In which I unstress about the relationship between my dog and my grandmother.
Bindu is fat and listless and can’t finish an entire dog walk around the perimeter of two city blocks. Her belly’s bloated. Her nose is dry and she’s tired all the time. She’s clearly not feeling well.
The week Grandma was out of town, Bindu did much better. I fed her water and Iams and nothing else, and after three days of such cruel denial she perked right up and her overall health and energy levels were much closer to normal.
This morning I told Gramma – again – that she’s got to stop over-feeding my dog. At first she said she wasn’t feeding them that much, that they aren’t getting any people food and only a whole can of wet food each day along with all the dry kibbles and Moist ‘n’ Meaty they can possibly stuff down their gullets… I explained to her that a 30-lb. animal needs about one cup of food per day, and could she please just not feed Bindu anything but dry kibbles and water? She said she can’t feed one dog and not the other because it’s not fair. I asked her to just close the hall door and leave Bindu in the back then, because otherwise she’s going to kill my dog. At that point, she more or less said that the dog ‘lives with a grandmother and is going to be spoiled, period’, and changed the subject.
I might have to find a doggy daycare just to keep my girl from having a food-induced heart attack; I don’t know how else to get the situation handled. I love that dog, but short of quitting my job and being home all the time I can’t keep her from being over-fed. I’ve asked nicely, I’ve asked intensely, and yes she’s tried to feed them less but she’s been in the habit of spoiling her dog rotten with food for a decade, and Bindu finishes everything Chipper doesn’t eat because she’s more alpha than he is and that’s just how dogs function and it has nothing to do with hunger at all: the fact that the dog is eating does not mean she’s hungry. The only way to solve this problem is to leave less food lying around, and it’s okay, Chipper won’t starve! Chipper will eat if he gets hungry enough; he’s omega, not dead.
Yesterday I ate Mexican food for lunch at the joint across the street from the office (it was raining out and the place was convenient). I had a book with me and absently finished off everything on my plate while reading. Maybe it wasn’t a lot of food by typical standards, but I’ve been paying attention to portion sizes these past couple of months and the result of such gross overeating was that I ended up with an absolutely brutal case of food coma: My stomach hurt, my heart felt labored, I was sluggish and exhausted and just so uncomfortable that I hovered on the verge of having a panic attack. I was a total retard for two hours, and it sucked.
Digestion is the single most energy-intensive function the body performs. Most heart attacks happen after a meal. Overeating can kill you.
And that’s how my dog feels all day, every day. Food coma. And she’s got a heart murmur, and she’s packing on extra weight, and I can’t get my grandmother to just lock my fucking dog out of the kitchen while she kills her own pet with kindness.
It’s not like Bindu doesn’t love her new life at Gramma’s house; she adores the rigid schedule and the big yard and the nice lady who indulges her and the little black dog who lives there too. I don’t want to keep her away from the house or anything, and I’m abjectly grateful that I have somewhere comfortable to leave her when I’m out working and playing…
The bottom line is that the woman comes from an era when they didn’t have dog food. Dogs ate table scraps and they died a lot; there weren’t any scientifically formulated bags of dog food lying around when she was a kid. Spoiling a dog is a kindness by her lights, not a cruelty. And I get that, but I want my blue dog to have a nice, long old age too.
I’m caught between Scylla and Charybdis [def] and it suX0rZ [def], but here’s some cute pet porn of my blue girl.
In which I shamelessly dork out on y’all.
The new-boyfriend vocabulary is growing; I’m gonna need a jargon file just so I can read it occasionally and smirk. None of it means nothing to anyone else, of course, but phrases like “Fuck you, get the fuck off me” and “You gotta understand; I live in the same yellow” and “At least the puking part’s over” all crack me up.
The weekend’s been superfun. Saturday night after work we went to Kelly’s and had dinner and drinks and I met his caddy. Later we met up with Becca and got hammered down at Barn Disease, partyin’ with the twenty-year-olds and diggin’ on their drama. (I got to see Arturrrrrro; I love that creature!) I had much more vodka than anyone needs and passed out in K’s bed around two.
The next morning he made me tea and toast; eventually we went to Walmart (where there were idiot coneheads standing in every damn aisle like cattle in chutes) for general necessities (I got lens solution and laundry detergent; he bought plumbing shit for his upstairs bathroom), and then I spent the afternoon finding my bedroom floor while he went home and mowed his lawn in ninety seven-degree heat. Around five he came over and chatted up my G’ma while I showered, and then we went back to his place where he cooked me dinner. And made me drinks. And ravished me senseless for hours. Christ.
This morning, though? The wretched bitch woke me up early so he could go golfing.
I’ve just washed my whites to wear to Amma the weekend after next and have all my saris and punjabis drying on the line. My room is clean and my belly’s full (I made an egg, hashed browns and veggie sausage, and then slathered it all in vegetarian gravy – oh yes) and now I’m seriously considering a big, fat nap (if I don’t have to go to band practice, that is).
