Dog's Life

Schmutzie commented the other day that she likes it when I post photos of Goldie, because she always looks so happy.

Let us delve into what it is like to be Miss Goldie. Thus, her daily schedule:

5:15 Awaken Suebob
5:30 Awaken Suebob more forcefully, get scratched and praised for 5 minutes
5:40 Go outside to survey the yard, chase birds and check for evidence of cats. Eat cat poop.
5:45 Go back to sleep on couch

6:15 Sleep on bed while Suebob takes a shower in order to keep an eye on her
6:25 Get scratched on the belly
6:45 Go outside, wait by car
6:50 Come back in, sigh, and look at Suebob meaningfully - hurry up!
6:52 CAR RIDE CAR RIDE
7:05 Arrive at grandparents
7:07 First snack of the day
7:15 Chase birds
7:20 Go back to sleep
7:45-9:00 Demand to be let in and out to amuse self with grandparents
9:30 Sit on patio with grandparents, get scratched and treats
9:45 Chase birds in the backyard
9:50 Sleep on grass after rolling around for a while
11:30 Beg for food at lunch
11:45 Dog food
12:00 Naptime
2:30 Awake for snacks and Judge Judy
3:00 More nap
3:15 Walk with grandpa
3:40 A snack might be good
3:45 Sleep
5:05 SUEBOB!! OMG SHE CAME HOME!
5:07 Play catch in back yard
5:30 CAR RIDE! CAR RIDE!
6:00 HOME! HOME!
6:05 Torment dogs next door through the fence
6:15 Snack
6:20 Tired. Nap.
7:00 WALKIES!!!!!!

8:00 Home. Drink 1 gallon of water. Cool off under open window.
8:10 Sleep
8:30 Perhaps a bite to eat
8:40 Sleep on couch

I have no idea why she always looks happy in photos. Right.

Come with me...to the sea

San Miguel Island

One of the items on my bucket list is "Visit all 7 Channel Islands," which is going to be a really good trick. Two of the islands are super-secret military bases, or so says my friend Ish, who works on San Nicholas Island.

He says he absolutely cannot tell me what happens on the island, lest we both be spirited away to a CIA black site and submitted to the Comfy Chair treatment. So I may have to shave my head and disguise myself as a Marine to sneak on, or something.

But I have high hopes, so still I forge ahead. I have had two memorable (one good, one bad) trips to two Channel Islands - Anacapa (the bad, 25 years ago, with killer mommy attack seagulls) and Santa Rosa, the good, where I found the first shreds of solace after my sister's death two years ago.

This weekend I visited my third island in Channel Islands National Park, San Miguel, on an Island Packers trip.


Beach at Cuyler Harbor

San Miguel is the furthest island out, a windswept little place where thousands of birds nest and seals rest on the warm white velvet sands.


Elephant Seal

And if you think the ISLAND is pretty, you should have seen the boat's crew. They were truly something to bring a tear to the most jaded eye.

There I was, a large wrinkly hulk of a human dressed in 7 layers of warm clothing, surrounded by a crew made up of people who have been banned from Abercrombie and Fitch ads because they would humiliate the other models.

Ok, I made that up, but really, it was like a shipload of freakishly mutant gorgeous people who gracefully danced around the ship in bare feet and shorts like it was their own seagoing jungle gym.

There was the Captain, whose name I did not catch, but who was tanned and wiry and had that ocean-tinged golden glow about him. And the co-captain, Steve, who had dark skin and dark hair and eyes as blue as the sea and who I really shouldn't think about, because I have nephews older than he is.

And the women - Laurie, with golden ringlets and a smile that looks like the after picture in teeth-whitening commercials. And this other girl, who clocked in around 3% body fat and whose performance while bending over hauling in an anchor was definitely catching the attention of some of the male passengers on the craft.


The woman on the left and the guys in blue are crew members. The guy with the big hat is a really nice guy who goes out to the islands all the time.

