Category Archives: Pets

Rough Day

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Ever have one of those days when you really wish Jesus would quit fooling around and just come back already? You know what I mean; we all have days that we know going in are going to be bad, but then they turn out to be so much worse than we expected. This has been one of those days for me.

It started almost immediately: the wonderful but occasionally absent-minded and mildly careless Jess forgot to set her alarm and overslept, so I had to get up, take care of the dogs, fix her coffee and stuff. I really didn’t mind that. It happens fairly regularly, so it’s a minor hiccup–I figure, at least I get to go back to bed, she has to go to work. Then, later, when I do get up, my sister-in-law Andie is up fooling around in the kitchen.

I love Andie and look forward to her visits. However, we were expecting her today, and I figured I’d have time to clean up the house before she got here. She got here yesterday instead.

Now, neither Jess nor I are what you’d call neat freaks. We’re basically feral and, since the amazing and diligent Jess went back to work I’ve been responsible for housekeeping. Needless to say, Andie’s version of clean and mine are pretty different. She likes things to be neat, organized, and genuinely clean, while I feel pretty strongly that as long as nobody sticks to anything they lean on and I know what’s in the piles of stuff, well that’s good enough.

So the first thing I say to Andie as I’m taking the dogs out is that I’m going to take care of the dishes in a little bit. By the time I come back in, she’s already doing the dishes, she’s put away the clean dishes, “put away” some of the piles, and reorganized the remaining piles. She’s standing there waiting for me to tell her where the stuff in the remaining piles belongs. I’m like “right there.” I like to think that Jess and I aren’t the only people on the planet who don’t actually have a “place for everything.” To be honest, I don’t even know what half of that stuff is, much less where to put it.

She wanted me to do something about the recyclables, and then seemed shocked when that “something” turned out to be tying the bags shut and lobbing them down the stairs to the basement (don’t worry, next time I go downstairs, I’ll kick them over to where they belong).

Anyway, I had bigger fish to fry: I’m supposed to get my first colonoscopy (and endoscopy too! Hope they use a different tube for that one, or at least do the endoscopy first.) tomorrow, and so I had to swill down half of a giant bottle of Turbo-Lax to start my day off (gotta make sure I’m squeaky clean inside!). I get to get up at 6 tomorrow morning to drink the other half–yay.

So already the day is not great. When that Turbo-Lax kicks in, it’s not fooling around. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be taking my colon to the hospital in a bucket tomorrow. It’s also kind of tough discovering that I am literally as full of shit as people have always told me (well, not any more, so there!).

Then, Molly, our golden retriever that was my mom’s dog, collapsed on the porch. She hasn’t been doing well for a while, and apparently today was the day. I called Jess and asked her to make an appointment for Molly at the vet, so she did that and then took off early to go with us. While I waited for Jess, I alternated between sitting next to Molly, petting and talking to her, and running to the bathroom.

We got her to the vet, and it was as bad as we had feared: we had to make the call that nobody ever wants to make. They gave us a little more time with her and we both sat on the floor with her petting her and telling her she was a good girl while we both bawled like babies. I told her to go kick Harry’s (another one of our former dogs, who was kind of a jerk) ass, and Jess laughed and then said Molly’d be too busy looking for mom. That really set off the waterworks. I never could look at Molly without thinking of Mom. Molly was the last thing that Mom really recognized. Mom couldn’t remember her name, but she’d cup Molly’s head in her hands, lean forward and say “You’re my dog. Yes you are, you’re my dog.” Then she’d kiss the top of Molly’s head.

Anyway, we’re bawling our eyes out, and the girl came in and gave Molly THE SHOT. She was gone in just a few seconds. She was such a good girl. One of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever known.

Then we come home, and Andie’s cooking chili. The air is thick with the smell of frying hamburger, venison, and bacon. BACON! Who the hell puts BACON in chili? And what kind of monster does it on a day when one of the world’s great bacon lovers and chili lovers is on a clear liquid diet? The sister-in-law kind of monster, that’s what kind.

So my eyes hurt from crying, my ass hurts from . . . well you can imagine, although I recommend you don’t try too hard . . . and I’ve got to take even more laxatives, while smelling all that good food. Food that I CAN’T HAVE!!!!!

I go outside to have a smoke, and there’s a good breeze blowing. I turn my back to the wind, and all of a sudden, there’s a sound . . . a weird sound . . . a sound like somebody blowing across the top of a giant, empty, coke bottle. Halfway through the cigarette, I had to rush back inside, and the sound stopped. I’m pretty sure that, after today, the doctor won’t have to worry about using the micro-camera equipment–he’ll be able to just grab a camcorder and shove his arm up there. I think there’ll be plenty of room.

Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Jesus’ll come back tonight.

Some Days It Just Doesn’t Pay to Get Out of Bed.

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Some days, you just know going in, that it’s going to be a shitty day. Take the other day for example; I woke up when the alarm went off – my least favorite way to wake up, or at least least favorite normal way to wake up (waking up to being swallowed alive by a giant anaconda for example, would be worse, but extremely abnormal). Anyway, I get up, stagger through the canine obstacle course that is our bedroom, and head to the bathroom to find the lid on the toilet down (almost always a harbinger of impending doom).

“Huh,” I thought, with my cloudy, morning-brain, “I wonder why Jess put that down?” I figured it was to keep the dogs from drinking out of the toilet.

It wasn’t.

It turned out that my wife, the lovely-but-tragically-digestively-challenged Jess was running late for work when the previous night’s meatloaf hit her. I blame myself of course, after all, it was me who made it, and me who got careless with the garlic powder (I like garlic, sometimes a little too much). It was a new container, and instead of opening the shaker side of the lid, I accidentally opened the spoon side of the lid and gave it a hearty shake. I estimate that I dumped at least a quarter to half-cup of garlic powder into the meatloaf, hence the ensuing (and ongoing) digestive tragedy.

At any rate, not to be too indelicate, our pipes were apparently not up to the challenge, and since the diligent, and extremely time-conscious Jess was (conveniently?) running late, she simply had no choice but to leave me a fabulous parting gift. It was a disappointing and unpleasant start to the day.

