Puppy School Part Duh


Let’s not even talk about how awful class was.

Okay, the trainer was sick again he said he would be better this week. Liar. Last week we learned that the dogs could sense his weakness and it was not the Obediencepalooza that it could have been. This week? Same song different verse.

At one point every single one of the dogs looked at the trainer and said talk to the paw, I mean really. Dogger and the other dogs were in no mood to heel or sit and stay or any of the things that they have been able to perform in the past. It was so embarrassing. Dogger was especially shirty this week, The trainer looked at me and tsked.

It just kills me, a couple of weeks ago Dogger was Example Dog! We heeled for the class! and I was so proud and this week… if there had been erasers to beat, Dogger would have been covered in chalk dust shame.

The saving grace was that the remaining dogs in her class weren’t feeling it either and the Dog Mother of the Shepard said that if we could cut out early it would be great. She can talk about cutting out early, her dog has obedience in its veins. It wants to behave. It comes to class all exciting and just can not wait to learn new skills. Bitch.

Dogger was not on her game at all. This is my fault. I’ve been lazy and just taking her to the field to run instead of going on proper walks to drill. It just gets dark so early and I was so busy doing nothing all weekend I didn’t remember to drill her like I was supposed to. We did the Come On The Leash thing, but at class she sucked at that. I haven’t been as strict as I should have been. I’ve been happy when she sits when I stop and I should have been demanding that she sit next to me or heel! instead of where ever she was when I stopped.


Of course she does all this before her big weekend at my parents. She was supposed to prove that she doesn’t need to go to some dog obedience concentration camp. She can suck it up or she’ll be sent off to Soul Suck Academy and be turned into some sort of canine automaton – kind of like that kid from A. I but taller and with better hair.

I also blame this on the dog smack that I have been using to pill her. I think as much of it as she has been ingesting as totally skewed her behavior. Now that she is off her meds and getting less smack maybe she’ll chill out. Maybe, I’ll give her even more benadryl this weekend – [evil laugh] “won’t stay will you?, HA!, try this on for size Dogger! Didn’t know you could double as an ottoman did you?! [ /evil laugh]


Okay, next update will be Monday. Have a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Tripping


Packing for a weekend in the summer you can pack everything you need in a baggy and still have room left to add an extra tee shirt and that cute shorts and top you found on sale and a second bathing suit or maybe warm ups in case it gets cool at night. Summer clothes are thin clothes.

Packing for the winter you can pack everything you need in a streamer trunk and still have to dig up another bag for the rest of your stuff. My God, winter clothes are fat! I’m not even staying for that long and I all ready look like one of Santa’s helpers.

Things to Do List

Pack - it’s not that I can’t practice self control with this. I have it in me to sit down and be very organized and clear minded and make lists and plan according to how long I am going to be there and what we are going to do and be all organized, but I also need to plan for eventualities, I could be invited to a dress ball!… for example, or there could be a surprise warm front and we could go to the beach instead of watching football so I will need tee shirts and maybe my bathing suit. I know that a guy can pack two flannel shirts, a couple of tee shirts and a pair of jeans and be set for a two week trip through Europe. I am not a guy. I want choices. Since I am being all organized about this and working ahead of time I have found that I have no toothpaste and I own no socks. See? Lists!

Cook - I am bringing my annual Key Lime Pie. I made the pie part up ahead of time and very efficiently froze it. I need just to warm up my store bought pie crust. First try did not work out, I really don't want to go into it.. Second try was better now all I had to do was remove the pie crust from its pie pan and transfer it to Alpha Gals super cool Traveling Pie Plate. Okay. It shrank. It suffered from shrinkage despite following the directions and poking holes in it, it got all swollen. And useless. Trying again, these things come in twos and I bought a second pack for a reason. Bastards. Okay. Swelling treated with a well placed jab, now I had to see how it travels from one pie plate to another. It could have been worse. It is now in the super cool TPP and I just need to thaw the filling and add it to the crust. And then refreeze it and remember to bring it with me.

