A Tivo Day

It’s a gorgeous spring day.  I really should be outside enjoying it but I have nothing to do outside.  I figure that I can watch the dogs sleep as well indoors as I can outdoors.  I decided to spend the day watching some of the dozens of things I’ve Tivo’d over the last year.  I have things from C-SPAN, Nature programs, lots of things from the Discovery channel.  Quite a potpourri.  They’re taking up a huge chunk of space on my old Tivo -- my wonderful, trusty Tivo -- and I need to watch them so I can get rid of them.

I’ve already watched a show on Barbarians -- about how the Romans maligned the Celts.  Interesting but not really earth shattering.  I watched a C-SPAN show with an author discussing dog food and melamine.  Nothing I didn’t already know there either, but it was still kind of interesting.  I was glad to hear the author say that from her research pet food manufacturers are no longer putting the carcasses of dead pets in food anymore.  You hear this all the time.  It is something that used to go on but it really caused so much bad publicity that it just wasn’t worth continuing.  To be honest, I doubt that your dog or cat cared if they were eating their brethren.  I know we hate to think about it but dogs and cats really aren’t that picky when it comes to their food sources.  They may have you fooled and be picky about what you put in their food bowl, but most cats and dogs will eat thoroughly disgusting things when left to their own devices.

I also watched an interesting show about a couple of trainers who took in dogs who’d had a bad life and re-trained them to be working dogs.  Now before you start thinking that you can do this with just any dog from a shelter, the dogs were a Bloodhound and a Bearded Collie, so they already had the instincts do particular kinds of work.  The Bloodhound turned out to be very good at tracking work and went on to work for a K-9 unit in Massachusetts.  The Bearded Collie needed more work and training at the end of the show.  But it was interesting to see the trainers work with them.

Right now I’m watching The Wolf Within, which I’m pretty sure I’ve seen before.  It’s a good overview of how we’ve ended up with dogs from wolves.

I deleted Stonehenge Decoded.  I watched it when it was on last year and I thought it was absolutely awful.  It offers the theory that Stonehenge was built as a place for the dead and a nearby wood henge was built as a place to celebrate the living.  The evidence is severely lacking and the theory is based on what the lead archaeologist came up with from studying a tribe in Africa that was obsessed with death.  There is, frankly, nothing in the culture of the peoples who inhabited the Stonehenge area or those who came later that would substantiate that they had a death fetish or worshipped death.  Stonehenge was built long before the Celts came to Britain but there is nothing leftover in the oral tradition that shows any special obsession with death.  The show (and the archaeologist) also overlooks the fact that stone henges (and wooden henges) are found all over the British Isles.  They offer no explanation for this fact or how it would fit in with their theory.  There are even similar stone megalithic structures all over western Europe.  They don’t seem to be particularly connected with death in any way.

I think a much more likely explanation for Stonehenge is supplied by another recent theory that suggests it was a site for healing.  People still could have come from far away to visit, bringing ailing people with them.  It would account for the nearby neo/megalithic village set up to cater to visitors.  And, it would explain the burials near the site.  It’s also a much more life-affirming explanation that trying to claim that Stonehenge was a place to celebrate death.  If the stones were part of a healing place it could also explain why there were similar sites in other parts of the country -- people would need healing places everywhere.

I visited Stonehenge once, years ago, but I don’t remember much about it.  I can’t remember if it was before or after they let you go up to the monuments.  I thought we could still go up to the monuments but the things I’ve read say they had put the fence up then.  I wish I could say that I had some transformational experience but I didn’t.  I just remember the big stones sitting in what seemed like a huge field and parking lot.  It was impressive but it seemed like the British were doing their best to belittle the place instead of preserving its grandeur.

One place I’d really like to visit is Newgrange in Ireland.  It probably doesn’t look very impressive from the exterior photos but it’s as old or older than Stonehenge.  It’s a passage tomb, a neolithic grave, in this case on an acre of ground surrounded by white quartz.  During the winter solstice light travels through a small opening above the door and illuminates the innermost chamber of the tomb.  I think it’s quite mystical.  They allow a few people at a time into the tomb during the winter solstice so they can see the light illuminating the tomb.  It’s quite amazing to think that this has been going on for 5000 years.  When you think about it, the people who built the tomb had to be quite savvy to build a tomb that would be exactly aligned with the rising sun on the winter solstice for so many centuries.

There are sites like this all over Ireland and the British Isles.  There’s another good one at Maeshowe in Scotland where you can watch the winter solstice light come into the tomb.  I like that one because they have a web cam so you can watch it online during December and January each year.  You can see the light getting closer and closer (and farther and farther away) from the room until it fills it up.  It can be quite aggravating some times.  You’re at the mercy of technical problems, bad weather, or mice chewing on the cords in the room.  But when you have a clear day and the light fills the room it’s quite spectacular.  You see the room as it must have looked at a very special time to ancient people thousands of years ago.

Watching the light come to these tombs has made me wonder about the religious beliefs of ancient peoples in the British Isles.  Why would they go to the trouble of building these tombs and aligning them with the rising sun on the shortest day of the year?  We’re told that, in general, ancient peoples believed in sun gods and moon goddesses.  They believed in rituals and magic to produce better hunts.  They believed in rituals and magic for fertile crops.  What did they believe about an afterlife?  I don’t know.  I know a little something about Celtic gods and goddesses but they don’t show up in the British Isles until about 500 BC.  These tombs and megaliths were built 1000-2000 years before the Celts came to Britain.  I don’t know what those people believed.  They had reverence for the dead or else they wouldn’t have built these tombs.  But what did it mean that they aligned these special tombs with the light of the winter solstice?  Was that a light toward an afterlife?  A way to live again?  A pathway?  Reincarnation is commonplace in Gaelic and Celtic stories -- stories of transmigration of souls and transfiguration.  But, again, we’re not talking about the Gaels or Celts here.

Maybe the light lets the dead return to the world of the living each year for a while?  The path could work both ways.  The veil between the living and the dead could lift for a while.

Just some ponderings.

More dog shows on Tivo now.

The End of the Romantics?

Once again I am playing hooky from work.  I’m supposed to be writing about cancer and dogs today -- kind of a heavy topic.  Instead I got distracted by a TV commercial.  I’m not even sure what the commercial was for.  I was getting dressed and it was playing on the TV in the same room.  I heard the speaker talking about the gentleness of nature and the pureness of a baby, blah blah blah.  So my mind started working with that and wondering if it were really true.  Are babies really pure?

Of course, I know that Wordsworth and the Romantics tell us that we’re born pure and we only lose our innocence as we get older.  But as I considered the idea this time I looked at it from a more natural perspective.  Is that what happens with animals?  Not really.  Animals are born with all of the proclivities already in place that they are likely to exhibit when they get older.  They can be influenced by circumstances -- by people, by other animals, by lack of food or lots of food, and so on -- but their basic nature is already there before they’re born.  Their temperaments can be influenced by genetics.  What were their parents like?  It’s not a matter of being pure and innocent or not.  Why isn’t that also true for humans?  You can have a happy cow or a mean cow but it’s still a cow no matter what kind of life she leads.  Is she a “pure” cow or an innocent cow?  Does a cow stay as innocent as a calf?  Well of course not.  But no one of any species stays as innocent as they are at birth.

That’s about the time it occurred to me that I was repudiating Wordsworth.  Somehow that made me very happy.  Not because I don’t like Wordsworth -- I do.  I love the Romantics.  But somehow it always made me sad to think that we have such a loss of innocence as we grow older.  I think it makes much more sense to realize that there isn’t a loss of innocence or “purity.”  There’s simply a development.  A seed that germinates in the ground doesn’t lose its innocence when it sprouts.  It develops and grows.  It’s part of a cycle.  It’s not a loss.

Hmmm.  Interesting.  I’ve always thought the Romantics were the key to everything.  I’m not sure what it means to personally disavow them and see the world differently.

