Category: Animules

Wherein I talk mostly about dogs.

Lucky in Love

The fortune-cookie fortune that rides around in my wallet, occluding my face on my driver’s license photo, says, “Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It is your destiny.” I think I put it there two years ago.

The Independent Weekly ran this horoscope for me a while back:

Even if you’re not sick, you need some medicine. What kind of medicine? The kind that can transform what’s pretty good about your life into something that’s really great; the kind that will super-animate your merely average efforts and blast you free of any lackadaisical attitudes you’ve come to accept as reasonable. This medicine won’t come in the form of a pill or a potion, but rather will be produced by your own body if and when you slip away from your comfort zone and go out to play in the frontier. Be your own doctor, Libra. Break your own trance. Crack your own code. Escape your own mind games.

It’s been on my fridge since May 2008. I moved last year; it must’ve come with me from Hillsborough. I don’t know—sometimes these newsprint divinations, these cookie runes, they speak to me, and I just hang on to them.

As I was tidying up the other day, I found a fortune on a very dusty dresser that said, “You will be lucky in love.”

And I scoffed. I did.

I said something like, “Psh.”

Being 36 and single in this society makes one feel decidedly unlucky in love.

But I really am trying to be more thankful these days, so I thought, OK, what if I take romantic love out of the picture? If I take romantic love out of the picture, I’m a leprechaun-rabbit’s-foot-four-leaf-clover-heads-up-penny in love.

See, there’s my family: my dad, who is my greatest advocate (and provides much amusement); my mom, the offerer of sage advice, even if she doesn’t remember giving it;  my sister/best friend; my brother-in-law, of the Magic Lawnmower Sauce and other timely rescues; my brother, the shifter of paradigms; my sister-in-law, an unsuspecting classmate at Carolina who I badgered for seven years to marry my brother before she finally gave up and did (I must tell that story sometime);  and their progeny, including a nephew I got for Christmas! (When I told a co-worker that, he did a double-take. He thought I said I got an Eff You for Christmas.)

And then my friends, who make every day awesome, who inspire me and make me laugh, who know better than me, who let me stay at their houses even though I can be a disaster of a house-guest, who do silly things with me, who like me despite my being self-absorbed, impatient, and mean-spirited. …I could link/name-check all day. If I didn’t link to you, I’m thinking of you, and if I haven’t yet written about you, there’s a very good chance I just haven’t figured out how to express how dope I think you are. Man, I love you fuckers.

And of course, two of my very favorite people, Violet and Redford, who I love so much it sometimes startles me.

I’m pretty sure all these people and dogs love me back in equal measure, but even if that ain’t the case, I suppose I’m lucky in love regardless.

Lucky in love. Lucky to love. Same difference.

WMMH

I sometimes listen to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and the panel ends the show each week with a round of What’s Making Us Happy. As you can probably intuit from the title, they go around the table and name a thing or two (usually a TV show or concert tour or something) that’s giving their lives a little bit of joy. I’ve had some anxiety and depression and overwhelm in the last week (ran out of one of my amino acids; also, I prefer not working to working, but my job preferred that I go back to work), so I thought I’d try to psych myself out of it by accentuating the positive. Who knows? This might become a regular feature.

Here’s What’s Making Me Happy:

I’m doing really great on my New Year’s resolutions.

To wit, my friend invited me to go shopping (thanks, Michelle!), and I have worn actual clothes when I wanted to wear actual sweats several times. I even took two pairs of pants to a tailor to get them hemmed. That’s, like, some Carrie Bradshaw stuff.

I’ve flossed a time or two and made my bed daily.

I’ve engaged in no Facebook debates. Indeed, I’ve expressed nary a political leaning nor a religious dubiety, even though I wanted to post this cartoon real bad when I saw it:

I repeated things to myself that I said to the beasts (even though it feels embarrassing to say, “I love you, Violet… I also love myself,” even when alone in my house).

