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Flashback
06.22.05 (3:21 pm)   [edit]
I've been reflecting on much of what has taken place in the last year. A few big anniversaries passed in the last couple of weeks. Some of them are: the day I quit my job in Ann Arbor, MI. The day I started to drive a U-haul across country with my father. The day we both lied to my mother on the telephone and told her we were still in Utah when we had already made it halfway through Nevada in just over two day's time. The day I arrived in San Francisco and said, "now what?"

I had padded my nest thoroughly with the expectation that I would have the summer off to be a bike-dork and learn my new home. It was fun for a few weeks and then I got a little antsy. I was dropping resumes in person and online like it was my job and wasn't really getting anywhere. I spent a lot of time on craigslist and in addition to looking for jobs, I searched around in the platonic section and met a couple of really cool people with whom I remain friends.

I also met a man who had for a pet a dead cat.

An east coast native, I honestly can't remember his name now, so we'll say....George, had a ridiculous accent. That sort of Boston "open wide and say AAAH! at every possible opportunity" kind of accents. He live(d) on Buena Vista Park which he called, "Boner Vister Pahk". We talked on the phone a lot and decided it would be fun to meet in the Haight for dinner one night. We didn't.

The day I was to meet him, he called and informed me that he'd just had his halo removed as part of a rehabilitation process from recent neck surgery. He went on to say that he didn't feel comfortable being jostled around in the streets and would I mind if we ordered in and watched a movie at his place. I understood he was incredibly bored from being shut in for a few weeks and went along with the change in plans.

Upon arriving at his apartment on my bicycle, I was a bit nervous at how posh his place seemed. He had me in, we had some "soder" and I kind of gawked a bit too much at the beautiful view from his livingroom. San Francisco "visters" take a bit of time to get used to, and even though I'd traveled here several times, I wasn't prepared to see from the skyscrapers of downtown to the Golden Gate Bridge by looking out one window. While I was staring he was talking which, admittedly, was starting to grate on my nerves and I'd kind tuned him out a bit. Then he talked about his landlady and how she doesn't mind much except for her tenants having animals in her properties. "But she doesn't seem to mind this little baby", he said. I shifted my gaze from the view to the couch in front of the window and saw what appeard to be a hairy pillow with glass eyes and then my mouth started talking as suddenly as a lightswitch is flicked.

"Oh!" I said, "isn't she... it's a she right?... just lovely! How long have you had her....like this...I mean...was she your cat....er...was there an accident?" With the exception of the time I challenged Chicalookate to 'pretend to have a domestic dispute' with me at a gas station in Michigan City, Indiana prompting her to bolt from the car screaming, "You bastard! I'm going back to my Momma's and I'm taking the babies!!!", I'm rarely left speechless or flustered. A dead cat as a throw pillow is just not something one is ever expecting to be introduced to. Out of a sense that it would be impolite not to, I touched the feline furniture and said she was beautiful adding, "should we start the movie now?"

We watched "The Butterfly Effect" and I thought was alright. During most of the movie, I was trying to think of what I would say to get the hell out of there as soon as it was over. I think I said that I'd done a lot of cycling that day and had to go and sleep. I've not spoken to him since.
 
Relieved
06.14.05 (4:22 pm)   [edit]
There has been a family in the hotel for the last couple of weeks. Mom, Dad and toddler daughter named Toasty.
I had never heard this poor kid called anything but and had to come to terms with the probability that this woman, who is a little odd, named her child and adjective. Sometimes she refers to her child as a noun by calling her "toast".

Yesterday I found out toasty was a nickname. Of course I'm making a big deal out of it because I can, but I'm so disturbed by that moniker. I was so relieved to know that the child has another name, even if I don't know what it is. The concierge was able to confirm that another name exists for this toddler, but couldn't remember it.

