Years ago, in the early nineties, back in the days when I foolishly scoffed at under-eye moisturizers as something I would need ‘one of these days, but surely not now’, Cosmopolitan magazine published an article called, “Women Who Love Their Dogs Too Much.”
I read it, riveted. I Identified with every word. Yes, I was one of these women. One of these women who would spend their entire lunch hour driving home to make sure the dog was ‘in a good mental place’ while left at home during my work day. Yes, I was one of those women who would forego any kind of a blind date that didn’t entail my dog’s being able to tag along. Call me codependent if you must and call me completely beyond hope if you will but I was what I was and I still am. Still. The article left a huge impression, and since reading it nearly a decade ago, I’ve strived to make positive change. I’ve realized that my dog, like me, needs time away from the one who loves them the most. Occasionally, I make this possible. I take Basil regularly to a doggy day care facility. On a regular basis, I walk up to my local convenience store and buy groceries* (*I’m single. Groceries means a loaf of bread, a six pack of Bud Light, a jar of peanut butter, and a pound of cottage cheese) and leave her tethered outside, unattended. Sometimes, I return a library book and leave her in the car. With these small gestures I console myself that I am not truly one of those women who love their dogs too much and cannot stand simple separation anxiety.
In short, I lie. Like a rug. To myself. Case in point being recently* (*’recently’ meaning: today).
Recently, I promised Roy that I would allow him to have my dog as a ‘therapy animal’ while he recovered from surgery. You all remember Roy, yes? Oh, wait a minute. I suppose not. You see, Roy was someone I dated through the entire summer and thought I would spend the rest of my life with and long story short I wound up deleting every post I wrote about Roy because Roy frankly and honestly told me, he’d prefer not to be written about on my blog. So, I deleted every post. Hence most of what you read that I wrote this summer seemed as if it skipped around and it did because I literarily deleted everything he and I experienced together. In the long run, this was an OK thing. Putting myself in his shoes, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in someone else’s blog, either, so it was easy for me to not write about Roy during the duration of what was, and/or appeared to be, our ‘relationship’.
Uh, hum. Anyway. Being as we’re no longer in a relationship, let me make a long story short and say that we are friends. And where Roy and I may not exactly meet in the middle, he and Basil absolutely connected on more than a fur-deep level. I’ve often pondered how tough it is for single parents (Lainie goes through this a lot. She’s the world’s greatest mom, and yet when you’re a single mom even that isn’t always good enough) and if you want to know the truth, when I first heard from Roy again, after he’d sort of gotten back together with me then not really and then disappeared again and then turned up again and then told me he was having major major surgery (yes, I wrote ‘major’ twice, and I meant to) the first thing that came to mind was, gosh, it would be great if you had a therapy animal.
Which is to say, gosh Roy, since I can’t be there for you any longer because we’re not together but because I still really do care for you (I wasn’t, in the long run, the one who pulled the trigger on the whole thing) you are more than welcome to have Basil come out and stay with you for a few days, if you like…or longer, if you like, because there’s a lot to be said for a therapy animal.
And there is, really.
Roy is supposed to take three to four walks a day. Much easier to do with a dog, especially a dog who wants to take these walks. So today, with heavy heart I took Basil out to the west side of the valley, with a carefully packed bag. I left her The Essentials:
Dog food
Dog treats
Dog sleeping quilt (which she likes to be covered with when she sleeps)
Leash
Dog food (two bags. That’s it. I’m not committing beyond that)
Mom’s shirt ( for sleeping on. If she misses me, it is immersed in Estee Lauder’s Cinnabar, so she’ll remember me)
Dog brush (Who am I kidding? I don’t use it on her, so doubt he will, either)
Leash (Complete with red LED flashing light to alert other cars and dogs to her presence after dark)
So Roy and I had a brunch today, eggs over easy and lots of bacon, and I left my life’s companion with him, and I said, see how it goes, and I can come get her tomorrow, or the day after. Already they’ve taken a walk, and probably gone to bed. “I feel bad,” he said. “I know you will miss her, and you will be sad.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “I have the cats.”
Yeah, the cats.
So far, they haven’t been quite that entertaining.
It has been a matter of hours now since I left Basil with him, and I know she is in good hands. He and I may not have worked out so well, but I do know that he loved her, and still does. So I console myself with an evening on my own. My cats are nothing but thrilled that they have my sole and complete attention. Perhaps tomorrow, Basil will come home.
Or maybe not.
Maybe Basil will stay several days with Roy, which he said he would enjoy very much, and I can hardly begrudge her that. She loves his yard, she loves the fact that he walks three, four times a day and enjoys it, while her ‘mother’ drags herself out maybe half that on a good day and really would rather be inside watching Lifetime Television for Women.
“When you come back,” he said today, “your dog will be a Nazi. She will be a German Shephard. She will salute you and say, ‘Heil Hiltler!”
Yikes. Given Roy’s German heritage and Basil’s proclivity to believe any doctrine coated in bacon, I have something very real to worry about.
But, what the heck.
At one point, I truly loved that German. I made him a huge part of my life, and in the same vein, of my dog’s life. Holly would have my head if she knew we were even in contact let alone that he had my dog, but at the same time, I have to let go of that, too. Roy told me, he could have died, during that surgery. And a lot of things became clear to him while he was waiting to ‘go under’. Things that were probably and for the most part of the variety of ‘too little too late’.
