Monthly Archives: February 2018

Craft Therapy

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My job and my personality are a great fit. I’m nit-picky and obsessive, and my brain likes to be doing a thousand things at once. The problem is, it never stops. Ever. While I have a hard time getting it rolling in the morning, it’s like a freight train. Once it gains momentum, slowing it down is–well, pretty much like stopping a freight train. Since hitting the liquor stash at noon is frowned-upon, I must employ a different distraction. I crochet.

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True. When the apocalypse strikes–and it will–sooner or later all the pre-made items will be scavenged, and we’ll be back to having to make our own. If you’re nice to me, I’ll make you socks.

Crochet’s not cool, is it? It’s for little old ladies in rocking chairs, draped in a shawl (which she crocheted) and surrounded by doilies. This definitely isn’t me. I don’t have a rocking chair.

My mom was an avid crocheter. She made afghans and bedspreads and holiday decor as far back as I can remember. But she was left-handed, and it was hard for her to teach me. I finally got the basics in a junior high home ec class, and it’s been part of my life ever since.

When I’ve been editing and writing and dealing with mountains of work email and need to whoa it down, crochet is my go-to coping strategy. I put an interesting or old favorite TV series on and settle in. I like serial TV better than movies, because part of my social dysfunction is I have some degree of face-blindness. I have a hard time distinguishing individual people, particularly if they are of similar age and appearance. I’ve found I tend to distinguish people by voice, which makes TV series ideal to pair with crochet, since I’m not looking at the screen a lot of the time anyway.

I’ve also recently rediscovered drawing, something I enjoyed a lot when I was in school,22426493_10212830143360855_1766052432900575989_o but crochet is currently front and center in my craft world. I was making a lot of doilies and other lacework for a while, the largest piece being a 62″ diameter round tablecloth that took me eight months to complete. It’s in my closet, because I haven’t gotten around to working in the ends and blocking it, and because I really have little use for a fancy lace tablecloth. But it was a lovely pattern, I’d never made a tablecloth, and I wanted to see if I could do it.

I’ve been making hats and bags and some other assorted things for the Colonial Capital Humane Society thrift shop, because they went above and beyond to pull Oliver from a risky situation and paired him with us. They work so hard every day for the homeless animals in our area, and rely solely on donations and the revenue from their thrift shop.

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I taught myself basic knitting several years ago, which I’ve now forgotten, but I’m thinking of learning again. I also tried Tunisian crochet, which is sort of a knit-crochet hybrid, but need to refresh my memory on that also.

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The older I get, the more I fit the stereotype of the old lady in a rocking chair. I also fit the stereotype of a yarn hoarder. I have four large plastic storage bins, a laundry basket, a duffel bag, and a storage ottoman stuffed with yarn. I’ve been trying to exercise some self-control and use yarn from the stash to make the bags and hats and such for the humane society, but eventually I didn’t have enough of the preferred colors in the right yarn to make what I wanted, and ordered more.

The internet is priceless when it comes to things like this. I have infinite free patterns only a click away, and I can order the perfect yarn for every project. Unlimited possibilities and an immediate-gratification-based personality means a lot of debits showing up on my bank account. But I have yarn!

In fact, it might be a key symptom of the psychosis that I actually have a favorite yarn. I found it a few years ago and made a shawl, which I later turned into a window covering for my office. I love it.

It has my three favorite colors (turquoise, bright green, and purple) and I would crochet slipcovers for all my furniture out of it if I could. Turns out it’s excellent for the bag style I’ve been making lately, so I ordered more. Yes…more. I’m definitely keeping one of these bags.

9b64c1c355e1eb09ea053f31e8e741b8--crochet-tools-how-to-crochetPerhaps even more significant than the size of the yarn stash or the fact I have a favorite yarn is…I have a favorite kind of crochet hook. And I only know this because I have an entire bag full of every kind of hook you can imagine. Broad, tapered, steel, aluminum, bamboo, ergonomic, Tunisian–I even have a whole set of hooks in which the end lights up so you can work with dark yarn in poor lighting.

But the two main styles are Boye and Bates, and I’m very firmly #TeamBoye. I have at least two in the full range of sizes, from tiny enough to work lace to hooks as thick as my thumb, because if I lose one, I need to be certain I have a spare.

Crochet is perfect for quieting a hyperactive mind. It engages enough of my brain to divide my focus, and combined with something on TV,  it prevents me from spinning in that perpetual loop that makes me stressed and anxious. The soothing repetition of the pattern, counting stitches in the back of the mind…it’s all very therapeutic.

Not as good as several strong drinks, but when you’re done, you have something pretty to show for it besides an empty liquor cabinet and a hangover.

Do you knit or crochet? Is it a new hobby or something you grew up doing? What’s the most impressive thing you ever made? Did you keep it or give it away?

Does the following paragraph make sense to you?

Work shell st in ch 1 sp of first V st. *V st in center dc of next shell st, shell st in ch 1 sp of next V st. Repeat from * across. End with dc in last ch of turning chain. Ch 3 and turn.

If it does, you’re part of the tribe!

Who Are The People In My Neighborhood?

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I’ve slacked a bit on my scoping-out of the new neighbors in the rental house across the street, and I’m still not sure exactly who lives there and which of the numerous people I see are just visiting or helping them settle in.

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In addition to the dark SUV, there’s now frequently a white pickup there as well. Night before last there was a third truck parked at the end of the street–at ten p.m.–and some guys had lights on it and were doing something which seemed to involve a large rolling jack like they use in auto racing. Whatever they were doing, it rated very high on the “my dogs must bark themselves into a frenzy” scale.

