So I was trying to get through my blogging life without bringing up tornados ever EVER AGAIN, because JESUS ENOUGH ALREADY, and if I realize this, you are all groaning with the realization, too.
However, nothing is really occurring in my life these days, apart from a cringing kind of constant disappointment that the partner and I are not yet living in a camping trailer and having wacky adventures all over the country (and don't think you are safe, Canada and Mexico, with your alluring contiguousness!) coupled with the grumbling realization that due to its unique and easily-connectable-to-one-nerd-from-Texas nature, I cannot write about my job.
Which is a real crying shame, if you ask the people who are in the know, because dude, that shit, I am telling you. Or not, as the devastating case actually is.
So I am tucked away this evening in The Bunker, which also goes by the less inviting name of My Parents' House, because it is an actual house and has a "tornado-proof room." How tornado-proof is it? Well, I submit to you the highly credible evidence that no one in the room has ever been blown away by a tornado. (In the interest of scientific accuracy, I must also point out that there has not been a tornado in this area while we have been living here, and also that no one has ever really set foot in the tornado-proof room. Its current occupants are a ladder and a five-gallon can of paint.)
Whither came I here?
NOAA website: The atmosphere is very unstable and therefore large BOOMS for you and your 37 dogs.
The radar: Greetings! I contain large blobs of various deadly, bloody colors!
The sky: Hey, there! I am blobby in the way the radar is blobby, and also I am the color of future giant BOOMS.
So I predict a night like Wednesday night, a night which I spent in a recliner up here in The Bunker, because I could not sleep in the spare room, because the spare room was occupied by Belle and her six newborn puppies, and not only did Belle decide to leave an artistic arrangement of doodies on the bed, I will tell you now that six newborn puppies are extremely loud.
C'mon, how loud can six newborn puppies really *be,* I am sure you are asking. And I will reward your curiosity by telling you that SQUEEEEESQUEEEEEE. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. mmmmmmrrrrrRREEEEESQUEEEEE! EEEEEK! EEEEK! EEEEK!
However, they are cute, fat and multicolored, and I quickly forgave them and WOOKIT THE WITTLE RAT BABIES.
I did not forgive the severe thunderstorms that awakened me at one in the morning, and again at three in the morning, and again at five in the morning. Now, I have a strained relationship with those hours of the morning as it is, and I am afraid that this meterological offering did nothing to reconcile me to them. At least two of those storms contained hail which CLICKETY CLICKETY PLINK PLINK RATTLE WHACK and at least one of them contained stronger winds than were strictly necessary, and at least one of them contained excessively large wads of lightning, each accompanied by the sound of an enormous truck backing up to the house and depositing exactly one thousand bowling balls on the roof. (No, I do not know where one can come by a truck of this size, it could have been a Transformer for all I know, I was VERY TIRED.)
And I was out of work today due to having fluey symptoms which made my coworkers nervous and I got tired of being chased with Germ-X, which led to vegetating on the couch all day, being fluey and intermittently being whacked in the side of my head with the skull of a puppy.
The Weather Channel: Hey, you should watch Vortex 2! It might sound like a ride at Six Flags, but it's actually our awesome new show in which deranged individuals deliberately drive into the path of tornados!
The Erika: I will.... actually totally watch that.
Let's check the radar!
.... are you KIDDING ME? I am NOT IMPRESSED, atmosphere. What is that, blue spray paint? I am not afraid of those colors, Doppler radar. You've really got to give me something to WORK WITH.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Driving to Kansas, for no apparent reason! The liveblog!
Transferred in its entirety from Livejournal, segments are in chronological order.
1:54 pm
First of all, I am posting on my iPhone, which is El Enormous Asspain, so forgive any spelling hiccups, iPhone likes to take legitimate words like "assburger" and turn them into "askbinder," which is actually also a pretty cool word.
Hmm, seems like southern Oklahoma was on fire recently.
So we have all three dogs in the car with us, which serves the double function of proving that we are functionally retarded and also makes the car smell like dog breath.
I realize that the Internet has been positively frothing at the mouth for these insights.
Oklahoma contains many cows. Perhaps too many.
XM radio kind of inspires me to eternal devotion. We are listening to an actual episode of American Top 40 from the 80s, hosted by Casey Kasem. (note to young people: Casey Kasem is an immortal radio god who continued to broadcast up until people got suspicious of his eternal youth. He then shapeshifted into Ryan Seacrest and that is where we stand today.)
The number one song? Kiss, by Prince. Remember when that was his name?
2:29 pm
80s on 8 shoutout to Jean: Manic Monday!
To Ali: whoaaaaohh, sweet child of mine!!
Ok, so those aren't shoutouts so much as they are songs I heard that remind me of people.
Things I have seen so far in Oklahoma:
A piece of plastic stuck in a fence, flap flap flapping in the breeze.
A "scenic turnout," which contained such stunning and soul-refreshing natural sights as a discarded Sonic cup and eight million power lines.
Some red hills with grass on top that were very pretty.
Kristi stabbing the radio button with impressive ferocity when an Uncle Kracker song came on. Maybe it was Sugar Ray, but who can TELL?
The Oklahoma Horseshoeing School, South Campus.
An exit advertising access to both Wayne, OK and Payne, OK.
Clark Griswold, I think.
2:47 pm
Ways to Annoy the girlfriend #397: Sing along to "Come on Eileen" in the voice of Beaker from The Muppets. ( note: this is difficult to sustain for more than 30 seconds, but that's really all you need.)
Y'all know I only travel so I can stick pins in that Facebook application about where I've been, right?
We are now in Norman, notable for containing the headquarters of the National Weather Service, fine folks whose relentless work ensures that I will be notified by text message if my doublewide's about to get blown away by a durn twister.
Apparently, they don't have gas stations, at least not along the highway.
3:31 pm
So I had this persistent mental image of Oklahoma City as a place altogether dark, stormy and being constantly destroyed by tornadoes.
Turns out it hasn't been eaten up by tornadoes! Who knew? It's actually kind of a pretty place. Of course, we accidentally took some random highway spur and ended up somewhere unplanned. But we've found 35 again and are headed ever northward, after a ridiculously curvy onramp that caused the dogs to careen sideways and knock each other down like a row of dominoes with really rancid breath.
3:48 pm
See amazing Guthrie! It has a territorial capital! When other capitals get near it, it starts growling and peeing on everything in sight!
Kristi is wanting to figure out where Greensburg, Kansas is. I'm thinking it's too far for us today, but that would be cool. Greensburg, as you remember, is famous for getting wiped out by a tornado (as usual, there is a tornadic undercurrent to my posts, discuss) and then having it's own TV show on Planet Green where they wanted to rebuild the town in a green way, only the townspeople were not so much for it, at least in the two or three episodes I saw.
Mishty. Twitter? You think I need to be on Twitter? Social networking sites make me LAZY, dude. All I have to do is post three hundred pictures of my dogs, make lame jokes about tacos., and call it a day. ETA: I have since capitulated, due to incredible boredom.
Let's keep going to Kansas, though, for reals. I could stand to add another state to the list. Might get me through the upcoming week.
5:28 pm
Kansas looks like Oklahoma, y'all.
This brings my tally of "states I have personally set foot in to 31," a number that is certain to change daily depending on my crappy memory. I'll have to seriously revisit a couple of states I either don't remember that well (sorry, Indiana) and others that I didn't pay much attention to (um.... sorry Mississippi).