OK.
We’ve all moved on.
I do love my dog too much.
But I can, despite what Cosmopolitan writes, let go.
Every once in a while.
In the case of necessity, or triple neck fusion, whichever comes first.
And that’s all I have to say, and all (Holly) I’m going to say, about that.
It’s just that I know Basil is sleeping very well. And she is in, if not my first choice, in ultimately the very best choice, of good hands for her.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
How To Run An Office
When Abby rolled in a half hour late this morning, nobody was surprised to see an email two minutes later simply stating, “Donuts in the break room,” because this is the rule. Fifteen minutes and you’re late. Anything over sixteen minutes and you bring breakfast. This was one of the first ‘rules’ Liz put in place after taking over as department director, and it works well. Keeps us all on schedule for the most part because even if it’s just a couple dozen donuts, nobody wants to buy breakfast for eight other people on any kind of regular basis. I know I don’t. The closest bakery for me when I’m running late is Petra’s, and eight breakfast croissants can set me back $40.
We have a lot of rules in the office, none of which are written down officially, but they’re no less in place and ruthlessly enforced and all things considered, they constitute a nice way to effectively run an office peopled by eight women of various ages and diverse personalities. I’d have to say the majority of them center around use of the bathroom. There’s the toilet paper rule. If you’re the last one to use the bathroom and you leave anything less than 20 squares of tissue on the roll without changing it, you’re going to get an email from someone if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you’re more apt to find someone standing in your office doorway announcing to you (and everyone else within earshot) that you forgot to change the toilet paper.
Likewise nobody wants to be called out for splashing water all around the sink so the next person who happens to lean against it while washing their hands gets to walk out with a lovely water stain across the band of their skirt.
It’s not an official rule that you must be an animal lover, but if you absolutely don’t like animals it is understood you will keep your opinions to yourself. This is largely due to the fact that between the eight of us, there are 3 dogs and 6 cats, respectively.
The lower right hand cabinet in the bathroom is a veritable mini-Costco of hair products and if you’re in the throes of a notably bad hair day and about to meet with a client, it’s perfectly acceptable to pilfer a spritz or two of someone else’s Tresemme to get you through. More than the occasional spritz and it’s an unspoken understanding that you’ll buy your own product or at a minimum, the next can of what you borrowed.
Everyone has free use of the bathroom, but setting up camp in there to apply your make-up, do your hair, or do anything else that requires more than five minutes will find you receiving the same kind of talking to. I think we’re all trying to stay conscious of this one, and the only person who actually does a wardrobe change in there is Casey, when she changes before her nightly sessions at the gym. This can be a problem when I’m waiting to use the bathroom because I know if I don’t I’m going to wish I did when I’m sitting in traffic that (Murphy’s law being the inevitable it is) will back up and make me twenty minutes late getting home just because I didn’t.
Everybody eats at their desk sometime and that’s fine, it’s what you’re eating that matters. We’re collectively OK with just about anything except onions. Onions are the gift that keeps stinking up the office long after the sandwich/salad is gone. The only offense worse than eating onions in your office is eating them in the boardroom, because that makes the daily 2pm meeting stink, too. I think this rule evolved years ago when one of our admins insisted on buying her lunch from the local taco cart every day at 11am, and from 11:15 until closing, the whole office smelled like the inside of an old burrito. I remember driving home and catching stray whiffs of red pepper and salsa that seemed to somehow have infiltrated my hair and my clothes, too.
It’s not a rule but an accepted fact that we have a comprehensive in-office recycling program. You’re free to bring in your old magazines, books, DVDs, and all those make-up samples you get at the Clinique counter when buying moisturizer, and put them in the break room, the unofficial ‘recycling area’. By the end of the day, they’ve been pretty much guaranteed a new life and a new home. Likewise you can bring in just about anything from your refrigerator and count on it being consumed. With all the weekend entertaining Jules does, she pretty much keeps us in veggie crudités every Monday, which is nice. There’s generally always a bag of tortilla chips in the break room and salsa in the fridge and without question, it’s open for anybody who wants it. But we do rigorously enforce the whole ‘double dipping’ thing, and ask that any utensil that’s been in your mouth doesn’t get put near or in anything that’s likely to go in anyone else’s.
I suppose it’s a given that you can also bring any homeless animals to us and we’ll give them homes, as well. Jules wound up adopting the feral cat from the loading dock, and Holly’s now the proud owner of the black tabby discovered wandering the east end of the parking lot. I adopted Gus because Casey routed pictures of him in an office email, thus weakening my defenses and finally slapping the kybash on them altogether by telling me how happy Basil would be to have ‘a brother’. I like to say with that, I ‘gave at the office’ and can absolve myself of the inclination to ever adopt another animal again.
We keep a coffee pot in the back and if you drink the coffee, you’re on the rotation for replacing it when it’s gone. I personally stick with cafeteria coffee, because as time goes on I’m less and less of a coffee drinker. I seem to require one cup in the morning and occasionally a cup in the afternoon and it makes no difference to me if it’s instant, canned, or liquid concentrate, I just need the caffeine. The office coffee pot can apparently only process bags of coffee with a starting price of no less than $12, so it’s understandable there are really only about three people who are still drinking it.
