This blog used to be a place where I wrote for my own entertainment and amusement. Now it’s haunted with bad memories, anger, regret, a poltergeist, a couple of trolls, an ogre, and some ghosts. So I’m moving on to a new location. I’m not taking the site down for now mostly because it holds a tribute to Katy. Also because it wasn’t all bad and I don’t want to lose the good stuff.
Those of you who are friends and have been reading along will get an email with a link to the new place. That way you can still tune in to the continuing adventures of Molly and Buster as they radiate joy into the universe and accidentally injure me. Those of you who I don’t know personally but would like to make the move can leave a comment, and I’ll update you too. Here’s to better times! [Clink]
Posted in Uncategorized
Q) If you could find someone to pay you $1 for every time you said “Don’t eat poop!” in the last 2 days, how much money would you have?
A) $27
Q) Why is it that dogs enjoy eating cat shit?
A) Cat food is waaaay saltier than dog food. Dogs crave salt constantly. They will kill for salt. They will eat cat food, no matter how it’s presented: original recipe, partially digested, fully digested, and extruded.
Q) How tired are you right now?
A) So tired that I keep having dizzy spells and almost drove into a concrete barrier on the way home.
Q) Why are you so tired?
A) I had to get up at 5 a.m. to attend a meeting by phone on Eastern time. Eastern time is arrogant and should be ignored as often as possible.
Q) How long did the meeting last?
A) 8 hours, with an hour break for lunch. The whole time I struggled to understand and figure out who was saying what and why.
Q) Will you ever accept the absence of the last serial comma?
A) No.
Q) Why are you so itchy all of the time?
A) How the fuck should I know?
Q) What are the two best movies ever made?
A) Clay Pigeons and Blade Runner. And The Princess Bride. And Pulp Fiction. Fuck you. I can too count. Oh, and Raising Arizona. And Miller’s Crossing.
Q) Will “Raising Hope” be a successful TV show?
A) Nope. Too white trash and too highbrow at the same time.
Q) But aren’t many or most people too dumb to notice?
A) Yes and no. I know someone who is dumb enough to have thought the show “Starved” was a documentary. But advertisers will notice. It won’t fly. But sometimes idiocy triumphs. NB: Dancing with the “Stars.”
Q) What is your favorite punctuation mark?
A) The hyphen. Hands down. However, I do enjoy both the semi-colon and the colon. Just saying “colon” cracks me up. Today I managed to discuss both the colon and wieners in the same conversation. And then? Someone threw in a “thinking outside the box.” Weiners + thinking outside the box = hilarity. A weiner outside the box. I need a vacation.
Q) Why is Buster always licking his left paw?
A) I think it’s nervous energy. I’ve inspected that paw up one side and down the other. That paw is fine. He is anxious about something that I haven’t been able to identify yet.
Q) What are the 19 stages of emotions following a severe emotional event, such as a break-up or being laid off?
A) Anger, deep sorrow, hate, rage, disbelief, grief, sadness, anger, rage, anger, rage, violence, hate, hate, hate, hate, indifference, sadness, sadness, sadness, acceptance. I did research.
Q) If someone actually did give you money for every time you had to say “Don’t eat poop” during any given period of time, how would you spend that money?
A) Goons. Hairy-knuckled beasts who would break some kneecaps like Tonya Harding’s ex-husband. Head cracking. Idiots deserve punishment. It’s karma on ‘roids.
Q) What should a therapist say during a session?
A) You should be asked if you’re sleeping and eating OK. If your therapist says, “Got any blow?” or “Your mom said to tell you ‘hi.’ But it was muffled by MY DICK IN HER MOUTH!” then I would like a referral.
Q) What are “chola eyebrows”?
A) These occur when a young lady has plucked out all of her natural eyebrows, then takes an eyebrow pencil with a reddish hue and draws upside-down Vs over her eyes. This is almost always accompanied by brown lip liner with sparkly pink lip gloss.
Q) Are you still planning to go to NY for the cheese course offered by the CIA?