In which I go from hanging out at home every evening to only being home to sleep.
When K came to pick me up for work this morning (we work the same hours on Saturdays), Gramma made a crack about my timing and mentioned that ‘it would have been nice to have been ferried around six months ago, when it was cold out.’ (Oh, yeah, I neglected to mention in the last post that I’ve done that Dumbest Of Things and hooked up with a co-worker. Dude’s desk sits like nine feet from mine. I know, I know, but whatever. Shit happens. Onward!)
I feel like I haven’t seen her – Gramma – in a week because I’ve been out every night past her bedtime, and only see her when she’s sitting at the breakfast table in the morning and I’m waddling past on my way to the shower.
My diet’s fucked. My last four dinners: Taco Hell, Pizza Slut, 10 PM breakfast at Shari’s, and last night? We had Applebee’s. (Srsly. Crap-o-rama.) I’m totally not counting the calories from the vodka, because that’s just depressing.
Work has been brutally slow this week. I’ve had hour-long lulls between calls and my file cabinet is already perfectly organized so I have nothing to do. Today I upgraded the ‘box to the latest version of WordPress; it’s not a difficult task but it is tedious and time-consuming (the automatic update plugin won’t run for me without errors, so I have to do it manually) and if that doesn’t prove how slow work is, the following utterly random and dull list will:
- I want a car.
- I want a bicycle.
- My grandmother is still overfeeding my dog.
- I am lovin’ the dry 95-degree weather we’re having.
- I really enjoyed my bro’s Coachella post.
- He wants me to help him with a shopping cart so he can start selling cool screened stuff.
- VUBOQ has started a sideblog in which he pretends he’s str8.
- K has started blogging. Like, today.
- I spent about 10 hours at best of craigslist this week.
- I need to color my hair.
- I need to do about 3 loads of laundry.
- I ran a box fan in my room last night because it’s so warm.
Um. Yeah.
Perhaps the sleep dep’s making me stupid? (Don’t answer that!) But even if it is, I still love you, my babies! *smooch*
In which I tell you about my recent TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL hard left.
While I don’t have a 5-year plan [I’m sure my toilet training was as flawed as anyone’s, but I have managed to avoid being completely anal], I do have a half-assed 2-year plan. Half-assed because it involves nothing more epic than getting out of debt and maybe becoming a flight attendant for cheap airfare – it’s not like it’s the most coherent 2-year Plan ever, I admit – but it did pretty much involve me being totally. fucking. single.
For at least a couple more years.
Not that I was planning to be celibate or anything, but after the marriage I have just had it with the entire concept of coupledom. The idea that it could ever be even remotely attractive to get into a situation in which another human being could have any reason to feel like it might be okay to just to call me and ask what I’m doing, let alone possibly have even mild expectations of any kind whatsoever regarding my time, inclination, affection, or fealty… well, it just made me freakin’ gag.
I’d decided that the trade-off wasn’t worth it. I’d rather be alone and give up the benefits – hah! cuddling? nagging? someone to take out the garbage? – of ‘being with’ someone in order to maintain the things I require: freedom, privacy, and total fucking autonomy… because I’m more than willing to get my own needs met but I’ll kill myself trying to meet someone else’s when they don’t mesh with what I have to give. Sure, such a situation means you gotta do everything yourself and you miss out on a few nice things, but those nice things aren’t nice enough to make it worth it. I play well alone, so fuck letting anyone think they deserve any part of me I don’t wanna give for free.
Because, you see, the truth is that I? Am an idiot. The Ex never asked me to quit gigging or doing shows or going to satsang, but I did. At first because I simply chose him above all else, and later because it seemed to make him sad if I was away all the time and I felt like I’d committed to taking him into account, but the end result was that I starved and became a creature that neither of us liked to be around… Of course there’s more to it than that – don’t even get me started on the fucking laundry baskets – but the point is that regardless of how it ended up that way, I put another’s needs first and suffered hideous consequences… and decided therefore to NOT DO IT AGAIN. At least not for a long while.
Yeah. Um.
Well, shit.
It seems I’ve met the male version of me. Dude talks as fast as I do, thinks as fast as I do, does pretty much the same thing for a living that I do, cracks me up, gets my jokes, likes the movies I like, makes perfect cocktails, swears like a longshoreman, makes love like a raunchy angel, and manages to be gender-balanced in a mirror of the way I like to think that I myself am: he’s butch without being a neanderthal and nurturing without being creepily sackless. In short, heart and groin and brain seem to all be functioning in tandem. Holy shit.
