My boys

I know, you guys have heard a bazillion and one things about my dogs. They are my family, after all, so they are a huge part of my life. They even share my dreams, I dream about my dogs almost every night.

But, I want to tell you about my boys. I love my girls heaps and heaps (in fact, tonight I took Ruby for a drive around the neighbourhood because she kept hoping I would...she loves sniffing the wind)...But, my boys. Both of my boys came to this house sicker and more broken down than you ever want to see another living creature suffering through. Neither of the girls has ever had to suffer through anything and they live quite like the pampered princesses they are. Oh, but my boys....

Ollie was our very first foster dog, and we were completely unprepared for how neglected an animal can be and still be alive. You could see every single one of his vertebrae and the points of his hips. He was so ill the first few nights with us that I had to feed him small tidbits of chicken (the only thing he would eat.) He was dripping pus from his penis, his paws were bloody and ripped to shreds as were his ears. Ollie has a pellet in his cheek and in his tail, and possibly more imbedded in other meatier parts of him from being shot. As sick as he was, he somehow brok out of his puppy pen on the third night and snuck up the stairs where he popped up by my side of the bed and pushed his nose under my hand to be patted. That's when I knew for sure he was "ours" for keeps. He was horribly sick with advanced heartworms and almost died during treatment (you don't know terrified until you are up all night with a dog that is struggling to breath and coughing blood). In return for a bit of care and love, Ollie spends his days quietly guarding his family and giving all the love and affection that one small boy can give.

Sam! Oy. Sam. Our one eyed-wombat dog. He too was skinny as a rail, with bones sticking out everywhere. He was so bony that his back cracked and crackled whenever he curled up. Sam only has one eye, we don't know what happened to cause him to lose his eye, but we are pretty convinced he was hit by a car at some point. All of his front teeth are broken/missing, and his back leg (on the side he's missing his eye) has a different angle/gait than his other legs. Sam also had heartworms (of course), but before we could treat them...we had to get him through a horrible infection that developed from his poorly performed neuter (at one of the local shelters). I knew he was ours for keeps when we went to visit him at the hospital after surgery to treat his infection....as sick and painful as he was he was so excited to see us that he struggled to get up and stick his big silly pink nose through the bars of his hospital crate. Through it all Sam never complained....he was alwasy unobtrusive and happy for any affection that would be sent his way. Now Sam spends his days having strategic naps and cuddling with me...he even has his own mumbling/murmuring language that he speaks when he cuddles. He absolutely loses his shit when he sees a squirrel and scream barks to make sure every one else knows he's seen one. He also likes to have a pack howl.....he likes a human to start him off, then he howls, which makes Ruby howl, which makes everyone else howl.

If you have never adopted a dog from a shelter/rescue society...then you are missing out. They all have stories of survival, and every single one of them...no matter how sick they are or how sad their history is harbour an optimism for a happily ever after with a family.

Another shark attacks swimmer

HoustonChronicle.com - Another shark attacks swimmer

Apparently there is a rogue THREE FOOT!!!! shark in the waters of galveston.

Run!

Run!

Run for your lives!

Daedalus - How not to buy happiness - The MIT Press

Daedalus - How not to buy happiness - The MIT Press

Interesting read, though it's quite along the lines of conversations I've had with friends in recent years.

Thong's flop effect - World - www.smh.com.au

Thong's flop effect - World - www.smh.com.au

Ok:

1. Why am I only NOW hearing of this?
2. D's mum will be well justified in her hate of all things thong.
3. How will Australian's survive withouth thongs? It's a classic quandry, do they continue to don their traditional footwear and risk the end of australian humanity? Or do they opt for leather (preferably german made) sensible close-toed brogans and start making like rabbits?

HoustonChronicle.com -

HoustonChronicle.com -

Now this sounds like the beginnings of a marriage made in heaven....

Speaking of Mysterious Packets

I got home for lunch today and found a lovely surprise package waiting for me containing a gorgeous murano glass necklace I'd been lusting over last week.

It has totally made an otherwise blah monday extra special.

Allison, you are the best. Thank you.

Mysterious Packet

One day, someone else will live in our house. Up in the attic they will find a mysterious packet with this label "Kitchen Drawer NIGHTMARE" and they will wonder about it's origins.

