A Whiter Shade of Pale

So it's been, like, five months of keeping quiet here.  I don't know why, in a way: I like blogging.  On the other hand, I went through a rough patch that I nodded toward and then, as I began to come out of it, I watched with fascination what my moods do when they have free play.

I should add that my psychiatrist, when I was finally able to crawl to the phone and call her, increased my meds.  I also got kind of abstinent.  These things together have put some distance between me and my inner life that I am more a spectator of than participant.  In general however, the black dog has rolled off my chest and curled up in a corner and the white dog with its own dangers has taken its place as my close emotional companion.
 

There came a day when I decided to fast for 24 hours from the binge the night before.  That led to a second abstinent day.  The relief of waking up in the morning without hating myself for what I'd eaten the day before gave me space to think about what I should do that day & what I might actually, in fact, get done.  It gave me space to think about what else I hated myself for.

As the increased medication kicked in, I was able to measure my obsessiveness as it dwindled.  The one really productive thing I did this winter was to get rid of all clothes that don't fit or aren't within a size of fitting.  I donated, I packed off the smallest and best to my nieces and sister-in-law, I sold some on eBay.  Because my VCR doesn't work, I donated all of my VHS movies and started to replace them with DVDs...until I realized I had tapped out a credit card.

Tapping out a credit card brought me up so short that I began obsessing about paying off debt, which I did a lot of until recently, when my dogs went away for the summer, moved away or died.  In ten days, I'm taking over a colleague's roster of dogs and will get back to it.  Currently I'm determined to get rid of one bookcase & am in the process of donating books or putting them out on the street on fair weather weekends.  It's a good way to develop an interest in life because every time I leave the house on weekends, I'm curious to see what's been taken and refresh my drop-off points if they've been cleared out.

In that sentence are two leading features of my interior life that a more elevated mood and sort-of abstinence force me to deal with: my near-agoraphobia and my generalized ennui.

Which leaves me with three things to explain, because who knows what "sort-of" abstinence is?

Here is what I'm doing about abstinence.

The Stepfords of the 12-step program I wish I went to more often count days of back-to-back adherence to whatever food plan they are on.  The last ten years or so have proven to me that if I try to live that way, when I do fall off and lose the Almighty Day Count, I will simply be off and running with the food.  So on days when I screw up, I am detracting a day from my day count and moving on.  I've been doing that since late April and have seriously messed up with sugar twice.  I've messed up with other things -- flour and chips -- another dozen or so times.  In nearly 70 days, then, I've averaged nearly 90% adherence to sort of planless plan.

Planless?  Oi.  Blame menopause, that ennui I mentioned, Prozac for having no plan.  I eat when I'm hungry, usually twice a day or twice a day with a yogurt/fruit at night.

Whatever.  I'm sick of food.  I can be starving & my indifference won't move me to do anything about it.  I don't want to write about the nuts & bolts so I'll leave it that.  The important thing is how much more space there is (or isn't) for everything else in my brain.

With a clearer head, I seem to cycle through spells of OCD, ennui, depression and massive anxiety.  I may have three days of one of these and then move on, or go through the cycle day-by-day.  I suspect they may be fewer actual states of mind.  Do I develop ennui and exhaustion instead of anxiety, for instance?  If I'm indifferent or too tired, then I can shelve ambitions of leaving the house and allay my anxiety.

I don't know which mood is more painful.  Probably the occasional days of the Black Dog because I really do feel helpless.  The other moods can be coped with, although anxiety is the physically most painful and emotionally most taxing -- it makes me impatient when I go out or something stupid, like dropping a bowl of salad on the floor, happens.

The anxiety takes a mild form of agoraphobia.  My particular species makes going downstairs to the trash or washing machines difficult.  Getting proper groceries in can be a week's berating of myself as I survive on take-out salads or wrap sandwiches that aren't hideous to purchase because it's only a little out of my way on dog walks.  The dog walks require a mantra, "Be here now," to survive because I want to get it done and be home again quickly.

I've got as much or more work to do on anxiety as I do on depression.  A lot of it is shame: shame of gaining weight, shame of having been fired all those years ago that settled into a sense of being unwantable.  It's weird, too, because when I go to Key Food, the bank, the pet stores, Housing Works to donate stuff, to buy cigarettes, to the doorman buildings where my dogs live or simply to walk Daisy, I am known and always marvel at the banter I share with all those people.  They don't hate me.  They don't think of me as being some unhireable slacker.  There is a tiny bit of social life I engage in when I get a carton of yogurt or bag of kibble, sometimes more than tiny.

When I can, I impress one of my few friends into escorting me beyond my comfort zone, which is pretty tight.  I think of those excursions as something I did when I was thin and I was frantic to get away from the Bat Cave.  I spent a lot of money in those days.  Now I spend it on having salads delivered.  Sigh.......

There's a lot from That Time -- the thin time -- I have yet to process.  I failed to learn how to have fun and then everything exploded and I saw how frail the life I'd created was.  I think I'm terrified I'll run into someone who knew me when I was thin.  Shame is such a powerful and pointless emotion, isn't it?  I mean, who cares?

The other day I saw one of the Stepfords who has left my 12-step program for a harsher one.  She is super thin.  She gave me The Look.  You know: pity based on disapproval.  I wanted to laugh -- really: shame did not kick in -- because she knows nothing.  She doesn't know I'm crafting my own abstinence, that I could not do that without what I learned in the Rooms.  She doesn't know anything beyond her own reality.  & in my hidden life, I am still speaking daily to people struggling with the hopeless form of obesity, handing out information, suggestions, gentleness, urging self-acceptance, small steps, clapping my hands at success.  Much of what strength I have comes from the Rooms I'm afraid to go to.

The last meeting I went to, I was greeted by the leader as though it were my first, as though I'd never attended a meeting in my life.  That's what a stranger I've become.  Later, someone told me how much they like my Psychology Today blogs and I thought, well, there goes anonymity.  So I'll continue to be lackadaisical about meetings.  Something in the Rooms broke for me, or I broke for the Rooms.

On the OCD days, I do 80 things at once or obsess at books.  On good ennui days, I read.  Yesterday & today are ennui days, it seems.  I haven't brushed my teeth since Wednesday although I did manage to get to the grocery store yesterday & to put some books out for the high pedestrian traffic of a long weekend.

I feel really bad for Daisy in all of this.  There are a couple of people even my much "better" mood hurts, but day-to-day it's Daisy.

Who is ten years old today.  Which makes me want to cry in fear of what THAT means.

So there you go.  Talk soon.  Or not.

Holy Week Is Over: Amen

Maybe my blues were partly brought on by the whole Catholic School Girl thing of Holy Week.

