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Pets

Doggy Tunes!

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So this morning it’s off at 5:30 to M’jihito’s house. His luggage, his dog, and he are piled into my car, in that order. Thence, to the airport, where the son and the luggage were unloaded. And now Charley the Golden Retriever is here at my house for a week.

Charley and Pup are hilarious, because Pup brings out the two-year-old Charley’s lingering latent puppitude. Around Ruby, Charley is still, unmistakably, a puppy. A great deal of frolicking takes place, and much mischief is plotted.

One of their Looney Tunes schticks has to do with food. They both love it. They both desire it. They both require it. And neither one can stand to see the other get it.

Pup gets fed inside an X-pen so that Cassie can’t take her food away from  her, but a glance at Charley and a glance at the X-pen will tell you that the contraption is too feeble to keep him  out. Another scheme had to be contrived. As soon as I opened Ruby’s can of expensive urinary tract prescription dog food, Charley knew something was up. He was beside himself with excitement. No way a bowl of the stuff was going to get on the floor without him inhaling it

HUMAN: Come on this way, Charley!

HUMAN walks down the hall.

CHARLEY and RUBY follow human.

CASSIE flies up the hall and dodges into the bedroom.

HUMAN: You stay, Ruby.

RUBY ignores HUMAN but is muscled aside by CHARLEY, who strong-paws his way into the bedroom.

HUMAN dodges out the door and closes it before RUBY can squeeze in.

HUMAN: Dog food, Ruby!

RUBY races toward kitchen, a bundle of joy. CHARLEY slams self against door in despair.

Heeeee! He’s a nice dog. But not the brightest rhinestone on the fancy collar.

Speaking of Looney Tunes, I called the gynecologist’s office to be sure I understood correctly that the radiology department would call me to make an appointment for the pending torture sessions. After punching through two punchabutton nuisances, I get stuck on hold. And hold…and hold…and hold…and hold…and hold…and hold…and hold… This wouldn’t be so annoying if one could wait on the damn phone in SILENCE. But noooo…they have to subject you to vomitous muzak and endlessly annoying blather advertising the many services they would like to persuade you that you need. After a good ten minutes on hold — I’ve answered e-mail, posted an announcement on my class’s Canvas site, unloaded the dishwasher, and am reloading the washer with new dirty dishes — the phone rings through and someone answers and the first words out of her mouth are “WILL YOU HOLD, PLEASE?”

Well, no, thank you.

How much, again, are you folks charging Medicare for this?

 

Bigfoot: The Year of the Unplanned Expense

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Unknown terrifying critter? Or unknown terrifying expense?

Ever think of the unplanned expense as kind of like the sasquatch? There’s no such thing as a bigfoot, eh? Surely if you spotted one, it would be a fluke. It would be a long spell, indeed, before you ever happened upon another one.

So one would think. The year 2014, though, has been the Year of the Bigfoot Expense around the Funny Farm. I swear: every month one unholy monster or another has jumped out of the brush. This month’s AMEX bill came in: $3420. Three times the budget!

Now, part 0f that was over $1700 for the car and homeowner’s insurance. But the rest of it? Mostly veterinary bills. Vet bill after vet bill after vet bill. And then the MasterCard bill came in: another $150 for the new vet, who won’t take American Express!

Every single month this year, starting in January, has brought bills like that: $2,000, $2,500, $3,000, now almost $3,500. Costs are out of control, and I don’t seem to be able to do much about it.

Some of these expenses were predictable: the insurance bills, of course. The Medigap bill that’s rising by another hundred bucks. The cost of pruning the accursed palm trees that flower and fruit and drop tons of equipment-busting beans, sharp little dried blossoms, icky worms, and filth into the pool. Gerardo reported that he talked the tree guy down to a mere $180 from his initial offer of $240.

Last week I had to buy a new pool cleaner. Granted, Harvey was ten years old, a very superannuated Hayward Pool Cleaner. But forgodsake: the bill was FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS! The alleged $100 “rebate” is one of those mail-in rip-offs, and you don’t get cash back with which to pay your American Express bill. No. They give you one of those fake Visa cards, so you have to go out and spend the money needed to pay the bill on some other junk!