A) Nope. But I think I have a good reason. First, I decided to use my frequent flier miles to go to Chicago in October to spend time with my sister and try to repair our relationship. Second, I realized that Hyde Park, NY, is nowhere near NYC. The logistics of getting there and back would include a rental car and getting lost. And I can take an hors d’oeuvres course right here. I would love love love love to go to NYC in the near future, but Chicago is also pretty great, and I’m going first class, so suck it.
Q) What’s wrong with Molly?
A) Kennel cough, aka bordatella. And this, if you think “adorable” is a problem, then she has that too:
1None of these Qs are ever asked F2
2These questions are asked either R3 or N4.
3Rarely
4Never
Posted in Uncategorized
I’m home tending to sick dogs today. Buster also came down with kennel cough, so it’s a very good thing in the long run that I didn’t travel today. Poor boy. Now he has to take pills too, but that’s a bonus for both of them, since I bought extra-special treats to stuff the pills into. I work from home in a completely different style than that practiced by most of the people I know who work from home only occasionally. That is to say, I actually worked all day, I am completely sober, I watched no porn, and I never even once considered taking a break to masturbate. Revolutionary. (see footnote)
Molly has proven to be a fussy, demanding patient. For some reason, she spent quite a bit of time on Sunday evening trying to figure out a way to enter my bedroom through the cat door that is in my window. Over and over again, she shoved her nose through the flap and cried and whined. Then she would shove one paw in. Then her nose again. Perhaps Buster took her to the woodshed earlier and she was afraid to come in through the dog door. Or perhaps she is very sweet but not so bright. At least we all slept through the night last night.
One behavior that Molly just started exhibiting is one of Katy’s strange little quirks. Every time we went for a walk after a recent rain, Katy would have to stop at every puddle and try to drink the whole thing. She would slurp at it like she’d been in the desert for weeks and didn’t know where her next drink was coming from. We used to narrate her thoughts as she guzzled: Oh my god you guys! Can’t you see that there’s PUDDLE WATER here? I’m glad you’re not drinking it so I can have it all!! Idiots!! IT’S PUDDLE WATER!! (Katy’s internal voice sounded quite a bit like Homestar Runner.) Then we’d walk on a few steps and she’d find a new puddle and try to drink that too. Molly has always been obsessed by water, but usually she prefers moving water, and the higher the velocity, the better. Sprinklers? Shut up. Sprinklers are the best. The ocean? Oh, snap. The ocean is the best. But now she has taken up Katy’s cause and tries to drink the entire contents of every puddle we come across. Yes, I know puddle water is gross and full of oil residue from the roads and chemical runoff from lawn chemicals. It’s not like I LET them drink the puddles. It’s just that sometimes I get distracted. I usually walk them with a cocktail in hand.
I just said a funny thing to Ameleh on the yahoo. We were discussing a person we know who has had lots of protection in her career and may not have had the job she has now without said protection. The shelter comes from a man who is short in stature, but a giant in ego. Anyway, we were discussing her future now that the small man has moved along. I said that she no longer has “her knight in tiny armor” to keep her safe from herself. Ha ha. I’m sure that was funny only to me. Suck it.
I recently had to go to a sort of conference thingy that was attended by a lot of very smart people with the letters Ph. d. after their names. Proof that common sense does not always travel hand in hand with intellect:
He or she was probably thinking deep thoughts while driving.
footnote: Paradoxically, the people I know who work from home on a daily basis work harder than most people. I believe that they are sober almost all day.
Posted in Uncategorized
I’m in a bit of a state tonight, and I will go ahead and blame Canada, because why not? I am currently observing a TV show called “Chuck’s Day Off,” which I find moderately enjoyable for reasons I will enumerate in a moment. I have noticed that the Food Network, Fine Living, HGTV, and the Cooking Channel all feature a disproportionately high number of shows that are CLEARLY produced in Canada. If this is the result of SOCIALISM and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE (I mean, according to your poster girl, Sarah Palin), then why are we frittering away one single second? Canada is where it’s AT, America. So what if the accent is just ever-so-slightly puzzling? It’s very, very charming. I want my life to be lived Canadian style from this second forward, yo. Pass the poutin.