Self Image

I don’t know who reads these posts.  It’s not really important that I know.  I mainly write them for me.  But I wonder if any of you reading were shy kids?  Did you have friends to play with on the playground at recess?  Maybe you didn’t fit in?  You wondered how all of the other kids seemed to find it so easy to laugh and joke and make friends?  And you, on the other hand, worried about being laughed at and doing the wrong thing.  Maybe you spent years building up your confidence and working on your self-esteem.

That description has to apply to someone else besides me.  I used to be so painfully shy when I was in elementary school that I would cry every morning and beg my mother not to make me go to school that day.  I’d get sick at school at the mere sight of food because I was so nervous.  One time I threw up on another little girl at lunch.  Believe me -- that does not make you a popular kid!  After that my teacher made me eat by myself.  How’s that for lowering your self-esteem and making you feel like an outcast?  I understand why she did it but it was still a bit harsh.

I think my social skills have never quite been up to par since those days.  Yes, I have learned to fake it but I still don’t enjoy crowds or even being with small groups of people very much.  But I have managed to make good friends here and there.

I’ve spent all these years concentrating on the things I’m good at.  I’ve built my self-confidence.  I know I am good at certain things.  I am self-sufficient now.  I take care of myself.  I’m not that nervous person anymore.

Still, I sometimes meet people who can send me right back to those days.  Once in a while I meet someone who gives me the feeling that they talk about me behind my back.  They may belong to my social circle.  They may not have the guts to say something to me personally.  But I get the feeling that they don’t really like me.  That they look down on me for some reason.  Maybe they’re like that with everyone.  I don’t know.  But if I don’t stop myself from worrying about it I can become paranoid about it.  I start feeling like that little outcast girl again.

I’m having dealings with someone like that now and it’s driving me nuts.  I spend way too much time thinking about it.  Am I good enough?  Do I do things right?  What is she going to say or do next?  It’s got me off balance.  I can’t get rid of her yet but I can’t wait to do so.  Or maybe I should confront her about it?  Or maybe it’s my imagination?  I don’t know.

It’s too bad that sometimes we have this old self image of ourselves and it comes back to haunt us from time to time.  Insecurity, I guess.

Random guilt

The weather has been beautiful so I took advantage of it today to do a little digging in the dirt.  I pulled up some weeds in the flower beds in front of my porch and planted some flower seeds.  I have no idea if they’ll grow or not.  I haven’t had a lot of luck with planting flowers from seeds in the past but I planted the seeds in such density that maybe some will manage to come up.

I’ve had that very unpleasant pins and needles feeling for a couple of days.  My dog BooBoo has gone with a handler to some shows in Maryland for the weekend.  I really miss him.  The house is too quiet without him.  The other dogs hardly pay any attention to me at all.  When BooBoo’s here he is either with me all the time or coming to check on me every ten minutes.  I’m having terrible separation anxiety with him gone.

Amy, his handler, posts messages on her Facebook page once in a while about the trip (they haven’t shown yet).  She said she spent three hours trimming him last night.  Oh, boy.  That’s expensive!  But I’m sure he needed it.  The dog grows hair like you wouldn’t believe.  I can groom him for hours and never get to the end of it.

I hope he does well but I’m more worried about other things -- is he eating; is he keeping people awake barking at night; is he getting along with the other dogs?  Mom stuff.  Can’t wait to see him again.

In other matters I’ve been having an ethics debate with myself.  I’ve stayed on friendly terms with my ex-fiance since he came back from Iraq.  There’s no intention of getting back together.  We went to Mexico together in December because the trip was already planned and I thought it might give us another chance but there was just nothing there anymore.  Since we got back we have had lunch or dinner a few times.  We go see a movie once in a while.  We talk on the phone once a week.  That’s about it.

My ex called a few days ago and we talked about his work (not going well) and some other things.  Then, out of nowhere, he asked me if I would like to get together for a little rendezvous.  Hmmm.  I said, “Aren’t you kind of dating someone?”  And he said, “Yes.”  I asked him a couple of times why he did stuff like this -- cheated on people -- but he just said he didn’t know.  Well, he said that he’d been missing me, but he cheats on everybody.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  We decided he should pick me up and we’d get something to eat or drink and go from there.

We ended up fooling around some without actually sleeping together...but I haven’t ruled it out for the future if this comes up again.

Now, shouldn’t I be feeling guilty about something?  Although I’m not sure why.  The person he’s dating is the person who broke up our relationship.  He was cheating with her while he was engaged to me.  Maybe this is payback?  Nah.  I just don’t care that much.  I really have put it all behind me.  I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t fun.

Maybe that’s why I should feel guilty.  I am fooling around with my ex just because it’s fun?  I don’t really want to get back together.  I’m just not seeing anybody else and he’s handy.  That’s awful, isn’t it?

Of course, he really should feel guilty.  He’s the one who is dating somebody and cheating on them.

I guess I could obsess about this and get myself all worried and upset.  Or I can just forget about it and see what happens.  I don’t really think it’s very important.  There’s just some random guilt floating around inside of me or I probably wouldn’t be thinking much about it at all.

Long story short, I really need to meet some new people but that’s easier said than done.

First puppy drawing criticism

Well, the cat’s out of the bag or, I guess that should be the pup’s out. I think all the world knows by now that the new puppy in the White House is going to be Bo -- a six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog. The little fellow (or not so little) is a gift to the Obama family from Senator Ted Kennedy who has been a Portuguese Water Dog-lover for a long time.

You’d think that people would be happy that Malia and Sasha are going to finally have the puppy that they’ve been wanting for so long but you’d be wrong. The Internet is lit up today with messages attacking the Obamas for getting a dog of their choice. Even people who have been ardent Obama supporters are now vilifying him for not getting a shelter dog.

Here are the facts:

1. Malia Obama is allergic to dogs. That severely limits the choice of dog for the family. They had to get a dog that her allergies would allow her to be around. Although some mixes and hybrids are described as hypoallergenic that is often a misnomer. In the case of the Labradoodle, they can have at least three types of hair -- curly, straight like human hair, and a wavy mix in between. Some of them may be hypoallergenic but some are not. It varies in each litter. They are not a breed and do not “breed true” with the same characteristics showing up in each puppy. To find a hypoallergenic Labradoodle the Obamas would have had to do a search that involved meeting individual dogs and ruling them out -- not very practical for such a busy family.

2. Visiting shelters to meet dogs was impractical for Malia or anyone with dog allergies. Think about it: if you are allergic to dogs the last place you should go is an animal shelter.

3. The Obamas and every other family and individual have a right in this country to choose the pet that they want, whatever its source. No one should be forced to get a dog from a shelter or rescue out of guilt. And whatever happened to the belief that you should actually try to get the happiest, healthiest puppy you could find? That still seems to be a good idea to me.

4. Once the family decided upon the Portuguese Water Dog, which is an excellent choice for someone who has allergies, it was highly unlikely that they would find such a dog in a shelter or even in rescue. The Portie is not a very numerous breed and its breeders are responsible, ethical people who have contracts with their buyers. They take back any puppy or dog who does not work out in their home. That means if you want a Portuguese Water Dog, you most likely have to go through a breeder to get one.

5. Contrary to what some AR nut jobs have been posting, this breeder is not a “puppy mill.” She’s a long-time breeder (70 years old) and highly respected. This puppy comes from champion breeding. He’s an AKC-registered purebred.

So, all I can say to the ARs who are whining and throwing mud at this puppy is suck on it. It’s really none of your business. The family did their homework and they made a responsible decision for their child and family. That led them to conclude that a particular breed from a good breeder was the best choice.

You can find out more about Bo from the friendly and polite AKC spokespersons who will be holding news briefings on Monday, April 13.

Elephant finesse

Time to catch up a bit. I’ve been so busy that I’ve been reduced to only writing here about once a week. I got to see The Haunting in Connecticut. Good movie! I thought it had a good plot quite apart from the scary movie -- I enjoyed the son fighting cancer and his family supporting him. I thought it was very compelling. But it was also essential to the frightening part of the movie because it put him close to death and created a connection between him and the “otherworldly” things in the house. Very nice. It did bog down a little at times with a couple of weepy scenes, but they didn’t last too long. There were some really good frightening parts of the movie. All in all, I thought it was very good.

