Alecto's Ophelia

For the love of a dog

This is my doggy. His name is Simon and he's just past 13 months. Best I can tell he's probably about 180 and given his current rate of growth and the massive size of his frame he will probably top out between 240 - 260. I have had a lot of dogs all of them wonderful in their own particular ways. Simon is the best dog ever. Giant breeds tend to be gentle loving giants. That describes my boy perfectly.

That look on his face is stuck there I think. He's gazing at the baby chicks in the chicken pen and he is completely smitten despite the fact that he is inclined to chase them when they're loose and likes to kiss them with his entire giant mouth. Cletus yells, Moooooommmmm, Simon is nomming the chickens again! He's never hurt them. So that's his look unless he's grinning. Or laying on the floor just looking at me as if I am his sole reason for being. I've been loved in my life. A lot. But I've never been loved the way this guy loves me. There is nothing quite like doggy love. You love a doggy like this, even if it's just a little bit (and I love him quite a bit more than just a bit) and he will worship and adore you until the day he dies. And then maybe even more.

This post is for Cookie Crumb. She lost her little guy fairly recently and her heart hurts terribly. My heart hurts for her. I look at my doggy and I am so unbelievably grateful for his presence.

Someday he too will cross the rainbow bridge. I will go with him right to the edge and never turn my face away. Doggies should never cross that bridge without the face of their owners. Because they'll be waiting for you. On the other side of the bridge.

And I will keep his collar and hold it to my face now and then the same way my mother did and still does to this day.

On Patience and the things we can learn from ourselves and animals

My mother says, 'wait for it... wait for it...' You know she's speaking in the context of training horses but she applies it directly to me as well and I'm grateful for that (who doesn't want to be trained with the patience and love with which horses should be worked with?).

Reminds me of my dog. The big one, not the little one. The little one waits for nothing and throws himself about in a terrible froth that only he enjoys. My big dog has been patient since he was just a few weeks old (according to his human mom). He waits, watches and then pounces sometimes. Or he waits, watches, thinks about it and maybe walks away, or lays down to forget about it or maybe wait some more. My favorite is feeding time. He knows he's hungry. He doesn't know exactly when he will eat but he knows he will (big guy has complete faith in me, it's a beautiful thing). When I pick up his water bowl first and then put it back he sits patiently and waits because even if he is thirsty at the moment, that's not the cheese he's looking for. When I pick up his food bowl he looks at me, still sitting, and that is all. When I leave the room to go to the feed bin his eyes don't even follow me. He sits waiting. When I come back with food in the bowl and run the water until it is warm (warm water in the food tends to prevent bloat and we don't want that) he sits very still and watches. And when I put the bowl down in it's place he does not rush the bowl or push me aside (although he sure could!). He waits until I step away and then he goes right to it. With dignity.

When Simon was just a baby (not that he's not still a baby, he's just past 4 months now) we kept him on a six foot leash at all times unless he was in the kitchen with us (gated) or in his pen or a crate. We allowed him no opportunity for trouble and an awful lot of imprinting time. And he only fought the leash once, by the way, and that was the first time outside. He did not want to go and so I waited until he was sure he wouldn't be forced and by his choice he came to me and then came with me.

In the morning when it was the in between time from the early morning outing with husband and then the final release from the crate by me I insisted that he not pull at the leash and that he wait for me at every step. I guided him outside and to where I wanted him to potty and then walked around with him until he said he was done (he says he's done by playing with little dog). When we went back into the house and little dog galloped up the stairs I stopped, waited and then we went up those stairs one calm step at a time. We stopped on the landing and then went up the next set up steps in the same manner.

Recently Simon is off the leash for the most part, even outside (although as soon as he hits adolescence we'll be going right back to the leash and the next stage of his training). And the beautiful thing about Simon is that he waits for me when I release him from the crate regardless of the little dog's leaping about. And when I open the door to outside he walks patiently by my side to the potty choice that is still my decision. And when we come in the door he waits for me at the stairs and the landing and we go side by side.

When he needs to go out he sits at the top of the stairs and waits. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he's just laying there or really needs to go out. If we fail to understand him he goes down to the landing by the front door and waits there. If we fail to come right away he starts to dribble a bit but never just lets it go.

Harmony and Balance through mutual understanding, love and gentleness. And of course, paying attention.

These days I am practicing patience in ways that nearly tear my guts apart sometimes. And I wonder, are his guts periodically torn apart when he waits for me? I must try to remember this. And regardless of how I feel I can choose how I react and like Simon, I can stop, wait, think about it and then maybe just lay down and let it go. Or watch some more. Or try something else. But never, never, never cause harm in the need. Just a dribble here and there and if need be find another way.