The puppy is costing a lot more than I planned on. It’s one thing to pay the breeder’s fee and then to get the usual shots and spaying and the like (she’ll have to be spayed in just two more months! That’ll be another two or three hundred bucks, presumably). But this little dog has been one constant drain on the checkbook. From what I can tell, too, once a dog gets a UTI, it’s likely to be a chronic condition that ultimately leads to bladder and kidney stones, which have to be treated with expensive and painful surgery.

Now I’m about to have a low fence put in to block her from the pool, since she will not stay away from the water and there’s no way I can train her to get herself out of there.

In the first place, “trainable” is not her middle name. UTI or no UTI, she’s still not house-trained and shows no sign of ever becoming so. Part of the problem is that she doesn’t indicate, the way most dogs do, when she feels the urge — it’s unclear whether she even does feel an urge, or whether she just kind of leaks. She doesn’t sniff around. She doesn’t circle back and forth. She just creates a puddle. Last night I had her penned in the office with me while I sweltered through another piece of Chinglo-academicese that needs to be returned to its authors within the next few days. In spite of being right under my nose, she peed under the chair, silently and seemingly motionlessly leaving a great puddle for me to find when I got up to let her out.

Given her general stubbornness, training her to get out of the pool is highly problematic. There’s only one spot in the entire, large pool — which must look like an ocean at dog’s-eye level — where either one of the dogs can get out. That’s the topmost of three steps at the shallow end. The corgis’ legs, even in adulthood, are too short to reach any of the other steps or to reach the bench at the deep end. That one, single step is only about three feet long and eighteen inches wide. The chances of a panic-stricken dog finding that thing, once it fall into the drink, are slim to nil. And “panic” is the operative word. Both dogs are so frightened by the water they can’t think.

In the second place, this proposed fence has to be custom-built and will cost $1,100. I am not at all sure I should spend eleven hundred bucks to protect a dog that I probably ought not to keep it all. Really, if I had any sense whatsoever, I would return her to the breeder. It’s painfully obvious that this dog came to me with something wrong at the outset, that she probably will never be well, and that I’m going to be dealing with yellow puddles all over the floor for as long as she lives.

Hate to do that, because she’s such a sweet little gal. But probably I ought to cut my losses while I can.

Because…more losses lurk on the horizon.

Sooner or later I’m going to have to get a car. The Dog Chariot is now almost 15 years old. It won’t run forever.

The pool has grown a permanent coat of algae. Nothing I do is getting rid of it. The best hope for a DIY fix is to pour an entire container of PhosFree in there and hope for the best. That will require having someone come and clean out the filter again (just had that done a month or so ago): another $150. That’s on the low end. And it’s a temporary fix.

The house needs a paint job: inside and out. That’s likely to cost around four grand.

The cracked tiles in the living room need to be replaced. And most recently, the kitchen cupboards or the wall next to them have settled, opening a big crack along one countertop and splitting a whole row of Mexican tiles. So, at best a couple dozen tiles need to be pulled out and replaced — quite a trick, with Mexican tile! At worst, the cause for this subsidence needs to be determined. God only knows what that will cost. And the middling possibility? It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the tiles can’t be replaced and so the whole countertop will have to be yanked out and rebuilt.

Those damn palm trees need to be removed. There are four of them. Cost could be, all told, as high as four grand.

So…think of that. We’re looking at tens of thousands of dollars in potential upcoming expenses. And we’re probably already pushing ten grand in unplanned expenses so far this year. It that’s not a sasquatch, I’d like to know what it is.

Ga$p! House Drama, Dog Drama

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7:00 a.m.: FLY out the door.

Dear friend takes me to breakfast and delivers lovely gifts for Birthday. {love love love}

From there, it’s off to the Vet with a container of edifying dawg pee, and from there a bounce-fest from vendor to vendor to freaking vendor.

Take Harvey to Leslie’s, where he’s usually repaired for free.

Cute (cute, cute, BORN THIRTY YEARS TOO LATE CUTE) tech: “Uhmmmm…  Well, the easiest fix is to buy a new one.”

$450 later, Harvey’s reincarnation is in the back of the car. To be fair (sort of): there’s a $30 in-store rebate and an $100 rip-off mail-in rebate. Meaning the gouge is a mere $320. Plus 10% tax. On the $450.