It does raise a question: if you take a house with a "creepy past" don't you have an obligation to at least discuss it with your spouse, if not the kids? If my spouse rented/bought a house where bad things had happened, I would really need to know that before moving in. Otherwise we would be adding another bad thing to the house's résumé in the form of a spousal homicide.

As far as our dog legislation, the state Senate committee was much friendlier to us than the House committee had been. They listened to our testimony and asked good questions. They’ll vote next week. We’re hoping to kill the bill in the Senate. We still have to deal with the bill in the House where it goes to the full Judiciary committee next. Maybe the full committee will be a little kinder to us than the subcommittee was. They were downright hostile.

In case you’re wondering, these are the so-called “Commercial Breeder” bills -- the same as have been put forward in nearly 30 states this year. Of course no one likes substandard kennels or bad care for cats and dogs. It’s ludicrous to think so. But we already have laws against cruelty and neglect. We already have a law that requires anyone selling 25 puppies or more to be licensed. You’re already supposed to be collecting sales tax when you sell puppies/kittens, dogs/cats in the state. Commercial breeders who sell to retail sources are already inspected by the USDA. So these bills are not necessary. They would only be used to create a new and expensive bureaucratic infrastructure in the state and set number limits on how many dogs breeders could keep. As anyone knows, number limits mean nothing when it comes to the care of dogs. There are people who can’t manage to properly care for one dog. Other people have good help and can care for many more dogs. Besides, once you start setting a number limit, it’s easy to lower that number every year until it affects ALL breeders. Virtually all breeders of cats and dogs, as well as agricultural people and other animal owners in the state are opposed to these bills. It’s only a radical fringe that supports them but they have been visiting with lawmakers and trying to convince them that the state needs these new laws.

I’ve been working on these particular bills since at least December. Actually, I’ve been watching since last year or before and trying to get people to become aware of them. In the last few days we’ve had another group become involved and it’s a been a little jarring. They’re doing a great job but they have come on the scene with all of the finesse of an elephant. We do see eye to eye about the legislation and the need to fight it. However, I had a few problems with some demands from the other group. For one, they wanted a list of all of the e-mail addresses of members of our Yahoo group. I had to tell them a couple of times that I didn’t have the right to give out that kind of information. When people join an e-mail list I think they have a right to expect their personal information to be kept private. If they want to join an organization they are free to do so but I can’t hand over their e-mail addresses so they can be automatically added.

Then, too, I freely shared the information I had about the bills and what was going on. On the other hand, when I talked to the other group they didn’t share information with me. They would tell me something, I would ask a question and the response would be, “Well, I can’t tell you that.” It’s hard to work with people who keep you in the dark.

I sent them the latest information about the bills but they appeared not to read what I sent them. They continued to refer to the original version of the bill and provisions in it, even in the subcommittee hearing. That doesn’t help us. Take the time to stay up-to-date on the bills.

Even if I had something in writing they would argue and disagree with me. They would call people to get an answer, duplicating our efforts. For instance, I had it in writing that the AKC OPPOSED the commercial breeder bills. They insisted that the AKC couldn’t come out and say that they were opposed to the bills. We had it in WRITING. I sent it all over the Internet and they still wanted to argue about it.

Really, the final straw was getting a call and being “asked” to write up material for the other organization. No idea what it was for, who would be reading it. But I was told to send it to them and they would give me notes about it so I could make changes. I wrote up the bill information and got back a message telling me it wasn’t what they were looking for. I replied that they would have to tailor their own message and that I couldn’t write what they wanted. They wanted an explanation. I basically told them that I wasn’t one of their volunteers and I don’t like to take orders from people.

I’m not a flunky and I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been writing about what’s wrong with animal rights and about dog legislation for over ten years. They can write their own damn press and web site material.

I believe this group has had problems working with other organizations in the past. They complain that other groups are “territorial.” Perhaps other groups simply don’t like being bulldozed or attempts to make them subordinates?

I’ll be happy to work with them to fight this legislation. They are a great group as far as fighting legislation goes. I just don’t want to be under their command.

(Of course it didn’t help any that they thought I was 12 years older than I actually am. Nobody likes that. If you want to work with people, don’t go around offending them.)

Backlash

I have spent the entire day waiting. I’m waiting for news from the state capitol about some dog legislation that we’ve been fighting for months. The bills are finally being heard in committee today and it’s nerve-wracking. It’s a six-hour drive to the capital and I didn’t want to risk my old car on that trip but I think sitting here waiting is just as bad. I can’t even watch the streaming video: I have a Mac and I don’t use Media Player. I have to rely on semi-instant replay from other people. We’ve already lost in the House committee and the bill has been recommended to pass on to the full Judiciary committee. It gets harder to stop at each step of the process. Now we’re waiting to see what happens in the Senate Ag committee. Well, I think of it as the Ag committee but it’s really the Commerce, Labor & Agriculture committee, so who knows where a member’s really coming from.

I seriously distrust a city-dweller dealing with agricultural issues. Just this morning I read a message about a poor farmer somewhere who may have to deal with keeping dust down on his farm because of some law that’s being considered in his state legislature. Of course, the law is designed to keep “dust particulate” down in some urban area but it will be applied across the state. That means he won’t be able to plow when it’s dry -- and, of course, you can’t plow when it’s wet. So what’s the poor guy supposed to do? It almost seems as though there are people who don’t want agriculture or animals in this country.

Why would people not want agriculture? Hell if I know. Well, I do know, but then this entry would turn into a rant against animal rightists and even environmentalists who go too far. Suffice it to say that there are people in this world who would be quite happy to save the planet at the expense of the human race.

I think we have gone far beyond the whole concept of a gentle, loving Mother Earth that we had in the 1970s. Mother Earth loved us and wanted us to enjoy the fruits she had to offer. Now the environmental movement is being run by Green Nazis. They make rules about everything. There’s no pleasure anymore. They will gleefully accost you on the street, in stores, in the parking lot, while you’re shopping, or anywhere they find you minding your own business, and tell you how you should be living your life. They’ll tell you what you should buy, what you shouldn’t buy, what you should wear, what you should eat, yada yada yada. Anybody else sick of it, too? I’m just tired of living in a Puritanical world, even if all of the healthy food and exercise and recycling is good for me or the planet. These people are the worst kind of missionaries out to convert us all to their little narrow-minded view of the world.

Wouldn’t you like to time travel for just a little while and visit with Scott and Zelda in the 1920s? You could drink, dance, stay out all night and nobody cared what you ate, what kind of excesses you indulged in, or how many things you did that were bad for the planet. Or maybe, just once, you could take a trip with Hemingway (I don’t even like Hemingway) and go watch a bullfight. OMG! How politically incorrect would that be! You could even pop down to Cuba for a few days and light up some good cigars. That’s another thing! Go back in time a few decades and you could smoke without people making faces and treating you like an outcast! Wow!

Really, it kind of sucks to live right now. All of the life and fun have been drained right out of living by these people who want us to do the right thing, save the planet and be healthy. It feels like the Temperance League is running the country. I think we should get rid of them and have fun again. We need a backlash. We should all stop being afraid of what people will think. Stop being afraid of those morality police.

Scary Movies

I’m supposed to be writing an article about smelly dogs right now which, as you can see, I’m not writing at the moment. It’s not a hard subject. There are plenty of things to write and I can even be humorous about it. I have solutions for the problem, which will make my client happy. I even have people on Facebook offering to send me their smelly dogs to inspire me. But, somehow, I’m not in the mood to write it.

Instead, I am playing hooky from work. I’m watching the wind blow the tree branches outside and the rain fall. I looked for and found a few four-leaf clovers outside a little while ago. I’m cooking some food for my old dog who needs a little extra something added to his regular dog food these days. I’m browsing the Internet to see what people thought of The Haunting in Connecticut, which I’d like to see.

Have I mentioned that I’m addicted to the series A Haunting? Everyday I take a break from work so I can watch people deal with the paranormal for an hour. I know it probably sounds ridiculous, but I love it.