I've been called 'Suds' because of a weird dream one of my co-workers had. (in the dream we ran a laundromat/bar together and she was called Flo. Flo-n-Suds). 'Mother' because I used to speak of my self in third person as in, "Mother doesn't think you should be swinging from the chandelier". 'Verlaine' because of someone named Verlaine who's a little bratty and the name cracks me up to this day (surprise?) 'Beav' short for Beaver because I once asked Monkey, (not his real name) "How's your beaver?" for who knows what reason and the other Beav overheard me and laughed so hard she had to sit down. 'Mr. Whatclock' because I get mail with my named spelled wrong often.

So those nicknames make sense to me in a way because they started somewhere. Where could Toasty have possibly started?

What's the weirdest nickname you've ever heard or had?
 
Dog Days
06.10.05 (9:45 pm)   [edit]
Currently, I'm babytsitting a house in which lives a very large and dumb dog. Grover is a Yellow Lab and he is one of thte slowest moving, most easily confused pups I've ever met. Yeah, yeah, Labs are easy to train, but that's because they're incredibly loyal to the pack. This guy has smoke coming out of his ears if you give him more than one command per hour. He reminds me of Lou.

Lou was a mutt who came to me one night at about 11 pm. My friend called me and told me that while she was at the park walking her dogs she saw an SUV drive by and a dog was thrown from its window. She said that since she already had two kids two dogs and an epileptic unemployed husband, she would be relieved if I took the pooch off her hands, at least to find a permanent home for him. The next day I took him to my vet.

He was pronounced healthy and I named him Lou because I already had a Thelma and I was very much the "Louise" of the group. He wieghed eleven pounds and had a birthmark on his head from being smashed against the uterine wall of his mother. It looked like he had had botched highlights that came up orange, otherwise, he was black. His hair was silky fine and wavy. This hair/fur, in reality it was really fur, because he shed like no other, was about 5 inches long and very thick. Lou was a chow mostly and mixed with who knows what.

I love Chow-Chow dogs because of how independant they are. They are loyal but tend to smoke the hair out of their ears when they think about simple commands such as, "come". "Sit" was never a problem for Lou, in fact, I used it as a base for the rest of his training. When Lou was confused he would sit. I would command, "sit", he would and then I'd reward him. In the same tone of voice I would command, "potty" while he was peeing and he'd look at me like I was being disolved by a laser and I'd give him a treat. After a few weeks that command stuck. I potty trained him in one afternoon when I busted him shitting behind my couch when I happened to have a plastic bag in my hand. I was taking him out every twenty minutes when I was home and he wasn't in the crate. At minute 19 he was pooping behind my couch and I caught all 12 pounds of him in my left hand all the shit in my right hand and screamed, "NO POTTY INSIDE! POTTY OUTSIDE! POTTY OUTSIDE!", and throwing him on the ground outiside next to where I had thrown his shit, I said, "good boy, potty outside, potty outside." For Lou, potty meant shitting and "do it" meant peeing. I've trained all of my dogs to go potty on command this way. He never pooped in the house again.

Then he grew to be a 65 pound dog with a very slow metabolism. I engaged him in many conversations about how unfair it is to be big and not be able to eat anything for fear of gaining weight. He would look at me and tilt his head, waiting for a word he understood. His IQ didn't gain with his weight.

Thelma weighing a whopping 38 pounds ate two cups of food each day and made the biggest poops I've ever seen come out of a short legged creature. (Thelma is half Basset Hound-half Labrador) Lou was mostly Chow, but ate a cup and a half of food each day and was overweight at 65 pounds. I couldn't feed him less because I was worried he would lack nutrition so I exercised him. His square, compact, and solid frame let him go for walks for hours with me. Thelma would run and sniff, pause, sniff some more, and then run away. Lou would keep pace with me for a one and a half hour hike five days a week. He stayed stocky even as I lost weight. Thelma ate more trash to subsidise her starving body. She liked to vomit on my couch.

Thelma now lives with my parents and doesn't vomit very often. They have a fenced yard. Lou lives with the doggy angels because he was a dumb beast. This is the sad part of the tale, but I have to warn you; some might think it's funny. I have learned to love the humor of this sadness because I can't do anything else. Like the show M*A*S*H* made light of war, Lou's life made light of his death. I enjoyed some great times in the 2 1/2 years of dumb Chow.

