Friday, May 30, 2008

The Hairy Lunatic


The Hairy Lunatic is really Maggie, our dog. The name Maggie evokes images of a sweet, devoted family dog, which our Maggie really is. But she also really is a Hairy Lunatic. We got her from Ramona Animal Shelter after Zonga, our Kitty Boy, abandoned us for a life of freedom on the streets. But more on that later. Zonga is a whole blog post all by himself.

Maggie was an adorable medium sized dog with German Shepherd markings plus a kind of foxy-coyote-ish look and a curly tail like a Jindo, all cute and eager in the kennel at the shelter. The tag said she was about 10 months old and had been a stray. We asked to see her in the fenced yard outside - see how she acted around the kids and all. The shelter guy led her out on a leash and closed us all in together. We let her off the leash so she could play with us. She promptly ran to the fence, found a hole under it and ran back to her kennel. She liked her poopy kennel more than she liked us. We took her home anyway.

Once home I walked her into the house and she immediately took an enormous dump on the carpet. I put her in the back yard where she quickly put as much distance between us and herself as she could - parked herself near the farthest fence from the house and lay down in some bushy-grassy stuff. I went inside to clean up the dookie, and wondered if it was her way of saying she didn't like us. But before long Maggie had mostly accepted us, and nowadays she knows she owns us, and seems to view us as something of a cross between her charges and her servants.

Early on she demonstrated her gift of communication. When outside at the sliding glass door she would jump up, reach her paws as high as they would go and stand there on her hind feet looking in at us purposefully. If we ignored her she would let her claws drag slowly down the glass for that nails-on-chalkboard effect. When wanting to go outside she would do the same - stand on her hind legs with her paws up high - only now looking back over her shoulder at us to make sure we got her meaning. We thought about installing a revolving door or something, as she wanted in or out about every other minute (and we obliged her), but she has actually resolved this for herself by creating her own doggy door. She started building her door by scratching at and making minute tears in the sliding screen. The tears soon turned into small holes. She could then hook her toenails into the holes and slide it right open. The small holes grew, creating convenient large holes for easier and faster use. Now the main hole is big enough for her to gallop through at full speed, eliminating entirely the need for us to open and close the door for her. She's a very clever dog, and very considerate. We didn't really feel like putting the money out for a doggy door anyway.

Maggie has some very endearing behaviors. Here's why we love our lunatic:

~She adores socks. Doesn't chew them up, but likes to have them near her when she sleeps. If I leave socks on the laundry room floor, I will find them near her bed the next morning, usually right next to her nose. Do they smell good to her? I have no idea, but it's kinda cute.

~She eats flies, bees and wasps, or whatever flying creature is in the vicinity. She even jumps into the air to try to catch birds. At first I worried about her getting sick from eating stinging insects, but so far so good. This is mostly sport for her, I think. We do feed her other food.

~She's part cat. She loves to toy with small critters she's hunted. She has no interest in eating them. She goes out into the bushy-weedy areas and tramples and leaps around to stir up whatever critters might be hiding, just for the fun of the chase. One day I watched her play a lizard to death and then lose interest when it stopped moving. And one morning I went into the back yard and found a dead rat, which I suspect had met the same fate as the lizard. She pushed at it with her nose and walked away disinterestedly when it didn't respond.

~She prances and leaps like a pony when excited.

~She flies through the air with the greatest of ease. Seriously, this dog can leap, and it's sheer pleasure to watch her take wing while running around the back yard, or just doing a high jump over the girls when they're playing on the living room floor.

~She loves to play-wrestle, but is a sore loser. We pretend to let her win so as not to hurt her feelings. She's a sensitive lunatic.

~She's so impossibly cute when she wants something that I give her way too many rawhide bones and raw eggs and bits of meat. And many times I've nearly caved in and allowed her pleading little self onto our bed, which is against the rules.

~When she hears Dave get the harness down she is so excited she can barely contain herself. In spite of this she exerts great effort to hold herself still so he can put it on her. She's nearly trembling with excitement, but somehow manages to not turn herself inside out with joy until the harness is on.

~She likes to lick our feet, which is both gross and sweet. I think it means she's taking care of us.

~For that matter, she likes to lick everything, so maybe the foot licking means nothing in particular. She smells the chair, then licks it, smells a toy on the floor then licks it. She smells the watermelon and cantaloupe I left in grocery bags on the floor and licks them. She's also a glass licker.

~She obligingly rolls onto her back if we come near her and there's a possibility we might rub her belly.

~She gives deep groans of pleasure or tiredness or, well, I'm not really sure why. She just groans humorously from time to time, and we think it's very funny.