They will have no idea how that packet of assorted draw rails/runners and drawer pieces caused us a trillion hours of frustration at our house just this past saturday.

Their only clues to the history of that packet will be the packet itself and the fact that one of the kitchen drawers is, in fact, not a drawer at all, but merely a drawer face liquid nailed to the face of the cabinet.

Poor Little Rich Dog - Ernie is healthy, wealthy, and abused. By Jon?Katz

Poor Little Rich Dog - Ernie is healthy, wealthy, and abused. By Jon?Katz

Makes me, oh, so sad.

Signs that my branes are lames....

Proof of my feeble brains (not at all a comprehensive list):
1. When I see the word "misled" in print...my brain pronounces it like this:
MY-zled. Which also leads me to believe that MY-zled is a different word from mis-led. Each with their own distinct meaning in my mind. Hence, if I read the word, it has a different meaning from the spoken word. I have the same problem with bristle...my brain? BRIS-tull. My brain also reads the words I'm speaking as I talk, so I have to watch myself that I don't say the word "MY-zled" or "BRIS-tull" aloud.

2. My brain refuses to believe that 9 is not a prime number, and that it's square root is 3. It also has no love for the number 11. It loves with an inexplicable love the number 47.

3. My brain can't comprehend the difference between megawatts and megawatt-hours. I have to perform math to prove to myself that they are two different values (and usedmeasure to different things, ie. one is capacity and one is volume) EVERY SINGLE time I have to deal with them. Which is daily in my work.

4. Sometimes my brain still uses spanish syntax, even whilst I speak english. So, that means that my words come out in a different order than I meant them to come out and leaves me pretty tongue tied and feeling dumb. I sometimes, to this day, speak engrish aloud. Or my brain interprets questions in a different way than an all-english brain would. I also still sometimes blank out in remembering the english word I'm looking for in my brains, but I can't necessarily remember the spanish one either. It's the bane of an ESL speaker who never had an advanced grasp of her first language. I feel like a brain injury patient...I know what I want to say, I just don't know how to say it. That's why I prefer written to spoken word, being able to see words make it easier for me to communicate. Hence, my hatred of the phone.

5. I still have to hold up my left hand and make an 'l' with thumb and first finger to remember which is my left hand sometimes.

6. I have the attention span of a gold fish. Lots of good ideas, but a lazy intellect to follow them, or even be bothered with speaking them aloud or writing them down.

7. Reading a book is quite visceral for me. So if a book "smells" funny to me, or "tastes" funny...I can't finish it. This has nothing to do with the subject matter of the book (ie. I love cookbooks, even if the food discussed doesn't appeal to me), it is a function of the print on the pages, the way the words are spaced out, the feel of the pages, the typeface, the way words are strung together/used to communicate and other aesthetic things that I can't beging to communicate to any other human being. On generous days, I try to convince myself that my brain has some weird unique native math that it uses. On not so generous days, I get frustrated with myself for being so picky when I can't even articulate what it is that bothers me.

What are you looking at?

SUMO!

sc 03

I need a sumo.

Intolerant

Something I have little to no tolerance for:
People that speak to themselves in a public setting for the sole purpose of hoping to engage you in inane and meaningless conversation. For example, whilst filling my car today after work, the woman at the pump opposite me made a HUGE song and dance about inserting her credit card, selecting the grade of petrol etc. Talking to herself in hopes I'd notice and make eye contact so she could then include me in the conversation she was conducting with herself vis a vis pumping gas in general. I knew exactly where she was hoping to go, she was hoping she could have a nice long bitch about how expensive gasoline is...but not as expensive as it was...and blah blah blah.

My new coworker (who is a complete dickbag altogether) also enjoys having conversations with himself. Which is a good thing as he's so alienated himself with everyone that we all avoid talking to him if at all possible. I see him in my peripheral vision, hoping for that one brief slip that would mean a prolonged and painful conversation about why he's so superior/smart etc.

Unlike many people in the Houston (and associated suburbs area), I have been a regular user of public transport before, so I have developed a skillset to minimise the occurrence of being entrapped in conversation with a total stranger about completely nothing. I've even become skilled/hardened enough to manage to avoid most conversations in line at the post office. That is a feat indeed.