I went on a first date with a man and scheduled another with a different man, though the latter had to be postponed. Due to a sick kid. I’m probably going to be a stepmom.

Most importantly, I very much reduced my intake of refined sugar. I had some chocolate mousse on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and a piece of cake and two cookies on Saturday. I didn’t wait until after 7:00pm that day, though. But considering that I got the piece of cake at noon and waited until 4:53 to eat it, I’m calling it a victory. In addition, Sunday included French toast with syrup, which kind of fits in the dessert category, but, really, what’s a brunch buffet without the French toast course?

(Again, this might sound like a lot of sugar to you, but I assure you, for me, it’s a smidgeon.)

Naturally, the glutenful weekend, together with my job preferring that I get up at the ludicrous hour of 6:00am, has made me one sleepy girl today. But that’s not what we were talking about. We were talking about What’s Making Me Happy.

Now. Let’s talk about What’s Making You Happy.

Meatball

On Saturday, a dog went missing. This wasn’t the dog of a friend of mine. It was the dog of friends of a friend of mine. I had hung out a few times with the owners and with Meatball, their big, sweet, nervous boy.

Meatball wouldn’t let strangers touch him. He was so scared of them. The one time I went to his house—the first time I met him—I fell in love with him, naturally, and spent 45 minutes on the kitchen floor, inching myself closer, not looking him in the eye. Eventually, he let me stroke his chest, and I just stayed there on the tile, petting him, for the rest of the party.

My friend sent me a text saying he was missing on Saturday. I don’t know how it happened. On Sunday night, I posted on Facebook for Durhamites to keep an eye out for him, and a friend that I was IMing with said somebody else had just posted that he was hit by a car.

And I fucking fell apart. I sat down on the couch between Violet and Redford and just sobbed. I thought about how scared he must have been when he was lost and how sad his owners must be, and I cried and cried.

I don’t know if this is normal. I don’t know if normal people get this torn up about other people’s dogs.

I guess that doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and I’m sad.

RIP, Meatball. You were loved.

New Year’s Resolutions

In the past, I’ve set the bar low, or as my friend Dan says, “created winnable games”, but I’m going to challenge myself a little bit this year.

1. I will dress better. A few days ago, as I “dressed up” by taking off my navy blue hoodie with paint on it and put on my navy blue hoodie without paint on it, I realized, this has to stop. But it means I’ll have to…go…shopping…I can’t feel my legs…(breathes into paper bag). How am I going to accomplish this resolution when just thinking of trying on clothes sends me into paroxysms? Help, girlfriends. Maybe a standing monthly shopping date?

2. I will continue to floss 2-3 times a week in my car at red lights. I would resolve to floss daily, but after about 18 years of that resolution, it’s smelling a little gamey, and a few times a week is better than nothing. This is not setting the bar low; it’s just knowing thyself. Myself. Thmyself.

3. I will not engage in political or religious debate on Facebook. It makes me not like people who, in person, I really like, and I’m certain the feeling is mutual.

comic from xkcd.com

4. I will make my bed. Life just seems more orderly when my bed is made. To make this easier on thmyself, I turned my bed around, set it at an angle for minimum bed-making gymnastic maneuvering, and bought one of those bed-in-a-bag sets from Bed, Bath, & Beyond. It was $180, marked down to $99, and I had a 20% off coupon, so for 80 bucks, I got a TOTALLY CRAPPY OPPOSITE-OF-FLAME-RETARDANT bed set. Seriously, it might spontaneously combust. It had those anti-theft things on it in the store, so I couldn’t open it and feel how polyester it was. And then, by the time I got it home, I was committed. Anyway, I basically just have to pull up the comforter to make my bed, and that’ll be easy. The 59 decorative kindling pillows that came with it might have to go in a closet.

5. I will reduce my intake of refined sugar. Oh, Jesus. This one makes me jitterier than clothes shopping. Here’s my plan. I can have sugar (and by that, I mean dessert items—I’m not talking about the quarter-teaspoon of sugar I have in my coffee; that stays) after 7:00pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That might seem like a lot to you, but it’s about four days a week fewer than my current intake. We’ll see how this goes. I have no faith in myself on this one.