FLY in the house. Call the insurance broker; explain annoying predicament to his voicemail; point out that as of 4:30 this ayem the house stank so much the schmell woke me out of a semi-sound sleep.

Feed Pup expensive urinary dog food. Dump remains of yesterday’s attempt to cook new Real Food for Cassie into garbage whilst Pup is distracted with inhaling third-rate canned dog food. Decide to try to rescue expensive goddamn pan, even though hope looks forlorn; put same (pan, not hope) to soak in heavily enriched detergent water.

Prepare human food on grill: piece of lamb, asparagus sprinkled with balsamic, lovely little salad, more bourbon and water than is good for anyone.

Sit fanny down in chair.

Instantly get up to answer effing phone: Insurance broker.

Abhorred, is he.

[Graphic Designer has already been abhorred, by e-mail. Sister-in-Sin has already been abhorred, by e-mail. Son has been rendered, as usual, stylishly blasé, by e-mail.)

Insurance broker to look into costs of a) replacing microwave; b) hiring out smoke damage repair; c) replacing $10,000 worth of cabinetry and God only KNOWS how much in counter surfacing. Insurance broker to call back.

Sit back down to try to eat congealing mid-day meal. Add a little more bourbon to depleted bourbon & water.

Instantly get up to answer effing phone: Veterinarian.

Pup’s urine still has blood, although she’s much improved. He wishes to keep Pup on expensive special dog food for at least four more weeks. He suspects the ailment is a function of her runtiness, although there could be a physiological issue, expressed in old-guy language as “vestigial hymen.” Liberated human interprets this as old-guy lingo for “hooded vulva,” but whatEVER. Feel amazingly grateful and worshipful that he took time out of a very busy day to telephone me. He wants to delay another round of antibiotics because he thinks she may outgrow the issue.

Sit back down to magnificent mid-day meal.

Think of STAGGERINGLY GREAT exchange between two future Fire-Rider characters. Drop fork, run for computer, write down notes.

Come back to magnificent mid-day meal.

Think of COOL DIALOGUE after STAGGERINGLY GREAT exchange in novel. Back to computer: write down more notes.

Finish dinner. Realize chicken put to simmer is now cooked. Remove from heat, remove meat from bones. Place in container; refrigerate.

Put surviving pans and dishes into ’shwasher. Turn to “sanitize” (giant spoon for collecting you-no-what from Peeing Pup is in there, after soaking in Intense Detergent for several hours).

Collect Pup. Collect Cassie. Place on Bed.

And it is now time for a siesta. Thank heaven for the Mediterranean Lifestyle, to which I intend to adhere until I fall over dead while blogging at this site at the age of 110.

Hunker down. Instantly get up to answer effing phone: Insurance broker.

He’s sending an estimator over: determine what can be done, whether the fix is simple or whether (gawd forbid) all the cabinetry needs to be ripped out and replace. (Holy Sh!t) He believes this will be covered by homeowner’s.

Hunker down.

Please, God: NO MORE PHONE CALLS!!!!!

Lovin’ Cats…

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Did you see the image of the kitty that chased off a mean dog that was attacking a small boy? Entertaining video, isn’t it? And pretty amazing, considering the general nature of cats.

LOL! Maybe not, too.

My mother used to have a Siamese cat that would sit on the wall that surrounded the backyard of the house where she lived in Long Beach, California. The neighbor had a German shepherd that was just driven wacky by this cat. Oh, how it wanted the cat. Every time it would walk by (in those days, the early 1940s, there was no such thing as a leash law — people let their dogs run around loose the same as they still let their cats run around loose today), it would see the cat perched on the wall and would fling itself at the wall trying to catch the cat.

One day the cat decided enough was enough. The dog came trotting along, minding its own business as much as a dog can, and all of a sudden the cat dropped of the wall onto the dog’s back, dug its claws and fangs in, and hung on like a gigantic furry tick! The dog shot off down the street, yowling, with the cat clinging to its back.

Ever afterward, my mother said, whenever the dog would come walking up the street it would cross the road and walk on the other side to pass her house! 😀

Naturally, cat superhero episode has triggered all sorts of foolishness about the joys of owning a cat that you allow to roam around the neighborhood. Here’s one that’s especially syrupy…snark! God, people are such morons!

