I am dogless today.

The dogs went to work with Nancy. She planned to take Annie, but Annie is a brat, and as soon as she realized she was going, she ran outside and bounced in front of Riley and said, I get to go and you have to stay home with Cheryl, so Nah! 

So Riley dashed into the house and posed winsomely in front of Nancy and said, she got to go two days this week and I’ve had to stay home all that time and all I ever got to do was go to Walmart where I stayed in the car the whole time and that’s not fair.

Is too, is too, danced Annie.

I’m the best dog, Riley reminded Nancy, you both say so and I’m a go dog, Nancy–I need to go.

She like ME best now, Annie bragged.

Neither one of them like you, Riley told her, They plot at night how to make the other one spend the day with you. I’m the Good Dog. I bark now and keep them safe and stuff.

You only bark because I taught you how to bark–you never barked when I first came here. And I still growl better than you do.

They don’t like it when you growl.

Do too, do too

No they don’t and they talk to you about it.

But I have my string and my coat on and you don’t, so guess who gets to go today?

I translated some of this discussion for Nancy. It seemed only fair.

They like me better now because I’m small and cute and everybody likes me and nobody even notices you and besides I sleep with them every night.

They’re too hot.

Okay, we’re going now, so you just stand back and let me through…

It might have worked. Nancy forgot her keys. She can’t go anywhere without keys, so she came back.

Nobody loves me any more, Riley said. He hung his head.

And Nancy put his leash on and he went.

I am struggling.

I want a new laptop.

I have a laptop. I bought it in 2004, it runs Windows XP—very, very slowly–and I let someone else borrow it until she gets a new one, but that just cleverly disguises the fact that I have almost never used this laptop in the 9 years I’ve had it. For one, I have a desktop (two, actually.) I didn’t use the laptop I have because a.) I don’t like the keyboard, b.) I prefer a mouse to that whatever-it’s-called on a laptop and my mice kept dying, c.) I don’t really have a ‘lap’, d.) it’s slow, e.) I have a desktop that I’m used to. I used it when I went to Alabama. But not all that much. In the best of times I go to Alabama twice a year.

I was always going to go sit outside in the summer and use my laptop. Never did.

I love the whole idea of laptops. I just…don’t tend to use them.

I want a netbook because they’re small. All reviews assure me I won’t like a netbook because they’re a.) slow, b.) not very powerful, c.) going out of style.

They can’t multitask. I almost never multitask. My desktop multitasks, although it took me months to realize this because the computers I used when I learned computers threw their CPUs in the air and died if you tried to multitask.

They won’t play games. I play solitaire, Mahjong and spider solitaire. I don’t think those are the games they’re talking about.

How powerful does a computer have to be to run Word?

I was reading yet another get this/not that report this morning and it assured me an i3 computer would be too slow and drive me crazy. My desktop is an i3. It’s  speed demon compared to the last one.

This is what I do on my computer. I write documents on Word. I process photographs on Photoshop Elements. Occasionally (not often) I listen to music. I have about 427 other ways to access music. I play spider solitaire. I look at facebook, Xanga and my email. Occasionally I consult Wikipedia. That’s it. Oh: I like to put files on my flashdrives. I shop on Amazon.com. I download Kindle books. That’s it.

I also scan 35mm photo film, but I would do that on my desktop.

It used to be I would describe what I do on my computer and the salesman would assure me I need the bigger, better, more laptop. (That was also in 2004.)

In 2004 I had some vague idea what operating system, number of cores, what type of CPU and what kind of game card I was looking for: I don’t have a clue any more.

For a while I was looking for computers with optical drives: then I discovered you can buy an external optical drive for $8.96 on amazon. REALLY.

The bottom line is, I don’t need a laptop.

The bottom line is, I need a car.

Work done on the eaves.

A better dog fence.

A paid lobbyist in Washington to keep the legislature from reducing my Social Security benefits. And one in Lansing to keep my governor from cashing in my pension plan. With rising health costs, drug costs, costs of living and reducing social security, failing pensions, and the steady hits my meager investment funds keep taking, getting older is looking more and more like heaven on earth. I should have practiced living in a cardboard box when I was younger and my joints flexed more easily.

