Obituary: Bebe (2008-2022)

Bebe joined our family via Jenn when she lived in Texas. Bebe was maybe two years old, had already had two litters of puppies, was underfed, skinny and skittish. Jenn found her at a shelter, took one look and knew this was the dog for her.  Bebe took one look at Jenn and knew this was the love of her life. They were a perfect match.

A Pitbull mix. Dispel all the negative thoughts you might have about Pitbulls. Bebe was the antithesis of every one of those negative thoughts. She was gentle and happy and sensitive, playful and as cunning as a coyote. Bebe was good at the long con: look sad, turn your head away from the treat being offered and !!! More treats would appear! But a harsh word would make her put her tail between her legs and creep away, afraid she let you down. 

Jenn and Bebe shared many homes, careers, friends, backyards, glasses of champagne and treats. Bebe was up for whatever was next. She was a protector of kittens, small puppies and very young children.  She loved a party, she was the perfect hostess. If someone came knocking at the door, Bebe was quicker than a doorbell to alert you that someone had arrived. She loved walks, romps and most of all, just sitting on the couch, cuddling. Bebe was the Queen of  Cuddles. 

Take Bebe to the beach and she was ecstatic! So much room to run, so many smells, so much love in the air. At this moment, I am sure she is on a beach with her dog pals, digging holes in the sand and basking in the sun. Bebe knew how to make a day at the beach the best adventure ever, rain or shine.

There are so many who loved her, so many who will miss her and so many who have great stories to tell about her. Bebe made people happy, that was her greatest gift. She was ruthlessly charming: it was impossible to know her without having a crush on her. She knew how to get into your heart and she knew how to stay there. 

We all miss you, Bebe. Carry on, my friend.

Old, older, close to oldest?

 Here's an example of false reality: you're watching a movie, an older movie, and you think: "Wow, this is a good film but it's been a while since I originally watched it.  Maybe 20 - 25 years?"  And you look up the year the movie was made and it was  36 Fucking Years Ago!  25 years is bad enough but 36?  That's half of my lifetime! That's ridiculous and terribly depressing and shocking. 

There is nothing to say about this other than it happens more and more. I am always prepared for an older movie with older stars, like Audrey Hepburn or Burt Lancaster or Cary Grant to be old.  I am never shocked when I watch movies with actors like that and see that they were made 50 or 60 years ago, in the 1960's, for example. For some reason, that seems appropriate. But a movie with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman?  Tom Cruise isn't dead and it was still made 36 years ago.  He should be dead by now.  But wait, he is younger than me by 12 years so I give him that benefit.  And Paul Newman has been dead for 14 years but for some reason I think of him as just a couple of years older than myself.  But NO!  He was a contemporary of my Mother, who was born in 1920.  Newman was born in 1925!  That fact alone makes me sadly crazy.

OK, I know, I know....I am on the cusp of being oldest. But it's a hard reality to accept, especially when you're watching a film that seems part of your past and you realize it's part of the way-way-back past. When you were a kid. Hardly a grownup, even though you already had a ten year old daughter.

YIKES!  The harsh reality never stops.

Back to the movie. I hope Paul Newman gets younger and Cruise gets older.  It's fiction after all.

Going to the Dogs, Part 4

 The second shift of walking SPCA dogs was last Wednesday, a brisk morning of about 30 degrees. Leaving my tiny, warm cottage at 6:30 seems ridiculous, of course, until I get to the site and start visiting the dogs in their prison cells.  I could be Jack the Ripper and they wouldn't care, I'm a body with a leash and with a pocketful of snacks!  I'm going to let them out into the cold morning air to pee and poop and run around and pretend to be free for a few minutes. Needless to say, these dogs are excited to see me.

There must be a better way to get these pups harnessed up than my method which is leaning over, chasing them around, bribing them with pieces of turkey hot dogs in my attempt to get them to calm down so I can secure the harness. By the end of my two hour shift my lower back was screaming at me from the leaning over the dogs. Walking them is one thing: some are over 80 pounds and are very strong but I am fine with that. It's the harnessing that's killing me.

But I will return in two days to try again. The temp for Wednesday morning will be below freezing again but the dogs keep me moving so it doesn't seem so bad. 

