mine cough

i have a little friend i'd like to lose, but he will never go
he follows me and comes with me and goes with me
the sneeky little devil cannot take a hint,
for when i think i've seen the last of him
he shows up once again

i beg and plead, and nearly weep
but does he care a enough to give me some respite?
no, not he, my selfish friend
he wouldn't give a second thought
if he had thought a first

and now i can not stand it any longer
go! you silly, stupid thing
i do not want to see you hanging 'round me more
i tell you leave, you insolent grime
i need you not today nor ever any more

Bears are Picky

So, I just met up with an old high school friend, and she told me a story about how she went camping with her family. Their foodstuffs got raided by a local, hungry bear, who apparently was not completely satisfied with the macaroni salad. He bit through the lid (I saw pictures as evidence) and ate the whole salad, except for the pickles, which he left in the bottome of the bowl. Who knew scavenging beasts could be so picky, but on the other hand I have been a bread scavenger of sorts. And I may have been a little choosey in my selections.

Linguas de Gato

Doesn't that sound appetizing? I'm eating some right now, delicious. Cat Tongue Cookies. Or at least they're supposed to look like cat tongues. I'm sceptical about the actual resemblance had by these little biscuit-like human cat-anatomy-shaped treats. And on the bag are three cartoon cats, presumably tongueless ones. Their names are Tobias, Malaquias, and Jeremias. I have no idea where the trio is supposed to be from, and even less idea where the bag of cookies came from, but that doesn't keep me from enjoying them. I do know the person who sent said cookies in a care package marked "Detweiler & Crew", I mean I met her a few years ago. I suppose they are more my sister's cookies than mine since they're from her friend and all, but I seem to be more enamored with them, so perhaps the cookies would prefer to be eaten by one such as myself. I think so.

Earthquake!

i woke up early this morning thinking that the dog, sleeping at the foot of the bed, had woken up in an itch/scratch thrashing frenzy. man, how obnoxious! i told him to knock it off. quit. but then in my fog i thought, sayers isn't actually doing anything, must be an earthquake..... what!? we don't have earthquakes here. but i didn't really care or think about that, it just seemed logical. i went back to sleep. so of course i was a little surprised to find out when i got up that there actually was a quake near wells this morning, a 6.3 according to richter.

my run-in with the chinese mafia

my teacher wanted me to write a story, and i was more than happy to tell her what i did over my christmas break. i spent it with my family, and my family was in the mafia. but only being in the second grade, i wasn't sure how to spell "mafia" yet. i tried. and i wrote all about my christmas with the chinese mafia who came from out of town especially to pay us a visit. grandma bessie, uncle egg, bonnie and mary were all there. christmas was big and loud and very exciting.

and then my teacher wanted to have a special chat with me. "your family is not in the mafia," she told me. "is there another word you're looking for?" i told her no, mafia is exactly what i meant, i just didn't know how to spell it. i asked her how you're supposed to spell it. i tried to explain how my family really was in the chinese mafia, and she got this sort of worried look on her face. she thought i was making it up. she refused to believe me, i bet she even talked to my parents about it. i was insensed that she did not like my story, my very true story.

years later, i was crushed to find out that my family was not, in fact, involved in any mafia. i found out what the real mafia was. we just called them the mafia, because.

it's sort of like that time in fourth grade when i confidently raised my hand to answer the washington d.c. question. that was easy, i knew what d.c. stood for, my father always referred to good ol' dixie cup, he used to live there. i was sure i was right, but when my teacher said no, that is most certainly not what the d.c. stands for, i was stricken with disbelief. how could i be wrong? had i been lied to all these years?

well, i have since realized that not everything my father said should be taken completely seriously. a lot of what he said, actually. and as a kid, with a very smart, knowledgable, witty, punster dad, it can be hard to figure out what is real and what is a joke. because the delivery is always the same, and the jokes always get repeated so many times that nearly anyone could believe they were true. but then there were those strange things he would say, that weren't really a pun or a joke, but his own peculiarity.

it's funny how every significant day in his life happened on a thursday. "daddy, when did you become a boxer?" and his reply would be, "on a thursday." "when did you get married?" .... "when did you get your first job?" - always on a thursday.

