Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a day to remember our fallen heroes, who died defending our freedom. While their deaths are termed the "ultimate sacrifice" (and they were), we must also remember the countless veterans who came home again despite horrible injuries, who lived lives of quiet dignity in spite of terrible pain and disfigurement. Some had scars we cannot see, both mental and physical. My father was one such man who suffered all his life with the pain and disability of his wounds. Yes, he came home again where countless others did not, but when he finally succumbed to death many years later, it was with a kind of grateful acceptance. It gives me comfort to know he is with his brothers in war again, those who he watched fall and missed all his life. Let us remember all of our veterans, those sleeping in foreign soil as well as those who came home again, both dead and alive. Without them we would not have the lives we enjoy today.

MISS SNARK RETIRES

Miss Snark, the font of all snarkly wit and wisdom, is retiring. Here's to you, Miss Snark: you've educated us all. Much love to Grandmother Snark and Killer Yapp. (At least this will leave you more time for those romantic sails around the Cote d'Azur with Mr. Clooney.)

Pursuit of Happiness

I just finished watching the movie "Pursuit of Happyness" and am stunned at what a powerful movie it is, and how empowering it could potentially be. I'm one of the lucky ones; I do not work, and yet I am assured that every first of the month, I will have a paycheck deposited in my account, no matter what, short of nuclear armageddon. It isn't a lot, but it's sufficient for my needs, which are few (food, a heated, lit roof over my head, and books). I have enough for some luxuries, like caffeine and artisan bread once in a while, but it's not enough to ever really consider going anywhere on vacation or anything. Every attempt to save money always ends in failure, because there's always another bill around the corner. It amazes me at how much more expensive it is to live in one part of the country as compared to another. In Michigan our gas, electric, phone, television bills, etc., were positively meager compared to down here in southern Wisconsin. Everything costs more down here - a LOT more.

Wait, wait.... I'm not complaining. (Sure sounded like it though, didn't it?) Someday I would like to be able to take a trip to the West Coast to see my son, or to the East Coast to see my other son, and it's just not going to happen unless I get off my duff and do something. There was a line in the movie tonight that really resonated with me: Chris Gardner said that when he was in school and got a really good grade on a test, it made him feel good, made him feel powerful... made him feel that he had the potential to do anything he set out to do. I've felt like that in my life, many times, but in all the answers to THE question I've had in my life (what do you want to BE when you grow up?) the most consistent answer has been: I want to be a writer. Yet every time I sit down to write, I stutter along for a while, but I eventually abandon every plotline I come up with as too formulaic or too generic or too derivative of everything else out there. My friend Pat (I would like to call her my friend) has written a novel so powerful, so life-changing for her, that Putnam has put this novel's title on the cover of their spring catalog as an example of the finest they have to offer for this season. That is awe-inspiring; that is the example that I'd like to follow. Yet not everyone can be the Great American Novelist. I don't want to win a Pulitzer; I'd just like to be able to write a book good enough to get published. My problem is, I'm a perfectionist AND a procrastinator, which is a combination guaranteed to ensure I'll probably never finish a book, much less sell one.

And yet... and yet... watching this movie tonight made me want to keep trying. Chris Gardner eventually sold his share of his brokerage firm as part of a multi-million-dollar deal, and yet at the time he was pursuing his internship at Dean Witter (his uncompensated internship) he was so poverty-stricken he was sleeping in homeless shelters with his son every night. His life is like a graph charting the course to success. It CAN be done.

And so here I am, in front of the computer, facing Microsoft's Helpful Assistant Paperclip blinking at me.... trying again.

Writer's Block

How many of you out there run Microsoft Word? I know most editors require your work in that format for submission. I was sitting before my silent computer this morning, staring at my current WIP. In the corner of my vision I could see the little paperclip guy with the big eyes (an MS Word 'assistant' you can use for help) standing there on his little yellow pad, waiting for me to give him instruction. I ignored him, like I usually do. Then after a while, when I hadn't typed anything or even moved the mouse, the little paperclip guy flopped down like my dog Buddha does when he's bored, and stared first at me, then over to the words on the page, then back to me.

Now, writer's block is bad enough... but I'm damned if I'm going to tolerate a smartass little cartoon paperclip guy rolling his eyes at me because I'm not typing fast enough!! Sheesh.

It's a good thing I can right-click on the little smart aleck and vaporize his little paperclip butt!!!

Whew! I feel a lot better now, so I'm off to stare at my WIP again. :)

From Winter to Summer

When we moved two years ago from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to southern Wisconsin, we expected it to be a little warmer, but we're still astonished at how much difference there is. It was HOT today - almost 80 degrees. In the U.P. of Michigan, temperatures hit 80 on maybe one or two days in late July or August. Average summer temperatures there are low 70s. Heck, up there, they probably still have snow. I became so accustomed to the climate there that it wasn't unusual for my husband and I to wear shorts anytime the mercury climbed much past 45 degrees. As a consequence, now we're suffering. (My husband still says he's going to plant a palm tree one of these days.) I find myself longing for a nice 35-degree night so we can sleep without the air conditioner on.