I’m witnessing the cooking show named above right now, and every time Chuck says the word “pan,” there’s a party in my pants. Why? A) Maple syrup (it’s CANADA, for fuck’s sake), and B) When Chuck says “pan,” I need 8 or 9 diacritical marks to express the sounds he makes. It’s sort of like “bpoen,” but I need a shwa and an umlaut to really explain. And, in addition to this, he said this sentence: “I want all of the beer to evaporate, and then my nuts become nice, sticky, salty, and sweet. I’m really, really close. Oh, yeah.”
Are we all on the same page? I would like anyone’s nuts to become nice, sticky, salty, and sweet. I don’t care if I’m the least bit involved.
So why am I in a state? Because once again, no sleep. I finally achieved a level of being where my emotional agitation wasn’t keeping me awake, but then… Molly contracted kennel cough. She’s not really any better today than she was yesterday. I am not going on the trip I should be going on tomorrow because I have no one on the fucking planet who will take care of a cranky pony in my absence (in spite of the fact that I have taken care of other people’s dogs on many, many occasions; see comment for additional information about the one person who would and will and has taken care of my dogs). She kept me (and herself) up all night with the coughing, hacking, horking, gacking. I used to think Katy sounded like an old Jewish man… Molly lacks the sincerity of Katy’s performance, but she makes up for it with sheer mass. Not only was the bed shaking, but the entire house. It’s been a really long time when that happened not related to my dog’s respiratory health.
In other non-news, I realized tonight that when I start to make a cocktail in the evening (when I put ice into a glass), my dogs start whirling and twirling at the door. Cocktail time!! We’re going for twosies!! They’re so smart. Or I’m so predictable.
Also, Internet, I have been searching for some way to express myself or lance the boil that is my life, and I so I wrote a poem (or poim) about my recent devastation. I’m not going to post it here, because I’m not a tween. However, not all poetry is self-indulgent drivel, although Ezra Pound and Sylvia Plath might disagree, not that I’m even attempting to stand anywhere near their shadows. Anyhoo, I would be happy to share with anyone who wants to brave these waters. Just leave me a comment, eh.
Posted in Uncategorized
This is why I can’t have nice things:
Dogzilla
On Saturday afternoon, Molly started horking. I thought she had an object (like a piece of bone) stuck in her throat because she seemed to be trying to clear something out. I gave her some soft food to eat in the hopes that it would help move the object along, but she kept periodically coughing and then spitting out phlegm. Then she’d be fine for a while and take a nap. She was still at this at 6 p.m., so I decided to take her to the emergency vet clinic. I was concerned that if there was something in her throat and she started coughing and choked, then passed out, I wouldn’t be able to lift her to get her into the car.
I had to go to the emergency vet clinic twice, since I forgot my driver’s license the first time. I don’t know how they deal with non-drivers who bring their pets in, but they were very adamant about my needing a license before they would treat Molly.
The vet saw her right away and expressed doubt that Molly had a foreign object stuck in her throat. She said these two dreaded words: kennel cough. Fuuuuudge. Yes, they were kenneled just a week ago. And I have to leave town again on Tuesday.
Anyhoo, the vet put the Bean on some antibiotics (even though kennel cough is caused by a virus) and some cough medicine. She double-checked with me first to make sure I was willing to pay for very expensive cough medicine.
“How expensive is very expensive?” I asked.
“$63,” came the reply. Of course. Molly can’t just have some of that ‘Tussin. She needs $63 cough medicine.
“Of course,” I answered, because I am a pigeon, a mark, a patsy.
They also wanted to give her a pain injection before we left because she’d been irritating her own throat all day, and the injection would help both of us rest. They told me it might make her high. Because she’s so big and muscular, I doubted if it would have much effect on her. Proof that I was wrong:
Is this real life?
She was gorked out of her mind.
Why is my head so heavy?
Dude. I feel funny.
The total bill? Just over $200. $200 to treat a virus she caught at the kennel. Which brings me back to my problem. I have to travel on Tuesday, but I doubt if the kennel will take her when she has a case of kennel cough (even though it’s clearly being spread already). I’ll call my vet tomorrow to see if they’ll keep her, but she’ll probably have to be in quarantine there, and I doubt if they’ll give her enough space and exercise. What I really need is a pet sitter, but I’ve always been hesitant to hire one, so I don’t have anyone in the hopper.
All in all, I’m sick of business travel. Time for a break from it.
