Meet Me on Monday

1. What do you put on your hot dog?

The only place I ever really got hot dogs was when I was growing up at the USC football games at the Collesium. My dad and I would each get a collassal dog. I'd get mine with ketchup, mustard and chopped onions. It was the only place I really fixed it up like that. I always got as many onions as possible, because you know if you've ever watched football that those games go 4+ hours and I'd be starving by the middle of the second half and my Dad did not provide additional snacks. I'd stealthily whip out the hot dog wrapper and lick out the remaining onion/ketchup/mustard goo in my starved state.



2. Do you play Sudoku?

It sounds like a sneeze. No.

3. What is your favorite vegetable?

French Fries!


I mean... Potatoes!



4. Do you color your hair?

Who? Me? Dye my hair? I don't know what you're talking about. And if I did, I wouldn't have done that in years. And it would have only been wash out dye. I SWEAR. Just because I left it on for 45 minutes and it never washed out does not mean it was permanent.

5. What is your favorite brand of clothing?

Hmmm. I dunno. I don't really have a favorite brand of clothing. Where I shop most often? Probably Old Navy.


Now, my favorite places where I would like to shop, but never do?

SHABBY APPLE! (SWOON!)




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Charles Brown Bagel (What, am I running a shelter here?)

November 30th I had been home from my Mom's house in Oregon for about 12 hours, and was on my way home from therapy that morning. I pulled off the freeway and WHAT do I see out running in the middle of traffic?


THIS BEAGLE.

I looked at him running in and around traffic in the middle of the street while I was waiting at the light for about 3 seconds before I mentally said "Aww, crap."

I knew I had to catch this darn dog. He's a beagle. We had a beagle (named Happy)when I was little and the dog ran away 5 days a week. He spent recess at the elementry school, lunch at the high school, back to the middle school for afternoon break, and if he hadn't been caught by someone at that point, then he'd usually follow some kids home and play with them all afternoon until dinner time, when their mother would call them in and notice the random beagle hanging around and call our number on the tag. Every day around 5pm the phone would ring and my mom would pile the kids in the car to go pick up the dog. Assuming she hadn't picked him up earlier at one of the kids schools. My sisters have many hostile memories of sitting out in front of their schools holding on to Happy waiting for my mom to come pick him up. Happy also ran across the stage at an assembly once and across the field at a football game. "Hey, Greg, isn't that your DOG?!" My brother got a lot of crap for it. But we all loved Happy. He was just a hound. A very naughty hound, who went potty in the house, jumped six foot fences, climbed chicken wire without hesitation, climbed wood piles and dug several foot deep holes in his quest to ESCAPE THE YARD.

I knew when I saw this dog out in traffic that he wasn't going to go home. Wherever he belonged, his nose was leading the way and he wouldn't go home even if he wanted to. Beagles are just like that. How we ended up with Happy to begin with was he wandered into the yard one day. My mom took him to the pound but his family never showed up and my mom went back and rescued him before he was to be put down. My first word was "doggie."

I went through the intersection, flipped a U and started calling to the dog. That got him out of the street right away. Because he wanted to get away from me! I chased him through the grocery store parking lot, and then down the street. An hour later, 6 or 7 close calls, a couple face plants in the mud, several attempts at bribery with McDonald's wrappers (once he saw they were empty he lost all interest) I finally cornered this darn dog in a particular backyard for the second time... and this time had the smarts enough to just WAIT for him to decide to leave. I set myself up in the only place he could get out at the narrowest section and just waited. When he decided to leave, and saw me blocking his exit he started doing an inch by inch inspection of the fence looking for weaknesses- like a velociraptor. (lol) He found none and started trying to make a run for it past me. He tried one way, then the other,but the passage was too narrow. He realized there was no way past me without me getting him. The whole time I had been chasing him, he had just been flat out scared. Unlike what my sister said, he was NOT playing a game with me. He was terrified. He didn't know what I wanted with him or what I was going to do with him. But in that backyard, he realized he was trapped. He finally just sat down and hung his head, looking ashamed... defeated. I kept waiting for him to make a run for it so I could catch him but then I realized he had given up! I tentatively inched towards him but he didn't move. After an hour of chasing him in the car and on foot, at least 3 miles from where we had started, this little dog just let me pick him up and carry him to the car.

I took him to PetSmart and had him scanned for a microchip, where I figured we would get a phone number and I would take the little stinker home, right? Um... no such luck. He wasn't chipped. I stared at the Banfield employee like they were speaking Swedish and had her scan him like 3 more times before I realized this dog really didn't have a chip. He had a collar, but no tag. There wasn't any damage to the collar either so the tag hadn't fallen off. We checked him all over for breeder tattoos but nothing. What's a $1,000 purebred beagle doing running around loose on the street with no ID and no microchip?