or how about this one, "where are you going?" do you know where my father was always going? "to see a man about a duck." tell me, what is a kid supposed to do with that? in his mind, it made sense, it amused him, and he didn't need anybody else to get it, but he did always get a huge smirk on his face when he thought he was being particularly clever and saw that he had thouroughly confused some poor soul who knew it was a joke but couldn't figure it out. ah, but the giant smile and kickback of the head, followed by an attention-getting gaffah, that was reserved for those who did figure out his best lines. and as a kid, that is so embarrassing.

the guy who made me cry on valentines day

today i went to get the stitches taken out of dog. back to the vet. i felt that i would hold my own, i had already gotten the bad news, so there was nothing new to get upset about. i would be fine. don't you think? and hey, we were going to the young, good-looking vet, not the old grouchy one. how bad could it be? snip, snip, dog treat, drool, dog treat, dog treat, done. which is exactly what happened, except that mr. vet started talking about the course of the disease and how one day, probably sooner that i had thought, i may have to bring sayers back so they can euthanize him.

he made me cry, and cry, and snot all over the place, and cry a little bit more. it was terrible. but at least he gave me some kleenex. man, i'm such a cry baby. and i really hate crying in front of people, for whatever reason. i may have a stoic or two in my family. or used to anyway. the stoics have died, along with some of the non-stoics, which is probably why this is so hard. he is just a dog, and yeah, i'd be a mess regardless, but somehow it seems like a last straw. dogs aren't family, but they're loyal. and sayers is special because he's tied to a past that i have a hard time remembering. i had him when i still had my whole family. grandma was always afraid that the puppy would take her out, walker and all, as he went racing through the house, lap after lap. my mom knew this dog, she helped me raise him and put him on the truck on my sixteenth birthday when it was time for him to go. and when sayers came back four years later, he kept my dad company when the house was empty and he was so lonely.

silly as it may sound, losing this dog is going to feel like a break with the past and starting all over, and who will be there? your parents will always be there for you. your dog will always stick by you. life's a different deal without that sense of belonging to more than, well yourself. because what is the point in that? of course, i am not alone. there is my sister, my aunt and auntie, and wonderful friends. there is a god whose love for me i continue to learn, sometimes despite myself. but there is still something to be said for loss. it is not the last word, but it is significant, it must be swallowed and digested. you recover, but you can never regain what has been lost and so the void will always ache a little bit, sometimes a lot. i am finally learning this and learning to accept it, but it has been a slow, hard lesson. there is nothing worse than finishing a good book. you want more, you want the story to continue, or as paul harvey would say, "the rest of the story." and usually, the rest of the story is quite unexpected. so i guess we'll see...

Last Wednesday

It's Wednesday. I've decided to skip teaching and go to Ellen's memorial, because that is clearly more important than studying the verb "have to" and reviewing body parts vocab and how to make a doctor's appointment on the telephone. A little bit ironic huh? Ok, so we drive up to Hailey, me, Lisa, Mike, Bonnie, Bessie, dog, and cat. We're dressed up because Ellen got sick and died, because that is what people do when other people die. We arrive, we park, and I let the dog out to pee before we go in. Except that Sayers doesn't want to get out of the car. He's acting weird. I pull him out in the snow and tell him to pee, which he is really good at usually, but this time he won't even move. He won't walk, he's slow, he's not responsive.

Mike asks if he got car sick. Um, I don't think so. I start thinking that maybe he has carbon monoxide poisoning. Maybe when Bonnie spun out on the highway a few days before and crashed the fuel up side into a pole, maybe that did something to the fuel system and poor doggie got gassed on the car ride up. I put him back in the car and figured he'd recover. We went in, I hung up my coat, started to mingle with Ellen's friends, but of course all I can think about is my dog dying in the back of the truck while I'm inside trying to mourn and remember Ellen, but really only thinking about my dog instead and doing nothing for him. That would be a cruel turn of fate. So after piling my paper plate up with food I put my coat back on and went to check on the dog.

He was worse. Couldn't quite manage to lift his head or even want to. He was at the vet just the day before to get a routine vaccine, he was fine. They said he looked good. Could it be some freak delayed reaction to the vaccine? I took a peek at his gums, which instead of being a healthy pink color were about the same color as his teeth. For a second I questioned myself, they are supposed to be pink, right? Clearly giving him some fresh air turning off the car was not helping. I went back inside and got directions to a somewhat nearby vet and Mike drove with me down to the vet in Bellevue. We were, by far, the best dressed people in the place. I was even wearing my long black coat, which is taylored and which was now completetly covered in white dog fur from lifting him in and out of the truck several times.

