Monthly Archives: February 2013

Just suppose you thought you might have a problem.

Just suppose that you had helped a friend out with a kinda sorta similar problem.

And it worked.

So.

Just suppose you found out you could maybe, possibly, apply the same problem solving solution to your own-maybe problem.

And.

Just suppose you decided to experiment on yourself.

And.

Inexplicably, irrationally, and against all expectations, it’s working?

What do you do with that?

Yeah, so I got stuck.

For awhile there, whenever I was doing dishes or doing whatever that allowed earbuds and checking out, I’d been stuck on two or three songs.

Let’s call them anthem.

Let’s call them addiction.

Let’s call them profiterole.

Let’s call them whatever, they were my songs against the night, and I loved them. I swayed my hips to them while I worked scrubbing, and nodded my head to them and punched my fists to them when nobody was looking.

I was pretty well adjusted? And then I stumbled up against the shuffle button and my whole life changed.

I pushed it and suddenly music was washing over me that I hadn’t heard in decades and centuries. Songs I’d thought long forgotten. Tunes I barely remembered, but remembering, I loved anew.

Even if they were kinda scratchy sounding.

So.

The other night it’s dinnertime and all four of us, Miss Carol and me and Cupcake and my little brother, were moving around in the kitchen getting dinner ready.

In truth, only three of them were actually doing anything meal-wise. I wasn’t.

And Cutter cruises in, impatiently awaiting his treat train.

Dude, he says, looking plaintively up at me.

Dude, I say, you got another seventeen minutes.

He wuffles and  slinks by me, his ears down and disappointed.

I hate you, he says, quietly- if I had thumbs, I’d get my own, he spits up at me, as he moves back out into the living room to wait until 6:30 when all manner of sugar-shock goodnesses burst his little system.

Tug wakes up just long enough to call me a dickhead.

Thanks buddy, I say, and Tug lays his big head back down for another nap.

I shrug and keep doing whatever it is I’m doing which certainly isn’t meal-making stuff as it swirls around me and then, promptly at 6:30, Cutter is sitting and staring up at me.

Now, boss?, he says, his tail sweeping a wide arc of carpet.

Now, my little buddy, I say. Your patience is marvelous and admirable, I say.

Cutter just looks at me, his tail furiously cleaning the same furiously cleaned arc of carpet, and hisses at me- fuck all that, he says, get me my cucumber.

He makes me giggle so I do it, but while I’m skinning his cucumber it all the sudden occurs to me that when I buy a salad at the Farm Fresh my cucumber slices are unskinned. I can eat the dark skin.

I stop for a second, resting my forearms on the sink. Behind me Cutter growls and from the couch Tug shifts just long enough to call me a dickhead again.

Miss Carol, I croak.

Do you realize? And I tell her the whole skinned/unskinned thing.

Doesn’t matter, Miss Carol says. Cutter gets his treat skinned.

Yeah, Cutter says, and head-butts my leg.

Hurry up, he says.

Cutter and Tug are singularly (duallularly?) a pain in the ass when it comes to eating and feeding. 

We free-feed them, meaning we leave their bowls full of food all the time hoping that they will spend their days idyllically moving slowly from napping to eating and blissfully waiting for our return.

The reality is waaaaaaay different. 

Cutter and Tug require an audience while they dine and they only dine right before their walk, so twice a day Miss Carol or me have to stand and wait and watch while the boys eat so that we or me can walk them.

It’s great fun but it gets even more frustrating.

Unless Cutter and Tug deem their food- the same dry dog food they’ve always eaten- suitable, they won’t eat it.

And then we feel bad. 

So one of the ways I’ve found to make dog food sameness palatable is to pour any kibble leftover in their bowls back into the the big dog food hopper, stir it around some, and re-serve it. 

I did this the other day and watched while my bumbling sleight-of-hand worked once again and Cutter and Tug chowed down after they’d turned their noses up on their dinner.

Why do you guys do that?, I asked. 

Tug’s nose remained buried in his bowl making snuffling and chomping noises, but Cutter raised his head and swallowed hard two or three times- still chewing the way dogs do- and glared at me.

If you left a sandwich on the kitchen counter all day long, would you want to eat it? he asked.

Yeah, Tug woofled, his nose buried in his bowl.

Cutter continued to stare at me like I was a turd.

But if you made the sandwich in the morning and stuck it in the refrigerator, you’d eat it that evening, right? he said.

Right? Tug mumbled around a mouthful of dog food, glancing over his shoulder at me.

But it’s not the same thing, I said.

Yes it is, Cutter said.

And he returned to the mincing little bites of his dinner, while I waited for them to finish so I could walk them.