“Cats are for life,” quoth the silly woman? I don’t think so. What an infelicitous turn of speech. They are the exact opposite of “for” life…

Cats are extremely efficient predators. They are obligatory carnivores, meaning the many feral cats roaming our cities, towns and countryside have to kill to live. In many parts of the world they are an invasive species. They devastate native bird populations, small mammals, and insect-eating reptiles. They carry toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease that induces spontaneous abortions in pregnant women.

If you MUST have a cat, keep it indoors. Otherwise, cat ownership is about as irresponsible as…oh, say, letting a mean dog run loose so it can go after a little boy.

Entrepreneurship, Work, Dogs, Life, the Universe, and All That…

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Entrepreneurship is one helluva lot of work. So are dogs. So is life. And if the Universe cares, it would be nice if it would, just once, transmit a message to that effect. 🙂 I hope you appreciate how SEOly I just put every key term in this post’s title into its first paragraph. But honest to god…I am so tired I could weep. Over the past few days (weeks? months? years?), the sheer amount of physical and intellectual work has damn near killed me. The business, the dogs, the lifestyle: hoooleee mackerel!

Bidness:

Client 1: due back in-country after several weeks of hanging out in the country where he lives as a contented ex-pat. Promised to surface Friday or Sat’day. Translate: bigawd, get my project ready for me to review and jaw about no later than about 4 p.m. Friday afternoon.

Human: Yessir.

Client 2: decides to utterly, totally, completely, MASSIVELY rewrite his book. Emits a chunk thereof. Holy shit.

Prospective Client 3: And it’s only 225 PowerPoint slides. How much would you estimate it will cost to edit this project?

Life (Interrupted by Business):

Choir director: Missing rehearsal for what? For only one regular service and the annual concert? Uh huh. Lovely.

Puppy: Doggy water bowls make the best swimming pools ever! And RRRROOOOO how I DO LOVE a mop!

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Business:

Designer 1: sends a new set of page proofs: please read these soonest.

Designer 2: sends two new sets of graphics: please respond soonest.

Designer 3: sends new design with new cover lines: please respond soonest.

Bluehost: down at 7:30 this morning. Down at 8 this morning. Down at 8:45 this morning. Human gives up.

Life:

Son: Bringing sick dog to your house soonest. No need to respond; will let self in.

Human: Deconstructs Pup’s X-pen and turns it into a fence to keep Pup out of the pool, using X-pen’s gate to provide an opening through which Human can pass without tripping on the goddamn dog barrier.

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Veterinarian 1: AARGH crash thud growl bite hit scream yowl THROW!

Veterinarian 2: Bring her in at 2:45 Monday afternoon, with a fresh bottle of dog pee. The bottle itself and the collecting instrument should be freshly sterilized…

Son: Forget small differences that seemed to foretell alienation at best, homicidal frenzies at worst. En route to your house with flowers, special bourbon (!), dog, and my own extraordinarily charming company (the only good thing to happen this week).

Business:

Human to Associate Editor: And this will get the number of assignments for you and the underling to read during the four-week summer course down to four. Think you and Underling can handle some (read “most”) of these?

Associate Editor to Human: That will leave only two of the four for you to have to do.

Life:

Gerardo: We’ll be there at noon to undo the horrific mess Richard the (now-FIRED) landscaper inflicted. Ai, caramba! “What does that mean in analogue time?” Gringa! What do you think it means? See you whenever.

Doctor’s Office: So you say that surgical incision incision is infected? You must come right in! Whaddaya mean you can’t come over here right this minute??? Okay, you must be here as dawn cracks tomorrow.

Human: Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby come ON come DOG we have to fly out the door to the veterinari…

BING  BONG! Gerardo: Bueno! Here we are! Donde the job?

Veterinarian 2: Uh huh. Yeah. This dog indeed does have blood in its urine. It has white blood cells floating around, too. And it has crystals, despite its obscene youth. Otherwise, it’s swimmingly healthy. Take this antibiotic. Take this prescription dog food full of shit no one in their right mind would think of feeding a dog if they had any clue what really goes into dog food.  Call in one week. Come back in two weeks. That will be 58 dollah.

Business:

Human to Associate Editor: And it’s only 225 PowerPoint slides. How much to edit behind me?