None of which is as exciting as how, thanks to an enterprising Australian Shepherd puppy and her unrestrained bouncing, we were nearly locked out of the car in Hunnewell, Kansas. (if anyone ever brings up Hunnewell, Kansas in conversation, you know, like people do, I can say, "you know, I almost got locked out of the car there once." Try it, you'll sound worldly and traveled!)
So why were we out of the car, you might ask. Well, Nosy Pants, after that many miles, Kristi and I had to be let out to pee. There. You've gone and embarrassed me again, Internet. You jerk.
No, seriously, the truth is even more embarrassing. We'd missed the Welcome to Kansas sign on the interstate, which made me crabby, so we found this one on this little country road, and of COURSE I am one of those State Line Picture People, and it took Katie stomping on the door lock and giving us heart attacks and nearly getting pasted by an 18-wheeler, all for the sake of a picture in which I am holding my left hand in a toolish position because the dogs had sprayed Kansas slush all over it and it looked poo-like and I didn't want it in the picture and I am ending this sentence now.
I look like an ass in this picture is what I'm saying. Thankfully the passenger side door was still unlocked, or none of you would have been treated to this unique and special tale.
I want food.
1:54 pm
First of all, I am posting on my iPhone, which is El Enormous Asspain, so forgive any spelling hiccups, iPhone likes to take legitimate words like "assburger" and turn them into "askbinder," which is actually also a pretty cool word.
Hmm, seems like southern Oklahoma was on fire recently.
So we have all three dogs in the car with us, which serves the double function of proving that we are functionally retarded and also makes the car smell like dog breath.
I realize that the Internet has been positively frothing at the mouth for these insights.
Oklahoma contains many cows. Perhaps too many.
XM radio kind of inspires me to eternal devotion. We are listening to an actual episode of American Top 40 from the 80s, hosted by Casey Kasem. (note to young people: Casey Kasem is an immortal radio god who continued to broadcast up until people got suspicious of his eternal youth. He then shapeshifted into Ryan Seacrest and that is where we stand today.)
The number one song? Kiss, by Prince. Remember when that was his name?
2:29 pm
80s on 8 shoutout to Jean: Manic Monday!
To Ali: whoaaaaohh, sweet child of mine!!
Ok, so those aren't shoutouts so much as they are songs I heard that remind me of people.
Things I have seen so far in Oklahoma:
A piece of plastic stuck in a fence, flap flap flapping in the breeze.
A "scenic turnout," which contained such stunning and soul-refreshing natural sights as a discarded Sonic cup and eight million power lines.
Some red hills with grass on top that were very pretty.
Kristi stabbing the radio button with impressive ferocity when an Uncle Kracker song came on. Maybe it was Sugar Ray, but who can TELL?
The Oklahoma Horseshoeing School, South Campus.
An exit advertising access to both Wayne, OK and Payne, OK.
Clark Griswold, I think.
2:47 pm
Ways to Annoy the girlfriend #397: Sing along to "Come on Eileen" in the voice of Beaker from The Muppets. ( note: this is difficult to sustain for more than 30 seconds, but that's really all you need.)
Y'all know I only travel so I can stick pins in that Facebook application about where I've been, right?
We are now in Norman, notable for containing the headquarters of the National Weather Service, fine folks whose relentless work ensures that I will be notified by text message if my doublewide's about to get blown away by a durn twister.
Apparently, they don't have gas stations, at least not along the highway.
3:31 pm
So I had this persistent mental image of Oklahoma City as a place altogether dark, stormy and being constantly destroyed by tornadoes.
Turns out it hasn't been eaten up by tornadoes! Who knew? It's actually kind of a pretty place. Of course, we accidentally took some random highway spur and ended up somewhere unplanned. But we've found 35 again and are headed ever northward, after a ridiculously curvy onramp that caused the dogs to careen sideways and knock each other down like a row of dominoes with really rancid breath.
3:48 pm
See amazing Guthrie! It has a territorial capital! When other capitals get near it, it starts growling and peeing on everything in sight!
Kristi is wanting to figure out where Greensburg, Kansas is. I'm thinking it's too far for us today, but that would be cool. Greensburg, as you remember, is famous for getting wiped out by a tornado (as usual, there is a tornadic undercurrent to my posts, discuss) and then having it's own TV show on Planet Green where they wanted to rebuild the town in a green way, only the townspeople were not so much for it, at least in the two or three episodes I saw.
Mishty. Twitter? You think I need to be on Twitter? Social networking sites make me LAZY, dude. All I have to do is post three hundred pictures of my dogs, make lame jokes about tacos., and call it a day. ETA: I have since capitulated, due to incredible boredom.
Let's keep going to Kansas, though, for reals. I could stand to add another state to the list. Might get me through the upcoming week.
5:28 pm
Kansas looks like Oklahoma, y'all.
This brings my tally of "states I have personally set foot in to 31," a number that is certain to change daily depending on my crappy memory. I'll have to seriously revisit a couple of states I either don't remember that well (sorry, Indiana) and others that I didn't pay much attention to (um.... sorry Mississippi).
None of which is as exciting as how, thanks to an enterprising Australian Shepherd puppy and her unrestrained bouncing, we were nearly locked out of the car in Hunnewell, Kansas. (if anyone ever brings up Hunnewell, Kansas in conversation, you know, like people do, I can say, "you know, I almost got locked out of the car there once." Try it, you'll sound worldly and traveled!)
So why were we out of the car, you might ask. Well, Nosy Pants, after that many miles, Kristi and I had to be let out to pee. There. You've gone and embarrassed me again, Internet. You jerk.
No, seriously, the truth is even more embarrassing. We'd missed the Welcome to Kansas sign on the interstate, which made me crabby, so we found this one on this little country road, and of COURSE I am one of those State Line Picture People, and it took Katie stomping on the door lock and giving us heart attacks and nearly getting pasted by an 18-wheeler, all for the sake of a picture in which I am holding my left hand in a toolish position because the dogs had sprayed Kansas slush all over it and it looked poo-like and I didn't want it in the picture and I am ending this sentence now.
I look like an ass in this picture is what I'm saying. Thankfully the passenger side door was still unlocked, or none of you would have been treated to this unique and special tale.
I want food.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Scenes From the Ranch, Take Two
I had asked an innocent question, really I had. Not quite as innocent as "Mommy, is rain the tears of angels?" but nevertheless, relatively innocent.
"So, Mom, what do you have on your DVR right now?"
This usually nets an interesting response, and always a quite predictable one, which is the stock answer of "lots of Judge Judy and SpongeBob SquarePants." (I would like to point out, for the record, that the latter is always included despite the clear lack of grandchildren in the picture.)
"Oh, right now it's pretty full of Big Love and Flight of the Conchords."
"Don't forget Blazing Saddles," said the father. "I have Blazing Saddles on there, and it is NOT coming off."
I realized that I had perhaps triggered an ongoing marital argument, although it was not nearly the one I thought it was.
"Oh, that's just a *crappy* version you got from Comedy Central! It has *commercials*! It's *edited for content*!"
"Does it not say 'somebody's going to have to go back and get a shitload of dimes'," I threw in fearfully. "It's not Blazing Saddles if it doesn't specifically include 'shitload of dimes'."
I must, in the interest of complete disclosure, admit that "shitload of dimes" is really the only thing I can clearly remember from Blazing Saddles, since I haven't seen the movie in its entirely since I was approximately ten. (No, my mother was not involved in the decision to allow a ten-year-old to watch Blazing Saddles.)
"It doesn't say 'shitload of dimes,' because it is a crappy Comedy Central edited version," groused my mother.
