It's Almost APRIL and It's SNOWING

How dare more snow fall?

Cold, vile, wet, unwelcome slop

Soon it will be mud

Cooking, Craving & Crappy Weather

I admit I take a perverse pride in not being a cook. I shun any meal that includes things which might qualify as “ingredients.” When I cook (using the term in its loosest sense) it involves frozen, boxed, canned or deli-prepared pseudo-foods. I know this isn’t good. I know that processed foods of any sort are not nearly as healthy as assembling one’s own fresh (preferably organic) ingredients. But in the realm of my many flaws and shortcomings, I have to pick my battles. I prefer not to wage my war in the kitchen.

I am, however, a great heater-upper. Today is a classic example of that. I gazed into the freezer and saw nothing there that appealed to me, yet for some reason I was feeling oddly domestic. Tom had to work, and he almost never gets stuck working Sundays (he misses too much football and NASCAR that way). I thought he would appreciate a decent dinner, so off I went to Bob’s Produce to secure a tasty meal involving as few “ingredients” as possible.

I discovered in their meat case a wild rice meatloaf, which looked good and evoked the appropriate level of domesticity. Into the basket. (They wrap the meat in brown paper for you, which is so retro.) The freezer case contained a bag of frozen rosemary-garlic red potato wedges. Into the basket. I already had refrigerator crescent roll dough and a bag of frozen seasoned summer vegetables. Arriving home with my bounty, I set about meal-preparation. Actually, the only preparation involved was the ketchup, Worcestershire and garlic glaze I made to dump on the meatloaf, which I had divided into two smaller loaves for faster and more even cooking.

He seemed to enjoy it. He’s having seconds right now.

Mealtimes around here often consist of each of us nuking whatever appeals to us when we get hungry. This leads to unusual mealtimes and an excess of snacks. Tom is making an effort to eat better meals and fewer snacks, so this was my small way to help him. Today I bought dill pickle potato chips, because that’s one of the few snacks that I like and he doesn’t. See? Thoughtful wife, indulging her own cravings for salt and crunch without derailing the husband’s dietary plans. I also bought two cherry turnovers, but I hid those. They are mine, mine, mine I say!

I must have recovered from my near-death-by-fruit experience, because I’m craving it again. Also oodles of vegetables. I believe in listening to my body when it’s telling me it needs something like this. I’ve learned to ignore it when it says it needs about ten glasses of Merlot, though. Sometimes it gets “need” and “want” confused. Lately it’s been telling me it doesn’t much care for meat (something about the texture, I think) but would like me to provide more things from the plant kingdom. Specifically, right now it wants citrus. I was hesitant at first, because I used to get such awful heartburn… but that was pre-gastric-bypass. I don’t get it anymore. So today, while at Bob’s, I got blood oranges, tangelos and some other orangish, round, citrusy thing with “honey” in the name, which presumably indicates that I can expect it to taste sweet. I’ll probably eat them all tonight.

Maybe I can eat enough citrus that I will actually make myself sick and be unable to go to work tomorrow, which right now has tremendous appeal… since I just saw tonight’s weather report. The dickwad weather guy just informed us that we can expect 3 to 6 inches of snow tomorrow. (Yes, I blame him. It’s irrational, but there you are.) He actually used the words “messy, mucky, murky and miserable.” This amuses me not at all. 90% of our snow finally melted this weekend, and while it did cause my boots to make disgusting squelching sounds while walking Bog-Dog through the yard on leash to keep him out of the quagmire, I had finally dared allow myself to believe spring might finally be on its way. But this is Minnesota, where you can expect to be kicked in the teeth by the weather on a regular basis.

I also noticed “While Walking Darwin” (sorry, Curt!) that Ozark is under the impression that we need an ornamental koi pond in the back yard. He has dug a considerable number of impressive test-holes at random locations. Fill those up with snow, and somebody’s going to break a leg. Most likely me.

Unless the weather guy is completely wrong (one can always hope), you can expect to hear me rant about the snow tomorrow. A lot. Because if I have to trudge through six more inches of this slop – again – I’m going to spread the joy.

A Cautionary Tale, Part 2

(If you haven’t read Part 1, you should do that before reading this; otherwise you will have even less of a clue what’s going on than I did. When l left you yesterday, I had suddenly stopped hearing from my friend David, who was dying of leukemia but had met someone special. They were about to embark on a cruise with the girls who worked for her, during which they were going to announce their engagement, possibly have the wedding… then let them know that he was terminally ill.)

At first, I figured they were just having too much fun on the cruise, but the “Oh my God, David is dying” emails that I expected never came. Something fishy was going on.

Looking back, I realized that while I had emailed with Gina, and seen photos, I had never spoken to her on the phone. Whenever I talked to David, it was him calling me when she was out, to ask me things like how to tell her about his illness, or to tell me about some surprise he had planned for her. But when she emailed or instant messaged, the spelling and punctuation, the font and colors were different, and when IM-ing each was always careful to clear the screen before turning it over to the other, because our conversations were often about the other and various surprises and secrets.

I reluctantly concluded that Gina was a figment of David’s imagination, someone he created to make me happy for him, so I wouldn’t feel sorry for this lonely, dying man. Then it hit me that the spa girls, the cruise, the Grand Hotel, the red dress, the gifts, the travel... were all lies.

I thought the only thing I could. David had reached the point where his cancer was overwhelming him, and he had done as he’d planned – he took the pills he had been carrying to end his own suffering. I was scanning obituaries, expecting to see his name. I hoped his family knew, that they had claimed his body, and that they were carrying out his final wishes. I wondered if I’d be getting a letter soon, instructing me how to claim the ashes if they didn’t.

How was I going to find out? I checked his business website, and it was still up and running. I sent an email, identifying myself as a friend of David’s, and asked how to reach him. Then I realized I knew his daughter’s name and age, as well as approximately where she lived, so I searched on MySpace until I found her page. But how to contact her and bring up this subject? “Hi, you don’t know me, but I was wondering if your father died recently.” Probably not very tactful. I composed a note, again identifying myself as an online friend of her dad, and that he’d suddenly dropped out of sight, and I wondered if he was OK. While awaiting her reply, I read her MySpace blog.

It suddenly became quite clear. David was an enormous fucking liar.

A quick reply from his daughter, then (because there was so much to tell) she called me. Short story – he was in jail in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Let’s see. Where to start listing the almost countless lies? Probably easier to list what was true. Among the factual bits were his name, his family’s names, his business name, the fact that his dad was a doctor and his brother is a dentist, and they lived in Wisconsin. That’s about it.

He did not now nor had he ever had leukemia. Oh, and he also wasn’t divorced. (He is now, though!)

