Archive for July, 2008

Get a grip

Published at July 28, 2008 in Dipshittery. 17 Comments

In response to my post below, Deb, who shares the same IP address as Chris T, and who I’m sure fancies herself the biggest animal lover in the world, left the following comment:

Okay, so what was the point of this little story? You are selfish? You are irresponsible? You have a dog for all the wrong reasons? Junebug is no longer your dog? Junebug decided to remain loyal to her family, the family you have dumped her with time and again?

If you have one ounce of humanity in your egomaniacal little soul, you will walk away, leave Junebug with her family, and not look back. You will, for perhaps the first time in your life, think of Junebug’s needs first.

Oh, and the next time you think about obtaining a living being to be your security blanket, the next time you want an animal so that you can play with her/his emotions in order to make yourself feel good, the next time you want to hurt a dog over and over again by dumping and reclaiming him/her, don’t. Just don’t.

Dissed? I think not. It’s not even payback. It’s just you getting called on your abominable behaviour.

Good luck, Junebug. I hope you and your family have a long, happy life together.

I love it.  I’m trying to decide what the best situation for Junebug will be — coming home with me or staying in a situation that she seems to have settled into quite well, with people who love her and take excellent care of her — and somehow this constitutes not “think[ing] of Junebug’s needs first” or “obtaining a living being as a security blanket.”

Now, Deb can’t answer because I’ve banned her for this bullshit comment — since I don’t have to tolerate this kind of thumbsucking when I’m paying for the bandwidth — but I sure would like to know how Deb has decided that I’ve “dumped” Junebug “over and over” simply by asking friends to watch her for a weekend now and again, much less that I’ve “hurt” her by doing so.

It seems to me that Deb — and all of the people who engage in this kind of drive-by pet-mommying, and they are legion — cannot possibly be over 12 years of age.  Because that kind of absolutist gobshite is what I’d expect from a particularly rigid child who hasn’t quite gotten to the stage where nuance is an easy concept, much less any sort of ability to adapt.

See, Deb, if you really think that dogs are going to fly apart if you leave and come back, that tells me that you have no experience with life, or with animals.  And that if you do have experience with animals, that you treat them like baby dolls rather than as beings that have to deal with disappointment now and again just like the rest of us.

So fuck off, Deb.  And all the rest of you drive-by pet mommies who might be tempted to try to comment here.

Dissed

Published at July 28, 2008 in Life with pets and Junebug. 9 Comments

I hadn’t seen Junebug in almost two months, since I’ve been staying in a sublet for the summer that doesn’t allow dogs.  I’d been looking forward to seeing her again, but I’d avoided visiting her at my friends’ place, where she’s been staying, in order to not get her worked up about me coming and going again.  After all, when I’d left her with them for weekends or weeklong vacations, she’d always cried when I left and eagerly greeted me when I came back.  With the full-body wiggle and happy dance.

Well, I saw her this past weekend, figuring that it’s only a week until I move into my new place and collect her.

And I got dissed.

She didn’t recognize me as I came down the street, and she was friendly when she finally did, but no wiggling.  No happy dance.  When I went into their place, she played with the bone I brought for her, but she didn’t do her usual snuggling.  And then it started thunderstorming, so all bets were off; she shook in terror and tried to hide.

Definitely not the reception I’d been hoping for, and I can’t say it didn’t sting.  Has she moved on?  She’s got it good at my friends’ place: they have a lot more people in their place, and two dogs of their own as well as three cats.  There’s no lack of attention and stimulation.  She gets to go to the park every morning, and they and their kids adore her (and she adores them).  They’d be more than happy to keep her.

So the question is, would she be better off there?  With me, she’d be home for long stretches of the day, with only the cats for company and a walk at some point before I got home.  She did fine with that for almost five years, but now that she’s settled into the routine at my friends’ place, is it fair to do that again?

Kitty update

Published at July 12, 2008 in Domesticity, Kitties and Health. 4 Comments

Sugarplum’s fine after her bloody vomit episode; the vet thinks it was just stress, since there was nothing else wrong with her.  I went with the senior wellness workup, since she’s 10 years old.  Bloodwork normal; her teeth need some attention for tartar, but I’ll wait on that until we’re settled in the new place.

However.

She weighed in at 20 pounds, which got me good and yelled at by the vet.  I hadn’t brought her to this vet in four years (her only other trip to the vet in that time was to the emergency vet when she had diarrhea on the weekend).  She was 15 pounds back then.

Here’s the kicker: I’ve been feeding her a controlled portion, between 1/2 and 5/8 of a cup, of high-quality, no-grain, high-protein dry food all that time.  And while that amount is theoretically just fine, and in fact should have resulted in her losing weight, it made her gain weight.  Which I hadn’t really noticed because I see her every day and I don’t have a scale.

For some perspective, consider this: while I was going through my papers and filing, I found her adoption record from 2000.  She was 7 pounds then, which was really too skinny (she’d been picked up off the street), but she would have been fine at something like 10 pounds.  Like a lot of street cats, she was very anxious about food, and I wound up leaving out dry food all day, which helped make her (as well as Zuzu) fat.  After the 2004 weigh-in at 15 pounds, I restricted her intake, which she adjusted to well; she didn’t even eat the dog food, which I left out all day because Junebug doesn’t really eat unless it’s something I’m eating.

