Shoulder seasons

I always complained about Central Oregon's lack of shoulder seasons. For the five years I lived there, spring and fall for me were just brief blips between winter and summer.

While I did eventually come to appreciate the muted high-desert palette of sage on gray on dust on moss, I never got over missing the intensity of color where I'm from, the wetter side of Oregon. I missed Portland's spring and fall. I've previously written here about the glory of springtime in the south. Flowers explode everywhere - it's an assault of color and fragrance. My yard in the springtime includes flowering bradford pears, dogwoods, wisteria, Carolina jessamine, honeysuckle and gardenias. Every time you turn around, something else is blooming. Honestly, even Portland and the Willamette Valley is muted in comparison with the south; for the most part, it's just a place where green congregates; forest on kelly on fern on envy on chartreuse.

The hiccup of autumn in Central Oregon was never anything to look forward to. After the glory of blue-skyed summers and their clear mountain lakes, summers of blessed, blessed dry heat, I wanted none of it. All fall did was remind you that winter was coming for you. October's frigid mornings and gray skies were winter's way of saying, "Get your ice scraper ready bitch. I'm coming for you."

Contrast that with the relief I feel now that summer is over. It's physical. Goosebumps with each turning leaf. When I pulled my first sweater out of its summer storage (I'd never lived in a place where you actually store your sweaters all summer. In Oregon, you face at least a handful of chilly days and evenings even in August.) we cried and hugged like old friends reuniting at an airport - I swear I heard violins playing in the distance. I don't even want to admit what I did when I wore boots for the first time this fall - it's simply indecent.

One thing about fall in South Carolina that's strange for me, that feels wrong for the season at hand, is that I'm opening up the house for the first time in months. Doors and windows, everything's open. No more mornings where you open the door to go outside and the air is hot and moist, like dog breath. After a long summer of sprinting from one air conditioned space to another, of keeping shades drawn against the heat, I've been throwing open all the doors and windows, letting a breeze blow through the house for the first time in months. It feels like spring.

So I did some spring cleaning. Starting with brushing the dogs.

Yeah, so that happened.

A video to charm your pants off

If this video does not make you smile, maybe even giggle a little bit, I'm worried about you. Genuinely. Deep in your soul, something may be broken.

The gross post

WARNING: Do not read while eating. Or if you’re particularly sensitive to stories about poo or dead things. No dead people though. Just possibly somebody’s pet.

One weekday morning, as Roomie and I were making our morning coffee, I looked out the window and saw a pile of what looked like wet cardboard. No, wait, that’s fur. Wait, is that … an ear? That’s a cat. 

“That’s a dead cat in our yard. How did it get there?”

It was pretty far from the road, but since our bad dog hadn’t been out in the yard much lately (when she goes on walkabouts, she gets the ole “tied to the back porch” treatment for awhile. Until we get lax again.), we figured that the poor thing had probably gotten hit by a car and then dragged itself away from the road until it finally croaked. On our lawn outside the kitchen window. The nerve.

So when I put the dogs out, I again tied the bad dog, who enjoys nothing more than rolling in dead things or strange feces (thankfully not dog crap—but if there’s a pile of deer pellets, cat turds or—HEAVEN—people poo somewhere, she’s on her back lickety-split, rolling gleefully until she's smeared in shit) to the back deck. But I let the good one go wander around for her morning business, as she is wont to do. But when she came around the side of the house that I could see out of the kitchen window, I watched with great interest in what she would do. I generally think it’s interesting to watch the dogs when they don’t know we’re watching, because I am boring.

She had her nose to the ground and was sniffing intently. I watched her study the space in front of her, meandering closer to the dead cat, she circled, but she clearly wasn’t sure what she was about to find. When she finally came upon the thing laying in the grass, looked at it, realized what it was, she recoiled as if in horror and promptly trotted away.

It’s like she’s not even a dog.  

However, the white/bad dog (I know, it's backward. In our house black is good and white is evil.) is really effing cute when I get home from work. It's kind of why we keep her around.

What happens when you don't go to church

So I’m home alone on a Sunday, and I’m cleaning and cooking and working and cleaning dog beds. Typical Sunday. I take these two foam things we let the dogs sleep on out into the yard to hose them down because for some reason my three year old dog has started peeing the bed, and sometimes just peeing on the carpet, and a junker car drives by and honks. I look up, as though I know anyone out here, and then go back to my hosing.