But you know what else I think? I think that if I was a less than loving momma or less observant, or less caring or even cruel that he would not be the dog he is today. And if I am not a loving person and observant and caring with myself and others then I too will fail to be the person I want to be.

Happy New Year to all and what I want you to know is that You (We) are the miracle.

Last Days with Chuck

Note - I have been unclear in the following post. Chuck was euthanized on Saturday, December 6, 2008. The original linked post was written in February, 2007. This post was written Tuesday, December 9, 2008. We got an extra 22 months and we're grateful.

We said good-bye to Squeegie like cowards just past Thanksgiving two years ago by having Oldest who hated the cat take her in to be euthanized. He cried anyway and brought her ashes back in a small tin that sits on the very top shelf of the hall closet so that Youngest can ask strangers if they’d like to see that she keeps her cat in the closet.

After Squeegie died I wrote a piece called Last Days with Chuck and when I look at the photograph of her all curled up in the sunlight on the back of the couch I can see the beginnings of what we saw in the end; her wizened little face curling in on itself all the while letting the sacred cat bits fly back to Bast.

It didn’t get bad until early fall. Chuck peed on Little Girl’s bed and we chalked it up to a not quite clean enough litter box and a not quite tidy enough bedroom. Cats are funny that way. We took her off dry food and forced wet in an effort to reduce any urinary tract infections but that just pissed her off because Chuck doesn’t like change of any sort.

And what began as a gentle Pavane toward the

Rainbow

Bridge

escalated rapidly with recriminations, pointed fingers and bad behavior all around; including the cat but we can’t really blame her for that.  Middle Child, who found the kitties in a wood pile when she was just five years old, about lost her mind over this. She did so in the traditional manner where storm clouds gather in corners of rooms and hover like the threat of disaster.

We limped through Thanksgiving in a state of unraveling denial and every day I told myself I would call the vet from work and every day I did not.

And then one day I did. It was a Wednesday and I dialed the number and when a man answered I blurted out all staccato like “I need to make an appointment to put my cat down.” Stop. Breathe. Air. There was some back and forth and an appointment was made for Saturday and the man told me he was sorry and then we hung up and I put my face in my keyboard behind my cubicle wall and cried good and hard as quiet as I could. Then I blew up a couple databases and left for the day crying all the way home until my eyes swelled shut. Aside from mentioning the appointment in passing, I didn’t speak of it after that.

On Saturday morning I got out of bed and dressed with some coffee and a toothbrush. Chuck was in Middle Child’s room and the kitty carrier was on the back porch. I think I started crying when I picked it up. Anyway, into Middle Child’s room I went and stuffed Chuck face and feet first into the last place in the world she ever wanted to go while Middle Child sat in her bed like the world stopped spinning and I’m doing this and eventually we all got into the car and drove the requisite 4.5 miles to the vet in the center of town where we three plus the cat sat on a bench in a quiet room and waited.

Our vet is a good guy. Really. He says things like ‘that dog’s on the right side of the force’ and I know exactly what he means. He talks sense about the whys and hows of animals and the choices we make and that’s about as unexpected as hens teeth around here. He looks at us and says “I understand you’re considering euthanasia.” Just like that. Like we had an out or something but there wasn’t any judgment going on all the same. So we talked a little about what was going on and what we’d done to try to fix or live with it and he agreed it sounded a bit like some neurological magic coming undone only he didn’t say magic, I did. I’m thinking Bast is way behind pulling this kitty home and maybe it’s my fault for wanting to hold on just another day longer.

Anyway, it was time and he explained everything. Cat’s don’t like to have their arms held the way dogs are kind of ok so the cat has a shot that puts her out but her eyes are still open and she’s all floppy like she already died or something but she’s warm and she’s got a heartbeat and he leaves the room again and there we are taking turns holding her when Husband finally finds a box of tissues and half the Atlantic ocean ends up in paper. When the vet comes back he shaves her arm a bit, ties a tourniquet taking care to tell us that it doesn’t hurt and we’ve laid hands on this cat not to heal but to send away and the needle slides in just so and the fluid is dispensed tiny bit by tiny bit (he is so careful, this vet) and her chest stops moving and her heart goes still and Chuck has crossed over the Rainbow Bridge leaving the rest of us behind to remember last days with Chuck.