It goes like this: people move into a new house. They begin to notice strange things happening but they try not to pay any attention. They tell themselves that they are imagining stuff or that there is some logical explanation for events. Then things begin to escalate until they can’t ignore them anymore. Then all hell breaks loose! LOL Okay, maybe it’s low-key hell, but people get spooked. That’s when they try to get some outside help, whether it’s a priest or a paranormal investigator or a local historian or someone like that. Half the time that doesn’t work and they have to keep trying. Or, they may just have to move out of the house. Most of the time they get things worked out. But sometimes they just learn to live with whatever is in their house.

I have loved supernatural stories ever since I can remember. I adore them. When I was very young I used to watch Dark Shadows every afternoon. I would dress up my cat in baby clothes and watch Barnabas and Angelique while I chewed my nails. It was wonderful. I always thought Angelique was just the best, smartest woman in the world. You have to admire her tenacity. I have always liked single-minded people, people who don’t let anything stop them. Like facts or someone’s aversion to you. :)) I thought Angelique was a wonderful role model in life. And, of course, she was very beautiful. Did you know that Lara Parker is from Knoxville, Tennessee? I only found that out much later but I think Tennessee should be very proud of her.

I loved other supernatural stories, too. When I was a kid one of our local TV stations used to show old black and white horror movies every afternoon. I remember that I particularly loved the old mummy movies. I never got tired of them. One of them was on TV again recently and I stayed up watching it late at night. I think I enjoyed it just as much now as I did when I was a kid.

I could never get enough vampire movies either. I used to try to watch every vampire movie on TV. I loved Frank Langella, Jack Palance, the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee movies. Somehow I didn’t like the Gary Oldham movie very much. But I loved the Lestat books. I wasn’t crazy about the first movie with Tom Cruise but I thought the second movie with Stuart Townsend was pretty good. Not as good as the books, of course, but pretty good.

I know many people have explained why we love the paranormal and why we love to be scared. I still don’t know what it is that gives us such a delicious feeling when we watch a movie that frightens us -- and we sit there knowing in our minds that we’re really safe. I still think one of the scariest movies I ever saw was The Haunting with Julie Harris. And yet you really don’t see anything at all scary in the movie. It’s all done with atmosphere. But it’s terrifying. I have watched it again and again and it’s still great. On the other hand, the original Halloween scared me so badly that I wouldn’t watch the sequels for years. That was too much, especially for a kid. Now I can watch them and they’re no big deal but when I was 12 years old or so it was horrible. It did not give me the pleasant kind of scare. I still don’t like gory movies.

But I do still love scary movies. I really like the movies that have been coming to the U.S. from Japanese originals, like The Ring, Dark Water, The Grudge, and one I saw this week -- Shutter. It was good, too.

Maybe I can find a good scary movie to watch this afternoon instead of writing about smelly dogs.

The REAL Boleyn Girl

Every month I swear I’m going to drop my HBO package. It’s overpriced and it has nothing but lousy action movies on it that I never, ever, ever watch. Seriously, is everyone in the United States or the world involved in running drugs and selling sex? There are more hitmen on HBO than could possibly exist in real life. I don’t care who’s in a movie or how good it’s supposed to be, if it has hitmen in it, or if the plot involves drugs, prostitution, or other unsavory parts of life, the chances of me watching it plummet. I’m not a prude. I’m simply not interested. I find those stories boring. Yawn-worthy. They are, in fact, so far removed from my own life that I can relate better to a film about space aliens than I can to films about those subjects.

So, that’s my general level of dissatisfaction with HBO. I saw an ad on one of my other channels this week that said the Starz network and assorted channels were going to be having a free weekend. I promptly turned them on to see what they had to offer. It wasn’t much better than what they show on HBO. I did find one movie that interested me even though I knew I was going to have problems with it.

The Other Boleyn Girl started out as a novel by Phillippa Gregory. It’s about Mary Boleyn, the OLDER sister of Anne Boleyn, who became the second wife of Henry VIII of England in 1533. It was turned into a big screen movie in 2008 starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Now, I used to belong (still do, but I’m No Mail) to a very good Tudor history e-mail list. I’ve been hearing about this book for several years so I knew that, from an historical point of view, it was grossly inaccurate and that it portrayed Anne Boleyn in the worst possible light. I think the movie softened things up a bit but, historically, it was still pretty bad.

The movie completely overlooks the fact that both girls spent considerable portions of their childhoods in France. And, very importantly, it totally whitewashes Mary. Mary, you see, was the mistress of the King of France while she was in France. He had some very uncharming things to say about her which I won’t repeat here, but suffice it to say that her reputation was completely ruined when she returned to England. It’s no wonder that she quickly became Henry VIII’s mistress as well. Not to put too fine a point on it, the girl was easy.

None of this factual information is included in the film. Instead, Mary is portrayed as a shy, sweet, innocent young girl when she meets Henry. He is the one who commands that she becomes his mistress. Yeah, right. And Anne, of course, is the bossy, mean sister.

Actually, I thought Natalie Portman was splendid as Anne. I really didn’t think she was a good choice for the role but she was excellent and I thought she even looked quite a bit like her. Scarlett Johansson looked like Mary, too, with her fair coloring. She probably acted somewhat like Mary -- kind of clueless -- but Mary was by no means the goody-two-shoes that she is in the film.

The whole film just reeks of revisionist history. According to this movie Henry bestowed titles and riches on the Boleyn family because of Mary. Nope. Didn’t happen. The Boleyns got virtually nothing out of Mary’s liaison with Henry. Mary wasn’t very smart and she didn’t hold out for much. She and her family didn’t benefit much at all from the affair. And, Mary wasn’t married when Henry began fooling around with her. She only married later -- and didn’t get a very good marriage out of it. There is considerable doubt, too, over whether the children she had were Henry’s -- there were two, a son and a daughter. Many people think that if they had been Henry’s he would have provided better for them. Afterall, he had a son earlier by his mistress Bessie Blount and he made him a duke and even considered marrying him to his daughter, Mary Tudor (Katherine of Aragon’s daughter). Henry wasn’t miserly and if he thought Mary Boleyn’s son (or daughter) was his he would have done well by him. Yet, he didn’t.

The fact is that Mary was a momentary diversion and she ceased to have any importance at all after Henry met Anne -- who had been in France when Henry met Mary. After Anne arrived on the scene Mary didn’t matter at all.

Unfortunately, the character of Henry in this film is simply dreadful. Once again Henry is portrayed as a monster, which he was not. Certainly not in the early years of his reign when he was still young and handsome. And, really, is it so very difficult to cast an actor who has fair looks? Hello casting directors! Henry had blond/reddish-gold hair and blue eyes!!!! Yet all the actors you see playing Henry are dark and brooding looking. The man was known for his humor and cheerful disposition for a long time. He was very intelligent and could be very charming. It was only much later that his sudden anger and calculating darker side took over. Don’t look to this film to find a nuanced performance of Henry. This guy is brutal and always angry about something.

The costumes are beautiful. The sets are average and don’t display much variety. One setting looks very much like another. Everything could be set in the same castle for all the viewer can tell. You have no idea where you are most of the time.

Time periods are crunched together and you don’t get any proper idea of how much time is passing. At the beginning of the film Anne looks like a young girl and she still looks that way at the end, even though, chronologically, some 16 years must have passed. It’s very disconcerting. Everything in the movie is out of order -- Anne is sent to France after her ENGAGEMENT (not marriage) to Henry Percy, when, of course, she was only sent to Hever at that time. That was in 1525. By that time Anne had long returned from France. Anne’s first meeting at court with Henry is shown after that when it was actually around 1522. And so on.

Watch the film for a bit of fun but don’t trust it at all for historical accuracy. If you want genuine history about the Boleyns visit this site. Better yet, read Eric W. Ives’ excellent biography of Anne Boleyn and courtlife, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn.