I'm checking in very briefly before putting on a sweater (pink!  With a pearl neckline!) and skirt (gray) and Not Dog Shoes (gray) and earrings (moonstones) and perfume (Ralph Lauren's Romance) and going to Grace's house for Easter dinner.  I have had to do as little as possible, except be the Woman Behind the Curtain looking for profound things to say about Easter that aren't hideously Christian, in order to face a dinner party, but by God, I'm going and it's only taken half a Klonopin to get myself through the dread of being outside today, along with a new pastry by Entemann's that I don't recommend -- Bavarian Cream.  Great idea but it belongs either in pie crust or pastry crust, not coffee cake dough.

I did not go to Mass today.  I did, however, take Daisy too church -- the dog run, where I threw-the-ball-threw-the-ball-threw-the-ball until she was filthy.  She smiled all the way home and is zonked now.  She is the second person, after me, who has been hurt by this episode.  She deserved her time of worship.  I hope I can move beyond Midaugh Street more often to get her there.

We all do what we can.  I absolutely know I'm not the most depressed person in the world, or the poorest.  I was pleased at what doing my taxes revealed about my income and now that I've pretty much become phobic about buying anything -- which is not a good phobia when taken to extremes and when do I not take everything to extremes? -- I can see no reason for not hacking away at one of the ties that bind, Visa and Discover.

Thank you for listening.  I'm still "this" far from tears of unknown origin but I'm showing up.

In pearls and moonstones and the curiosity of what really happened in that tomb.

The friend who can be silent

I need to do something for myself, under my own name.

In my other life, I am the woman behind the curtain.  I do a damn good job of it, pulling the big green bead's eyes & mouth to say wise things that help people Like Me.  But I get tired of being the mostly unacknowledged presence or, when I do add a comment to the Wizard's social media, being banged away at.  After all, people come to the Great and Powerful Wizard, not to the fat woman behind the curtain.

I'm sorry if I'm confusing you.  Let's just say I have a secret life with a confidentiality agreement sealing it from too much sharing.

Today the Wizard mouthed this command:

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing…not healing, not curing…that is a friend who cares. ~ Henri Nouwen

It speak to me more than to the supplicants, I'm afraid, but every once in a while the woman behind the curtain has to make the Green Head waggle its ears.  Maybe someone out there knows what it's like to be that person who needs a witness to their pain but adamantly does not need advice.

I hope so, because the woman behind the curtain, who is Frances Kuffel with her own writing life, needs such a witness.

So thank you in advance and let's talk about that.

I am tired of walking the same old dogs.  I am tired of staying behind the curtain.  I am tired of myself -- my addiction to sugar, my depression, my deepening social anxiety, my slothfulness that I indulge in to calm myself (along with the sugar), my guilt, my loneliness, my anger.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired as in book a cruise to nowhere and reread the Harry Potter books with a ginger ale to the sound of shuffleboard in the distance.

I am also tired of my financial debt, which I am trying very, very hard to pay off but which makes me impatient.  In this respect, thank God for the Great and Powerful Wizard.  When Daisy got sick I could write a check instead of hand over plastic.  Some of that plastic will be retired in the next couple of months.

I am also tired of being stuck in finding a novel to write.  Tired of being overwhelmed by household chores I put off.  Tired of not having anywhere but bed to read or watch TV.  Tired of reality television (I knew I'd watched too much, I posted on Facebook, when Pope Francis made his first appearance and my immediate reaction was, "So...is that a yes to the dress?"), which I watch for its ability to numb that overweening anxiety.

I am tired of diarrhea, also a result of the anxiety.

I am so tired of it that the other night I reached for my evening cocktail of a Klonopin and two nighttime ibuporfins and watched my hand hover on the Klonopin.  For a moment, I thought I'd had one of those what-did-I-come-in-this-room-for moments.  Then I realized my hand was considering taking the 75 or so little green pills in the bottle.

It would be that easy, some voice whispered in my head.

Sleep.

I was not shocked.  I was reassured.  I felt a certain amount of peace mingling in my anxiety about whether I'd get to sleep that night.

I didn't do it.

The next day, I was doing my Transcendental Meditation like a good little girl behind the curtain and began crying.  Gushing, really.  I wanted someone to say, "I love you" without being asked.  The one smart thing I did was to go visit my friend Grace, a nine-month-old white Labrador who, I think, loves me to distraction.  She thinks she's my lap dog.  I can't wear my glasses when I sit down at her face, or wear black that I care about, or, tomorrow, make-up.  She is very thorough about washing my face and dusting me with love hair.

I had to go back again the next day for another scoop of Grace.

In the meantime, I had a conversation with the Great and Powerful who has gotten interested in binge eating.  I don't fully understand what her plans for this interest are but she wanted my feedback.  I could only cry.  There is someone who is going to writing about bingeing for her but it won't be me.

Pity.  I could make it real.

And as the G&P talked on, all I could think was, "You understand nothing" as I cried as quietly as possible.

I think that conversation was the one that sent me back to Grace.

Later, as I was switching back and forth between Supernanny and Say Yes to the Dress, I thought about the moment my hand hovered over the Klonopin.  I would have to find someone to take Daisy before.  If the Salvation Army came and took bags of my clothes away, would they come in and clear out my apartment if I could get it together to box everything up?  Would my sentimental niece be angry that I didn't separate out my jewelry and salt and pepper shakers and Barbie dolls for her?  What would happen to my debts -- would my family have to pay them?  I could imagine the long, vastly deep silence that would follow my brother telling my father what had happened.

I hauled my teary, angry self into the kitchen for a cigarette and whispered, "I want to go home.  I want to go home."

Home is a long, silent, flatline away.

I am owned by my books and CDs and nun doll collection.  I am bound by Discover and Visa.  I am beholden to not being the second child my father has to bury or burn.  I am claimed by a niece's gobbling, good-natured desire to possess the same small things that possess me.  I am buried under stuff.

I added another book to the bag I'm taking to the library when I have the wherewith all to cross the boundaries of my comfort zone.

Grace torments Daisy.  She can't go live there.  But she's nine.  Daddy is 95.  I got rid of 11 boxes and innumerable bags of clothes this winter.  I donated all my VHS movies.  I can keep at it.  Surely.

All the while knowing this will pass.

But to what?  What?  The same old dogs.  The same old Giant Green Head platitudes.

And inevitably the cycle up.

It is wildly unfair to be this weight and age, to smoke, to eat what I too often eat, and be this fucking healthy.

Although I couldn't afford being unhealthy, either.

Round and round.