Yes, before I started going through menopause I complained of being cold all the time, but that's beside the point.

In this fuzzy, not-very-good picture, our new puppy Buddha is sitting on Jerry's lap - or, more correctly, his chest. Jerry's got a bit of a belly, and both the dog and the cat seem to regard it as a kind of shelf for lounging on. The cat stays there for hours; Buddha doesn't last very long, before his puppy curiosity gets the better of him, and he's off adventuring again.

Despite our despair over losing our two much-loved dogs within three months of each other, watching Buddha grow and learn is a joy. He's very smart, and very opinionated about it, too. He will never be the kind of dog that obeys blindly and without question - he has to mull every command over in his head for a split second, while regarding you with that calm, inquisitive gaze. I often get the feeling that he knows a lot more about the nature of the world than I do. There's something in his eyes that reminds me of the way my mother looked at me when I had to confront a problem: a kind of amused patience after I rejected her opinion, while all the while she knew I'd come around to her way of thinking after all.

My new little dog has world-weary eyes for such a young soul, which is one reason why I named him Buddha. (Also, because "Confucius" was too long.)

The Black Hole

Wow - time flies when you're so wrapped up in other things, you barely remember to pay the bills.

As you can see by my profile photo, I managed to talk my husband into letting me get another dog. We were interested in adopting the dog pictured on the previous post, but by the time we got to the Humane Society, that particular dog had already had numerous applications submitted for her. We were getting ready to leave when a little black head popped up over the gate separating the entrance area from the main body of the shelter. The folks at the shelter had discovered a litter of five puppies on the side of the road, and after rescuing them and having them seen by a vet, were offering them for adoption. The little head belonged to the only male of a litter of what they claimed were lab mix puppies, and they'd named him Rusty. (Odd, because he's not rusty anywhere.) The little black head belonged to an odd-looking body - he had a white patch on his chest and belly, one entire leg that was blue merle, and each remaining paw was gray; he also had a kind of gray "goatee". He had one ear that stuck straight up, and the other tilted forward. He had a quizzical, sober, and inquiring expression, and no puppy playfulness at all. He was very somber for a three-month-old puppy. After asking about him, we learned that he was running loose in the shelter that morning because he was scheduled to be neutered, and had just had his first bath in preparation, and they wanted to keep him inside so he wouldn't get cold. We fell in love at first sight.

All's well that ended well, and we brought him home. I had him housetrained in a remarkable three days, and that, combined with his serious demeanor, intelligent gaze, and tendency to think everything over very carefully before acting on anything, led me to name him Buddha. He's very "zen", for a puppy.

(We think he's more Border Collie than Labrador Retriever - I've since found out that there are short-coated Border Collies, and that they can be just about any combination of colors.)

I fell down the puppy hole and have just started peeping about again, looking at the world to see what's happened in my absence.

After Buddha had been with us for about six weeks, our elderly Miniature Schnauzer, Muffie, began having a series of small strokes. The vet said that given her extreme age (20 years old) about all we could do was give her aspirin to thin her blood. This did a remarkably good job, but only for about a week. After that, she went progressively downhill. Finally, we submitted to the inevitable and had her euthanized; we were tired of watching her suffer.

It really sucks to have two companions who had been with you for years die within three months of each other. (Oh, and one more thing - our vet now thinks our beloved Polly's kidney failure was caused by what we now know was tainted canned dog food.)

About two weeks after that, we adopted another puppy from a different shelter to serve as a companion for our little guy. We chose a puppy that we were told was a cross between a Boxer and a Mastiff. (She looked like a pit bull to me, but the folks at the shelter said they knew about this stuff, and they could tell she was a Boxer/Mastiff.) She was a remarkably homely girl of a dark brown brindle color; we named her Sadie (my husband picked the name this time.) The two puppies spent all their time playing and generally having a marvelous time, but problems cropped up from the very first day. The first time I tried to feed them both at the same time (each had a separate bowl) Sadie would rush Buddha and snarl and snap at him until he moved away. If he then tried to go to her bowl (which was only logical - I didn't call him Buddha for nothing!) she'd rush back and snap at him there, too. She ended up guarding both bowls and wouldn't let him eat. She bullied him unmercifully. He doesn't have a mean bone in his little body, so he just let her do it. (The only time he ever growled at her was if she came to me for a pat - he didn't like me petting anyone but him.) She soon translated this behavior into their toys, bones, even the two beds they slept in. She was so dominant-aggressive I was afraid to leave them alone together. One morning when I had to go to the doctor, my husband went to the bathroom briefly. While in there, he heard the sound of dogs fighting. When he went back out into the living room, he found Buddha on the floor, and Sadie was pinning him down by the throat. Sadly, we ended up taking Sadie back to the shelter. We found out later that she wasn't a Boxer/Mastiff mix at all - she was a pit bull.

She could be a pain in the butt, but boy! Was she a little lover when she wanted to be! I miss her.