The Pets - Dog and Cat. They are all ready dressed for any occasion so there is less packing to do. Note, I said less not no. There is the food issue, how to bring it from Point A to Point B. Its easy to say just measure out how much they would eat everyday and bring that amount. Right. If you do it that way, if you decide to stay a day longer or if they animal is feeling sad away from home and you perhaps feed them a little more then unusual and it is Thanksgiving for gods sake! You don’t want to starve the babies. Then we have the treat issue. Do they need them? Am I actually going to be working Daisy on her skills while I am there? I think will be because of Puppy School and all and I think we’re going to cover the hard stuff this week… how about her nail clipper? her other leash? and toys? Bring all of Doggers' bones or just the one? To tennis ball or not to tennis ball? Am I actually going to be able to play fetch? And what about Kitty. Kitty is going to be locked up in a bathroom all weekend so all he’s going to need is tranquilizers.

JFK

You might have heard that Saturday was the anniversary of JFK assassination. I grew up in Dallas. I moved there with my family in 1972, nine years after the fact. Dallas was in the process of undergoing explosive growth and my family was only one of the thousands that were deluging the area with new people. New people who weren’t there then and were too busy to think about what happened less then a decade before. It was a city on the move, Growing and growing and building literally before your eyes. The crain was the official city bird for many years.

I have no memory of field trips to the Kennedy Memorial as a child; Old City Park, trips to museums at Fair Park. If we went by it, we went by it quickly – “And on our right is thekennedymemorial, Okay, over that way is Thanksgiving Square, isn't it pretty? It must have been pointed out to us but I don’t think they sent a lot of school kids to check it out. The school book depository, Deally Plaza, the Triple Underpass and Love field were just there. When I was really little Love Field, for a time was not even an airport. It had a skating rink.

Somewhere along the line I knew roughly when the assassination happened. I thought it was sometime around Thanksgiving or on Thanksgiving or something like that. We didn’t go downtown often or ever. No reason to go there what with all that construction, it was a nightmare. It was only after college when I had a job downtown that I first started to think about the Assassination. I think it was also due in part to the opening of the school book depository building as a museum to the assassination. It was there for a number of years before I had a chance to go. It is extremely moving, people were crying, I was crying, and for the most part the museum is just pictures. Pictures of people from all over the world mourning our president. You can look out the window and see how easy it was.


The Dallas city fathers did a dance of joy when Dallas went on the air. Now, for the first time in decades when people asked about Dallas “Hey, isn’t that where JFK was Killed?”, they asked “Hey, isn’t that where J.R. lives?”. Yes! Yes it Is!

I was working at a theatre near downtown and we had many actors from out of state. That year was on of the big anniversaries, The 30th maybe? And there were made for TV movies being aired and reporters in town and more crazies then usual down at the triple underpass with their metal detectors and the drum beat was everywhere. The actors wanted to see it. They wanted to know where it was. They were in Dallas damn it and they wanted to go where it happened. I didn’t have to take them. I didn’t want to hear about it, I didn’t want to talk about it, I wanted it to go away. Why now? Why with all these people in town did they have to be making such a big deal about it? It was embarrassing. “Why yes, welcome to Dallas, The City that Hates! Glad to See you!”.

I lived there for at that point, 20 years and never heard a word about it. It was in the past. Dallas does not do the past. It builds, it is about the future. What happened in the past is finished, it isn’t about The Now. We didn’t talk about it.

True, I was very young, but. Here I was the next generation and I was learn about it like it happened somewhere else in another time to other people.

HAPPY SUNDAY!!!!

Today is the 40th anniversery of John F. Kennedys assassination in Dallas, had he lived he would be 86 years old.

Round and Round


I don’t know why the other cars are rushing around when I'm on the way home but I’m rushing home in order to be able to change clothes and walk Dogger while its still light. When she doesn’t get a walk, she’ll look around until she finds something to chew on, then she makes sure she gets my attention and then leads me a chase around and around the dining room table. To try to make this a less enjoyable form of exercise for her, I make it as unpleasant for her as possible. I do this by banging on the table and bellowing operatically at her to stop. This is supposed to make the whole thing so loud and unattractive to her that she will remember that the next time she wants to do this. Who knew she was an opera fan?