But the car turns around, and then pulls into my yard - we don’t have a driveway, you actually have to drive through the yard to park on the landing in front of the barn-like garage and carport. He drives toward me, and I stand up, and it occurs to me what I look like: I’m wearing a tank dress (I’ve started to refer to them as housedresses) because it’s the only thing I can stand to wear in the heat and humidity. I’m squinting through my glasses, my frizzy hair is piled on top of my head, and I’m wearing no bra, though I do have an apron with a wild horses print on it tied around my waist – it was an ironic gift from my best friend, but I actually wear it because I cook and bake and wash dishes by hand. Also, as though I have new readers who need this info: I’m ultra white and have tattoos.

The fellow driving his beater car across my lawn is a black guy (p.s. more than once in the last few weeks, I’ve been in restaurants with people who have stage-whispered “black” when referring to perceived cultural differences. I’ve also gotten a stage-whispered “white” when someone was telling me which Taco Bell was preferred, because the employees were all, you guessed it, “white”) about my age, smoking a swisher sweet and wearing a white wife-beater tank top.

I say hello when he leans out his window. I’m thinking about where my dogs are. Inside the house.

He tells me he’s looking for “Heavah,” she lives somewhere around here and she looks just like me.

I tell him I don’t know anyone named Heather out here. Then he points out my tomato plants, and tells me that he grows tomatoes, too, and eggplants and okra and beans, and his watermelons are doing well, too.

When he describes the wall he built to keep his tomatoes off the ground, I say, “yeah, we should have done something like that, too. Anyway, good luck finding her.”

Then he drove away.

When I told Roomie about it (we tell each other any time anyone comes here, as it happens so rarely) suggested that the guy was “fishing.”

I’m trying to picture how that would have gone successfully for him.

“Oh, Heather? I don’t know her. Would you like to come inside for a lemonade? Or some homemade salsa?”

Am I being innocent?

Anyone remember that movie Ferngully?

Of course we have neighbors we hate.

No, that's too far. We don't hate them. They just seem like dicks.

My house sits on an acre, just far enough back from a busy road. We have a big yard, and we like to spend time outside, usually tossing a ball for the dogs, and often with a beer (or large glass of wine) in hand. On one side of us, close to our house, is a house that's empty save occasional visits from the grown kids of the dead lady who used to live there.

On the other side, past the vast expanse of our lovely yard, live The Jerkoffs. It's a couple and a kid, and someone who looks like a grandma seems to appear from time to time. Roomie has seen the kid shooting at birds. That's just a really good way to piss off this particular hippie. And, charmingly, while the kid was shooting at birds, Grandma was just chilling on a riding mower, watching.

It's not like we have seagulls or some other kind of asshole birds around (like steller's jays, which are big, fat jerks), but sweet songbirds, cardinals, something called a titmouse,  and amazing, huge pileated woodpeckers -- rare, protected Woody the Woodpecker birds. Roomie also saw the kid chasing the chickens around their chicken coop throwing rocks at them. Cool, right?

(Don't get me wrong, I'm OK with eating chickens. I'm just not really into being an asshole to them while they're still alive. I get the irony, but as I see, it, 90% of the point of raising chickens is eating eggs -- or meat -- without feeling guilty about the horrible treatment the animals experienced while they were still alive.)

While all that makes me think the kid is a turdface, I wasn't really pleased when I heard his dad yelling at him while they burned whatever they were burning (they do it so often I suspect it may be their garbage) in their yard one morning. I'm not sure, but I think I heard him smack the kid, too. Excellent. (Mom's an unknown. Guilt by association, I say.)

Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the dogs. They have dogs, but they don't appear to be pets. They live in a pen outside next to the chicken coop, and they bark incessantly. I don't hold it against the dogs. They look out and see our off-leash pooches running around, frolicking happily with owners who love and snug them and throw balls for them. I mean, I'd bark, too. It's like the dogs are yelling, "Hey!  We want to play! This is bullcrap! Did you guys see this? We live in a cage! Look, see how huge this yard is? Why can't we run in the yard?! That looks like fun! We want to come play! Come get us! Can we hump your dogs?!"