I write this is hopes of catharsis.  I write this for anyone who lies a similarly mobius psychological life.  I write this for those who are mystified at where I go, where their own friends go.  I write this to say that there's not that much difference between dying and death.

And please, I beg of you, don't offer suggestions for fixing it.  I'm not stupid.

I'm tired.

Tri- Quad - Oh Hell, Pentfecta

Once a year, and only once a year, I change my Facebook avatar from one of my book jackets to a picture of Cupid face down on the ground with an arrow in his back.

Coupled with Fat Tuesday, Chinese New Year and Presidents' Day Weekend, I'm swinging between bitchy and heartbroken.

You think all of this is self-inflated exclusion?  It is.  But I've run into Chinese lanterns, Mardi Gras beads, countless valentines and have a heavy schedule of dogs for the three-day weekend.  I ordered flowers for my father's sort-of girl friend yesterday, wishing he'd asked my brother to do it and order some for me at the same time.  How much fun to get flowers!  How it's NOT going to happen.  I'd go buy them myself but the Bat Cave is mid-disarray after getting rid of almost all the clothes I don't fit.  The project involved so many piles of various destinations that a lot of other things got out of control & I don't know where I'd put the flowers I won't buy myself.

God, I'm so tired of myself.

OK, so here is what I need to say: a catalogue of all my feelings the last few days:

Glad to be rid of all but two hefty armfuls of clothes I want to sell on eBay.
Glad some bad karma went out the door with those clothes.
A failure for having gained back most of the weight.  I kept one dress from my highest weight and when I found it, I tossed it into the Salvation Army bag with a shudder as to how it might fit me now.
Regretful about some of the associations of those clothes.
Angry and resentful about some of the associations of those clothes.

Sad and angry about men I loved who did not love me back.

Heartbroken that my black Lab client is moving to Manhattan on Friday.  Great week to break up a marriage, BTW.

Frustrated leading into anger at a freelance project I can't get answers on, including whether I will be paid for it.  This is the thorniest feeling.  I THINK frustration leads to anger, which leads to self-justification which leads to sarcasm which leads to all the reasons I should be paying my employer for doing a massive project in a very short time.  I THINK that's the order.  Doesn't matter.  It all ends in Ben & Jerry's Key Lime Ice Cream.

Stressed out over the project above, edits for my new book coming in, many dogs to walk, money (loss of Lab = $600 a month).

Wishing I wanted something.  Or maybe I do.  I wish I had hope.  I wish I could be thin, write a novel and be solvent.

Funny: I am where I started in Passing for Thin.  Fat.  Hopeless.  Wanting to write.  Only this time, I'd trade freedom from credit cards for the love of my life.  Been there, didn't do that.

Thanks for letting me vent.  I THINK I got it all out............

VERITAS w/ Mel Fabregas: 'Food Addict' Label May Worsen Fat Stigma

VERITAS w/ Mel Fabregas: 'Food Addict' Label May Worsen Fat Stigma

My response:

We can only hope that the more information about food addiction that becomes available, the more compassion people will have for the obese.  How much were these people told about the addiction?  If you read Pam Peeke The Hunger Fix or any of the other half dozen laymen's science on the subject, you'll know food can literally scar the brain.  Obesity is not a choice, it's an unavoidable consequence of the dopamine system gone awry. You have to be pretty odd to wake up one day and decide, "I think I'll gain 200 pounds, have a hard time moving, difficulty sleeping, have to ask for a seat belt extender and endure disapproval every time I encounter another human being."

Perhaps the people in the study feel fat women are like Bowery drunks.  Perhaps compassion is a disappearing quality.  Perhaps they will one day wake up on the wrong side of the number on the scale and will have to re-think their prejudices.  The latter is the most likely scenario of all.

Bad Week...Or Not...

I need to review this very strange week and the only way I'll do it is if I show off while I'm at it.  Ergo: I blog.

Let's begin with the glass half empty of pond scum, my default position in life.

1. My computer screen is fading in and out.
2. I lost internet (and phone and cable) for an entire business day on Tuesday.  I have a freelance gig that is entirely dependent on the internet.  My freelance gig boss was not happy.
3. I lost $55 in cash on a very windy day.
4. Daisy got very sick.
5. Daisy got very sick all over the sheets and blankets.
6. Daisy cost $660 to get her take a solid poop.
7. Daisy's vet visits cost me at least $115 in lost business this week.
8. My house looks like I need a hoarding counselor's intervention as I continue to sort clothes into piles: (1) Salvation Army (picking up 2/13, my deadline); (2) niece in Washington; (3) niece and sister-in-law in Montana; (4) Housing Works donations; (5) boxes to ship West; (6) trash; (7) eBay; (8) waiting for a decision from various nieces; (9) clothes I need to hang up or store because they are either too sentimental or they actually fit.  My friend Ann gave me a baseline I'm grateful for: if it fits or almost fits, keep it.  My closets, now mostly empty of Thin Clothes, are bulging, as are my drawers.
9. The shoes I ordered my father do not fit.  I have to run out and send the paperwork so that my brother, in full I-told-you-so mode, can return them.  I wanted them to fit because it would have made my dad feel...younger, having more choices than Fred Flintstone.  I was really upset about that.
10. I ate over Daisy.  Piles of sugar.  Twice

That's a nice full list of reasons to be exhausted.  Because after surviving the list, I go into the weekend with 15 and 10 walks per day, which is not relaxing and especially not relaxing when I decide to pull down four big boxes of clothes that need to be photographed, described & emailed to probably parties before dividing into 8 of 9 piles above.

Ah.  Burp.  I just had a deserved Greek salad with grilled chicken from the diner.  I believe in restaurants & weight loss, if don't order the milk shake, fries and pie.  I mean, it's gone.  There isn't anything else to pick at.  All the experts say don't go out.  I say, go out, order healthy, and have a cigarette.

Or order in, which is what an agoraphobe with dirty hair and clothes does.

Anyway.  You can see I'm pushing toward the better side of it all if I can appreciate a good salad.

Half full of good Champagne would be:

1.  My internet, phone and cable service have been restored.
2.  Daisy is much better and got to run loose on the Promenade in the scant snow this morning with her pal, Sandy.
3.  This is big: I PAID THE VET BILLS BY CHECK.  For once in my life, I am both paying my bills down, have a teeny but growing nest egg and am liquid enough to pay a big sudden bill like that without having to make minimum payments.  It helps that Discover gave me $106 back for some random reason.  A minimum payment there will LOOK like a bigger payment, at least.
4.  I got rid of enough clothes yesterday to walk through the apartment without terrible, terrible danger.  I'd like to attack my cellar cubby today but everything seems to be taking longer than I'd like.  Tomorrow I'll be able to ship off two big boxes.  That will feel good.  Still, I'm anxious because I don't know what's downstairs in storage and when I get done with this, I will have to do it all over again with the CTFOAF.