~In spite of her youth and high spiritedness, she has only destroyed one shoe and three or four Barbies since she came to live with us. She tries hard to be a good girl. (Seriously, my sister's dog has eaten up walls and metal pipes at their place, so I am well aware of the potential for destruction with a young, spirited dog.)

Our Hairy Lunatic is a sweet, quirky little gem. There is just nothing like the joy that a happy dog exhibits and communicates. She gives us pleasure every day.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A, Like, 2 1/2 Inch Winged Cockroach

Bugs didn't used to creep me out that much. And even now most bugs are alright with me in moderation. Naturally, like anybody else, I hate flies around my food, or wasps and bees dive bombing the jacuzzi while the kids are playing in there, or snails eating up pretty, flowering plants, or any kind of bug that has pretensions of forming ranks with its brethren and taking over my personal living space. What I mean about them being alright with me is that I don' t mind sighting the occasional roly poly or the meandering stink bug. Earwigs and silverfish annoy but don't terrorize. Spiders don't make me shriek. In fact one time I was singing in a classic rock and blues band on an outdoor stage over which hung a lovely shade tree, which apparently played host to a spider egg sack that was fit to burst, when suddenly, probably in the middle of one of my superior Janis Joplin renditions, hundreds of tiny little spiders came floating down onto and around me and the rest of the Mike James group. I'm proud to say that I just kept on singing. Now potato bugs are a different story altogether, and you can't judge me for being squeamish about them, because they're rubbery and squishy and kind of translucent, and are probably part alien, and one of them ran across my flip flop clad foot one evening when I was watering the lawn of the house I rented on Pixie Lane 13 or 14 years ago. I nearly hurled.

But you're probably wondering about the cockroach in the blog title. Several nights ago one of the girls ran in and screeched, "There's a big bug on the wall! There's a big bug on the wall!" I was skeptical about the "big" part, since my girls tend to react strongly to bugs in the house, so I took my time getting into the computer room to tend to the bug. Once I did, however, tears sprang to my eyes and my hand sprang to my mouth, either to hold in a shriek or a wail or maybe some vomit. It was a monster. Even now, with the initial shock over and time for my rational mind to process the incident, I'm fairly certain this beast was at least 2 1/2 inches long. It was winged. It must have weighted like a pound, because it didn't scuttle or skitter, it lumbered. Slowly enough for me to practically empty a spray bottle of some natural bug killer stuff onto it as it made its slow escape. And it did escape, I'm afraid, somewhere under my desk, although I'm certain it couldn't have escaped death with all that spray on it. I have that to console me.

I didn't always have such a strong reaction to cockroaches. Not that I ever felt fond of them or anything, but I tried to keep my wits about me around them, even when I lived in a Caribbean city in Colombia where there are plenty of these big, flying cockroaches. What really turned me against cockroaches was an apartment we lived in in West Covina. The day we moved in there was the beginning of a war for me. There were roaches (the smaller, reddish ones) visible 'most any time of day or night - you didn't even have to know their hiding places. The cheeky things were peeking out from under the counter by my foot, rushing out from somewhere around the sink while I was preparing a meal, clinging to the inside of the door of the cupboard as I opened it, dashing across the floor to snatch a fallen piece of lettuce. These were some bold and brassy little tormentors.

Some things I may never forget about living in that apartment: I never prepared food without disinfecting the counter and sink first; I began keeping clean silverware in ziplocks and using paper plates; I never left food unattended; while sitting at the kitchen table I didn't keep my feet on the floor, but instead propped them up on the base of the table as I ate; I should have taken out stock in those roach bait trap thingy companies. While the kitchens were the worst places in those apartments as far as critter activity, I always felt I might step on one anywhere I walked. The ultimate horror was the night I was woken up by the sensation of a cockroach at the corner of my mouth. Only it was more than a sensation; it really was a roach. I wanted to scream and throw up and cry and who knows what else. I actually met a woman at a Bible study once who, when I told her where we were living, shuddered, and told me that she'd lived in those apartments as a little girl, and that she still had nightmares about it. Those apartments obviously should have been razed decades before we ever lived there.

I never did win that war against the roaches in that apartment, although I won thousands of personal battles over our three years there. I got so angry about the incessant roaches that I went into killer mode. When I saw one, I would go after it with a napkin and smash it, throw it away, and get ready to do it again when the next one showed its face. I felt triumphant with each slaying, feeling I'd reduced the roach population significantly (I'm sure now that the friends and relatives of the dead were laughing at me from behind cupboard doors as they procreated untold millions). I used to buy a package of 500 napkins once a week, and between our normal family use and the roach slaying, the 500 napkins were all used up by shopping day.