Obviously, the whole dry-food thing isn’t working, even on a restricted basis.  So I bit the bullet and got high-protein (at least 12% by weight; a lot of canned food is 9%) canned food.  Now, I hate dealing with canned cat food.  It stinks, you have to wash the bowls twice a day, and then you have to deal with the cans (which will be a real joy when the dog comes back).  But, well, it’s for my cats’ sake.

And it seems to be working.  I don’t have a scale, like I said, so I can’t check her weight, but she appears a bit thinner, and she’s more active just in the short time (about 2-3 weeks) I’ve been feeding her the wet food (which, incidentally, is the same brand as the dry food).

But the best part?  Her shit doesn’t stink!  Seriously — I used to be able to smell her shit all the way across a 950-square-foot apartment, and now I can’t smell it five feet away.  The litterbox in this place is, literally, five feet from the couch where I watch TV and work on the computer, and had I not had a confirmed sighting of a huge turd sitting there, unburied, I would not have known she’d taken a crap this morning.

Back to the gym

Published at July 12, 2008 in Iron, Aging gracefully or not and Health. 3 Comments

Whee! I’m finally cleared to go back to the gym for the first time in about six months.  My back’s okay, my toe has healed up, and my knee is at a point where workouts are encouraged to strengthen it.  So I called up my trainer and booked 20 sessions.

I haven’t lost as much ground as I had been afraid I would; Elizabeth, my trainer, told me it’s much easier to regain lost ground than to build up the muscles in the first place.

The coolest thing is the whole chest business.  There came a point, about a year into my workouts, when I suddenly felt my chest engaging when I did bench presses.  It was very odd; I had thought it was working before, but apparently not.  According to E., it takes a while for the body to learn to do that instead of relying on the arms and back.  And the cool part was that my body remembered that when I got onto the bench.

I also was able to bench-press the 45-pound bar plus two 10-pound plates first time out.  I had last gotten up to the 35-pound plates, so it was pretty great to see I hadn’t deteriorated back to square one.  I think it had taken me six months to get to the bar alone.

The only real drawback is that E. is leaving the gym in a few months, having had it with being a trainer.  But we’re going to work out some kind of “workout buddy” arrangement to continue, where we train together on the weekends and I’m on my own during the week.  I may also take the money I save from not buying training sessions and start going to a yoga studio as well to increase my flexibility.  Because one of the things that doomed my knee was tight, very tight, super tight IT bands and calves.

A tale of moving woe

Published at July 12, 2008 in Real estate and Vanity. 2 Comments

So, I moved out, which I’ve mentioned.  Stairs which wrecked my knee, bloody cat barf, the works.   But now there are two rather large complicating factors here.

1)  I can’t find my passport and other important papers that were in a plastic document protector near a whole lot of other papers that I do, in fact, have with me.  I discovered this when I tried to book a trip to Iceland for my birthday and came to a page where you have to input your passport number and other info for the TSA’s security theater.  So I opened the box where I thought it would be and … nothing.  Dug through another bin where I was sure it had to be and …. nothing.  Opened every bag, bin and box I have here and … nothing.

There’s a chance it’s in the storage unit, but I honestly do not remember packing it anywhere.  I’ve called the old building.  Nope.  I called the friends whose car I borrowed to move.  Zip.  I called the buyer, and nothing.  I *can* replace everything, at some expense and hassle, but for my peace of mind, I’d really like the originals.  I have to think they’re in the storage unit, because there are some other important papers I *do* remember packing away that are in there.

2) Oh, speaking of the buyer: My contract allowed me to stay up to either 7 or 10 business days after the closing, at a per diem rate of $131.  I closed on 6/4 at 2 pm and paid the full per diem for that day, not a prorated amount.  I had anticipated being able to turn the keys over to the buyer on 6/8, but the move-out took much longer than I had expected.  She came over and did the walk-through anyhow, and left some stuff there.  She had to take a car service because the trains weren’t running.  I gave her the option of going out and coming back to see if I had finished, but she refused.  I offered to drive the keys over to her, which she was fine about, but when I did finish, she said it was too late and she was going to bed.  I was fried at this point, hot and exhausted, and wasn’t going to meet her there at 9 am.  But my broker lives in the building and had a set of extra keys, and she was going to be showing another apartment at 9 am; I would leave my set of keys inside the apartment.  The buyer agreed to meet the broker there at 9.  Didn’t show up until 1030 am.

Now, the per diem had been paid through 6/8.  My attorney is keeping $5000 in escrow in case I went over.  I asked him for the funds, and of course the buyer had to agree to release the funds.  She didn’t bother to answer for A MONTH.  Now she wants all kinds of money for the morning of 6/9 when she didn’t have the keys.  Now, there *is* a penalty of $350 per day for going past the 7 or 10 business days post-closing grace period, but I didn’t do that.  I was still in the per diem period.  I’m not sure that’s the actual term, since my copy of the contract is one of the important papers that’s off in my storage unit.  I’ve asked my attorney to take a look at that.   Because I didn’t sign the rider the buyer’s attorney wanted me to sign shortening the grace period from 7 business days to 7 calendar days, and I sure as hell didn’t sign anything at the closing that shortened it even further.

Also? She wants $25 for the car fare.  Bullshit.    Especially since I a) do not control the MTA; and b) I left her at least $100 worth of cleaning supplies.

Frankly, I’m ready to litigate if she continues to hold my money hostage.  Make her spend some money to recover that $25 car fare.