Well, I got that taken care of, as well as my own ablutions (oh, don’t act so grossed out, you do the same thing), and got all the dogs outside to do their thing, had my morning smoke, got all the dogs back inside, managed to survive the three-ring-circus that is feeding time at Casa del Moon, and headed for the den to do some writing. My entry to the den was blocked, however, by the dog gate (Molly the old Golden Retriever sleeps loose in the den, and Mattie the young, crazy Jack Russel/Beagle mix sleeps in a kennel in there). Normally, the gate is only shut at night, to keep Molly from wandering.

“Huh,” I thought, “I wonder why Jess latched that gate?” I figured it was just an accident, one of those things you just do without thinking, because you’re busy thinking about other things.

It wasn’t.

It turned out that Molly had experienced a tragic digestive crisis of her own overnight. Three times (apparently what the lovely and resourceful Jess was thinking about was how glad she was that she was running late for work). For more info on why Jess latched the gate, see my post, My Dog Eats Poo: A Disgusting Allegorical Tale. ‘Nuff said on that.

So, my morning was pretty much eaten up by cleaning . . . well, let’s just leave it at that.

To top it all off, I had to go to work.

I don’t like going to work. I’ve been doing it all my life, and I’ve never liked it. That’s why I want to be a writer-it’s so much more fun. Sadly-so far at least-it’s also far less lucrative, so I get the dogs all squared away, saddle up, and head to work.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like this job better than any other job I’ve ever had. I like helping people to improve their writing skills, especially when they really want to improve. Unfortunately, this particular day’s students didn’t really seem to want to improve, they just wanted me to tell them what to write so they could pass their classes. This always puts me in a bad mood.

Then a kid comes in. While one of my colleagues is reading his paper, this kid is blathering on about one of his classes which focused (in part) on the Civil War, and he didn’t feel that the other side (the side he identified with) was fairly represented. Then, he made the mistake of asking me what I thought.

I knew where he was coming from: when I was a kid, most of my heroes were Confederates (my family also has southern roots). Let’s face it-the South had all the cool guys: Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Mosby’s Rangers, etc. What did the Union have? A bunch of incompetents, an alcoholic, and a couple of deeply devoted arsonists. But then, I told him, I read some books, a whole bunch of books, in fact, and had come to the conclusion that better men never fought and/or died for worse cause, i.e. the right to own another human being as property.

He seemed to take offense to that, pointing out that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about state’s rights.

I pointed out to him that the only state’s right the South was specifically interested in, the only one that couldn’t have been settled peaceably was the right to own slaves. If you doubt me, and I’m sure some of you do, here’s a link to the Declarations of Secession of Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. As far as I can tell, the other nine states never really mentioned any specific reasons (other than hating Lincoln, and/or perceived unfair treatment) for seceding. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

He, of course, countered with that old chestnut, “But most confederates didn’t even own slaves!” True enough, but, those guys were talked into war by the guys who did own slaves.

He then asked if I thought all people who fly the Confederate Flag now are racists. I told him no, I didn’t think that, but, I asked him, what would you think of me if I was flying a Nazi flag over my house, not because I was a racist, but because I was proud of my German heritage and had ancestors that fought for Germany? He didn’t seem to have an answer for this.

All this time, I was getting more and more aggravated. I have a pretty low tolerance for stupidity, and virtually no tolerance at all for willful stupidity, and this kid was pretty much the poster child for it.

It got quiet for a while, and then he asked me what I thought about the cool kids club. I didn’t know what that was, until he said it’s spelled with all K’s. I told him I wasn’t a fan.

He didn’t say anything, so I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, I asked him what he thought about the KKK. He was really quick to point out that he wasn’t in favor of hurting anybody, and he really liked black people, in fact, he had a lot of black friends, but there were some things that he did like about the KKK. I asked him what those were, and he hemmed and hawed around for quite a while, just um-ing, and well-ing, etc.

I finally asked him if he was having trouble thinking of something good to say about them that wouldn’t make him sound like a racist, and he just laughed, and said something about racism being pretty much over in the good ol’ USA.

By this time, my head was about to explode, and of course, my mouth started moving faster than my brain. I told him that, of course, he could say that, he was safe. He asked me what I meant by that.

It’s important to understand, at this point, that we were not alone. There were several others present, all young white men, including one gay kid.

I said, “I mean you’re safe. I’m the safest person in this room. I’m white, middle-aged, at least marginally middle-class, and married. At this point, I am pretty much my only natural predator. You guys are less safe than me, because you’re younger, and more likely to get yourself into stupid, potentially life-threatening situations, a stage I’ve already survived. You guys are safer than Xxxxx.”

Xxxxx asked why they were safer than him, and I said, “Because you’re gay.”

This came as a complete surprise to Xxxxx, who pointed out that no, as a matter of fact, he was not gay.

Talk about derailing your own argument. Here I was, trying to point out that there are segments of our society that live their lives at considerably more risk than others, and that for those who are at virtually no risk to deny the evils of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, etc., that plague large portions of our society is, quite simply, deluded and disingenuous bullshit, and instead of making my point, I merely succeeded in making myself look (or at least feel) like the biggest asshole in the room.

Xxxxx wanted to know why I thought he was gay, and all I could think of was that I just thought he was. I had of course launched into that compulsively and diarrheatically vocal apology mode which usually only makes things worse, and makes you look like an even bigger asshole than if you’d just said, “I’m sorry” and shut the hell up.

I make no defense for myself. Xxxxx is a really nice kid. He’s very soft- and well-spoken, and speaks proper english, is always neatly and tidily dressed, doesn’t curse, doesn’t talk about women, and has good posture. Apparently, to my hunched, slouching, profane, vulgar, only conditionally showered, torn-T-shirt and worn-out jeans and shoes-wearing mind, that all adds up to gay. I made assumptions about him, based on purely circumstantial evidence, and, in a twisted kind of way, I supposed I proved my point, just not the way I expected to.

Hell, for all I know, that other kid, the stupid one, probably does have a lot of black friends.

All I know for sure is that I should have stayed in bed.

And, of course, that I, and most likely most of you too, have a lot farther to go on a personal level toward fixing the problems our society faces.

Just When You Think You’ve Stuck the Landing: Life Happens

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Life is weird, uncertain, and, more often than not, annoying. We all expect a certain amount of troubles, trials, and travails, but we generally expect to get through them and, we also expect a certain amount of calm after the storm ends. Not a lot, but at least enough time to catch our breath. Sometimes (usually) though, the universe and powers that be have other plans.