So that's the background on how I felt when, one day, I heard the sound of large machinery coming from the neighbor's yard. It sounded angry, and hungry, and as I looked at the stand of trees and brush that separates our property from theirs, I saw limbs and leaves heaving and shaking as they clawed and cut them out of the ground. Tiny birds fled the destruction.

My vision's not great, but it was totally a scene from FernGully (p.s. Avatar was basically an expensive version of FernGully, but without Tim Curry. Incidentally, I have loved Tim Curry since he was trying to figure out who killed Mr. Boddy. Anyone with me? My early exposure to Rocky Horror only confirmed my adoration).

So now I think of my neighbors as the new embodiment of Hexxus.



Except my neighbor is in no way sexy.

In summary: Tim Curry is rad, my neighbors are dicks, and Hexxus destroyed enough bird habitat that we can now see the dickface yard better and hear said dicks yelling at their kids more clearly. Yay.

On the other hand, I now have a much better view of the daily activities of their chickens.

But that's another post.

Swamps are pretty cool. Except for the dead deer rotting away next to where we parked. That was uncool.

My first swamp guys!

Big change from the high desert where I've been living the last five years. Actually, I guess it's totally different from any place I've ever lived. Best part? We found a nice hut to hang out at when we become hobos.

 

It even came with an area rug. (Insert Lebowski joke here)

Roomie's trying to teach me some of his smartypants stuff. Like how to identify a few birds. Truth be told, I'm pretty terrible at it, because my eyes are so bad, but even people who can't see far away can hear calls and see shapes of large birds at a distance.

Also, did you know that cypress trees have knees? They're stubs of root that grow up out of the swamp around cypress, and they look vaguely phallic and eerily primordial. Most of the ones we saw today had these salmon-colored tips that really upped the tree-ween-of-the-swamp-floor factor.

Gross, right?

Here's a close-up:

Also, we thought Margaux loved the desert, but that's probably just because we'd never taken her to a swamp before. I mean, mud and stink and neck-deep puddles and bugs and dead things? Brackish water you can swim in that's the color of over-steeped tea so you don't know what's at the bottom of the pool and there could be anything down there! Snakes! Sticks! Dirt! More mud!


Sister was in heaven.

The Homestead

Wow, so, holy crap. The south is crazy.

My life has been insane.

The end.









I kid!

I'll give up some of the details, starting with a bit of advice: Don't ever live in someone's living room. Especially your boyfriend's dad and stepmom's living room.

Really. Just don't. And their garage? Probably not a lot better than the living room.

Yeah. It was horrible.

But now we have a house! It's junky and drafty and in a teeny tiny little town (Aynor, S.C., population: 640) and it has stinky cupboards and a garage that looks like a barn and I absolutely love it.

But it's tons of work. We got a good deal, but when we moved in, there was dirt everywhere. Gross dirt. Other people's dirt. A thick orange syrup covering the bottom of the fridge with hunks of mac and cheese in it. Cat food scattered under the sink, covered in mold. A freezer full of mildew. And cockroaches -- or, excuse me, palmetto bugs -- everywhere, dead. Upturned, legs in the air -- they left rusty spots on the floor when you scraped them off the hardwoods or the bathtub. Dead lizards in the windowsills.

But that? The scum everywhere? The smell of cat urine in the laundry room? Not the worst of it. The worst was the NASCAR room.

Oh yeah. You got that right. It was painted glossy black, and someone had applied a checkerboard wallpaper strip all the way around the room, plus wallpaper strips of the NASCAR logo placed randomly about the room.

Still. Despite the scum, the cockroaches, the NASCAR logos, we could see the house's charm. An acre. A porch. Two rows of 50-year old muscadine grapes. Enough rooms for all of our crap.

So now, we've been here for two weeks, and everything's different. Before, we were actually fighting from time to time -- something we'd never really done before. Not bad fighting, but fighting. It's amazing what a home does for you. We're both in such better head spaces. The other day, Roomie was singing a song in the kitchen. The words? "I'm so happy ... I'm so happy ..." ... and this is coming from someone who's taking calculus.