The conversations we’ve been having to a one possess for me a certain otherworldly quality, because he is pretty much always in the midst of saying something I’ve never heard an actual man say before. It’s like every imaginary guy I’ve ever controlled in my head has accidentally escaped into the real world and turned into a single person while still following the script I use in my fantasy life. It’s freaky, and not just in its own right but because of the timing, too: I keep telling him he’s a bitch for being early (“I was going to be jaded for another two years”), and he tells me to fuck off because I’m late (and since he’s 3 years older I do have to give him that one).
It makes me snot up when he says shit like, “You’re hungry? I’ll go make you some food,” and he, like me, has had such stellar taste in the past he’d never even had a decent back rub until a few days ago. We’re like rescues, cowering and abjectly grateful for even the most basic kindnesses. We’re dorking out on merely being nice to each other and if I wasn’t one of us I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near us with the way we’re lettin’ our dork flags fly. And I feel… (five points to whomever nails the lyrical reference in this sentence) like someone owes me, after the shamefully basic shit I didn’t get (I have never understood why people treat their lovers worse than they do strangers), and an offer to simply do something nice for me makes my brain stall out for 12 seconds.
So, yeah. Okay. Perhaps, on reflection, it isn’t the institution of couplehood itself so much as my inability to choose well, or maybe its just an issue of simple timing, but I find myself gacked out because I DIDN’T WANT TO DO THIS YET but it’s so easy when you’re not forcing a square peg into a round hole: I have never once edited a single thing that’s come out of my mouth with this man, NOT ONCE. And considering how fast we talk we’ve already covered three months’ worth of material and I have yet to self-edit. Humor, God, sex, past damage, personal growth, responsibility, pet peeves, embarrassing truths, secret aches: not a single thing even made him blink let alone slide off into an other topic because he simply didn’t grok what the fuck I was saying.
Long story short is that I feel feakin’ fantastic, and if I felt any less so I’d probably be freakin’ the fuck out.
And the hand-shaped bruise on my hip is pretty hawt, too. Heh.
In which there’s a new device within range.
In which it’s totally off the hook and I’ve been walking around grinning like a lobotomy recipient.
I haven’t posted for five days ’cause I’ve been busy. *waggles eyebrows* Yes: busy. In the Biblical sense of the word, if you catch my drift.
There has been sleep deprivation, giggling, endless (good) conversation, strange continuities (owner’s manuals and stair-counting), driving around aimlessly, endless location jokes, belly cramps from laughing, a few bars, a couple restaurants, wine, vodka, and couches, floors, and beds. And while there won’t be more details on that front (because don’t EVEN get me started, I’ll never shut up) I will say this: OMFG teh yum.
I really need a chiropractor, though. Damn.
In which the Internet seeks to educate me.
My employer’s web site offers live chat support, so literally anyone can come along and open an IM session that pops up on my desktop.
This is the best one EVAR:
In which I am bested by a John Deere push mower.
Gramma told me to mow the lawn while she's gone. Dutifully I went into the garage yesterday, and got out the lawn mower. I started it up...
...and mowed the damn lawn for over half an hour before I accidentally grabbed the little bar under the handle and realized it was a POWERED mower!
It was like pushing a rock up a hill, swear to God. I'm even injured - I have a big nasty blister on my thumb. I couldn't figure out how my old grandmother could possibly drive the damn thing every week.
This is a TRUE STORY! You may laugh at me now.
In which I have the house to myself for a week.
My grandmother left today for a trip to Detroit with her bowling team. I get to bring in the mail, mow the lawn, feed the dogs (they’re getting dry kibbles and water and none of the other shit they’re used to), and drive her car while she’s gone.
It also means I get to go home on my lunch breaks and let the dogs out to pee. My lunch break is between 3 and 4, and I just got back.
Bindu is dry-nosed and tired all the time. She’s still bloated and tight in the belly even though Gramma claims to have been reducing her food. She and Chipper (grandma’s dog) are between the two of them drinking well over a gallon of water per day (which is a lot when you consider that the two of them together weigh less than 60 lbs.), and there have been accidents on the rug by the front door.
Though I’ve been playing phone tag with the vet for almost two weeks and haven’t spoken with him directly, I know from one of his messages that Bindu’s got a heart murmur and reduced liver function. She’s twelve years old.
She doesn’t seem uncomfortable – she still barks like hell at the mailman every day – but she can’t walk ten blocks without nearly passing out. Simply trotting up the stairs to my bedroom makes her pant – hard. When I told Gramma that she had heart and liver troubles, Gramma replied, “Sounds like old age. She’s old.”
My dog has become not merely old, but geriatric. I don’t think she’s well, but I don’t know what the problem is and I suspect it might be more than mere age. Having never been faced with an expensive pet health situation, I don’t know what I’ll do if she needs, say, surgery, or heavy meds to survive.
It was love at first sight the day I first met Bindu all those years ago. When she dies, I swear to God I’m going to need to be sedated for a week.
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4 random books from my Library!