I did some blogging.  I put in the hours I demand of myself on this freelance project.  I took a huge bag of clothes to Housing Works last night and seem, from what the women at the donation desk said, to have been the only genuinely nice person to have graced their Saturday.  I even got the vomit washed out of the bedding.  Five days out of seven without sugar is better than four or two or none.

Still, it was a tiring week.  I would really really like to have a whole day off.  Maybe two.  Only Daisy and an appointment for a massage and the energy of declothing myself to put into making some decent food instead of ordering it out.  It's not going be this week.  Dogs and dogs, at least five containers of clothes to mess my head up with.  If I'm lucky, I'll get to spend some exhausting hours photographing and measuring clothes for eBay.  If I'm even more lucky, someone will buy something.

OK.  Gotta go walk a golden retriever.  I'll be the one who smells like raw red onions and feta cheese.

Scary - Sweet

It started with what felt like a normal walk.  She didn't indicate any urgency but when it was time to take a dump it was pure liquid.

There's a reason they call Labradors "Lardadores".  They'll eat anything and they can get really fat.

In case you don't know, I have issues with fat, so Daisy is not fat.  She will, however, eat anything.  This desperation on the part of Labs to get potential food in their mouths is so bad that our friend Boomer once almost pulled his owner over to get to a patch of light shining on a sidewalk darkened by scaffolding.  Add to that their innate bomb-sniffing skills and at night it can be impossible to keep God knows what from going down their throats.

So Tuesday morning she had diarrhea.  I decided to fast her and get some ID -- or WW40 as a lot us call the sick dog food -- that night.  She had another bout that afternoon but I fed her and she had no BM that night.  She did, however, arf at about 4 in the morning so I decided to fast her again except for a couple of cookie bits and her usual custom of licking my yogurt bowl.  That afternoon we had an urgent call to go out and then later in the afternoon she began throwing up at rough half-hour intervals. 

I'm not going to be anonymous about this because I'll post a link to this blog on Facebook where a lot of friends know Tom, who is a vet in Illinois.  I texted Tom that Daisy was pathetic and could he call me.  He answered that he was in a meeting until 8 and would call then.

At six, she threw up pink bile -- blood -- and I completely lost it.

Thankfully, our vet is open until 8 and had a 7.30 appointment available.  My friend Ann Marie agreed to walk Sandy and -- oh, it was one of those days -- because the building had lost cable service for the day -- I had to walk over to Hodi's house and tell his owner I couldn't walk the dog until later that night.  He told me not to worry, that he'd do it.  I was all tears and snot by then and walked home to call Gerry, Ann Marie's husband, who had volunteered to go with us to the vet.

Most of me suspected it was some kind of gigantic upset stomach and after we ruled out rat poisoning and until we had all the blood work back, that's what the vet confirmed.  I have some pink liquid to squirt down her throat to coat her stomach an hour before eating and mostly she's just kind of lethargic and funky.

Here's where the story I want to tell really begins.

Tom called at 8, just as I was talking to the vet.  I asked him if he wanted to talk to her and at first he demurred, then said, what the hell, put her on.  Platelets, enzymes, blah blah, rectal, liver, blah blah, Cornell, Ohio State, you're-kidding?  I'm their protege, blah blah blah.  Call ends abruptly.  The vet handed it back to me and said, "Who was I talking to?"

I squirmed on the bench a little, not wanting to brag but wanting to make my point.  "He's my best friend from childhood and, I think, a rah-ther famous feline endocrinologist.  His name is Tom Graves."

She took a beat or two.  "Doctor Graves?  He wrote all the books!"

The phone rings.  Tom again.  "You wrote all the books," I informed him.

"Only some of them," he laughed and proceeded to assure me that 98% of these gastro disturbances are self-curing but that I had done the right thing.  Daisy is nine now.  Not fifteen but not two.  I needed to have her seen.  We said goodbye and I stood up.

"Wow," the vet said.  "I just talked to Doctor Graves."

"I'll bring him by when he's in town," I told her.

She kind of gasped.  "That would be...such an honor."

As I was writing a check for FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE DOLLARS, I thought, I bet I could get you a signed, first edition copy of 600 Kinds of Cat Hairballs if you'd give me a discount. 

I was giddy with relief and with Tom's fame on the walk home.  "Did you hear?  Did you hear?" I kept saying to poor Gerry who had seen and heard all of it.  He was kind enough to let me natter and I laughed that it was pay-back for Tom's attendance of our grade school reunion last summer when a couple of people wouldn't stop talking about Francie Kuffel the millionaire writer.  (And he hadn't corrected them, to my knowledge, about the numbers but he sure let me know how tired he was of me when talking to people we hadn't seen in 40 years.)

When we got home, I texted Tom about what went on out of his hearing.  I thought it was terrific -- I was humbled by it, awed (and I HATE that word) by it.  He said the vet had emailed him a sweet note after we left the office and I was even more impressed and honored.

Then the texting turned real.  Daisy is nine.  Realistically, she has, at most, six years left.  Three is more typical.  She's active, snotty and vivacious but the tip of her tail is white now.  "I need to get a puppy," I told Tom.  He answered that when he lost his chihuahua, he cried so much his friend bought him two more to replace her.  And Tom has something like a million other dogs around the house.

I remember how puppies invigorated the older dogs in our house and how, when the older dog went to the Great Duck Pond in the Sky, we were in love with another dog and it didn't hurt as much.  Given my reaction to what I pretty much knew was an upset stomach, I don't want to think about what it will do to me when Daisy leaves.

She's grandfathered into our apartment building, however.  Not long after I got her (and it caused me a nervous breakdown: I wish I could stick up for myself the way I do for Daisy), the co-op board made some rules.  No dog over 40 pounds, no excessive barking, only one dog per unit.  I was furious and being a renter, I had no voice in this.  It's the dogs under 40 pounds who bark all the time, you soulless fuckwits, I wanted to tell them.  And my apartment is so small, I should be restricted to half a dog.

If I'm not out of here when I'm alone again, maybe a fox terrier, I suggested.

Tom and I have strong opinions on breeds.  We don't always agree.  He nixed the fox terrier and sent me photos of the dogs he thought I should have.

