Fuck Your Seat Belt

Friday night, my sister and I went out with our friend Dennis to meet up with some other friends at a ska show. My sister drank a lot so I needed to be the driver but we had her car. I started driving and realized that I didnt have the seat adjusted quite right so I pulled into the parking lot of a McDonalds.

I was standing outside of the car trying to figure out how to use the eight million controls on the seat to get it right. There was a car full of drunk guys parked in a space three spaces away from us. They exchanged words with another car that was waiting at the drive-thru window. I don’t remember any yelling though or anything that sounded angry. Out of the blue, the passenger in the car at the drive up window pulled out a gun and shot several shots at the car next to us. I didnt see this but Dennis did and he told me later. After they fired the shots, the car squealed out of the parking lot.

It was truly a surreal moment. No one in the car next to us was shot nor did it look like any bullets actually hit the car. All of the guys who were in the car got out and started to check the car for damage. I jumped back inside my sister's car. She was screaming that I needed to get out of there. I put the key in the ignition and went to put my seat belt on. My sister screamed, "Fuck your seat belt, GET OUT OF HERE!" So that is what we did.

Anyhow, this is a gun incident that just reminded me how really very afraid of guns I am. I will admit it. I dont like guns.

I have mixed feelings about the gun control issue. I think most gun owners are responsible people. I can think of legitimate uses for guns even if that use is simply a hobby of target practice. But christ, it sure would be nice if we lived in a world without guns. If I thought gun control could actually accomplish that, I would probably get behind it even.

Life Without Cookie

So things are weird at my house without Cookie around. Brooke is just so good that in some ways it has been nice, i.e. I can take Brooke more places because she is better behaved and I can take her for walks without bothering with a leash because she’ll walk on heel and come when she is called.

But then, everything just seems so empty without Cookie. Brooke is a wonderful dog but her personality is more subdued than Cookie’s was. It has been too quiet at my house what with no one barking at the cat or demanding treats or whatnot.

It also has kind of sucked because Cookie really kept the cat in line. Now that Cookie is gone, the cat is doing all of the things she wasn’t allowed to do before. She is coming into my room in the middle of the night and waking me up by biting me. She is running out of the door to go outside when I let Brooke out which wouldn’t be a problem except she likes to do that at 11p when I am ready to go to bed. She has been eating the dog food again. The Cat is OUT OF CONTROL!

Ah well, I guess I just miss her.

Depression

I haven’t really felt like writing much lately. I haven’t really been reading many other people’s blogs lately either. I have given the matter a lot of thought and I think that this is mostly due to some seasonal depression I am experiencing.

This year’s depression might not actually qualify as a clinical depression. I mean, I am still functioning ok for the most part. But what has happened to me is that I find myself feeling very numb most of the time and kind of blah. I am watching a lot of movies and a lot of TV and I am reading some books albeit nothing that demands too much thought. I have been playing a lot of Soduko which I enjoy because it takes less thought than writing a blog post.

Seasonal depression is the kind of thing that can sneak up on a person especially if it isn’t the dark suicidal kind but rather the kind where everything just becomes a big effort. It is funny because I didn’t really know it had hit me until I noticed that my lotto fantasies had changed.

Usually, I dream about traveling the world and going on adventures or, in my less selfish moments, about the charity work I could do with that kind of money. But lately, I have been dreaming about winning the lotto and then…well…doing nothing. Not moving, not going on a vacation, just sitting around and watching movies. Yeah, that’s right folks: My current lotto fantasy is to quit my job and go on the Netflix 10 out at a time plan!

I hope spring gets here soon

Yes, I am a mess (and I have one too!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/garden/21mess.html

God bless the New York Times. I have been kind of down lately but to be honest, I havent been spending a lot of time cleaning up my house. I used to when the house was new but now that it just the same old house where I live, I have found other things to do with my time.

And the clutter just keeps coming. And the truth is that some times I feel guilty about it which is different from the times when the mess actually starts bothering me. So from now on, I am only going to spend time cleaning up the gross things (like you know, I'll do the dishes before things grow on them and I'll clean the bathroom). I am not going to worry about the clutter at all unless it actually starts to bother me.

Next month's journey of self discovery: I will explore why I feel the need to get permission from the New York Times to be a slob. ;)

Dog's Death

Cookie died while I was at work today. But I think she had a good last week.

Last Tuesday, she had a very bad day as I talked about in my last post. I was seriously going to take her into the vet to be put down last Wednesday. But then she seemed to get better – a LOT better. She hadnt been eating her dry food so I bought her a bunch of mushy food and I bought her her favorite snacks. It was almost as if she thought, “Well, I *was* going to check out but now that the service around here has finally gotten better, I think I’ll stick around for a while.”

So I didnt take her to the vet last Wednesday and instead I took her up to the lake. That is one of her favorite places and I thought she could get worse any minute and it would be nice if folks got a chance to say goodbye. But she didnt get worse, she got better. We even took a short walk that night. I took her back up to the lake on Friday. She was so excited to go that she did her little happy dance that she always would do where she would turn in circles and bark at me to hurry my ass up because we needed to go to the lake RIGHT NOW!!!

She had a really nice day at the lake on Saturday with my folks while I spent some time with a friend. Then I picked her up and brought her back home where she jumped on the couch and watched squirrels out of the window with my other dog Brooke. She went on a few adventures in the yard but mostly she slept (very peacefully). I spent some time rubbing her belly while lying in bed watching movies which is pretty much what we did Sunday too. She had to go outside a lot because her medication made her thirsty. I kept feeding her all the mushy food and special treats she wanted to eat and she seemed to be enjoying that, even going so far as to stand in the kitchen staring up at the cupboard where I keep the treats until I walked in and gave her some (which I did, of course).