On the Art of being Inappropriate

Posting has become very difficult. Commenting has become very difficult but nobody should take that personally; I’m certainly still reading and I have a lot to say but if your comments require authentication I can no longer post a comment during the day and at night, well at night I just haven’t been able to. I’d offer up excuses that anybody would buy in a heartbeat but what the hell would be the point in that? This is a life blog where we strive for honest, forthright communication. Well, I do anyway. It’s my purpose for being here. Here is where I write the things I might not say otherwise. Here is where I document the things that matter in my life in a way that I cannot easily communicate elsewhere.

And it was all good until my family members started reading my blog and I had to start filtering. And then I started having real feelings for the sensibilities of my readers and I had to start filtering there. And then life got hard again and I stopped writing all together because I didn’t feel I could write most of my truths without pissing off or offending somebody and no matter what anybody tells me about people pleasing paranoia and all that, this is real for me. Conflict, real or perceived, makes me curl up under the proverbial bed with my thumb in my mouth and my eyes squeezed shut. That right there might be too much information for some of you.

Anyway, I don’t want my family members to stop reading my blog. It’s pretty much the only way you know I’m still breathing. I do want you to take what I write with a grain of salt and recognize that it’s about me, not you. I don’t want my blog friends to stop reading and if I offend any of you with too much information or a conflicting opinion, belief or behavior I’m sorry for that but I value your presence and your input. Actually, I love that you’re out there. Somehow it all makes me feel a bit more human and connected. So I’m going to try this again, one more time, because most of the time it keeps me grounded.

So that’s it. That’s all I really wanted to say right now except I’ve been looking down a pretty deep black hole lately and I’m doing my best not to tip in and the beloved kitty who has been with me through three marriages and two divorces went over the rainbow bridge on Saturday but the three remaining chickens are good and Simon is cool as hell even though I’m pretty sure he just passed the 50 pound mark (he’s fifteen weeks old today) and I quit my night and weekend job (the one at home that makes me happiest but won’t pay the mortgage) at least until my family pulls their collective heads out of their collective asses and starts pitching in unconditionally and I’ll write about all of it in the very near future. I’m pretty sure it’s a good story.

 

 

Mr. Fluffy Tinklekins

 

The dog is a beast. He's gaining close to a pound a day with no end in sight. Last checked he was 40 pounds at 12 weeks and 22 pound Homer (on a good day) has lost what little fur like substance he had left due to the constant nomming of the over grown baby.

We were trying not to crate him. It seemed like a good idea at the time. You know, big dogs, fast growing boys, should not be confined and all that. So we installed gates in the kitchen and installed an over sized puppy playpen on the lower level so that he and Homer could cohabitate and I wouldn't have to listen to it all night. And then it became VERY apparent that no one was EVER going to make Simon do anything he didn't actually feel like doing. Ever. His strength is, and will continue to be, greatly disproportionate to his actual weight. The good news is he really wants to please. And we are prepared to make good use of that willingness every second of his very impressionable puppy hood.

So we bought the biggest crate known to man. I swear you could put an elephant in there and it surely will never fit through a door again now that it's been assembled. We assembled said crate and then attempted to insert tab A (Mr. Fluffy Tinklekins, don't worry, I'll get to that) into slot B (door of crate) and failed miserably. He was only 30 pounds at the time. Nomans and I, we are very strong people. Lots of upper body strength and all that. It took two of us. One inside the crate pulling and the other outside the crate pushing. It was very demoralizing to the both of us and not a little disturbing to the puppy.

We bought treats. We bought treats and we slowed the hell down. For the first week it took me an extra twenty minutes in the morning after Little Girl's bus left just to sweet talk him to the door of the crate. But that works, you know, the whole sweet talking thing, because he wants to please so very, very much. And now he's crate trained and goes right in without a fuss and stays in too if you remember to toss in a bit of puppy candy. But here's the kicker, normally you would insert a divider so that the crate was just barely big enough for the puppy. This encourages them not to pee in the crate (or worse). We can't do that too him, I don't think it would be good for him. And in the end I don't intend to use the crate forever, I just need to be able to ask him to go if I really need him there.

Which brings me to the next point. If I ever hope to have friends or family in my house ever again I'm going to have to be able to put him away. Most people do not appreciate 240 pounds of slobbering fur in their lap and as I mentioned above, Simon pretty much does what he wants to do. And that doesn't mean he's not being socialized, he is. It just means I really don't have the physical control to fall back on.

Did I mention he has complete respect for the gates in the kitchen right up until he doesn't?

So here's poor Simon locked up in this cavernous crate and he still wets the bed at night. Not that we would do anything so silly as to leave him a bed in there, it would be consumed by morning. He wets the bed and then rolls in it. Or at least lays about in it. And since we can't wash him easily in the winter and have to rely on baby wipes for the most part he's kind of ripe.

