My dog is going senile. She’s a semi-large breed (half Great Dane, half Doberman/Shepard mix - yeah, rather large), and she’ll be 13 in May. It might not sound that old, but for a larger breed, it’s ancient. To compare it people-wise, if she were a Chihuahua she’d still be in her 60’s, taking swimming lessons at the senior center and playing bridge every Friday with the girls, going to Bingo every week and having her blue hair done at a regular salon. But she’s a big dog, which means she’s more like the slow-moving terror of the nursing home; the sneaky late-80-something old lady with Alzheimer’s who stinks and is always causing trouble, stealing and messing things up whether she means to or not. She’s the one the beauty students try to pawn off on each other when they visit, because nobody really wants to touch that smelly old thing. But despite the fact that she’s smelly and slow and destructive, she’s still sweet and lovable in a pitiful kind of way.
Now, Alex has pretty much always been stupid. In her defense, however, it’s not entirely her fault. She was actually making relatively good puppy progress until one day when she was 14 weeks old and she got hit by a car. Her leg was broken and she had to go back in the crate until it healed – six whole weeks. So everything she’d learned up to that point – her housebreaking, obedience, tricks, etc – just flew out the window during her six weeks of confinement. So when she finally did come out of the crate, she was a 5-month-old puppy starting from scratch. This might not have been such an issue, but the damn dog weighed more than 60 pounds at that point. Again, to put it in people-perspective, it was like having an infant in a fourth-grader’s body.
But I digress. Now that she’s 13 and really losing it, every day is a new (and not necessarily exciting) adventure. I never know what I’m going to wake up to. I also never know what time I’m going to wake up, because lately she’s taken to rousting me in the wee hours (no pun intended) to go out. Once she gets me out of bed and into the cold, dark night in my pajamas and whatever shoes I can stuff my feet into, whether they match or not, she stands in the yard and does…nothing. Not a thing. No poop, no pee, no sniffing, no digging, no scouting around for a place to leave her prize…nothing. She just stands there staring into space. After she does this for a minute, she looks back up at the house, sees me, and comes back up the steps and wants to go in. When I tell her, “no! You haven’t done anything yet!” and point back to the front yard, she trundles back down the steps only to stand motionless on the grass once more. After a few minutes I give up and let her back in and crawl back into my warm bed, and when I wake up a few hours later, there’s a nice, fresh pile and/or puddle waiting for me at the bottom of the basement stairs. So that has become my daily drill. Joy.
She’s reverting back to puppyhood, just like old people revert back to childhood when they go senile. This is challenging. She can’t hear, she sometimes falls down for no apparent reason (I think it’s an equilibrium thing related to her hearing loss), and she STINKS. I never expected to have to endure the puppy phase not only a second time (when she got hit by the car and had to re-learn everything), but a THIRD time now that’s she’s lost her mind. And I’m slowly losing mine as well now.
*yawn*
More on this later.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2005
The Charm Bracelet
Several years ago, a close guy friend of mine hooked up with a new girlfriend. This girlfriend, who quickly became my friend as well, had a sterling silver charm bracelet that I just thought was the coolest thing. Not only did I love the way it looked, how the charms caught the light and reflected it as it bounced off the various dangling faces, or how it sounded, all those silver baubles clinking against each other as she raised her hand to sip her drink or drag on her cigarette, or how each little charm had a story behind it – but I loved the idea that I had met someone for whom gift ideas would never, ever run dry. The woman wore around her wrist a sterling silver testament to everything she found important, interesting, significant, symbolic, historic, or just simply, well, charming to her. She was an optometrist and had little silver eyeglasses on the bracelet. She had her initials. She had her sign. She had little silver cats, a little horse head, a cross, a USMC insignia. She had so much stuff hanging off that bracelet, with room for more, and I thought, “I have just met the easiest person to shop for in my life!” and then I looked at that bracelet again and thought, “man, I want one of those.”
That spring, while shopping a silver jewelry website for a charm for her birthday, I started eying the bracelets and the charms, and briefly entertained the notion of buying one for myself. Then I stopped and thought, “Maybe if I mention it to enough people, someone will get one for me!” It had worked with the engraved Zippo a few years earlier, so I figured it had to work for this, too. To me, it just seemed like something you don’t buy for yourself – it’s a “gifty” kind of thing. And besides, it would make shopping for me that much easier for the rest of my natural life! Stumped? Hey, just get me a charm!
So that night I told my boyfriend. Then I said something to my sister. Then I mentioned it to my mom. My own birthday was coming up, so I figured maybe someone would come up with one. My birthday came and went, no bracelet. Christmas came, and I got lots of nice stuff from my mom and my sister. My boyfriend, Warren the Anti-Santa, gave me a used, broken modem, a t-shirt I'd never be caught dead wearing in public, and a little charcoal grill we’d bought earlier that year for a July 4th picnic that never happened. No bracelet.
A week before Valentine’s Day, Warren and I broke up. He still sent flowers to my office (because he’d already ordered them and forgot to cancel, apparently), but of course there was no bracelet. Three months later my birthday rolled around. No boyfriend, no bracelet. Now, I suppose I could have used the money that my mom sent and bought one for myself, but at this point I was set on getting one as a gift. See, it was like a mission now: who was going to give me The Bracelet? Then six months later, as another Christmas rolled by without one, I started thinking that maybe it was just going to have to be me.
