There's a Word For It!

Reason #2 Why I'm Not Signing My Dogs Up for Any IQ Tests

Annie is walking like she is walking on a carpet of Legos, which is how she walks when her arthritis acts up, which is what it does when she goes on a bender, running like a happy fool through the neighborhood. Scotty, the beta-dog jester, followed loyally behind, as always.

The fence gate was left open this morning. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that it was closed last night, evidenced by the fact that the dogs did not get out last night. So some time during the night, the gate was opened.

Thinking of someone fiddling with our gate in the night and the aftermath of Annie's flight-or-more-flight tendencies makes me simultaneously glad that I have big dogs while wanting to drive them straight back to the reject bin I rescued them out of for putting me through this every time the gate is left open.

They were found maybe two miles away (as the collie flies), at the neighborhood sewage treatment plant. Luckily not IN the sewage treatment plant, but at the administration building, where a nice man tracked me down by their dog tags.

So Annie is a big hurt burger, and Scotty came back so hot he was unable for a while even to chew on some ice, which is his usual treat on a warm day, and with burrs clumping up his ruff, his tail, his hindquarters, and his front leg hairs. I got most of the burrs out, but I keep finding more, so this may be an ongoing clean-up job.

I'm not sure whether this means I have to check the damn gate every morning, but I will be for a while. And checking the locks on the doors and windows.

UPDATE (INCLUDES CONFESSION!): Drew says he's pretty sure that he left the gate open the day before while he was loading some yard waste into his truck. The dogs are just so, um, brainily challenged that they did not notice until the next morning.

Notes On Birthday XLVII

I've been away for a while. It was in your best interest. You don't want to read thoughts that are either jumbled, vacant, or snide. Why? Pick a reason. My pants were tight. The lawn needed to be mowed. The grapevines needed to be cut back. My eyes itched. I was in NO MOOD. The air felt soggy.

Do I have something to say now? Not really. But here are some thoughts on my birthday back on June 22 that I didn't get around to posting at the time.

• I got an iPhone 3GS for my birthday. Yeah, it IS that cool.
• Not only did Drew buy me the iPhone, he gave up HIS upgrade so we could get it at the discounted price. I gave him the Blackberry I bought last year. He's having much more fun with it than I ever did, so it's all working out.
• Most under-appreciated birthday gift this year: we still have the Prius. Drew, who still gets a little discombobulated driving around in a robot car, left it running (maybe running is the wrong word since it runs on battery when parked) on street parking in downtown Portland while we stood in line at the Apple store. Ironically, Drew worried about somebody stealing his cell phone out of the car while we were gone. When we got back to the car, the radio was still playing and the battery was on red. But it was still there! Thank you Portland, for not stumbling upon our doofy mistake! (We're still not sure whether it could have been driven off. There were no keys in the car. That's the weird thing about this car - the keys do not have to be in the ignition. They just have to be in the vicinity of the sensor in the dashboard.) I'm not sure whether the car was supposed to stay running like that but it did. Maybe I should re-peruse that owner's manual.
• While waiting in line at the Apple Store (while our car was patiently playing its radio and waiting for us to return), I saw somebody shake someone's bike helmet, like they were shaking their hand, because the bike helmet person didn't have a free hand. Very awkward moment when the hand-shaker realized that he had actually just shook someone's helmet, and he couldn't really get that moment back.
• Did we go out to a fancy restaurant on my birthday? Um, no. I got a craving for Burgerville at lunch time, and had no room for fancy food at dinner. So we had birthday cake for dinner. Hey, we're adults.
• I'm pretty sure I don't look a day over 50 (which is a relief, since I'm not 50).

Coco the Death Cat Takes Advantage

You know that nursing home cat who would sleep on the beds of the next-to-die? I have been under the weather since Saturday morning with a particularly nasty nausea-and-body-aches brand of bug, and Coco, who is not known to be particularly cuddly, has been on my lap pretty much 24-7. It's making me a little nervous.

Of course, it could be the fact that I have been stationary, under a comfy blanky, not a thing I'm used to doing on a summer weekend. But still. Does she know something?

Note This on your Calendars

By proclamation of me, tomorrow is National Nobody Needs Me to Do Anything For Them Day. 