Apparently until May of last year, they all thought life was rolling along quite normally. The family consisted of Mom, Dad, 20-something daughter, and teenage son. Dad’s business was going well, and he ran the occasional amateur sports car race himself. And then, one fateful evening in early May, a woman appeared at their door and introduced herself to Mrs. David as his girlfriend. Uh-oh! When he stumbled upon this touching scene, it hit the fan. He ended up in his workshop with a gun, threatening to kill himself. This led to a stay in a local psychiatric facility.

During his stay there, it was discovered that this particular girlfriend of five years was but one of many. He’d been carrying on with a string of other women for something like 16 years. Learning that David was not who they had always believed him to be caused everyone to take a deeper look at things, and it was revealed that not only was he an enormous fucking liar, he was also a thief.

Dear Daddy David had looted around $100,000 from his kids’ trust funds. He had stolen his brother’s identity and run up nearly $65,000 in bad debt. He had also stolen his daughter’s identity and managed to steal about $6,000, and she was horrified to find that she was wanted on fraud charges. She remedied that situation quickly, adding to the list of atrocities committed by her father.

When he got out of the facility, apparently before he could be arrested, he broke into the girlfriend’s house, and stole money and anything else not nailed down. He then “went missing.” So, in a way, he was truthful in telling me that he was estranged from his family, but he allowed me to believe it was because of his pending death and their inability to accept his wishes regarding it. He did take off with an old convertible and some camping gear, but his family didn’t know that yet. All they knew is that his cell phone was found near the train tracks, and he was nowhere to be found. His daughter was furious, betrayed, and worried sick. She was torn between wanting him to be punished for all that he’d done, and wanting him to get help, because he clearly had a lot of psychological issues.

Minutes after my final communication from him, in which “Gina” told me that the van was arriving to take her, David, and the six spa girls to the cruise ship, he was arrested by DNR officers in Michigan. They’d been looking for him due to a string of bad checks he’d been using to pay for campsites. The laptop was stolen. So was the cell phone he’d been using.

When I spoke to his daughter, he was still in jail, and I believe he still is. There are many, many charges pending against him in a variety of jurisdictions. There’s also the fact that he hadn’t paid taxes on his business for several years. By the time we’d had this conversation in late September, the business had been sitting idle since May. He’d taken money for orders he’d never delivered, and the business is bankrupt.

I assured her I was not one of “the girlfriends,” and told her the story he’d been feeding me, not only for the last couple of months, but for nearly three years. He was frighteningly consistent, always. And the detail, the enormous effort he put into the whole “death trip and meeting the wonderful Gina” story was downright creepy. There were detailed accounts of each day, what they wore, where they dined, all the spa girls with individual personalities and complex relationships – it was all quite incredible. She asked for the email addresses and IM identities he had been using, which I gladly provided. In return, I asked her to let me know if he ever got out of jail. I don’t think I’d exactly be a priority for him in that event, but he’d been talking about “coming to meet me before he died,” and I’d discussed it with Tom, obtaining permission for lunch in a public location. He and “Gina” had even been planning to come see me after the wedding. Clearly he couldn’t have pulled that one off!

One day a couple of months later, one of the spa-girl IDs logged on instant message. Did he get out? I waited to see if he’d message me, because I sure as hell felt I deserved an explanation. No contact was forthcoming, so I went on the offensive. I asked who was on the account. Finally a tentative answer came, “me.” To summarize, it turned out to be a very nice 50-something man who works for the county in which David is incarcerated. He works for the IT department and had been given the task of cleaning out the laptop David had been using, so that it could be sold at auction. We chatted a bit, and he told me there was a lot of seriously icky stuff in that computer.

The upheaval this whole thing caused in my life is nothing compared to what this man has put his family through. His wife did, in fact, divorce him, and his kids want nothing to do with him. Their lives have been turned upside down, and will never be the same.

But on some levels it did affect me.

Of course I felt gullible. On the other hand, he was very, very good at weaving his own version of reality. Everything he’d told me up until the “death trip” had been completely plausible and consistent. The details that could be checked out did check out. I verified his name, his family names, his business, the fact that he’d had a photo studio that had been sold about five years before, his brother was a dentist, and I even saw his name in the results listings for the amateur races he had told me he’d been in, as well as the events his business had sponsored. I never had any reason to become suspicious.

During that final month red flags began to appear, but most could be dismissed because I had always known David was a bit extravagant and impulsive, given to grand gestures, and that he might do things even more irrationally than usual, given that he was facing the prospect of his own imminent death. Maybe it was odd that he met the perfect woman at that precise time. Maybe it was odd that he managed to rent a cabin that I had once visited myself. Maybe the drive along the shore, the luxury home rental, the gifts, visiting her hometown and meeting “her girls,” the photo that I never received… maybe all of it was plausible, but altogether it was suspicious. Still, the intricate and consistent details he shared gave it all some ring of truth, even if it was more like an Oprah Book Club story. I believed he was dying, and wanted also to believe he’d found some happiness and would not die alone.

Still, all this took from me was a good-sized chunk of my time. I can feel all betrayed and lied to, but that part didn’t bother me all that much. He did, however, bring it all a little bit closer to home for me.

While he never bragged about having money (I guess he used to… then he just took it from other people; I guess multiple girlfriends are expensive.), he sure seemed to have it. While talking to “Gina,” I told her that I was attempting once again to write my book, and that Tom and I had discussed finding a way for me to take six months off from work so I could focus on it and get it done. The problem was that we absolutely can’t afford to lose my income for that long. We're regular "just getting by" working people. I was trying to figure out if I could get some sort of grant, and mentioned this to her. She said, “Maybe some rich, dying guy could finance the sabbatical.”

This was something I had never, ever considered, and would never in a thousand years have brought up. I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to ask David to do that, because that was not why he was my friend. She said that it was something he’d love to do, if he knew I needed it. I relented, and said she could mention it, but only what I was planning to try to do. If he offered to help in any way, it had to be based on that knowledge alone. I didn’t want to be one more female who wanted to get something out of him, as he had portrayed several women in his past. (None of that was true, of course, but I didn’t yet know that.) Maybe I was being disingenuous, though, because deep down I believed "Gina" would not only tell him what I needed, but strongly encourage him to help me. I elected to just let it go, and let fate do what it would.

This planted a tiny seed of hope in me, which was doomed from the start. I was thinking that David had always proven to be very generous with his family and friends, and here I was essentially the only person standing by him (even from far away) while he faced the most difficult thing he’d ever been through. Perhaps it wouldn’t be unusual to leave a small bequest for such a friend. Maybe I’d be able to use that to pursue my own dream. I vowed to myself that I would thank him publically, in the acknowledgements when my book was published. (I’m such a sentimental sap.)