And now I need to go check on my collected balls of tin foil and string.*

*Does this make sense to anyone? My grandmother collected string (I believe she cashed in the tin foil balls during the war.) It has something to do with The Great Depression. All I know is that as the End of Times approaches, everyone will need balls of tin foil and string. And maybe some tires.

 

Shhh! Annie is sleeping.

I bought a book today to read for my reading group, Annie’s Ghost by Steve Luxenberg. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I think I’m really going to like it. (I have really liked most of the books the book group has selected, although almost none of them were books I would have picked out for myself.) My mind still makes profound distinctions between books I ‘want’ to read and books I ‘have’ to read.

Normally I spend most of my days in my chair at my computer.

I sat down on the couch with my book and began reading and The God Awful Creature Across the Street dragged 14 children out into his yard and began torturing them in FULL VIEW of Annie. TGACAS is a bulldog. We hate him.

Bark bark bark, Cheryl, bark bark. Do you SEE this? Bark bark.

I called her into the Conservatory. I said (this seems to work for Nancy) “We’ve got this, Annie, you can relax.”

Torture murder mayhem ritual decapitation ARE YOU LOOKING AT THIS? Bark bark.

I went outside with my book and sat on the box by the back door.

Cheryl, Riley greeted me, you came outside–is everything all right? Should you brush me now? Here, I’ll sit between your knees until you feel better.

Annie ran to the back gate. The postal Delivery Person from Hell is coming, Cheryl, run, grab Riley, let’s all get in the car and drive away now….

I went back inside. Sat on the couch. Read my book.

Oh, my God,he just ate a child and now I think he’s going to eat the mailman…

“I don’t remember why I thought I had to have you,” I said to Annie.

I don’t know how you managed to live long enough to find me, Annie said.

Fortunately, Nancy and I had just survived last evening.

Most evenings are the same, here. Nancy, Ilah and I have dinner together and then play a game while Riley throws himself with a sigh onto the floor and Annie runs to the dining room window to report passersby, dogs on ropes, wind gusts and all manner of intolerable social errors being committed in our front yard. We have taken up feeding her about this time. We now feed her using puzzle toys, which have significantly increased the amount of time it takes Annie to finish her dinner and gives her something to do (other that running to the dining room window to bark.) Then Nancy and I do the dishes, and then we go into the living room where Nancy and Annie crash on the couch and I sit in my chair.

Last night we went to the Conservatory. I had something I was doing on the computer, Nancy was reading a book.

Wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong WRONG WRONG.

Oh, my God the wrongness of it.

Stray postal delivery workers converged on our front yard with picket signs and hand granades. Annie ran around the house barking at everything that moved. Space Invaders! Huns! Godzilla!

Riley raised his head off the floor. Squinted. WTF?

He was too tired to deal.

We tried reason. We tried calming voices. We tried assuring her we ‘had it’.

Annie became more and more hysterical.

Finally we got up, walked to the living room, Nancy got on the couch I got into my chair, we turned on the TV and Annie collapsed, exhausted, on the couch.

We were safe at last.

Order had been restored.

And having learned from that experience, I got up off the couch, where I DO NOT belong, walked over to my desk chair and sat down where I DO BELONG, and Annie has been sound asleep on the couch ever since.

I think I may even be allowed to read over here.

We’ll see.

  

Someone was spreading a suggestion, in the form of a…what are those things called? There must be a word for them: a visual post on facebook with a picture and a cause. This one was suggesting dog owners adopt the practice of securing a yellow ribbon on the leashes of challenged dog to let other people know the dog needs space. Having a dog that needs space, I liked the idea and shared the post, and below it I mentioned I have such a beast.

A friend responded, “I feel your pain.”

I think the ribbon is a nice idea. I don’t hold out much hope for it’s success when something as simple as ‘don’t touch strange dogs’ does not appear to be anything people learn.  

But I haven’t gotten to the pain stage yet. I’ve actually only had dogs for about two years now. (Two years exactly on the first of May, the day Nancy and I drove all the way to Indianapolis to rescue the thirty pound dog (who now weighs 52.4 pounds–he never weighed 30 except in the ad) who peed all over my leg and jumped out of the car half-way home. (I caught him. I used a toddler. Pure luck on my part.) I’m still just…baffled.

