Month: July 2005 (Page 2 of 4)

It’s so hot, we didn’t even go to the movies last night. Because even though movie theaters are supposed to be FREEZING, especially in the summer? Last weekend we went, and they weren’t. And sitting in a room with 200 people in the dark, while trickles of sweat race from my temples is not what I call a “good time”. There is only so much technology can do in the face of 90-degree-plus heat. And yesterday? It was 100 degrees. And then there’s the whole journeying process, from the door to the interior of a car, which probably reached levels hot enough to bake muffins yesterday, and then there’s walking from the mile-away parking space, and so we decided to stay inside & drink slushy pina coladas. JWo played backgammon on the computer, and watched a movie, and I read. Finished Harry Potter this morning, weepy & yet still fufilled.

And relieved. Because my favorite radio station gave away the ending on Monday, but because I was too busy either talking on the phone, or listening to Coldplay, I didn’t hear it. WHEW! They did it again on Friday, and who knows how many times in between, but by that time, I had heard they were doing it, and I announced to JWo I was going to No Media Status. CD’s in the car, CD’s at work, and very skittish viewing of web news & blogs. The radio station ruined it for my friend Roger & he was quite bummed – and even though I started to flip ahead (to help myself brace for the news), I got busted by James & realized the error of my ways. :) Sigh. At least now I can discuss it with my friends!

If I ever leave the house….

I’m feeling extra-PSA this morning – a result of combined exposure to Cesar Millan (the Dog Whisperer), an article in the paper on pit bull rescue, and the weekly dog adoption segment in the local morning news.

ARRRRGH.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let me just pontificate for 60 seconds.

Don’t get a dog because you want to surprise or gift your partner or child.
Don’t get a dog and then give it up because you’re “moving & can’t take it with you.” The only valid excuse I can think of for this is if you’re getting moved overseas by the army. I have seen & read this reason so many times it makes me want to slap people without even hearing the why. Dogs are not sofas, to be unloaded when you’re moving because you don’t want to bother! ARRRGH!
Don’t get a dog and treat it like a baby, and then be surprised by behavior problems later.
Don’t get a dog & think it’s NOT like raising a child. Just because you can crate them, doesn’t erase the parallels between the two. Boundaries, discipline & responsibility are essential.
Don’t get a particular kind of dog because it “looks cute” or is somehow “in fashion”. Research breeds. Take a hard look at your life & lifestyle, and determine from there the kind of dog that fits you.

I wanted a soft-coated wheaten like nobody’s business, five years ago. They look like teddy bears, they are exuberant, and they are cute, cute, cute. With jumping-up issues, and a coat that requires loads of upkeep, and as a terrier, a mindset already prepared to challenge and resist you. Things I blithely ignored. Thank god I’m married to JWo, who had a lot more knowledge than I about the process & commitment to a dog. We already had Suzy, and I wanted “my” dog after we bought our house. Since he was going to have to do more care for the dogs, given his work schedule, we agreed it should be a breed we’d both be happy with, and that would benefit us both (me-companionship & fun, him-hunting) and wasn’t going to require either of us taking up running, since we’d probably fall down after a block. It was a long discussion, and we concluded a black lab was the dog to get. I’d grown up with them, and of course, they’re great hunting dogs.

I realize I’ve treated Polly like a baby at times, and she is more needy & less polished & trained than I’d now like her to be. Suzy & her 1/4 Chessie genes need to recognize that I am not on the same level as her in the pack, but that I am above her. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love our dogs, but I realize I need to give up a little of the “she’s my baby” behavior in order to give Polly some of the room to just be a dog, a calm, submissive dog who knows her pack leaders are large & in charge. :) In watching the 800 episodes of the Dog Whisperer, it becomes crystal clear that in allowing a dog to have more control (esp on the leash), the dog becomes anxious, aggressive, out of control; exerting just that small amount of assertiveness quiets the dog & allows both owner & dog to enjoy each other. It’s frustrating to see people with dogs get angry & upset & then think the dog should be put down, because somehow it’s the “dog’s fault” and the issues are incurable within the animal.

I could draw a parallel to how many people are parenting their children nowadays – excessive permissiveness, ignoring problem behavior, doing what’s easier for the parent regardless of the result in the child, etc. – but then I’d have to scream again & write for another twenty minutes. So. The mantra for the day is, Be the Pack Leader. It’s what your dog wants.

Say you’re making volumes of zucchini bread. Usually, you add nuts. Instead, you add chocolate chips and coconut.

Duuuuuude. It’s totally stoner bread nirvana, and for those of us who work and don’t lay around all day tokin’ up on mary jane, it’s pretty damned good, too. Kudos to JWo on another batch of yummy goodness!