I didn't know what to do with him. I was also leaving in 36 hours for Utah for a week. Um....

I brought him home and debated about calling the pound. I decided that I would probably have better luck in finding his family myself so I put up notices on Craig's List, Fido Finder, Pet Harbor, the shelter's website and everything else I could think of. I checked all the lost dog notices. He was crawling with fleas so I gave him two baths and gave him a flea treatment before I set him up on the couch for the night, with a full belly of cat food. (It was all I had!

The next morning I checked my email and found... nothing. No one had responded to any of my notices. I had posted ads everywhere from SF Bay Area to Reno to Redding to Fresno... and nothing. Now this dog had spent the night in my home and I looked at him and I couldn't imagine calling animal control and having him thrown in the back of a scary metal cage.

Aw, crap.

I talked to just about everyone I knew. I called rescue groups. I plead my case to No Cal Beagle Rescue. No one helped. No one offered the kind of help I needed, other than to turn the dog in, but I just couldn't do it. I wanted to find his family, but I had to leave on this trip. I talked to my dad several times and he pressured me into calling my brother. Whose wife instantly said NO WAY. My brother said Sure!

And the dog was dropped off the night before I left for the airport. They ordered me to name him before he came otherwise he would be called "Javier" during his stay at their house, or something "equally gay" they informed me (with a hand flip and high squeaky voice- makes me think of Javier on Felicity, who I LOVED, but still, not for a dog!). He wasn't my dog and I had no plans on keeping him so I wasn't going to name him but I wasn't going to punnish the darn thing by having him called Javier for a week, so Charlie Brown Bagel was henceforth christened.

Charlie was extremely well behaved and utterly charming at my brother's house. He peed in the house, pooed on the carpet immediately after a walk, cried and howled for an hour at bedtime, did "revenge poops" in the crate (when they tried to crate him) and in the first 10 minutes he was put int he backyard to play, he jumped the six foot fence and was missing for 5 hours, leaving my brother driving around calling for him during the workday. (Luckily he happened to wander back to my brother's neighbor's house and was howling at their dog and my brother heard him, called for him, and he actually came!) I heavily compensated them for their charming houseguest with a Sweet Tooth Fairy and the BYU chocolate shop settlement when I got back from Utah. Ugh.


I was gone for almost a week and although I did get a few emails... Charlie's family never emerged. It has now been 7 weeks. After 30 days of possession, Charlie legally became mine. He was neutered on Saturday of last week and is currently a sporting an e-collar, making him look like a space alien, or like he has a lampshade on his head. lol

He came pre-trained on some things, he could sit, was housetrained (his antics at my brother's have been deciphered as marking, or as not being taken out when asked to be taken out since he couldn't be trusted in the backyard) and could fetch, and is learning to like a crate and this week just learned 'down' although he's not wild about the command and barks his contempt for the command before he goes lays down. lol He also knows "wait" pretty good!

The only problem we have at present is that my current housing only allows 2 pets. I know have 3. I completely and absolutely abhore those people who break the pet rules because I don't think it's fair to the animals. I now am one of those people. Am I ready to pick up and move if management tells me it's the dog or the unit? Not really. I have no idea where I would go. Where am I going to find housing that would allow 3 pets? Where would I come up with the money? Where would I come up with the energy? You know how much it costs to move a piano? But if I commit to adopting an animal, I am that animal's parent for life. If I decide to keep him, I will never give him up. Ever, no matter what. I am hoping they won't notice or care, or by the time they do I will be ready to move on. But at this point, I need more time.

December 1st, the day after I found him, after his 2 baths and flea treatments. Charlie probably weighed... 15 pounds? Very underweight, all ribs and bones, although this was a very flattering angle. You should have seen him from above- his waist was SO tiny... Even now people still comment on how small he is, not knowing his story and how much he has fattened up...



Here is Charlie at 18.6 pounds! A little fatter! Sporting his new red collar and his new Charlie Brown name tag! (With the classic yellow and black zig zag)



His official weight when he went in for his neuter was 20.4. Not too shabby! :)

I love my handsome little boy, and I have some great digging pictures (like the one in the header) that I'm going to post soon! Hopefully he will just keep getting better. As my dad said... we are kind of saving each other. I thought that was nice. Charlie gets me out of the house, takes me on walks, makes me talk to people at the dog park, at PetSmart... he is a very naughty little boy sometimes (he's never had an accident in my house though [knock on wood]) but I love him so, so much.