We've worked our asses off, and there's more work to do. But here's ye olde photodump:

I heard once that Oregon is one of the least-churched states in the U.S. Well, folks, I now officially live in the Bible belt. And church is allllll up in my face, considering what I now do (if you missed out on that: I work for a company whose clients are all churches). Plus, there's a church on every street. I drive an hour to work every day, and I haven't counted the number of churches I pass on my way to work, but suffice to say it's a lot. A lot a lot. There are two big ones in my tiny town, plus I see signs all the time for churches that meet in smaller places, houses, community centers, malls. If I were a photographer, I'd start a photo project on the churches. I love the quaint chapels with the manicured cemeteries, and I love the gospel barns (photo to come of that one). They're just so damn cute.

This sign sits at the end of a vacant lot across the street from our hardware store, which is right next to the tire center. We also have a tiny BBQ joint I haven't gotten to try because it's only open during lunch hours, and "sometimes on Thursday and Friday nights," according to a sign in the window. My new doctor says it's been around forever and it's owned by a "nice black family" and it's "real good." I can't wait to try it and guest blog about it on Donuts 4 Dinner.

Hipstermatic shot of the front door and the 1980s crappy stained glass.

We painted out living room smurf blue to cover up the painfully cheery peachy color. I like it.

We also bought edible lettuce plants, a good plan since we can't install a huge garden like we had originally hoped, on account of the fact that there's a chance our landlord doesn't own our house and we may have to move out. But that's another story.

Yard! Ball! Cilantro!

When you live in a tourist destination, you think the tourist crap is stupid. Fortunately, my girlfriends realized I'd have a different opinion once I left. Yay Bend! Now, where is my University of Oregon gear?

The former NASCAR room. It's now Kermit green. We also have an elephant gray room. Don't diss the mistint aisle at WalMart.

Ain't she sweet? We just need some rockers. Maybe a swing.

Last Christmas, I made you a pie

In case you missed the memo, I'm kind of into baking. As in, I dream about opening a bakery one day -- I may even have a name for my bakery picked out. (The first three letters of my last name are PIE, after all)

Problem is, once you start getting into baking, you become accustomed to your own tools. Because I don't settle for mediocre baked goods -- I use a digital scale to measure flour, people. And right now, I don't have access to my kitchen (it's still in a trailer in the driveway). This is all to say that to me, the idea of making pie crust without a rolling pin, pastry blender, food processor, or digital scale is ... well ... it's just not happening.

So for Christmas I ... I ... this is hard to admit.

I used store-bought crust.

Which I then filled with delicious Martha Stewart chocolate pecan filling. And when I had to use 4 oz of chocolate chips from my 12 oz bag, I made do.

The pie, by the way, was pretty good. But the crust about made me gag. Cardboard. I've heard that Whole Foods makes a good pie crust, but there ain't no Whole Foods out here. I have my choice between a crappy Food Lion and Wal-Mart. And, I hate to admit this, but I prefer the Wal-Mart. (I can't believe I'm already a Wal-Mart shopper. The south really does change you.)

Otherwise, my dinner was splendid. And while I know this will pain certain of my family members, I have to admit this: I've never really loooved mashed potatoes. They're, you know, fine. I guess. Just a vehicle for getting gravy into my gullet, really. But mashed SWEET potatoes? With hot milk and butter and salt and pepper and a few tablespoons of brown sugar and absolutely no effing marshmallows? Creamy, fluffy, delicious. I'm never going back.

And another thing. Please don't even try telling me that my dog isn't basically the prettiest dog ever. (And lately, shockingly, she's been a downright good girl. Probably because we keep shipping her off to live with strangers and then not returning for a week. I'm guessing she's afraid that next time, we won't come back to get her, which I suppose is a reasonable fear.)

Poor Kaya. She's the sweet one, but just not as photogenic. Always in the shadow of little sister. In other news, Roomie and I have decided that Atta Boy food is totally sexist. So we're going to make our own dog food, called Atta bitch.

In other random Christmas news, how rad are those vintage Season's Greetings glasses? I kind of love them. (Note, too, the hand-hewn, salvaged cypress bar top. Ahem.)

And guess who woke up to a actual show falling out of the sky and sticking to the ground the day after Christmas?