Take Tucker for example: Tucker is the name we’ve given to the newest addition to our apparently-endlessly-growing furry family. He’s a little beagle who turned up at our house last week; rail-thin from hunger, with claws so long they’d turned sideways, and with a pretty unbearable stench. He’d clearly been on his own for a while, and was equally clearly not good at it.

Now, both I and my wife, the lovely and compassionate Jess, both immediately realized, and verbally agreed that the last thing we needed was another dog. We’ve already got four dogs, five if you count Ralph the compound dog, and two of them were strays who were dumped. We’ve done our bit for the homeless dog population of Wayne county.

We both stated this emphatically, and with great conviction, and then I opened the gate and let him in, and Jess took him downstairs and gave him a bath and clipped his nails, and I fixed him a bowl of food. What can I say? We’re both soft touches when it comes to sad strays (I’m not complaining, that’s actually how I got Jess to take me in).

We both agreed however, that we weren’t keeping him. I got on the computer to put an ad in the paper, something that the local paper used to do for free. Guess what? Not any more! So, we called the animal shelter to see if anyone had called about a missing beagle.

Finally, we found a guy willing to take Tucker, and after a couple days with us, Tucker went to his new home. At the new home, he wasn’t allowed in the house, and was on a chain, which, apparently, he didn’t care for. This last Saturday, Tucker returned to us, just as smelly as before, but with a serious case of the runs added on.

Since the guy who had taken him never came looking for him, we figured he probably wasn’t all that attached to Tucker anyway, so we’ve sort of adopted Tucker (theoretically temporarily) while we look for a better permanent home for him.

Tucker was thrilled. He’s a timid little guy, and spent most of the first couple of days he was with us crying and panicking anytime Jess or I got up and moved around. Fortunately, Jess and I lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle, so he settled in pretty well. He learned the hard way to stay away from Elsie when she’s eating (his nose is healing nicely, by the way), and was actually starting to want to play with Mattie and Dude (who are kind of over-enthusiastic and scared the crap out of Tucker initially).

Yep, Tucker really thought he’d landed on his feet. The storm had passed, and he was safe. He’d found people to take care of him, other kids to play with, plenty of food, and a comfortable, warm home. Life was looking up. It was going to be nothing but kibble and fun forever!

Until yesterday. Yesterday, Tucker got no breakfast, new dad took him for a ride in the truck and left him with new friends. He wasn’t really thrilled about all this, and his trepidation proved to be justified when his new friends stuck him with a needle and he dozed off to wake up with no balls!

Talk about the universe yanking the rug out from under you. Actually it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had only been a rug. Then, to add insult to injury, new dad brought him home, and put this stupid cone on him so he couldn’t even kiss his own boo-boo (although frankly, “boo-boo” doesn’t really suit that sort of soul-crushing injury, does it? It’s not a skinned knee, or even a nipped nose).

Tucker is clearly less than thrilled with life’s current vicissitudes.

He spent most of yesterday afternoon just standing in one place for a while, looking sad. Then, he’d walk around a little bit, until the cone hit something, and he’d just stand there for a while. He spent about 30 minutes with his cone pressed up against my leg.

He seemed to think that the cone was a punishment for something. Think about that. He’s already had his balls cut off – through no fault of his own – and now he has to wear this embarrassing thing. He is one bummed little guy. The final blow came last night. He fell asleep standing up and fell over, which apparently brought an instant, and painful reminder of just how bad his day had been.

Does this cone make me look stupid? This was Tucker’s main activity yesterday.

He seems to be doing a little better today. His tail is wagging a little bit, but he’s clearly still not digging the cone.

Which brings me back to us (you and me, that is). We’ve all had similar experiences, when things are terrible, everything is going wrong, and there’s just no way things can get any worse. Then, just when we think we see a light at the end of the tunnel, it turns out to be an oncoming train. It’s sometimes even worse, when we think we’ve made it, and turn around to assess the past, to try to glean some meaning from our suffering, so we never even see the train coming.

I got some bad news from a friend of mine today, and I didn’t know what to tell him, other than I was sorry to hear it, and some lame comment about how I’ve found life to be largely just an ongoing source of failures, embarrassments, and humiliations, punctuated sporadically by minor personal triumphs, whiskey, and sex (which actually counts as a personal triumph in my book), and that sometimes the best you can do is to learn to embrace the awkward stupidity that is life (this may be why very few people ever ask me for advice, counsel, or comfort).

I know that usually, in my experience anyway, that feeling that I’ve stuck the landing on something is almost immediately followed by a usually very public faceplant. It just seems inevitable. However, I take comfort in the fact that, just like (no matter how much he fails to understand it, for very understandable reasons)Tucker has the extremely humane and compassionate Jess (and also me) looking out for him, I myself have, not only Jess, but an even more infinitely compassionate owner (not to get all spiritually/religiousy on you, but it’s what I believe)looking out for me.

No matter who you are, life is going to throw a lot of crap at you. Some of it happens for a reason, and some of it’s just bad luck. The trick, I think, is to learn to laugh at it (as much as possible), to be grateful for the good things, and to remember that, no matter how bad it gets, at least you’ve still got your balls (hey, listen, if you haven’t learned by now that you shouldn’t look to me for life-advice or general wisdom/philosophy of any kind, then it’s high time you did).

Adventures of a House-Husband: Christmas Edition

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Home Life, Kids & Grandkids, Pets, Religion, Uncategorized, Wives

Merry Christmas everybody! Right now, I’m sitting here feeling sorry for anybody who isn’t me. Last night, in an effort to minimize the cooking over the next couple of days, I whipped up another huge batch of Slopbucket; arguably the greatest and deadliest meal known to man (the recipe is in another post entitled “Adventures of a House-Husband: Home Cooking Edition”). It was, in a word, AWESOME!!!!! That knocking you heard last night? That was the sound of my arteries (and possibly my colon as well: there’s a LOT of Velveeta in this stuff), slamming shut and reverberating around the world. That weird and ominous thundery yet kinda gurgly noise you heard this morning?  It was probably just weird and ominous gurgly thunder (but there are a LOT of peppers and chili seasoning in this stuff too).

Even more awesome is the fact that there’s enough left over for supper tonight, and it just gets better with age, like wine, whisky, and my wife, the lovely and gustatorily adventurous Jess (although she’s still just 27, as far as I’m concerned). I haven’t looked forward to supper this much since . . . well, last night, I guess. Still, I’m really looking forward to it. A lot. You might want to sleep with your earplugs in though. But enough about that.