Hope

First, one of my good friends went into labor with her baby girl night before last.

She had a baby boy.

...

We have all been having lots of fun with that one. I don't think anyone is ever going to get tired of talking about it. And I cannot WAIT to hear about it directly from "Mommy." :) Young man doesn't have a name yet, but I am SUPER excited to hear what it will be, and I had lots of fun combing every baby website I could think of trying to find little boy stuff the night he was born. (Yes Shirlene, your mailman will be attacking you, courtesy of me. Sorry! It was compulsive. I hope it helps with the enormous task you now have at hand trading your beautiful hot pink baby girl stuff in for boy stuff! Really, I think of the receipients of my shopping binges as victims more than anything else. LOL)

...

I was driving home, in heavy fog the night after this sweet baby snuck into this world. Some song was playing on the radio and I just felt overcome. (Per usual.) I put my hand on my belly and cried. On the one hand I could almost feel the spirit of Shirlene's pregnant motherly body becoming my own- meaning, I could almost imagine myself being with child at that moment- I could almost feel it, dream it, picture it. Almost. Something I haven't been able to do. (You have to give me credit for admitting this because I feel nuts saying it like this! What am I, some kind of new age hippie taking on 'spirits'? LOL I hope you can get what I am TRYING to say... Not very well I might add...) At the same time I instantly felt robbed because I just can't. I can't be a Mom. I can't be someone's mother because in order to do that I have to allow myself to trust and love someone as a spouse first. And trust that person enough that I would allow myself to bring an innocent child into our marriage and into this world without doubt that anything would happen to it. At this time, I don't for a second believe that.

Driving in the car, in the fog, not being able to see ahead, and just totally living in the moment, for just a second... I felt that "someday baby" in my belly... and cried for having hope. But I couldn't even fully feel the hope because even as I was feeling that emotion, I was also feeling the anger of what had happened, the mistrust I have of both other people, and of myself, and of my dis-desire to return to those sweet dreams I have so coveted my whole life.

At the same time, I am so grateful for each of these sweet new babies that are born every day, and the people that are brave enough to give them life. I am so proud of you for taking on the task of motherhood and everything that it entails. I dream that I will one day dream of that life again. I am grateful for your faith, trust and love in the world and your relationships when you chose to bring these babies home. I aspire to you. I aspire to your faith.





...

After listening to this song play over and over and over again on the promos on cable I admit it, I was hooked and I sought it out on YouTube so I could listen to it's full length. Taylor Swift's channel has apparently been malfunctioning or been overused or something for the last two days because I haven't been able to get anything by her host (even by other artists) to play for the last two days. Since I've been up all night the last two nights editing Shirlene's maternity pictures and posting the pictures over on my work blog, I needed the music and have devoted some serious time trying to get the darn thing to play. In desperation, I turned to You Tube artists. And I think I found something I might like even MORE than the original. Really! This is a duet sung by Julia Sheer and Tyler Ward, with the latter on guitar. They are great and I really love her voice.

I did it.

I changed my blog header. My heart aches.

I feel like I am admitting that something really happened, you know? That he really did something. That he hurt me. That we aren't going to have a life together. That this isn't our blog. That we aren't going to get married or have kids. That our future won't be together.

I have known those things... I have talked about those things; with friends, family, in therapy, even on this blog. But I feel like by replacing my blog header that I am admitting it. And it hurts.

My eyes burn, and my chest is heavy and I feel like I can barely breathe. There isn't any relief in being honest with myself, or letting go of that picture of us together. February 3rd will be six months since I found out. I feel like I am on a countdown.

But I did it. I sat in photoshop and I pasted over our happy, smiling, innocent pictures as fast as I could. I disconnected from the process and just worked like I would for any client or project. And our header, although saved on my computer, is gone now. I miss it. I miss my innocence, I miss our relationship, I miss everything about it. I will always be better off by knowing, but that doesn't stop the pain or longing.

Wordless Wednesday: Ever wonder what it's like to drive 9 hours with 2 cats?

Amelia uses the litterbox on the freeway.... Toulouse made THIS FACE...

Toot puttin' in his order at Arby's. He REALLY liked the lady who waited on us. He wanted to jump in the restaurant and snuggle her.

Where can I file a complaint?

With the UNIVERSE?