Of course, it was a mess of slush by noon. Whatever. I'm hoping for more snow, but mostly because folks here are so terrified of snow they're apt to shut down roads and businesses, so I could actually get a snow day. It'd be a nice change from Bend, where they run school buses across sheets of ice in blizzards, and where I worked for the newspaper. The actual apocalypse wouldn't get me out of work. In fact, the apocalypse would sell some damn papers. They'd probably call us all in on our days off to cover that shit.

GOING

So I've been. I went there. Here's the quick-n-dirty for those too impatient to wait for the ending: I got a job. I loved Roomie's family.

So, yes, in a way, the ending is written. But there's so much more. Like the rash. The rash! Yes, I got a rash.

As I returned from my job interview, a four-hour affair in which I was assured that the department I will work for is fun, funky, teasing and *diverse, I decided to take a nap. Roomie's mom was very understanding about my sleep deprivation and exhaustion, and was more than happy to wait out my short nap before she took me to the beach again (she lives four blocks from the beach. Swoon). So I took a short one, and woke refreshed.

After the nap, I stood with her in the kitchen, chatting, and absent-mindedly rubbed my right shoulder. And I realized something was off. Raised skin. I looked down. It looked like hives on my shoulder.

We inspected. It looked like maybe some heat rash. Now, I've been in much more extreme heat than this for longer periods, much hotter sun, but I was on vacation. Vacation does not entail polyester suits. So to me, this seemed like a reasonable reaction. (I have serious white people skin. My people are from the North.) So I went ahead and went out to dinner with Roomie's dad and stepmom and step brother (yes, they're adorable). On the way back to Roomom's, where I was staying, I noticed that The Rash had spread a bit. We hit the market for some Benadryl.

The next morning, I had an angry rash all over. My arms. My neck. My back. My face. And I had to get on an airplane soon. For 12 hours.

I called my mom. I may have cried. (I shouldn't tell you, but I once had scabies. It sucked. I was afraid I'd given it to grandma, whom we stopped by to meet after dinner [painfully adorable] and I was freaked out.)

Anyway, I could go on and on about the rash, but I finally saw a dermatologist: It's not contagious. Some sort of allergic reaction to something. The south? I hope not. Atlantic Ocean crab? Maybe. (FUCK)

But here's the short of the long (the long of the short, etc.): I got the job. Nailed it. I start Nov. 8. That means I have a very short time to wrap up my life, my job, my home, and go there.

So now that I've been there, what did I think?

The family is every bit as wonderful as I assumed they'd be. Roomie explained them all as I expected. They're charming, they're loving, they're wonderful. I don't think they paused long enough to wonder about me to think that I could be anything other than what they expected: I am the girl that their darling boy loves. So of course I'm great. And they are the people who raised my darling boy. There. Perfect. Done.

The place though? Well ... I don't know. It was a reality check. I think the job will be good. I'm not looking forward to my commute (Potentially more than an hour. One way. Every day), and the land? I was told that I would drive through some beautiful country on the way to the jobsite. I didn't see it. It looked like Mexico's countryside, which, in my view, is not so pretty.

I think there's a good chance I'll feel like a stranger in a strange land. But I'm trying to remember that I didn't like Bend at first, and now it's home. This browny sagey landscape is now so lovely, so deeply dry and crusty and dusty-lovely to me, I have to think that maybe I'll find a way to love this new home. Maybe I'll find friends like I have here -- OK, well. Maybe that's not so likely. I've had some ridiculous luck here.

So, here I go. I'm leaving in 7 days. I have to pack my home and my life and figure out how to make my dogs happy and how to make my new family get the smelly, difficult pack who will show up on their doorstep (in about 10 days) and quite suddenly be a part of their family. I have to say goodbye to my mom and my dad and my niece and nephew and my sister and so many friends, and I have to arrive ready to be a part of something new. I have to do this before Roomie arrives to support me.

But here I go. I'm packing now. We're going. We'll be there soon.

Love is effing crazy, you guys.

*By diverse, I mean there was a vegetarian and a British guy. I'll take it.

Wagon: The thing that I get off and on depending on my mood.

Yesterday was day one of not being a lazy-ass whiner chubby-bunny face-stuffer.