But it was all bullshit. He didn’t have a penny to his name by now, and any money he’d had recently had been stolen from others. Yet he was cruel enough to bring this up, to make this offer, to dangle hope before me, to allow me to think that maybe, just maybe, I was going to catch a break for once so I could get my feet under me and have the luxury of the time to do something that meant the world to me. And all the time he knew it was an impossibility.

I could forgive the other lies. He is clearly a very disturbed, unhappy man, and if creating a fictional world and sharing the tale with me made him happy, that didn’t really hurt me at all. What he was doing to his family was a whole ‘nother story, but ultimately not my concern. I’d have been pissed to learn that the whole Gina Story was a lie, because I’d really bought into that, but in the end it wouldn’t really change my life much.

But I cannot forgive the one time he actively drew me in, to make me part of the story. I never asked him for anything, and never would have. For him (through the persona of the fictitious Gina) to offer what I believed would be a small thing for him, but a huge opportunity for me, was unnecessary to his fantasy-world, and deeply hurtful for me.

Hope is the greatest gift you can give someone who is struggling. False hope is a sadistic joke.

Do I consider myself a compassionate and loyal friend? With no risk of immodesty, I believe I can say that I am.

Am I capable of holding a grudge? While it’s probably not something of which I should be proud, I can hold a grudge like nobody’s business.

The fact that he held false hope before me, making me think that perhaps a small bequest from his considerable resources would grant me opportunities that I otherwise would not have, that being a good, kind, compassionate, loyal, hard-working human being might finally earn me some little bit of breathing space in my life… that is something I cannot forgive.

In the spirit of championship grudge-holding, if he never sees the outside of a jail cell (or psychiatric hospital) again, it would not break my heart.

Maybe I’m not such a good person after all.

Intermission

To pass the time while you're waiting for me to post Part 2 of my earlier tale, let's enjoy (and I do use that term with a heavy dose of sarcasm) some recent photos of Brody, Ozark and Darwin (who is better known as Bog Dog these days). Sprocket was far too dignified and sensible to be involved. He waited, warm and snug, in the house.

Here are a couple from the other day when we got that last (I HOPE) snowfall:

Brody and Ozark, undoubtedly plotting against Darwin




Brody: "Go ahead and get him, Ozark! He doesn't suspect a thing!"




Ozark: "He's too fast. How 'bout if I just get you instead?"
Brody: "HEY, that's my EAR!"



Ozark: "I don't know what Brody told you, but it is totally not true!"


And here are a few pictures I took today. (I never used this camera before. Clearly I have a lot to learn!)

Brody: "Mom, do NOT look at Darwin. I'm warning you. Do NOT look at Darwin."



Darwin: "Brody ratted me out again, didn't he? Hi, mom!"



Bad dog. Bad bad dog. (Yet somehow cute)



Darwin: "So, I guess we're headed for the tub, huh, Mom?"
Me: "You bet your muddy fuzzy little ass we are."

And that is my Saturday up until now. Why do I feel like I need a nap? The most strenuous thing I plan to do for the rest of the day is finish the book I'm reading and select a new one.

A Cautionary Tale, Part 1

This is a story I told back in September on MySpace, but I’m going to see if I can tell it a bit better here. There’s a lot of information to be presented before we get to the “hook,” though, so hang in there. It’s a long, long story, so I'm going to split it into two installments! Tom works all weekend, so I have time.

If you are reading a blog, you’re probably fairly active online, and you probably have cyber-friends. You know what I mean; people you may have been emailing for a long time, and while you’ve never met in person, you feel you know each other pretty well. I have lots of those, and even consider some of them among my best friends.

David was such a friend.

We met a few years ago, when I was preparing to go on my first (and so far only) cruise. I was reading and asking questions on a cruise message board when our paths initially crossed. During the course of this, we found out we had other common interests, and began emailing privately.

As is best in cyber-friendships, we took our time revealing personal information. It was months before we shared last names or other identifying facts. I learned that he was several years older than I was, and had been divorced for about seven years. He had two kids, a son who was then 16, and a daughter in her early 20s. He had been engaged, but she had broken it off a year before, shortly before their wedding. His father had been a doctor, his older brother was a successful dentist, and the family definitely had money. He lived about five hours from me. In high school, he had been an up-and-coming tennis player and was interested in photography. He later opened a photography studio and operated that for 20 years, but had sold it several years previously when the city was redeveloping the area. He then started a radio-communications business, customized for the racing industry. He also did some work in retail jewelry.

The other thing he told me was that shortly after his divorce, he had been diagnosed with a rare and nasty form of leukemia and had almost died. He’d had intensive treatment, and finally a bone marrow transplant from his brother, and had been in remission for about five years. Six or eight months into our friendship, I didn’t hear from him for a while. When he wrote again he said that he’d begun having symptoms again, and had learned that his cancer had recurred, and he was undergoing treatments.

My younger sister is a registered nurse in one of the leading centers for cancer treatments and bone marrow and stem cell transplants. I talked with her about his situation, and she said the outlook was grim, because after having the bone marrow transplant there weren’t a lot of other options. David was undergoing experimental treatments at the Mayo Clinic. After a while, he was doing better, but was under close observation by his doctors.

David was a funny and generous man. He was the sort who would do anything for those he cared about, but was also the type who would find a way to make his point if he felt someone had wronged him. He told me about how he’d proposed to his former fiancée in Paris, and when she broke it off with him, he had taken the stunning, laser-engraved diamond ring and tossed it down a storm drain right in front of her. What she did not know was that it wasn’t the real diamond, but a fake that he’d gotten just for that purpose. He wanted to freak her out and show her that the ring meant nothing because she’d erased any “value” it might have had to him. He also mentioned that he’d let her keep many of the things they’d bought together in preparation for their upcoming marriage, but took back the other jewelry (which he gave to his daughter) and the lingerie which he threw out the window of his car, piece by piece, on a road trip. I found this darkly hilarious.

Over the next year, he had another recurrence of his cancer, but it was once again battled back into remission. We talked on the phone occasionally, and I enjoyed our relationship. Due to his involvement in the racing industry, we knew a lot of the same people. He had a girlfriend that he talked about frequently, before she broke it off. He believed it was because she couldn’t deal with his illness. Months later there was another girlfriend, but that didn’t last because she had a drinking problem and he discovered he didn’t have deep enough feelings for her to make him inclined to endure that.

David seemed to be an intelligent, successful, funny, strong man, yet there was a loneliness in him that I tried to fill in some small way through our friendship.

After another period in which I didn’t hear from him, I got an email. This was last August. It said he had recently learned from his doctor that the cancer was active again, and they were out of options. He had about two months to live. This news, and his decision to accept it without pursuing further experimental treatments, had caused a huge fight with his children and ex-wife who could not understand or accept his decision. He had taken an old convertible, some personal belongings (including an old laptop) and hit the road. There were things he wanted to do before he died, and since his family wasn’t supporting his decision, he struck out on his own.