"It DOES SO say 'shitload of dimes'!" raged the father. "You can say shitload on Comedy Central."
"You CAN NOT!" returned the mother. "You absolutely can't say shitload on Comedy Central!"
"Have you seen Dave Chappelle's show?" rejoindered the father. "*That's* on Comedy Central!"
"Does Dave Chappelle say shitload?"
"Dave Chappelle swears all the time! On Comedy Central!"
"That is NOT what I asked you!"
"Dave Chappelle says SHIT. A lot."
"But does he say SHITLOAD? Does he?"
"I'm sure he has!
"AHA!"
"Maybe you can say 'shit' on Comedy Central," I added helpfully, "just not *shitload.* It's like, maybe they can say *fucker* but not *motherfucker.*"
"ERIKA, WATCH YOUR MOUTH!"
"Mother, that was not prurient usage. I was using those words in the context of an intellectual discussion."
"Oh, okay then."
Meanwhile, the father has exited the building to have a cigarette, a rather suspicious maneuver to my way of thinking, when what he *ought* to have been doing was stomping over to the DVR to prove my mother wrong.
Which I guess answers the question entirely.
(Also, I know this is a long shot, but if you live in Wise County, Texas, and are missing a very sweet, very large buff-colored Great Daney mastiffy kind of dog, he misses you and wants to come home.)
"So, Mom, what do you have on your DVR right now?"
This usually nets an interesting response, and always a quite predictable one, which is the stock answer of "lots of Judge Judy and SpongeBob SquarePants." (I would like to point out, for the record, that the latter is always included despite the clear lack of grandchildren in the picture.)
"Oh, right now it's pretty full of Big Love and Flight of the Conchords."
"Don't forget Blazing Saddles," said the father. "I have Blazing Saddles on there, and it is NOT coming off."
I realized that I had perhaps triggered an ongoing marital argument, although it was not nearly the one I thought it was.
"Oh, that's just a *crappy* version you got from Comedy Central! It has *commercials*! It's *edited for content*!"
"Does it not say 'somebody's going to have to go back and get a shitload of dimes'," I threw in fearfully. "It's not Blazing Saddles if it doesn't specifically include 'shitload of dimes'."
I must, in the interest of complete disclosure, admit that "shitload of dimes" is really the only thing I can clearly remember from Blazing Saddles, since I haven't seen the movie in its entirely since I was approximately ten. (No, my mother was not involved in the decision to allow a ten-year-old to watch Blazing Saddles.)
"It doesn't say 'shitload of dimes,' because it is a crappy Comedy Central edited version," groused my mother.
"It DOES SO say 'shitload of dimes'!" raged the father. "You can say shitload on Comedy Central."
"You CAN NOT!" returned the mother. "You absolutely can't say shitload on Comedy Central!"
"Have you seen Dave Chappelle's show?" rejoindered the father. "*That's* on Comedy Central!"
"Does Dave Chappelle say shitload?"
"Dave Chappelle swears all the time! On Comedy Central!"
"That is NOT what I asked you!"
"Dave Chappelle says SHIT. A lot."
"But does he say SHITLOAD? Does he?"
"I'm sure he has!
"AHA!"
"Maybe you can say 'shit' on Comedy Central," I added helpfully, "just not *shitload.* It's like, maybe they can say *fucker* but not *motherfucker.*"
"ERIKA, WATCH YOUR MOUTH!"
"Mother, that was not prurient usage. I was using those words in the context of an intellectual discussion."
"Oh, okay then."
Meanwhile, the father has exited the building to have a cigarette, a rather suspicious maneuver to my way of thinking, when what he *ought* to have been doing was stomping over to the DVR to prove my mother wrong.
Which I guess answers the question entirely.
(Also, I know this is a long shot, but if you live in Wise County, Texas, and are missing a very sweet, very large buff-colored Great Daney mastiffy kind of dog, he misses you and wants to come home.)
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Scenes From the Ranch, Take One
"I think I would make a really terrible prostitute."
With undue alacrity, I wrenched myself away from setting a personal high score in Text Twirl on Facebook (which resulted in whiplash that will have my neck twitching for *days,* as if my coworkers needed any additional reasons to regard me as a freak) and regarded Kristi, who was standing over the sink, idly scrubbing a plate, face upturned and awash in the glow from the florescent lights, a trailer-dwelling Botticelli angel if there ever was one. (And there was one, I have just pointed it out, do try to keep up.)
"May I inquire as to the reason for this startling statement?" said I serenely, casually arching random body parts off of the couch in an effort to take an unobtrusive glance at the sink to determine if the dirty dishes had suddenly sprouted predatory sexual qualities.
"I just think I would make a really terrible prostitute. I mean, look at me."
The unarguable truth of Kristi's statement warred with my personal bias of not being able to imagine anyone *not* wanting to have sex with my girlfriend. I weighed my response carefully. Kristi, at the best of times, is prone to setting amazing new personal high scores in the field of self-deprecation, so I wondered if it were actually my partnerly duty to assert that her massive sexual appeal would in fact make her a terrific prostitute, a sort of "you'll always be beautiful to *me,* honest, and no one can tell that you're bloated" ploy.
Then I remembered that I am massively, stupidly insensitive when it comes to Relationship Situations such as these. I rank about an 8 out of 10 on the Hilariously Insensitive Sitcom Husbands scale, which makes me simultaneously both Ray Romano and the dude in this relationship. ("Every woman bloats! Every single one of them! None of us are special! And no one is really looking at you THAT HARD, okay? OKAY? Now stop worrying! Now stop making that FACE! What did I SAY?")
I then recalled that I usually dodge potential bullets such as this with either shrill invective or questionable humor, and in order to determine the best course of action in the present situation, I skillfully inserted a clarifying question.
"What on Earth led you to evaluate your potential prostitution skills?"
"I was thinking about jobs I would never want to do. I think that would suck. I would be patently terrible at it."
Whew! We were in safe territory! This was merely Vocalization of Random Thought Process! I could play this game!
I went old school, and reverted to the "Oh my God! *You* love the song 'Pancho and Lefty' by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard??!! *I* love the song 'Pancho and Lefty' by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard!!" pattern of our early dating days.
"I would *also* make a terrible prostitute! What a coincidence! I don't submit well to authority, and most prostitutes have to listen to pimps. Also, I have thighs that should not be viewed by any except those that profess to feel romantic love for me. Because then it is too late for them."
"Um... those are also the reasons why I would make a terrible prostitute!" said Kristi, in a certain fervor-free tone which made me feel that she is not nearly as enamored of the line "he wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel" as I am. Though I have to admit that it also underscored her inexplicable fondness for hearing me talk.
"Do you think," I speculated gleefully, "that after nearly two years, we have *finally* discovered the basis for our entire relationship?"
"Apparently, we are saving each other from a lifetime of subpar prostitution," said Kristi, flopping herself amongst the couch and immediately attracting the amorous attentions of several corpulent cats.
"Oh, look!" was the sprightly exclamation that intruded on Text Twirl (high score: 512110!!!) a few minutes later. "Arachnophobia is on!"
"Excuse me, I have to go out to the pasture now and spend the next two hours with the cows. Nothing *personal,* you understand, I am simply necessary out there for reasons of... cow... stuff."
.... and I live to dodge bullets another day.
My personal bias may be intruding again, but how can anyone *not* love this woman?
