my faith in mankind has been restored
A few days ago I was out walking my poor, sick puppy when she needed to make a pit-stop on the side of the road. Now that she is taking prednisone, she has to pee A LOT and when she does, it takes quite awhile. As I stood there waiting, holding her leash in one hand and two poop bags in the other, I sensed a car pulling up behind us and waiting for us to move. I thought perhaps we were standing in their parking space or something so as Lucy finished and we began on our way I looked back to nod and wave an apology for her taking so long.
Unfortunately, I was not met with a gracious reply. The dude in the 4Runner pulled right up next to me, leaned out his window and said loudly and accusingly, "DO YOU HAVE A BAG TO PICK THAT UP?"
In total confusion, and because I can never think of good, biting comebacks until 24 hours later, I offered up the eloquent response:
"IT'S PEE!"
Nice job there, Bean. That'll teach him.
I looked at him with utter confusion, my very soul crushed at the insinuation that I am an irresponsible wretch who doesn't clean up after her dog, and he returned my gaze with an evil, accusing stare. He shook his head in disgust and drove off. Turns out we were not in his way or in his parking spot. He lives a little further down the road and was just stopping to play Poop Police.
Two days later, after having fumed over this incident way more than it merited and having schemed all manner of evil payback scenarios including but not limited to lighting a bag of dog poop on fire on his front door step or asking him if he had any bags to clean up his yard, his hideous, hideous yard, we encountered him again. This time, Jon was with me. Lucy stopped to pee in the same place and I sensed a vehicle approaching from behind again. I turned to look and there was 4Runner dude hanging out his window with his mouth open to speak. But this time, he said "Hey, I just wanted to apologize for the other day." I told him it was okay, I was just so confused because she was just peeing and I hope he knows we always pick up after our dog. He said there's some dog that's always leaving messes in their yard and in their neighbor's yard and he was sorry he wrongly accused me.
After he drove off, Jon and I went on and on about how big that was of him. He went out of his way to apologize and make things right. Who does that these days? I am now relieved of having to regard all humans as loathesome, hateful beings on account of apologetic neighbor. We should all be like him.
Posted by Poka Bean at 4:31 PM
the foxtail and the hound
I am a grieved dog mother. Lucy has been in the saddest state since Saturday morning. At first we thought she had some kind of eye infection because her eyes were cloudy and red and swollen. But then we noticed her becoming incredibly lethargic. She moped around the house as though she were drugged all weekend. And then she began twitching her head. My God, the twitching! It was unbearable to watch. By Monday morning, she hadn't eaten anything or had a single sip to drink since the Friday before.
So I took her to the vet. The entire staff puzzled over her for almost an hour. After poking and prodding her all over, the vet took a second glance in her ears and found foxtails in both of them. Ah ha! At last! She yelped when he pulled them out but they sent us on our merry way with antibotics and ear/eye drops and said to come back in 24 hours if she wasn't better. I fretted all night about what a terrible dog mother I am. How could I let this happen?
Well, 24 hours later, she was no better so we went back to the vet. I'm telling you she was the saddest, most heartbreaking dog you have ever seen in your life. She didn't want to walk or move, she just wanted to lie still in one position. Her eyes were swollen and droopy and her posture and the expression on her face made it look as though we had put her under heavy sedation. And the twitching continued. So upon another long, laborious examination and a blood test, it turns out foxtails weren't the problem. Lucy has a sad condition. Masticular Muscle Myositis. It's some kind of auto-immune disease. Apparently the muscles in dog's jaws are made up of different muscle protiens than the rest of their bodies so for whatever reason, her own immune system has begun attacking her jaw muscles! No wonder she doesn't want to eat. And their jaw muscles wrap pretty much all the way around their heads and behind the eyes so that explains the swelling and irritation. Poor baby! It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears right there in the vet's office. When I have real, human babies, I am going to be A. TOTAL. DISASTER.
So Lucy's on antibotics and prednisone for 20 days now and the vet thinks we caught it early enough to help her but some dogs never fully recover and have to be on some form of steroids for the rest of their lives. I cannot bear the thought of this. I am grieved, I tell you. GRIEVED.