I’ve observed the small humans seem to primarily be there on weekdays during traditional work hours, which continues to support my hypothesis that the woman does some sort of home daycare, either as a job or for family members. I’ve regularly seen 3-5 kids, and they all seem to be taken elsewhere by evening.

I  told Tom I thought this was preferable to them actually having a bunch of kids. He wasn’t sure why. But if there are several children, maybe in some sort of shared custody situation, there’s the potential for a bunch of them running around the yard and street day and night. So, kids that go away are slightly better than those who don’t.

Today, Tom called my attention to several boys unloading items from a trailer in the driveway. The unusual bit was they were all wearing white shirts, black pants, and ties. I have no idea what to make of this. Religious minions? Sheldon Cooper or Alex P. Keaton wannabes?

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For those of you under 40 who have no idea who Alex P. Keaton is…here you go. Michael J. Fox before he was Marty McFly.

The religious aspect is a distinct possibility, which is of some concern because I am slightly allergic to such things. The black vehicle has a “pray” sticker on the back, and since they arrived, whenever I step out the front door, the air crackles with electrical energy, making my skin tingle, and I break out in brimstone.

I told Tom if they turn out to be Jehovah’s Witnesses and come knocking on my door, I could answer wearing my devil horns and offer to introduce them to my dog Cerberus. Tom thinks this would not be very neighborly, so I’ve agreed to revert to my usual door-answering strategy, which is simply not to do it. Besides, I only have two dogs, which leaves me one dog-head short of pulling off the whole Cerberus thing.

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Wonder if these guys are busy…

So, surveillance continues. Eventually, there will be some sort of interaction (Tom, not me…obviously) and all questions will be answered. But for now, I’m gathering clues and theorizing worst case scenarios. This way, no matter what we eventually find out, it will be better than what’s been going on inside my head.

Classic: Innocent or a Diabolical Plot?

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In November of 2007, we welcomed a three-year-old golden retriever into our pack. He was under 60 pounds, emaciated and neglected, saved from that life by golden rescue. We named him Darwin.

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Despite his trauma, he was the sunniest, bounciest, happiest, cutest golden retriever I’d ever seen. He was also extremely ornery. This Classic Fermented Fur post describes when I pondered that he might actually have an evil agenda.

Though I describe him as “barely sixty pounds” in the post, which first appeared exactly ten years ago today, he was still recovering. He eventually chunked out at around 85 pounds, which was a little too much, despite his enthusiastic fence-running, but he was healthy and happy, and we sure did adore him.

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Darwin didn’t know how to not be enthusiastic about every single thing.

Darwin doesn’t play fair. He is some kind of canine nuclear reactor with the ability to take a finite number of cute doggie molecules and fuse them in an out of control chain reaction, creating an infinite Cuteness Output.

He’s a smallish golden retriever, but he has about a million dogs’ worth of adorable packed into his barely sixty pounds.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a direct correlation between Darwin’s Cuteness Output and the Orneriness Quotient. If I could find a way to break the link between those, he’d be the perfect dog. I imagine it’s some sort of evolutionary defense mechanism. In fact, the more I think about it, the cuteness is probably multiplying in proportion to his orneriness because it’s much more difficult to bash a really, really adorable dog in the head with a boot. Clever, Darwin, very clever.

It’s impossible to throw him off the bed when he gets all curled up just where I need to be and looks at me and flutters his tail. When he has his head on the pillow, too, I can’t even muster up a good glare.

It’s impossible to refuse to pet him when he’s draped over the back of the love seat, toy in his mouth and tail wagging.

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Try to resist this. I dare you. It cannot be done.

I can’t yell at him when he slurps up all the coffee in the cup I left on the end table, because it makes him so happy, and he seems to make a real effort not to make a huge mess. Clearly, I am the untrained one, if I’m still leaving coffee on the end table in the first place. And this is a dog that does not need caffeine.

It’s impossible to ignore him when he finally comes back in after an extended fence-barking episode, because he looks at me with that huge golden grin on his frosty, bark-breath encrusted face (Seriously! Whisker-cicles!), seeming to say, “Wow, I just had the best time, but now I’m overflowing with indescribable joy merely to be in your presence.”

There’s no way I can shove him down to the foot of the bed so I can reclaim some small scrap of my own blanket because he then rolls over on his back and I am compelled to scratch his chin and chest and hold his enormous paw for a while.

When he first began getting clear up in the bay window, my instinctive reaction was to make him get down. Dogs don’t belong in the window, right? But he looked so cute standing up there. Plus, his tail thumping on the screen greets me as I make my way from the garage to the house after work.

Then he started sacking out on the windowsill, watching the world go by, and that was even more adorable. It is now Darwin’s window. I’ve given up my claim. I’m thinking of padding the windowsill so he can be even more comfy. One additional benefit is that Brody gets up there less (though he mostly confined his window-time to only his front two paws), because when he got excited over something outside, he tended to claw the screens to shreds.

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After coming across the Obey the Purebreed website, I’m developing a new theory. Dogs use cuteness as the ultimate weapon. If they amass enough “cute,” they gain the ability to get away with anything they want, moving them further along in their diabolical plan for world domination.

I’m not sure, but I think Darwin may soon become their leader.

I just hope the chain reaction which generates all that dog-appeal is not truly nuclear. Because if it is, I am so doomed. He does have that golden glow, but so far I have no reason to believe he is radioactive.

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Let The Games (and Spoilers) Begin

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It seems the 2018 Winter Olympics are now underway. How much time will you spend watching?

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I used to be an enthusiastic Olympics-watcher. You’d think all the technology and TV networks would make it easier to watch the events, but I find it much harder.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, it was all pretty simple. The host network might air a few of the less-popular competitions in the afternoon or late at night, but if  you weren’t home during the day or willing to stay up until three a.m., you were shit out of luck because this was in the prehistoric, pre-VCR days.