My Cavewoman Moment

Oh, the shame. I am so ashamed of myself. I was in the grocery store this morning -- where else is there to go on a rainy Saturday morning? I was zipping around the aisles, happy that I had my bills paid and still had money for something as frivolous as food. I was nearly through shopping when I came up to the buggies near the front where the store puts out things on clearance that they want to get rid of. I always stop to see what they have here. I’ve picked up some great things in the past -- Starbuck’s coffee (I cleaned them out that day), cans of tripe for the dogs, weird salad dressings. Today I immediately noticed that they had a couple of bags of dog food. Now, I consider myself a dog food connoisseur. I spend a lot of time reading and writing about dog foods and their ingredients. So, when I saw these two bags of Newman’s Own Organic Dog Food I was all aquiver. I’ve never bought this food before but I’ve read lots of great things about it. Actually, I don’t even know why it was in the store because I’m pretty sure that my grocery store doesn’t carry it or sell it. But there it was and I pounced on it.

I picked up a bag and the original price was $20. Ouch. But I kept looking until I found the marked down price. $3. THREE DOLLARS! Oh, yeah. And it said that it was for active and senior dogs. That was exactly what I had. So I was greedily putting the bag in my cart and reaching for the second bag when a woman picked it up practically out of my hands. I’m sure my mouth fell open. I was beside myself with vexation. “Oh, were you going to get both bags,” she said. I struggled for a moment. Should I bluntly tell the truth or be polite? Finally, about 200 years of my family living in the South rose up and beat me over the head. “Oh, no. That’s okay. Go ahead.” I said, very primly. And I wheeled quickly away. I was totally steamed!

I jerked my buggy up and down aisles to finish shopping and I kept thinking about that dog food and the nerve of that woman virtually stealing it from me! How rude. Well, of course I was going to get both bags. Anyone could see that. That’s why she sidled in and picked up the food when my head was turned. But I decided to go back and see if the food was still there. So, I turned the corner and looked. There it was! There was my organic dog food. Joy! Happiness! And then I felt like a total bitch. Lord, I was trying to hoard dog food. I had probably been a complete churl to the poor woman. I had been acting like some kind of cavewoman fighting over food. What was even worse, that woman seemed to have better manners than I did since she put the food back.

I guess this goes to show that people can act irrationally about just about anything. I don’t even feed my dogs organic food but when it came to getting a good bargain on something I behaved terribly. I think I acted as badly as those women you see in videos who trample each other trying to get a wedding dress on sale.

To top it all off, I was thinking about the healthy dog food when I was checking out and asking the checkout lady to get a carton of cigarettes for me. Yeah, I want my dogs to eat healthy but I don’t seem to give a damn about my own health. How’s that for irony?

Art and the Need for Experts

Any fans of The Graduate out there? Remember that scene where Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) tries to find something in common with Mrs. Robinson (the great Anne Bancroft) and brings up the subject of modern art? As I recall, he stumbles through some one-sided conversation and she has nothing to say. Then, when he asks her what she majored in in college, she says her major was modern art. That scene always makes me laugh, though the expression on Mrs. Robinson’s face is awfully sad.

I think I just had a similar experience tonight. I watched a program on the Ovation channel about Modern Art. I minored in Modern Art in college and worked at an avant-garde art magazine after college. I really haven’t given it much thought since then. I came to hate, loathe and despise everything to do with postmodernism when I was in graduate school So, watching this overview of modern about this evening was an, er, interesting experience. I felt like I simultaneously knew everything I was being told and like it was all new to me. The art works were all the same but some of the interpretations were a little different than I had previously known.



There was good old Cubism. Then, for some unknown reason, the show took a completely ridiculous turn to discuss Nazi art. I have no idea why because it was completely inconsequential and racist. Pure propaganda. Then it went back to discussing what I would call real art -- abstract art and abstract expressionism. After that I began to lose interest. I could never pretend to be very interested in Pop art or art of the 1960s-70s and later. Conceptual art mostly bores me. I like to look at art and understand it, or at least receive a visceral impression. I don’t want to have to read a description to understand it or prepare myself for it by reading a manifesto.

The host was saying some interesting things even if I had stopped looking much at the art work. He said something about how accessible art is now. That anything can be art and no one can tell you that it is or isn’t. Well, isn’t that just swell. Or, is it? Frankly, it probably means that a lot more bad and mediocre art gets accepted as good art now. I know that we probably don’t need an Academy system as once existed in France, where a group judges painters and paintings and puts a stamp of approval on what is Art. But, honestly, there is so much junk being called art now that it trivializes everything.

All of which made me think that we have democratized art to the point where there are very few respected critics or judges anymore. And, the same is true for many other areas of life. We, our society in modern times, has tried to do away with all of the experts. We’re democratic. Everyone is equal. Everyone’s opinion is equally valid. Therefore, we don’t need and don’t trust expert opinion. My opinion is just as good as yours. The opinion of the man on the street is just as valid as that of someone who has studied a subject for decades.

Perhaps this kind of thinking began when the monolith of the Catholic Church crumbled during the Reformation and Protestants announced that they didn’t need the expert opinion of the Pope. They didn’t need priests or saints to intercede for them with God. They could pray directly to the man upstairs themselves. Get rid of the “experts.” Of course, the next step is to get rid of the king -- have direct rule by the people through elected representatives. I’m sure if we could get rid of them we would.

We still have a few experts that we haven’t managed to get rid of yet -- doctors, lawyers, plumbers, computer geeks, and the like. We worship at the altar of those who can do things the average person can’t do. Just look how superior athletes are treated in our world. There’s an entire commentating class built around discussing what athletes do on Sundays. But, for the most part, we prefer to think that we’re all equal and that the things we produce are just as good as what other people produce. My artwork is as good as what’s in the museum. My poem’s as good as that girl’s. Anybody can write a novel.

From my perspective, there are also people who are trying to get rid of the experts on animals. Many dog, cat, horse and other animal breeders have devoted their entire lives to raising animals. They can tell more by glancing at an animal than some people can tell from a battery of tests. Yet, because our society prefers to believe that everyone’s opinion is equal and no one’s knowledge is anymore valuable than someone else’s, these animal experts are being ignored in favor of people who would rather believe animals are like furry children. This, of course, is the next step in our democratic movement -- animals must have rights too, don’t you know? And who else can speak for the animals but the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It’s also nice that there are more fundraising dollars in promoting this kind of “democracy” for animals, isn’t it? Get rid of the animal experts -- the breeders and those who work with animals -- by means of legislation that outlaws breeding and owning more than a couple of animals. Then the “guardians” and “caregivers” (oh, we don’t “own” animals -- that would be wrong) of the fur-children can send you lots of money so you can work to get more animal rights.

No matter what realm we’re speaking about, be careful about getting rid of the experts in a field. They are the ones who know the past and can predict the future. Their knowledge isn’t easily replaced.

The Turn in the Road

Sometimes I think that we all have to choose our own particular brand of mental illness in this world. If we don’t, then something far worse may be visited upon us. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my choice of mental illness. I am always expecting the other shoe to drop. I’m always waiting for the bad thing to show up or the wolf to come to the door. No matter how well things are going -- especially if things are going well! -- I expect something bad to happen. There has to be a turn in the road.

I’d rather choose my own poison than let someone do something to me. When I was about eight years old I had to have my tonsils out. Back then I hated needles and shots. I’d had strep throat repeatedly and my parents had taken me to the doctor constantly. It seemed like I was always getting my finger pricked or getting a shot for something. So, when the nurse came in my hospital room to draw blood I told him I wanted to do it myself. I figured that it wouldn’t hurt so much if I could stick myself. Either I was very brave or just a control freak.

So, right now things seem to be going very well in my life and it’s got me worried sick. There has to be a catch. I’m waiting for something to go wrong. What will it be? Clients that don’t pay? Something that goes wrong with the house? Health problems for me or my dogs? The car breaking down?

I have this theory that if you can imagine the worst things that can happen and make plans for how you would deal with those things that you can be a little more prepared. It helps, marginally. You can prepare yourself for some things. You can prepare yourself for what to do if you have a flat tire. But there is no way to prepare yourself for everything. There is no way to prepare yourself for being told that your dad has cancer everywhere and only has a few weeks to live. There is no way to prepare yourself for waking up and going into the living room and finding your mother dead from a stroke. There’s really no way to prepare yourself for losing a house or a job, no matter what you tell yourself.