We didn’t walk today. Instead of walking my dog I got rerouted around Robin Hoods barn. The radio didn’t feel it was necessary to take a break from their breathless Michael Jackson frenzy to tell the locals that they might want to take an alternative route home. They could have, in passing, “Oh, by the way? going Downtown? Find another route. Okay”. The cops could have blocked off the entry into downtown and rerouted us from there instead of forcing us on the non - grand non – tour of the city. When I first got rerouted I thought that they were doing this for a Christmas Show thing they have booked at the convention center. I thought that they were doing all this so it would be easier for the people to park so they could go to the Christmas Show and buy sequined incrusted crèche sets with bonus Red White and Blue™ glitter Uncle Sam ™ Santa, now!with! singing I’m Proud to Be An American™ (Holiday Mix) action. I don’t think people who would want to buy sequin incrusted crèche sets with bonus Red White and Blue™ glitter Uncle Sam™ Santa, now!with! singing I’m Proud To Be An American™ (Holiday Mix) action need things to be easier for them. I think they should suffer for their glitter incrusted crèche sets with bonus Red White and Blue™ glitter Uncle Sam™ Santa, now!with! singing I’m Proud to be An American™ (Holiday Mix) action.

So needless to say by the time I did finally get home it was too late to walk Dogger. Before I went inside I went out front and saw a Random Beyotch outside the Drug Dealers House and asked Random Beyotch outside the Drug Dealers house what was going on downtown; because I figured if anyone would know what a horde of cops was doing within shouting distance of the house, it would be them, taking at least a professional interest in what was causing the cop convention. Random Beyotch looked up from her BBQing ( was I invited? No.) to tell me she didn’t know and I should go on inside and watch the news if I wanted to know what was going on downtown. I guess it wasn’t in Random Beyotchs’ job description to be aware of such things, she must be an intern. Random Beyotch was busy grilling crack or whatever and couldn’t be bothered with The White Girl Next Door. The words “lots” “cops” and “everywhere” did to make her look up towards the house as if to see if the “lots, of cops, everywhere” might be advancing on her and her BBQ from somewhere behind the Drug Dealers house.

I went inside and did what Random Beyotch suggested - Gas Leak an Underground Gas Leak. I Drove around Robin Hoods Barn and got dangerously close to booths of sequin incrusted crèche sets with bonus Red White and Blue™ glitter Uncle Sam™ Santa, now!with! singing I’m Proud to be An American™ (Holiday Mix) action, for an underground gas leak, for all that something could have at least exploded or sang or been covered with glitter.

On The Way


Driving home from work this week and I noticed that the body shop at the bottom of the hill had morphed into a used car place. Wow. They didn’t even change out the stock, same wreaked cars, new great prices! They had gotten rid of some of the brush that had been around the building when they painted it and I saw this camper . It looked like my grandmothers camper. She’s gone now and so is it, but seeing it made me think of one summer when we drove out to California to see her and I got to spend a night in the camper.

I was thinking what fun it would be despite my Dad to retelling apocryphal tales about thieves breaking into campers and what happens to the poor unfortunates they find in them. Thanks Dad. I still slept out there that night but I also kept look out for those apocryphal camper thieves, cause there is nothing like a twelve year old camper trailer with a twelve year old sleeping in it to attract the neighborhood apocryphal camper thieves.

The camper brought back another camper related memory, when I was a freshman at college, my dorm room TV was this little tiny black and white. This was fine for certain things. Like most of network television. But it was time for the SNL season premier and I was not going to watch it on the black and white. And my room mate was a raging loony and I had get away from her. The crazy room mate is kind of beside the point, but she was bat shit crazy. Anyway, I needed to watch my show on a color TV. I found one.

Lorne Michaels will never know my sacrifice. The TV I found belong to one of the guys in my department. In order to watch the show I had to agree to watch it with him. In his camper trailer.

While we were waiting for the show to start he did me the favor of outing most of the men in the department. As I was a Theatre major, the idea that some of the guys were gay was not a huge surprise. That every reasonably attractive man I had mentioned to him,was gay and that all the guys in the department, except for him, were gay was a bit of a surprise; because I all ready knew there were some straight guys in the department, some, a handful, at least a couple. Okay, two that I was sure of. He did me this favor, he told me, so I would not waste my time crushing on some gay guy when I could cut out the queer man and go straight (ha,ha) to him. I guess the fact that He looked like a drowned rat was supposed to be irrelevant. A heterosexual drowned rat.