And then there was me:


Some of the passengers were pretty cute, too. I talked to this tall, skinny Norwegian guy (and you KNOW I like them tall and skinny) for a while. When I asked him what he did, he said he helped design things like the Mars Rover. He used to work for Jet Propulsion Labs but now had his own company. Yes, for reals, a rocket scientist. A cute rocket scientist. Fortunately he had a very fit and tanned Norwegian wife to bounce himself off of my Looney Old Lady Radar of Loooove.

So I didn't get lucky on the trip, at least not with any rocket scientists or sea captains who were age-inappropriate. But I did get lucky and make some new friends. Let me introduce them:

And you know? I can live with that.

Lots more photos in my Flickr set.

7th Goldieversary

I have had Goldie for 7 fun years.


We have walked at least 5,000 miles together. Chased 3,000 birds. Caught 50 lizards, five gophers and one very mad rat. Been through one major and three minor surgeries. Rattlesnake bite. Foxtail in the eye and one in the ear. She has dragged me through bushes, into the ocean, over fences. She is an adventuresome dog and I am her enabler.

And as I say to her every day, I still think she is "the greatest dog in the world."

Tres Años

I am really sick of church, which is kind of bad, being as how I am a board member and all. Yeah, inconvenient.

The worst part is that I can't decide if it is actually for a good reason or just because I am pathologically unable to sustain a relationship - any relationship - for longer than three years.

Sigh. My brain is all wrong.

But when Sunday rolls around, I try to think of any excuse not to go to church. When I go, I enjoy it because of the people, but getting there is like walking in your most painful shoes. You just don't want to take that first step.

If I went to a church with 300 people, I could skip with no problem. But I don't. I go to a little church, so when I am missing, it is pretty obvious.

I have been involved in this church for a long time, but I never realized before how much it is based on this whole Law of Attraction/The Secret kind of thing. My old pastor was a Course in Miracles guy, not a "think of a pony and you'll get a pony" guy, and we never studied the basics of the church's teachings, so it just did not occur.

But I was mistaken. Once of the basic beliefs of my church is indeed the Law of Attraction. And you know how much I hate that nonsense.

The mush-brainedness of it continues to gall me. One of the notions is that you aren't supposed to think fear thoughts, lest those fears come true.

So during the Swine Flu scare, we put out hand sanitizer but we had to have a whole big dance-around speech about how we weren't going into fear thoughts but that we were just following Health Department orders...but NO FEAR THOUGHTS.

Holy cats, people. It is just hand sanitizer, not a condemnation of your fear-free brain. Germs exist. Get over it and clean yourself off.

(And if you think you are fear-free, you are SO lying. Unless you are an enlightened master. Which you aren't, because you're wasting your time reading blogs instead of going out and doing enlightened master stuff.)

Then this past week, the sermon was about how face-to-face interaction was good and computers were bad because they isolate us.

How about you? Do you feel isolated? Me, I'm looking forward to seeing Suzanne and Mar and Major Bedhead and Average Jane and about 200 of my other favorite isolated people in Chicago.

So I dunno. Maybe I am not cut out for this church thing. Maybe I need another church. Or a break. Or to suck it up and do something for longer than three years. Something. Right now I feel stuck with it until I get off the board in 6 months. Not that I'm counting. Pray for me.

All wet

My aqua aerobics partner-in-crime is Diana, a mischevous, bright-eyed special ed teacher.

We always in trouble with Cheryl, the control freak instructor, for running our yaps while we exercise. We get in water fights, crack each other up and generally behave as if we are 13 years old. But somehow we always get a good workout.

Today Diana was on the verge of being late to class. She walked to the edge of the pool and stepped off into the water.

Unfortunately, she stepped off right next to this hellish German woman. I mean, she isn't hellish because she is German (though my dad did have to go kick those bastards' butts back across the Rhineland in 1944), but because she is an uptight cranky old cow.

She doesn't come to class to work out. Instead, she always latches on to some poor unsuspecting fellow student and talks their ear off for the whole class in this whiny, complaining way she has, all the while moving her arms a couple times a minute so it looks like she is exercising.

I know because she caught me one day and it was horrible. Ever since, I have refused to make eye contact with her lest she draw me in with her Tractor Beam of Bad Personality.

ANYWAY, Diana made a *gasp* splash when she got in.