What I should have is a move to the West, where I can get another Lab puppy, as well as the terrier Kenneth wants, his cats and frogs, the chickens, Long Island ducks and angora bunnies we both want.  And the goats Tom insists we must have.  A black Lab named Dahlia.  "You can't name a dog before you get it," Tom texted back.  But when I knew I wanted a yellow Lab, I knew also that I would name her either Lucy or Daisy and I gave my grandniece the choice.  So Dahlia it is: murder victim or flower of rare coloring.

At least he agrees that he loves black Labs.

At 8 this morning, Hodi's owner called to offer to walk the dog himself.  "We're just on our way out," I said.  "She needs to pee like a racehorse after being hydrated last night.  We'll be there in five minutes."

"I really don't mind," he said.  He's been suffering from a painful arthritic hip pressing on a nerve and his stalwart Jack Russell mix, who I adore, walks too briskly for him. 

"No, it's Okay," I assured him.  "They love each other and Daisy's Okay."  I told him what the vets had said and apologized for being such a mess the night before.

"Don't apologize," he said.  "You know what I did after you left?  I sat down on the couch and cried for all the dogs I've lost."

Which made me start crying again because I will walk Hodi without pay to keep them together.

No black Lab or fox terrier or -- Jesus, Tom: how could you suggest a shih tzu to me, of all people? -- any other dog will be Daisy.  And a lot of my breakdown about Daisy is really, of course, about my father.

Still, it's best to be a little prepared.  It's best to know you can love again, which of course I can or I would have stopped walking dogs when Melly moved or Henry moved or -- well, Hero nearly made me quit the business.  When I don't see Gerry and Ann Marie's Grace for a week, I ache.  I get cravings for Tiger and Tallulah.  I want to squeeze the white fur off of Hodi.

So I'll be Okay.  Even if I don't like it.  And Dahlia -- your mum probably hasn't been born yet, but your grandmother is a tide-swimming, salmon-rolling, bed-hogging maniac of a puppy.  And you will be, too.  And I will love you all my days.

Food Fix - Bethesda Magazine - January-February 2013 - Bethesda, MD

Adoption Day

So for anyone who isn't adopted, or who is less hyper-navel-gazing as I am, birthdays for an adopted child can be a little weird.

The only story of my birth is that my parents got a call on the evening of the12th of December saying there was a baby girl available for adoption.  They had adopted two boys and had been waiting for a girl.  They said yes and Mom opened up all her Christmas cards to add my name.  And there was a scramble for baby stuff because they hadn't saved everything from Jim's infancy.

I was lying in the bath this morning thinking that it was 7.30 a.m. in Missoula.  Fifty-six years ago this morning my parents picked me up from the hospital and brought me home.  It was a school day and they would be going to court the next morning to make it all legal, so they didn't tell my brothers, who were in first and third grades, that a baby was coming that morning.  Mom was keeping her fingers crossed that I wouldn't wake up when Jim and Dick came home for lunch because she didn't want them going back to school with a story to tell before it was official, but I did and Jim's grew round (I'm guessing) as he asked, "Is that a baby?"

Which, I think, is what Thumper said upon seeing Bambi.

I'd love to start calling you Thumper, Bro, but would have to kill you if you started calling me Bambi in return.

I don't remember if the boys tattled.  My father told me last Christmas, which was that in 1956, when a baby was born who was being given up for adoption, it was swept away immediately, before the birth mother could see it.

I know that her name was or is Ann[e] Taylor and I have joked that I should get a discount.  She was supposedly a student at the University of Montana but I know from one of my brothers' searches that the annuals did not reveal his mother.  Who knows if she gave her real name?

I only know this much of my birth and the subsequent days.

The rest I have to intuit and guess at.  My birth certificate reveals that the delivering doctors was one of my father's partners at the time which probably accounts for the immediate inside scoop of my availability.  Kind of like medical inside trading, I guess.  My godparents were the other branch of his medical practice.  Trip, who delivered me, was a close family friend.  How strange it is to think of that now, all those times at the lake and dinner parties and working with Dad making bullets and shotgun shells and he knew who my birth mother was.  What she looked like.  If she was silly or heartbroken or smart or funny.  If it was an easy birth.  If she had requested a Catholic family.

And how strange it is that one chromosome made me a Kuffel rather than a Smith or a Kelly or whatever.  Not only would I not be who I am if I'd been born a boy, I wouldn't have the parents I did/do.

My father is tight as a modern o-ring on a space shuttle about his years of practicing medicine.  He'll tell stories sometimes but never with a name attached and not many tales at that.  Having been in general practice transiting to anesthesia, which he got a bigger crash course in in Korea, then one of two anesthesiologists in the state for a while, he has some cool stories and I used to call a trip to the mall Doc Country because of all the people who'd come up to him to say the babies he'd delivered were now parents themselves.

But I think it is probable, despite his saying otherwise, that he checked out Ann[e] Taylor and Baby Girl Number Something.  He once admitted she was Irish.

Or did I just want that information so much that he gave it to me to stop my questions.

Someone once thought I had Native American blood.  My mother was appalled.  "You're German," she said shortly.  But I hung on for the sake and literary/religious history of my Black Irish features.

Who knows?

And how strange that for three days I had a phantom name -- my paternal grandmother's and mother's -- that a few people -- my parents, some nurses, Dad's partners -- may have known but which was not official, probably not used in the hospital.

Where did my birth mother recover from giving birth?  If it was in the obstetrics department, did she hear me crying?  Did it make her breasts hurt?

Did the nurses give the motherless baby some extra cuddling?

I have learned that those are critical days, from the moment of birth on.  I missed the first two most important days of my life, that time of extreme bonding.

When I asked my mother how long it takes to bond -- to physically feel your baby crying -- as an adoptive mother, she said, as shortly as she said I was German, ...oh hell.  Now I don't remember.  Eighteen hours?  Thirty-six?  Something like that.  It was reassuring, her fast as fast response and the short time it took her to own her babies.

So those are the questions and the facts that some adopted children spin in the week of their birthday.  And it is a week as we look back on unknown events, from birth (and often on our birth mother's delivery) to the next transfer, whatever that means and wherever it was to.

What adopted children feel in that week....well, that depends on the kind of person each of us is.  An over-thinking depressive has some blank-to-black days in that week, kind of mirroring baby and birth mother, maybe.

I'm always glad when the 15th rolls around.

Somewhat guiltily, I am fine.  Our cable went out for a few hours and another tree came down this hurricane, but my neighborhood is fine.

My poor city -- oof.  It sounds like 9/11: no traffic, no subways, no planes.  Sirens.

Tropical Storm Sandy & Shameless Promotion

Tropical Storm Sandy is coming.

I have a new hobby or job -- I'm not sure which -- doing some social media consulting for a book that has more common sense about food in it than any I've read, Pam Peeke's The Hunger Fix.  Please feel free, everyone, to give me ideas and help in how to promote the book more deeply in the `net scape.