I suppose the final and handiest rule is that of absolute honesty. It’s just a given around here that nobody’s going to lie to you about anything, and if you ask an opinion you’re going to get (at least)one. I personally enjoy this one, although I’ve learned long ago never to ask, “Does this skirt make my butt look big?” when I’m having one of those days where I feel like my butt is big, and I can see in the mirror that it’s big, so why set myself up for being told I need to somehow make it smaller. I have also saved money by employing this rule when it comes to salon appointments. Just last weekend I stopped into Liz’s office and announced I was going to hit the salon Saturday and have my color done again. “Uh, no,” she said, glancing up at me. “You’re not ready yet.” I then bent down so she could inspect the top of my head and she said again, “couple more weeks,” which was great because it saved me not only cash but a few hours of my Saturday that otherwise would have been spent in a salon chair.
My very favorite of all the ‘rules’, however, is that for the most part, what happens in the office stays in the office, to borrow from the old Vegas slogan. Let’s just say we’re not always Human Resources Correct, but that’s OK. Maybe it’s because we’re not that we’re able to handle stress as well as we do, and spend so many hours together every day, year round, and consistently get along. It’s our unspoken ‘Code’, and it’s never broken.
Never.
No matter who’s asking.
When Liz received her fifteen year service award recently, our General Manager asked if anyone had any ‘stories they’d like to share’. Well, nobody did, or at least none they wanted to share in the executive boardroom in front of the General Manager. “What about you, Madeleine?” he asked, “anything you want to share?”
I didn’t hesitate a second. “Nothing,” I said, and held up a hand against his protest. “Let’s just say we have a code.”
And I’m very glad we do, or at least I know I will be when my own service anniversary next comes around.
We have a lot of rules in the office, none of which are written down officially, but they’re no less in place and ruthlessly enforced and all things considered, they constitute a nice way to effectively run an office peopled by eight women of various ages and diverse personalities. I’d have to say the majority of them center around use of the bathroom. There’s the toilet paper rule. If you’re the last one to use the bathroom and you leave anything less than 20 squares of tissue on the roll without changing it, you’re going to get an email from someone if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you’re more apt to find someone standing in your office doorway announcing to you (and everyone else within earshot) that you forgot to change the toilet paper.
Likewise nobody wants to be called out for splashing water all around the sink so the next person who happens to lean against it while washing their hands gets to walk out with a lovely water stain across the band of their skirt.
It’s not an official rule that you must be an animal lover, but if you absolutely don’t like animals it is understood you will keep your opinions to yourself. This is largely due to the fact that between the eight of us, there are 3 dogs and 6 cats, respectively.
The lower right hand cabinet in the bathroom is a veritable mini-Costco of hair products and if you’re in the throes of a notably bad hair day and about to meet with a client, it’s perfectly acceptable to pilfer a spritz or two of someone else’s Tresemme to get you through. More than the occasional spritz and it’s an unspoken understanding that you’ll buy your own product or at a minimum, the next can of what you borrowed.
Everyone has free use of the bathroom, but setting up camp in there to apply your make-up, do your hair, or do anything else that requires more than five minutes will find you receiving the same kind of talking to. I think we’re all trying to stay conscious of this one, and the only person who actually does a wardrobe change in there is Casey, when she changes before her nightly sessions at the gym. This can be a problem when I’m waiting to use the bathroom because I know if I don’t I’m going to wish I did when I’m sitting in traffic that (Murphy’s law being the inevitable it is) will back up and make me twenty minutes late getting home just because I didn’t.
Everybody eats at their desk sometime and that’s fine, it’s what you’re eating that matters. We’re collectively OK with just about anything except onions. Onions are the gift that keeps stinking up the office long after the sandwich/salad is gone. The only offense worse than eating onions in your office is eating them in the boardroom, because that makes the daily 2pm meeting stink, too. I think this rule evolved years ago when one of our admins insisted on buying her lunch from the local taco cart every day at 11am, and from 11:15 until closing, the whole office smelled like the inside of an old burrito. I remember driving home and catching stray whiffs of red pepper and salsa that seemed to somehow have infiltrated my hair and my clothes, too.
It’s not a rule but an accepted fact that we have a comprehensive in-office recycling program. You’re free to bring in your old magazines, books, DVDs, and all those make-up samples you get at the Clinique counter when buying moisturizer, and put them in the break room, the unofficial ‘recycling area’. By the end of the day, they’ve been pretty much guaranteed a new life and a new home. Likewise you can bring in just about anything from your refrigerator and count on it being consumed. With all the weekend entertaining Jules does, she pretty much keeps us in veggie crudités every Monday, which is nice. There’s generally always a bag of tortilla chips in the break room and salsa in the fridge and without question, it’s open for anybody who wants it. But we do rigorously enforce the whole ‘double dipping’ thing, and ask that any utensil that’s been in your mouth doesn’t get put near or in anything that’s likely to go in anyone else’s.
I suppose it’s a given that you can also bring any homeless animals to us and we’ll give them homes, as well. Jules wound up adopting the feral cat from the loading dock, and Holly’s now the proud owner of the black tabby discovered wandering the east end of the parking lot. I adopted Gus because Casey routed pictures of him in an office email, thus weakening my defenses and finally slapping the kybash on them altogether by telling me how happy Basil would be to have ‘a brother’. I like to say with that, I ‘gave at the office’ and can absolve myself of the inclination to ever adopt another animal again.
