard of blue meat. Today I found out how to get blue-colored meat. It’s an all-natural method, too!

Yesterday I cooked some meat and vegetables for the dogs. The special was pork and purple kale. I boiled these together and served up about half of it. The meat was the typical grayish color you would expect from boiled pork. The rest of the mixture went in the refrigerator, waiting for today’s canine breakfast time. When I pulled the food out of the refrigerator, I saw the pork had turned blue. Truly blue, although not blue catsup-blue. It’s an interesting color but not too appealing to me. Fortunately, animals that will eat cat poop or several-day-old roadkill are less picky about the color of their food. All the pork was quickly eaten. The kale itself is less popular and eaten under protest.

My guess is that chicken breasts would really end up blue but beef wouldn’t be all that colorful. Doesn’t homemade chicken noodle soup with blue lumps of chicken floating in it sound pretty cool?

Favorite Childhood Toys

from Jo(e)'s blog: http://writingasjoe.blogspot.com/2006/12/favorite-toys-meme.html

Favorite toys of childhood

1. Ralph, my stuffed, light blue Basset Hound. He had a tag that said he was "Morgan, Junior. TV Star" but I don't remember seeing him on TV. I loved Ralph with a passion that was visible in his missing fur and damaged eyes (the droopy eyes were done partially with felt that eventually wore away). He had a huge squeaker that was most of his muzzle originally. Somehow it migrated into his neck.

2. The sandbox. We had the coolest sandbox. My dad built the sandbox and its lid and filled it with fine white sand. We had a farmset in there, a set of dogs close to the same scale as the farmset animals, and some miscellaneous dinosaurs. It made for some interesting social structures. I confess that there were some caste decisions made on animal color. We weren't supposed to put water in the sandbox because it was wood and my parents were afraid of the bottom rotting out, but we did. You can't build much fun stuff with dry sand. I played in that sandbox until I was 13 or so. I think my parents hauled it off because they thought I was too old to be playing in it.

5-year plans

The hardest thing about making a 5-year plan now is realizing that Sleek will not be a part of it. She's 12 and a half, so I don't think she'll be physically here in her present body.

It's highly questionable whether or not Fluffy has a shot at being part of the 5-year plan. She's about to turn 11. The difference, I think, is that Fluffy is from my soul plane. I know I'll be with her again. I think there is even a good chance she'll show up in a different dog body during my current lifetime. With Sleek, I'm not so sure. I think she's from a different soul plane than Ms. Fluff and me, and she may be finishing up with us for now.

Voting

I miss voting. Sure, I still vote, but my state only has mail-in ballots now. The closest I can come to the voting experience is to drop off my ballot at one of the election-day-only drop locations.

Why do I miss voting in person? I miss the sense of civic membership that came from standing in line with people from my neighborhood (even if I didn't know them), greeting the poll workers, seeing my name in the voter rolls, stepping into the booth, fitting the ballot over the pegs to align it, pushing my chads through as I made my choices, putting my ballot into the "secret ballot envelope" and finally putting it into the ballot box. I love that! I feel so responsible, so adult when I vote in person. Voting by mail feels more like paying bills by mail -- personal drudgery rather than civic participation.

On the other hand, I remember all too well my first experience voting. I was 19 and away at college. It was a Presidential election year, so many of us in the dorms registered locally (absentee ballots were less common in those long ago days). We voted at another dorm near ours. I found one of my closest friends over at the polling place when I got there, and we happened to get booths at the same time.

For some reason, it hadn't occurred to us that we would be able to vote for anyone besides the Presidential candidates, and maybe for US Senator. Holy moly, there were all sorts of races on that ballot! Since we were young, naive, and mostly experienced in tests where the powers-that-be recommended choosing some answer instead of leaving a blank, we felt we had to choose a candidate for every race. We're talking about school board, city council, everything. We lived in the dorms, we read the college paper, not the town paper. We knew nothing (although we did know we knew nothing). So we started consulting with each other, even as both of us are in the voting booths. "So, who do you want to vote for on city council seat #1?" "Uh, I'm not sure. How about voting for Party X this time? We haven't voted for many of those." "Umm, look, there's a woman running for the next position. Let's vote for her." "OK." We went through a lot of races that way, and I'm sure the precinct workers wanted to kill us and/or void our ballots. I'm not sure they shouldn't have, but at least we were participating. It was important to us to use our votes for that first national election where we could.

Today, even if it's done at home, I vote. And I send a mental toast to my dear friend in honor of that long ago vote. Thanks, Broc-T for sharing my first election!