I, being the supportive and caring friend I am, told him how sad I was at the news, how much I would miss him, and how it upset me that his own family wasn’t there for him. He called me, and ended up crying because he was so alone, and he feared that when he died nobody would even claim his body. He asked me if I would consider claiming his ashes, if he left the appropriate documents and instructions, and scatter them at his favorite turn of a particular racetrack. I said that of course I would.

He continued to email and instant message wherever he could get a wireless signal, from a variety of locations and coffee shops in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. One morning he went to have breakfast, and later wrote, very excited that he had met a woman at the cafe. She had been reading a book he had recently read, and they struck up a conversation. She was divorced, about my age, and was on a solo getaway of her own, taking a break from the spa she owned in the southern part of the state. Her name was Gina, and she was gorgeous. He was giddy over the fact that they had decided to spend the day hiking together. I jokingly told him if she needed a “reference,” that she could email me.

Over the next day, she did just that. I told her what I knew about him, except for the fact that he was dying. She noticed that his watch occasionally beeped, and he would excuse himself. I was aware that he was taking some medication aimed at keeping him comfortable as he awaited the inevitable, but he’d asked me to let him tell her about that in his own time. So I dodged those questions handily.

They quickly became inseparable. I continued to write to them both, as they traveled around the U.P. and rented a luxurious house on the shore. He began buying her extravagant gifts, and she was uncomfortable with this, until I impressed upon her that David considered money just a “thing,” and that he loved giving gifts to people he cared about, and that it would really hurt his feelings if she didn’t accept them.

Their relationship intensified, and he told her about his illness. She was devastated, feeling she’d found someone with whom she might have a future, but she soon decided that she would stay with him “till the end.” She stated in no uncertain terms that she would not accept any sort of “inheritance” from him, but wanted to enjoy whatever time they had. They went to the Grand Hotel, and I heard all about the romantic, wonderful things they did. He bought her clothes, including a spectacular red gown that she wore to dinner. They had a portrait taken that night, and they promised to have the photographer email it to me. She instant messaged me about the box of Victoria’s Secret clothing and lingerie he had delivered to her while he was out sailing, and we gushed over each piece as she unpacked it and tried it on.

Next, they went to her hometown so that she could arrange with her business partner to be away from the spa for a while longer, so she could continue to travel with David. He met the “spa girls” who worked for her, and I started getting emails from them, very excited about the boss’s “new man.” They were silly young things, all very beautiful (we all were exchanging photos), and they seemed to have the hots for David, which did his bruised ego good.

Gina had also recently discovered that some sexy professional pictures she’d had taken a few years ago for her then-husband had been put on a voyeur website by the photographer, and when she told David about this he went to see the photographer and impressed upon him the urgent need for him to remove the photos if he valued his continued existence. He also took out an ad in the local newspaper, telling people not to trust this photographer and to find out if they, too, had been released into cyberspace without their knowledge or consent.

David and Gina went on their way, and headed to Florida. After a day in South Beach, they rented a car and drove toward the Keys. They stopped along the way and rented a gorgeous houseboat with the plan to take that the rest of the way to the Keys. David had also done something he had sworn he’d never do again – he got a blood transfusion, so he could stay strong and active as long as possible, to enjoy this time with Gina. I was so glad that this lonely man had found a strong, compassionate (and beautiful) woman to be with him, even though it would be for weeks or months, instead of years. She kept me up to date on his health status, his good days and bad days, and the nightmares he was having.

One morning he even called me to say not to worry if I didn’t hear from Gina until later because she’d had a bit too much to drink the night before, and wasn’t feeling well. She wrote later, swearing off tequila forever.

They wrote to tell me they were going to a particular bar in Key West for dinner, and that I should look for them on the webcam. They would wave. Gina told me what she’d be wearing, so they’d be easier to pick out. I’m not much into webcams, so I didn’t look, but some of the spa girls did, and they were excited to see the couple having such an adventure.

I began to wonder if they might actually get married. He said if that were to happen, she had to ask him because he didn’t feel he had any right to ask her that, given his situation. I talked to both of them separately about it, and after several discussions, they got engaged. He’d bought a ring while they were still in Michigan, just in case.

David arranged a three-day cruise out of Miami for the two of them, plus her spa staff, as a big surprise. They planned to announce the engagement, perhaps get married in one of the ports, and David sent the girls hot pink bikinis along with their trip information. A flurry of emails from them bombarded me with questions. I was not to reveal the engagement or the illness; that was something David and Gina would do on the cruise.

The morning of the cruise, the girls were all in Miami, ready to board, and David went to a hospital for another blood transfusion. The van was about to arrive to take everyone to the ship, and I was looking forward to hearing about the cruise, the engagement announcement, and the wedding. I was less looking forward to when they told them that David would likely be a part of their lives for only a couple of months.

I never heard from any of them again.

(Later today or tomorrow, you will get... The Rest of the Story!)

Will I Answer, Or Won't I?

We’re getting new cell phones in a few days. Not that we needed them, or that either of us is especially thrilled about it, but it seemed to be time so we’re getting them. We’re not “cell phone people” who take calls no matter where we are. I’ve probably sent text messages to a total of three or four people (ever), I don’t get online or read email with my phone, and we see no need for a camera in our phones. I occasionally make a call, and if it rings, I sometimes answer it. (It depends on who it is.)

We got rid of our “land line” a couple of years ago, though, so our cells are now our only means of verbal communication, short of yelling loudly from the back deck. We only kept the house phone as long as we did because it took a while for our neighborhood to get cable internet, so we needed a phone line for the computer. Once cable internet arrived, though, I couldn’t get rid of the phone fast enough. I’ve spent most of my adult life working in service jobs which consisted largely of answering the phone. I hate the phone. I am not a chatter. If information needs to be exchanged, fine. Otherwise, send me an email and I’ll read it eventually (as long as it’s not some stupid “forward” or chain email), and will most likely reply. With the phone, you take your chances.

This will be the first time we’ve had “flip phones.” Tom always maintained that the non-flip variety were more durable, and since he uses his phone a lot more than I do, and carries it on his belt at work, I figured whatever he wanted was fine with me. Now most of the phones are the smaller flip-type, so that’s what we’re getting. I have no idea what model it is. I don’t care.

One thing I do know is that it’s best to keep things as simple as possible, because the more complicated it is, the more likely you are to have problems. And you do not want to have problems that result in having to call your wireless carrier’s “customer support.” This industry has taken useless to a whole new level in terms of “helping” their customers. I have yet to have a single positive experience with any wireless carrier for any problem, and I think we’ve been with most of them by now. We’d planned to switch carriers when our contract expired, then decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, because whoever we switched to would suck just as much.