I have to go to the store and get some real food in the house -- God, how I dread walking out of the Bat Cave.  But I thought I'd run this recipe by you.  It has a four-HF rating from the doc herself ("I love the recipe") and it has a zing from the lemon and olives that I wait for with each bite.  It's from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, btw.

It will be good to chop on Monday.  Cooking is one of the most satisfying things I can do, you see.  And if there's anything I need, it's a feeling of satisfaction.

If I ever get to give a dinner party again, this will probably be a starter course.

 

Moroccan Stew

1½ cups chopped onions

3 garlic cloves

1/3 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon dried thyme

3 cups cubed potatoes (I often omit because I don’t always have a carb at night)

2 cups chopped green beans (canned or frozen are fine)

3 cups cubed fresh tomatoes (canned will do in a pinch)

3 cups vegetable or chicken broth

2 red bell peppers, chopped

3 13-oz cans artichoke hearts, drained & halved (reserve the brine)

½ cup pitted black olives (use good Greek olives)

pinch of saffron 

¼ cup fresh lemon juice

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

salt & pepper to taste

 

Sauté the onions & garlic in olive oil until translucent.  Add the thyme, green beans, bell peppers, and tomatoes, & cook on medium-high heat for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Ad the vegetable stock & the brine from the artichokes & simmer, covered, until the vegetable are tender, about 20 minutes.

Stir in the halved artichokes, black olives, & a pinch of saffron.  Continue to simmer gently for another 5 – 10 minutes.  Add the lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper.

Smack Down, Smack Back

Friends and I were sharing some hilarity on Facebook during the presidential debate last night and enjoying some special glee when Obama retorted to Romney's proposal to add an additional (unasked for) $2 trillion on the military that, "We have these things called air craft carriers, where planes land on `em."  I posted, "We have this thing called ELECTRICITY, Governor" to the general chuckles of my lefty pals who were snickering with me.

I posted on a public place so of course my comments are open to criticism.  But boy, was I stunned to find this response this morning:

Yeah. It's made from coal & oil. A whopping 12% from "green" sources. Divorce Pakistan? Nah, divorce O'blahblah. Building the military makes jobs. You remember what a job is, right? Not as adjunct, but with benefits & tenure. The cave as you call it must not have good reception. The dogs can't make political discussions. Might want to go grab a bite to eat somewhere that has cable TV. O'blahblah repeated almost verbatim everything Romney said. Oh, and by the way, on the military--Marines still use bayonets. Looks like your boy's rhetoric smacked down, allright. O'blahblah was petulant--almost childish. He smacked himself by being out of touch with the practice of the men he's supposed to be "in command" of. Romney at 52%, O'blahblah at 45%. Rasmussen. History dictates that no candidate up by more than 50% this late in Oct has ever lost. *little shrugs* Hm! BTW, does walking dogs require taxes be filed, or would that make you one of the 47% Miiittenns was talking about? I like the name "Mittens." It fits: Simple, straightforward, strong, warm and effective.

I don't know this writer except that we both play Cityville together.  My profile page has seen lots of political controversy in the last few months and I know I've argued with this writer more than once -- but I don't think I attacked her personally.  A dear friend from childhood is a well-informed neo-con with whom I take umbrage on a regular basis but she is also interested in the peanut butter cookie recipe I used to make my father's birthday present.  She refers to instances from her life in her argument as I do mine.  The ire behind this response, however, is seething.

We are all seething.

This is the zeitgeist and I feel I need to respond to her and other conservatives who look at me and shake their heads at the enemy.

Yes, Virginia, I have cable.  I work and I pay taxes, to the tune of 33% a year.  I do not have children so the taxes I pay toward education do not directly benefit me.  I own nothing so I have no tax loop holes.  I do not receive food stamps or medicaid.  I also pay sales taxes, taxes on my cable connection and cell phone, electricity and air flights.  Et cetera.

I'm not part of the 47% but I'm a taker because I have collected unemployment twice in my life and worker's compensation once.  I also use traffic lights, subways, streets, libraries, PBS, NPR, Homeland screening at airports, etc.  I went to a public high school, a public university and a private graduate school that receives prodigious federal funding.  

I  refuse to be shamed by the fact that I work in nontraditional jobs that require a degree of personal enterprise and complete self-discipline (i.e., if I don't walk a dog, it doesn't get walked by someone else and I don't get paid: I'm not claiming to be the world's most disciplined person by far!)

I've written two books that have, I believe, helped people understand their relationships with/around food better and reassured them that they are not alone, not freaks, not even very weird.  I may have even helped a lot of people.  I'm proud of that.

Polls are polls.  If Romney wins it doesn't mean he's the better man.  It doesn't make me a loser if I back a loser.  It just means a LOT OF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE.

Medicare and Medicaid will be left to individual state governments, many of which have such records of grift and nepotism that no one will protect the recipients.  Those recipients include my father, by the way, who is 95, self-made and a veteran.  

But, hey -- you can always go to the emergency room, right?  That drives medical care up higher and only the person obviously at death's door is going to get the correct diagnosis and treatment.  An ER will not screen for cervical cancer, say, or take a routine chest x-ray.  From my personal experience, an ER will look for the simplest explanation -- ulcer -- when the problem is a 36-pound ovarian cyst.  (And I had insurance then.)

I do not worship Barack Obama but I would martyr myself to comprehensive health care.  It's simply the right thing to do -- extend a hand to everyone because we CAN.  If we can run two wars, we can provide health care.  My taxes pay for all sorts of things that neither help nor I believe in.  Get over it.

And if you want evidence, look at life expectancies and happiness indexes of European countries with national health care.  Socialist?  Who cares?!  People are healthier (the Dutch are even taller) and happier where the central government provides essential services and safety nets.

An enlarged military, history also tells us (see Germany in the late 19th century), means two things: it will go looking for a fight and high profits for industrialists.

You can't cut taxes, add $2 trillion to the military and balance the budget.  It.  Can.  Not.  Be.  Done.

Trickle-down doesn't.  I live in a neighborhood of true trickle-downers.  It trickles down in imported cars, imported marbles, gold bathroom fixtures, real estate in swank weekend towns, trips to Turkey, kids in private schools and Armani.

Do you know how long it takes for that to trickle down to Nebraska?

This is the most important election I have voted in because it's life and death.  We either make our people healthier and more secure or we throw the deck of health cards in the air and watch what happens.  We either take a sane military approach to the Middle East or your grandson dies in Iran.  We are either grateful for the actual progress that is being made in the economy or we believe in political roulette. 