There were things I didn’t know when we got Riley. The number one thing I didn’t know:

When the description of the dog says, “is good/bad with kids” or ”does/does not well do well with other dogs” these warnings have nothing to do with you as the potential home-giver. You’re either going to take the dog or you’re not: the warnings are to alert you to the 50,000 other people you and your dog will meet in his lifetime who are profoundly, inexcusably dog-stupid.

I was used to living with cats. When strangers came to my home half of my cats packed their napsacks and disappeared, half of my cats minus one came out to greets my guests and one came out to plot his revenge. You can’t just walk up to a cat who would prefer you not do that.

Screw you, sayeth the cat, I’m outta here.

My first wake-up call was at Pride. We took Riley because we had a new dog, we didn’t want to leave him home all day, we were proud of him, and a lot of people take their dogs to Pride. Nancy hissed, “Cheryl” and as I turned around a toddler grabbed my beloved yellow dog around the neck and slobbered him with a kiss.

His father was standing right there! He watched ! 

This is what I know about dogs. Children–particularly small children–get bitten in the face by their own dogs (not to mention mine) because they break the cardinal rule of dogs:

don’t look me in the eye and don’t get in my face.

As it happens, Riley loves children, particularly toddlers, and–although I have never tested this–I believe they could poke their fingers in his eyes, up his nose and down his throat and he would continue to wriggle with unabashed pleasure. He was clearly raised in a daycare facility. Somewhere around Indianapolis there is at least one and probably multiple growing babies who probably still miss their yellow dog. He clearly misses them.

Riley is less predictable around other dogs. He can behave very well. He really doesn’t like to be restrained while meeting other dogs, and when he worries I’m not paying enough attention he will assume guardian role and try to growl the intruder away.

And I will be absolutely honest here: I will walk up to a stranger’s dog and put my hand down. I am very tactile with animals. I also believe I can tell the difference between a dog that is pleased to meet me and one that has some reservations, and I know that if someone else’s dog bites me, it’s my own stupid fault. I also am much, much more likely to reach out and touch a mid-sized, long-haired wobbly dog than a.) a small dog, b.) a stiff dog, or c.) a large dog demonstrating anything less that sheer enthusiasm for our greeting. I’m an almost farm kid. There are things you learn along the way, not the least of which is, animals can be unpredictable and farm dogs are at the top of the list. His job is almost never to greet you and take you to the family safe.

I think Riley is a beautiful dog. When I take Annie and Riley somewhere with me, the dog everyone on the block responds to is Annie. They either love her or hate her on sight, and those people who love her want to touch her. I am not an expert on dog body language by any measure, but I would personally interpret her response as ‘ambivalent’. If she were someone else’s dog, I would never walk up to her and stick my hand out. I’m not even a dog person: but then, clearly neither are they. And there are people Annie is quite happy to greet. (They tend to be women. Older women rather than younger women. Go figure.) She is less sure of herself around children. She has never been aggressive toward any human being once she’s seen them: she barks at Ilah’s movement noises, but never at Ilah, she races to the door and barks and growls like the hound of the Baskervilles when guests come, but as soon as the door opens she’s all wriggly waggly come in come in, I think they keep the silver’s over here…

I watch her more carefully around people than I do Riley. I never take Riley entirely for granted. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the difference between Annie and Riley is a matter of trust: Riley trusts that I will never put him in a threatening position, and Annie isn’t entirely sure of me yet. Nonetheless, that requires that I will always be paying enough attention to keep everyone involved safe.

I could be wrong, too. I took Riley for his annual physical yesterday and they took a blood sample. It turns out he has veins like mine–they roll around and avoid needles. So at one point the vet tech is hugging him, the vet is stabbing him in the leg with a needle and Riley is slamming me in the leg with his tail. Look, Cheryl, they love me–everybody here loves me ouch they do Cheryl, really 

His vet–the vet who owns the practice, is at least my age and has met a lot of dogs in his life, gave Riley the ultimate compliment. He said, “This is a really nice dog.” 

Annie is smarter than he is, she runs circles around him in both energy and charm and she is a happy, cheerful little dog. Yesterday she took it upon herself to school a Newfoundland. (In Hadley June’s eyes, Annie is slightly bigger than a chihuahua. She was not impressed.)

We’re still working on “nice”.