And now, a shameless plug for this here blog, which I suppose is not so shameless, seeing as how it is my blog, and if I didn't want it read, I would keep on updating at my current pace, which actually sort of *does* make this shameless, if you ask me, and if you *don't* want to ask me, why read this blog that is never updated OMG PLEASE READ MY BLOG PLEASE LIKE ME INTERNET, I DON'T WANT TO HAVE A REAL JOB ANYMORE.
Stay tuned for the ever-evolving and occasionally interesting saga "How To Quit Your Job and Live On the Road," a moderately engaging account of Kristi's and my attempt to do just that.
With undue alacrity, I wrenched myself away from setting a personal high score in Text Twirl on Facebook (which resulted in whiplash that will have my neck twitching for *days,* as if my coworkers needed any additional reasons to regard me as a freak) and regarded Kristi, who was standing over the sink, idly scrubbing a plate, face upturned and awash in the glow from the florescent lights, a trailer-dwelling Botticelli angel if there ever was one. (And there was one, I have just pointed it out, do try to keep up.)
"May I inquire as to the reason for this startling statement?" said I serenely, casually arching random body parts off of the couch in an effort to take an unobtrusive glance at the sink to determine if the dirty dishes had suddenly sprouted predatory sexual qualities.
"I just think I would make a really terrible prostitute. I mean, look at me."
The unarguable truth of Kristi's statement warred with my personal bias of not being able to imagine anyone *not* wanting to have sex with my girlfriend. I weighed my response carefully. Kristi, at the best of times, is prone to setting amazing new personal high scores in the field of self-deprecation, so I wondered if it were actually my partnerly duty to assert that her massive sexual appeal would in fact make her a terrific prostitute, a sort of "you'll always be beautiful to *me,* honest, and no one can tell that you're bloated" ploy.
Then I remembered that I am massively, stupidly insensitive when it comes to Relationship Situations such as these. I rank about an 8 out of 10 on the Hilariously Insensitive Sitcom Husbands scale, which makes me simultaneously both Ray Romano and the dude in this relationship. ("Every woman bloats! Every single one of them! None of us are special! And no one is really looking at you THAT HARD, okay? OKAY? Now stop worrying! Now stop making that FACE! What did I SAY?")
I then recalled that I usually dodge potential bullets such as this with either shrill invective or questionable humor, and in order to determine the best course of action in the present situation, I skillfully inserted a clarifying question.
"What on Earth led you to evaluate your potential prostitution skills?"
"I was thinking about jobs I would never want to do. I think that would suck. I would be patently terrible at it."
Whew! We were in safe territory! This was merely Vocalization of Random Thought Process! I could play this game!
I went old school, and reverted to the "Oh my God! *You* love the song 'Pancho and Lefty' by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard??!! *I* love the song 'Pancho and Lefty' by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard!!" pattern of our early dating days.
"I would *also* make a terrible prostitute! What a coincidence! I don't submit well to authority, and most prostitutes have to listen to pimps. Also, I have thighs that should not be viewed by any except those that profess to feel romantic love for me. Because then it is too late for them."
"Um... those are also the reasons why I would make a terrible prostitute!" said Kristi, in a certain fervor-free tone which made me feel that she is not nearly as enamored of the line "he wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel" as I am. Though I have to admit that it also underscored her inexplicable fondness for hearing me talk.
"Do you think," I speculated gleefully, "that after nearly two years, we have *finally* discovered the basis for our entire relationship?"
"Apparently, we are saving each other from a lifetime of subpar prostitution," said Kristi, flopping herself amongst the couch and immediately attracting the amorous attentions of several corpulent cats.
"Oh, look!" was the sprightly exclamation that intruded on Text Twirl (high score: 512110!!!) a few minutes later. "Arachnophobia is on!"
"Excuse me, I have to go out to the pasture now and spend the next two hours with the cows. Nothing *personal,* you understand, I am simply necessary out there for reasons of... cow... stuff."
.... and I live to dodge bullets another day.
My personal bias may be intruding again, but how can anyone *not* love this woman?
And now, a shameless plug for this here blog, which I suppose is not so shameless, seeing as how it is my blog, and if I didn't want it read, I would keep on updating at my current pace, which actually sort of *does* make this shameless, if you ask me, and if you *don't* want to ask me, why read this blog that is never updated OMG PLEASE READ MY BLOG PLEASE LIKE ME INTERNET, I DON'T WANT TO HAVE A REAL JOB ANYMORE.
Stay tuned for the ever-evolving and occasionally interesting saga "How To Quit Your Job and Live On the Road," a moderately engaging account of Kristi's and my attempt to do just that.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
For Shiner, 1994-2009
This is a story about life.
It started with a broken-down beagle roaming our South Carolina neighborhood. A tiny tri-color with a chewed-up ear and a crooked knotty tail. One with mud caked on his belly and breath that could fell a bison at fifty paces. A dog that everyone felt sorry for, but no one could quite manage to add to their canine collection. But he was friendly and personable, and quickly became a favorite of the neighborhood kids. In fact, it was one of them, a tiny chatterbox of a kid with questionable judgment, who decided to name him... Freckles.
I was, personally, against this decision. I thought he needed a name more suited to his appearance and apparently rough history, a name like Butch, or Killer, or at least Incredible Reek Factory. (Incidentally, I was not terribly popular with the neighborhood kids.) But Freckles he was christened, and Freckles he became, and even I was eventually forced to admit that the friendlier, gentler name was the correct choice. Despite the junkyard dog appearance, there wasn't a sweeter animal on the planet.
It was my family's job to adopt him; we adopted *everything* that wandered through on four legs and didn't have the natural instinct to devour four human suckers in their sleep. It wasn't quite as clear-cut as that, oddly enough. It was more like Freckles *chose* us, over every other family on the block who fed him and had young children to play with. (And *everybody* fed this dog. The real miracle of his elderly years was that he didn't weigh two hundred pounds.)
So Freckles became the latest addition to the zoo, and my parents spent a lot of fruitless time trying to explain to us that Freckles was clearly terribly old and kind of slow and judging by the fact that he followed our other dog Trooper at a strictly maintained distance of ten feet or less using only his nose, pretty much entirely blind.
But we were kids and didn't understand old age, much less imminent death. And Freckles seemed to have an uncanny aura of immortality clinging to his dusty coat. He shuffled slowly through the remainder of our years in South Carolina, rooting out innumerable fascinating smells and occasionally smacking into our ankles. Oddly healthy and vibrant for a decrepit-looking old dog, Freckles weathered the move to Georgia, became yet more dependent on his gravel-encrusted snout, and apparently bathed in guano on an hourly basis.
We never entirely understood why this scrappy, smelly street dog was led to give up his vagrant ways, nor did we know why our revolving door of a zoo was the one he ultimately chose to join. But, gentle and reliable and continually energetic despite his years, he remained a fixture in our lives.
Then the yelping started.
We lived in the woods, isolated at one end of a country road with a graveyard at one end and a bramble encrusted trailer park at the other. It was a prime dumping ground for strays, and for several years, we kept the no-kill shelter in business with our donations. ("Yes, this is 5987 East Bumble Drive again... yes, we need another pickup.") There were simply too many transient animals to realistically care for, and we became somewhat desensitized to giving them over to the authorities. In the meantime, we lost Trooper to an untimely successful escape and an unwary driver. We had a pair of troublemaking young dogs come and go. And then one day, we heard the persistent cry of a tiny puppy, way off in the woods.
Mom spent all day trying to find the puppy, struggling through the wet woods with a blanket and a flashlight. Concerned and upset by the steady rain and falling temperature and unable to locate the crying puppy, she suddenly had the inspiration to turn Freckles loose.