Shortly after the new year, I met a new guy. Over the 10-month course of our relationship (which included a Valentine’s Day and a birthday), he would give me a necklace and a "promise ring" (what the fuck ever), but no charm bracelet. We broke up a month and a half before Christmas, so I knew I wasn’t getting The Bracelet from him. But there was always Mom and my sister! Alas, it didn’t happen.
I spent a good deal of time being single after that, so there was no boyfriend in the picture to fulfill my quest for The Bracelet. Then I carried on a long-distance relationship that lasted a couple of years, but he never gave me anything. Birthdays and Christmases came and went, and still my wrist remained unadorned and silent. Then last year, long-distance-guy actually asked me what I wanted for Christmas! Holy crap! This man had given me nothing over the course of our relationship. No gifts, ever. But this year he was asking! I thought, “this is my chance! I’m gettin’ The Bracelet!” I played the “oh, gee, I don’t know, let me think about it a minute” card, and then called my sister who, being the conspiratorial little imp that she is, said, “weeeelll, I could always drop him a hint if you wanted!” Later that night, she emailed him and told him about The Bracelet. She explained to him that the reason she’d never gotten me one was because it really was the sort of gift that a boyfriend should get for his girl, and not a sisterly kind of thing. Then a few days later, he asked me again for gift ideas. So I just came out with it, and said, “you know, I’ve always wanted a charm bracelet.” I thought between me and my sister there was no way he could not get me what I really wanted!
A week later, I found out he had been cheating on me for three months. Still, I sent him the gifts I’d gotten him (which in retrospect was a really dumb thing to do), and I thought maybe The Bracelet would still arrive, despite the fact that the relationship appeared to be on its way out. I thought maybe The Bracelet would be offered as a peace offering, or maybe even a break-up gift. Hey, at this point I’d take it for whatever reason!
The day the package arrived from him, I got so excited! With trembling hands, I peeled the tape off the top of the box, ripped open the flaps, and looked inside. There were two obviously hastily-wrapped gifts. In the first I found a pair of ugly gloves and a stupid-looking hat. The second gift yielded a set of windchimes. No bracelet.
The relationship became officially over on New Year’s Eve, and I’m now beginning to get back in the groove of the single life, slowly, surely, and with careful apprehension. Dating is a bitch, that’s for sure, but I’ll tell you one thing: the man I end up with is not going to be the one who has the best job, the handsomest face, the nicest body, the funniest sense of humor, the brightest future, the coolest car, the cutest smile, the sharpest wardrobe, the biggest house, the fattest wallet, or the most sexual prowess.
He’s gonna be the man who gives me that fucking bracelet.
That spring, while shopping a silver jewelry website for a charm for her birthday, I started eying the bracelets and the charms, and briefly entertained the notion of buying one for myself. Then I stopped and thought, “Maybe if I mention it to enough people, someone will get one for me!” It had worked with the engraved Zippo a few years earlier, so I figured it had to work for this, too. To me, it just seemed like something you don’t buy for yourself – it’s a “gifty” kind of thing. And besides, it would make shopping for me that much easier for the rest of my natural life! Stumped? Hey, just get me a charm!
So that night I told my boyfriend. Then I said something to my sister. Then I mentioned it to my mom. My own birthday was coming up, so I figured maybe someone would come up with one. My birthday came and went, no bracelet. Christmas came, and I got lots of nice stuff from my mom and my sister. My boyfriend, Warren the Anti-Santa, gave me a used, broken modem, a t-shirt I'd never be caught dead wearing in public, and a little charcoal grill we’d bought earlier that year for a July 4th picnic that never happened. No bracelet.
A week before Valentine’s Day, Warren and I broke up. He still sent flowers to my office (because he’d already ordered them and forgot to cancel, apparently), but of course there was no bracelet. Three months later my birthday rolled around. No boyfriend, no bracelet. Now, I suppose I could have used the money that my mom sent and bought one for myself, but at this point I was set on getting one as a gift. See, it was like a mission now: who was going to give me The Bracelet? Then six months later, as another Christmas rolled by without one, I started thinking that maybe it was just going to have to be me.
Shortly after the new year, I met a new guy. Over the 10-month course of our relationship (which included a Valentine’s Day and a birthday), he would give me a necklace and a "promise ring" (what the fuck ever), but no charm bracelet. We broke up a month and a half before Christmas, so I knew I wasn’t getting The Bracelet from him. But there was always Mom and my sister! Alas, it didn’t happen.