 

 

ps–I should clarify something that was not clear in my last post. Annie is not aggressive toward Ilah in any way. Neither Nancy nor I would tolerate that. She has never barked at Ilah. She barks at noises from Ilah’s room when Ilah herself can’t be seen. She also barks at wind shifts and unpleasant smells that attack our sidewalks, people who walk up to our door (but never the people once they come in.) She likes Ilah. She has no problem with Ilah’s walker. She worries about the noises the metal sculpture makes when Ilah’s door closes.  

Ilah moved home to live with us on or about the 17th of January.

What did you bring me? Riley greeted her and he seemed quite convinced it would be something of value. She brought him nothing, however, and he promptly lost all interest in her and has never so much as flicked his tail in her direction since. (He does sit between me and her, gazing intently at her and then at me, during dinner time, when bits of food might at any moment fall dogward.)

Annie, on the other hand, shouted OH, MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT? and ran all over the house. ATTACK! ATTACK! HIDE THE BONES, GRAB THE PEOPLE, EVERYBODY RUN FOR COVER

That evening Ilah moved around in her room and the hackles rose on Annie’s neck, she released a low growl and began barking menacingly as she stalked Ilah’s door. And she has done that every third time Ilah moves around every day ever since.

Nancy and I have even talked about it. Why hasn’t she adjusted to that noise? 

We snap, “Annie, leave it!” and she does. Until next time.

We worry that Annie has a bad attitude toward Ilah, although she seems like Ilah well enough: it’s the NOISE she doesn’t like.

It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I don’t understand. Ilah uses a walker. her walker has wheels on the back and skids on the front, so it creaks like most walkers do and it makes this slow, dragging sound, like scales moving across the floor. Every time Ilah comes out of her room I visualize this giant dragon dragging its tail through my living room. And like Annie, I don’t seem to ever acclimate to the sound.  

All things considered, life with Ilah and the dogs has gone better than I anticipated. She likes Riley, and appears to be very comfortable with him. She likes Annie well enough, although she says, “she’s nosey.” (She is.) Annie is just very active, running here, there and everywhere all of the time and I think just that activity level can be a little hard on the elderly (sometimes it’s hard on me.) There is also The Thing in the Back Yard we must be alerted to five times a day, The Horrible, Very Bad, No Good Mailman (we hate him) to be announced and Someone Walking on OUR Sidewalk alerts to be issued whenever that happens. We keep the curtains drawn in the living room because it provides a little less visual stimulus for the dogs. It also makes the room dark. But neither dog is afraid of the walker, they simply respect it, and while Annie feels free to run into Ilah’s room whenever the door opens, she so far has not stolen or mutilated any sacred treasures.

Today Annie and I go see her trainer, review Cheryl’s faltering training steps and sign up for our intermediate obedience class (again.) We have to get Cheryl trained.  

Annie and I have a ritual we do every morning. She gets up with Nancy, goes outside to her her morning work, has her breakfast, and by then I am usually up and seated at my computer.  Annie comes and nose-bumps me. This is my cue to hug her and fondle her all over her body, with particular attention to her head, pick up her feet and scratch her butt. When she first came to live with us we could barely touch her head, we could not hug her, she was nervous about us touching her feet–but she loved a butt rub. She will tolerate anything if it evolves eventually into a butt rub. Now she cuddles up next to me–all parts always moving–and makes little snorty noises which I choose to believe are sounds of pleasure. We do this every day.

Yesterday we practiced five times, just to make sure we got it right.  

It is a damp, gray day.

Not a good outdoor dog day.

Wet fur. Wet dirt. Testy moms complaining about ‘mud’ and ‘tracks’.

There is a depressed dog on either couch. Life is just not hardly worth waking up for, today.

When good dogs go bad:

Okay: I stole the eraser from the corpse because I collect them. I am convinced that someday Nancy will have a mechanical pencil that will survive long enough to need a replacement eraser, and I have at least 6 of them waiting for that moment.

So far it’s not looking good.

It would appear that mechanical pencils sit on Nancy’s deck, or her couch-side table, and sing siren songs of chewability to Annie. Come little dog, and chew me up, I’ll taste so good… You haven’t nibbled on a pencil as good as me in days…

I can leave my shoes on the floor and Annie will trot up to them and  beak them, but only one of my pairs is so tempting as the cause her to grab it and run away with it… Come on, Cheryl, RUN! I’ve got your shoe! We can play chase!