I plan on spending it flouncing about, consuming internet entertainment, and eating sweet things. I may be dressed as a 17th century poet. Or a 300-pound disability defrauder. That part is still up in the air. 

Everyone is welcome to join the festivities, as long as I don't have to assist in any way.

I plan on making it an annual holiday, held on the third Wednesday in June. Years from now, you will be asking yourselves, what did you do on the first NNNMTDAFT Day? You may want to plan your day accordingly.

Explanation Would Ruin the Magic

Flight of the Conchords, Hard and Phirm, and Todd Barry from the Future. Just Believe.

"Man Cold" from Man Stroke Woman

Found this series on Netflix so I went to You Tube to see if it would be worth it to watch the whole season. Netflix that, baby!

Whose Son Is This? And How Is His Driving Record?

Dean's in town. It's a great way to clear the fridge and pantry of leftovers. It's usually also a great way to make Drew fume over missing and misplaced parts and tools in the garage. Bike maintenance takes a lot of tools and parts, and two bike maintainers using the same space with different concepts of orderliness means that high jinks shall surely ensue.

But so far, at least in the house, he has shown us a new, you know, responsible form of Dean. He cleans up after himself in the kitchen, the bathroom is clean, and I can see most of the spare room floor. 

And he seems to be taking his training more seriously too. When I have called him in Colorado Springs lately, he talks of going to "work," both when he has to work at the bike shop AND when he has a training session. AND he has put beer drinking on hold. THAT's when you know he's serious.

And he looks like an oak tree with two trunks. 

I'm writing all this because he borrowed my car tonight and I'm hoping all this responsibility has made its way down to his accelerator foot.

Update:  car's back in the garage in one piece.

Being Awesome: I Can Do That.

So there we were sitting in the audience waiting for Tom Robbins to come out and entertain us and complaining about being in our 40s and putting on weight for no good reason. We hadn't changed our behaviors. We hadn't begun to enjoy nightly milkshakes before bed. We hadn't developed cravings for fried cheese appetizers.

I was telling Drew how I had tried my usual cutting-down here-and-there behaviors, and had actually gained weight, and how we had gone on a particularly active vacation - hiking, walking, sightseeing so much our feet were aching at the end of each day - and had still gained weight.

Drew, being the kind of guy (meaning like most guys), who when he hears of a problem, feels compelled to solve it (instead of the kind - like most women - who merely commiserate and share your whine), ventured a plan. Why don't I try one of Dean's coach's regimens for bumping up one's metabolism: doing 20 minutes of highly aerobic activity first thing in the morning, before you go about your day. Don't count it as your workout. Just add it as your 20-minute furnace boost.

I hadn't been running on a regular basis for maybe two years, choosing instead to follow Scotty's lead, who prefers a fast walking pace, so he doesn't miss any good sniffs, and so he doesn't overheat with his ridiculous collie coat on. Although we do an hour to an hour-and-a-half of this fast walking at least four times a week (with half-hours on the other three days), I had pretty much given up on my running career.  After all, running with a dog is complicated, and leaving the house in my running gear without the dog is heart rending.

Uh-oh, Coco the Basement Cat has decided to help me type. This may slow things down.

Drew said, no, do not feel sorry for the dogs. This is about you. Get on the treadmill and go for 20 minutes. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody feels left out. And if they do, the hell with them.

So I did. In practice, they end up as 30-minutes sessions: a quick five-minute warm up and a five-minute cool down sandwiches the 20 minutes of running. It was hard at first. The minutes ticked by so slow I doubted my grasp of the concept of time. But the 20-minute mark would always show up eventually. It has been a month now, and I have kept it up long enough now that it (almost) feels like a habit.  I call my sessions "being awesome." That also helps me to keep it up. I don't want to not be awesome. And it has not precluded me from taking the dogs out for their walks after breakfast. 

And the weather has been so nice lately that I have been able to get outside and see something beside the sun room walls.  Luckily there are few other runners at the park when I go, because sometimes it seems like I am going so slowly that I must be on a hidden treadmill, but no matter. I'm not out there to impress anyone (which should be obvious from my outfit, which usually fails to match three different shades of blue, some black, some occasional hot pink or purple, all topped off with a red baseball cap).