Human to Client #2: Palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver palaver…

Human to Client #1: Nothing. Where the heck is the dude? But…silence is golden and do not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Human to  Client #3: And that will be $60/hour…

Human to Designer 3: Fix the cover lines so they’re visible, ALL of them are visible in an Amazon thumbnail.

Human to Designer 2: {discreet silence}

Human to Designer 1: {discreet silence}

Human to Departmental Secretary: Please review the attached 25-page syllabus, as required by the Department and District policy…

Life:

Swimming Pool to Human: CONK!

ogodogodogodogod

Gerardo the Chinese-Mexican Miracle Worker kindly rescued the backyard from the unholy mess Richard left. By the time Richard was done with his answer to the French well I asked for, which was what local landscapers call a “river of rock” (i.e., it was something he and his underlings know how to do), he had bifurcated the yard in such a way as to put anyone who wished to take out the garbage at risk of a fractured ankle. Fortunately he flat-out refused to carry off the mountain of dirt he excavated by way of creating this little fiasco.

Gerardo showed up with two of his slaves (how does he pay these guys on what he charges? He must have something on them!). They pulled all the ankle-twisting rocks up from Richard’s stupid “river of rock” and used them to reinforce the berms around the citrus trees. They shoveled the crushed-granite top dressing off the area around the ditch Richard’s guys excavated, shoveled it off the mounds of dirt they left, hauled the dirt over to the ditch, filled up the ditch with said dirt, stomped it down, filled with more dirt, stomped it down, regraded the yard manually (this is what is called a “Mexican grader”…heaven help them), spread crushed-granite top dressing over the repaired area (you do not want to KNOW what a cubic foot of crushed granite weighs, to say nothing of a cubic yard), and finally spread the remaining crushed granite over what remained of Richard’s mounds, which wasn’t much by the time these guys were done.

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I paid Gerardo about twice what I thought he’d ask. That is about half of what his and his guys’ labor is worth. I wonder if he would be insulted if, for next winter’s Christmas gift, I paid his tuition for the Spanish-language Master Gardener’s Class at the Desert Botanical Garden. Probably. At any rate, it would be counter-productive: six weeks in that thing, and he’d come away knowing what he actually could earn for his services.

My yard is now back. It is now possible to carry the trash out to the alley without risking a broken ankle. The dogs can now walk across the backyard without risk of incurring a vast veterinary bill. Once again they have a space in which to chase balls and flying toys and each other. Enough of Richard’s rock-flled ditch survives to serve as a half-assed version of a French well, probably reducing this summer’s patio flood by about 50 percent.

The man’s a saint.

Lists as…Transcendental Meditation? Last Grip on Sanity? Other?

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So as (unfortunately) usual, I fail to get my act together at 5:30 in the morning but instead stumble into the office, directly across the hall from the Queen of the Universe’s reclining room, where she allows the human to sleep at night. By quarter to seven I’ve spent over  an hour working on the client’s stuff and on some PoD formatting for one of my own books. I have not (not, not, no indeed NOT) made the one- to two-mile walk necessary to shuck off the two or three-pound gain I would dearly like to rid myself of.

Dogs are not fed.

Pup has hunger-barfed (so I imagine…more to come) because she was not fed (I think) when we rolled out of the sack as dawn cracked.

M’hijito is supposed to show up a bit before 8 a.m. with Charley, the inveterate amuser of puppies, and so it is now too late to go for a walk. I will remain fat another day.

Must race to get resident hounds fed before Charley shows up, and so race around doing that. To avoid having to chase one of them to Yuma, I sneak out into the garage and slam the door behind me, there to open the garage door and run out and grab the newspaper before The Queen realizes what’s up.

That’s when I notice the cage thingie I put down to deflect dogs from the ant bait I put down yesterday is…moved. Like…REALLY moved…as in pushed all the way to the front of the garage.

Whaa?

AND…there’s no ant baits inside there.

Holy shit. Did Ratty get back into the garage and steal the ant bait? Hm. I know Ratty’s signs, and I can’t see any indication that she’s come visiting. She could easily squeeze in around the security door or the garage door, neither of which fit well when regarded as part of the Roof Rat Universe.

Ratty likes ant baits? Really?

The raccoons could not have weaseled (heh!) their way in: they’re way too husky to wriggle in through the cracks around the door.