The life expectancy of an unattended mechanical pencil is roughly 12 hours.

This is the problem. Snorty McFee:

All of my animals have multiple names. Her name on her license is ‘Annie’. Her name when she is outside barking and I have enough enough is ‘Annabel Lee!’ AKA ‘Snorty McFee’. (This allows me to look at Nancy and bark, “Get Snorty!”)

Riley is Wiley Riley Booberry Boo (or any combination thereof.)

‘Wiley Riley’ is…an exaggeration. Nice dog. Not a rocket scientist.

Yesterday I took them to the Downtown Dog to have their toes shortened. This is a horrible betrayal. Annie weighs 40 pounds and it takes two people to trim her nails, one to hold her, one to snip. With Riley they use a sander that looks remarkably like my Dremel, but Annie will have nothing to do with that, thank you very much. Yesterday the unthinkable happened: a foreign dog came into the dog grooming store and Annie and I spent some time assuring each other that no one really needed to bite that dog, that it was a public store–for dogs, even–and that awful, no good, horrible dog had as much right to be there was we did. Although we had an appointment. And we’re a better dog. And we don’t like that dog at all. We are, I think, actually making a little progress on that whole other dog aggression thing. Not dog park  progress, but ‘we can walk past other dogs maybe sometimes if everything is fine’ progress. Tuesday we have another appointment with our trainer to continue our work,and we have arrange Ilahcare for our next class, whenever that may be. We WILL be a well-behaved, walkable dog. We’ll get Cheryl and Nancy trained if it kills us. We will.

Riley does not like having his toes shortened either, but I think his major objection is to the table. We don’t like that table. He is quite proud of his feet when it’s all done. Riley doesn’t care if other dogs come into the grooming salon while he’s there. Well, he does: some he would like to greet, some he would like to send packing, but a simple ‘no’ will allow Riley to calm down and get down to the serious business of getting all the way across the hardwood floored storefront with shortened toes.

He has gone outside again. Birds are chirping. Grass is growing. He has an estate to survey.

 

 

We are petitioning to send Cheryl back to work.

We don’t know what ‘work’ is.

Nancy goes there. She’s gone all day and we never have to worry about her racing out into the back yard with a spray bottle in her hand, yelling intelligible human-speak while dousing us with water. It doesn’t hurt or anything, but still. We look stupid. Imagine if you have barked to your neighbor dog, I own this fence, I am ruler of this yard and you are not welcome here! all alpha and fierce-like, and then your old, fat owner comes charging out of the house and chases you across the lawn with a spray bottle. You get all wet and you look stupid in front of your enemy.

Hahaha, laughs your enemy, your owner did that to you!

We are losing the backyard wars and it’s all because of Cheryl. 

She says stupid human things to us. We don’t understand them all, but this is one she says often. She says:

“Stella lives in her back yard

just like you live in yours.”

Crazy talk. 

We have the whole back yard to defend.

Cheryl needs to stay in the house and keep her spray bottle to herself.

Annie is outside eating crocus blooms: or eating bees, it’s hard to tell from here. According to the back fence thermometer it is 60 degrees outside, which may be a little optimistic, but whatever it is, it’s Annieweather. Also Rileyweather, but he is much more tolerant of the cold than she is. Annie has a minimum of dog hairs. In fact, there are parts of Annie that have no dog hairs at all. She’s a forty-pound purse dog.

Annie and I have had the garage fight twice today. We store our trash, our recycling, the cranberry juice and my gourds in the garage. Well, okay, we also keep the car out there. The easiest way to get included in any ‘go’ adventure is to be in the garage when the car is about to leave, so whenever the garage door opens, out runs Annie. Also, because she lacks faith, she does not dash back into the house on command, sensing that bad, bad trickery might be involved.

Because Annie has minimal hairs, it would be dog cruelty to leave her in the cold garage for any length of time. This is ignoring things like antifreeze leaks, insecticides and salt licks. We have a dog rescue organization here in town that offers cash money to neighbors willing to turn people in for dog cruelty.

When Annie dashes out into the garage and then says, no, no, Cheryl, I’m not coming inside–I’m going to stay out here for a while, hey, what’s this delicious green stuff? Cheryl wants to beat her with a broom. 