It's easy to do anything for 20 minutes. It's easier to do something first thing in the morning before the excuse lobe in your brain kicks into gear.  And 20 minutes is not nothing - a concept which is difficult to grasp after so many years of living amongst those for whom three-hour workouts are commonplace. It makes a difference. The pounds may not be melting away, but I can notice small changes. And that gives me hope. Hope that it's not all down hill from here. Hope that the next birthday doesn't mean more ballooning gut and arm flab. I may have lost a little of whatever it is inside our cells that make us firm and fresh, and may have more of the stuff that allows "ripe" to turn into "soft and squishy," but if 20 minutes a day can help slow that change, then I'm willing to run.

Air! Just What I Ordered!

Hey, we got a shipment of air today at work.

Office Depot has really stepped up their air delivery.  To be fair, this box wasn't completely filled with air. It also held six binders and some binder tabs, which took up less than a quarter of the space in the box. They shipped a separate box, about the same size, with two ten-roll packs of toilet paper. 

Efficiency at its peak, ladies and gentlemen.

The Kind of Courage That I Deal In

I have had some painter's block these last few weeks due to the fact that I left the painting-in-progress at an awkward moment. You know, the underpainting is done, the next layer is half done, and the product, if I stopped now, would either be bad art or good velvet art.

Unfortunately, since it's difficult to transport the paint from canvas onto velvet at this point, I have no choice now but to use the next layer of paint to turn bad art into art. Can I do it?

If not, it must mean that I'm a bad artist. So to approach the painting today took some piglet style courage.

I approached it. I applied paint to it. Is it better? I never know until the next day. There's still another, crucial layer to be applied. Stay tuned.

Weather note: thunder storm after a week of unseasonably hot weather. Aaahhh.

Testosterone Makes Men Crazy, Part MCCXXVi

Ever been to Palouse Falls in Washington? You know, the ones where the Palouse River falls 186 feet off of basalt cliffs into a bathtub shaped pool? Ever thought about riding them in a dinky little kayak? Me neither.

Weakened Further by Technology

Behold the pygmy jerboa and weep.

In Which I Soften The Frak Up

The high temperature today, freakishly, was something like 89 degrees.

I work at a home-based business. I share a room with a server, a computer, a copier, two printers and a scanner. The air conditioner in said home-based home went out this morning. At first, I just thought I had done a superb job at boosting my metabolism this morning with my little run. Then I was sure that I had a raging fever. I was finally told that it wasn't me, that the house was the one with the fever.

It was hot! I was sweating! And if there had been anyone there to complain to, I would have whined like an orange Ford Fiesta on a hill. Instead, I suffered in silence. And even though I kept telling myself that humans lived and flourished without air conditioning for 50,000 years before this particularly warmish afternoon in this particularly technologically superheated room, I still felt like a mini-martyr.

Luckily, our own famously tetchy heat pump is working today, so when I got home, I was able to relax and watch an episode of House that I missed when our cable went out by logging on to Hulu.com. 

So I went from trying to channel our hard-bodied ancestors who once stalked the sun-scorched plains on the hunt for a scrawny gazelle, to snuggling on the plushy couch with my MacBook and my Nalgene water bottle, watching entertainment on demand and trying on my new Saucony running shoes.

All of a sudden, I felt pretty squishy.  But I'm not going back outside for a quick gazelle hunt.

I Can See the Beauty of a Hermit Cave

Does it help that the next door demon's parents feel bad that their spawn is of Satan?  Not much. It would help more if they supervised their rug rats, instead of choosing serial apology.

It seems that the Bad Seed gets pouty when Scotty The Adorable gets bored with standing by the fence and getting fed wood chips and dirt, and so he throws stuff over the fence at him when Scotty turns away. It started with dirt clods (once so many that I came home to their father in my back yard, trying to sweep up the mess). Yesterday, it escalated to lumber. I happened to see him toss a pointy stick at Scotty, and I headed out the door with death in my heart, and a soft but firm voice.

I didn't think that his parents saw this time, but I guess I was wrong, as I came home from work today to this note in my mail box.

I just have a feeling that being made to apologize just makes this kid pissed off. I guess we'll wait and see.

1:24 of My Life Spent Unwisely

I made it all the way through The Worst Movie Ever. Can you do the same?