An Odyssey of Adoption

RANT ALERT!!!
About ten days ago I spotted this picture on a local Humane Society's website. Her name is Brandi, and she's a Boxer mix (I think Boxer/Labrador, from the look of her.) The blurb said that she came from a family with two young children who was moving out-of-state and couldn't take her with them. She's housebroken, well behaved, and is about 1 1/2 years old.

Now, since my Polly died in December, I've been haunting different Society's websites looking for another dog to adopt (despite my husband persistently saying "no" every time I broached the subject to him). He took a long look at this picture before he said "no" this time. I let the matter rest - being a pest hasn't gotten me anywhere so far.

The next morning he picked up the picture again and said, "She looks confused. She's looking for her people, and she doesn't know where she is or what she's doing there. She looks sad and lonely."

I said something about not understanding how someone could do that (although I do, actually - that doesn't mean I have to like it) and my husband said, "Well, we moved out-of-state and brought both our dogs with us!"

I let him stew some more, and within another two hours he had tracked me down to my office and said, "Let's go get her."

He called the Humane Society the next morning, and spoke to a very nice lady who shall go unnamed here, who said that although it was their policy not to do same-day adoptions, if we came early the next day when they opened, brought the appropriate documentation (proof that we own our home) it might be possible to do everything the same day. Their website says to bring our other animals with us so they can meet the prospective addition to the family, but my husband explained to the very nice lady that our Muffy is 20 years old, is blind, deaf, and incontinent, and no longer gets around too well (unless treats are involved, in which case she still hops around like a little filly.) He explained that Muff spends all her time either 1. sleeping, 2. going piddle, 3. eating treats with her four teeth, or 4. sleeping. The very nice lady said we didn't have to bring her (which is great, because actual outdoor temperature was below zero at that time.)

The next morning my husband and I were getting ready to head out on the 3-hour trek north, when who should call but the very-nice-lady, who said Brandi had an infection and wouldn't be available for adoption, or even for viewing, until the full course of antibiotics was over. She said she wanted to catch us before we left (which we both thought was very thoughtful) and that she'd call us when we could come and see her.

Which brings us to the present. I called earlier this week to see how she's doing, and the lady that answered the phone acted like a medieval dragon guarding the castle keep. Me: "My name is so-and-so, I spoke with the very-nice-unnamed-lady last week about Brandi, and am calling to see how she's doing." She: "Have you filled out an application?"
The conversation went downhill from there. Every time I asked how she was, I got "we don't do same-day adoptions, you know" or "other people are interested in her too" (which, according to the un-named lady, is a bold-faced lie) or "you have to bring all of your pets with you for the interview."

I understand there are people out there who go and get dogs from the shelter on the spur-of-the-moment, and after a few days of messes on the floor and the chewing of priceless objects, return the offending creature from whence it came, but I'm not one of them. I'm not going to take a dog home and decide three days later I don't want it after all. Dogs aren't ill-fitting shirts in an ugly shade of puce that I'm going to return to Wal-Mart to get my money back.

I don't mind meeting their conditions for adoption. They're reasonable. What I do object to is being told one thing one day, and still another thing another day. I object because the first person told us they bend the rules all the time, for the right people, and the second one never did get around to my original reason for the call, which was to see how Brandi's doing. She acted like it was a state secret and the price for revealing said secret was her head or something.

Has anyone else out there ever noticed that there are some lower-level or mid-level managers that treat their fiefdoms like a chastity belt guarding a lady's honor? I have LOTS of experience with this type of person, having spent 18 years in the military.

When I was working as the supervisor for what was called the "I.D. lab", there were written instructions in place for how to issue someone a military I.D. that were never to be waived, for any reason. I never waived the written instructions. However, the powers-that-be at that particular command insisted that all military members bringing in their dependents for I.D. cards had to be dressed in uniform, or we weren't allowed to serve them. I realize that not all the folks that read this are formerly military, so I'll set this up for you.

Say you're a soldier or sailor that dresses up in a starched, spit-shined uniform every day of the week including Sundays, and you're given a half-day off by your kindly supervisor to go home, retrieve your wife and children, and take them back to the base to get I.D. cards for them. How many of you would take off the stiff, uncomfortable uniform and put some baggy shorts and flip-flops on (this was in a tropical climate)? ALL of you would? So would I. Yet every time I bent this inflexible rule, I got yelled at for it. BUT.... (you knew this was coming, didn't you?) if I refused service to an out-of-uniform client and he or she went screaming to my supervisor, guess what happened? You're right - they told me to take care of the customer. I always ended up looking like the bad guy for enforcing a rule that I thought was bullshit to begin with.

I only worked there for about six months before they rotated me, which is the way the military does things - it makes you more well-rounded in your job. The guy that took over after me had a different management style that I did - he was militant (pun intended) about enforcing the uniform rule, and even went so far as to chew people out for not being "proud" of their uniform and their service, thereby embarrassing them horribly in front of their wives and children.

After all is said and done, I'm not hopeful that we're going to be able to adopt this lonely-looking girl after all. I'm going to call again tomorrow, and this time I'm just going to ask to speak to very-nice-lady, instead of braving the wrath of the dragon again. Wish me luck. :)