More Madness
I seem to be unable to escape a life in which canine madness predominates. And by this I mean, even though Faye went to a wonderful new home on a ranch with three adorable boys who are madly in love with her, I once again find myself with two grumpy canines in the house and a never ending cycle of opening the backdoor to let them in or out or to just stand there and stare, and continuously dirty food bowls, paw prints on the floor, and little tumbleweeds of hair drifting about in the currents of the A/C. And not to mention that one of the dogs currently staying with me is the Queen Of All Things herself, and she won’t let me forget (not in a million years) that Her Opinion Matters Most (and no one elses’ ever matters).
Beau is not so happy with this arrangement. I saw a drastic improvement in his behavior once Faye left (can we say, war over the sofa, 24/7 wiggleworm and running 4 miles a day with continual hyperactivity??) and for two weeks or so things were as normal as they ever are around here. Then Penny showed up and he gave me the, oh-no-you-friggin’-don’t look, and now it’s a competition to see who can behave more badly, who can be loudest, and who can possible act the most jealous. Beau pretty much ignores Penny as much as he ignored Faye - but the problem in this is that Penny is short, fat and geriatric, and she hates to be ignored - hates ever more to be trod on by a large grey and white galumping moose. Every five seconds she is expressing her displeasure that he should be within a twenty mile radius of her royal self, despite the fact that this is Beau’s house and I am doing Penny a favor by keeping her here and not banishing her to the kennel (even if the kennel won’t take her anymore). The crazy bat queen must have her way at all times and immediately or there is several minutes of growling, barking and snarling while slithering around on the floor on her good front legs and gimpy back ones, oddly reminiscent of one of those dancing-flower fireworks.
My parents (and brother) are happily galavanting about in cool, beautiful, scenic and interesting San Fransisco. I, on the other hand, am stuck in hot, muggy and rainless Texas with a large grumpy moose who hates company, and a small fat badger that hates everything. Which is all fine when they are at their respective houses with their respective slaves to wait on them hand and foot - it’s when we get these two irascible creatures together that canine madness ensues. Here I am trying to write a parasitology paper on Hydatid Disease with moose grumblings in the background because it’s been twenty minutes since he last ate and angry badger opinions being spat at me from behind him because HOW DARE HE SPEAK IN HER PRESENCE.
I am going out of my mind at the present moment.
Saturday cannot come soon enough.
better than hanging out with humans, moose on the loose, pack mentality | Comment (0)Sadly, Rather Unlike the Adult Beverage
Hurricane Ike came this morning. It’s the first hurricane I’ve been through in the eleven years that I have lived in Texas. My parents and brother hunkered down in Katy, which got more than we did up here, but still the show was impressive. At least I have power, water and television reception at this moment, whereas, last I heard, they have no power, no water and they are spending their free moments cleaning up the debris in the yard. Luckily, no damage to the house or the cars. The worst I got here was just down old dead branches falling out in to the yard (thank you Mother Nature for doing something I had been postponing). But it was never too serious or worrisome - I even caught the friendly squirrel at her feeder I put up several time today in the wind and the rain.
It came about 7 this morning, at least enough for there to be a sizeable difference in the wind speeds. It’s normally pretty windy here, being that it is flatter than Kansas and all, but the winds picked up rather quickly in about thirty minutes and I would say there were some strong gusts, maybe up to 75 mph, but a constant blow at about 40 or so. I woke up and it was still dark, but Beau was pacing around my room, looking forlornly in my direction as if to say, “Are you up yet? Oh God, we’re going to die and the girl is not even awake!!” We went outside, and thank god yet again for teaching him to pee on command - he pottied after a bit of persuasion in the howling wind and driving rain. Of course, I had to be standing in the lawn under my tree in the danger zone, but we got it accomplished, and damp and wind blown we went to have breakfast.
The rest of the day has been, shall I say, uneventful. I chose this weekend to paint since we got out of school on Friday (who knows why since this thing didn’t even come until this morning). I repainted the kitchen because I hated the turquoise in there and I started on the living room. Mostly as a procrastination from studying, also because I want to impress my parents with my skills when they come up this Friday (I’ll be babysitting grumpy corgi, Ms. Penny, for the week). Beau lounged on the sofa, snoring and every once and while looking up when a strong gust would come by, but otherwise unperturbed as I painted, made soup and watched movies.
So my first hurricane was… a success? At least there was no damage and all we got was a lot of free water for my lawn and some wind that knocked stuff out of my trees that probably should have been knocked out eventually anyway. No lightning, no thunder, no tornadoes, no moments of adrenaline or even slight worry.
blah blah blah | Comment (0)All madness, all the time
I could not win last week. Just when things were looking up, something else went to crap. I am just hoping at this point that this means all my crappy days and bad luck are out of the way for the rest of the semester, and I can get down to what really matters - school and getting Beau healed.