There are dogs who have been at the shelter for a couple of months and there are some I have enjoyed who have been adopted in the few weeks I have been there. It's always a joyful moment when I look at the board of about 30 dogs and don't see one that was there the week before. The beautiful three-legged husky, Selene, found her home two weeks ago and I truly hope it works out for her and her new guardians.  

Cross your fingers that my back holds out. I am buying stock in an ibuprofen manufacturer pretty soon.  

Woof.

Floundering with the dogs. Part 3.

I think I won a reverse lottery: my time slot for volunteer dog-walking is before sunrise!  Seriously, 7:00 a.m. means leaving my house by 6:30 and it's dark!  And too early to make coffee, something that my dogs today seemed to intuit. Caffeine-free, not quite alert, rather cold, a bit nervous about this adventure, but there I was at the allotted hour, trying to get a 70 pound ball of white fur into a dog harness when all the dog wanted was to be left alone. 

As reported previously, the dogs at the shelter live in 10 x 10 concrete rooms. The rooms are cleaned regularly and the temperature is fine, but I don't care if dogs have zero aesthetic sense: these boxes are depressing. No art on the walls, no cute bookshelf holding their favorite toys, no soothing music. A bed, two bowls. That's it. Is it any wonder they look at us volunteers as interlopers? Especially us new volunteers, which they (the dogs) understand can be easily intimidated. And intimidated I was.  Look at this dog:  how cute does this guy look?  Keep in mind that he is part Irish Wolfhound.

His name is Gandolf. He has been at the shelter for a while, was "adopted" three weeks ago and then returned to the shelter for reasons that I do not know.  But how bad must he feel?  Loved for a few days and then scorned. It's no wonder he doesn't want me to try and put a harness over his head.  However, once harnessed, he was fine. We walked, he peed a lot, I gave him pieces of cooked chicken I brought with me. We went back to his prison cell and he went back to being depressed.

My next dog was Selene, a tri-pod (what they call a dog who has had a leg amputated.)  Now, one might think a three legged dog would be easy to handle, but one would be mistaken. Selene is beautiful, large and quite energetic and jumpy. While Gandolf was simply disdainful, Selene is quite wily. She hates anyone leaning over her and can spin around 360 degrees faster than you can say "Siberian Husky."  Getting a harness on her took about five minutes of alternatively giving her sliced hot dogs (also brought with me) with one hand and trying one-handed to snap her into her harness.  Once done, we went out to the yard and she raced around like crazy, chased a ball, played tug and acted like the two-year old dog she is. 

Whew.  Now my two hour shift was almost half over and I looked for another dog I could walk and I picked Sunny. The notes I read on Sunny said he was a bit jumpy and somewhat difficult to harness but a sweet-heart and was learning to "Sit" upon command.  OK, into  his room I snuck, after throwing hot dog slices to the far side so I could sneak in without him bolting out the door.  Again, I spent at least 5 minutes with him, never once getting anywhere near putting on the harness because all Sunny did was jump on me. Not forcefully, but just jumping up and down, on his back legs, over and over. He wanted more hot dogs but even the hot dogs couldn't get him to quiet down enough to harness him. I finally admitted failure and left him for someone else to take out.  He looks like such a good dog.... and he probably will be one day. Just not today, at least not for me.  

I still had time on my shift (not that anyone would care if I left early, but a commitment is a commitment.)  I chatted with two other walkers who had been there a while and told them my sad Sunny story. They suggested Marshall, an older dog, who they said was a bit jumpy, but in an older dog way. Fine, off to get Marshall.

Seriously, look at this guy.  He's about 8 years old, weighs about 60 pounds and looks like such a good guy.  It took me another five minutes and tons of hot dog slices to get him harnessed and he was such a puller on the leash!  When we got to the big yard and I could unleash him, he ran like his tail was on fire. He peed on everything and did that digging-marking thing dogs do. He chased the ball (but wouldn't bring it back) and then proceeded to just dig a huge hole. Then more running and more peeing.  Finally, after about 20 minutes he hopped onto a large wooden structure and let me pet him. And that was the best part of my day. Marshall wanted to be petted. He wanted someone to tell him he was a good boy, that he was such a good dog. I petted Marshall for about five minutes and it was clearly the best part of his morning as well. He was as calm as a daisy as we walked back to his cell. He let me take off the harness easily and he got more hot dogs.  