Lou had incredibly long fur and an undercoat that needed to be raked out bi-monthly with a grooming rake. The force needed to pull out the dead hair was enough to break the rake after one year's use. Three days before the rake broke, I had guests for dinner and made one of my signature dishes and had Tostitos with a Hint of Lime available for dipping in the mushrooms sauteed in wine and broiled with Chihuahua cheese. This particular type of chips has MSG in it and I didn't eat any of the leftover chips. I carefully stored the chips on my fridge because I knew that Lou would eat the garbage when I left. When, on grooming day, I had put the chips in the trash, I was intending to take the bag of trash out when I took Lou out for his 'post groom spin' in the parking lot behind my apartment. Because the rake broke in the middle of the grooming session, I forgot about the chip bag and left for a 20 minute errand to get another rake. When I came home, Lou was dead.

He had snaked the bag out of the trash can, fended off Thelma, (Lou was a big food guarder) and got his static-y head stuffed into a bag of chips and was munching away like mad when he suffocated. I found him with the bag up past his neck and his body splayed like he had collapsed. He died in a good state of mind.

I have never understood death in such severity before. Most of my losses have been the result of HIV related death or Parkinson's or cancers that allow a bit of "pre-grieving" to take place. Lou was my favorite idiot and he was dead as soon as I learned to love him unconditionally. My body went completely out of my control and my arms and head thrashed in a way I could never duplicate without such loss. I had to run to my neighbor's to ask for help because I didn't know what to do with a dead body in my house. This neighbor is one of my oldest friends and he grew up on a farm. He calmed me down and we got a blanket out and lifted Lou to my car and I called the vet and told them I needed to bring her in. Thankfully, my friend can drive a stick and drove me there so I could say my last good-bye.

Dead dogs pee and poop for an hour after they die and Lou made a mess of my hatchback. "Bad dog, potty outside! potty outside!" didn't seem so relevant anymore. I'd give anything to clean up after that beast again....except for the hair. Thelma now lives in the Detroit area with my parents and is having a wonderful time in her retirement.

I never understood what my mother was saying when she talked about how awful it would be to outlive your children. Now I know. As Thelma lives with my parents and they are so attached to her, I don't wan't to imagine what it would be like for them to have to deal with losing her. I want to go back and prevent them from falling in love with her even as I know this is impossible. I have already done my pre-grieve with Thelma. It's likely she'll live for another five years, but I won't be there in the end as I was with Lou. Chances are it won't be a freak accident that causes Thelma's death, either.

As selfish as it seems, I hope I outlive both of my parents. I never want to see either of them grieve over me.
 
Been Absent
06.05.05 (1:07 pm)   [edit]
Erkay,

so everything got all weird in the last couple of weeks. One of the co-workers nearly chopped his thumb off with a broken glass so I've been covering his shifts as I can.

On my day off last week I took off out of the city in a convertible and turned the most unusual shade of Crayola due to high winds, strong sun and lots of sand blasting at my skin. I had one of the greatest days in months, however. Shannon and I walked in the Redwoods near Guerneville and caught up. It was like Africa hot up there and the woods were nice and cool. I watched the sunset with Zac at Goat Rock and nearly froze to death. One of my favorite things about the evening here is that it almost always gets cool as the sun goes down.

I'm getting killed by working turn-around shifts where I close the bar and the come right back in and open it the next morning. Three a week. The good part is that I have lots of half days off, this way.

I'm babysitting a dog named Grover at my friend's house in the East Bay. The house is huge (so is the dog) and I can see a Trader Joe's from the kitchen window. I'm in heaven! I get a car for the next 10 days, too. The only down side is not being able to walk to work. I'm really spoiled by my twenty minute walk to work.

Grover needs to go for a little walk and it's time for me to go to work again. (I think)