BUT…Ratty leaves certain unmistakable signs, wherever she goes. And…there ARE no Ratty signs to be seen.

So that leaves only one suspect: DOG!

Cassie has never shown the slightest interest in ant bait, nor has she ever shown any skill at relieving my home-made ant traps of their bait. Now we have narrowed our suspect list to one: PUPPY!

Pup has consumed two packets of ant bait: lock, stock, poison, plastic container, and barrel.

Sumbitch.

So I look up the ingredient of said ant bait and discover it’s the same gunk people in tick- and flea-infested parts of the country smear on their dogs to kill and repel external parasites. In the amounts Pup ingested (assuming the Ingester was Pup and not Ratty), the stuff is relatively harmless. I mean, it could kill her, but it probably won’t. What’s much more likely to kill her is the plastic she chewed up and swallowed.

Pup is eating well. Cassie is eating well. I’m on the Internet.

M’hijito calls: running late; begs off delivering Charley the Golden Retricver and Perennial Puppy. Thank god.

Call the vet; too early.

With no Charley en route, I realize there’s time for that one- to two-mile walk after all. It’s too late and so too hot to bring Cassie, so I throw on some clothes, grab a hat, and fly out the front door, dodging the enraged Sovereign of All Creation.

While walking…walking…walking, the mind gyrates. So damn many things to do…  Beloved client has sent a large quantity of hugely revised (we could say “wholly rewritten”) copy, expecting an answer along about yesterday. Got less than halfway through the set of page proofs I was supposed to return to the designer yesterday. MUST pay that AMEX bill that’s been gathering dust on the desk for…how long? Why did I not send a receipt to the New England client? Local client paid about half of what was owed… Can I figure out, from my English-major record-keeping, a) how much she actually owed at the outset; b) how much she paid; and c) how much she still owes?  Can I express this without pissing her off? Must take checks to credit union. While up there, better drop by the middle-class Costco up on the freeway, restock. SDXB is supposed to show up here tomorrow; the house is dirty. He especially hates dirty bathrooms, of which I have two (2). Cassie needs tennis balls. I need more CereVE; is there a Walgreen’s on the way to the credit union? Where? I haven’t finished formatting Fire-Rider for the designer. I forgot to post grades. The wound left by the dermatologist’s procedure, performed yesterday, will probably preclude today’s scheduled mammography; why didn’t I call the boob X-ray people yesterday afternoon? The puppy has petrified pee all over her butt again; must be washed. The plants are parched, now that temps are over 100 degrees. Water plants; adjust irrigation schedule. Must call vet about ant baits. Must write new copy: describe landscape from very depressed protagonist’s point of view.

Pup slept all the say through till 5:30. Is that a good sign? Or is she too sick to roll out of the sack for her usual 3:33 a.m. reveille? Pool is getting green; must clean. Plants are dying; must water. Cactus is paling out; must water.

Must finish the current scene: describe the landscape in front of the marching troops, as they drop down the eastern face of the Sierra Madere in about the year 5200 A.D., from the point of view of the very tired, discouraged, and homesick protagonist. Say what? Describe an imaginary scene as seen through an imaginary man’s eyes in an imaginary time? And…how, pls?

AUUUGH! All this in 20 minutes???????

Evidently I’m getting hysterical. Must get a grip.

When I get home, I write a list:

√ Call mammography clinic; try to get out of mammogram
√Call vet
. . .Call Pet Poisoning Hotline
. . .Failing that (which does FAIL), find out about poison online
. . .Figure out what to do
Wash pup
√Pay AMEX bill
Enter data in Quickbooks
√Take $960 worth of client checks and $775 worth of paycheck to credit union
√Send receipts to clients
√While in northwest Phoenix, go to Costco on I-17
Look at local client’s new material
√Bathe
√Clean bathrooms
Continue formatting project
Continue writing current chapter
√Reset irrigation system
√Water parched plants
vTurn on irrigation system for emergency run today
Sweep down pool walls
Return call to KJG
Finish reading page proofs
√Fend off student whining
√Post grades

It’s 3:30. Pup, not yet dead, is sleeping on the bed with Cassie. I’m about to join them in the afternoon siesta. The checkmarked items are done. Didn’t get everything done (yet)…but equilibrium is marginally regained.

Lists. The grappling hook to Sanity.