Posted by Poka Bean at 4:52 PM
the one with all the hate mail
Yesterday I returned home from a lovely, relaxing camping trip with my hubby to find several angry comments awaiting me on very old posts. You might think this upset me, but it had quite the opposite effect. I had a good long chuckle and then began celebrating finally having something fun to write about! Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes...
Hate Mail #1Posted by rationalvoice23 on 8/10/06 at 11:57 PM on
this post dated 3/16/05.
The reason Terri-Rae Elmer's on the air is because she's good. Face it, if
she wasn't, she would probably be bagging my groceries for a living, just like you.
Instead of asking yourself questions just to hear yourself talk,
why not actually try to rationally answer your own verbal upchuck...
"why, why, WHY do they let her do that repeatedly on air?" Because more
people like her as opposed to people who don't. Was that so hard to comprehend ass master?
Btw, i made an acct just to burn ur ass. Suka.
Now to begin, I would like to make a public apology to Terri Rae for having carelessly and hurtfully made negative comments about the way she gives the closing line to all of her news reports on the radio. I didn't realize my post would come up as the 3rd item listed on Google when one searches for her name but after getting this random comment on a post that's over one year old, the thought occured to me to check. What do you know, there it is. So shame on me. I'm very sorry. It was wrong of me to do that and truly rude and unkind. It was not my intention to defame anyone in the public eye. I will leave that old post up only briefly and then I will delete it altogether.
Now to rationalvoice23, I must ask...where did you get the idea that I bag groceries for a living? I have in fact never been employed by a grocery store, as a bagger or in any other capacity. Nonetheless, thank you for the new nickname! "Ass Master." I like the sound of that. And thank you for making an account just to burn my ass. It feels downright scorched! Hot as blazes! Charred, singed, seared! For a minute there I had to STOP, DROP, and ROLL.
Oh yes, and for those of you who couldn't crack the code, "suka" is my clever hate-mailer's way of calling me a "sucker" in truly cool hip-hop jargon. The correct pronunciation isn't SUE-kah as you might think. It's "sucka."
Hate Mail #2
Posted by rationalvoice23 on 8/11/06 at 12:06 AM on this post dated 2/16/05.
I just realized you have no talent as a writer...
Fortunatley, i'm not one to rain on anyone's parade without offering an umbrella:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0935166076/sr=8-3/qid=1155279406/ref=pd_bbs_3/103-8526384-6270269?ie=UTF8
There u go; a link to a book that could possibly help you redeem a
fraction of your adult audience.
Thank you for the book recommendation! I love books. I will definitely check it out. And hey, catchy line there with the raining on the parade and the umbrella thing. I'll have to remember to use that.
I'm really grateful for the writing advice. It carries a lot of weight coming from someone as obviously intelligent and eloquent as you, and someone with such excellent spelling and grammar skills to boot! By the way, what do you mean by "redeem a fraction of your adult audience?" Redemption's not the goal of this blog. In fact, I believe only Jesus can redeem people. I would never pretend to be able to do it myself! Did you maybe mean the book could help me redeem my writing? My horrible, horrible writing?
Hate Mail #3 and #4
Posted by rationalvoice23 on 8/11/06 at 12:10 AM on this post dated 2/10/05.
Okay, I officially vow to never read another word of this (lame ass) blog so
long as i live...
Punctuation man; punctuation.
Sheeeit.
And then posted at 12:11 AM, one minute later...
Hrm, hrm... Woman.
Sheeeit.
Okay, easy there, partner! This is a family show. Let's watch our potty talk! (Although kudos to you for the phonetical spelling of the potty word as pronounced in a southern drawl. Nice effect!) Hopefully that book you recommended previously will help me with all those punctuation problems I seem to be having. Gosh, how I hate to see readers go down based on punctuation. Such a shame! But "Hrm, hrm...Woman???" You've got me on that one. Is it secret code? Or a foreign language perhaps? Lord knows I've just barely mastered English, you can't go busting out with stuff that's so far over my head like that!
Posted by Poka Bean at 1:27 PM