All the most-anticipated events aired during prime time every evening, and the whole family watched together. This was also before the internet and social media, so you didn’t have to worry about avoiding spoilers. The evening news, if something earth-shattering had happened during the day, would always helpfully warn you to look away or turn down the volume before revealing any spoilery details. Time zones? Forget it. The Olympics happened from 7-11 p.m., regardless.

In the 1980s, when I was a young at-home mom, I watched a lot of Olympic coverage. Cable was by then a thing, and the host’s partner networks let me watch more than ever, and I sort of cared. I actually had a childhood friend, Amy Gamble, compete in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, and everyone made a point to follow the hometown girl. I also edited her book last year, and you should absolutely check it out! Bipolar Disorder, My Greatest Competitor: An Olympian’s Journey With Mental Illness is incredible.

Now, though, it’s almost like there are so many viewing options I can’t even start. No matter the time of day, there’s something being broadcast on the host network, or one of the other networks they own. News, events, recaps, specials, retrospectives…who has that kind of time?

It’s different than having a favorite sports team or race car driver. You follow them every season, year after year, and have a lot of emotional energy invested in their performance. The Olympics, however, are made up of 99% people I’ve never heard of, or athletes I literally haven’t given a single thought in the past four years. Other than national pride–which is getting harder and harder to manufacture these days–the emotional investment isn’t there.

I haven’t watched any of these sports since the previous Games. I only vaguely recall the rules or how they’re scored, other than they all seem to involve either “go fast,” “don’t fall down,” or some combination of the two. I don’t know if the guy from Transylbergerstan hates the other guy from Blombodia because he beat him out by one point or 0.00001 second in the last big ski thing.

Thanks to social media, there’s no way to avoid pesky spoilers unless you totally unplug and vigilantly monitor every flip of the channel (or simply watch nothing but Netflix) so you don’t accidentally give away the outcome of the event you planned to watch later. Which, for most of us, is not an option.

I guess I can appreciate the edge-of-control thrill of luge, skeleton, downhill skiing, or bobsledding. Ice skating can be entertaining. Overall, though, I prefer the summer Olympics. Gymnastics has been a favorite event for me since Olga Korbut in 1972, though I wonder if I’ll feel the same for the 2020 Summer Olympics, or if knowing now what so many of those girls have gone through will taint the experience. Maybe it will make their strength and determination even more impressive.

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Every little girl wanted to fly like this. I used to spend hours performing “floor routines” in the front yard, and was even briefly on the Y gymnastics team…but I quit before the first competition because team sports are so not my thing.

I sincerely admire the monumental accomplishment each athlete achieved by becoming an Olympian. That’s a dream far beyond what most of us could ever imagine. I wish them all well, and for thrilling competitions, but the tension and conflict are a bit overwhelming for me.

You’ll find me here in my usual spot in the evenings, watching The Vampire Diaries on Netflix.

What’s Cooking?

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For years, I said I couldn’t cook. This wasn’t really accurate, though, because what I meant was I didn’t cook. I always worked outside the home, and cooking simply wasn’t very high on my priority list. There was a period of a year or two when Tom worked only a mile from the house, meaning he got home well before I did, and often had dinner waiting. That was pretty awesome. But typically dinner was my responsibility, and I relied on packaged products or quick and easy recipes with minimal ingredients.

When I started working from home in 2010, I vowed I would “learn to cook.” This actually meant I’d bother to find recipes and acquire ingredients and turn them into tasty, home-cooked delights.

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This hasn’t happened yet, but it could. I remain hopeful.

I’ve never understood people who claim they can’t cook. The internet is full of recipes and video tutorials. All you have to do is take a minute to read them, follow the instructions, and–voila!–food.

But then I remember math, and consider things from a different perspective. People claim math isn’t that hard, because numbers are clearly defined and behave in certain ways, and as long as you follow the steps, it always turns out. I beg to differ. Numbers are sneaky, slippery, tricksy things, and we have a longstanding animosity dating back to third grade when I was forced to learn multiplication and fractions. But if I can have some form of (undiagnosed and possibly imaginary) mathematical dyslexia, I guess people can be culinarily dyslexic too.

While I was once known to look into my pantry and sigh, “All I see here are ingredients, but nothing I can actually eat,” I do now cook, and not too badly.

I also bake, though I’m currently forbidden to do so. Tom is watching what he eats, and when I make six dozen cookies, it’s up to him to eat five and a half dozen of them, because I’m a gastric bypass patient and can only tolerate a small amount of sugar.

I don’t do anything fancy. I see friends’ posts of gourmet meals they’ve prepared, with exotic ingredients and complicated presentations. I’m not going to be seeking out specialty markets to procure organic saffron or truffles or imported albino hummingbird eggs or whatever foodies do. But I can produce above-average meals, and in a pinch can peruse the pantry and freezer and come up with some combination of the available options we won’t mind eating.

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My dinners will never look like this. At all.

The problem is there are only two of us. While broiling two steaks and baking two potatoes isn’t difficult, most meals end up being large enough to feed a dozen starving Teamsters. If I’m making soup or chili, I learned long ago to just start out using the enormous soup kettle, because by the time I get done adding everything I want in there, I’m going to need that kind of capacity.

This means leftovers. For days. And days. At first, I felt badly about feeding Tom the same thing four days in a row, but he swears he doesn’t mind. He’s thrifty, and the comfort of knowing we’re not wasting perfectly good food makes him happy. Once I got past the feeling I was somehow failing by not cooking fresh meals every single day, I could totally get behind this concept, because it means I might only have to cook twice a week.