I decided to try something different this year; cooking dessert stuff. Every year, my wife, the ever-more-awesome and eternally lovely Jess, makes Christmas candy, primarily Buckeyes, Peanut Clusters, and what she calls Moose Balls (don’t knock ’em ’til you try ’em). They’re basically Buckeyes, only instead of peanut butter, it’s cream cheese and crushed Oreo cookies rolled into balls and dipped in chocolate. They’re awesome, and I love ’em, but I got to thinking that she might enjoy something new. Plus people keep posting videos of how to make all this stuff on the Facebook, and it looks so simple. Seriously, watch the videos: it’s almost like the stuff makes itself.

Chocolate Lasagna

I mean it combines two of my favorite meals; Chocolate and Lasagna. What could go wrong?

And then there was this: Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. The sweet-toothed and just plain sweet Jess loves her some Cinnamon Rolls. I figured she’d enjoy this for breakfast Christmas morning (Sorry, I can’t figure out how to link the video, but here’s one to the recipe).

The Chocolate Lasagna looked to be the most complex, so this morning, I started with that. It went pretty well, although the first step was to mix some stuff up and set it aside. I did that, but then it was really kind of unclear as to what to do with it. I also learned that using a mixer is a skill. A skill I do not possess, apparently. Those little whirligigs can really fling the heavy whipping cream. You’d think that something like that would come with some kind of cover, or they’d make mixing bowls with deeper sides, or something.

Fortunately, I had Dude, Mattie, and Molly, a highly efficient and enthusiastic cleanup crew. They had my back. And my chest and legs, as well as the walls, countertops, etc (yeah, it got a little freaky in the ol’ kitchen this morning). Anyway, I got everything mixed up and ready. I put down the first layer of Graham crackers, and started smearing the cream cheese mixture over it. Now in the video, it smeared right along, with no problem at all. Not in my kitchen though. In my kitchen, it was like trying to get rid of snot. That stuff stuck to everything, and wouldn’t spread out at all. I ended up with the Graham crackers piling up and shattering into pieces which I then had to try to put back into something resembling a layer, like a frustrating (but delicious) jigsaw puzzle.

Finally, I referred to the recipe. Yep, I was doing just what it said. Oh wait . . . remember that bowl of stuff I’d mixed up and then set aside? Yeah, neither did I. There was a sentence in the middle of a paragraph that said to “fold” it into the cream cheese mixture. Now, I don’t have any idea how to fold a liquid, so I “dumped” it in, mixed it up, and everything went fine after that. It really makes me wonder about who wrote that recipe though. I mean, you just don’t stick something like that in the middle of a paragraph. There should have been a separate step in there. Were they pressed for space? Were they limited to a certain number of steps? Or, were they just expecting the people who used that recipe to know what they were doing? If that was the case, then they were wrong. Very, very wrong.

At any rate, I got that done and put in the fridge, and tackled the Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. Now that one really looked easy. Twenty minutes later, I was still trying to get that first can of cinnamon rolls open. Poppin’ fresh, my ass. They might be fresh, but there was very little poppin’ going on. I’ll admit, I was a little worried. The instructions warned me to make sure I pointed the ends of the can away from myself to prevent injury. Apparently those things are under a lot of pressure. I could not get that thing open to save my life. I even read the instructions. They said, “Push spoon against seam. Unroll tube.” I tried a spoon. No luck. I tried a butter knife. Still no luck. Finally, I resorted to a steak knife. That did the trick. Apparently (happily) the Pillsbury people are laboring under an extreme misunderstanding about how much pressure that cardboard tube contains. There was no pop, not even when I stabbed it with the steak knife. A little oozing maybe, but certainly not the explosive blast I was led to expect. I’ve got to say, I felt a little silly (and kind of disappointed, too).

Anyway, I got it done, and both dishes turned out great. Well, at least they look great. We have yet to try them. Still, I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it.

Of course, Christmas isn’t just about food. It’s also about presents.

Now I don’t know about you, but in my family, traditionally, it’s the grandparents who give the worst gifts. Don’t get me wrong, when I was a kid, I always looked forward to going to my grandparent’s houses for Christmas, but it was because I looked forward to seeing them and all my cousins (plus, my Dad’s folks lived in Florida, and Pa had a huge collection of Louis L’amour and Max Brand westerns). It was not for the gifts, which were normally underwear and socks, or their equivalent.

Note: If you are one of my grandkids, you should stop reading now, unless you’re just into preemptive disappointment. Seriously. Plus, what are you doing reading this blog? I’m pretty sure there’s some at least mildly inappropriate stuff on here. There’s certainly supposed to be. Go read something good for you!!!!!

Now my wife, the cool and generous Jess, and I have always tried to get the grandkids something pretty cool for Christmas, but this year, I decided it was time to go traditional. I do, of course, remember the expected disappointment of opening deceptively festively wrapped packages of underwear and socks, so I decided to go a different route. We got them books. Now, when I was a kid, I would have been thrilled to get books (yes, I was a weird kid), but I’m not sure my grandkids will be equally excited. Still, they’re good books, and they’re smart kids, so who knows?

I got the oldest boy Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s a great book, and full of stuff that he’s almost certainly not going to learn about in school. Plus, he’s gone with me to the Rez a few times now, and I feel like to understand the present situation out there, you have to have some understanding of the history.

I got the oldest girl My Name is Malala, the story of an Afghan girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head for insisting on going to school, survived that to face her attackers, and won the Nobel Peace Prize by the age of 16. I figure in a world full of Kardashians, Britney Spears’es (she’s still a thing, right?), Miley Ray Cyrus’es and various other assorted females who seem to be mostly famous to for their ability to vibrate their posteriors faster than the speed of sound, as well as the scarcity of their clothes, she could do worse than learn about a girl only slightly older than herself who stands for something good, does it fearlessly (or maybe in spite of fear), and is trying to make the world a better place. I also figure that if nothing else, it would be good for her to learn that not all Muslims are psychopathically religious headcases who want to kill her.

Jess got the younger boy The Indian in the Cupboard. Hopefully, it will induce a love of reading like Jess and I have. I don’t think it’s particularly heavy or inspirational, but we both started out reading fantastic adventures, and we figure it’s a good way to get him started.