New topic: Anyone who knows me well knows that my motto is “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” Or maybe no one has ever heard me say that. I recently had a case of runner’s knee because I pushed it too hard two weeks ago, and it took two full weeks for the pain to go away. For two weeks it hurt like a motherfucker to go down the stairs. So since my knees finally felt better, I went back to walking this weekend. I need to lay off the running for another week-ish. And today, since yesterday’s walk didn’t cause any pain, I decided to be an overachiever again. I set out on a walk that would have taken me on about a 4 mile round trip. As I was walking, I had a cockamamie idea. Back in the day when I used to be a serious runner, I would run downtown, around the Alamo, and back. So I did that, except I walked instead of ran. That’s about a 10-mile round trip.
I had an adventure on the way, of course. As I was heading south, a crackhead who was sitting at a bus stop across the street decided to holla at me. He was fairly persistent, so I replied that perhaps he should consider finding some sort of gainful full-time employment instead of being a crackhead and bothering me. Luckily the street is wide at that point, and being a crackhead, he didn’t have the gumption to actually cross it and stab me.
Since he was at a bus stop, I hoped that he’d have climbed aboard a bus and be gone on the way back. Why do I bother to hope things at all, Internet? My hoping for something is almost a guarantee that it won’t happen. So I saw him a block away this time, and with my superior intellect, I realized I could go a block west and avoid him that way, then hook back east to resume my trek. What I didn’t take into account was the highway overpass. The street I was on dead-ended after a scary-ass block. I looked to my right. There was the crackhead a block away in that direction. I looked left. Not promising, but maybe there was a way out? So I turned left and realized just why there was a crackhead sitting so close to this “neighborhood.” I was in Crackhead City. Great! I can blend. I went down another block and found another dead end. I wasn’t going back the way I came, so I climbed over the dead-end barrier. There was a pathway worn in the grass, so I was reasonably sure I would end up back where I wanted to be. On the other hand, it was my own logic and decision-making that had led me to a dead-end street in CrackTown, so… The path led beneath an overpass, but it was the lowest overpass I’ve ever seen. It was just taller than I am, so not much light found its way in. I was certain I would either step in human remains or step in human excrement. Out the other side, up a path, and YAY, back where I wanted to be. There was the gas station where I found Buster. What a relief. (Buster, who got into the car with some obvious trepidation, and looked at all the people with a look that said, “I’ll come with you, but no butt stuff.”)
I guess the next time a crackhead hollas at me, I’ll keep my opinions to myself.
Posted in Uncategorized
Best idea I’ve had in a while:
1) Purchase a large Sonic diet limeade.
2) Guzzle said limeade.
3) Add sangria to Sonic cup.
4) Enjoy while taking dogs for twosies.
One of fate’s cruelest tricks: I’m a conscientious dog walker. I always pick up the poop. Tonight, there was a tear in the poop bag, which caused me to have Buster poop on my hand.
Last night I turned the TV on and realized why I rarely watch network television. I’m not sure if it was a CSI or an SVU, but the show I saw featured the guy from the Chase Sapphire commercial and Captain Hammer.
Dr. Horrible's Arch Nemesis
Lastly, Internet, some news. My ex-boyfriend and I have brokered a fragile truce. We have been raging at each other, trying to destroy each other, and, generally speaking, acting like massive assholes to each other. What I forgot during this unhappy episode is that when you’re busy being an asshole toward your ex-whatever, you’re just being an asshole and you’re likely to splash some asshole all over everyone around you. I don’t think that I am an intrinsic asshole (at least, I hope not) and I don’t want to be one anymore, even in reaction to someone else. I don’t think we’ll ever be best friends again and I still mourn that loss. I will continue to feel that void in my life for a very long time. But the least we can do is try to behave like humans. We’ve been at this point before, but this time I really, really hope it sticks. There are some things we’ll never agree on and some topics we will have to avoid, but since the whole point is to just stop trying to tear each other apart, I doubt if many, or even any, conversations will ensue. I still have a lot of healing to do. Until there is a thick layer of scar tissue over the raw parts, I don’t know how much contact I can tolerate. But last night I was actually able to sleep because I felt peace for the first time in a while. Wish me luck.
Posted in Uncategorized