It was a great day when we moved out of that place. We had to get rid of any upholstered furniture we'd had there to make sure we didn't take any critters with us. We even unpacked our boxes in the garage of our new place to make sure we weren't bringing them in with the boxes. Three years of terror over.

I didn't realize that I'd lost the Roach Warrior aspect of my personality until the other day when this big fat monster was on my office wall and I was reduced to a whimpering bundle of horrific apartment memories, unable to grab a napkin and smash that big bug. I guess the reign of terror lives on in my mind. I probably need some deprogramming. And to keep our house doors closed at night; our security screens are not secure enough to keep out cockroaches.

If you're ever planning to move to an apartment in West Covina, please contact me first. I'll let you know which apartment complex to steer clear of.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Ulterior Motives

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, and all that... I mentioned in my first blog that I had ulterior motives for blogging, besides just wanting to write. Here it comes...... (Am I a sell-out???): I am starting a home business, and hope to use blogging as a way of networking and advertising. So now you know, and you can choose to read or to refrain, to become a pawn in my evil schemes or to run for the hills. Or just to read some other blog by a truly altruistic soul who has less mercenary reasons for blogging.

On the bright side, I'm going to write about whatever I feel like writing about - not just about business.

Oh, and here's the other thing. This might truly turn you against me, even if the networking/advertising thing wasn't a deal breaker: my picture. I cheated a little. Not that it isn't me, or that it's me after thousands of dollars worth of surgery, or me after a little Botox enhancement; it's none of the above. But my husband did take the picture of me from slightly above, so as to minimize the double chin and bags under my eyes. I hope it doesn't smack of MySpace desperation or anything. The picture does look the way I really look.... about 25 pounds lighter and on 8 hours of sleep a night. The way I looked for a brief moment in time just before my second kid was born, when I got into shape and onto a good sleep schedule - about 3 years after my first kid came around.

So there you have it.

Oh also, if you want to know my favorite joke, which I learned in fourth grade, and which is the only joke I can actually remember, it's this:

What do Star Trek and toilet paper have in common?








............................................They both go to Uranus to wipe out the Klingons!



I told my pastor this joke a while back and he liked it. Hope you did, too.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

First.Blog.Ever.

As the title says, this is my first blog ever. Not just on blogger.com, but ever on the internet. And I'm too lazy and/or busy to keep a journal on paper, so why on earth would I be creating a blog for the world to see (you may wonder)? Yes, I have ulterior motives. More on that later. Anyhow, I really do enjoy writing, and since typing is not laborious for me as is pen-and-paper writing, I think it will be a pleasure for me to write my thoughts out.

So here's a story for today's entry - My four-year-old daughter, Sojie, and the neighbor girl (age 5, unless she's mistaken or lying, about which I have my suspicions) have struck up an over-the-fence friendship. It started when the neighbor girl got a plastic two-story playground thingy to play on in her yard and she became able to peer over our 6 foot fence and into our back yard. She began hollering at Sojie one day, and that was all it took. I love how easy it is for kids to make friends. Sojie is gregarious, so it didn't take much for her to establish a solid over-the-fence relationship. Whenever one of them hopes to connect with the other, she hollers "LITTLE GIIIIIIRL!" from her respective side of the fence, and the other little girl runs out to talk with her. Even after learning each other's names, that's still how they arrange their over-the-fence play dates. I wasn't watching things too closely - busy with laundry or whatever - so I'm not sure how the whole gift exchange thing between them developed, but one day Sojie started running in with all kinds of new (to her) toys from Little Girl: a castle for tiny dolls, a big plastic purple horse with legs that move, a hair band, and I forget what else, but like 6 things a day. I didn't want it all to be one-sided, so I picked out some of Sojie's things to send over to Little Girl: a bracelet, a little tree house for tiny dolls, special colorful pencils taken out of our prize box, and I forget what else. About the third day of this gift-fest, Sojie ran in with some items that I considered less desirable - two mismatched socks and a pair of women's underwear. Little girl had crossed an unspoken line. We don't really know the neighbors, beyond a wave and a hello. Certainly not well enough for exchange of intimate apparel, even if it hadn't been gently used. I bagged up the latest gift and had Sojie return it. Little Girl insisted that it was for me - for Sojie's mom - and tried to give it again. I decided this was going to require adult intervention, so I came out and asked her if her parents knew she was giving away so many things. She assured me that they did. Then I let her know that I have lots of underwear, and she should not be throwing over her mom's things for me. Happily, both little girls seem to be done with the gift exchange phase, and now keep their interaction limited to hollered conversation. Although I did recently find some green onions that Little Girl pulled up out of her folks' garden and threw over the fence for Maggie, our dog.