At the very least, it should be less disappointing than socks and underwear.

Of course, gifts aren’t even what Christmas is really about, they’re just symbolic.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

If you really want to know what Christmas is all about, you’re looking in the wrong place. This is a silly place (mostly), for silly ramblings. The real meaning of Christmas is beautiful, and deadly serious. Look around you. All those people of different races, creeds, colors, lifestyles, etc.? They’re what Christmas is all about. They’re why He came. Well, them, and you, and me (that’s what I believe. You, of course, are welcome to believe what you believe as well). If you need more information than that, go to church tonight.

At any rate, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa to all.

 

 

Further Adventures of a House-Husband: Cooking and Laundry Edition

All About Me, Home Life, Pets, Wives

I’ve gotta say; this house-husband thing isn’t working out the way I had thought it would. I came into this expecting hours and hours of Oprah Winfrey and bonbons. Since I’m not really much of an Oprah fan, I thought I could substitute John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies (I figured that whole Oprah thing was probably more of a guideline than a rule).

Well, I’m two weeks into this, and not only have I not had time to watch a single moment of Duke-based entertainment, I still don’t even know what a freaking bonbon is, or where to get ’em. Obviously, I’m doing something terribly wrong. I mean besides the things that I know I’m doing wrong.

Take today for example. It started out pretty good. I drove my truck into town and filled up all the gas cans for the lawn mower. Came home and filled up the mower. I even checked the oil and hydraulic fluid. I was feeling pretty darn manly, I don’t mind telling you (Did I mention that our mower is a Dixie Chopper? Advertised as the World’s Fastest Mower. How manly is that?). You could almost hear the testosterone coursing through my veins, like a bullet-train through a tunnel in Manly Mountain. For two or three glorious hours, I mowed the crap outa this place (in many places, literally. We have a lot of dogs). But like all good things, it came to an end, and I had to return to the house to fulfill my domestic responsibilities.

Now, at the risk of being called a girly-man, I’ll admit I don’t really mind doing some of the household chores. When you think about it, even the word household is really kind of manly. Household. To hold the house. It conjures up visions of defending your castle, even if your castle is a split-level 3 bedroom with 2 1/2 baths and an attached garage, and you’re only holding it against dirty dishes and dust bunnies (hey, allergies kill, ya know?). You just have to use a feudal mind-set.

Anyway, I like to crank up some Stones, or Rush, or Lucero, and rock out while I do the dishes or whatever. But today was laundry. I freaking hate laundry. But, my wife, the hard-working and diligent Jess, is out there bringing home the bacon, so fair’s fair, right? WRONG! I was taught to work by my Dad, who taught me that if you do things right, then you make things easier later, a philosophy that I have been unable to impress on the partially hyper-efficient light-of-my-life, Jess.

One of the things that I previously admired and valued in her was her ability to get naked faster than any other human being in history. Even in winter, when she, as a firm believer in dressing in layers who hates to be cold, can divest herself of approximately 12 layers of clothes in about 3 seconds. Time to go to bed? FFFTHOOP! She’s naked, in less time than it takes to type the sound effect. As I said before, I always thought of it as one of her most endearing qualities. Until I had to start doing the laundry. Now I’m faced with trying to separate all these layers into individual pieces of clothing so I can get ’em in with the correct load (and before you accuse me of being overly fussy and not nearly manly enough about the laundry, let me just say that, inconvenient as it is, I feel like I need to do my best for her. After all, she’s always done her best for me.). The point is, her method of undressing significantly increases the time and effort required to do the laundry correctly.

Of course, once the laundry is done, it’s time to fold the laundry. Now, when I was single, I never bothered folding laundry. I figured, screw it, it’s clean, that’s the important thing. Worrying about wrinkles just seemed silly and vain when there are so many really important issues in the world. However, once we were married, the lovely and sometimes terrifyingly persuasive Jess pointed out to me the error of my thinking. Honestly, I was okay with it (as I said before, it’s always best to defer to her anyway), but that was when she was doing the laundry. Now, I’m doing the folding, and I gotta say, I’m not crazy about it. Once again, her method of undressing comes into play. Not only does she get undressed incredibly quickly, she also manages to turn nearly every piece of clothing inside out, although, as an added challenge to me, she does like to leave a shirt or two right side out, and the occasional pair of pants 1/2 inside out. This usually causes multiple efforts on my part, because I just naturally turn all of her stuff inside out as it comes out of the dryer, in order to get it right side out. It is far more confusing and stressful than folding laundry should be.

Then, there’s the sheer quantity of laundry, almost all of it hers. I, myself, take the philosophy that if I didn’t do something today to get my clothes dirty, then there’s really no need to change them. Her viewpoint is different. It’s amazing the amount of clothes, even underwear, she goes through in a week. I mean, it’s like she changes them every day or something! She is an amazing woman.

Anyway, I finally get the laundry done. She gets home, and decides to go take a nap while I fix supper. Meatloaf, one of our favorite meals:

2 pounds of hamburger

2 big onions

2 eggs

1.5 tubes of Ritz crackers

Italian seasoning (how ever much seems appropriate)

1 fistfull of ketchup.

Mix it up, mold it into a loaf, stick it in the over for 1.5 hours at 350 or 400 degrees, or just remove before it starts smoking.

Since the dogs went with her to take a nap, I know there’s very little chance of her actually getting to sleep. It’s much more likely that they’ll use her as a trampoline until she takes them outside to play ball, so I figure I’ll do something, give her a little extra thrill. She has said that nothing turns her on like the sight of a man doing housework. I figure, if that turns her on, then just think how excited she’ll be if she comes out of the bedroom to find me cooking dinner . . . wait for it . . . naked! I mean, she works hard, she deserves an extra treat now and then. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t mind coming home and finding her cooking naked. Or vacuuming naked, or watching t.v. naked, or really just doing anything or even nothing at all, as long as she’s naked. Granted, it never happened, but she reads these blogs too, so . . . (hint, hint, please!, hint).

Okay now, before you get all freaked out, I’m not completely insensitive to the need for culinary sanitation, I mean after all, when you find a hair in your food, it’s nice to know that it (probably) came from the cook’s head (another reason to always be nice to restaurant staff), even if you were the cook. So, I nipped into the other room, and slipped into my culinary-themed banana hammock; the one with “kiss the cook” printed on it. And yes, it is in fine print. So what?(I tried the naked-with-an-apron thing once, but I just looked ridiculous).