It rained today. We were told to expect 60 mile an hour winds as well but they were a no show. I’m surprised. I left my patio chairs outside and I didn’t think about it till I was half way down the street. I was sure I was going to come home to find them on the neighbors roof. Despite all the rain for the basement wasn’t full of water when I can home. The day I closed on the house I was greeted by a flooded basement. I have not forgiven it yet. The only water was a little puddle by the washing machine water drain. I don’t know if the sump pump over flowed or what, but it was mostly dry. Oh, and there is a new branch down in the back yard. I tried to take Dogger for a walk when I came home but we were only out for a little while before it got all Apocalypse Nowish looking and I took us home.

Puppy School Week Four



Lets see. This week Dogger showed the class how well she can trip me and make me fall down! Whee! She did this right after the trainer told us about a dog that broke its owners leg when it ran into her. She also made the trainer nauseas. That is exactly what I want the trainer to associate with her, nausea and dizziness and her potential capacity to break legs. Good Dog!.

After my free fall in the parking lot the trainer kept taking Dogger away from me and when he did let me have her, I tried to explain that I have a trick knee and I might have lost my balance regardless of what Dogger was doing - he hovered . I liked it better when the other puppy was the bad dog. That puppy dropped out. I can see it hanging around the corner and drinking beer out of a water dish. It might smoke, I could see that. Maybe I can call that other dogs mom and set up a play date for our little miscreants. I could get Dogger her own studded collar and a little leather jacket. I think it’s the bad dogs next door influence. They talk through the fence when they are all outside and I think they have been telling her bad things. Bad Dog things.

Since the trainer was sick this week we worked on making the dog come on the leash. I think this was for the best. Dogger is not ready to sit and stay. Come she is ready for. Dogger and I have been working on this off leash for a while but she is still not good at it. She won’t come unless she wants to and has chewed everything in the environment she wanted to chew, and so has nothing else to do. The promise of doggy snack is becoming a slightly attractive motivator but not good enough to get her to stop killing my shrubbery when I call for her.

The problem we ‘re having with the coming on the leash thing is we worked very hard on Heel. Very Hard. She doesn’t get far enough away from me for me to properly get her to Come. She looked at me tonight and said Come? I’m right here! Damn. . I also have to learn a few new things to do the Dogger , Come thing right. I have to remember to let her get to the end of her leash and say Come then a sharp tug on the leash, walk back wards slowly,( as to not make her get all dancy) and then make her sit down if she hasn’t all ready done so then release her then give her a treat. I wasn’t doing a very good job doing this in class. I really sucked. I was having trouble with the right sequence. The trainer told me to write it down and work from my notes.

Danger Dog was not in the mood for Puppy School. She was in the mood for assault.

I think my little TV is trying to tell me something. It is kind of blinkering and fading . I think this means there is something wrong with it. I am hoping this means it has the flu. The flu is supposed to be very bad this year. It could affect electronics. really old electronics are especially vulnerable to flu. It could also be the tube dieing. It’s too young to die. You can’t buy insurance for this. No one wants to help you with your sick TV out of the goodness of their heart. If you want to pay someone, then sure someone will take care of it, but not for free and they don’t do it out of love .They don’t care about the TVs pain.

I am going to be in pain if that TV dies.

Over the River and Through the Woods

Mr. Kitty decided that I needed my Monday to start sooner then my alarm did. Mr. Kitty was feeling peckish and thought I needed to get up and feed him. When I thought that Mr. Kitty needed to go downstairs and leave me the fuck alone, Mr. Kitty thought my stereo needed to go crashing to the floor.

I then thought Mr. Kitty needed to be FedExd to an undisclosed location in the United Arab Emirates .

When I got home his foreign Frontline™ had arrived. I now know a number for Poison Control in Australia. I feel very international now. I love Frontline™ it promises to kill, maim and destroy everything with more then four feet that comes within a block of my pet. It also promises to beat on baby fleas like a Canadian on a baby harp seal. Good on Ya Australian Frontline™!