I hate it that an election has come down to a moral perception of the world but the fact is that all evidence points toward the contempt someone lucky and suited for a job-with-benefits has for everyone who doesn't and how life-threatening that is this year.

And by the way?  Even the Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch of Fox News, noted that Romney agreed with Obama's foreign agenda.  Obama didn't repeat Romney -- Romney conceded to Obama.

So really, don't assume, OK?  And if you want to truly claim that you don't rely on the federal government, get off the highways, home school your kids, find out if those drugs you take for high blood pressure were invented with federal grants, don't let your kids go to ANY college and sit in your back yard and rot.

Now Trending in Francieland

I will write here soon -- I promise!  Right now, I'm dissecting my 12-Step program over at Psychology Today.  Check out today's post, "Doing the Two-Step with the Twelve Steps".

Now Trending in Francieland

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-fat-women-want/201210/antonyms

"Please Update Your Blog"

So wroteth a Facebook acquaintance and I found myself in agreement.  Lately I've come to Car on the Hill with agendas (which I had to look up because it seems as though the word should have a Latinate ending -- but it doesn't).  I still have one but I think I can do it in tandem with "What Fat Women Want" over at Psychology Today.

I am thinking about the Seven Deadly Sins and how some of them -- greed, pride, avarice -- have sort of become virtues.  What, then, are the Seven Deadly Sins for the 21st century?

The first -- but not necessarily the greatest or the worst of the New Deadly Sins -- on my mind is Shame.

It it is of particular pertinence to Car because it's one of the reasons I've kept my posts either general or political.  While I was working on the book formerly known as Sex and the Pity (now referred to as Love Sick, but it needs a subtitle), I didn't want to tip my hand. While I was teaching I didn't want to draw my classes into this part of my life.  While I was depressed, I couldn't write, didn't want students or faculty to know or, also God forbid, affect my chances of getting a grown-up teaching position for which I had submitted many applications. Ditto eating, admitting disappointments, et cetera and so forth.

And a lot of those reasons revolve around shame. 
 
My Microsoft dictionary defines it as "a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace".  The fourth meaning is "a great disappointment".

There is, of course, much that looks familiar in that paragraph.  What feels alien about it, however, are the words "painful," "strong," and "great".  Because I rely on my Car readers to sort of identify with me, I'm going out on a limb by saying that those big adjectives are mostly negated by sheer familiarity.  Shame should also have the adjective "perpetual" or "chronic" added somewhere to its definition because it takes an unusual blip on my emotional radar to become aware of how much shame I live in.  If, for instance, I laugh too loudly or ask for help or make no plans to see anyone besides family when I go back to my hometown, I may feel a sharper twinge of an emotion that is my second skin, but ordinarily my painful, strong, great emotional state is mostly a sinking nervousness at the idea that I have to leave the house or wake up in the morning or pick up the telephone.

So far almost everything I've written could go on my Psychology Today blog where I might earn a teeny royalty some day but I've confessed enough here to make it Car-appropriate.  Let me be even more specific.

I hide.  I sneak around my very small world beyond the Bat Cave trying to be both invisible and very big -- very big by telling jokes, saying please and thank you, telling amusing stories, apologizing for being in the way.  For invisibility I rely on side streets, waiting until dusk, turning off my emotions, wearing oversize clothes, and staying inside as much as possible.

I had a run of abstinence this summer that did not seem to produce weight loss and I fear with good reason that I may now be as big as I was when I began to lose weight lo! those many years ago.  As a dog-walker, I do not dress up.  As someone in debt, I no longer have my eyebrows, hair, nails, etc. done.  I feel tremendous shame -- embarrassment, disgrace, disappointment, in that order -- over what I look like.

Next Wednesday I fly to Seattle to stay with friends I've come to conclusion are obligated to like me anyway.  The following week, I go on to Missoula where I will once again not see old friends.  It's the end of a tiring summer -- I wrote some 30,000 words (some of which have been knocked down, causing me more shame) and walked a lot of dogs in 100-degree heat.  I have failed my own dog and find myself unable to get back up on the novel bandwagon after my agent rightfully nixed the 120 pages I gave her.

The other thing about the definition of shame is that it needs the word "compound" in it.  Shame inflates itself.  If I can walk Hoadie for an hour a day, why don't I walk Daisy?  (Because I can't stand leaving my house unless I have to.)   I know I have the bones of a story, the talent to write it and all the time anyone could ask for, but I'm frozen with fear that I can't make the final leap into a new chapter one.  Why?  I'm afraid of failure and afraid of my sloth, one of the traditional Seven Deadlies. 

And in between all of this, I am teetering, yet again, on the border of depression when my life has no meaning and all I want is to go back to sleep.  I am terrified of another bout.

Any good news in here?

I think so.  I think there are some major sins beyond shame that are making themselves apparent: fear, frozenness, a certain kind of weakness that manifests as giving in too easily and for which I need a better word.

Which is, at least, a project I can work on teasing out.

A Gift

I have been walking a Jack Russel mix this summer because his owner is heavily occupied in taking care of his wife, who is in hospice care for late stage cancer.  His dog had never had a dog walker before so I report to Mr. Smith (the names here are changed) his various achievements and events.  Hoping to amuse Mr. Smith and, perhaps, his grieving family, I wrote the following.  It seems to have succeeded in adding something sweet to a most trying and sad time.  I'm up to my eyeballs in dogs and deadlines, so I thought I would post this for you.

The Adventures of Hody

By

A Friend

I came to know Hody in the heat waves of July, 2012.  His Male Human calls him a Jack Russell but conversations with other interested parties leave me thinking he is part border collie as well.  Consider his coloring: it is the border collie’s white with black splotches and freckles, like an exceedingly good portion of Oreos ice cream.  And his ears do not stand at constant attention as he walks, which a terrier’s do.  On the other hand, his demeanor is all terrier.  He is determined, quick, stubborn and larky.  Then, too, he is as huge as a Jack Russell and as playful.

In fact, most of Hody’s day is marvelous play or delicious naps.  In his profession of playing and napping, he has proven himself an ambassador, comedienne, man of medicine, gourmand, hurdle racer and lover.

My acquaintance with Hody is mostly in the context of out-of-doors.  He makes a fierce noise when I pick him up, sometimes for joy and sometimes because he likes to pretend I am a robber and should be warned sternly away from his home.  His Male Human prefers to put him in his halter because Hody is so soft and glossy to the touch.  When I perform this maneuver, I place the halter on the floor, then pick up his paws and place them inside, praying he doesn’t decide to dance in the seconds it takes to click the halter closed.  Then we snap on the leash and out we go, in a stately manner, as far as the threshold of the building, when he bolts into the broader space of the sidewalk.