Anyhow, she was doing so well that part of me thought that maybe I should tone it down with the ‘giving the dog whatever she wants’ thing because although I really loved Cookie, I know that she was just the sort of dog to take advantage of such a situation. I know this because she wasnt really my dog. She was my uncle’s dog or maybe it would be better to say that he was her person. There was no doubt who was in charge between the two of them and it wasnt my uncle! At my house, Cookie generally had to content herself with bossing the cat but she did that with such gusto it was hilarious.

But then this morning, she had a really hard time getting outside to pee and she wouldnt take a treat from me when she got back in. I came home for lunch around 3p and she wouldnt get out of bed nor would she take a treat from me. I pet her for 10 minutes or so before I had to go back to work. She didnt look in pain but she didnt look particularly well either.

And when I got home at 8p, she was dead.

I found a box in my basement and put her in it and then put the box in my car. I think my vet can arrange a cremation so I’ll take her there in the morning.

This is a picture I took of her a month or two ago.

Not Blogging So Much Lately

I havent really felt much like blogging lately. Mostly because it is becoming clear that my dog, Cookie, is dying. I don’t know how many posts about that I can bring myself to post. It is what I am thinking about most of the time though.

I thought she was a goner for sure yesterday. She wouldnt get out of her bed. She was drinking water but wasnt peeing so she was getting very bloated. She wasnt eating. She wouldnt even take some salami and that dog LOVES salami so I knew it was bad. Then all of a sudden in the middle of the night, she wanted to go outside so I let her out and she peed and peed! Then, this morning she was STARVING so I fed her some canned food and she gobbled it all up!

So, she lives. For now.

It is funny too how easily one can allow one’s mind to slip into denial about things like death. When she was eating this morning, I caught myself thinking “oh thank goodness, she is going to be ok” But she isnt going to be ok for long I am afraid.

Bad Moon Rising?

As I drove home from work tonight, the moon was rising. It was this huge orange ball hanging just above the buildings of downtown as I drove down Michigan Ave. I couldnt stop looking at it, it was so beautiful. It didnt particularly match my mood though. It was at peace while I was still wound up from my day.

I have been stressed out at work because it is the holiday season and we get really busy and my bosses get especially worked up about things.

I have been worried about one of my dogs. For the past week or so, she has been very lethargic and hasnt been eating much. On Saturday, she collapsed outside - she just walked out onto the porch and fell over onto her side. I had to carry her back into the house. She recovered from that episode but collapsed again on Monday. Then she got better. Then she got worse. Finally, I took her to the Vet on Wednesday morning.

He said that she has a problem with her spine. It could be a tumor putting pressure on it or it could just be a bad back. He said that there was no point in taking an x-ray because at her age, if it is cancer, there is no point treating it (she is 13 or 14 years old). So the plan is to put her on prednisone to treat what is most likely causing her symptoms if it isnt cancer. If she has cancer, she will get worse and will most likely die in a month or two. If it isnt cancer, she should get better.

So far, I think she is getting better. She has seemed like her old self since starting this medication yesterday but it is only two days so who knows? The medication makes her thirsty though. When I came home at lunch, she had had a small accident (just a few drops really), most likely out of excitement that I was home *finally* to let her out. I think I will have to restrict her water while I am at work. That is hard though. I mean, I know that I don’t like being thirsty but then I don’t like having to piss really bad when there is no bathroom available either. Oh well. The truth is that I hope like hell that I’ll have to worry for a LONG time about making sure she has lots of opportunities to get outside.

Still, sometimes death seems so unfair to me which is funny because death is probably the most fair thing there is in the world. Every one gets a death.

Fatties told, "Put down the cookies or else you will be POOR"

This weekend I read an interesting article in the New York Times that just left me shaking my head at how crazy our culture is about fat people. Basically this was an article that showed several different ways fat people experience discrimination in our culture and how that discrimination often results in fat people having lower incomes and less wealth.

Now, none of this is any great shock to me. Discrimination is part of our culture and as a fat person, I have experienced it.

But one might wonder how a respectable newspaper might approach this issue. Will they present this as a problem with our society? Or will they take a neutral objective stance and just report the facts? As it happens the NYT didn’t take either of the above approaches. The theme of their article seems to be “Health scares haven’t seemed to motivate people to lose weight, let’s give them some extra incentive by telling them that being fat will mean that they will be poorer than they otherwise would be” Here is the opening to their article:

"As you snatch a couple more Christmas cookies or down another eggnog, you might be thinking about what those extra calories will do to your health. But have you considered what they will do to your wealth? The sugar and fat will add pounds, which can lead to heart disease, diabetes and a shortened life span. There is another consequence to packing on extra weight: being fat costs money — tens of thousands of dollars over a lifetime."

Surely the only reason anyone is fat is because they don’t have enough information about the consequences of being fat: The health risks, the discrimination, etc. I mean, no one would choose that right? So either fat people are lazy and are staying fat because they are too lazy to get up off their asses to take a walk around the block OR They are ignorant about the effects of being overweight OR being fat isn’t as much of a choice as people might like to think. NYT appears to take the view that if only they told us poor fat people that fat people are discriminated against and that discrimination has an economic impact, we’ll get off our fat asses and put down the Christmas cookies and eggnog. *rolls eyes*

Next the NYT will tell homosexuals that they can go straight and minorities that they should blend more with the mainstream culture.

Can I pass Eighth Grade Math???

It wasnt until after I took this silly test that I realized that I already knew I could pass eighth grade math because I already passed eighth grade math. Yup, I passed that sucker in the tradional time in one's life to pass such things: EIGHTH GRADE. Whew. If I had remembered that earlier, I could have saved myself a whole five minutes :)

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?