I also had some good news truck wise. The truck does not seem to be as out of alignment as I thought it was! Yay me for not messing it up more then I thought I did. I was trying to take Dogger on a nature hike, I thought I had taken the right turn off… I had been to this nature walk place one other time. In the dark. As a passenger and I remember thinking “Oh, this is right by where the state cars go”. So I had this picture of a lot with a state vehicles in it. Vehicles being the operative word. I turned where I saw a state building and a bunch of state stuff. I saw the dirt road and I followed it. Wrong dirt road. I ended up with the truck perpendicular across this some what soggy sand road and I couldn’t get it out. I also didn’t have my cell phone with me because it seems that it now lives in my living room charging itself and receiving wrong number calls. So. I am stuck in the sand, the truck is making odd sounds and I’m wondering if the truck may grow four wheel drive for just a little while, since I really needed it to be all four wheelie and get the hell out of this mess I had gotten into.

I eventually got the truck out. The truck was not happy and I seem to have messed with the alignment while I was trying to get the car to go in a direction it wasn’t comfortable going dog in it. Back and forth and back and forth over this huge sand clot until I wore it down enough to get the truck over it. Sigh. It was not my finest moment. The truck is now 10 years old and it goes out of alignment if I run over a large pebble, so its not like this is unusual for it. But this time I know exactly what I did to make it all out of alignment.

When Dogger and Truck and I finally did reach our destination we were greeted by a large sign ALL DOGS MUST REMAIN ON LEASH AT ALL TIMES what I didn’t realize was that it really said was Diana must keep her Dog on leash at all times. Just Her. All other Dog Owners should feel free to run their dogs off leash, over hill and yon – don’t even both trying to keep them under control. Because you know, ALL DOGS does not mean YOUR DOG. I saw this sign about every four feet. We were greeted by off leash dogs about every six feet, cause ya know, there is nothing more fun then getting charged by a large dogs! Thank God I wasn’t a toddler or the owner of a dog given to attacking strange dogs , or someone who just really can’t deal with both my large excited dog as well as a strangers large excited dog.

We did have a great time though. Dogger had a ball. It was pretty too. We walked for about an hour and we didn’t get even a third of the way through. It has great paths and we are so going back. ON LEASH.

The Weather Outside is…



Let Us Shop

Oh the weather outside is delightful
But the family’s wish list is frightful
And since we've so many places to go
Let us shop, let us shop, let us shop!


It doesn't show signs of stopping
And I brought some cash for spending
The blue lights are turned up high
Let us shop, let us shop, let us shop!

When we’ve finally spent all our dough
How I'll hate to go home while the sales on
But if you promise we can come back tomorrow

All the way home I'll be warm.
The crowds are slowly dying
And my dear, we're still good-buying
But as long as you’ll loan me more,
Let us shop, let us shop, let us shop!


I’m sure I’m no doubt ripping someone off with that. It’s in the sprit of the pre-Thanksgiving sales that are flooding the air waves this week. There aren’t the real sales and the real hard core shoppers aren’t even thinking about this proto-sales. The real sales are the day after Thanksgiving. This is the super bowl of competitive shopping. This separates the girls from the women.

If you can’t suck it up and be awake by 5:30 am the morning after cooking all day and then eating your body weight in dinner and remembering to get the car to the mall parking lot the night before to make sure you have the best possible parking spot … you should just turn in your ovaries ‘cause girlfriend you are not ready for the big leagues. Stick to your catalogues and your web sites. Shopping neophyte.

I have an aunt and girl cousins who do get up in the dark the day after Thanksgiving and hit the malls. They shop all day. You can’t keep up with them. They have plans and maps and lists and exit strategies. They are machines.

That’s not my thing. I love shopping, don’t get me wrong. Shopping is good. But. I. Hate. Crowds. I. Hate. Noise. I hate people in a hurry to be in a hurry. I love Christmas Carols, I hate Christmas Carols if I have to spend any amount of time in the mall this time of year. How many versions of The Little Drummer Boy or that new Mall Christmas fav These Are A few Of My Favorite Things do I really need to be assaulted with? I can’t stand the sound of them. I don’t even want to think about the poor souls working in Christmas Stores who have been listing to Jingle Bells since last August.