We keep a coffee pot in the back and if you drink the coffee, you’re on the rotation for replacing it when it’s gone. I personally stick with cafeteria coffee, because as time goes on I’m less and less of a coffee drinker. I seem to require one cup in the morning and occasionally a cup in the afternoon and it makes no difference to me if it’s instant, canned, or liquid concentrate, I just need the caffeine. The office coffee pot can apparently only process bags of coffee with a starting price of no less than $12, so it’s understandable there are really only about three people who are still drinking it.
I suppose the final and handiest rule is that of absolute honesty. It’s just a given around here that nobody’s going to lie to you about anything, and if you ask an opinion you’re going to get (at least)one. I personally enjoy this one, although I’ve learned long ago never to ask, “Does this skirt make my butt look big?” when I’m having one of those days where I feel like my butt is big, and I can see in the mirror that it’s big, so why set myself up for being told I need to somehow make it smaller. I have also saved money by employing this rule when it comes to salon appointments. Just last weekend I stopped into Liz’s office and announced I was going to hit the salon Saturday and have my color done again. “Uh, no,” she said, glancing up at me. “You’re not ready yet.” I then bent down so she could inspect the top of my head and she said again, “couple more weeks,” which was great because it saved me not only cash but a few hours of my Saturday that otherwise would have been spent in a salon chair.
My very favorite of all the ‘rules’, however, is that for the most part, what happens in the office stays in the office, to borrow from the old Vegas slogan. Let’s just say we’re not always Human Resources Correct, but that’s OK. Maybe it’s because we’re not that we’re able to handle stress as well as we do, and spend so many hours together every day, year round, and consistently get along. It’s our unspoken ‘Code’, and it’s never broken.
Never.
No matter who’s asking.
When Liz received her fifteen year service award recently, our General Manager asked if anyone had any ‘stories they’d like to share’. Well, nobody did, or at least none they wanted to share in the executive boardroom in front of the General Manager. “What about you, Madeleine?” he asked, “anything you want to share?”
I didn’t hesitate a second. “Nothing,” I said, and held up a hand against his protest. “Let’s just say we have a code.”
And I’m very glad we do, or at least I know I will be when my own service anniversary next comes around.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
No Room For The Queen(s)
I realize I have too much furniture, too many books, far too much dishware and more clothes than any three normal people need so it’s no surprise that I also have too many animals. I understand I could get by with a few less chairs, one less couch, and who knows how many less end tables. I could also lose the entire midsection of three of my closets and go six months without noticing which suits were missing. I comprehend that if I were to minimize in this regard, life would probably be less complicated and therefore that’s what I should do. The problem is, I’m not apt to actually do it. Not now and not at any time in the foreseeable future. No more than I would be apt to give up either of my cats or consider living for one minute in a house not largely dominated by Basil and her stuffed animals. If I know anything about myself it’s this: Once anything – animal, vegetable, mineral, or end table – earns a place in my heart, I’m hanging onto it. If this occasionally poses a difficulty, I simply work around it.
The working around it is the easy part, most of the time. About the third time I bang my leg into an end table, I just move it to a different location. I’m constantly finding new places to store books, and you’d be amazed just how many clothes you can fit into a closet if you hang everything correctly. I’ve managed to convince myself I need antique Kayson china service for ten in addition to the service for fifteen I have in Fiestaware and the regular every day plates from Macy’s. I’ve learned to step over the inevitable cat in the hallway when I exit the bathroom in the semi-dark of morning, and double check to insure that’s a pillow not a dog on the couch before I flop down on it. Most of the time, life flows pretty smoothly.
Once in a while, though, we hit a snag and last night was no exception. About ten-forty-five I started shutting down lights in the living room and called Basil in to bed. Creature of habit that she is, she trotted down the hall and I heard her leap up onto the ottoman beside the bed so she could make the leap up onto the mattress (Girlfriend’s getting a little too chubby to make the leap without it, so mental note to lay off the Milkbones for a bit). A night like any other, I thought, and then saw that both cats had already settled onto the bed, something they generally won’t do until after Basil and I are both asleep. I’m not sure why this is, but have decided it’s an innate part of a cat’s nature to have the last word in everything, including the final prowl around the house before the day is officially over. The fact that they’d retired to bed earlier than usual wasn’t a huge problem for me. I just slid in a little closer to the wall and over to one side to give them both space.
The problem was Basil. Rather than jumping onto the bed she continued to sit on the ottoman, staring blankly at me, pausing only momentarily to dart her eyes over to each cat in turn before returning her gaze to mine. I patted the bed. “Come on, Bas,” I said, “night night.” Well, the ears came up but that was it. She simply continued to stare and that’s when I realized that given the positions of both cats, there wasn’t a whole lot of bed left for her. There was a small space near the wall but nowhere near the foot of the bed where she’d long ago staked out her own ‘spot’.