Of course, the minute you get there, they want you to fill out paper work and expect you to remember things like your phone number. Come on people, I have no idea. I just need you to fix my dog so I can get back to my funeral. They were very nice though. They asked where I was from: Twin Falls. It was pretty clear though, the way they looked at us that they had a hard time believing that any two folks dressed the way we were could be from Twin. Look, people die . And their friends, even their friends from Twin Falls, dress up all classy for them. I told them I needed to go back to Hailey though, for a funeral. But that I am staying in Ketchum. They were so confused. Here I came from Twin Falls to Hailey, then took my dog to Bellvue, had to go back to Hailey, but was not staying there or going back to Twin Falls. I was going to be in Ketchum. OK. It seemed he was bleeding internally, so once they got a diagnosis they would refer me to a vet in Sun Valley, which is close to Ketchum.

We went back to Hailey, back to the memorial service. I found my plate of food was still there, so I ate it. And I mingled a little bit with folks, looked at Ellen's photo albums and found some embarrassing photos of myself with my equally dorky sister in them. It was strange, and sad, but sort of happy too, an Ellen celebration. But then I got a call from the vet and they explained the most likely scenario. Sayers' spleen was exploding; he had a tumor growing in it and it got big enough that the organ ruptured and the bleeding made him go into shock. That was his problem. He would probably have to have his spleen removed. "Have to." I have to go to work. You have to go to the dentist. My dog has to have his speen removed. Such application, I could use this in my class. But maybe there are too many haves, they might get confused. It is, after all, first level ESL.

Anyway, the vet made me cry because I was convinced that my dog had cancer and was going to die, and here I was, at a funeral, the only person crying. And I was crying because of my dog, not because of Ellen who did just die from the big C. I imaginged how she would respond to the news. I bet she'd be pissed. She was pissed that she got sick soon after finding the best dog she had ever had. And this was exactly the kind of thing that she would see as unfair and would get upset about. Ellen likes happy endings and cheesy movies that are unrealistically upbeat.

Ok, so to wrap this thing up, I took Sayers to the Sun Valley Vet Thursday morning and they took out his spleen and sewed him back up and he got to come home on Friday. He's healing up nicely now, though a little depressed now that i've taken his morphine patch off. But the vet did call this morning to say that he tumor was cancer. He has something like a 90% chance of dying within 12 months. So that sucks, but I can't say I didn't expect it. I had a feeling. I like my dog a lot. He's mine. He's my buddy, so we'll have to hang out and be pals and enjoy each other as much as possible. I really, really like him.

Cat Women

one day at work i was making some muffins or scones or something along those lines... and the manager walks up to me and says, "you know those two mills sisters who come in here all the time?" yeah, i tell him i know them. so he asks, "are they cat women?"

ok, do you understand the question? because i had no idea what he was talking about, i had to clarify. cat women?

"yea, cat women," like this is a normal term that people use everyday. i'm thinking about cat woman, batman... is he asking if they think they have catlike superpowers? really, i have no idea what he's talking about. so while i'm trying to compare the mills sisters to the only other cat woman reference i know and figure out whether or not they could in fact be cat woman, or cat women, he finally enlightens me with the meaning of the phrase.

apparently, a cat woman is, yes, a woman.... who will not only be a spinster, but will be an overenthusiastic cat owning spinster in her later years.... which means probably having more cats than friends.

oh, of course. cat women. no, i told him that the mills sisters are not cat women. one is actually getting married soon, and little does she know, ruining her chances of ever becoming cat woman. what i failed to tell him, however, was the really amusing part. that he was in fact asking a cat woman, who didn't even know she was a "cat woman," about cat women, without even realizing it. let me clarify a little bit here. i am not a self-professed cat woman type, but it has been hinted at before. i once had two friends give me a crazy lady action figure, a prediction of me in my gray years. batteries were not icluded, but six or seven cats were. she was old, independant, poorly dressed, and yes, crazy and surrounded by cats. but i am determined not to let this be a self-fulfilling prophesy. receiving the crazy cat lady figure has made me determined not to succumb. however great the tempation to acquire litter upon litter of cats, i vow never to start a cat collection, never to open an feline orphanage out of my home, and never even to own more than one cat, if that, if and when i am an old, crazy spinster woman. its not that being a cat woman is necessarily such a bad thing, but i would prefer to be known for something other than a multitude of cats, and i just don't think many people could ever see past a cat infestation.