Charlie (the beagle I found, which I haven't told you about yet) ran away on Friday. He had been locked up all day at home because I had to do a shoot in the Bay and the shoot ran over by about 3 hours because the clients had a long list of locations they wanted to visit. I got home and had to run straight to a client consultation, so I brought him since he was so upset about being separated from me all day. (He has SEVERE separation anxiety because he was a dumped dog- I found him running in traffic, literally- and he panic barks and cries and runs franicly looking for me if I step out even on the porch for 10 seconds.) He was still really upset about being apart from me all those hours and when I tried to get out of the car, he ran out and took off running down the street- and straight into traffic. Apparently I just threw all my bags down right there when I started chasing him- 5 blocks, at night in a bad neighborhood, and crying because I though e was going to get hit by a car. He wouldn't come back to me when I called. He finally stopped to sniff something in a bush and I ran past him and he saw me pass him so he ran up to me, like, where are you going? I carried him back to my car, crying, holding him, no leash, in the dark to find a police officer (If I hadn't been crying already I would have started crying again there) standing by my car guarding my stuff. Some lady had seen it all happen and asked the cop to watch my stuff, which he did. My purse was just thrown all over the parking space next to mine and my portfolio was laying on the ground. I was so upset about the dog I hadn't even realized I had done that, but even when I saw it all on the ground I had the thought while I was holding him that even if it had all been stolen while I was gone the dog was more valuable and more precious to me than my "stuff." I thanks the cop but I didn't want him anywhere near me. After Matt I am afraid of them. They don't make me feel safe. They scare me. They make me feel violated and uneasy. I feel like I don't know what to expect from them. That they aren't trustworthy. And with Matt as an example... how could I think otherwise at this point? This happened after therapy this week but I'll bet the therapist will likely comment on how great itis I didn't have a panic attack when I saw him. It's the closest I have been to a police officer since I found out the truth about Matt- 5 months. But I was so upset and distracted by the dog that likely protected me from a reaction to the uniform. I then had to pull it together and do a bridal consultation while the puppy howled in the car. It was awful. I was also 30 minutes late to the meeting because of all that.

Saturday we were up at 6am and down to the SPCA to get Charlie neutered. He howled and howled when they took him away from me. :( But he is home now. Tired, sore, he got a baby tooth pulled (he had three canines- 2 grown up and a baby that never fell out) so he was extra sore, and he can't stop licking his owies so he has to wear an e-collar (so he has a cone head). He was up every 2 hours last night. Poor baby.

We went to schedule the appointment in person on Wednesday and when we went in, I left my cell phone on the seat in the car and I guess Charlie kicked it into his water cup in my car while he was getting out... which I didn't notice until we walked out after waiting in line for 2 hours. My phone was definietly dead. I went to file the claim online with the insurance I bought in December (after my Mom threw my last phone away with the Thanksgiving turkey...) and it said there was no record of my insurance! So I had to go down to the store to straighten it out. It was a nightmare. But the store had the insurance record and I filed the claim on their phone (how do they expect you to call in a claim when your phone is broken, btw?) and my phone should be here next week, allegedly.

I logged into my online account with Chase Bank and discovered the savings account I have had since 1983- when my bank was Great Western- had been closed without my permission or knowledge. I contacted Chase and they said that since I hadn't had any money in the account for 60 days they closed it. WHAT? Just because there wasn't money in it didn't mean I didn't want it! And how about a warning? I would have kept a $1 in there to keep the account! They are also eliminating their free checking that I had had with WaMu- for the last 13 years. I am going in tomorrow or Tuesday to break up with them. I went to Schools Credit Union Wednesday or Thursday last week and opened an account with them. The whole thing really upset me. I have had that account for literally, 28 years. I don't want to close it, but Chase is horrible. What horrible customer service. I'm so upset. Schools is going to give me 7% interest on my first $500 in my savings account if I can figure out how to use their bill pay thing, so, I guess that's worth it. But I'm still not happy about the change. Emily does not like change.

I lost my health insurance (Kaiser) on January 1st as my discounted program came to a close. (You can only be on it 4 years.) I had applied for new coverage through Kaiser and had been waiting for the results, which I got today. Declined. I have no coverage. No health insurance. No way to get my anxiety or anti-depressant medications once I run out, anywhere to go if I have a problem... My anxiety is through the roof knowing I'm not covered. Now, I have not had been covered before, but I haven't had anxiety before, so my level of caring about it is much higher- meaning, I'm freaking out, rather than saying, "Oh, well, I'll figure it out." Which is what my ordinary reaction would have been.

I did post on Facebook and a girlfriend enlightened me to the fact I could apply somewhere else, like Blue Shield where she had successfully applied on her own a few years ago, and so I am looking into that. And trying to breathe.