There are some things that will eventually happen to everyone, like losing a parent. We know they’re coming eventually but you still can’t adequately prepare for them.

But I know that we can’t spend our entire lives worrying about things that may or will eventually happen either. My life seems good right now. I know there will be ups and downs. I also know that how I choose to look at things will make a big difference. I can wait for something bad to happen or I can enjoy what I have now. I think it probably makes more sense to enjoy the moment.

I know you'll never read this...

...but I need to tell you anyway.

I wanted to say thank you.
Thank you for being there.
Thank you for making me feel like a human being again.
Thank you for showing me the value of honesty, no matter how little or big.
Thank you for making me smile.
Thank you for the bittersweet memories.
Thank you for reminding me that some people do care.
Thank you for reminding me that tears can heal some wounds.
Thank you for giving me the energy to keep going.
Thank you for the self-confidence.
And most of all, thank you for just being you, even though I may never see you again.
Thank you.

Forced Sterilization

I went to see my therapist yesterday. Just the regular, sort of necessary monthly visit. I think they consider me to be on “maintenance.” My therapist likes dogs so she was asking me to explain to her why the idea of a mandatory spay/neuter in our city/county was a bad idea. (See Why I Hate The Idea of Animal Rights.) I was explaining and she pops up and says that she thinks FORCED STERILIZATION FOR PEOPLE should be required. I just stared at her. What can you say to that? She started saying something about welfare mothers with too many kids, blah blah blah. I finally said I didn't really like anything forced or mandatory.

She is a nice older lady. But how do I get these fruit loops?

Just to be sure I wasn't crazy I came home and checked online. Yeah, forced sterilization is considered a crime against humanity. So, it's not just me that thinks it's a bad idea. The Nazis did it for eugenics reasons. They have done it in India and China as birth control. It just sucks. I can't believe I have a therapist who actually thinks we should do that here.

I would change therapists but with my luck I would get someone even worse.

I was struggling with this information all night. It boggles my mind that there are Americans in favor of forced sterilization. It generally boggles my mind when people want to take rights away from other people, but this is something extremely personal. I don’t know where in the Constitution it says that we have reproductive rights but I’m pretty sure I was born with those rights. No one should be able to take them away from me because I make below a certain income level or my I.Q. is low or for any other reason. And you know it’s always the poorest folks in a country who are singled out for laws like this -- they’re the ones least able to fight back.

I struggled with whether or not I would post this story here because I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell all the world I see a therapist. But I did post it and I do see a therapist. I have what’s called social anxiety disorder. It’s not so bad now because I take medication for it but for a while it was ruining my life. Some people think of it as shyness but that’s not really an accurate description. It can take the form of agoraphobia. I was afraid to leave my house because I didn’t want to see people. I couldn’t answer my phone because I was afraid to talk to them. If I had to call someone I had to write down what I was going to say so I would be prepared. Sometimes it would take me a day or two to work up the nerve to call somebody. If someone came to my door I was terrified. I had panic attacks all the time. Anything could set me off. I was living in a state of fear all the time, afraid of everyone and everything.

Fortunately, after trying to get some help and not getting the right diagnoses, I found a good doctor and got the right medication. I’ve been getting better ever since. I live a fairly normal life now. Most people think I’m very outgoing and they can’t get me to shut up.

I’ve had a couple of great therapists over the years but the last couple I’ve had have been less than stellar. This current therapist is a nice lady but I’m a little worried that we’re not connecting very much. The whole forced sterilization issue kind of brought that out in the open.

If you didn’t know it, the United States has had laws on the books about forced sterilization.

The United States was the first country to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics. The heads of the program were avid believers in eugenics and frequently argued for their program. They were devastated when it was shut down due to ethical problems. The principal targets of the American program were the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, but also targeted under many state laws were the deaf, the blind, people with epilepsy, and the physically deformed. Native Americans, as well as Afro-American women,[17] were sterilized against their will in many states, often without their knowledge, while they were in a hospital for other reasons (e.g. childbirth). Some sterilizations also took place in prisons and other penal institutions, targeting criminality, but they were in the relative minority. In the end, over 65,000 individuals were sterilized in 33 states under state compulsory sterilization programs in the United States.[18]

(Wikipedia)

It’s been tried here before on the state level so you shouldn’t imagine that it’s something that could never happen here. We were right up there with our Nazi friends, leading the way toward a more eugenically-perfect world before WWII. Americans seem to have lost interest in the idea after seeing Hitler’s efforts, thank goodness. But it could happen here again.

"Insourcing" is the new word

There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post this morning -- Home Economics of Anxious Times: Dyeing Your Hair in the Kitchen Sink. It caught my eye because I’m a confirmed color-at-home person. My cousin is a hairstylist and she used to cut my hair when I lived near her so I was always a bit spoiled with haircuts, but even back then I had no qualms about coloring my own hair. She would color it occasionally but most of the time if I saw a color I liked in the store or in a beauty supply shop I’d simply grab it and try it. My hair has been every color from plum to pumpkin. I’ll try just about anything, including highlights, streaks, lightening. You name it. I’ve never really had any disasters. If I don’t like the way something turns out I just color over it. No big deal as far as I’m concerned. I don’t do a lot of heat-damaging things to my hair so it stays in surprisingly good condition, despite all of the coloring.

At any rate, I clicked on the Post article and discovered that it was about the current “economic downtown.” That means recession or near-Depression to the rest of us. It’s about some of the ways people are economizing in the current economy. Apparently the new word is “insourcing.” That means that people are trying to do things for themselves, especially those expensive little luxuries that they were formerly paying others to do for them. More people are coloring their hair at home. They are buying sewing kits so they can do their own tailoring. They’re doing their own landscaping.

Within one week, Mary changed the bulb in the headlight of her Mercedes, cutting out a $120 trip to the mechanic. The couple made a cake for their 11-year-old daughter's birthday party instead of spending $50 at the local bakery. And Chris, who works in a management job, picked up some cans of paint from the Sears in Fair Oaks to help a friend redecorate -- seven hours of work but a savings of roughly $1,000.

Now, I don’t want to seem callous, but, Mercedes aside, these are things that I ordinarily do for myself anyway. When I have a headlight out, I change it. I bake my own birthday cakes for people. And I can’t usually afford to pay people to paint my rooms. Okay, if I need the outside of my house painted, I would probably call professionals, that’s true. I’ll grant you that. I’m not keen to get up on ladders.

I do pay someone to mow my yard. That’s mostly because a) if I depend on myself to do it I will procrastinate and my grass gets too high; and b) I break every mower I touch. But I do not pay my neighbor very much to mow my yard when he mows his at the same time. It’s not the $500 per month lawncare described in this article.

I don’t have a personal trainer to dismiss.

Wal-Mart said sales of herb gardens and tomato and pepper seeds are up, an indication that shoppers are trying to save money by growing their own food, spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said. In Wal-Mart's auto department, sales of oil, filters, grease and funnels have also risen as more people opt to be their own mechanic.

I must hang out with very poor people because we have always done these things.

Brenda Waller, 42, of Herndon said her consulting firm has frozen salaries, and she's worried about the future. She has called off the lawn care service for the coming summer and asked the woman who does her nails to cut them extra short -- so the manicure will last longer. And no more pedicures. But she is holding on to DoodyCalls, a company that cleans up after her pets in the yard. Founder Jacob D'Aniello said his Charlottesville-based company grew by 21 percent last year.

Again, these things don’t seem to apply to me. I do my own manicures and pedicures -- GASP! And I pick up after my own dogs.

I almost left out the most interesting part of the article:

Underhill, the retail consultant, predicts consumers' newfound self-sufficiency will last even after the recession is a distant memory. "Americans have always taken some pride in doing things for themselves," he said.