The key is...WHATEVER YOU DO....NEVER EVER EVER MAKE EYE CONTACT. EVER! Not even when the slightly deranged girl with unfocused eyes stands so close to you that you can feel her fetid breath on your neck. Not even when your new best friend insits you trade your satchel for his, because he's always wanted a satchel like yours. Not even when the local neighbourhood crank makes it her life mission to insist everyone that visit the post office file a complaint about service because "ever since all these new people moved into the neighbourhood" she has to stand in line for so long (um, longer than five minutes).

Two Camps

I'm of the belief that the world can be divided into two strict camps:
A> Those that eat coolwhip (on purpose).
B> Those that think that coolwhip is revolting.

I belong to camp B.

And the city now has gone

How the clock moves on, relentlessly,
with such assurance that it eats the years.
The days are small and transitory grapes,
the months grow faded, taken out of time.

It fades, it falls away, the moment, fired
by that implacable artillery -
and suddenly, on a year is left to us,
a month, a day, and death turns up in the diary.

No one could ever stop the water's flowing;
nor thought nor love has ever held it back.
It has run on through suns and other beings,
its passing rythm signifying our death.

Until, in the end, we fall in time, exhausted,
and it takes us, and that's it. The we are dead,
dragged off with no being left, no life, no darkness,
no dust, no words. That is what it comes to;
and in the city where we'll live no more,
all is left empty, our clothing and our pride.

Pablo Neruda

Happy birthday Senor Neruda.

Killer Monster Dogs!!!!!

Does this look like a pair of monster dog killers to you?

Because, I assure you they are. Woe be to the dog that dares to cross our path whilst we are out on our evening walk. Olls and Ru go absolutely spacco over it. Ollie begins to snort like a raging bull and Ruby does her jihad war dog barking and mental attempts at wild face biting.

Even when we safely pass the crazy terrorist dog that dares to cross our path, Ollie continues down the path snorting and snuffling and flailing his legs.... that is until he can find a suitable place to pee and then kick dirt around.

That should instill fear in any dog that even dares to think of walking on OUR path.

Forgive Me!

Here are just a few sins I've committed in the last few days:

1. Whilst on the phone with a very helpful girl from the bank, she gave me the phone number to PC banking support. I told her I was writing it down. I even paused as she read it to me and repeated it back as if I was writing it down. I DID NOT write it down. I didn't want to write it down. I had no intention of calling the PC banking desk if I had further problems. I was sure I wouldn't. And, had I run into further problems....I would have been ringing her back.

2. During our repainting the downstairs marathon this weekend, D's inner engineer emerged. He had an elaborate system for taking switchplates off the walls and keeping them and the trillion screws that come with them from being scattered in the bomb site that was our downstairs during the painting extravaganza. At 8 am on Sunday morning he explained this system to me, asked if I was capable of following it and I said "yes." The truth was I had not been paying even one iota of attention to what he was saying, and proceeded to take the switchplates off the wall in a higgledy-piggledy manner with nary a care as to whether or not we'd ever find the screws that went with them when it was time to reattach them to the wall. I then claimed I followed his system and it was obvious his system was at fault. Not me.

3. I ate pulled pork. And I LOVED IT!!! At 9:30 pm on Sunday night after 12 hours (god help me) of painting hell. With my bare hands. And no napkins.

4. I drove at approx 85 mph all the way to Houston on monday after I stormed out of the house during the clean up process after I got cross with the entire activity. I said I had to go visit my grandmother. I claimed I'd promised and she was expecting me to bring her lunch. She had no idea I was coming. When I got home, the downstairs had been magically reassembled to it's pre-painting hell condition. Amazing!

5. I told Ruby I would kill the rednecks next door with my bare hands if they didn't stop setting fireworks off at midnight last night. I was not kidding. I wanted them to be dead. I was hoping one of their bottle rockets would hit them in the throat.

Guess who's second "gotcha" day it is today?

HoustonChronicle.com - Texan's implant ends seven months of hiccups

HoustonChronicle.com - Texan's implant ends seven months of hiccups

This is absolutely terrifying. Can you imagine?