I’m always a little frantic when I get a new phone. I haven’t bothered to learn how to set them up; Tom takes care of that. My one absolute essential, though, is to have Cross Canadian Ragweed ringtones. They must be downloaded and programmed immediately. If my phone rang, and I didn’t hear Cody singing “Constantly” or “Alabama,” how would I know to answer it? Would I even want to? Hearing Cody when someone is trying to call also me makes me a little less likely to drop-kick the phone into the next room, sparing me more possible calls to “customer support,” so it’s worth it for that alone.

Actually, I was browsing today, in anticipation of this Big Event, and discovered that “Back Around” is now available as a ringtone, so that’s going on there for sure. The problem is that it will take me forever to figure out how to accomplish this. I haven’t done anything with my old phone for at least two years, other than answer it and make the occasional call. The whole downloading process tends to get me confused and flustered. Yet I must have these ringtones. It will take me the better part of a morning, but once I have them, I have them. Then I can set about forgetting how I got them, so I can be just as confused the next time I get a new phone.

Tom keeps his phone on at all times, but mine is only on when I’m a) not at work and b) not with him. If he’s around, anyone who might need to reach us in an emergency knows to call him, and if I’m at work, people know they can reach me there. But they probably shouldn’t bother.

If the ringtones are “my thing,” then the voice dial feature is Tom’s. I don’t think it’s too hard to scroll down my recent numbers (since I normally only talk to the same handful of people and they’re always in my recent calls list), but he enjoys being able to tell his phone who he would like to call.

I know I have to have a phone of some sort, but cell phones are so annoying. People act like they can’t live without them. Teenagers are wrecking their cars because they’re trying to text each other while they’re driving. Why??? What’s wrong with not being able to be reached by phone for fifteen minutes? Before cell phones, any time you were away from the house or your job, people couldn’t call you. And we all survived! Do we have better communication simply because we have more of it? I don’t think so.

About the only really good thing I can think of when it comes to cell phones is the trend toward free long distance. When I was a newlywed and young mom, and my own mother had just died, I spent a lot of time on the phone with my older sister and my aunt, and ran up massive phone bills. If that were the case today, I could have gotten all my information (“The baby just went ‘grrrrkgl!’ What does he want???”) and comfort and not had phone bills in the $200-300 range.

But even free long distance has its drawbacks. Whatever happened to writing letters? Remember those? People would buy pretty paper, write using their very own hand and an actual pen, tell others what was going on in their lives, sign it with love, put it in an envelope, address it, lick a stamp, and someone would have a pleasant surprise in a few days when they opened their mailbox. I used to write a lot of letters. I used to get a lot of letters. I miss letters.

So, on Monday I will most likely receive my new phone. Tom will set it up, I will download ringtones (calling The Boy from the normal phone on my desk at work for technical assistance if necessary), and that will be it. My phone will go back to being something that I resent more than appreciate, riding around in the bottom of my purse. If it has internet capabilities (which I really don’t know; it doesn’t matter) I won’t use them. I know it doesn’t take pictures, but if it can receive them, I’ll never know it.

It’s just a phone. And I don’t like phones.

Spring Car Cleaning

Tom made me clean out my car yesterday.

Wait. That’s not accurate. We don’t “make” each other do things. Not only would that be dictatorial, it would also be spectacularly unsuccessful. When one of us knows the other would like us to do something, we generally do it, because that’s what marriage is all about. Plus, it cuts down on fights over stupid little things.

If I want Tom to do helpful things for me, though, such as take my car to work and change the oil or take off my winter tires, I have to clean it out first. So yesterday I did that. This involved removing approximately 70 empty beverage bottles and dozens of empty cigarette packs. Yes, my car is typically a rolling dumpster.

It’s not that I don’t like my car. I do. It’s a 1999 red Chevy Cavalier Special Racing Edition. This means it has a spoiler on the back, a sun roof, and sporty little checkered flag decals around all the Chevy insignia, as well as a small oval thing that clearly states that it is a Special Racing Edition. It’s still a Cavalier, though, so thinking of it in terms of any sort of racing is rather ludicrous. I inherited this car in 2000 when my dad passed away. He’d gotten it just eight months earlier, when he was 75. Whenever anyone asked what a 75 year old man needed with a sporty little red car, he would answer, “To pick up women.” Yep, that was my dad.

I might like my car, but I hate to drive. I drive myself to work, and on necessary errands on my day off, and that’s about it. I will do just about anything to get out of having to drive anywhere. If it’s a work-related seminar or gathering, I always manage to bum a ride from someone else, especially if it is to a place with which I am unfamiliar. Not only are there far too many idiots on the road, I constantly fear that I might do something to make me appear to be just as idiotic.

The more you drive, the more likely you will eventually be in an accident, and that is simply too anxiety-making. I’ve been in two minor accidents in my life, and the whole “scene of the crash” thing is enough to make me throw up right there by the side of the road. (Not in my car. Even I would have a hard time dealing with that kind of mess.) I figure if I’m ever in another accident it would be best if I were rendered unconscious so I could skip that part altogether. Let the police and paramedics sort it all out. They can fill me in when I wake up.

Because I almost never have anyone else in the car with me, I don’t see a problem with tossing my empty bottles and cigarette packs on the passenger side floor. Since it has been a long, cold, miserable winter, I hadn’t felt the need to go outside and tote all my trash to the dumpster. Hence the massive accumulation of junk on both the front and back floorboards. It’s my car, and if it doesn’t bother me, it shouldn’t bother anyone else.

I also rarely take my car through the car wash. It seems rather unnecessary. From time to time, though, I do have to get the extra-strength glass cleaner and go scrub the smoke residue from the inside of the windshield. I realize it’s time to do this when I think we’ve been having a suspiciously long string of foggy days. Oh, yeah, it’s the window, not the weather.

We don’t like to put a bunch of bumper stickers on our cars, but I do have one lying in the back window, which reads “Militant Agnostic. I Don’t Know, and You Don’t Either.” I also have one of those white “etched glass” style stickers of a golden retriever in a side window, and a red Cross Canadian Ragweed logo centered low in the rear window. Those, along with one of my dad’s old hats in the back window are all the personal touches I have added.

Well, there’s the pervasive stench of cigarette smoke, but again… it’s my car, and that’s one of the few places in the populated universe in which I can still smoke.

The other thing that clearly designates this as “my car” is the thick coating of dog hair on the back seat. No matter where I go, a little bit of my dogs goes with me!

If you ever see me driving down the road, don’t worry. I’m not the “road rage” type, I’ll give you plenty of room, won’t tailgate, and I never fail to use my blinker. So be kind! If you traumatize me in any way, I’ll have a panic attack that will not only ruin the rest of my day, I may refuse to leave the house on my next day off. Not that I’ll be using that time to clean my house or car. It’s far more likely that I’ll be at my desk blogging about the idiot who almost ran me off the road.