I think that it used to be true that Americans were self-sufficient but not anymore. I think it's only a myth now, like the days of the Old West and Pioneer Spirit. Americans don't do that kind of thing now. We go shopping. We buy online. Have you taken a good look at American kids recently? They would rather stay inside and play games (sorry Matt) than go outside and do anything. Most people do seem to want everything to be done for them. I think when this financial mess is over they will go right back to the same lifestyle they were enjoying before it was so rudely interrupted.

I think all of this is my way of wondering if these economic bad times are truly affecting everyone in our country equally. I think, perhaps, it’s those who have benefited most from the big salaries, the housing boom, and the joyride on the stock market during the last decade who are feeling the fall now. The rest of us are surely being hurt by bank problems and credit drying up. Some industries may be losing jobs. But I don’t know if our daily standard of living is being impacted as much as some of our wealthier friends. In my business, freelance writing, I haven’t noticed any change at all. Nothing has changed for me. Unless, of course, I wanted to go to the bank and try to take out a loan. Then I suspect it might be much more difficult than it would have been a year or two ago.

My dad was born in 1907. For him the Great Depression was something that he lived through by trying to sell things door-to-door in order to support a wife and young son. That had to be incredibly difficult. It affected him for the rest of his life. When I was a child in the 1960s and ‘70s he would rant about turning the heat down in the house to save money and turning out lights in rooms when we weren’t using them. He kept our kitchen cabinets full of canned food, “just in case.” I think he was haunted by the feeling that you could lose everything and that you had to conserve what you had.

I grew up being influenced by my dad’s way of thinking. I won’t throw anything away. You never know when you might need it. I am loath to pay people to do things for me. Who knows how, or if, our current economic situation may affect people’s thinking in the future?

Go Get 'Em, BlueDogState!

I love BlueDogState. For me there's nothing better than a Democrat that combines dogs and politics. :))

Single Again

I’m a little shy about posting again, lest Matt decide to riff on what I write. Very funny, Matt. I did enjoy the Sea Kitten photos.

I had a birthday over the weekend. That was weird. My ex took me out to dinner for my birthday. That was also weird. We began breaking up about a year ago -- breaking up can take a long time. In our case, I discovered he was cheating on me between Valentine’s Day and my birthday a week later. Oh, yeah. That was a great month. So, I kicked him out of the house, at least technically. He was staying with me while he was home from Iraq. So, I sent him wandering between his mom’s house and female acquaintances of varying degrees (ex-wives, old girlfriends, and probably the cheating ‘ho). I stayed mad for a while. Then I waited for an apology to come from him. Actually, I never got a good apology. There was never any satisfying contrition. That probably explains why we couldn’t put things back together.

I went through a phase where I wanted to forgive him and work things out. When you put five years into a relationship it’s hard to throw it all away without at least trying to save it. That’s when he started explaining that he was “dead” inside and didn’t feel anything for anyone. It’s hard to do anything with that kind of announcement. There’s just nowhere to go when somebody tells you they feel nothing for no one.

By this time he was back in Iraq and we were communicating sporadically. Occasionally I would blow up about something which was really probably about the end of the relationship in general and the way he was acting. We limped on this way for a few months trying to stay friends. He came home in the summer for a few days and we spent a little time together. Mostly this gave us a chance to talk in person. When he left we were on better terms than we had been for a while but we were not back together.

By autumn we were planning to take another trip to Mexico together. He had asked me to marry him the first time we took a trip to Mexico so it had some special significance for us. (Of course, I didn't know on the first trip that he would start trying to arrange an affair just a few days after he proposed to me.) His time in Iraq would be over and he had always planned to have some time to relax before coming home. I thought this would give us one last chance to see if we could work things out. We had a great time for 11 days. We always got along great when we were on vacation together. We ate great food, we enjoyed the water and beaches, we saw more Mayan sites, we did all kinds of fun things. We spent time alone together. But, when the trip was over, we came home and we have gone our separate ways. There's really nothing left there between us anymore. If we don't have something right in front of us that's interesting to talk about -- oh, like Mayan ruins or spending money to buy things -- I think we bore each other.

He lives about 30-45 minutes away but we never see each other. He called a lot when we first got back but we don’t talk much now. He’s dating the ‘ho. She lives near the property he bought.

When we do see each other, to have lunch or go to a movie, he tries to totally confuse everything and cross all kinds of relationship lines. He wants to act like we’re still together. I have to remind him that he’s dating somebody else now. I’m strange that way, I guess. I don’t like for things to be confused. We’re friends now. That’s it.

It’s only since we’ve been back from Mexico these last couple of months that I’ve begun to think of myself as single. I feel different. In my dreams I’m single now. There are actually other men in my dreams now instead of him. It’s nice. But, in waking life being single is also scary and lonely sometimes. I’ve been part of a couple for 5-6 years. You get in the habit of thinking differently about everything. It takes some adjustment to go back to thinking like a single person.

My test is what will happen if I die. Who’s going to bury me? LOL I know. It’s morbid. But if you’re a couple there is somebody to handle your funeral arrangements. If you’re single, what happens to you? I guess I’d better not die right now or who knows what would happen to me.

Change.

Life is all about change. I mean, if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind... or what's worse... you grow stagnant.
And, as of late, (especially professionally) I feel as though I am growing more and more stagnant by the day.
That's why I told them a few days ago that I was going to stay another month, then I am gone.
Now, this wasn't just a random decision that I wanted to quit my job. It's been in the works for a while now. And I didn't quit without a Plan B. I do have another job lined up. It just doesn't happen to start until the end of March.
They took it well, ummmm... as well as could be expected. I have personal ties that go back at least a decade with most of them. My boss says she thinks I am making a mistake, which she later clarified that the reason why I was making a mistake was because who would bring her chocolate and mountain dew?
I've reiterated several times that this is not a loyalty issue. I'm not even staying in the same line of work. If I were leaving for a competitor, well, yeah... it would be like me flipping the metaphorical bird at all of them. I'm just ready to pursue a different career angle... one with exponentially more job growth and opportunity. Something I could see myself in for a long while... and one where I won't feel the desperate need to shower immediately upon returning home. Wearing jeans to work is a plus, too.
So, wish me luck. Yes, I am a little scared to be doing something I have never done before... but the excitement of something new trumps the fear.

I like PETA. It's like David Lynch for Kids.

I put a tiara and a dress and lipstick on a fish. On a PETA website. Today, I am complete.

In further response:




And some particularly cute sea kittens of note:








And the Sea Tiger, a close relative of the sea kitten.



So what can I do?

* According to this press release, PETA's Ashley Byrne is touring the country, giving talks to schools that serve Sea Kittens in the cafeteria. The number to call if you want to invite her to your neck of the woods is 757-622-7382.

* Add Sea Kittens to your friends list on Facebook! Let them know that they're simply adorable, and not in the slightest bit misjudged and creepy.

* Make your own Sea Kitten at the website.

* Eat vegetarian sushi. This has nothing to do with Sea Kittens, it is actually pretty tasty.

* Find as many places where the plight of these beautiful creatures will not be trivialized or WTF'd at (such as your college friends or internet forums) and make sure to spread the word.

* "Ask the U.S. Fish Sea Kitten and Wildlife Services to Stop Promoting the Hunting of Sea Kittens." And use THOSE EXACT WORDS. It says to on the website.

* Ask them if they have any recipes for Ikizukuri.

Why I Hate the Idea of Animal Rights

I usually try not to write about dogs on this blog since that’s what I get paid to do on the blog I write elsewhere. I know people get tired of hearing dog owners gush about their pets, too. I also know that I tend to rant about certain subjects -- subjects that people can have strong feelings about. For instance, I have purebred dogs. I know that there’s a strong movement in this country toward adopting pets and many people are under the impression that mutts make better pets. I can give you at least twenty reasons why that’s bull but I don’t really want to argue about it here. I will say that I worked with rescue for years and fostered dogs. Sometimes I adopted dogs that otherwise couldn’t find homes. I finally quit helping rescue when a dog that I kept for them attacked my own dogs and tried to bite a child. When I asked for help with her from the rescue group they told me it was my problem. I had enough at that point.