Really. After more than a week of sleeping 10-12 hours a night, and evenings spent in the company of my couch and a bowl of spaghetti (Really, at one point a friend stopped by, and I was watching Sex and the City in the dark, eating a bowl of spaghetti, in a filthy house. He asked, "Where's Roomie?" I told him, monotone, "He's out of town." My friend looked around the room and said, "So, are you just pissing and shitting yourself where you sit, too?" "Uh huh. I'll clean it up before he gets back.") I've decided it's time.

Yesterday, I did my first pilates class in ages, and discovered my that one of my instructors' sister is a poet. Now, when I heard that, I thought, "Oh, poet. Uh huh. Sure. I'm sure she's a real good poet." But it turns out she recently won a prize I was familiar with, and was recently published in Poetry, the journal I have a collection of going back to 2007. She's a real muthafuckin poet, y'all. Not sure why that matters, except to think that there are real poets out there who are related to real people I know somehow lets a tiny light into the black-ass darkness that's descended over my head, Eeyore-style. (Poetess also apparently went to college with a close friend of mine, who doesn't know the pilates instructor. It's all very strange in my world. Everyone knows everyone. Especially ex-boyfriends.)

Then this morning a good friend came and met me and Margaux to walk That Damn Butte, as I decided to name it. "Somehow, today, they made the road to the top extra long and extra steep," I thought all the way up, as my friend's ass disappeared ahead of me as the road curved around the butte. I think it may have had something do do with a) Only getting about 5 hours of sleep last night b) Did I mention all that couch time? All that delicious, wonderful, yummy nummy snoozy couch time? God, I could go lay down right now ... and c) All those cigarettes I've been smoking.

Gasp! Cigarettes! The horror!

You're telling me. I am starting to get wrinkles, people. And even though I quit smoking for almost five months recently, my stupid face decided to start the shadow of one of those heinous smoker lines around my mouth. The thing is, I have a real purdy mouth. Or at least I used to! Wah!

Anyway. One self-improvement project at a time.

Everything sucks

I thought about not writing about this here, because it's just so depressing. But I have to. (How's that for a winning lede?)

Wednesday morning last week, I went to wake the dogs up and let them out, and right away knew something was wrong. Rio (of turd fairy fame) had moved a few steps from the bed the three dogs share, and was lying on the floor on his side, whimpering quietly. His front legs were quivering. When I moved to the door and called the dogs, as I do every morning, he pushed up on his front legs into a sit and looked at me.

"Rio, come on buddy," I said. He tried to push forward, but that was it. His eyes were wide. He tried to shove forward, but his bum stayed put.

Now, I've lived with Rio for a year. Roomie's had him for six. He's a little bit of a drama queen. A hurty paw, a tiny sliver in the pad, could leave him three-legged. A subtle breeze could elicit a squealing plead for mercy.

But this was no drama queen moment. He was paralyzed from mid-waist down.

Over the next couple of days, the vet tried a few of the less expensive diagnostic and treatment options. But the prognosis wasn't good. There was little hope for recovery. He was going to be paralyzed. He was going to be incontinent. And his personality wasn't going to change; he would still be an anxious little guy. The kind of dog who, at the slightest bit of stress, would lick his paws raw.

And now, as he pissed all over the pee-pee pads we'd tucked underneath him, shitting medication and stress-induced diarrhea all over himself and his bedding, it bothered him. He fretted. He tried reaching his back side, tried licking himself clean. He buried his head in his paws when we were cleaning him.

You see where this is going. We decided to put him down. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever been a part of -- and I won't even begin to imagine or explain what it was like for Roomie.

Now for the part where I piss off the cat people: Dogs are a bigger deal than cats. Sure, cats are companions, and they're sweet, and they can be affectionate, and I can really see why some people are "cat people." I mean, dogs are a pain in the ass. Hooboy don't I know it. Dogs smell. Dogs can be a liability. They make it hard to go away, even for a weekend. They kill people sometimes. But cats aren't dogs. Dogs have soul -- and I don't mean they have something crafted by god that other animals don't have, I'm staying away from the whole god argument. I mean they have the kind of soul James Brown talks about. Dogs totally look at you and see you, all Avatar-style, whereas cats look at you and you might as well be a lamp. Perhaps your cat looks at you and sees a lamp that gives good belly rubs or a lamp that puts food in his bowl, but you're still a fucking lamp.