I thought about shifting the cats around and probably would have but something stopped me. Maybe it was a rare moment of insight when I realized surely I had better things to do with my time than use it to rearrange cats at nearly eleven p.m. Maybe it was just the fact that it was nearly eleven and I had to get up early. I’m not sure which, but I do know I patted Basil’s head, pulled the comforter around me, and fell asleep, confident they’d somehow work it out amongst themselves. Never mind I felt terrible at the blank stare Basil continued to send my way, a blank stare that said as plainly as I’m sure she would have if she could talk: “Are you kidding me? What’s up with this?”
I woke up shortly before five, due in part to the alarm clock’s beeping and the fact that I had two ice cold kitty paws wedged just above my right ear. Both cats idly raised their heads at me, then lowered them back to the bed, stretched, and resumed sleeping. Basil was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t on the bed, she wasn’t on the couch, she wasn’t on the back of her favorite chair. I found her in the den, on the twin bed, curled at the foot of it, still giving me the eye. “Look,” she seemed to be saying, “I had to sleep here all by myself last night and I’m not happy about it.”
I empathized with her sentiments, but only partially. Only partially because given the kink in my neck at the time (induced by having to semi-constantly shift the position of my head on the pillows to avoid the pre-dawn placement of ice cold kitty feet on my ears) the idea of sleeping alone seemed like the only intelligent one. It might be time, I thought then, stepping into a hot shower, to revert to Plan B.
Plan B was instituted last week, and had a very short run. It started out as a brilliant idea on my part, or so I thought. When it came time to go to sleep at night, I’d simply close the bedroom door. Basil and I would have the entire bed to ourselves, and I wouldn’t have ice cold paws applied to various parts of my head and shoulders when I was trying to sleep. Plan B was promptly enacted and lasted exactly two nights. On the first night, I fell asleep to plaintive meowing coming through the door, followed by the swooshing sounds of random kitty paws swatting under the door. The second night foiled the plan altogether. That’s the night Gus, the boldest of the cats, made a game of lunging at the door, making a nice resounding thud that sounded for all the world like a burglar trying to break in, shortly before 2 a.m. After that night, the bedroom door had remained open and the queen sized bed was available to all of us. Which had worked out, but not for very long.
“Oh, yeah,” Casey said this morning, when I told her about how Basil had been booted from her own territory and forced to sleep alone, while I myself had been reduced to sleeping in far less space than I wanted. “You give them an inch, they take over.”
I digested that, because it was true. They had taken over the bed. They’d also, come to think of it, taken over most of the furniture in the house and they certainly had me hopping to their command. I might be in full management mode in the workplace, but within two minutes of coming in the door at night and being assaulted by both of them meowing for dinner, I drop everything – no matter what it is – to crack open that can of food and get it served. The label may say “Classic Dinner Pate, Beef and Chicken” but I call it simply, “The Silencer”.
“So what do I do?” I asked, and Casey just gave me a look and shrugged, a look and a shrug that told me what I do is nothing because there’s nothing I can do. A look that told me, as she has many times before, that she lost her own bed years ago to her two cats, and not even her husband has been able to get them under control. Sometimes, she said, he’ll even get up and sleep in the guest room just to get away from them.
Which is sad, in a way, if you think about it, but maybe not so much on second glance. That is a pretty comfortable twin bed in the den. If Berk promises not to take up too much of the room on her side of it tonight, I should sleep pretty well.
The working around it is the easy part, most of the time. About the third time I bang my leg into an end table, I just move it to a different location. I’m constantly finding new places to store books, and you’d be amazed just how many clothes you can fit into a closet if you hang everything correctly. I’ve managed to convince myself I need antique Kayson china service for ten in addition to the service for fifteen I have in Fiestaware and the regular every day plates from Macy’s. I’ve learned to step over the inevitable cat in the hallway when I exit the bathroom in the semi-dark of morning, and double check to insure that’s a pillow not a dog on the couch before I flop down on it. Most of the time, life flows pretty smoothly.
Once in a while, though, we hit a snag and last night was no exception. About ten-forty-five I started shutting down lights in the living room and called Basil in to bed. Creature of habit that she is, she trotted down the hall and I heard her leap up onto the ottoman beside the bed so she could make the leap up onto the mattress (Girlfriend’s getting a little too chubby to make the leap without it, so mental note to lay off the Milkbones for a bit). A night like any other, I thought, and then saw that both cats had already settled onto the bed, something they generally won’t do until after Basil and I are both asleep. I’m not sure why this is, but have decided it’s an innate part of a cat’s nature to have the last word in everything, including the final prowl around the house before the day is officially over. The fact that they’d retired to bed earlier than usual wasn’t a huge problem for me. I just slid in a little closer to the wall and over to one side to give them both space.
The problem was Basil. Rather than jumping onto the bed she continued to sit on the ottoman, staring blankly at me, pausing only momentarily to dart her eyes over to each cat in turn before returning her gaze to mine. I patted the bed. “Come on, Bas,” I said, “night night.” Well, the ears came up but that was it. She simply continued to stare and that’s when I realized that given the positions of both cats, there wasn’t a whole lot of bed left for her. There was a small space near the wall but nowhere near the foot of the bed where she’d long ago staked out her own ‘spot’.