6. I will talk to myself like I talk to my dogs. Less: “You’re a silly monkey” and “Are you one of the two best dogs in the world?” More: “You’re cute, sweet, friendly, capable, smart, personable, honest, and caring, with leadership qualities.”

7. I will get into a romantic relationship. Jitteriest! How will I do this? I will go on dates. At least one first date a month (unless I find him before December, which will void this contract). That will be twelve possible matches. I’m going to work the Law of Averages.

So. What are your’n?

DW


Look what I saw walking down the street yesterday.

I made a U-ey and parked about forty feet away from him. I said, “Hey!” and squatted down. When he turned around, I put my hands out to the sides. He broke into a slow gallop and flopped himself into my arms.

He was a little shorter and thinner than Violet, maybe 50 pounds; his head, however, was like a damn double-wide mobile home. He wore no collar, but he wasn’t dirty or too skinny. I gave him some stale crackers that a friend had left in my car a couple months ago and looked around. Nobody was out looking for a lost dog. In fact, no one was out on foot at all. That street is really trafficky, and people drive way too fast down it so I hoisted him into the Outback and took him home.

I was a little worried about introducing him to the pack. Redford has been less-than-mellow at times lately, and Violet’s knee is still all jacked up. Plus, Double-Wide was intact, or unaltered, as they say…whatever, he still had his balls, which can translate into aggression.

But I let Redford into the backyard with him anyway. They scampered and cavorted. Redford fussed at him a little bit, but DW quickly submitted, and the pecking order was established.

"Handsome-off," said my buddy Phil.

I switched out Redford and Violet, and

guess who got along like gangbusters.

I reluctantly—reluctantly because I was already wicked fond of the little guy—sent a message to my neighborhood listserv, left a voicemail with Animal Control (they were closed for the holiday), put a post up on Craig’s List, tacked a “Found” notice on the neighborhood grocery store’s bulletin board, and uploaded photos to Facebook. I asked everyone who walked by my house if they’d heard of anybody missing a dog. One girl said, “Oh, he’s been out for a minute. I seen him yesterday.”

The little guy didn’t know any commands, not even “Sit”, and when we headed out for our two-and-a-half-mile neighborhood loop, he acted like he’d never been on-leash. He jumped around, snatching the lead in his mouth, and criss-crossed a million times, wrapping me up in a nylon boa.

He wasn’t totally housebroken either. I kept hearing Violet do her Enforcer Bark, the one she uses on Redford when he’s about to take something off the counter or he’s standing too close to me while I’m cooking bacon. I’d turn around and find everybody staring at each other, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Later, I found little yellow drips on the floor and the bookcase and the chaise and realized Violet was being the big sister.

I got a response from Craig’s List, but it seemed spammy, and the pics they sent of their “missing dog” looked nothing like DW. Indeed, a second email came in this morning from a different address but with the same pictures of “Cowboy”.

Late last night, I spoke to somebody who knows about these things, and that person said, by law, strays have to be turned in to the shelter in case somebody’s looking for him. They keep him there for five days and then do temperament testing to see if he can be adopted.

So, I just went to the Animal Protection Society of Durham. DW tried to make a girlfriend first thing. Balls. But he was really nice about it. If he’d had the ability or know-how, I think he would’ve sweet-talked her a little first.

They scanned him for a microchip. I wasn’t surprised to find out he didn’t have one.

I have a friend who works at the shelter, and she said she’ll keep an eye on him. She even said she’d consider fostering him if it came to that.

And then I said goodbye to DW, and they took him in the back. And I boo-hooed.

I loved him already.

 

Impermanence

I can’t stop thinking about yesterday’s squirrel. Thich Nhat Hanh says we must surrender to impermanence. I’m trying. I just wish this lesson would stop presenting itself to me in such a violent way.