Marshall made me realize that all the labor involved in trying to get the dogs ready to go outside, ready to go the the field or walk around the property is worth it for one reason: the dogs need attention and love. That's it. If we struggle to leash them up, it's ok. It's worth it to see them calm down, look at us like we might be alright because we are petting them. 

Whew!!!  It was an eye-opening morning, a lot of frustrating moments, a lot of self-doubt (can I actually do this?) and some satisfaction as well.  Next Wednesday will be better. I will get better at this. It's all about the dogs, not about me. 

And I haven't even mentioned the cats and guinea pigs and bunnies! We don't walk them, of course, but they are also looking for homes.

Think about it!

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Walking. And talking. And talking, talking, talking......

Call me a grumpy old lady, I don't care.  I'm walking quietly through the regional park, listening to the birds, enjoying the meditative quality of an early morning walk when a screech like a screaming eagle shatters my reverie and sets my teeth on edge. Three people walking together, talking in loud voices that could probably be heard a half mile away, having no respect for the calm, tranquil morning. I don't get this. You are right next to your walking partner, why use your Alpine ski voice?  No one within the half mile circle of your voice cares about your friend Sandro and his chickens.  No one in the park on a beautiful morning wants to hear about your husband's cholesterol count. (Seriously, I heard about both of these things within 90 seconds.) No one in the park even knows Sandro or your husband and if we did, we would want them to vanish off the face of California (they could still stay on the earth, just far away) so you wouldn't scream about them while walking along with your really sad and embarrassed dog. 

The park is for everyone. It isn't just for you and your spandexed friends. Lululemon doesn't care that you are advertising her (?) clothes while you shout out your love for the guy who did your Botox work. Shut the fuck up.  

I had to actually turn around and walk away from these three people, out of the park, back to my car. Walking is lovely. Talking and shouting and ranting loudly is not lovely. Made me want to chug down a shot of cheap whiskey but I didn't because it wasn't even 8:00 in the morning and I never drink before 8:30 a.m. 

Kidding.  But not about the noise. 

Hawks screech.  People should not.  Just saying.

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Miss Marple (Agatha Christie) and her cultural faux pas

 A few months ago my sister gave me an old collection of six novels by Agatha Christie. There is something so lovely about reading Agatha's mystery stories. It's as if you simply do not care one whit about the present day struggles and troubles with society and politics and world events. You are tossed backwards in time, to the 1930-1970's and you are happily taken up with the customs and moral concerns of those eras. Miss Marple spans about 30 years,  so one must be ready for a few modern changes in culture as one reads about her amazing murder-solving abilities.

One readily acknowledges that one's time could be better spent improving one's mind with modern day non-fiction about socioeconomic disparities and the political breakdown of our country but one does not care, at least for about three or four hours. Agatha Christie is a tonic for all of the above.

Currently I am reading a Miss Marple novel. (Yes, I am one of the "ones" mentioned above.) The where, when, how of the novel are not important because they all have a common theme: polite conversation, a mysterious murder, more investigative conversation and Voila! We know who the murder is and how it was done and why, all thanks to the elderly and sometimes doddering Miss Marple.

However, in today's light, these books give us such a rich look into society of that time, especially because Agatha Christie began writing her mysteries in the 1930's but her last book was published 40 years later. That's a huge span of time, of course, running from the Great Depression through WW2, into the Cold War and almost to Watergate!  While Christie doesn't mention a lot about current events in her Miss Marple stories, she does flavor her tales with quick references to daily events. She will mention how novel telephones are in the early novels and then moves on to the same thoughts about television.  But since most of her murder solving work takes place in small villages in Britain, it's easy to ignore the fact that time has marched on. While reading her stories, it's easy to pretend everything is stuck in 1933.

Agatha Christie was certainly not a "politically correct" writer.  She has no problem using pejorative and dismissive words and phrases, not to mention racially loaded terms. I won't repeat them all here, but words like "chink" and "darkie" and  other pejorative terms for different nationalities are widely used by characters in her mysteries. They aren't necessarily used in a malicious manner, just as a term of identification in some way.  But reading them today, it is sometimes a bit of a shock that those phrases exist so easily on the page.