But if I were in a roll-over accident today, I would not be buried under an avalanche of empty Lipton Diet Berry Green Tea bottles. Because Tom made me clean out my car.

If I Only Had a Brain

Some of you have written to ask what’s going on, since I didn’t post a blog yesterday. Nothing’s wrong, I’m just brain dead. I have about four half-written (or just badly written) blogs, but nothing I’m happy enough with to publish. Hey, if nothing else, I try not to subject my readers to mediocrity.

One topic I’m working on is my thin/fat/surgery/thin story. That will be a two-parter, because there’s no way to tell the tale in anything resembling a brief manner. As we know, “brief” is not one of my strong suits anyway, and there’s a lot to that story. While there are some humorous aspects, it’s not that funny a story. My perspective is such that I am able to see the funny bits in retrospect, and I’ll try to share those in as upbeat and silly a manner as possible, but going through nearly two decades of morbid obesity is still essentially depressing. Until I can get all that worked into a readable, non-gloomy format, that one is on the shelf.

Some other subjects include my fascination with Google Analytics (who is visiting, who is not visiting, and the strange places around the world from which people are finding Fermented Fur), some of the bizarre search strings that are somehow leading people to my blog (example: “carpet glue turned rancid”), the ongoing unspoken strategic battle my husband and I have been waging over our household windows (open or closed?), and various work-related grumblings.

I truly had planned to come up with something good on my lunch break today, but as it turns out I simply do not have the available brain cells to accomplish this. One reason involves what should have been a simple task. The goal was to have our practice management program look through our canine patients, decide which of them are at least six months old and have not had a heartworm test, and enter a reminder for them for April 1. Apparently our computer is silicon-deficient or magnetically challenged, because it is unable to do this. My call to tech support informed me that if I try to do it that way, it will not only add a reminder for the intended patients, it will also switch all existing reminders to April 1, even if they just had a heartworm test this week.

This left me with the horrifyingly unacceptable alternative of printing a list of all dogs six months or older without a heartworm test reminder, and then going in and manually entering each one. So, Woman With the I.Q. of Dryer Lint walked me step by step through the Information Search function, creating a new search and report that would provide the list that I wholeheartedly did not want, but still needed. I ran the report. I printed the report. The report included over 3000 patients and took up 175 pages.

We do not have 3000+ canine patients. We might have close to that many, but a lot of them already DO have heartworm test reminders in their records. Upon further investigation, I determined that while she was walking me “step by step” through entering all the parameters for this search, WWTIQODL failed to have me enter the one that says “Species = Canine.” Translation: “Must be dog.” So I had a report of not only the dogs who hadn’t had heartworm tests, but also the birds, cats, guinea pigs, iguanas, ferrets, rabbits, gerbils, bearded dragons, chinchillas and pythons who have not had them. This would be 100% of all non-dog patients, as we only test dogs for heartworm disease.

I re-ran the report, including that handy bit of search criteria, and brought the list below 2000, and seem to have excluded birds, cats, reptiles, and other non-dog mammals. A mere 120 pages now. I notice, however, that any particular page (such as the first one) has every animal on it shown 2-4 times. I do not know why. I decide this is inconvenient, but I can cross out all but the first appearance of each pet. It will make it look like I’m getting a lot done. I shall feel ever so productive as I make lots of blue “cross out” lines with my Sharpie.

Then I begin to pull up each pet’s record, so that I can insert a heartworm test reminder, because none of these animals is supposed to have one, according to the freaking report. Eight of the first 10 I attempt to work with have already had a heartworm test, so there is already a reminder in there. Yet there they are on my dumb-ass report. This is not helping me at all. Rather than call back and try to fine-tune the report, then run it again (And someone has to go to Costco because we’re almost out of paper; I can’t really run another 100+ page report that will probably also be useless), I will just wait till Friday.

Tech support’s WWTIQODL also failed to help me with another strange glitch that we’ve been trying to figure out since yesterday. We transcribe all our charts directly into the computer, so that when we need to print out or fax records anywhere, we don’t have to go find a chart and make copies. Plus, doctors’ handwriting is tough for non-natives of the clinic to decipher. But someone requested records yesterday, and attempting to print that chart causes an error I’d never seen before. She has five pets on file, and the other four print fine. Just not the one she wants. I’ve been unable to find another client record with this problem. It’s just this ONE pet in this ONE client’s file. No idea why.

I called tech support yesterday, and they thought it was a printer problem at the front desk, where the problem was discovered. I uninstalled and reinstalled printers, created fake generic printers, tried to route it to different printers, none of which worked. Then I discovered that even down in my office, it will not print. So I no longer believe it’s a hardware problem, as they were suggesting (something to do with the laser printer upstairs). It’s something in that animal’s record. WWTIQODL had me look at several things, and then informed me she had no idea. She wanted to send me back to the hardware guy, which I declined. I’ve done some further investigating, and I now believe it has to do with a service code on a March 2007 invoice, but that’s as far as I’m getting. I might try again Friday, and hopefully will get a different techie.

In the meantime, we photocopied the damned file.

The husband and I are both off tomorrow, and it’s supposed to snow. Again. I’m torn. Snow, if it must come (and believe me, it’s almost APRIL, and it can totally STOP FUCKING SNOWING NOW!), should come on my day off. Snow covers Darwin’s Dog Bog (temporarily). But snow will eventually melt, creating a bigger Dog Bog than before. I just want to skip to late April, when there’s grass and no puddles and leaves are coming out on the trees. I’m sick of winter and sick of snow, but the departure of the snow brings about a whole different headache. I need to fast forward.

While telling us about tomorrow’s expected snowfall, which could be anywhere from a trace to ten inches, depending on how the storm tracks (and, gee, isn’t that a helpful forecast???), the meteorologist informed us, in an unnecessarily sadistic manner, that one year ago today it was 81 degrees.

As if I needed to know that. How is that helping?????

At this point, I think it would be best if I just sit here and start working my way through the bag of Reese’s Mini Reester Bunnies that I picked up on my way to the clinic today.

And that’s why I’m too brain dead to generate a decent blog.

Just Another Muddy Monday

You never know what to expect with Mondays. Sundays are far better. You can decide if you’re going to get a little energetic, or try to out-sofa-slug your previous personal best. (Guess which one I chose.) But on Mondays, you know you’re headed back to work, and that there will be a desk full of things that all need to be done, practically climbing all over each other to be on the top of the inbox. Today was such a day. We’re hiring new weekend staff, and each new employee requires approximately six metric tons of paperwork. And that’s before I even begin to sort through the inbox.

And yet I survived.