I’m also cooking. It must be close to the holidays. Yesterday I made a much more complicated version of my yearly Key Lime pie. Did you know that 32 ozs. Of whipped cream is a hell of a lot of whipped cream? That, that much whipped topping can make a number of pies? My recipe calls for just one pie. My God! It would be the worlds tallest pie. Who needs a pie you can also use as a booster seat? Or to hide gifts in? I mean. Dayum. I don’t need that kind of stress. I have to put that thing in a car with Dogger and Mr. Kitty. Maybe if I tie it to the roof of the car? Or use it as an air bag? Or as a very frothy party dress? I can be the new Betsey Johnson!


Harrumph. An awful lot of egg yolks and sugar were sacrificed for lime flavored Cool Whip ™. I see some food coloring it that pies future. I didn’t do all that for a Key Lime Flavored Cool Whip ™ Pie and since I did it will at least be a Key Lime Flavored Key Lime Green Cool Whip™ Pie.

HAPPY SUNDAY!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY!!!!!

Friday Fiveish



I spent the day with the interior of my skull wrapped in cotton batting. I don’t know how it got there and it is still there to a degree. I spent hours this morning doing a task that, when my head is not full of cotton, I can get done in a snap. After I was done, the specter of having to get out of my chair and file reared its ugly head. I had to sit down again.

I only got about a quarter of what I was supposed to get done finished and the stuff that’s left is only half of what there is still to do.

It’s a sad state of affairs when stapling is more work then you can get done with out taking a rest.

Because I am still a big quilt, we have our friend The Friday Five from my friends at Fridayfive.org.



What food do you like that most people hate?

I hate everything. The only food I don’t hate is food most people feed to their two year olds. I eat my hamburgers plain and dry. I won’t eat a burger if there has been cheese on it. I learned after years of struggle to tolerate ketchup and mustard traces on my burgers. Pickles slices are just wrong. I am unable to understand why people put chili (blech!) on there hotdogs. It’s not that I like food other people hate, its more that I like plain food. No sauces, gravies or heavy spices. If it doesn’t taste good on its own putting stuff on it is not going to make it better. I think of it as au natural food, food in the nude so to speak.

What foods do you hate that most people love?

Most people like Mexican food. Mexican food is unacceptable for the following reasons.

1.) It involves cheese.
2.) It involves spices that are unnecessary and unpalatable and smell funny.
3.) It involves foods that are stringy, gritty or actually paper.
4.) It involves Taco Bell™, Taco Bueno™ and having to inhale what those places smell like. Mexican food smells like what you add to it. In real life you are eating grass cuttings and pigeons .
5.) It is hot because if you could actually taste what you were eating you wouldn’t eat it.

What famous person, whom many people may find attractive, is most unappealing to you?

Tom Cruise – Too Toothy, Too Culty, Too Short. I can tolerate him in ensemble pieces ( as long as it is a large ensemble) or in very short cameos. I also do not understand any of the winners of American Idiot, Popular? Sure, Talented? Hell No!

What famous person, whom many people may find unappealing, do you find
attractive?

Stephen Rea. Siiiiiigggghhhh. But not for his looks. He looks like a depressed basset hound. He is a great actor though and I love his accent. I also lust after the father guy on Grounded For Life even though I don’t watch the show. The guy who plays Wesley on Angel is very hot.

What popular trend baffles you?

Everything baffles me. I am bafflement personified. Why do people dress their little, bitty girls up like Brittany Spears? Why are those clothes available in 6x? Why would you put a mullet on a toddler? Why is wrestling still televised? Why is UPN not on a NAACP hit list? Why is Seventh Heaven still on TV and Action not? why is everything on TV aimed at 12 year old girls? Why are all the movies made for 14 year old boys? Why are movies on purpose made for grownups so damn boring? Why are they all ready playing Christmas Carols? Iraq? George Bush? Baffled.

Separation of Church and State! It's Your Birthday! It's Your Birthday!!