Sometimes he has a bodyguard or two waiting for him.  He is thrilled to see who is waiting and bolts over so that they can perform their Maypole dance of butt-sniffing.  My own dog, Daisy, is always one of his regiment of protectors and they see each other at least once a day.  Still, they have to inspect each other’s orifices in case one of them is really a cat or a squirrel that is in Daisy or Hody disguise.

With the leashes untangled, the time has come to make a most crucial decision: where should Hody pee first?  Recycling bags (from which odors are neither absorbed nor washed away) are ideal, but so are the fringes of grass and ivy poking out of fences and tree railings.  The only thing that is better than recycling is recycling with another dog’s piddle on it.  It is an ecstasy of ownership.  This place is mine, Hody grins as he trots off the next stop, his black ears bobbing like a baby’s hands waving.

But I forget myself.  There is one thing that exceeds even peeing on pee on recycling.  That is peeing over his bodyguards’ pee on recycling.  When Daisy and Gertie escort Hody out into the world, I have to pause a long time for this business because Gertie must co-sign each of Daisy’s signatures and then Hody trumps them both.  They get in line behind Daisy and are quite impatient to prove themselves as worthy a gusher as Daisy.  What the black and yellow Labradors produce in quantity, however, Hody exceeds in frequency.  Sometimes he teases me by sniffing so seriously at a spot that I’m sure and event will occur, only to shrug his little terrier shoulders and continue his bob-bob-bobbing along down the street.

“Hod,” I say when he is, near the end of a walk, as I confess I call it, shooting blanks.  “You’re yanking my chain.”

“Walker,” he says back, “there are only two important things in life: what is in front of your nose and that you leave as much behind in this world as you find.  And if all you can do is go through the motions of giving yourself away, that’s enough.”

“Did you acquire your knowledge of philosophy at Harvard?” I asked him recently, but he only grinned and climbed a stoop to be adored by a man watering the geraniums in his window box.

Because I live nearby and have a dog as well as walking other dogs, I have a large acquaintance in the neighborhood that Hody has been delighted to share.  He is now a notorious Lothario, having no use for boys but a healthy desire to get to know any girl he meets.  He is especially fond of Sophie, a mix of hound and some other beautiful race, who appears (but is not, in reality) to be about three times as big as Hody.  She bows to him and he crouches to her, then pounces so that they meet in an embrace of rapture, his legs hugging her waist as hers rest momentarily on his shoulders.  After this greeting, it is time to get serious again.  There is another Maypole dance and then Hody mounts her.

“That’s my boy!” his Human Male crowed when I told him of Hody’s dalliances.  “A true Smith.”

A few days later, I extolled Hody’s exploits to his Human Female Family Member.  “Oh, no,” she lamented in horror.  “What will people think of the Smiths?”

I looked at Hody, who wagged his upright tail complete agreement with his Human Male’s pride, which is only proper for a dog of great heart.

In this way, Hody has become acquainted with Grace, a bull dog, Talullah, a Bassett-Rottweiler mix, Sandy, a golden retriever, Lucy, a gray poodle, and numerous flings.  So far he has shown no interest in his bodyguards but this is perhaps professional discretion on his part.

I have introduced him to Schuyler as well.  Schuyler is a whippet who is used to being picked on.  He is so fast that other dogs chase and chase him and sometimes, when Schuyler decides to rest, those dogs gnaw on him as a piece of prey.  Schuyler is, therefore, a suitable young man for Hody to play with because he dodges behind his Human’s legs while Hody snarls and lunges, then comes out to bow when Hody gives up on his objections.

They can play this game forever.

Hody’s only true enemy is a German shepherd.  He does not like that German shepherd at all.  I have a rule about the dogs Hody dislikes and I am forced to remind him of it at least once every other day: if the dog is too big to eat in one sitting, he must desist from attacking.  His Humans do not have refrigeration space for a German shepherd, you see.

In his role as ambassador, Hody has welcomed Spanish, Italian and Dutch visitors to these American shores, as well as tourists from Out There Where There Are Yards.  Many visitors come to his Promenade in order to photograph the fence that keeps us from falling into the fascinating but frustratingly forbidden rushing cars below.  Daisy patrols the benches in advance, making sure there are no crackers or hamburgers in Hody’s way, and Hody follows, looking for a hand and listening of the kick-kick sound that dogs know Humans think is Dog Talk.  Ears are good, butt is best, and in this heat wave it is always pleasant to sit under in shade under the bench in order to beg to be released from the persecution and sadism he receives from me.

There is a last piece of business Hody must perform outdoors.  We will not delve deeply into it but suffice it to say that it is very exciting when it involves leaping over a tree railing, pacing around and around the tree so that my arms are wrapped around the trunk trying to keep hold of his leash, and then, when I am either dizzy or holding the leash in the crook of my little finger, enjoying the sweet relief we all prefer not to speak of.

Because life is never dull, going home is as much a joyful profession as going out for a walk.  Sometimes the Human with the Cookies in His Right Pocket is outside the apartment building door!  Sometimes the Human with Suzie is there and they to sing together.  But at the very least there is cooler air inside, followed by a welcome home cookie and the laughter of his very own Human Man who is ready with his Almost a Rabbit that must be killed after so much marking up the neighborhood and teasing of the Human Walker.  The Human Man tosses the many-tailed Almost Rabbit and Hody bounds off to retrieve it, shaking it and breaking its Almost Rabbit neck, growling menacingly in case the Almost Rabbit should decide to fight back.  Hody can kill Almost Rabbits for hours but at some point even Hody –

            – must –

–        sleep.

That, of course, is most comfortably done in bed, and in a proper bed, with lots of

pillows and cool sheets and warm blankets and Human Adoration.  A pillow is a nice extra mattress but every dog knows that the best place to rest one’s head is on a Human Limb (although it is very comforting to snuggle deep against a Human’s side as well.).  Part of the joy of Hody’s nearly perfect life (German shepherds and not being able to jump up and drink from water fountains like Daisy) is that his Human Woman is always ready to be a headrest.  When you are as big as Hody, and as abused by a Walker, you need the warmth and tenderness of a Human in order to restore your acuity for hunting, and this the Human Woman provides as she pursues her own dreams of fresh fields, splashy puddles, Real Rabbits and the occasional snow.  Each sleeps better for the other until it is time to eat or hunt or claim the streets again for his own.

Question of the Day...

Who are your favorite bloggers these days?  Most particularly, who's writing well about diet, health, cooking, body image, women's issues & books?

(For once this is Not About Me!)