If you haven't read one of the classic Agatha mysteries in a while, please do.  "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" or "The A.B.C. Murders" are good places to start for a Hercule Poirot mystery.  "The Body in the Library" or "The Caribbean Mystery" are good Miss Marple books.  Reading one is like taking a little vacation from reality and that is often just the tonic for what wears us down in everyday life.  Check them out.

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Burning the Bounty

It's not that I don't make mistakes or screw up all the time, but seriously....burning a cake?  A cake that I have made at least a dozen times?  A cake made from the bounty of apples from my daughter's front yard? A cake that was to be served at a dinner for ten people? And I burned it?  Holy cow.  Now what?  It's not like life gave me lemons and I made lemonade (a trite saying that I hate, by the way.)  No, life gave me apples and I burned them.

Back to the cake. I did what any baker would do who didn't have time to bake another cake: I took a knife to the aforementioned burned cake.  Once it cooled enough to handle, I gently flipped it upside down and roughly sawed off a quarter inch from the bottom part of the cake. Then I slowly shaved about an eighth of an inch off of the really dark parts of the side of the cake. There was nothing to be done about the too-brown apple pieces on the top, so those remained. Once the surgery was complete, the cake looked OK.  Unless you had witnessed its sad coming-out-of-the-oven over doneness, you might not have known its major flaw, which was, of course, that it was burned.  I felt a tiny bit bad about the overcooked situation but not bad enough to leave the cake behind. It came to the party with me. 

No one suspected a thing! Once sliced, the cake looked perfect!  And it tasted great, no hint of black edges, no burnt taste and people really liked it. Whew, crisis averted.  Well, not really a crisis, of course. Who would really care if the cake had accidentally fallen into a muddy, wet ditch or had been trampled by a runaway horse or been stolen by a cake thief?  One of those scenarios might have given the baker a great story to tell and that story might have been better than the actual apple cake desert.

Next time I will save the cake for myself and serve the guests an outlandish tale that they will eat up like pudding and be just as satisfied. 

Actually getting to walk a dog! Part 2

 There I was, poised to harness an 80 pound dog when my dog-walking "mentor" gently asked the relevant question: "Do you have treats in your pocket and poop bags as well?"  

Well, gosh, no. I carried neither treats nor poop bags.  What a loser.  No wonder I have not yet been certified to walk a dog. What dog would want to be seen with me?  How alarming to be out, strolling the grounds, and pooping, and having your so-called certified dog-walker not be able to pick up that poop!  

So we begin again. We get poop bags. We get treats. We get a leash. We get a walkie-talkie. Then we try and get a dog.

There are a couple of dozen dogs at this local SPCA  so one would think getting a dog on a leash and taking it for a walk would be easy. Not so much.  As I previously reported, there are a lot of steps between "wanting to walk the dog" and actually "walking the dog."  And seriously, we don't really walk the dog so much as let the dog out of its very sad, tiny concrete room to go out and pee and perhaps poop and maybe get to run around in one of the yards. There isn't a lot of walking involved. There is, however, a lot of struggling and jumping and wrangling involved.

These dogs, most of them, have come from families. And now they are in small rooms, alone. They often have to pee and poop in those rooms, where they have a small bed and a food and water bowl. The dogs hate to be in the small 10 x 10 room so when they see a person sneaking into the room they go crazy. They jump, they wiggle, they jump more. Trying to put a harness (which is what they need to wear to exit the room) on a leaping, over-excited dog is like trying to harness a small tornado. It's very difficult.

After what seems like ten minutes, once the harness is on and you get to leave their prison cell, they are all energy. They just want to get outside, to be let go, to chase a stick or fetch a ball or simply zoom from one side of that yard to the other.  And then they want to be petted. Lots of pets. Lots of love. Then, maybe, they will let you walk them for five minutes before you must take them back to their cell. And leave them.

My training is complete. Next week I will get my shift assignment and will have two hours to walk whatever dogs need walking at that time. As happy as I will be for that allotment, the  dogs will be happier.  After all, I am not in a 100 square foot concrete cell. They are.  All I hope is that I make them feel better, 20 minutes at a time.