The last morning we had Rio, we took him to McDonalds and bought him an egg McMuffin. We took him to the park and pet his velvet toffee ears. And we stayed with him until the end. If you've never put an animal down, you can probably imagine what it's like, and how much it sucks. I thought I could imagine how awful it would be before I had to go through it on Friday. But here's the thing: It's so much worse.

The day we put him down, I went to the going-away party of one of my best friends, who's moving to Utah (Utah, for chrissakes). The next morning, my Roomie left for most of the next month for work. Oh and the gee dee tire store called and won't put my summer tires on because they're bald and 'we have a nice tire we can put you in for $6,000 and why don't you also bend over for us lady.'

I think I'm going to write a country song. I'll start with something about how I haven't been sleeping right. How at first, I can't get to sleep, then, in the morning, I want to stay in bed all day. I'll also write about filling up two bowls with breakfast instead of three, and about Margaux pacing the back yard with too much energy, looking for someone who wants to play.

And now, with apologies, here are some pictures of Rio. He was even cuter in person.

Shit

Best part of today's outing? When Margaux rolled in human shit.

Wait, did I say "best"? I meant worst. Yup, that was the worst. I couldn't even bring myself to look when Roomie took her over to the pile to be sure she knew what she was in trouble for. But I'm also a lil pathetic; her terrified yelps when he dunked her in the creek to clean her off still sort of broke my heart.

Another awesome thing about when your dog's wearing human shit? Being paranoid that she's going to brush up against you for the rest of the day. Because she has shit on her. Human shit.

And why do dogs like to roll in shit, anyway? Google tells me it may be to mask her smell so she can hunt more effectively, but, hello Margaux: Humans are the most dangerous animal on earth. Masking your pathetic little 45 pound dog smell with the smell of shit from some redneck who doesn't know not to leave his turds and toilet paper in the woods isn't going to help you catch a squirrel. It's going to make the squirrel think that a) you may be a human, so you may have a gun and b) you've been drinking Budweiser, so you're probably in a foul mood.

Heeling

Lordy it's been a shitter of a week. Especially considering that I'm about to work my 12th day in a row, so that shitter week? Extra long.

Tuesday morning, a friend and I decided to try doing a wee jog/walk together. We decided to meet at 6 a.m., which she was nervous about. She asked me to text her at 5:30.

"Good morning! I'm about to go watch the beautiful sunrise!"

A couple of minutes later, as I was putting the I'm a Mean Mommy Pinchey Collar on Margaux, I got a text reply.

"Dude. You are not allowed to be perky."

Fair.

But we did it, and the sun rose by the river as we trotted and chatted and our dogs sniffed beside us. It felt wonderful, but within two hours my heel, the one with the dreaded plantar fasciitis, was hurting badly enough I knew it was too much, too soon. Eff.

But my gym membership is about up, and I'm too broke to buy a new one. I have only one option.

The first 10

The first time I ran 10 miles, I cried.

I'd started running after I left a 5-year relationship. I was living with a good friend temporarily, and she ran, had in fact started running to treat her depression. So we'd get up in the mornings and go for runs, and spend the whole time talking and processing and working through all of the psychological garbage I'd collected over five years with a guy who I loved desperately despite the fact that he was a major alcoholic with a moderate cocaine and prescription drug problem who was sometimes verbally abusive. Oh, and he never wanted to have sex. Wondering why I left?

After awhile, another runner friend suggested I do a half marathon, 13.1 miles. I decided to go for it. I printed a training schedule off the internet and got to work. By this point, I had gotten into another relationship and fallen in love again. He was tall and skinny and funny, a former bike messenger and road bike racer. Sometimes he'd drink a Pabst before we ran, but then we'd head out together, and he was a slow loper of a runner, so I could keep up with him. We'd take my little dog out and run by the river and talk. He called me Sporty Spice.

But then he dumped me.