She followed Freckles on a straight-line path through the underbrush, his unerring nose rooting out the puppy's hiding place in the creek bed down in the woods. Mom made it back to the house as Emily and I came home from school, carrying a shaky bundle of blanket with a fat-bellied, black-spotted gray pup peeking out, a proud Freckles trotting behind.
"Look," she cooed reverently, "We've found the world's ugliest puppy!"
Freckles wagged his knotted tail and shuffled back to his doghouse.
The puppy wasn't ugly at all, really, just a little odd-looking. The spray of dark speckles on her ash gray fur made for unusual coloring, maybe her floppy ears were somewhat too small. And she did toddle unsteadily on her stumpy legs, hampered by her swollen, wormy belly. But something happened in our animal-saturated brains. Instead of arranging another shelter pickup, we started talking about taking her to the vet and getting a thorough de-worming. We started talking chew toys. We started talking names.
The next morning, Freckles was dead on the front doorstep.
Freckles went to his rest next to Trooper, forever at the heels of his favorite friend. The puppy he brought us was christened Shiner, because the black ring around her left eye- thicker at the bottom than at the top- gave her the look of someone on the wrong end of knuckle sandwich.
Like Freckles was going to bring us a dog that didn't have something of the scrapper in her.
He also didn't bring us a *normal* dog. Shiner's customary "welcome home" greeting consisted of leaping into your arms while peeing directly onto your shoes. We became accustomed to coming home, throwing the door open wide, hiding behind it, waiting for Shiner to spring outside and do her business, actually *watching* her do her busines, and then still getting the Pee of Joy sprayed on our shoes. God forbid anyone ever showed up in flip-flops.
It also became readily apparent that Shiner was a paranoid nutcase. She frequently erupted with Vesuvian anger at the most random of household objects. The broom, in action, could safely be ignored. But a broom being moved from one corner to another was clearly a sign of danger that the stupid humans would simply not recognize. The same went for the ironing board, a portable cooler, and a tube of wrapping paper. Now, Shiner was not one to *attack* these things, oh no. She had a *message* to deliver, a message delivered at full voice from a distance of twenty feet, a message unaccompanied by growling, whining, or any real signs of canine alarm, a message we never quite figured out and which could have meant anything from "that thing is plotting to steal our wallets in the dead of night" to "I do not care for the shape of that object" to "that is the mothership of the alien overlords." Shiner was quite often scared witless by her own tail, a sturdy number which curled upward and towards her back, and would occasionally tap her firmly on the butt during a brisk walk.
"WHO DID THAT?" her terrified face would demand as she whipped around. "WHO- Oh, YOU. YOU did that." And she would proceed to chase her tail. Like a skater executing a spin, she would pull in on herself and pick up speed, and more often than not, she would snare the offender and give it a firm warning bite, only to realize it was attached to her body, and she would let it go until - "HEY!!! WHO DID THAT?"
And the ball. Some dogs are treat-oriented. Some go for the belly rub. Some go springily insane until you take them for a ride in the car. And then there are those of us lucky enough to be partnered up with a dog who loves the fetch.
Shiner? Loved the fetch. I am convinced that her blood did not consist of cells or platelets or uh, negative ions or whatever, but of actual microscopic bouncing tennis balls. All of which were quiveringly insane. My father, who has never exactly been mocked for his weak throwing arm, used to chunk a tennis ball deep into our backyard, which consisted of a whole lot of excessive downward slope, dotted liberally with trees, which ended in a creek bed. Shiner would streak down the hill like she was Luke Skywalker manning a speeder through the forests of Endor, dodging trees at ludicrous speeds, returning muddy and leafy and ready to go again. She'd chase the ball until she dropped over on her side, panting and grinning and completely satisfied with herself. And then she'd want to chase some more. And when the killjoy humans tried to coax her back into the house, she'd make a feeble grab for the tennis ball in their hands. "I am not DONE YET," said the face of the Shiner, "GIVE IT BACK!"
And may the Good Lord help you if you didn't throw the ball fast enough for her liking. If a round of irritating canine cussing didn't move you, she'd charge you and nip at your hands or nudge your feet, or if you were my father and incredibly unlucky, she would grab your shorts and underwear and yank them down in the front yard at the exact moment that one of the three passing cars of the day was rounding the corner.
Shiner hated car rides, but she had an uncanny instinct for knowing if the humans' ultimate destination was to her liking. I remember a certain trip from Miami to Key West which included a Shiner (and she was not a small dog) who leapt from the driveway into an already crowded car, curled into the floorboards, and cemented her reputation as the world's most stubborn dog by refusing to move. We took the trip with an increasingly cranky dog wedged under our legs, a dog who was hating life for a couple of hours until we hit Key West, where Shiner zeroed in on the first outdoor watering hole, threw her front paws up on the bar, and demanded something strong from the bartender via some vigorous and strategic panting.
Shiner wasn't all neuroses, though. She wagged enthusiastically every time she saw me. It wasn't any special attachment to me so much as her joy and relief that one of the family had come home again. The happiness of the kind of dog that waited in the living room every night until all four of us were home before she trotted off to the bedroom to sleep. The family watchdog, in the most important way. "You're here," she'd say, "now I can rest." Mom would send her in to wake us up in the mornings, though why she continued to do it was beyond us. Shiner was the worst wakeup dog ever. She was more interested in crawling in and curling up with us than kicking us out of bed. She still holds the distinction of being the best nap partner ever.
Anyone who knows me can tell hilarious (to them) and terrifying (to me) tales of the severe weather events I have sniveled and whined my way through. Yet for many years, I've had a Storm Buddy who's always had my back, and who never once made fun of me. I know there are many dogs who are afraid of thunder and heavy rain, but I have never encountered another dog who learned to associate the words "Doppler Radar" with storm activity.
"Let's check the Doppler Radar..." saith the weatherperson.
SWOOSH saith the fleeing form of Shiner, en rapid route to my parents' walk-in closer, where she huddled underneath my mother's shirts until the weatherperson stopped using such ugly words as "Doppler Radar." (It is a little known fact that shirts will protect you during severe weather; Shiner was a very meteorologically astute dog.) All this before a single roll of thunder. The words were all it took. She wouldn't move until the last raindrop struck the roof.
After I moved to Texas, I was glad to take up residence with my Storm Buddy again, the one who could always be counted on to crouch in the storm closet with me until it stopped rumbling and blowing. A few weeks after my arrival, I experienced my first supercell thunderstorm, the arrival of which was heralded with the largest crack of thunder I had ever heard, a crack which sounded as though an entire truckload of bowling balls had been dumped on the roof. Shiner and I made the very same noise at the very same second (that noise is YARP, in case you are interested) and dived for the storm closet simultaneously, in such a way that our legs became entangled and we both fell down. And then we remained ensconced for the rest of the evening.
One of her favorite athletic activities was a game we liked to call "Get The Cat." The name was derived from this game's complicated system of puzzles, brainteasers, and attendant elaborate strategy.
No, I jest, this game involved the chasing and getting of an actual cat, and although it started as just any cat that happened to be around, the focus of the game quickly narrowed down to Murrie.