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Slow cooker full of Santa Fe Chicken. This usually takes care of dinner for about four days, until the risk of botulism outweighs the bother of cooking something else.

While I’ve realized I most certainly can cook, I’d still rather not. Even though I don’t have to brave the Out to go to work, I do still have a full workday with managing the editorial department, all the managerial admin stuff, and editing for my clients. When I meet my goals for the day, I’d much rather crochet and watch Netflix than trash my kitchen making dinner.

The other challenge is finding things we’ll both eat. Tom prefers lots of meat, rice or potatoes, and if vegetables are nowhere to be found, he’s 100% fine with that. I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like, or a bread, and I prefer most dishes without any meat at all. I’m happy with peas, artichokes, olives, mushrooms (all of them), eggplant, squash, broccoli, cauliflower, or avocados, all things that make Tom pinch his nose and flee to the other end of the house.

The latest “holy crap, how many days will we be eating this” situation involves ham. Tom can’t pass up a bargain, and he found a Smithfield spiral-cut ham on sale for roughly half price. It is a 12-pound ham. Twelve. Pounds. Google tells me the proper ratio when serving ham is 3/4 pound per guest. My handy-dandy calculator on my phone tells me this works out to 16 people. For the two of us, that would mean eight days’ worth of ham. I know I could freeze some of it, but I hate our freezer. It’s ridiculously small and the compartments are stupid, and it always feels too full. Plus, Mozzie is afraid of it, and every time I open the freezer drawer, he runs from the room.

Fortunately, I exist largely on sandwiches, and I’m doing my best to work my way through Hamzilla. The downside is it makes me thirsty, and my kidneys are starting to wonder what the hell is going on.

What about you? Can you cook? Do you enjoy it? Do you have favorite dishes or kitchen tricks?

And now…time for a sandwich. I still have about eight pounds of ham to eat.

The Universe Is a Jerk

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Yesterday, I shared this Classic Fermented Fur post about when I cut the quick on one of Ozark’s front toenails and it didn’t want to stop bleeding. I found a non-stick pad and some Vet-Wrap to solve the problem.

I hadn’t even thought of Vet-Wrap in years, but I found myself needing to order some today. The only explanation is that the Universe noticed yesterday’s post and has a twisted sense of humor.

The last day or so, Oliver has been licking his left front paw. Mozzie, being a golden and by definition a caring, sympathetic dog, has been helping. Which is really the opposite of helpful. They sometimes do this if Oliver has just been to the groomer and has some clipper burn on his toes, but he hasn’t been to the groomer in almost a month. (Note to self, schedule that for in a few weeks.)

I thought maybe he stepped in something interesting in the yard and it would pass as soon as all the lickable goodness was gone. But a while ago, he was on the couch with me and I noticed his left dew claw was at an odd angle.

Standard poodles normally have their dew claws removed when they’re a few days old. They also customarily (in the US) have their tails docked by 1/3 to 1/2 so the remaining tail is straight. I’m very firmly against cosmetic alterations such as tail docking and ear cropping, so I was fine with Oliver having a natural tail. Dew claws can be a problem if they’re loose or floppy because they tend to catch on things, but Oliver’s are nice and tight, so I wasn’t worried.

But I probably should’ve been because at some point recently, he must have caught it on something. Now it’s loose-ish, and sticking out enough I noticed it through his long leg-hair.

What to do? I’d really like to avoid a trip to the vet. The first thing they’d do is suggest I have the dew claw removed, likely both of them, and at his age this is a pretty big deal. For three-day-old puppies, the cartilage is still developing, so it’s a simple snip and a dab of surgical glue, though I would still rather not do this unless I had a reason, like the puppy was going to be a field dog and likely to injure it. But at over a year old, this would be amputation, involve general anesthesia, stitches, bandages, and probably the Cone of Shame.

I think the first step is to see if I can manage this. It doesn’t appear to be painful, since he’s not limping or holding his paw up, and he’s still tearing up the yard running around with Mozzie. Other than some licking, and giving me dirty looks when I try to examine it, it doesn’t seem to be bothering him a lot.

I ordered some Vet-Wrap and medical tape, but even with Amazon Prime it will take two days to arrive. So I checked the “medical supplies and owie-repairer” basket in my bathroom and found a roll of gauze and some waterproof tape. Oliver was surprisingly cooperative as I wrapped it. My theory is that holding the dew claw tight to his leg for a couple of days should give it a chance to heal and tighten back in place.

I hope he’ll leave the bandage alone. I have a large Comfy Cone, but I have a feeling this would introduce more chaos into the household dynamics than any of us would like. He’s currently in his crate with a bully stick, my theory being this will keep him from paying attention to the bandage-wrapped appendage until he gets a bit used to having it on there.

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The Poodle Is Not Amused

I guess we’ll see. If he won’t leave it alone, or if this doesn’t work and he keeps messing with it after I take off the bandage, we’ll have to visit the vet. Since by then I’ll have tried the “wrap the area and cross my fingers and hope for the best” option, the next step might end up being amputation.

He’s a poodle, and therefore brilliant, so maybe I can explain it to him. If he gives it some thought, I’m sure he’ll recognize the benefits of keeping all his original parts where they belong.

Nothing to do now but wait and see.

Sunglasses Are Easier Than Eyeliner

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I started using makeup the summer after 7th grade, when I was 13 years old. There was a girl in my neighborhood who I secretly thought was rather plain, but she could get her hair in those lovely Farrah Fawcett curls, and she wore makeup. She looked like the cover model on a teen magazine, but I looked more like this.

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In my defense, it was 1978. 