The German upbraided her severely. She went into a tirade about how she had just come from the salon, you see, where she had gotten her hair done. Right before coming to the swimming pool.

Her hair was this spiky Calvin in Calvin-and-Hobbes looking thing, and NOW IT WAS SPLASHED WITH WATER.


I kept catching Diana's eye as she was getting an earful and making juvenile faces at her over The German's shoulder.

Diana apologized profusely and managed to move away, but The German circled back for more.

"The sign," she said, pointing angrily, "says NO DAIFFFINK!"

Since when is stepping off the edge into the pool "diving"? No wonder the Chinese have been kicking the German's butts in that Olympic event for the past few decades.

And since when does someone go to a SWIMMING POOL where 40 people are splashing to the oldies and expect that they will be completely, 100 percent safe from getting their hair wet?

After laughing for the whole hour, I told Diana "I am SO blogging this."

Stay tuned for more adventures from Jerks at the Gym. Next up: "Yoga Class - You're In My Spot."

It's not FAIR

I was recently in a situation where someone went out of his way to make my life worse.

Why was he so malicious?

Because we were in a situation where he perceived that I was getting treated better than him. And there was no way to make his situation better, so he settled on making my situation worse.

And he was satisfied by that.

God, preserve me from people who want to make everything "fair."

As William Goldman said so wisely in "The Princess Bride"
Life is not fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

The sooner you learn that, the happier your life will be. Pinky swear.

If I Ran Things

My two favorite mind games are "If I Won the Lottery" and "If I Ran This Place."

The reason they stay mind games and not reality is that 1) I rarely play the lotto and 2) I am hopelessly incapable of being in charge of anything more complicated than lunch plans (and even then I manage to take the person with gastric reflux to Yazmeen's House of Fiery Hot Curry and the gluten-intolerant to Barb's House of Carbs).



One of my favorite businesses in the "If I Ran This Place" game is the airlines.

If I Ran An Airline:

1) The maximum allowable size for carry-ons would be the maximum allowable size. Period. Is there an airline that enforces this rule? If there is, let me know, because I want to fly with them and only them. People have wheeled carry-ons that are big enough to pack the corpse of Seabiscuit into. My rule: If you can't carry it on, it isn't a carry-on.

2) No reclining seats. The only thing that happens when someone reclines their seat is that they are 1% more comfortable and the person behind them is 99% more cramped and rage-filled. Upright and locked, baby.

3) Speaking of babies - parents MUST be allowed to be seated with their children. I hear endless tales of parents being separated from their kids on airlines and of other people refusing to switch seats to allow the family to be reunited. What kind of stupid-ass BS is that? Buddy, you're moving. Families get to sit together. Period.

4) Speaking of jerky passengers, flight attendants have the right to perform the Duct Tape treatment on anyone at any time. Come on. You know you want them to.

5) No movies. Have you ever seen a good movie on an airplane? I rest my case. Read, sleep, or look out the window as God intended you to. You're in an airplane, flying, as men have wanted to do for millenia. Now look out and marvel. Yeesh.




6) Try our new snacks. They are called "Lithium." They will ensure a nice flight for everyone.

7) We may not charge extra for overweight luggage, but may charge more for turbulence. You pay to go to Disneyland, right? Enjoy the ride!

8) Minimum seat width: the average ass width of shoppers at the Tampa Wal-Mart on a Sunday in late January. Why Tampa? I picked it because it is kind of a silly name. Why Wal-Mart? It's where America shops for value (oh, wait, that's Sears. But not anymore! Sorry, Sears. America is over there at Wal-Mart, picking up their $5 prescription.) Why late January? Because by then, the Christmas cookies have had time to sink in.

9) Minimum leg room: comfortable for the shortest player on the World Championship Lakers Basketball team. (Go LAKERZZZZZZ!) Let's just hope it isn't one of those Muggsy Boggs/Spud Webb years.

10) The barf bag would be called the "Aloha" bag. I learned this on a helicopter in Hawaii. Because the sound of someone throwing up? "A-lohhhhhh-haaaaaa."

That's all for my airline? If you ran things, how would it be?