I thought about shifting the cats around and probably would have but something stopped me. Maybe it was a rare moment of insight when I realized surely I had better things to do with my time than use it to rearrange cats at nearly eleven p.m. Maybe it was just the fact that it was nearly eleven and I had to get up early. I’m not sure which, but I do know I patted Basil’s head, pulled the comforter around me, and fell asleep, confident they’d somehow work it out amongst themselves. Never mind I felt terrible at the blank stare Basil continued to send my way, a blank stare that said as plainly as I’m sure she would have if she could talk: “Are you kidding me? What’s up with this?”
I woke up shortly before five, due in part to the alarm clock’s beeping and the fact that I had two ice cold kitty paws wedged just above my right ear. Both cats idly raised their heads at me, then lowered them back to the bed, stretched, and resumed sleeping. Basil was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t on the bed, she wasn’t on the couch, she wasn’t on the back of her favorite chair. I found her in the den, on the twin bed, curled at the foot of it, still giving me the eye. “Look,” she seemed to be saying, “I had to sleep here all by myself last night and I’m not happy about it.”
I empathized with her sentiments, but only partially. Only partially because given the kink in my neck at the time (induced by having to semi-constantly shift the position of my head on the pillows to avoid the pre-dawn placement of ice cold kitty feet on my ears) the idea of sleeping alone seemed like the only intelligent one. It might be time, I thought then, stepping into a hot shower, to revert to Plan B.
Plan B was instituted last week, and had a very short run. It started out as a brilliant idea on my part, or so I thought. When it came time to go to sleep at night, I’d simply close the bedroom door. Basil and I would have the entire bed to ourselves, and I wouldn’t have ice cold paws applied to various parts of my head and shoulders when I was trying to sleep. Plan B was promptly enacted and lasted exactly two nights. On the first night, I fell asleep to plaintive meowing coming through the door, followed by the swooshing sounds of random kitty paws swatting under the door. The second night foiled the plan altogether. That’s the night Gus, the boldest of the cats, made a game of lunging at the door, making a nice resounding thud that sounded for all the world like a burglar trying to break in, shortly before 2 a.m. After that night, the bedroom door had remained open and the queen sized bed was available to all of us. Which had worked out, but not for very long.
“Oh, yeah,” Casey said this morning, when I told her about how Basil had been booted from her own territory and forced to sleep alone, while I myself had been reduced to sleeping in far less space than I wanted. “You give them an inch, they take over.”
I digested that, because it was true. They had taken over the bed. They’d also, come to think of it, taken over most of the furniture in the house and they certainly had me hopping to their command. I might be in full management mode in the workplace, but within two minutes of coming in the door at night and being assaulted by both of them meowing for dinner, I drop everything – no matter what it is – to crack open that can of food and get it served. The label may say “Classic Dinner Pate, Beef and Chicken” but I call it simply, “The Silencer”.
“So what do I do?” I asked, and Casey just gave me a look and shrugged, a look and a shrug that told me what I do is nothing because there’s nothing I can do. A look that told me, as she has many times before, that she lost her own bed years ago to her two cats, and not even her husband has been able to get them under control. Sometimes, she said, he’ll even get up and sleep in the guest room just to get away from them.
Which is sad, in a way, if you think about it, but maybe not so much on second glance. That is a pretty comfortable twin bed in the den. If Berk promises not to take up too much of the room on her side of it tonight, I should sleep pretty well.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Back in Action: Return of the Road Warrior
I was walking back to the office from the banquet kitchen this morning when I felt the buzz of my Blackberry and saw “Dad Cell” flash across the Caller ID. Knowing I’d just spoken with him last night I have to say my initial reaction was carefully concealed panic. Some people say late night phone calls are the truest indicator of bad news on its way but in my experience with my parents, it’s the daytime calls that you need to worry about. They know my schedule. A daytime call is an oddity, and the last one, three days before Christmas, had been the one to let me know my dad had suffered a stroke.
“Hi there,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice I really didn’t feel.
“How did you know it was me?” Dad hasn’t quite gotten his head around modern technology. I remember the first email he sent me, in the mid-nineties when he and Mom finally installed the Internet in their home: “It’s Dad Stop. Write me if you get this Stop.” Apparently the Internet service hadn’t explained to him that broadband was slightly more in tune with the times than a telegram. His first emails were cryptic consistently because he couldn’t understand how he could send an email that would take ten minutes to read and not be charged for a ten- minute long distance call.
“You have a special ring,” I lied. “How are you?”
“I’ve just had some great news from the physical therapist,” he said, “and I knew you’d want to hear it.”
As soon as he said that, anxiety started melting. I knew he’d been working very hard with the physical therapist who came to the house three times a week, and I knew Mom had been on him like a boot camp drill sergeant to insure he kept up with the exercises on his own. The combined effort had paid off. As of today, the physical therapist cleared him to drive. He’d regained enough use of his right hand and was getting some mobility back in his right foot. While there had been talk of him getting a brace for his foot he was now, as he explained it, ‘on hold’ with that idea, although if progress continued it wouldn’t be any kind of permanent brace, just something to help him as he continued to progress. “So I don’t have to drag my foot along behind me,” he said and I couldn’t help but wince at the imagery that conjured. Hard to match with the dad I’d done so much with throughout my life, from all the sailing trips and all the boats, and the hikes through the redwoods to Stinson Beach and the climbs up Mt. Diablo. I remembered when we used to jog through Berkeley in the early weekday morning hours in the late seventies when he was in his ‘running phase’ as Mom called it, and it just didn’t fit.