Wednesday was what I’d categorize a “roller coaster” day. If you asked me about my day as a whole, I would have to average all the quarter hours and say, “Well, it was stressful at times, but overall, it was good.” However, averaging things just means you’re working with an average. You can get to the number 11 many different ways. For instance, my morning started with histrionics from a sales rep, kicking, biting & screaming like a toddler, and since I am fucking addicted to the Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic channel, I imagined myself putting a choke chain around the neck of this squawling, puking being, and pulling up on the leash, you know, (say this in a sexy accent) raise his head up, like in dog show. Show him you are the leader, he will be proud! Instead I attempted as much diplomacy as I could, while defending myself, without being rude, until he made a threat. And then I said it. It was a first for me, asking someone straight out if they were TRYING TO THROW ME UNDER THE BUS, before they even tried to do it. Because I am goddamn familiar with The Bus, having felt its wheels on my body many a time at the old job, and I tell you what, a sales rep is not gonna punch my ticket for the bus. And suddenly the bus went away and the ears went back and the strain relaxed and we established that I was not in his life to make him miserable, but that he was crossing a line. Don’t make me get Cesar Millan on your ass.

After that, I figured I might as well tackle all the other things that were pissing me off, you know, just sort of throw all the stinky trash into one bag. It was like fishing through sweaty locker room underwear. BLEAH! Then, running late & rushed from all the grossness, I was off to a client meeting, and it was one of those meetings you wish for. It was fun, we laughed, we had a great time, and my revolutionary, change-your-entire-strategy proposal actually slid right in to the overall discussion and was well-received and appreciated. APPRECIATED, people, that is what makes work worthwhile, makes the morning from hell fade away. Then I had lunch with friends, and then I had a dentist appointment and then I did more work.

And you probably think the dentist appointment was another bad thing, but it really wasn’t. I got a lucky roll on the dice genes when it came to my teeth – so checkups are speedy & relatively painless. I came home & watched more Dog Whisperer & ate Thai food. All-in-all, a good kick-ass day, with the good far outweighing the bad that was my morning. So I leave you with what was my FAVORITE part of one of the DW segments:

Cesar: You show favoritism to one dog over the others?
Dog Owner: Yes.
Cesar: See, that is not fair. You have to treat your dogs equally. If you send your dog to me and I have a favorite dog already, that is not fair to your dog.
Dog Owner (not believing him): Don’t you have favorites of your dogs? (Cesar has 30 dogs)
Cesar: No. They are all number 2.
Dog Owner: Who is number 1?
Cesar: I am.

Cesar is the SHIZNIT.

A dear friend of mine is currently experiencing an acquaintance (by proxy, really, it would be far too generous to even call this person any name under the friend umbrella) who is copying most of the aspects of her life. She gets a new job, the other girl switches jobs. She gets engaged, the other girl gets engaged. She takes up spinning, the other girl takes up spinning. She thinks about selling her homespun yarn, the other girl muses about creating her own business, selling – shocker – homespun yarn. Interestingly, this happened to another dear friend of mine – anything she did, the co-worker had to do, too. It practically drove her “underground” – she didn’t want to share things because she knew they’d be replicated within a week!

Now, I am not saying I am 100% completely constructed of original thought. Quite frankly, I believe I have an excellent balance between self-driven concepts and those that are copycat. We all are copycats, to some extent – after all, in a free society, an exchange of ideas is expected. So much so, we have patent laws and copyright laws, just to punish those who try to be accomplished without doing the work! But haven’t we all had that one person, made even worse when it’s a friend, who insists on doing, being, living EVERYTHING you are doing? It’s like someone’s trying to steal your skin and live in it, and then where does that leave you, just slopping around like a background dancer in a Robbie Williams video, tearing out chunks of yourself & flinging them at the camera out of frustration? It sucks, and it’s been my experience, that the friendship ends.

The person who liberally helped themself to my ideas, style, and life eventually got kicked to the curb. She loved my apartment, so she rented one in the same building. We were friends, so it seemed fun, at that point. But then the pattern got established – I got a cat? She got a cat. I shopped for (fill in the blank), she got one the next weekend. I bought a new car? She bought a new car. It never ended. Gratefully, she moved away, and one of her truer personality traits shone brightly through the facade she had patchworked over herself: cheapness. If there is one thing I can really get behind hating, it’s being cheap. Not broke. Broke is forgivable. Cheap. Cheap means you have money, but you just won’t part with it, no matter the circumstance. Cheap means not paying people well even if your own net worth from their work is in the gajillions. Cheap is when you break something, and you don’t buy a new one. Cheap is telling someone you’ll pay them X amount to do something, and later go back on it and try to nickel & dime the situation. (“I’ll pay you $15 for gas.” Fifteen minutes later: “No, actually, I’ll pay you $5 for gas.”) She was infamous for this, and she pulled a fast one on me, at the last minute, and at that point? I was done. She was toxic, besides being cheap. I am all for frugal, and finding the deals and being a power shopper – but don’t be cheap. It reeks of bad breeding and you soon discover you have no one to go to dinner with, like, ever.