We don't really mind.

We took him to Main Street Westport on Sunday. Main Street Westport wants to be Rodeo Drive East (it's not, that would be The Avenue in Greenwich but please try not to disillusion Westport in these current economic times). We figured that's a perfect place to start socializing him because nobody walking up and down that street has any manners to speak of (including me based on the level of snark in this post). Or sense but don't get me started. He's guaranteed to get a boat load of attention wanted or otherwise.

He was brilliantly well behaved with the possible exception of stopping to have a pee on every possible patch of leaves because that's where he potties at home. You know, on the leaves in the yard. He doesn't know sidewalks from Adam. He was pet, hugged, cuddled, kissed and slobbered on by at least 50% of the population. He ate it up. He didn't even try to climb into any laps although I wonder what will happen when he realizes he can pretty much make a lap happen anytime he wants.

By the time we made it down one side and back up the other he was exhausted and we weren't much better. I looked down at my angelic fluffy white pumpkin and realized that Mr. Fluffy Tinklekins is mostly yellow these days.

He only cried a little

Dear Typepad,

Whatever you did, please undo it. I'm trying to type but your servers appear to have screwed the pooch.

Sincerely,

Me.

OK, I'm trying but whatever Typepad did it's got me ready to jump ship. I haven't seen a performance degredation quite this bad since Windows 2.x. Seriously, I'll let you know where I go if I decide to shut this site down due to complete system malfunction. And I pay for this crap?

Yeah, so, here's my dog. And my other dog. And what turned out to be their mutual sleeping arrangements. He cried at 3:30 and at 5:30 and both times to potty although at 3:30 we pretended we couldn't hear him.

Completely Gratuitous Puppy Picture

On Sunday. He mine.

(I'm pretty sure he's winking at me too)

Chickins and Bugs, Chickins and Bugs

I have two step sons who are being raised on high fructose corn syrup and processed white flour. They are both highly medicated and highly suspect. OK, that last part isn't true but it's funny and when it comes to coping with the reality of who they are versus who I am, I often need all the humor I can find.

In the six years I've cohabitated with their father we've come face to face in a state of abject discomfort more times than I care to think about. Many of these occasions has stopped just short of bloodshed (mine and / or their father's, not theirs (don't worry, I wouldn't (probably (but you never know))). In the last year and a half alone it got bad enough that he (Nomans) traveled South to visit but they (Thing One and Thing Two and I name them that most affectionately) did not come North at all. Last summer we had one weekend that went well enough (although there was a bit of bloodshed over some communications that I filed under the category of entitlement that nearly caused WW III yet again) and then an actual week at the beach (and no one died but oh my goodness it took super human efforts from every single one of us). After that there was nothing due to the holidays and some other such scheduling conflicts as you've got to understand that all nineteen moons (I made that up, I don't actually know how many moons are required) must be in full alignment or god help us all.

The other thing, and this is a bit of an aside, is that in the past Nomans spent a full twelve hours in the car each weekend (three down three up three down three up) on the bloody New Jersey Turnpike until he could no longer and then the trips spread further apart and the whole darn thing just broke down until something finally gave and those boys took the train to and fro.

So you can imagine that I greeted this most recent arrival with some level of trepidation because I have to tell you that when I hear a child recoil in horror from the sight of swamp dirt it just makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I want to drag them into the muck until they get it about not being separate. Plus dirt is good. We need to eat a lot more of it than we do. And... that might just get me started on classroom allergies.... yadda yadda yadda moving right along now...

I was worried about the chickens. I was worried about the garden. I was worried about the fact that we don't have chicken nuggets or anything even close. And I was worried about my ability to withstand the assault of constant whining without ending up back on the psyche ward and / or in divorce court. In short, I was freaking fatigued with panic. Neat visual, isn't it?

Something gave, that's all I can say. Something caved in like a sink hole in Pennsylvania except in a good way and one of those boys ran down the back stairs on Sunday morning as fast as his growing boy legs would carry him and barefoot ran through the chicken pen (with a boat load of requisite chicken poop) and into the coop to release the ladies to their breakfast buffet (called my late fall garden) and help himself to the three morning eggs. The other boy stared hard at said eggs on the table an hour later and asked if I'd added cheese. No way, no chance, no how, they just grow that color when you don't do anything to them but let them eat veggies and bugs and then he proceeded to inhale every last bite and then some.