I was rescued from being shanghaied by the KISS Army by my older sister when I visited her at her house in Pennsylvania. I saw her as the epitome of class and elegance. Her house had things like valances and a master bathroom and a chair in her bedroom just for reading and drinking coffee. I had a sliding closet door in my room at home which contained a toilet and sink, and the toilet never worked in all the years I lived there. The only use I ever found for it was as a secret beer cooler when I was in high school. Come to think of it, my sister didn’t have a secret beer cooler in her master bedroom, so maybe I actually won that point.

She got me a dark gray Revlon mechanical eyeliner pencil and persuaded me that bright blue eye shadow was not an acceptable alternative. I also learned to tweeze my eyebrows, though that produced mixed results, because I spent much of the next two years looking perpetually surprised.

The late 1970s and early 1980s had high expectations for teen girls. One did not leave the house without proper makeup application and a perfectly coordinated outfit with accessories. I had a royal blue satin jacket with white piping and a matching baseball cap, for crying out loud. They matched the blue and white pom-poms on my roller skates. I weep at the memory.

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Oh, wow…I forgot! I also had the shorts. This outfit in royal blue. But I also had the hat and the pom-poms, so I out-1978-ed Chrissy Snow.

Hair was sacred. Every day, without fail, girls were required to wash, dry, curl, style, and hairspray it into submission. Having long nails was also desirable, and I focused intently on growing my nails into uniform perfection. But it never failed–every time I was almost there, one would break, and I’d have to cut them all back and start over.

I adhered to this regimen through much of my adult life. Even when my weight was out of control, I kept it up. Then, sometime in my 40s, I asked myself, “Why the hell are you wasting so much time and effort on this?”

Good question.

Up until 2010, I worked outside the home, and continued to maintain “out in public” grooming standards. Since then, however, I’ve worked at home, and can honestly stay home for weeks at a time. I prefer it that way. By current cultural standards, I imagine I’ve “let myself go.”

Let’s compare.

Back then…

  • Meticulous makeup when leaving the house, and even at home if the husband was present.
  • Hair washed and styled daily.
  • Nails as long as possible, later transitioning to acrylic nails at a salon when it became clear my nails were never going to cooperate. Forced to endure contact and small talk with manicurist, which is one of the lesser circles of hell.
  • Clothing as stylish and coordinated as possible. Comfort optional.

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See? Cute as hell, but how many hours did I agonize over the perfect hair, makeup, and accessories? I mean, seriously, I even have a stupid red flower in my hair.

Now…

  • Makeup only when having “a night out,” which occurs only when Tom manages to lure me into the Out with promises of delicious seafood and copious adult beverages. Until recently, I used to also put on makeup if I had to endure some sort of extended interaction with someone, such as the veterinarian or groomer, but now I figure as long as I remember to shave my chin-whiskers and mustache, I’m good.
  • Hair…brushed. Usually. Until the last couple of years, I had my hair professionally cut and colored (to cover the pervasive, persistent gray), complete with highlights. But for the past year and a half, I’ve stopped coloring and have been trimming my hair at home. My stylist friends recoil in horror when I mention this, but there are many tutorials on YouTube, and it’s not that hard as long as you have very low standards.
  • Ironically, now that I don’t give a rodent’s derriere about my nails, they grow long and thick and I could probably rip open a tin can with them if I had to. Since I spend most of my day keyboarding, I have to cut them back more often than I apply makeup.
  • Clothing criteria have shifted from “stylish” to “fits and sort of matches and doesn’t squish my middle.” This includes stretchy shorts and tank tops in the summer, and leggings and weather-appropriate shirts in cooler weather. I feel fancy if my underwear matches my pants. Bras are only for social occasions.

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Hair, brushed…mostly. Makeup…none. Lack of makeup disguised by convenient sunglasses. Dogs perfectly groomed and adorable. As it should be.

I’m strangely okay with this. I’m not sure if Tom approves, but if he doesn’t, he’s been smart enough not to say anything about it. This might be slightly unfair, since he is the one who has to look at me, but the dogs have to look at me more, and they don’t mind. In fact, when I get a shower, they sort of look at me like “hey, you were just starting to smell right,” but even I realize they’re not the best judges of personal hygiene.

It’s liberating not to waste so much time and money. I’m baffled by the women I see on HGTV when they’re touring potential new homes and open the gigantic walk-in closet and sigh. “Oh, it’s so small.” (It’s roughly the square footage of the home I grew up in.) “I’ll never get all my things in here. Is there, like, a shoe closet somewhere?”

In October 2016, we attended the Walker Stalker Convention in Atlanta, and I was forced to buy new liquid makeup, blush, mascara, and lipstick, because I was fairly certain my liquid makeup was technically old enough to vote. I haven’t bought any since, and should be good for the next few years. I do still love my eyeliner, and if I wear cosmetics that is one thing I never skip, but I use it so rarely I haven’t run out since Atlanta.

By contrast, the Direwolves are shining examples of fashion and grooming. They have signature style Lupine collars with matching harnesses and leashes, and color-coordinated tags. They are bathed regularly (but not too often, because they are dogs and too much bathing is bad for the skin), their nails are kept trimmed, and Oliver receives a poodle-clip at Jill’s Pet Resort every six weeks.

Most women freak out if their stylist is on vacation when they need a cut and color. Oliver’s groomer was out on medical leave when he needed his most recent appointment, and I almost had a panic attack.

It’s not that I don’t care how I look. I just think it’s not nearly as important in the scheme of things as I’d been led to believe. By not wasting buckets of money on clothes and makeup, I have more for the important things, like yarn and dog toys.

It’s all about priorities.