Anyway, it all turned out to be pointless, since once the dogs figured out I was fixing food, they all came to investigate, and it was kind of disturbing trying to fix supper with a giant black lab licking my leg, and then I got cold because of the air conditioning, and besides, with the dogs harassing me, the hard-working and exhausted Jess actually went to sleep, so I just put my clothes back on. All in all, it was disappointing and disturbing on multiple levels.

The meatloaf was awesome though.

Being a conscientious and thoughtful house-husband is no easy thing.

The Dude, playing ball. Another reason cooking naked is not a great plan for me.
The Dude, playing ball. Another reason cooking naked is not a great plan for me.

P.S. Good luck getting that visual of me cooking in a thong out of your head. You know you pictured it. You’re welcome!

The Tao of Poo, or: Why I’m Not A Philosophy Major

All About Me, Home Life, Pets, Wives
The Dude at Christmas
The Dude, our youngest self-propelled poo machine on Christmas morning. It’s no wonder he’s hyper-regular, with all that fiber in his diet!

Ever have one of those days when the things you dread the most turn out to be the things that give you the greatest joy? I’m having one of those today. Don’t get me wrong, the day didn’t start out too bad, it just didn’t start out too good. My wife, the lovely and understanding Jess let me sleep in a few minutes, braving the feeding of the beasts all by herself. Anyway, I got up, and while I was getting ready for school, she asked me to go to the bank and grocery after class.

Man, I hate going to the bank. I hate going to the grocery even more than I hate going to the bank, and I hate that even more when we’re on a diet, which we currently are (more or less). But, since the industrious and selfless Jess is working 12 hour days, I told her I’d do it, and said it with a smile (fake) on my face.

Then, I take the dogs out one last time. I try to keep them out extra long, because I was going to be at school most of the day and didn’t want to come home to any accidents. Since it was 16 degrees outside, it was a little difficult forcing myself to stay outside long enough to make sure they got all their business done (if I go back inside without them, they just stand at the door like, “What the hell dad?). To kill time and give myself something to do, I decided that I’d clean up the dog poo in the yard. Since we’ve got 5 dogs, this is a never-ending task. Of course, Ralph, our chief stray, refuses to poop in the yard. In fact, he pretty much refuses to enter the yard at all. He seems to think that a fenced yard is for house dogs, not real dogs like him, and so, is beneath his dignity* (of course, he’s not above coming inside and spending the day sleeping on our bed when it’s cold or raining. He’s got a kind of selective dignity). Still, the other 4 keep us busy (and we have to keep on it because one of them really loves a good poopcicle. Disgusting but true. If you ever come to our house, you want to be real careful about which dog you let lick your face).

I get the poop scoop and rake and start to work, only to find out that it’s all frozen solid to the ground. I’d need a jackhammer to work that stuff loose, so I decide the heck with it. I get all the dogs stowed in their respective spots, and head off to school. First up, Geology. Let me just say, I hate science. I hate all things sciencey. Frankly, I find science depressing and scary. My first semester of school, I had to take Environmental Science. It seemed to pretty much be a class all about, “This is how the planet works. And this is how we’re wrecking it.” Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t some kind of left-wing, ultra-liberal panic-mongering thing, it really just seemed to be pretty much common sense. I mean really, if the chicken poo from these industrial farms is so toxic with chemicals and hormones and what-have-you that the farmers can’t use it for fertilizer, then it seems like a bad idea to put it in storage facilities along the major waterways (and, if it’s not so toxic, then why don’t they use it for fertilizer? Who in their right mind would want to keep it?)

Anyway, if Environmental Science was all about how we’re killing the planet, Geology seems to be the flip side of the coin, i.e. it’s all about the many, many ways in which the planet is trying to kill us. I suppose it’s all a matter of how you look at it really. If you take the short view, then we’re definitely winning. If you take the long view however, the planet is going to win. The depressing part is that win, lose, or draw, we all end up dead. So I find science kind of a bummer. However, I like the instructor. I’d guess he’s in his mid 70’s, and very funny. His mannerisms and way of talking kind of remind me of David Letterman, so he’s pretty entertaining. I guess it could be worse.

In the afternoon, I have Victorian Literature (and I can just hear you all groaning with jealousy). I like the subject well enough, but today I seemed to get myself branded the classes’ token sexist, just because I suggested that a book (Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell) might have been written the way it was, because it was written by a woman. You see, I think the professor is scared to death of what I’m going to say, so every time I start to say anything, she tends to cut me off. So she cut me off before I could present my very cogent, insightful, and not-derogatory-in-any-way explanation for my thoughts. Thus, all I got to say was, “It was written that way because it was written by a woman.” Naturally, the class being Victorian Literature, it is about 75% female (’cause the chicks dig that stuff. hahaha). You can imagine how my truncated remark went over. I was lucky to escape with my life.

It was after school that my day finally took an upturn. I didn’t have to wait in line at the bank, which was nice and, in my experience, unprecedented. When I got to the grocery, I walked inside, got a cart, and promptly forgot what the heck I was supposed to get. I could remember several other things that we could use, such as yoghurt for the dogs (cuts down on gas. Seriously), but not what we needed. However, as I was headed back to the dairy aisle, I walked past the cleaners and remembered what I was supposed to get. Fabric softener! Then, there was no line at the checkout, another pleasant surprise.

When I got home, things continued to improve. I managed to get inside the house without losing any of the dogs (there’s no fence at the back of the house, and our dogs are all far too stupid to be allowed to roam loose. If left free outdoors, they would have the life expectancy of a mayfly – except for Ralph of course. His disdain for the other dogs is not unwarranted). I got up the stairs without tripping over any of them, got the 3 basement dogs past Elsie (the Ripper), a 13-year-old English Springer Spaniel, who crouches at the top of the stairs like a leopard waiting to pounce on the first one through the door (she has a passionate and psychotic hatred of all things 4-legged, and affects a mere hostile indifference to all other living beings except Jess. Jess is her God.).