I spent a good deal of time being single after that, so there was no boyfriend in the picture to fulfill my quest for The Bracelet. Then I carried on a long-distance relationship that lasted a couple of years, but he never gave me anything. Birthdays and Christmases came and went, and still my wrist remained unadorned and silent. Then last year, long-distance-guy actually asked me what I wanted for Christmas! Holy crap! This man had given me nothing over the course of our relationship. No gifts, ever. But this year he was asking! I thought, “this is my chance! I’m gettin’ The Bracelet!” I played the “oh, gee, I don’t know, let me think about it a minute” card, and then called my sister who, being the conspiratorial little imp that she is, said, “weeeelll, I could always drop him a hint if you wanted!” Later that night, she emailed him and told him about The Bracelet. She explained to him that the reason she’d never gotten me one was because it really was the sort of gift that a boyfriend should get for his girl, and not a sisterly kind of thing. Then a few days later, he asked me again for gift ideas. So I just came out with it, and said, “you know, I’ve always wanted a charm bracelet.” I thought between me and my sister there was no way he could not get me what I really wanted!
A week later, I found out he had been cheating on me for three months. Still, I sent him the gifts I’d gotten him (which in retrospect was a really dumb thing to do), and I thought maybe The Bracelet would still arrive, despite the fact that the relationship appeared to be on its way out. I thought maybe The Bracelet would be offered as a peace offering, or maybe even a break-up gift. Hey, at this point I’d take it for whatever reason!
The day the package arrived from him, I got so excited! With trembling hands, I peeled the tape off the top of the box, ripped open the flaps, and looked inside. There were two obviously hastily-wrapped gifts. In the first I found a pair of ugly gloves and a stupid-looking hat. The second gift yielded a set of windchimes. No bracelet.
The relationship became officially over on New Year’s Eve, and I’m now beginning to get back in the groove of the single life, slowly, surely, and with careful apprehension. Dating is a bitch, that’s for sure, but I’ll tell you one thing: the man I end up with is not going to be the one who has the best job, the handsomest face, the nicest body, the funniest sense of humor, the brightest future, the coolest car, the cutest smile, the sharpest wardrobe, the biggest house, the fattest wallet, or the most sexual prowess.
He’s gonna be the man who gives me that fucking bracelet.
Introductions Are Always Nice
And since they are nice, I should start this with one, right?
Right.
So, um...hi. Welcome to my blog, "As Planet Deedums Turns." My life is a soap opera, more often than not because I invite unnecessary drama and turmoil into my life. Well, it's not that I invite it in, it just seems to find me -- and my reaction to it is what makes my life such a topsy-turvy whirlwind. Add to that the fact that I am a textbook Gemini, and well, it's a recipe for one disaster after another. I'm a veritable shit-magnet at times.
But it's not all bad. If my life were boring, or if it were simply ordinary and I lacked the imagination to make it more interesting than what it is, I wouldn't have much to write about, would I?
I don't know what I'm going to write about, quite honestly. I'm single. I'm fat. I'm 33 - almost 34 - years old. I live in Buffalo. I used to live in Chicago, and it was much cooler there. Right now I work two jobs, one of which I hate and am quitting in August to go back to school full time. I struggle with identity issues. I just started seeing an expensive Jungian shrink who's supposed to be helping me figure myself out. I have a dog and a cat. I'm a hopeless and seemingly incurable "messie." I like shoes. I quit smoking in October of 2004. My boyfriend broke up with me on New Year's Eve. I'm addicted to Cherry Crush. I'm writing a book about the layer of hell known as customer service. I think way too much and analyze everything to death. I worry about stupid stuff. I'm always late. My mom likes to say I'm "one step behind the rest of the world." Thanks, mom. Really.
So you see, there's plenty of fodder for blog entries here. What I actually choose to write about depends on my mood, my meds, my schedule, and my energy level. You'll just have to check back now and then, won't you?
But hey, really - I'm glad you're here. Thanks for stopping by.
Right.
So, um...hi. Welcome to my blog, "As Planet Deedums Turns." My life is a soap opera, more often than not because I invite unnecessary drama and turmoil into my life. Well, it's not that I invite it in, it just seems to find me -- and my reaction to it is what makes my life such a topsy-turvy whirlwind. Add to that the fact that I am a textbook Gemini, and well, it's a recipe for one disaster after another. I'm a veritable shit-magnet at times.
But it's not all bad. If my life were boring, or if it were simply ordinary and I lacked the imagination to make it more interesting than what it is, I wouldn't have much to write about, would I?
I don't know what I'm going to write about, quite honestly. I'm single. I'm fat. I'm 33 - almost 34 - years old. I live in Buffalo. I used to live in Chicago, and it was much cooler there. Right now I work two jobs, one of which I hate and am quitting in August to go back to school full time. I struggle with identity issues. I just started seeing an expensive Jungian shrink who's supposed to be helping me figure myself out. I have a dog and a cat. I'm a hopeless and seemingly incurable "messie." I like shoes. I quit smoking in October of 2004. My boyfriend broke up with me on New Year's Eve. I'm addicted to Cherry Crush. I'm writing a book about the layer of hell known as customer service. I think way too much and analyze everything to death. I worry about stupid stuff. I'm always late. My mom likes to say I'm "one step behind the rest of the world." Thanks, mom. Really.
So you see, there's plenty of fodder for blog entries here. What I actually choose to write about depends on my mood, my meds, my schedule, and my energy level. You'll just have to check back now and then, won't you?
But hey, really - I'm glad you're here. Thanks for stopping by.
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