Like one day last May, my friend Erika looked in a bush beside her deck to find a nest, lovingly and painstakingly constructed by, she would discover, a mama robin. And the next day, resting inside the nest was an egg, about an inch long, turquoise.

Twenty-four hours later, she looked in the nest and found two eggs.

The third day, three.

A few days passed. She spread the branches and found three tiny, ugly-ass animals, with feathers and everything, eyes open, all smooshed together.

She shared each development photographically on Facebook, but I, as the mother of her dog Barley’s favorite playmates, got to witness in person the tiny miracle unfolding.

Each day, those little dudes became more and more undeniably birdlike. They chirped. They flapped. They opened their beaks in anticipation of morsels.

Their mom would scold Erika and me from another bush every time we came too close to her treasures.

Then one day in mid-June, as I was about to hitch up the dogs to take them home from their playdate, my friend and I peeked through the leaves one last time to ogle Mother Nature’s work.

I guess the birdies had developed enough to feel fear and to do something about it, because before we could blink, one baby robin had flopped itself out of the nest in a whole-hearted, yet thoroughly ill-advised, attempt at flight. It made a large arc but plummeted very soon to the ground, where to our horror, Redford plucked the shrieking thing up in his mouth. I started screaming. Erika started screaming. Redford dropped the flitting bird on the ground, and he and Barley barked emphatically at it. I ran at my dog and smacked his big head, and the robin limped through the air over behind a bush.

And for the second time in a few weeks, I stood there, watching a bird draw its last breath.

Its leg was broken. I don’t know if a broken leg kills a baby bird, or if it sustained internal injuries, or if it had a heart attack from terror. I picked up the dead body, no saran wrap this time, realizing in that moment that Redford had killed the one at my house too.

I spent awhile trying to process the simultaneous red-orange rage and steadfast love I felt toward my dog. It remains hard for me to fathom that those two emotions can exist at the same time in one psyche, but they say it’s true for parents of children who do terrible things. They love the child but hate the act. Love the sinner but hate the sin.

I was also mad at myself for scaring that bird out of its asylum.

But the fact is, as my brother told me after Boonie died, each animal acted according to its nature. Humans are curious about the wonder of life. Birds try to fly. Dogs kill birds.

Squirrels run in front of trucks.

It’s all nature, and the nature of nature is that everything’s impermanent.

Goddammit

On my way to work this morning, a squirrel sprinted across the road toward the car in front of me. It missed the little guy by a hair, but when he got across to the other lane, a truck tagged him. He ran to the edge of the road where he launched himself in the air, cartwheeling toward the bus stop, as if he could fling the pain away. I was going, “Oh no! Oh no! No no no!”, and blood pumped through the veins inside my elbows making me feel nauseated and weak. I had trouble gripping the steering wheel. By the time I looked in my rearview mirror, he was nowhere in sight.

I hope he died. I hope he died fast.

And I wish the Universe would stop trying to teach me this lesson. I hate it.

FLOCK OF CHICKS

A vlog for you’ns! It’s been a while since I’ve posted a vlog because I kept thinking maybe I’d shower and put on make-up before I did one. But I so rarely get around to doing those things that it got procrastinated upon. I procrastinated it. Until tonight, when I decided to record one, despite the fact that I’m sweaty from the gym.

Anyway here it is:

 

They also have a gift called a Trio of Rabbits, and I’ll admit that I like to imagine them doing a few musical numbers with top hats and canes for the lucky recipients.

Dear Redford, Part 7

Sometimes when we’ve been strolling around the neighborhood, you and Violet have started sniffing enthusiastically at the same spot. You’ve decided it’s mark-worthy before she’s finished checking it out, and you’ve peed on her head. OK. I get that. There must have been something that required your scent, on the double. But, dude, when I reached down to pick up Violet’s poop on our walk just now, and you marked my leg? That was uncalled-for. You know I’m yours already.

Love you anyway,

Amy