So I started running alone. Just me and my little dog. And it was good for her, and I felt good, and lost a little weight and even more inches despite my regular diet of carbs, cake, cheese and beer. I'd do several short runs a week then one increasingly long run on the weekend. I'd tried to get to 10 miles a couple of times, but kept getting held back by screwups. My hamstring would bother me, or I'd uknowingly pick a route with bodacious hills that I simply could not run up. I knew all I had to do in my training was get over that damn ten mile mark. As someone told me, "If you can run 10 miles, you can run 13."

As I was coming to the end of the trail, my breath started catching in my throat. At first, I thought something was wrong with me, that my lungs were seizing. Then I realized it was just the pride catching in my lungs. I didn't know until my eyes started to sting how glad I was that there wasn't a man with me. The rest of the day my body buzzed warmly, and I couldn't stop grinning. And I finished the half marathon. I ran the whole way -- I mean, other than when I was drinking gatorade or peeing. I understand that people pee and shit themselves in marathons in order to get good time, but that ain't me.

Hard days for A-holes

Three days ago, Margaux bit one of Roommie's friends.

Now, when it happens, it's never a real bite. She doesn't bite down, she doesn't chomp. It's more like a ferocious lunging action with teeth bared, so teeth come into contact with skin. After, you could see two marks on his hand; broken skin where she'd gotten him.

Granted, he did lean over her in a vulnerable spot. She was snoozing in bed, and the next thing she knew, a man she barely knew (a man with a beard, no less) was leaning over her, hands coming at her (in reality, he was going to pet Rio). I mean, jeez. If I were dozing off, and got woken up by a giant with a beard, I'd probably lunge at him, too.

Then, last night, she lunged at another friend (bearded, and wearing a hat) who came into the room and surprised her. Immediately afterward, she dropped her ears and cowered. She knew it was wrong.

So today, when I wanted to take her to get her vaccines updated, I was nervous about the vet staff. I took two anti-doggie-anxiety pills I'd gotten from a friend, and fed them to Margaux in a half of a hot dog.

Two hours later, she was three sheets to the wind. Red-eyed, dry mouthed, and dizzy. It was kind of cute, but pretty pathetic. She had a good sideways stagger that I recognized from a few of my own experiences, and her back legs kept nearly giving out. I probably should have just given her one of the pills, rather than two.

When some friends came over this evening, we let her out of her room and instructed her to lie down on her bed. When she stood up and walked toward a man she has only met a few times, I told her to go back to her bed, and he said, "No, it's all right." I should have said, "No, it's not." But I didn't. Roommie's always trying to get me to trust her more, so I watched as he pet her. Just as he was talking about how cute she is, and asking what kind of dog she is, she went for him. He was wearing a hat.

Later, as I punished her -- she had to sit with an upturned bowl and watch and smell while the other two dogs ate their dinners -- I felt awful. She looked so sad with her red-rimmed eyes. She wants to be good, I know. And in fairness, she was drunk, and that wasn't her fault.

But it's strange. I used to think it was so simple. If you have a dog that bites, you put it down. But that was before I met Margaux.

Eff.

Clocked

Today was a lovely day, sun-shiny bluebird winter kind of a day. After a wicked yoga session (I sweat a grim face into my tank top, a damp: -_- under the sports bra. Not sure what could be more attractive) we loaded up the three dogs and headed out to Roommate's work's base camp.

It's a lovely plot of acrerage out in the country. You drive past llama farms, a few ranches with horses standing around looking bored, and all the while the Cascades on the horizon show off for you, until you hit gravel. There, Roommate opened up the back door to the car (apparently this is their routine when going out to base, I was new to the routine) and let the three beasts scurry out. Then we hit the gas while they ran behind us, Mama Kaya at a slow trot until she was a quarter mile behind us, Mister Rio jack-rabbiting up the middle, and my Margaux at a full on sprint beside the driver's window. I did not know a head that big could move that fast, but we got that bitch up to 30 MPH. Seriously.

After some ball throwing on the lawn, we headed down to the river and chucked the ball into the water for awhile, until their poor little butts were clenched and their back legs shivered so hard they refused to jump into the water anymore. On the way back out on the gravel (with Mama safely tuckered in the back seat), Margaux only got up to 26. When we finally let her in the car, I told her how disappointed we were with her. Only 26 miles per hour? Weak. In this family, we're winners.

So, that's her base. Next, we figure out mine.