Classic: Worst. Dog-Mom. Ever

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This edition of Fermented Fur appeared ten years ago today, and involves Ozark, our much-loved and much-missed 110-pound Pyr/Lab mix. Behold…

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He was so sweet and gentle and patient, and I definitely tried that patience in this post. I’m glad I blogged about a lot of these things, because I only vaguely recall some of them, and even the crazy memories make me smile.

I started out with only the best of intentions. That’s how I always start out, being a basically well-meaning person. It’s not my fault if things turn out like crap half the time.

I’ve been treating Ozark’s rancid left ear for a couple of weeks, but not as consistently as I should have. As a result of my semi-inadvertent neglect, I decided last night that he should go to work with me tomorrow for a thorough deep cleaning. After that, we can formulate a new treatment strategy, and start out with a whole bunch less brown, smelly ear gunk, increasing our chances of success.

Before I could take Ozark to the clinic, it was necessary to give him a good brush-out. He’s been looking a little bedraggled the last few weeks, and if I took him looking like that, I would be forced to hang my head in shame. I borrowed a Furminator (a nifty super-duper undercoat rake) from a fellow golden owner two weeks ago, and had yet to so much as remove the blade cover. So, today was the day.

After getting through the morning household chores, I put Brody and Darwin outside so they didn’t complicate the grooming process. Sprocket got to stay, because he never complicates anything.

SprocketPicnic

Sprocket’s motto: I’ll just be over here, not bothering anybody.

Darwin immediately began running the fence and barking like crazy, but I couldn’t do anything about it just then. I made a mental note to strangle him later.

I spent the next twenty minutes or so brushing Ozark, and got enough undercoat (without even trying) to fill two paper grocery bags. I could have brushed for another hour and at least tripled the fur-removal total, but portions of my right arm were becoming numb. Time to move on to trimming the foot-fur and toenails.

As usual, I nicked the quick of one nail, this time on the left front foot. I applied some stop-bleeding liquid, and all appeared to be well. Ozark was not totally thrilled, but he’s a very tolerant dog and not prone to holding grudges. I picked up the fur and toenail remnants and ran the vacuum, exploding one bag, installing another one, and vacuuming again. This is the standard procedure.

A bit later, Ozark went outside. When he came in, I noticed him lying in the living room licking his paw. Then I noticed his extremely bloody foot. Then I noticed the numerous drippy blood spots all over the carpet.

Not one to panic, I went and got the peroxide, some paper towels, and the anti-bleeding stuff (though I was beginning to doubt its effectiveness). The problem was that his footie was now bleeding quite a bit, and I couldn’t blot the blood flowing from his nail and then get the liquid on it fast enough. Hmm. A new strategy was clearly needed.

I poured a whole gob of the liquid onto a paper towel, and it turns to a gel once it’s out of the bottle. I needed to work quickly. Next step, transfer gob of gel onto my finger, blot blood with other hand, rapidly apply goo to damaged toenail. Observe. No new blood appearing on perturbed pet’s paw. Eeeeexcellent.

Step back. Watch neurotic dog begin licking damaged digit, thus removing anti-bleeding goo. Witness creation of spectacular new bloodstain on carpet. Time to haul out the big guns now.

Somewhere under one of the kitchen cabinets I had a small brown paper lunch bag with first aid supplies I had brought home when Ozark had a sore on his foreleg that he wouldn’t leave alone. I never used it, but had a hunch it was about to come in very handy. I gathered the peroxide, Telfa pads, medical adhesive tape, anti-bleeding goo (which may or may not be totally worthless), and a roll of purple Vet-Wrap bandage.

Ozark looked at me with tremendous apprehension and attempted to flee, leaving a trail of bloody toe-prints in his wake. I intercepted and returned him to the “treatment area.” (On the floor in front of the aquarium) I repeated the whole blood-blotting-and-goo-applying process, this time following it up with the swift slapping-on of a Telfa pad over the end of his foot. I secured the pad with a systematically-placed round of Vet-Wrap, which was in turn secured with white medical adhesive tape. Wow, that looks almost professional.

Let me state, though, that while I manage a veterinary hospital, I am not now, nor have I ever been a veterinary technician. I do, however, observe a certain amount of treatment, and I watch a lot of Emergency Vets on Animal Planet. At any rate, I thought I did a right-fine bandaging job, considering.

Ozark begs to differ. As far as he’s concerned, his entire left front leg is no longer part of his body. He lies by the aquarium, giving me that mournful, incredulous, “how could you do this to me” look. Whenever he tried to stand up, he’d look at his foot as if it belonged to some other dog with zero fashion sense (I rather liked the purple, but maybe he didn’t) and lie back down. I finally enticed him up onto the couch with me, so there’s a slight chance I’ve been forgiven.

It’s entirely possible I wrapped his paw in some unnatural and potentially hazardous position. It’s also possible I wrapped it too tightly, and he has no circulation below his elbow. For these reasons, I will take it off before bed tonight, and hope it doesn’t start bleeding again. I’m not even going to think about removing the eleven thousand blood spots from the carpet until I’m sure this entire unfortunate situation is behind us.

Now I have two reasons to take him to work tomorrow, I guess. Ear and foot. Of course, if he didn’t already have a disgusting ear, I wouldn’t have been hacking away at his toenails today, and we wouldn’t have the toe problem. All my fault, of course.

At least he smells pleasantly of peach-kava grooming spray and is relatively tangle-free.

 

Rescuing the Rescued Poodle

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Oliver the Wonder Poodle has been with us almost a year. On his gotcha-versary, expect a lengthy post about everything he’s taught me about poodles in that time. But one very amusing thing happened around six weeks after he arrived and opened my eyes to the ingenuity, curiosity, and unflappable nature of the breed. He was five and a half months old and a bit over thirty pounds at the time, and too smart and intrepid for his own good.