“That,” I said, “is fantastic! I am so glad!”
He was glad, too. His voice had a lift to it I hadn’t heard since before the stroke. “Oh this is swell,” he said then. “I’m back in action. No handicap at all! But I’m not signing up to drive on the highway or anything,” he said, pausing. “Not right now. But if I want to drive down to the store, or down the road to my friend’s house, I can do it! And Mom doesn’t have to drive me anymore. She’s been having to pack me around everywhere…” Which was, I understood as he let the conversation trail off, what had most bothered him.
There’s never been a question, really, of who the alpha dog was in that household. If I had a dime for every road trip they’d taken together in over thirty-six years, and a nickel for every mile they’d traveled in a vehicle, I certainly wouldn’t be working right now. The ability to get up and go had always been important to him, and had been one of the reasons he’d found some enjoyment in the last hectic years of his auditing career when the oil company had him one month in Hawaii, one month in Alaska, the next month in Nigeria, and after that in Canada, Kansas City, or the wrong end of Texas. I remembered all the plaques on the wall of the den recognizing the miles he’d traveled for his job, year after year being acknowledged “Road Warrior of the Year” and although he’d grumble about the airports, the hotel food, and the loneliness of it, you knew he was also proud of it. To hear the relief in his voice that he could do something as simple as drive down the road for a quart of ice-cream again was touching. He sounded as giddy as a clumsy school kid who’d just been picked first for the softball team.
Now I have to be honest and admit my first reaction following that call was to be relieved and incredibly happy for him. It was only after I got back to my office and really considered the ramifications that I wondered if being able to drive meant being able to drive anything, or if he’d be somewhat selective. My parents have too many vehicles for just two people. They have a new Subaru wagon, a new Diesel truck, a vintage convertible, an antique corvette, an antique Packard, and another car from somewhere in the forties of which I have a picture at home but off the top of my head I’m not sure what the make of it is. Suddenly, like any over-concerned daughter I wanted to call him back and admonish him not to attempt to drive anything other than the Subaru wagon, the smallest option of all their vehicles and surely one of the few with actual air bags. I wanted him to perhaps not do this driving until spring, when the snow had gone. I wanted to especially remind him not to drive anywhere just to be driving, but to drive if he had somewhere to be or something to do, as there was no sense rushing right into this whole thing and taking on too much at once. I wondered if that physical therapist really knew her stuff, or if she was rushing his recovery. Finally, as I opened a file on my desk and attempted to yank my brain back into the Now and out of the worry mode, I wanted to insure he was securely wrapped in bubble wrap before he got behind the wheel of anything, just in case the air bag wasn’t as good as the manufacturer’s warranty claimed it was and heaven forbid he needed it.
It was at that moment that I had what Oprah calls an ‘Aha’ moment, because what I thought about then were all the times Dad had sent me or any of his kids off somewhere, and how he’d make sure we had a few bucks in our pocket (“You always need some walking around money,” as he put it) and he knew exactly where we’d be and when we’d be home. I remembered all those times I’d be babysitting down the street and the doorbell would ring. There on the porch of whatever house I was earning $1 an hour in watching some toddler would be my dad, holding a Mealamac plate wrapped in Reynold’s Wrap. “Meals on wheels,” he’d announce, and there would be the dinner I would have had at home if I’d been home. I realized in that moment why he did all of that, and how he, like me now, wanted to do everything he could to ensure nothing happened to one of his kids.
And yet life does what it does, and I’m sure at every turn he had to realize you really have no control, and I think I realize that now, too. I think he realized it for the first time in 1969, when I fell off the deck and cracked my head. And again in 1975 when my sister was hit by a car when we were on a bike ride. And again in the early nineties, when my brother was mugged and turned up in a Berkeley hospital as a John Doe with permanent hearing loss in his right ear. I think he realized that sometimes you have to let go. You have to realize you’re only human, and life is going to do what it’s going to do regardless of anything you do.
So having realized that, I’m not going to tell him what he can and can’t drive, and I’m not going to remind him that snow is slippery to drive on, and I’m also not going to advise bubble wrap as a sensible secondary safety initiative in a vehicle. I realize I’m only human. I realize I’m not in charge of this.
I also realize this is my dad I’m talking about. So I may just wait a bit and then call Mom and ask if there’s any way she can temporarily ‘lose track of’ keys to any vehicle other than the Subaru wagon until the Road Warrior gets a little stronger.
“Hi there,” I said, forcing a smile into my voice I really didn’t feel.
“How did you know it was me?” Dad hasn’t quite gotten his head around modern technology. I remember the first email he sent me, in the mid-nineties when he and Mom finally installed the Internet in their home: “It’s Dad Stop. Write me if you get this Stop.” Apparently the Internet service hadn’t explained to him that broadband was slightly more in tune with the times than a telegram. His first emails were cryptic consistently because he couldn’t understand how he could send an email that would take ten minutes to read and not be charged for a ten- minute long distance call.
“You have a special ring,” I lied. “How are you?”
“I’ve just had some great news from the physical therapist,” he said, “and I knew you’d want to hear it.”