Mon: Faye was up at 5:30 a.m. Normally, I just put her in the bathroom so I can keep sleeping until 7. I should have known when she didn’t get excited (because normally if I get up it means we’re going outside for potty then breakfast) that something was up. At 5:32 a.m. there was a violent diarrhea explosion all over my bathroom. Dammit. I never could fall asleep.
Texas A&M Athletics also decided to deny me football tickets on my sportspass (that I have had for 5 years), telling me I must have bought them too late and their computers weren’t updated yet. Too bad I bought them in July and paid tuition the day it was posted. I parked illegally, yelled at some poor student worker, and got a crappy seat not with my friends.
That night, after one of the best afternoons of my life, one of the best relationships of my life ended. I’m still trying to figure that one out, but you can’t be in a relationship with somebody if that person doesn’t want to be in it as well. So now, I just feel like an embarassed fool, which luckily doesn’t differ too much from my normal status quo. Gave my sports pass away to someone who could use it and enjoy it a lot more than me.
Tues: The box from hell scared the crap out of Faye. There was a box, on the counter, that had been there, not moved or changed, for a week. But today, the box was out to get her, and long after the box was removed, I had to drag her in and out of the doorways it had been within 100 miles of. While I was making dinner, Beau was sleeping in the pantry and as I turned around with a hot pot of steaming broccoli, he lifts his head and I kick him square in the damaged ear (which has been getting steadily worse). I proceed to sob on the floor, cradling a whimpering Beau, for 30 minutes while my food gets cold.
Gave away my crappy ticket to the person I gave the sports pass to.
Wednesday: I come home to find that some asshole truck decided to drive up into my lawn and make a huge smush of my grass that I work very hard on to keep nice. It’s not nearly impossible to mow that section of lawn. I do, however, get to go horseback riding and I don’t fall off. After taking the dogs to the park, I go to move a sprinkler and walk right into a ginormous spider web. Much screaming and frantic brushing myself off ensues.
Thursday: I learn I am bad at my job. First I forget to get the drinks from the SCAVMA person, then when I go to pick up the food for the Natura feeding program, I find out they’ve sent me the wrong thing. When delivering the food to people, I mistake one person’s order for another, give one person a coupon and give away a bag of food that I thought had no home, but in fact belonged to someone else. Thus, I created more work for myself. I come home around 7 to find two incredibly crazy hound dogs and take them to the park where Faye proceeds to eat voluminous amounts of mud, and Beau tries relentlessly to hump a friend’s dog.
Friday: School is (thankfully) uneventful, and I am enjoying my new project at one of my jobs. I am getting most of the food fiasco sorted out. I come home, happy, excited - only to find that my neighbor who just put in new grass (and is two houses down) is flooding out my yard with all her runoff, causing my grass to develop a fungus. Yay for free water, bad for fungus. I was hoping my yard would be dried out so I could mow it - but instead I have to mow in the squishy thick uneven yard. I also come home to find voluminous amounts of Faye diarrhea once again splattered all over my bathroom. It’s been there for hours and there are flies all over the place and it stinks the whole house to high heaven. I call my mom, have a slight breakdown over the phone and cry while picking up stinky poo and cursing this week.
Also, my weedeater string ran out 1/3 of the way through the yard. And because the grass was wet, all the clippings are still on the sidewalk. Oh and I had three weeks worth of laundry to do. And I walked into another spider web while moving sprinklers. At least the dogs and I had a good walk.
Saturday: My neighbor and I went to the football game together. I had hopes that we would be in the non-student section and I could sit my tired butt down the whole time, but instead we are stuck with a bunch of freshmen (God I hate that Wildcat) and have to stand the whole time. At least it was down on first deck, 14 rows back from the field. And lunch was good and the company was pleasant. And the sun went down and it wasn’t god awful hot. Also, Jeff bought me a snowcone, which is pretty good in my book.
However, upon returning back home, I find confetti all over my floor (at least no diarrhea). This is because Beau has decided to eat my parasitology notes that I left on the coffee table (they had been there for several days). So all my keys and my notes and my annotations are now more or less in his GI tract and I’m just waiting to see the pink, blue and yellow flecks start appearing in his poop. It just hope it’s not diarrhea.
Since it was late, I just went to bed, but the dogs were slightly manic from no walk and it took a good while to calm them down before I could finally fall asleep.
Sun: Nothing so far… but it’s only 1:30 and I haven’t left the house today. In fact, maybe I won’t ever leave my house again. At least there hasn’t been any diarrhea…
moose on the loose | Comment (1)