Murrie was my giant, lovable escape artist of a cat, the one who treated every open door as an invitation to escape. A game of cheerful back-and-forth between puppy and cat turned into Shiner the Traffic Cop artfully directing Murrie away from the front door during such crucial junctures as Bringing In the Groceries, or Moving Large Furniture, and most especially, Someone Forgot To Shut the Door. Actually, "artfully" is the wrong word. I'm not sure what the right one is to describe the TICKATICKATICKARUMBLERUMBLE CRASH HEY, WATCH IT RUMBLERUMBLE WHOMP that inevitably followed the war cry of "GET THE CAT!" but a good time was had by all, even the cat, and no one ever got hurt. Except for that table in the hallway.
Shiner made a couple of moves, got to see lots of places and smell lots of other dogs' butts, and though she may have slowed down a bit with age, her titular eye markings may have gotten covered up by white hairs, and her affinity for fetch was somewhat duller, she retained energy, vitality, and her affectionate nature into her double-digit years. She traded zipping through trees and chasing cats (Murrie having passed nine years ago) for basking in the sun and wallowing in the occasional flower patch. She was lucky enough to enjoy reasonably good health into her fifteenth year, and even the pills she did have to take were sneakily crammed into hot dogs and pieces of cheese, so we can't say she was too reluctant to take them.
On Friday, it was obvious that the cancer was getting to her and my parents started talking about what to do. Yesterday, she was obviously uncomfortable. She'd stopped eating. She didn't want to sleep. The vet came out to the ranch today to help us let her go. It was time. She'd lived a long life, and was obviously so tired.
She wagged her tail when she saw me. It was the last wag she ever gave.
True to form, she went stubbornly. It's okay, we told her. Everyone's here. You can rest.
She's resting now, near another creek bed a thousand miles distant from the Georgia mountains, in the midst of the woods of the Texas ranch that was her final home.
Thank you Freckles, for giving us the last of your years and for bringing us our funny-looking puppy. Thank you Shiner, for giving us your entire life. There is no description for the depth of our gratitude for that gift.
I'm really going to miss you, old girl. But there's a cat up there who's had a peaceful nine years, and I really think he needs to be Gotten right about now. So go Get The Cat.
We love you.
It started with a broken-down beagle roaming our South Carolina neighborhood. A tiny tri-color with a chewed-up ear and a crooked knotty tail. One with mud caked on his belly and breath that could fell a bison at fifty paces. A dog that everyone felt sorry for, but no one could quite manage to add to their canine collection. But he was friendly and personable, and quickly became a favorite of the neighborhood kids. In fact, it was one of them, a tiny chatterbox of a kid with questionable judgment, who decided to name him... Freckles.
I was, personally, against this decision. I thought he needed a name more suited to his appearance and apparently rough history, a name like Butch, or Killer, or at least Incredible Reek Factory. (Incidentally, I was not terribly popular with the neighborhood kids.) But Freckles he was christened, and Freckles he became, and even I was eventually forced to admit that the friendlier, gentler name was the correct choice. Despite the junkyard dog appearance, there wasn't a sweeter animal on the planet.
It was my family's job to adopt him; we adopted *everything* that wandered through on four legs and didn't have the natural instinct to devour four human suckers in their sleep. It wasn't quite as clear-cut as that, oddly enough. It was more like Freckles *chose* us, over every other family on the block who fed him and had young children to play with. (And *everybody* fed this dog. The real miracle of his elderly years was that he didn't weigh two hundred pounds.)
So Freckles became the latest addition to the zoo, and my parents spent a lot of fruitless time trying to explain to us that Freckles was clearly terribly old and kind of slow and judging by the fact that he followed our other dog Trooper at a strictly maintained distance of ten feet or less using only his nose, pretty much entirely blind.
But we were kids and didn't understand old age, much less imminent death. And Freckles seemed to have an uncanny aura of immortality clinging to his dusty coat. He shuffled slowly through the remainder of our years in South Carolina, rooting out innumerable fascinating smells and occasionally smacking into our ankles. Oddly healthy and vibrant for a decrepit-looking old dog, Freckles weathered the move to Georgia, became yet more dependent on his gravel-encrusted snout, and apparently bathed in guano on an hourly basis.
We never entirely understood why this scrappy, smelly street dog was led to give up his vagrant ways, nor did we know why our revolving door of a zoo was the one he ultimately chose to join. But, gentle and reliable and continually energetic despite his years, he remained a fixture in our lives.
Then the yelping started.
We lived in the woods, isolated at one end of a country road with a graveyard at one end and a bramble encrusted trailer park at the other. It was a prime dumping ground for strays, and for several years, we kept the no-kill shelter in business with our donations. ("Yes, this is 5987 East Bumble Drive again... yes, we need another pickup.") There were simply too many transient animals to realistically care for, and we became somewhat desensitized to giving them over to the authorities. In the meantime, we lost Trooper to an untimely successful escape and an unwary driver. We had a pair of troublemaking young dogs come and go. And then one day, we heard the persistent cry of a tiny puppy, way off in the woods.
Mom spent all day trying to find the puppy, struggling through the wet woods with a blanket and a flashlight. Concerned and upset by the steady rain and falling temperature and unable to locate the crying puppy, she suddenly had the inspiration to turn Freckles loose.
She followed Freckles on a straight-line path through the underbrush, his unerring nose rooting out the puppy's hiding place in the creek bed down in the woods. Mom made it back to the house as Emily and I came home from school, carrying a shaky bundle of blanket with a fat-bellied, black-spotted gray pup peeking out, a proud Freckles trotting behind.
"Look," she cooed reverently, "We've found the world's ugliest puppy!"
Freckles wagged his knotted tail and shuffled back to his doghouse.
The puppy wasn't ugly at all, really, just a little odd-looking. The spray of dark speckles on her ash gray fur made for unusual coloring, maybe her floppy ears were somewhat too small. And she did toddle unsteadily on her stumpy legs, hampered by her swollen, wormy belly. But something happened in our animal-saturated brains. Instead of arranging another shelter pickup, we started talking about taking her to the vet and getting a thorough de-worming. We started talking chew toys. We started talking names.
The next morning, Freckles was dead on the front doorstep.
Freckles went to his rest next to Trooper, forever at the heels of his favorite friend. The puppy he brought us was christened Shiner, because the black ring around her left eye- thicker at the bottom than at the top- gave her the look of someone on the wrong end of knuckle sandwich.
Like Freckles was going to bring us a dog that didn't have something of the scrapper in her.
He also didn't bring us a *normal* dog. Shiner's customary "welcome home" greeting consisted of leaping into your arms while peeing directly onto your shoes. We became accustomed to coming home, throwing the door open wide, hiding behind it, waiting for Shiner to spring outside and do her business, actually *watching* her do her busines, and then still getting the Pee of Joy sprayed on our shoes. God forbid anyone ever showed up in flip-flops.
It also became readily apparent that Shiner was a paranoid nutcase. She frequently erupted with Vesuvian anger at the most random of household objects. The broom, in action, could safely be ignored. But a broom being moved from one corner to another was clearly a sign of danger that the stupid humans would simply not recognize. The same went for the ironing board, a portable cooler, and a tube of wrapping paper. Now, Shiner was not one to *attack* these things, oh no. She had a *message* to deliver, a message delivered at full voice from a distance of twenty feet, a message unaccompanied by growling, whining, or any real signs of canine alarm, a message we never quite figured out and which could have meant anything from "that thing is plotting to steal our wallets in the dead of night" to "I do not care for the shape of that object" to "that is the mothership of the alien overlords." Shiner was quite often scared witless by her own tail, a sturdy number which curled upward and towards her back, and would occasionally tap her firmly on the butt during a brisk walk.