My mornings follow a very structured routine, because I am Not A Morning Person, and varying from the expected process results in chaos and throws me off for the rest of the day. Things must not happen out of order, and nothing requiring independent thought can take place until I’ve been up at least an hour. If I ever experience an early morning house fire, I’m doomed.

Having two puppies made this a challenge, but we were doing pretty well. They wake me up every morning–really heckkin’ early–all happy and wiggly and adorable, they get breakfast, I get coffee, and everybody is set.

morning mom

I know this is dim and grainy, but I did warn you they wake me up early. This is what I see every morning when I open my eyes. Not a bad way to start the day.

One particular morning in early April, I took the dogs out then popped back inside to unload the dishwasher and let them run off some puppy mania. A few minutes later, I noticed Mozzie at the sliding door. He had on his “worried ears,” and his eyebrows clearly communicated “you’re not going to like this, but I swear I had nothing to do with it.”

I looked for Oliver, but no Oliver was to be found. I put my shoes back on and clomped down the deck steps into the yard, but still didn’t see a poodle puppy. Mozzie decided to be helpful–because he’s a golden and that’s what they do–and pointed out a hole under the lattice surrounding the deck.

Aha.

Investigation quickly revealed the wayward poodle under the enclosed deck. For reasons known only to him, Oliver had dug under the lattice, wriggled under the deck, and now couldn’t get out because the angle of the hole was wrong.

Thankfully, he wasn’t upset about it. If he’d been freaking out, I’d have had to go all mama-dog and rip off the lattice and probably die of splinter poisoning. But Oliver knew he wasn’t in immediate danger, and I had everything under control. Poodles have a lot of incredible abilities, but mind-reading isn’t one of them. This was fortunate, because if he knew what I was thinking just then, he’d have been a lot more concerned.

He sat there looking at me, confident and unperturbed. I, however, was fairly perturbed. I hadn’t had coffee yet, and I avoid physical exertion at all times, but it was evident I would have to dig the little monster out of there before my coffee-drinking could resume.

I located the garden rake, which would have to do, because while I was sure we owned a shovel, it was probably in the shed, which was padlocked. I had a key to this, of course, but figuring out which one it was would require more mental dexterity than I have before coffee.

Rake in hand, I set about deepening the hole and extending the angle back under the deck so Oliver could crawl out.

Dig, dig, dig. Scoop, scoop, scoop. Pause to catch my breath and look at the unrepentant poodle sitting there smiling at me through the lattice-holes.

Oliver occasionally attempted to help, but didn’t seem to be very effective. I was calling bullshit on the whole thing, because he got under there in the first place, and those paws looked pretty capable, but all he could do was scratch around, occasionally nibble at the dirt, and stick his naughty-but-adorable head out.

Mozzie mostly paced nervously and wandered over from time to time to assess my progress and make sure nobody was in trouble. He’d done his “come quick, Timmy fell down the well” part, which was apparently as involved as he planned to be in the whole matter.

Finally, I was sweaty and my back was cramping, I had dirt embedded in my knees and under my nails, and I probably had spiders in my hair, but Oliver managed to squirm out under the lattice. I immediately dropped a log in the hole to prevent further incidents. Mozzie was ecstatic, because his buddy was available for chasing again and I had stopped scowling and muttering.

Having puppies was not on my to-do list before I got these two. I’d been declaring emphatically for the past ten years that my puppy-wrangling days were behind me. I could not have been more wrong. Despite the house training and crazy antics, these two goobers have brightened my world and made my life a lot more interesting.

I just prefer it if they save the interesting stuff for after I’ve had coffee.

Knowing What You Don’t Know

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On this date ten years ago, I posted this on Fermented Fur. At the time, I managed a holistic veterinary clinic, to give you a little context. I do need to ask Rachel about “the toilet and the sacrificial pen,” because I have no idea what that was all about.

Sometimes I realize all over again that I’m the smartest uneducated person I know. I just know stuff, but I don’t know how I know it. You know?

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Yeah, so, anyway, I had a brain-deadening day at work. We had a planning meeting first thing in the morning. (Translation: Me and all three doctors sitting around for forty-five minutes trying to figure out creative new forms of torture to reinforce with our employees the consequences of not doing their damned jobs.) This was followed by a marketing meeting in which Dr. Vet-Friend One and I worked out a plan for our next “program launch,” including educational material, logistics, staff training, blah blah blah, resulting in a 74.9 % increase in my workload.

Eventually it became lunchish, and at 12:45 I clocked out so I could write my daily blog for you, my discerning, loyal readers! Six minutes later, my intercom interrupted my musings about the glory of the golden retriever and my fervent wish to have a tail. Seemed I was going to need to cover the front desk so my poor, overworked receptionist could get a break. We were short-staffed because one of our techs has a litter of bulldog puppies at home, and apparently you have to hand-feed them because mama bulldogs will smush them (not on purpose, probably), so she had to go home and tend to the little fuzzies.

If appointments hadn’t run late in the morning, I’d have still have had someone to listen for the phone while the receptionist went to stave off hypoglycemia. This was all fine. I did reception work all my adult life and am more than capable (and damned good at it, even though I hate it with a white-hot passion). What was not fine was that I didn’t learn of this situation until about three minutes before I had to go up there. I need time to prepare, plan, figure out when I will get to take my own break, and get stuff ready to take up there with me to work on. Or find a way out of it altogether. It was another hour before I got to take my own shortened break and hammer out my blog so I could get back to my lengthy to-do list.

Wow, this wasn’t supposed to be a work rant. In fact, I seem to recall saying in my Forbidden Topics blog that I wouldn’t discuss work. I should probably listen to myself more often. But not today.