I joked with my friend (the one who’s being copied) about how I’m also copying her – we’re both knitting a particular shawl/wrap, both knitting it out of Noro, bought from the same online retailer. But she also knows I do plenty of other things off in my own direction, and it’s part of the froth & fun of our knitting gal-pals: you see someone working on something that’s so ass-slappingly gorgeous, you just have to make one for yourself! And we’re not doing the same color, for pete’s sake. My friend Kim finished the most gorgeous cabled scarf, and I might have to be making one of those, too. It’s affirmation and adulation – and part of the “knit klatch” mentality.

Every one of my friends (knitting & otherwise) is an individual first, and a follower second, and perhaps that is the difference to me. For me, imitation CAN be a form of flattery, but in small doses. If you spend more time imitating, than being yourself, then you are not real. You are a shadow, always a few beats behind, striving like mad to ignore who you really are.

Hurrah, Harry’s back!

You scored as Hermione Granger. You’re one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out.

Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is…?
created with QuizFarm.com

Today is “Bulky Item Pickup” in the neighborhood, and you see people cruising the streets, scavenging for treasure, da da da. I spent a chunk of time yesterday, working on the garage (filled with allllll my stuff from storage), in the effort to clear off & drag out the antique couch for BIP Day.

It was a mixed deal. It’s a gorgeous piece of furniture, yet it would have cost me at least a grand to have it reupholstered, and another few hundred bucks to have the leg repaired properly (broken off). I also know my mother spent $500 for it, and she gave it to me my senior year of college for my apartment. It’s always been the couch she gave me, in my mind. There’s a lot of shit in the garage she gave me, products of shopping, mostly for herself & then clearing out her old things & giving them to me. The process of working through the boxes in the garage is a lot like confronting all of your past – reminders of my own bad decisions & purchases – and then all the stuff given to me by my mother, with whom I haven’t spoken in two years.

So. It felt cathartic, throwing a ton of stuff away, putting old clothes that don’t fit into a charity bag, and then before JWo got home, I dragged that couch to the curb. I felt like I needed to do it, by myself. There’s still a lot of stuff to go through, and I still struggle with getting rid of things, but it’s astounding just how much of it I’ve held on to out of a sense of obligation and duty – not good reasons to keep them.

And by 9 p.m., the couch was gone. Someone else’s treasure. May it serve them well.

Our nieces: Miranda, on the left, is 8, and Danielle is 6. Their grandma, JWo’s mom, sent me this picture & it made me laugh, for several reasons. First, when I was growing up, we never had a kiddie pool BIG enough for a floating lounge. Second, I can totally hear both the girls, Miranda’s probably shouting, “Loook! Look!” and Danielle’s probably screaming, “STOP! STOP!” because she thinks she’s going to be monsooned by her big sister and her bigger float device. And lastly, because I can hear BOTH their giggles, the kind of giggles you have when you’re a little kid, unrestrained and erupting.

I love to watch their sisterhood as they grow….

The first big laugh of the day, from our horoscopes in the paper:

Mine:
CANCER (June 21-July 22)Five Star Day:
Wave goodbye to the 2-1/2-year transit of Saturn in your sign. Your stamina has been tested, as well as the validity of what you have chosen. You might have suffered some losses, though you will soon find that they were for the better. Tonight: A full-scale celebration is in order.

James’:
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)Two Star Day:
You might sense a change in the wind as Saturn enters your sign for 2 1/2 years. During this period, the authenticity of your life choices will be tested. You also might let go of what doesn’t work for you anymore. You are starting a new 39-year life cycle. Tonight: Your home is the right place.

Hey, good luck there with Saturn, JWo. Try not to trip on all its muthafuckin’ rings.

In the office refrigerator.

We have Kitchen Duty that rotates – one person /week – and the primary duty is to put the coffee cups in the dishwasher, run it, unload it, etc. I do not go into the refrigerator (only the freezer for ice) because the refrigerator is SCARY. There is no room, and it looks like it could eat you if you spent too long trying to put something into it.

However, one of the newer braver souls here is on KD this week, and he sent out an email yesterday that the fridge was going to meet a new sheriff in town: him. And part of the warning to get your stuff out of there contained an observation: that in the refrigerator, there was an unopened carton of milk.

Expiration date: December 26.

He asked for guesses for the year. The predominant guess year has been 2003. (There’s no way to check, but still.)

It kind of makes me feel a little less shameful about our refrigerator at home. We suffer from a condiment problem, in that we have every kind of pickle, relish, sauce, and flavor accoutrement or enhancer under the sun, leaving very little room for much else. I can just see our recovery program: Condiments Anonymous, where the first step is admitting you don’t need three kinds of barbecue sauce open at once……