"WHO DID THAT?" her terrified face would demand as she whipped around. "WHO- Oh, YOU. YOU did that." And she would proceed to chase her tail. Like a skater executing a spin, she would pull in on herself and pick up speed, and more often than not, she would snare the offender and give it a firm warning bite, only to realize it was attached to her body, and she would let it go until - "HEY!!! WHO DID THAT?"
And the ball. Some dogs are treat-oriented. Some go for the belly rub. Some go springily insane until you take them for a ride in the car. And then there are those of us lucky enough to be partnered up with a dog who loves the fetch.
Shiner? Loved the fetch. I am convinced that her blood did not consist of cells or platelets or uh, negative ions or whatever, but of actual microscopic bouncing tennis balls. All of which were quiveringly insane. My father, who has never exactly been mocked for his weak throwing arm, used to chunk a tennis ball deep into our backyard, which consisted of a whole lot of excessive downward slope, dotted liberally with trees, which ended in a creek bed. Shiner would streak down the hill like she was Luke Skywalker manning a speeder through the forests of Endor, dodging trees at ludicrous speeds, returning muddy and leafy and ready to go again. She'd chase the ball until she dropped over on her side, panting and grinning and completely satisfied with herself. And then she'd want to chase some more. And when the killjoy humans tried to coax her back into the house, she'd make a feeble grab for the tennis ball in their hands. "I am not DONE YET," said the face of the Shiner, "GIVE IT BACK!"
And may the Good Lord help you if you didn't throw the ball fast enough for her liking. If a round of irritating canine cussing didn't move you, she'd charge you and nip at your hands or nudge your feet, or if you were my father and incredibly unlucky, she would grab your shorts and underwear and yank them down in the front yard at the exact moment that one of the three passing cars of the day was rounding the corner.
Shiner hated car rides, but she had an uncanny instinct for knowing if the humans' ultimate destination was to her liking. I remember a certain trip from Miami to Key West which included a Shiner (and she was not a small dog) who leapt from the driveway into an already crowded car, curled into the floorboards, and cemented her reputation as the world's most stubborn dog by refusing to move. We took the trip with an increasingly cranky dog wedged under our legs, a dog who was hating life for a couple of hours until we hit Key West, where Shiner zeroed in on the first outdoor watering hole, threw her front paws up on the bar, and demanded something strong from the bartender via some vigorous and strategic panting.
Shiner wasn't all neuroses, though. She wagged enthusiastically every time she saw me. It wasn't any special attachment to me so much as her joy and relief that one of the family had come home again. The happiness of the kind of dog that waited in the living room every night until all four of us were home before she trotted off to the bedroom to sleep. The family watchdog, in the most important way. "You're here," she'd say, "now I can rest." Mom would send her in to wake us up in the mornings, though why she continued to do it was beyond us. Shiner was the worst wakeup dog ever. She was more interested in crawling in and curling up with us than kicking us out of bed. She still holds the distinction of being the best nap partner ever.
Anyone who knows me can tell hilarious (to them) and terrifying (to me) tales of the severe weather events I have sniveled and whined my way through. Yet for many years, I've had a Storm Buddy who's always had my back, and who never once made fun of me. I know there are many dogs who are afraid of thunder and heavy rain, but I have never encountered another dog who learned to associate the words "Doppler Radar" with storm activity.
"Let's check the Doppler Radar..." saith the weatherperson.
SWOOSH saith the fleeing form of Shiner, en rapid route to my parents' walk-in closer, where she huddled underneath my mother's shirts until the weatherperson stopped using such ugly words as "Doppler Radar." (It is a little known fact that shirts will protect you during severe weather; Shiner was a very meteorologically astute dog.) All this before a single roll of thunder. The words were all it took. She wouldn't move until the last raindrop struck the roof.
After I moved to Texas, I was glad to take up residence with my Storm Buddy again, the one who could always be counted on to crouch in the storm closet with me until it stopped rumbling and blowing. A few weeks after my arrival, I experienced my first supercell thunderstorm, the arrival of which was heralded with the largest crack of thunder I had ever heard, a crack which sounded as though an entire truckload of bowling balls had been dumped on the roof. Shiner and I made the very same noise at the very same second (that noise is YARP, in case you are interested) and dived for the storm closet simultaneously, in such a way that our legs became entangled and we both fell down. And then we remained ensconced for the rest of the evening.
One of her favorite athletic activities was a game we liked to call "Get The Cat." The name was derived from this game's complicated system of puzzles, brainteasers, and attendant elaborate strategy.
No, I jest, this game involved the chasing and getting of an actual cat, and although it started as just any cat that happened to be around, the focus of the game quickly narrowed down to Murrie.
Murrie was my giant, lovable escape artist of a cat, the one who treated every open door as an invitation to escape. A game of cheerful back-and-forth between puppy and cat turned into Shiner the Traffic Cop artfully directing Murrie away from the front door during such crucial junctures as Bringing In the Groceries, or Moving Large Furniture, and most especially, Someone Forgot To Shut the Door. Actually, "artfully" is the wrong word. I'm not sure what the right one is to describe the TICKATICKATICKARUMBLERUMBLE CRASH HEY, WATCH IT RUMBLERUMBLE WHOMP that inevitably followed the war cry of "GET THE CAT!" but a good time was had by all, even the cat, and no one ever got hurt. Except for that table in the hallway.
Shiner made a couple of moves, got to see lots of places and smell lots of other dogs' butts, and though she may have slowed down a bit with age, her titular eye markings may have gotten covered up by white hairs, and her affinity for fetch was somewhat duller, she retained energy, vitality, and her affectionate nature into her double-digit years. She traded zipping through trees and chasing cats (Murrie having passed nine years ago) for basking in the sun and wallowing in the occasional flower patch. She was lucky enough to enjoy reasonably good health into her fifteenth year, and even the pills she did have to take were sneakily crammed into hot dogs and pieces of cheese, so we can't say she was too reluctant to take them.
On Friday, it was obvious that the cancer was getting to her and my parents started talking about what to do. Yesterday, she was obviously uncomfortable. She'd stopped eating. She didn't want to sleep. The vet came out to the ranch today to help us let her go. It was time. She'd lived a long life, and was obviously so tired.
She wagged her tail when she saw me. It was the last wag she ever gave.
True to form, she went stubbornly. It's okay, we told her. Everyone's here. You can rest.
She's resting now, near another creek bed a thousand miles distant from the Georgia mountains, in the midst of the woods of the Texas ranch that was her final home.
Thank you Freckles, for giving us the last of your years and for bringing us our funny-looking puppy. Thank you Shiner, for giving us your entire life. There is no description for the depth of our gratitude for that gift.
I'm really going to miss you, old girl. But there's a cat up there who's had a peaceful nine years, and I really think he needs to be Gotten right about now. So go Get The Cat.
We love you.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Discard your literary pretentious and embrace the shallowness within! Find out how inside-->
This past evening or so, I came to some troubling conclusions. This concluding episode took place in front of my bookshelf, specifically the bookshelf on the right, which is not the bookshelf that contains books that are currently for sale on Amazon.
You know, my "keeper bookshelf."
I was scouring it with my eyeballs (my eyeballs have amazing scouring abilities; I can scrub out a bathtub with a mere *glance*) when I realized that I was not at all certain of what exactly my standards of "keeper book" were in my brain.
(Brain: Uhhh, trust me... there is a LOT of room in here!)