Somehow in the magic of the frogs and the bugs and the tree houses (it's on the ground but she and nanny built it themselves)and the swamps and the dirts and the Little Girl on the swing with a chicken in her lap (oh WHY does this one chicken permit this?) Thing One and Thing Two fell down the looking glass and came out grass stained and grinning without a single smidge of processed anythings anywhere about their bodies all weekend long. (OK, nice story but we did go for Hibachi on Saturday night and it was the holy hell of bad food but nobody died and it was Thing One's fifteenth birthday and he was so very happy with it all)

And at lunch which involved a veggie lasagne that did not come out of any sort of can or box followed by a Dutch Apple pie made before their very eyes, before the ride to the train, Thing One has been thinking that if all of us just ate a little more locally and with a little bit less fosile fuel involved (well, yeah, OK, I was ranting a bit over the weekend) and took a little bit more care of the world and maybe took care to eat food that was really food that we might just be, well, um, a little bit happier and a little bit healthier and maybe, just maybe a lot less likely to blow each other up.

And we all lived happily ever after until the very next adventure which might have started three minutes after.

Sometimes you just have to wait for it.

Passing by the open windows

It is really very easy to get yourself lost in the world and wind up serving your soul sunny side up to some cosmic parking lot attendant at the train station. I was sitting in my car at the station this morning, not feeling all that balanced, staring at the platform and thinking, what the fuck? My ears and throat hurt and I've yet to recover from the lost sleep incurred during the trip into the city Tuesday night with the big kids to see one of the final productions of Rent (I'm still crying over that one).

And then I got out of the car and approached the platform. I'm reading Jack Kerouac's On The Road from the original scroll which means it's like reading the inside of my own brains at nine thousand miles per hour minus any sort of punctuation or spell check. I rather like it a lot. The rest of you might get to feeling a bit sea sick as most people eventually out grow the desire to be hung upside down by ones feet and spun around until the world forgets the lie of linearity. After awhile I forgot about the soul sucker in the parking lot and got lost in Kerouac's version of reality (I quite like it).

None of this resolved the soul sucking and its really just a bit of a bandaid. Sometimes I need to come home and just get hit upside the head with the desires and textures of my own life. You know, the real part where I operate under the illusion that I'm making up at least a good portion of my own rules. So you know how this goes; I take off my monkey suit, pour myself a glass of wine and head out into the great and mighty jungle which calls itself my back yard.

Some of you might remember this little guy in a prior iteration when he was quite a bit smaller and I questioned Audrey's ability to keep him hanging off the deer mesh. Well, here he is and I suspect he'll hang here, slug free, for quite some time. This is food people. Through the garden walls and into the mini jungle, this is food. It's awfully hard sometimes to find a way back to something real and true in all the muck of soul suckage out there. And to reiterate an earlier point, I do actually love this thing they pay me money to do. I LOVE it. However, it is still corporate america, not my life and a bit of a soul sucker all the same. I need grounding, people, and here it is.

This is a little hard to see but it's one giant mutha of a sugar pumpkin (they are supposed to be TEENSY) resting in a bed of corn. I'm just going to wait and see what it does despite the fact that the slugs (that I thought I didn't have) have finally moved in and consumed the first of my ripening sugar babies (bastids).

When Little Girl shakes this pumpkin it sloshes.

Here is a butterfly stuck in the meshing. We freed him without contact and he flew away...

  To the tiny cupola on the roof top. You can see him, he's the little beige spec, on the peaked roof of the cupola.

  You can see the bottom of the new chicken coop behind Little Girl who is doing her own version of geeking the camera (does anybody out there besides me recall the origin of the word geek and it's relation to chickens specifically?).

  And then there's this seven nearly eight year old version of peace. Yeah, I do actually buy it.

In the light...

And finally, I know it's kind of hard to see, but this tobacco type plant I bought two of that got no more than 18 inches high at any point in time suddenly makes this gianormous offshoot that's nearly four feet tall (not that you can tell because those cone flowers are nearly eight feet tall now) and he stands up like some porn star out of the seventies and says, come 'er, babe. let me show you what I've got...

Have a great weekend. I'll be rolling about in the dirt and other such scandalous things.

Close the what?!

Two nights ago at dinner Little Girl asked how the eggs were getting out of the chickens. Being too tired to remember the word vent or even have the foresight to not answer at all I said,

"The eggs come out of the egg hole." 

This was, apparently, uproariously funny. I went to bed.

Yesterday NoMans was working from home. He was standing on the second story porch overlooking the chicken pen where Little girl sat with a chicken in her lap, chicken tush pointed slightly up.

She looked up at him and said,

"NoMans, how do I close the egg hole?"

He stood speechless until he realized she meant the small doors in the side of the chicken coop.