As soon as he said that, anxiety started melting. I knew he’d been working very hard with the physical therapist who came to the house three times a week, and I knew Mom had been on him like a boot camp drill sergeant to insure he kept up with the exercises on his own. The combined effort had paid off. As of today, the physical therapist cleared him to drive. He’d regained enough use of his right hand and was getting some mobility back in his right foot. While there had been talk of him getting a brace for his foot he was now, as he explained it, ‘on hold’ with that idea, although if progress continued it wouldn’t be any kind of permanent brace, just something to help him as he continued to progress. “So I don’t have to drag my foot along behind me,” he said and I couldn’t help but wince at the imagery that conjured. Hard to match with the dad I’d done so much with throughout my life, from all the sailing trips and all the boats, and the hikes through the redwoods to Stinson Beach and the climbs up Mt. Diablo. I remembered when we used to jog through Berkeley in the early weekday morning hours in the late seventies when he was in his ‘running phase’ as Mom called it, and it just didn’t fit.
“That,” I said, “is fantastic! I am so glad!”
He was glad, too. His voice had a lift to it I hadn’t heard since before the stroke. “Oh this is swell,” he said then. “I’m back in action. No handicap at all! But I’m not signing up to drive on the highway or anything,” he said, pausing. “Not right now. But if I want to drive down to the store, or down the road to my friend’s house, I can do it! And Mom doesn’t have to drive me anymore. She’s been having to pack me around everywhere…” Which was, I understood as he let the conversation trail off, what had most bothered him.
There’s never been a question, really, of who the alpha dog was in that household. If I had a dime for every road trip they’d taken together in over thirty-six years, and a nickel for every mile they’d traveled in a vehicle, I certainly wouldn’t be working right now. The ability to get up and go had always been important to him, and had been one of the reasons he’d found some enjoyment in the last hectic years of his auditing career when the oil company had him one month in Hawaii, one month in Alaska, the next month in Nigeria, and after that in Canada, Kansas City, or the wrong end of Texas. I remembered all the plaques on the wall of the den recognizing the miles he’d traveled for his job, year after year being acknowledged “Road Warrior of the Year” and although he’d grumble about the airports, the hotel food, and the loneliness of it, you knew he was also proud of it. To hear the relief in his voice that he could do something as simple as drive down the road for a quart of ice-cream again was touching. He sounded as giddy as a clumsy school kid who’d just been picked first for the softball team.
Now I have to be honest and admit my first reaction following that call was to be relieved and incredibly happy for him. It was only after I got back to my office and really considered the ramifications that I wondered if being able to drive meant being able to drive anything, or if he’d be somewhat selective. My parents have too many vehicles for just two people. They have a new Subaru wagon, a new Diesel truck, a vintage convertible, an antique corvette, an antique Packard, and another car from somewhere in the forties of which I have a picture at home but off the top of my head I’m not sure what the make of it is. Suddenly, like any over-concerned daughter I wanted to call him back and admonish him not to attempt to drive anything other than the Subaru wagon, the smallest option of all their vehicles and surely one of the few with actual air bags. I wanted him to perhaps not do this driving until spring, when the snow had gone. I wanted to especially remind him not to drive anywhere just to be driving, but to drive if he had somewhere to be or something to do, as there was no sense rushing right into this whole thing and taking on too much at once. I wondered if that physical therapist really knew her stuff, or if she was rushing his recovery. Finally, as I opened a file on my desk and attempted to yank my brain back into the Now and out of the worry mode, I wanted to insure he was securely wrapped in bubble wrap before he got behind the wheel of anything, just in case the air bag wasn’t as good as the manufacturer’s warranty claimed it was and heaven forbid he needed it.
It was at that moment that I had what Oprah calls an ‘Aha’ moment, because what I thought about then were all the times Dad had sent me or any of his kids off somewhere, and how he’d make sure we had a few bucks in our pocket (“You always need some walking around money,” as he put it) and he knew exactly where we’d be and when we’d be home. I remembered all those times I’d be babysitting down the street and the doorbell would ring. There on the porch of whatever house I was earning $1 an hour in watching some toddler would be my dad, holding a Mealamac plate wrapped in Reynold’s Wrap. “Meals on wheels,” he’d announce, and there would be the dinner I would have had at home if I’d been home. I realized in that moment why he did all of that, and how he, like me now, wanted to do everything he could to ensure nothing happened to one of his kids.
And yet life does what it does, and I’m sure at every turn he had to realize you really have no control, and I think I realize that now, too. I think he realized it for the first time in 1969, when I fell off the deck and cracked my head. And again in 1975 when my sister was hit by a car when we were on a bike ride. And again in the early nineties, when my brother was mugged and turned up in a Berkeley hospital as a John Doe with permanent hearing loss in his right ear. I think he realized that sometimes you have to let go. You have to realize you’re only human, and life is going to do what it’s going to do regardless of anything you do.
So having realized that, I’m not going to tell him what he can and can’t drive, and I’m not going to remind him that snow is slippery to drive on, and I’m also not going to advise bubble wrap as a sensible secondary safety initiative in a vehicle. I realize I’m only human. I realize I’m not in charge of this.
I also realize this is my dad I’m talking about. So I may just wait a bit and then call Mom and ask if there’s any way she can temporarily ‘lose track of’ keys to any vehicle other than the Subaru wagon until the Road Warrior gets a little stronger.
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