Then I came home.

When I dragged my droopy derrière through the front door, I was met by only two happy doggy faces, Ozark and Sprocket. I smelled dinner, which is always a good thing. After welcoming me home, Tom said, “I’ve got a project for you.”

Not what I want to hear after a non-stop workday, in which I got exactly seven minutes for my lunch break. He continued, “It’s out on the deck.”

I have a hunch where this is headed, and it is not making me a happy woman. Apprehensively, I peer out onto the deck, where Darwin’s smiling mud-splattered face met my gaze. Before I went any closer, I asked, “How bad is it?”

“Worse than last time.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll go change and get to it, then.”

My ever-so-wonderful husband said, “No, have dinner first. It’s ready now.”

Aha! A reprieve! I gratefully accepted my plate of yummy baked chicken and veggies and retreated to the Sofur. Perhaps I should have made dinner last about three hours, but I could hear that Darwin had abandoned the deck and was once again out galloping through the yard, getting even more muck-saturated - if that could even be possible.

When I was finished, Tom directed me to the bathroom so I could see the “improved setup.” I’m not sure if he’s extremely proactive, has burgeoning psychic abilities, or if he just knows our dogs, but he had stopped at the store on his way home from work and gotten a ten-foot hose and super-squirty nozzle, which he had already hooked up to the bathroom sink.

Should I be euphoric that he had bought this miraculous bit of dog-cleansing paraphernalia and set it up for immediate use, or annoyed because all indications are that I will be undertaking this dog-cleansing solo? I opted for somewhere in between.

Back at the sliding glass door, I told Tom to get the camera, because if I was going to go through what I knew I was about to go through, I would be obligated to share it with the world. Photographic evidence was required. Retrieving the camera, he proceeded to take several short clips of Bog Dog committing crimes of appalling cuteness. How a dog can be so naughty and so damned charming at the same time, I cannot fathom. He looked so gleeful, splashing and wallowing and barking. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to be so supremely furious that I could say, “Fine. You just became an Outside Dog,” but I couldn’t. First, because I do not believe in Outside Dogs; second, because (as previously mentioned) he was still – somehow – so freakin’ cute.

The Moment of Truth had arrived. Oh, joy. I got the leash, attached it to Darwin’s collar, and quickly led him to the bathroom. As I shut the door, Tom said, “Let me know when you get him in the tub.” I was imagining additional photo opportunities, but I later learned he had meant that he had planned to come in and turn on the water once Darwin was secured. Unaware of this, I turned on the water and attempted to arrange the bend of the hose for maximum water flow. Naturally, the whole thing came disconnected, drenching the vanity and mirror. I returned to “keeping the Bog Dog in the tub” duty, and Tom came in and reattached the hose.

That hose and the oh-so-marvelous nozzle are my favorite inventions in the history of the planet at the moment. The cup-dumping of the other day was much harder and much less effective than tonight’s bath. Thankfully, Darwin is very good in the tub, otherwise I’d have had no alternative but to reconsider my stand on Outside Dogs.

Tom’s voice came through the bathroom door, “How’s it going?”

“Fine.”

“I’m making some big bows for his ears.” (Ha ha.)

“OK,” I muttered.

“They kinda look like nooses, though.”

Ooooh, there’s the joke. Good one.

I was even able to use large quantities of shampoo, excluding the gobs that spilled on the floor when I knocked the bottle over with the hose. He’s not squeaky-clean by any stretch of the imagination. That sandy grit is hard to get out, short of combing out all the undercoat that has the dirt so thoroughly trapped. But he’s way cleaner than I managed to get him last time.

Once out of the tub, I dried him the best I could with a towel, before setting him loose. He had a repeat of the “crazy-dog banzai run around the house,” before bounding on the Sofur and propping his elbows on the arm, striking the perfect Cute-Dog pose, and wagged his tail joyfully.

Damned adorable, manipulative dog.

My job only half done, I returned to the bathroom to clean all the mud and splatter from every surface. Again. I was using the hose to rinse out the tub when Darwin came in to see what I was doing. Seeing the spray from the nozzle, he immediately bounded into the tub and began biting, snapping, and slurping at the water. My Sassafras used to do that. It was funny then, and it’s funny now. I’d release the handle on the nozzle, the water would go away, and Darwin would look perplexed and dismayed. More squirting, more chomping at the spray, more laughing from me. I summoned Tom to see our Canine Clown. Squirt, chomp, laugh. Squirt, chomp, laugh. More laughing. Ha ha ha! I may wet my pants. Oh, well, they’re already soaked. Who’d know? Squirt, chomp, laugh.

OK, enough is enough. Deprived of his aquatic games, Darwin returned to the Sofur, I finished cleaning the bathroom, put on a clean sweat suit, deposited the filthy, drippy towels in the washer, and here I am.

This is my life. It’s a good thing I love my dogs so much and think they are so incredibly wonderful that I am able to find these things amusing.

But, still… next on my agenda is to Google “driest place on earth,” because that’s where we’re moving. Just let him try to find a swamp there (wherever it is).

Impatient (as usual), I went ahead and Googled. Apparently, our new home shall be the Atacama Desert, which is located in Chile. Next up, find a Realtor and a holistic vet in the area. Got any extra cardboard boxes?

Snow Dogs

It's still snowing. Not a lot, but enough to keep the ground covered. This is fortunate from the standpoint of keeping Darwin's bog a bit less of a mud hazard, but I'm still ready for the snow to be gone. However, the three "younger dogs," Brody, Darwin and Ozark, really love a good snow-romp. Tom shot a video clip this morning, and I thought I'd share it with you. You hear about the hounds all the time, and seeing them in action gives you a bit more insight into how they look and behave (or don't).

In this clip, all three of them are there initially, before Darwin zooms off in the direction of his bog. No, nobody is doing much of anything exciting, but they are awfully gorgeous! The occasional pauses are when Tom took a still shot in the midst of shooting the video.

Anyway, that's it. No long, funny story, just a clip of three of Da Boys. Sprocket was happily snoozing in the (warm) house.

Part 2 of the Birthday Story

I left you yesterday at 11:00 PM on March 22, 1984, when I began to suspect I was in labor. Knowing that if that were the case I wouldn’t be getting any sleep for a long time (like 18 months!), I did what would seem impossible. I went to bed.

I woke up about 1:30 AM, and it was evident that I was, in fact, in labor. I woke Tom, and we called my mom. She lived about a half hour away, while his mother lived about three hundred yards from us, so Mom needed a head start. Our apartment was soon full of grandmothers-to-be, but I didn’t see much of them right away. I was crouched over the toilet in our downstairs half-bath, barfing. Whether it was labor-induced nausea or nerves, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I was not happy.