I got them outside, and decided to give the poo-picking-up another try. It had turned out to be a perfect day for the task. Cold enough to keep it intact and rollable, but warm enough that it wasn’t stuck to the ground like cement. The dogs were all being good, and the 2 youngest, Dude, a 7-month old Black Lab, and Mattie, a 1-year-old Beagle were running, wrestling, and wearing themselves out, which boded well for a peaceful evening.

So all-in-all, it’s been a pretty good day, and the high spots were all the things that I had spent the day, if not dreading, at least not looking forward to at all. Plus, I came up with this post which, regardless of how much or how little you enjoyed reading, I have thoroughly enjoyed writing. Writing it has also given me something to do that was so much more fun than studying for tomorrow’s Spanish test, which is really what I should be doing.

Anyway, to finish this off, let me leave you with this thought. Every day and every life has its ups and downs. It’s how you deal with the poo, even when it’s not yours (or maybe especially when it’s not yours but you still have to deal with it) that makes or breaks your day. Call it the Tao of Poo.**

Have a lovely day. Or evening. Or whatever.

 

*Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t know where he poops. He’s lived here on the compound for 8 or 9 years, and I’ve never seen him go, or seen any evidence that he does. All I can figure is either he goes way back to the woods to do his business, or he’s got a freakishly highly-evolved and efficient digestive system. Probably the former, but even that’s kind of weird, ya know?

**This is why I’m not a Philosophy major.

Winter Is Back: A Frozen Comedy of Errors and Counting My Blessings

All About Me, Home Life, Pets, Uncategorized

Winter is back. I’m not happy about it. I used to love winter. Snow days, demolition derby sledding, snowball fights, snow angels, and no work, it was awesome. I remember playing outside until we were virtually frozen solid, then coming inside and mom using the broom to knock off the snow that was caked on David and me. Those were the days.

And then winter changed on me. It got cold for one thing. Really cold. Bitter, cuts through you like a knife, chills you to the bone, just want to hunker down under a pile of blankets and hibernate kind of cold. I don’t know about “Global Warming”, but climate change is real folks. How else can you explain the difference from the winters of my youth which were a veritable winter wonderland, to the frozen hellscape that Indiana turns into every year now? The difference has to be in the climate, because it’s certainly not in me. If anything, the changes that have taken place in me should have made me even more resistant to the cold. For one thing, I’m much, much better insulated than I was as a kid and yet the cold hits me instantly now, whereas when I was a scrawny little kid, I barely even noticed it.

There is no doubt in my mind. Winter sucks. Take last Monday for example. Sunday night, I stayed up too late reading, so Monday morning, my wife, the generous, kind, and loving Jess, let me sleep in. She had to take her new puppy “Dude” to the vet for some kind of vaccination, and the garage door opening and closing woke me up. I thought (briefly) about getting up, and then dozed off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was our preacher checking up on something I’d told him I would do. I told him I hadn’t gotten it done yet, hung up, thought again about getting up, and dozed back off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was our preacher, with another question. I answered it, hung up, thought about getting up, and started to doze off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was not our preacher, it was Jess. She was at the vet’s office, and her jeep wouldn’t start.

I told her I’d be there as soon as I could, got up, dressed, and went down to start the truck up so it could warm up while I finished my ablutions. I climbed in, turned the key to warm up the glow plugs (it’s a diesel), and then tried to start the truck. Unfortunately, instead of the roar of the diesel springing to life, I got the RRRrrrRRRrrr RRRrrrRRRrrr of the infamous dead battery. The batteries had been getting weak, and I’d forgotten to plug in the block heater. I was not happy.

No need to panic, I thought, Jess is someplace she can get out of the cold. I called my son-in-law and asked him to come jump-start the truck. He came back with his Blazer, and we hooked it up. We let it charge for a few minutes, and tried it. It cranked a little more, but still wouldn’t start. We continued to try for another hour or so before we gave up.

I took the Blazer to pick up Jess while he got my battery charger from his house and hooked it up to the truck. Naturally, the heater didn’t work worth a darn in the Blazer. I didn’t have time to mess with the Jeep because my daughter needed the Blazer to get to work, but I quickly checked it out, in case it just needed a jump. There was something seriously wrong. Nothing happened at all when I tried the key, and there was a weird electrical buzzing sound both inside the Jeep, and under the hood. This was going to take more than a quick jump-start (although I was beginning to believe that there was no such thing as a quick jump). So I got Jess and Dude picked up and brought home, checked that the battery charger was hooked up, and went inside to warm up.

After an hour or so, I went down to try the truck again. Still no good. I checked the battery charger, and the positive cable had come loose from the clamp. This did not make me happy. I took it inside, found my tools and fixed the charger, put it back on the truck and went back inside.

I gave it another hour and a half, went back down, and tried it again. This time it fired right up, so Jess and I climbed in and took off back to the vet’s. We had made sure that the Jeep wasn’t locked, but when we got there, the doors were all locked, and the unlock button wouldn’t work. The back hatch opened, so Jess climbed through and unlocked the door. I still couldn’t figure out what the problem was (although honestly, me trying to do anything mechanical is rather like watching a monkey play football. Sure it’s funny, but he’s not going to make the team), so we called the Jeep dealership, since it’s still under warranty.

Three phone calls, and an hour later, I was still no closer to success. Finally the Jeep dealership got an actual mechanic on the line. He listened to my description of the problem, and said, “Oh yeah, your battery’s dead. When the battery goes dead, it messes with the computer and all kinds of weird stuff happens. You just need to jump it.”

I was still not filled with confidence. Who would design a car so that, if the battery gets low, the whole thing just shuts down, except the locks, which just keep locking themselves, preventing you from getting to the hood release? Apparently every car manufacturer in the world these days. I got the jumper cables hooked up (after a few exciting moments having Jess try to move the truck close enough for the cables to reach without hitting the Jeep), and immediately, all the weirdness stopped. The doors stayed unlocked, the buzzing stopped, and it acted like a car with a bad battery.

Problem solved right? Wrong! I could not get it to take a charge. We sat there for almost an hour with the cables hooked up, and it still wouldn’t start. Now it was starting to get dark, so I decided to pull the battery, and go get a new one. We had to stop and fill the truck up first, of course, because it was low on fuel. I went in to the truck stop to get diesel fuel treatment and a Diet Coke, and had a weird conversation with a trucker who was filling a three-gallon mug full of soda. Only when he walked away, still talking, did I realize that he was talking to someone on his phone, using one of those Star Trek earpiece things. Ah, the wonders of technology. Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any weirder.