“Go ahead–eat antifreeze, for all I care.”

We don’t have any free-flowing antifreeze in our garage, but you catch my drift.

When she first came to live with us, everything we did was like opening the garage door to grab a bottle of cranberry juice, only to have Annie dance out into the garage and play ‘chase me’ around and around the car. In fact, when we first got her she was terrified of the car: it took me 35 minutes to get her into the car the first time. This was after Riley said, Hey–it’s a go day! and jumped into the back seat, panting with enthusiasm. Unlike Riley, she’s never said, Oh, look, the front door’s open–I think I’ll run to Canada… Although, to be painfully honest, those adventures are actually preferable to standing two and a half feet away from a dog I can’t catch. When Riley bolts off down the street I am more focused on FINDING him than I am on how (&*%(&*($_)$#(*7 frustrating this bull-headed runt of a dog can be…

Anyway. I called her. She wouldn’t come. I called her cheerfully. She laughed: Trick. I shut the door.

I walked away.

Silence.

Silence.

Woof!

Cheryl–somebody left me out here in the garage…

I accidentally shut Riley in the garage once and he stayed out there quietly until people started coming to the house and he had to bark their arrival. (It was also better dog weather in the garage that day.)

Both dogs have come inside now. Riley is piled up on the couch, resting, and…I’m not sure where Annie is. The trash is not rattling. No dogs are outside barking. (Well, if they are they’re not mine.)

She’s napping on the living room couch. She can’t nap out here with us because Riley owns the couch. No: you can’t share. I don’t share my couch. Oldest Child.

They came inside because the backyard neighbors (once Princess’ proud owners) have a new dog who may/may not be named ‘Deuce’. Deuce is a medium-sized dog, possibly still a puppy, of obscure breeding background (I saw him once for thirteen second at the top of the baby’s slide.) Deuce and his human mom are out in the back yard practicing ‘sit’. This so infuriated Annie she had to rage outside and insult his heritage on both sides of his family, which caused Cheryl to rage outside and order both dogs into the house and slam shut the dog door.

So a foreign dog and his human are doing no one know what in the neighbor’s back yard, NO ONE KNOWS OR CARES and there is nothing to be done but the taking of a nap.

Nancy will hear about this, when she gets home.

Annie just trotted out there, poked me with her nose, and then trotted back into the living room and threw herself in a heap on the couch.

She moved, Cheryl. That woman I like to bark at  and you won’t let me any more–she moved.

Just so you know. 

 

Annie is exhausted. It is barely 11 am.

She is lying on the end of the Conservatory couch, under the light, about two feet from Nancy (at her computer) and about eight feet from me (at mine.) Ilah is in her room. Riley is outside, soaking up sun.

The Thing in the Back Yard has been barked into submission.

No one is gallivanting off to parts unknown.

If the noisy water machine in the food room would be quiet, life would be perfect.

We are in an interesting phase of our training with Annie. We (Nancy and I) are learning that ‘leave it’ actually works, that ‘sit’ is a useful command most of the time, that even when Annie goes ballistic because The Thing in the Back Yard is braying, BOTH chows have escaped from their house at one end of the lawn and Jetta the Weimaraner is hysterically barking at the other end, if we say, firmly, “Annie, come,” she…may not actually ‘come’…but she will eventually veer her mad dashing through the door door and back into the house. Or, in other words, we don’t have to corner her, grab her by the collar and haul her bodily into the house.

We have made progress, in spite of ourselves.

Today we worked out the kinks and figured out a way the two of us could attend our intermediate dog training class together (with our dog.) We need this dog to learn obedience. And she can: I believe I’ve admitted before, the hardest part of training Annie is training me.

What do you want me to do, Cheryl?

You’re not paying any attention–we could be eaten alive by this danger coming toward us and you’d never know: I’d better step in, here…

Riley–our starter dog–trusts me to handle situations, even if he has to dance and lean against me and bark to get my attention. Annie has limited faith in my abilities. Nice human, she appears to think, but a little dumb about the world.