For example, my keeper shelf contained Jane Eyre. Now, I HATE Jane Eyre. I do not care that it is one of the standards of the bildungsroman genre, the romance genre, the Gothic genre, or that it addresses the role of women, or that there's a crazy lady in the attic or that it has long been regarded as one of the cornerstones of the canon of Western literature. I hate it. Jane is the original freakin' Mary Sue in a lot of ways, and Rochester is a jerk and I wish crazy attic lady had bitten all of their noses off.
So the question is begged: why do I still own the damn thing?
I'll tell you why, because to do otherwise at this point would be kind of rude. It's for the same reason that I have Moby Dick and War and Peace on my bookshelf. I have never read Moby Dick or War and Peace. I petulantly and angrily and sometimes obnoxiously refused to read the former in college, no matter how many times it was assigned to me, and I apparently purchased the latter to take up four inches or so on my bookshelf, because that is all it has ever done.
In fact, now that I come to ponder it, I think Moby Dick is what caused me to drop out of college. "IF ONE MORE PROFESSOR TRIES TO LOB THIS BOOK AT MY HEAD, I WILL SWEAR A GREAT AND BLOODY VENGEANCE AGAINST THAT PROFESSOR AND I WILL HUNT THEM DOWN AND DESTROY THEM, EVEN ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS! ...SEE, I DON'T NEED TO READ THE DAMN BOOK!"
Begone, random minor works of random minor Brontes. Agnes Grey, I have no further need of you. The Professor, you were weird and probably wanted to try to force Moby Dick upon me. Scram, minor works of Hawthorne. I need you not.
So off they go, along with the books that I enjoyed, but will never read again. This category includes Middlemarch, The Scarlet Letter, and Anna Karenina. I've read them once, they were enjoyable, but they were taxing in one way or another, and I don't need to read them again. I got enough the first time. Ralph Waldo Emerson, you're probably headed in that direction as well. I'm keeping the Jane Austen, but I don't flatter myself that it says anything complimentary about me; I'm afraid that Austen's still kind of trendy.
Ditto Dickenson. I just don't read poetry these days. I don't curl up and *relax* with poetry, I curl up and relax with fluffy, fuzzy crap. If I want to read something with depth and heft, the most I can handle these days is Larry McMurtry. I am not erudite, I have not any literary depth. I am superficial and twee, and I accept this. Which is why I'm more likely to grab up an old volume of the Sunfire series or a most likely substandard volume of historical fiction or a collection of someone's humor columns.
So why are the classics taking up space on the top shelves? I'm afraid it's merely a diversionary tactic on my part. "Well, she's got a shelf full of historical romance and one devoted to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Tolkien, but oh look, Leaves of Grass! Maybe she's not shallow after all!"
And if that's the only reason I'm keeping them around, then onto the sale shelf they go.
Oh wait, I've never actually read the Tolkien either.
Comment fest! Tell me, do, which books and authors are on the keeper shelf, and which are merely occupying space on your bookshelf for reasons known or unknown? Which books do you love that you know very well are mindless brain candy? Are you kidding yourselves that you'll get around to reading certain weightier tomes that you've had lying around for years? Did anyone else read Sunfires? And still maintain a bizarre affection for them? My brain wants to know, and also, we are bored!
You know, my "keeper bookshelf."
I was scouring it with my eyeballs (my eyeballs have amazing scouring abilities; I can scrub out a bathtub with a mere *glance*) when I realized that I was not at all certain of what exactly my standards of "keeper book" were in my brain.
(Brain: Uhhh, trust me... there is a LOT of room in here!)
For example, my keeper shelf contained Jane Eyre. Now, I HATE Jane Eyre. I do not care that it is one of the standards of the bildungsroman genre, the romance genre, the Gothic genre, or that it addresses the role of women, or that there's a crazy lady in the attic or that it has long been regarded as one of the cornerstones of the canon of Western literature. I hate it. Jane is the original freakin' Mary Sue in a lot of ways, and Rochester is a jerk and I wish crazy attic lady had bitten all of their noses off.
So the question is begged: why do I still own the damn thing?
I'll tell you why, because to do otherwise at this point would be kind of rude. It's for the same reason that I have Moby Dick and War and Peace on my bookshelf. I have never read Moby Dick or War and Peace. I petulantly and angrily and sometimes obnoxiously refused to read the former in college, no matter how many times it was assigned to me, and I apparently purchased the latter to take up four inches or so on my bookshelf, because that is all it has ever done.
In fact, now that I come to ponder it, I think Moby Dick is what caused me to drop out of college. "IF ONE MORE PROFESSOR TRIES TO LOB THIS BOOK AT MY HEAD, I WILL SWEAR A GREAT AND BLOODY VENGEANCE AGAINST THAT PROFESSOR AND I WILL HUNT THEM DOWN AND DESTROY THEM, EVEN ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS! ...SEE, I DON'T NEED TO READ THE DAMN BOOK!"
Begone, random minor works of random minor Brontes. Agnes Grey, I have no further need of you. The Professor, you were weird and probably wanted to try to force Moby Dick upon me. Scram, minor works of Hawthorne. I need you not.
So off they go, along with the books that I enjoyed, but will never read again. This category includes Middlemarch, The Scarlet Letter, and Anna Karenina. I've read them once, they were enjoyable, but they were taxing in one way or another, and I don't need to read them again. I got enough the first time. Ralph Waldo Emerson, you're probably headed in that direction as well. I'm keeping the Jane Austen, but I don't flatter myself that it says anything complimentary about me; I'm afraid that Austen's still kind of trendy.
Ditto Dickenson. I just don't read poetry these days. I don't curl up and *relax* with poetry, I curl up and relax with fluffy, fuzzy crap. If I want to read something with depth and heft, the most I can handle these days is Larry McMurtry. I am not erudite, I have not any literary depth. I am superficial and twee, and I accept this. Which is why I'm more likely to grab up an old volume of the Sunfire series or a most likely substandard volume of historical fiction or a collection of someone's humor columns.
So why are the classics taking up space on the top shelves? I'm afraid it's merely a diversionary tactic on my part. "Well, she's got a shelf full of historical romance and one devoted to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Tolkien, but oh look, Leaves of Grass! Maybe she's not shallow after all!"
And if that's the only reason I'm keeping them around, then onto the sale shelf they go.
Oh wait, I've never actually read the Tolkien either.
Comment fest! Tell me, do, which books and authors are on the keeper shelf, and which are merely occupying space on your bookshelf for reasons known or unknown? Which books do you love that you know very well are mindless brain candy? Are you kidding yourselves that you'll get around to reading certain weightier tomes that you've had lying around for years? Did anyone else read Sunfires? And still maintain a bizarre affection for them? My brain wants to know, and also, we are bored!
Saturday, September 13, 2008
You will all no doubt be relieved to know that I took great care to remove such dangerous items as plastic flowerpots, my small gardening shears, and a mysterious ceramic thing in the form of a lighthouse from my backyard, lest the mighty winds hoist them aloft and fling them about.
Also, the hatchet. Which I immediately determined was both the most likely candidate for flinging and also the last thing I wanted to come crashing through my windows.
Y'know, since all work and no play would make Ike a dull hurricane.
Although I think it'll actually be downgraded to a Tropical Sneeze by the time it gets this far north, one can never be too careful.
And if you're in Houston or Galveston, please be careful.
Also, the hatchet. Which I immediately determined was both the most likely candidate for flinging and also the last thing I wanted to come crashing through my windows.
Y'know, since all work and no play would make Ike a dull hurricane.
Although I think it'll actually be downgraded to a Tropical Sneeze by the time it gets this far north, one can never be too careful.
And if you're in Houston or Galveston, please be careful.
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