One of the things that’s going on here where I live is a push by the chairman of the local animal control commission to institute a mandatory spay/neuter law. Believe me, that’s gone over like a lead balloon. This is a rural area. It’s more than rural. It’s mountainous. There are a lot of hunters here who hunt bear, boar, fox, raccoons and other “critters.” They keep packs of dogs for hunting. Some hunters may have 40-50 dogs and take out more than a dozen a night for hunting. They take good care of their dogs but the dogs are intact. That means that they are not spayed or neutered. For good reason. Hunters choose the best dogs for breeding. They may occasionally trade dogs with other hunters. They may pass on pups to friends. Once in a while they may sell a dog or a puppy. They don’t want their dogs spayed and neutered.

So, this difference of opinion between the local animal control commission chairman and a few people on the commission and the hunters has been fought during commission meetings. The hunters and local breeders have been packing the meeting room to argue against the idea of MSN (mandatory spay/neutering). And the chairman just won’t let it die. She seems to be motivated by several local rescue groups who are strongly animal rights-oriented.

You should know that even the local animal control director has said that there hasn’t been any increase in stray dogs in the county. There has been an increase in owner turn-ins at the shelter in the last year, which has exactly zero to do with breeding or hunters. Spaying and neutering won’t make people keep their dogs if they want to give them up. Most of the time people turn in dogs to the shelter because of behavior problems or because they are moving or because of financial difficulties. None of these things has any connection to an animal’s sexual status.

The great majority of people on the animal control commission are also against MSN in the city/county but the chairman has set yet another subcommittee meeting for next month. MSN is clearly not something that is wanted by this community. Maybe this chairman will realize it sooner or later.

Unfortunately, the AR rescue people in the area are pushing things to a dangerous point right now. I spoke to one of the hunters yesterday and he told me that rescue people had been at the homes of some of the hunters trying to see into their kennels. He said that rescue people had approached hunters while they were out with their dogs and asked them if they wanted to get their dogs spayed and neutered. They have even been seen trying to lure hunting dogs with canned food so they could “rescue” them. Seriously, this is an area where hunters have guns. Somebody is going to get hurt if these people don’t back off.

I only have five dogs but I’m a breeder. I’ve been showing and breeding my dogs for a little over 20 years. I detest the idea of MSN. Not only does it fail to solve any problems and it has backfired everywhere it’s been tried, but I believe that it violates our rights. The government should not be able to force me to spay or neuter my pets. That should be a decision that is solely between me and my vet for the health of my dogs.

I’m also vehemently opposed to animal rights. I find that most people who support the idea of animal rights have very little true animal knowledge. They have not been raised with animals. They don’t know anything about farming or hunting. For them, all animals are pets and should live in the house and be cuddled. That’s fine if you have a cute little cat or dog as a pet. But the fact is that not everyone lives that way. I believe there are many ways of keeping animals and animals have many purposes besides being pets. We need animals on farms. Hunters deserve the right to continue hunting. People with real knowledge of animal husbandry don’t look at all animals as cute, cuddly pets and it’s a mistake for other people to try to force through laws that would demand all animals be treated that way.

Consider PETA’s latest campaign to rename fish as “sea kittens.” Have you ever heard anything so stupid? What on earth is wrong with fishing? Why should we try to make fish warm and fuzzy? They aren’t. I don’t care what kind of social life they have. Fish have provided sustenance to humans for thousands of years and coming up with a silly new name for them isn’t going to change the fact that fishing is a part of our economy and many people depend on fish for food.

Most people don’t realize that the real agenda of the animal rights movement is to eliminate pet ownership altogether. It is “speciesist” in the extreme and would like to see either the elimination of humans from the earth or a “Back to Eden” lifestyle that would wipe out the majority of human life on earth so the animals could flourish. Animal rights values animal life more than human life. When people begin to realize that maybe they will stop supporting PETA and the Humane Society of the United States.

For quotes from animal rights leaders you can click here.

Another Facebook Victim

I have to report that I am the latest Facebook victim. LOL My best friend from college e-mailed me a couple of days ago and said that she had signed up and therefore, I had to sign up, too. It’s like a blood oath kind of thing, I think. So, I did. I succumbed without a struggle.

I have resisted Facebook and these other social networking sites since they came into existence because I’m basically a hermit. That’s the primary reason. But I also have this dread of seeing and meeting people I used to know. I never attend reunions -- not high school reunions, college reunions, or any other kind. I’m always certain that other people have become fabulously wealthy and successful and I haven’t.

That’s actually not true. I have a sneaking suspicion that every classmate who is now wealthy and successful probably goes home at night and drinks him/herself to sleep. Maybe they have marital problems or they’re about to lose their huge house. I know somewhere inside that what we see on the surface is not the true story. But when you go to reunions you see people laughing and being happy. They look successful. They look like their lives are wonderful. They drive great cars and they look slim. So, I feel like going to reunions would make me feel bad about myself, even if I know that it’s all phony.

That’s why I have resisted joining sites like Facebook. They seem like places where people put up pictures about their happy lives. But this time curiosity got the better of me. Or maybe I was just in the mood to say, “What the hell? I don’t care what they think.” So, I filled out the information. I put up a picture of myself and started adding current friends and old classmates to my friends list. I think I have seven or eight friends added now. That’s respectable for less than 24 hours, especially considering that I’m not letting everyone see my profile.

Of course I couldn’t resist seeing who else was on Facebook. I had to look up one special person -- the one that got away. I’ve looked all over the Internet to see if I could find this man. I thought I had tracked him down once but then he disappeared. Yes, he is on Facebook. I couldn’t believe it. I haven’t seen him in so many years but I recognized him at once in his picture. He has changed, certainly, but it is absolutely him.

Oh, no. I won’t be contacting him. I don’t have that kind of nerve.

I wonder if people look at me in my pictures, read my profile and think I sound happy and successful?

Lily Allen and Drug Tests

For those of you who have been spurned, I present to you Ms. Lily Allen:

So tired. Drug test in the morning. Peace.

Post-Valentine's Day Blahs

Well, another exciting Valentine’s Day has come and gone. I guess that means that candy is half-price at the drugstore today so if you’re feeling glum you can go stuff your face. :) I hope your Valentine’s Day was better than mine. This was my first official single Valentine’s Day (notice that the shorthand for Valentine’s Day is VD?) in six or seven years. I have been alone on some of those days but it was because my intended was working outside the country. This year I had no comforting excuse. I was just alone. No flowers or candy showed up at the door. I had to go buy my own brownies to get a chocolate-induced high.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d mention an interesting story I saw online the other day: Kisses unleash chemicals that ease stress levels

"Chemistry look what you've done to me," Donna Summer crooned in Science of Love, and so, it seems, she was right. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a panel of scientists examined the mystery of what happens when hearts throb and lips lock. Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women....

In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.

Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined.

For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. "This was a surprise," Hill said.

In a test group that merely held hands, chemical changes were similar, but much less pronounced, she said.

Cool. So, kissing leads to men being more interested in bonding? I never would have guessed that. From my experience, I have always thought that women were more interested in kissing than men were. With a couple of rare exceptions, most men seem to me to act like kissing is a toll both and they have to rush through it to get somewhere fast.

That was kind of one of my complaints with my recent ex. He started off being very romantic and the kissing was good. But it wasn’t long before the kissing went out the window. There was still lots of sex, but I like more than that. I like some personal attention. I like romance. I like KISSING. By the end I couldn’t even get him to hold hands anymore. I think you really can judge the state of a relationship by little things like that. It shouldn’t all be about sex. There’s a lot more to intimacy than just that. But it’s hard to communicate that information to someone who’s not getting what you’re talking about.

There’s such a fine line when you talk to someone about personal things. You don’t want to tell them, “Hey! I don’t like what you’re doing!” Because, obviously, you care about them. But you want to have your own needs met, too. It’s not easy.

Clearly I have post-Valentine’s Day blahs. Maybe Somewhere In Time will be on TV again today and I can eat some more brownies to cheer myself up.