I got home, and my lovely honey-bunny had dinner ready, and the dogs were already fed. The day was looking up (what was left of it). We settled in on our respective couches. He sits on the nice leather one, and I sit on the furry dog-friendly love seat known as the Sofur. My choice. I like to be where I can have canine company. I’m currently debating whether I need to cover the slip cover with a slip cover, because it’s getting totally gross, but it’s such a pain to get it off to wash it, and even more of a pain to get back on. Wrestling, tugging, stuffing, cramming, straps, buckles, safety pins, bleeding fingers, etc. Maybe we should just get a new love seat. Okay, worry about that later.

A story preview came on the TV, some bit that was going to be on the news later, about some people who threw their baby out the window of a burning building to save its life. The conversation that followed perfectly illustrated the gaps in my formal education.

Me: I wonder if there was someone down there to catch the baby. Or a net or something.

Tom: There had to be. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have just jumped out, too?

Me: Why would they jump out? (Picturing a pulverized parent, topped with a pair of intact arms clutching a very confused baby)

Tom: Couldn’t they just jump, then right before they hit the ground, toss the baby up in the air?

(I thought he was kidding, but now I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. Or maybe he really just wanted to test my science trivia knowledge.)

Me: What? No. It doesn’t work that way.

Tom: Why not?

Me: (Mentally flipping through notes from every science class I ever took, which apparently was at least one too few) I don’t know. It just doesn’t.

Tom: Yes, it does. It has to.

This troubles me, because it certainly seems as if it should work that way. I mean, there you are, a couple of feet from impact, but if you toss the baby in the air, wouldn’t that reverse its momentum, thereby either negating or lessening impending smushage? Acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. I remember that, but have no idea how it applies to this situation. Yet I know that it does not, in fact, work this way, though I have no evidence, no facts to cite, no ammunition with which to arm my argument.

Me: No, it doesn’t. Call The Boy. (The Boy is a science nerd, and totally knows everything about such things)

No move is made to call The Boy. We suspect he will think we are both idiots, and we will hear his eyes rolling from 25 miles away.

Me: (Thinking of an episode of Myth Busters) No, seriously, I know it doesn’t work that way. It’s like in an elevator when it’s crashing. You can’t just jump up right before it hits the bottom of the shaft. It doesn’t work. Otherwise nobody would ever die in elevator crashes.

At this point, I’m wondering if the same argument could be applied to plane crashes, because people clearly die in plane crashes all the time. I’m not sure there are all that many elevator crashes. I’m frustrated, because this is one of those things I know, but don’t know how I know it. It sure seems that if you toss the baby up right before you hit the ground, the baby wouldn’t hit the ground at terminal velocity. But I know there’s a clear scientific principle that explains why the baby would still end up a 10-pound maraca. Maybe if I hadn’t exhausted my daily allotment of brain function at work, I’d be able to figure this out.

About here is where the conversation fizzled out. I was thinking, “This is absurd. I can’t believe we’re having this discussion. Am I really this stupid? Why don’t I know this? This conversation reminds me of Rachel and Ryan and the toilet and the sacrificial pen. (Don’t ask.) Could be a good blog, though.”

I wandered over to my overworked laptop, which still hadn’t fully cooled down from giving its all today at work. I Googled “jump up before elevator crashes” and got a whole bunch of very detailed, informative hits, none of which I fully understood. There were calculations and formulas and such.

There was talk about how if the elevator is falling at 60 mph, you can’t jump up from a standing start at enough velocity to make any difference. And if you don’t time it perfectly, you will quickly regain any tiny fraction of momentum you lost by jumping.

One site said the best bet would be to get on top of another passenger, so they could cushion your fall. Preferably a person with a high body fat content. This sounded like a good plan to me, since I am quite brittle. They also pointed out that more people die falling down stairs each year (Yep. Stairs are treacherous, especially when the stair-user is tanked.) so we should all stop worrying about elevators.

By this time, I completely forgot what this had to do with babies and burning buildings. Frankly, I no longer care. I’m just annoyed that I, a semi-intelligent 43-year-old person, can’t organize simple facts about something that should be easy to explain. I’m still halfway tempted to call The Boy.

My plan is to avoid elevators which might be about to fall. I also suggest staying out of burning buildings, and if that is unavoidable, it’s probably better to throw your baby toward a dumpster or bush or waiting good Samaritan than to jump while holding the baby and try to calculate your velocity and how hard to throw the baby at which precise instant so it doesn’t end up looking like Flat Stanley. I am also in favor of avoiding stairs, given my recent troubles in that area. The earth is our mother, and we should endeavor to remain in close contact with her at all times.

However, I do have to get on a plane next week to go to Las Vegas. If it begins to crash, I will not attempt to save myself by jumping upward at the penultimate moment. Instead, I will decide that sobriety is highly overrated, and I will commandeer the drinky cart and consume as many of those teeny tiny bottles of liquor as possible before impact. If I’m going to be reduced to a fine grind or a smoldering hunk of charcoal, I’d rather be in the middle of an alcohol-induced blackout at the time.

We never did bother to watch the story about the baby and the burning building. I’m assuming it turned out fine, because the commentators didn’t use the word “tragedy” eighteen times in the preview. If it had been even remotely tragic, they’d have said it. A lot.

The real tragedy is that I can’t explain why tossing the baby in the air just before you hit the ground wouldn’t help.

But the most important thing of all is that we were not talking about it being a puppy in the burning building, because that would have freaked me out. What kind of puppy? How old? What’s his name? How high up was he? Who caught him? Was he scared? Was he hurt? Is he okay? Did he have smoke inhalation?

Of course if it had been a dog, he would have alerted his family before the fire got out of control, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.