Anyway, now that he was out of the way, I filled a cup at the fountain machine, but when I pulled the cup away, the machine kept pouring, so my hand got covered with Diet Coke. I tried to reach underneath to pop the little lever to shut it off. That worked, but I triggered the Sprite lever, so my other hand got soaked with Sprite. By now, I was even less happy, but I was still maintaining my composure pretty well, still trying to see the humor in the situation.

At least the truck started, so off we went in search of a battery. We found an AutoZone that checked it out, and sure enough, it was shot. While we were there, I asked them to check out my truck batteries, and went out to disconnect them. Sure enough, both of them were shot too. At least I had my tools with me, so no problem, right? Wrong again, but thanks for playing! For one thing, my truck is a 4×4, 1-ton Dodge Ram, which means it is very, very tall. I am my father’s son, which means I am not. While I could reach the battery cables to disconnect them, there was no way I could reach the little blocks that hold the batteries in, much less get enough leverage to lift the batteries out. Another problem was that the ever-helpful and well-intentioned Jess had left the ratchet, socket, and extension in the Jeep, so it would be handy when we got back. OK, that’s inconvenient, but I could borrow tools, so still manageable.

Really, I think I handled myself pretty well. So far, I hadn’t gotten angry, or become too frustrated. I’d barely cursed at all. All in all, I had handled the whole situation with admirable dignity, decorum, and patience, right up until the third time I hit my head on the hood which was being held up by a piece of plastic pipe of insufficient length. The weather was well below freezing, and the hydraulic braces on the hood couldn’t hold it up, so I had stuck this pipe in to brace it. Unfortunately, that put the front edge of the hood right at forehead level, and just out of my line of sight, thanks to my baseball hat, which turned out to be great for impairing my vision, but much less effective at diminishing impact. It was at this point that my Zoloft gave up the fight, and I completely lost my mind (for reference, watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the scene where Clark loses it over the exterior lighting).

Judging by the looks on their faces, the good folks at AutoZone found the sight of a short, fat, middle-aged man doing an impromptu Zulu war dance while rhythmically chanting an unbroken stream of profanity, obscenity, and vulgarity calling down the vengeance of the Gods on all designers, makers, and purveyors of automobiles and automobile parts in their parking lot to be deeply unsettling. On the other hand, after the dust had settled they seemed much more eager to assist in any way they could, loaning me a folding-chair to stand on so I could lift the batteries out, helping Jess to fish out the wrench she dropped between the radiator and the grill, and things like that. In between instances of assistance, they would retreat to the safety (and warmth) of the store to watch the show.

Eventually, I got both batteries in the truck replaced, and we headed back to finish rescuing the Jeep. That, thankfully, proved to be much simpler, thanks to the smaller battery size, lower vehicle, and Jess’s somewhat misplaced foresight in leaving all the necessary tools in the Jeep. I got the new battery installed, and the Jeep fired right up, and we finally headed for home and warmth. We realized that neither of us had eaten all day, so I stopped and picked up some carry-out on the way home.

We finally made it home, and were ready to call it a night, but wait, there’s more! Once we were full and warm, we got to talking about the little dog that had gotten dumped at the neighbor’s house about a week ago. The neighbors were feeding it, and it was staying on their porch, but the weather was supposed to get down to like 7 below, and 4-6 inches of snow. The more we sat there in our house, all full of food and warm, the more we both found ourselves worrying about that freakin’ dog. Which was how we found ourselves tramping through the wind and the snow at 10:30 at night to steal a dog that apparently nobody wanted. Jess was able to eventually get close enough to her to get a leash on her, and we got her back to our house, and bedded down in our basement with warm blankets, fresh water, and food. Jess checked her out and announced that she was about a year and a half old, just coming out of heat, and, in all likelihood pregnant, which is probably why she was dumped in the first place.

As we drifted off to sleep that night, tired and sore, but satisfied that we had done the right thing, I felt compelled to count my blessings. Sure, I might be a lousy mechanic, and we might have added a new dog, but I’ve got a warm house, I’m reasonably healthy, I’ve got family and friends that I can rely on, and Jess is not going to leave me to freeze to death in the middle of nowhere for something that might be an inconvenience (although I’m sure the thought has probably occurred to her from time to time). All in all, I’m a lucky and blessed guy.

I’m still not happy about winter though.

 

Goodbye Harry Flashman

Home Life, Pets

img284 My wife Jess with her boy, Harry Flashman

Harry Flashman passed away peacefully today at the Greensfork Animal Hospital after a brief illness. Harry was, like his namesake, bad-natured, argumentative, and a bully. Unlike his namesake, he was also loyal, courageous, playful, and fiercely protective. He would not hesitate to take on a dog 3 times his size if he thought it was too close to, or getting too much attention from his mommy, my wife Jess. He loved her as much as she loved him. He would follow her anywhere, and put up with things from her that would cause him to rip anyone else’s throat out. His trust in her was ironclad. He would eat anything she gave him, from dog treats to lettuce. Actually he would eat anything she dropped. We had to learn early on not to drop pills or jalapenos. He was an inveterate counter-surfer. Nothing close to the edge was safe. I’ll never forget the time he came trotting out of the kitchen with a slice of my pizza in his mouth. He’d snagged it, and managed to jam the entire slice down his throat. The only thing visible was a big pizza crust smile.

A few more memories of Harry:

Him running from window to window crying and looking for his mommy every time she’d leave the house. His frantic barking and efforts to escape his ex-pen at dog shows as a puppy any time Jess wasn’t right next to him. The way he loved to snuggle on the couch with Jess, and God help any other dog that got too close (except, of course, his half-sister Elsie). His compulsive swimming in our pool back in Vegas. He’d get in there and just swim, until he was almost too tired to get out. How much he loved running in agility competitions with Jess. No one else could get him to do anything, but he’d do anything she asked him to. If anyone else tried to run him, he’d just run out of the ring to be with Jess. He was her boy, and only hers, and there has never been another dog that was loved as deeply or as well as Jess loved him. When he got sick, it broke her heart, but at the end, she loved him too much to prolong his suffering, despite her own suffering at his loss.

If dogs can go to heaven, and I can’t imagine that they can’t, he’ll be the first in line to welcome Jess when she gets there, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

So goodbye Harry, you were a good boy.