Oh, you noticed that, did you? Okay, I’ll follow your stupid command

I have learned humility with my intermediate dog. I no longer lecture my sister about taking her dog to the dog park. Now that I have a dog that is aggressive toward other dogs, I can suddenly hear. (This has always been one of my most charming traits: teach me about of two elements on the periodic table and I am suddenly an ‘expert’ on elements. I’ll tell you anything I think you need to know about elements, regardless of your own level of expertise. I just learned it, it’s obviously new information no one else has ever heard before. Teach me about five of the elements on the periodic table and I might eventually realize just how many elements there are. Go bury in my head in the sand and groan. Girl, you did it again… I never learn. I was, for about a year, an expert on dog training because I had a genial lab mix who would occasionally sit when I told him to. I’m sorry, WeeOne. Thank you for your patience. And Jim. I’ve never even SEEN his dog, yet I felt completely confident telling him how to train him…)

It appears that a contingency of the family Peck is en route to Alabama today. Have a wonderful weekend.

Say ‘hi’ to Ella for me.  

Last year we fired our Internet service, which was also our cell phone service. I was mad because the salesman who sold me the service was fairly universally hated by the people who worked for him because he was more into hustling than he was providing service. He would sell anything to anyone, whether or not he had any expectation that it would worked, and then duck into the back room when an unsatisfied customer showed up. (I learned all of this after I fired the service and dropped by the office a few months later to find a.) he was gone, b.) previously ‘gone’ employees were back, and c.) they really, really disliked him and took great pleasure in telling me what a jerk he was.)

In the end, we went back to a service I had previously fired. The Internet service is fantastic. The basic cable is very reliable. The premium channels, for while we pay extra, still pixelate at dramatic moments, but who gets everything they want in life? Thrown in the ‘bundle’ with the above services was a free phone. We took it because…it was free.

Previously the phone number belonged to someone named ‘Ping’. Not all of Ping’s friends speak English. Not all of his creditors are pleased with him. Ping may be a she. For a year now I have been answering Ping’s phone and assuring those who have called me that I am not Ping, I don’t know Ping, I don’t know Ping’s new number, but this number is mine and I am not Ping.

It would appear that I lack credibility.

Today the phone rang and when I answered the caller seemed confused. Her caller ID told her my name was Ping. I explained I am not Ping, I don’t know Ping, I don’t know Ping’s new number and I have no interest in paying Ping’s past debts, having quite enough of my own current ones, and it turned out this person is a friend of Ilah’s and she really should have the number on her phone, just not in Ping’s name.

So I called Comcast, who gave us the free phone.

They were charming and helpful (they have clearly been trained to provide good customer service) but it is now my job to call friends with different service providers to find out which providers ID me as Ping.

I would like to divorce Ping. This relationship is not working out. However, I’m not so devoted to the dissolution of our union that I wish to call my friends to ask a.) who they thought just called them, b.) what service provider they use for their phone and c.) how they are, in the general course of their lives, because you really can’t just call people to ask them to read their caller ID and tell you what service provider they use, thank you very much, click.

I am dogless today. Ilah is expecting guests and my partner worries that our dogs are problematic. Actually only one of our dogs is problematic: the other stays in the back yard and barks at guests’ cars, but sees no reason to come in and bark at them. Ilah had multiple guests yesterday and Riley said, I’m sorry, Cheryl–I’m out here waiting for snow.

Riley loves snow. He loves to stand in the middle of a snowstorm and blink. When he does come in, he has a light blanket of snow on his back and snowflakes in his eyelashes. It’s a good day, Cheryl, he tells me. I’m claiming my husky heritage and besides, the little black dog hates the cold. So on snowy days the whole back yard is mine.

I haven’t explained that whole March concept to him yet. It could still snow again, and I hate to break his heart.

But today he has gone to work with Nancy and will probably spend most of the day outside on his lead because a.) Annie is inside and not hanging from his jowls, and b.) he is terrified of Nancy’s work cat.

Annie is not. Terrified of the cat. She has a healthy respect for the work cat: but unlike Riley, she does not shrink back and plead, don’t make me go in there… 

The work cat is not terrified of Annie, either.

Be gone, dog, sayeth the work cat.

You’re funny, laughs the dog.

I’m not stepping foot into that building, Riley takes his stand. No, no, no, I’ll stay out here and suffocate in mounds of snow like the Iditarod husky that I am.  

And on and on it goes.