We were at the hospital by 3:00 AM. I went through the pre-birth preparations, which are notable for their complete lack of dignity. I also continued to throw up. The monitor strapped to my bulging belly kept shifting and losing the ability to provide the necessary data, and every time I had to move so they could adjust it, I got sick again.

I had also vowed that there would be no drugs given for pain, but I soon began to reconsider that decision. What had I been thinking? Drugs are good. Drugs are wonderful. I should have as many of them as possible. Immediately. The nurses told me that they’d let my doctor know that when he arrived. I later found out he was in the lounge area, reading the newspaper. By the time he showed up, I was too far along and so I was stuck with Plan A, drug-free.

Tom likes to tell everyone that I threw a bedpan at him, but I must categorically deny that accusation. What actually happened was that he was not in the room, and I had to reach for the barf-pan, and it fell to the floor with a loud metallic crash. He came rushing into the room and retrieved it. At no time was there any bedpan-throwing, despite my elevated crankiness level. Don’t let him tell you any different!

The Boy entered the world at 9:45 AM, at 6 pounds 12.5 ounces, and 19.25 inches long. I would have sworn he was at least 30 pounds, but I imagine most new mothers feel that way. I’m pretty fuzzy on the details, and don’t have that “first time I held the baby” moment etched in my mind. I do know that Tom cut the cord, which was very brave of him. He didn’t get sick or anything, though he did observe that freshly-born babies smell, and not in a good way.

I wasn’t at all surprised that he was a boy. About the fifth month of pregnancy, I knew. We didn’t have any testing done, but for some reason I just stopped thinking of the baby as a girl. After that, it was always “him,” “Junior,” and lists of boy names. I had a girl name (Kayla) in reserve just in case, but knew we wouldn’t need it.

The blessed event took place in the same hospital where Tom and I were both born, and where my mom worked as a nurse, which is kind of nice. On a sad note, a close family friend was also hospitalized there at the time, and she passed away with a heart attack shortly after Ryan’s birth.

I suppose I slept sometime that morning, in between visitors and frequent assaults by a variety of nurses, as well as “lessons” in bathing and nursing the baby. Didn’t women manage these basic tasks for tens of thousands of years before the advent of nurses and hospitals? I was more concerned about the fact that the first time I stood up it felt like my innards were going to slither out onto the floor.

So, today my baby is 24. When I was 24, he was in kindergarten! He went off to college when I was 37, an age at which many women are giving birth. It seemed like bad timing to become parents so young, but when he “left the nest” I was supremely grateful that I wasn’t one of those poor women who would have kids underfoot until their mid-50s.

Instead of offspring, he has a great job, the perfect almost-fiancée, an adorable little dog, a very nice apartment, a non-junk car, and a bright future. I’m not sure how we did it, since we were incredibly young and clueless, but somehow we got him all grown up into a person who is not a burden on society, which is an incredible relief.

That was my one and only experience with pregnancy and childbirth, leaving The Boy to go through life sibling-free. I might have had more kids if I could have figured out how to have puppies instead, but since that wasn’t an option, I raised The Boy and adopted a whole bunch of dogs.

Two Dozen Years of Motherhood

Tomorrow is The Boy’s 24^th birthday. Naturally, this means I’m reflecting on the time immediately surrounding his birth. I’d just turned 19 a couple of months before, and Tom and I had been in our first “home,” a townhouse in his parents’ neighborhood and owned by his aunt’s husband, for a few weeks. My previously flat, tan, firm abdomen was vertically striated with stretch marks, but I wasn’t upset by that at the time. In fact, I remember when I saw the first one begin to appear, low on the right side, and I was rather pleased. Now I yearn for those “flat, tan, firm” days.

I’d actually enjoyed being pregnant. I’d had little discomfort, and only had two incidents of morning sickness (Tip: Do not eat blackberry pie, and then go to get a perm for your wedding. The results will not only be unpleasant, they will be unsightly). It was my own personal biology experiment. I had “Your Pregnancy Week By Week,” and followed the baby’s development closely. “Fingernails this week. Awesome!” But as with most expectant mothers, I had reached the point when I wanted nothing more than for pregnancy to be over.

The scene: The living room of our apartment. I am slouched on our cheap (but new) rust and brown plaid sofa.

Me: (gazing at the massive abdominal mound, which is writhing alarmingly) Come OUT!

The scene: Later, in the bedroom of same apartment. A stabbing pressure pain assaults the ligaments of my inner thigh region.

Me: (as I immediately sit on the edge of the bed) Owwwwwwww!!!!
Tom: (Snicker)
Me: Shut up. It’s not funny.

The scene: Later still, in the pale yellow and green Care Bears nursery in the apartment. It’s just waiting for the new arrival.

Me: (thinking to myself) I’ve got everything, it’s ready to go, it looks perfect. So, hey, baby, how about showing up now, OK? Wonder how I’m going to do all this, though. I don’t even know this baby. We haven’t technically even met. It’s all going to change when he comes out, isn’t it? I’m a trifle concerned.

The scene: That evening, and we have a friend over. Sleep has been difficult lately, due to the gigantic, filled-to-bursting uterus. My ever-so-helpful mother had repeatedly told me that a glass of wine was fine (as there were still no clues of my latent alcohol problems) and that it was “good for your blood.”

Me: I think I’ll have a glass of wine to help me get to sleep.

The scene: 11:00 PM, and we are about to go to bed.

Me: Uh-oh. That doesn’t feel like a pressure pain.
Tom: Is it time?
Me: Maybe. It’ll be a while before I’m sure, though. Go to sleep. (He can sleep anywhere, any time)
Tom: (Goes to sleep. How does he do that?)

I also go to sleep. For a while. But the remainder of this story happens after midnight, which is technically the next day, March 23, 1984, the Day of the Birth, so I’ll tell the rest tomorrow, on its official anniversary! (Warning: There is throwing up involved.)

Today, we are going to see The Boy, Beautimous Girlfriend, and Grand-Dog Odin, to take the Birthday Boy to lunch and bestow the traditional gifts. Also to return a bunch of books, lend some CDs, probably burgle several new books, and deliver Odin’s somewhat-fictitious vaccination records so that he will be permitted to attend little-dog play group. Given Beautimous Girlfriend’s recent discovery of her raging dust mite allergies, I shall endeavor to scrape most of the little creepy-crawlies off my person, my clothes, and her books before we go. It would be a lot easier if I could see them. As The Boy pointed out, they are microscopic. He illustrated this point via the use of his pocket microscope. The fact that he has a pocket microscope is something that Beautimous Girlfriend and I find enormously endearing, in an amusing, geeky, smart-science-guy way.

Twenty four years ago today I weighed 40 pounds more than I do at this moment. I also weighed 90 pounds less than I would in 2001. As usual, I have most things ass-backward.