Being certified as a dog walker, Part 1

 Heeding the call from the Sonoma SPCA for volunteers, I am currently taking classes on being a volunteer dog walker. Now, one would not guess that there's a lot to learn about walking dogs, especially if one has been walking dogs for more than 50 years. But that would be a faulty assumption! It seems there are hundreds of things to learn about leashing up a canine and strolling it across the property.

In short, it is harder to be a certified SPCA dog walker than it is to be a parent! No one really gets a lot of lessons in parenting, you just sink or swim. Someone might help you with diapering skills or explain how to sterilize baby bottles but other than reading a couple of books about sleep patterns and the right stroller to buy, most parenting is on-the-job training. And usually the kids turn out okay!

But the dog walking curriculum covers everything from different dog collars and harnesses, leashes, dog safety (from dog and human points of view), how to give a dog a treat, how to pet them, how to rate their poop on a seven point scale, when to maintain eye contact, how to manage a huge dog as it pulls you across the muddy lawn, and on and on. All of the information is good but so far I have gone to three classes, had one Zoom meeting and I have yet to actually walk a dog!

But I will persevere! Tomorrow I get to "shadow" a dog walker to see how it is actually done. I am sure I will learn more valuable tips on dog management but I just want to meet the dogs and walk them and make them happy for a few minutes. Turns out that if you are a stellar dog walker and last at the job long enough you can eventually be trusted to take the dog off the SPCA property!  Perhaps take a dog to the beach!  Or to a park, or go on a hike! Needless to say, I am looking forward to this sort of adventure.

I will keep you posted on how the training progresses and if I actually get to walk a dog. 

Noise or not?

Working in an industry where there are people in your face all the time, when you must deal with people on their terms, when the daily chatter of hotel life is non-stop, it makes you crave quiet. When you come home after an eight hour shift there is nothing you want except silence. No music, no talk, nothing. Just quiet. That was me, for years.  I would play music on my days off, sometimes not even then. With the loud, constant ringing I have in my ears most of the time, quiet was fine.

At some point you realize that noise is different for each of us.  Depending on where you work, you might be surrounded by noise all the time but it might not be intrusive. Or you might be the person who doesn't mind the background confetti of sounds, always ongoing. Maybe that background chatter doesn't feel personal so it is easy to ignore it, like constant white noise.  

The other evening, I sat at a nice bar in a nice restaurant having a glass of wine while waiting for some take-out food. The place was noisy, as restaurants usually are, but surprisingly I found that the noise was mildly entertaining.  Noise was coming from the patrons at the tables, noise was in back of me from the hostess stand, chatter from other people sitting at the bar, clattering from the open kitchen, a slight murmur from the bartenders as they worked. Many layers of noise but none of it disturbing or annoying. (Of course the glass of wine and the promise of good food probably were factors in the lack of annoyance.) And I realized that it wasn't sounds that bugged me. It was when the noise intruded on my personal space: people chatting at me when I didn't want to chat, the telephone ringing when I didn't want to answer it. That kind of noise over an eight hour shift made me crave the silence.

Since my life doesn't have eight hour shifts much anymore, I am going to start paying attention more to sounds that I like and that I enjoy.  Except for the cawing of crows, I really like the sounds birds make and I live in a bird-rich area, so I'll start with appreciating that. I might have to sit at restaurant bars more often and bask in the happy noises emanating from that venue. Maybe I will even begin to listen to music when I am alone and enjoy the companionship of that kind of "noise." Maybe my solitary world will become less silent and maybe even more joyful. 

Who knows? Change is good. 

Parents - Siblings - Self

Talking to my older brother Steve the other day, we remarked on how detached we sometimes felt from our other siblings, other people, the world. Not in a bad way, but just slightly removed and thus slightly unemotional.  Maybe it's a generational thing; so many of us baby boomer kids were raised by parents who really had no idea what they were doing and thus were not the most forthcoming with affections, connections, communications.

Or maybe it was just our parents. They didn't have many friends other than in-laws, there were never dinner parties at our house where adults mingled and they never discussed relationships outside of aunts, uncles and cousins.  Our parents really had very little outside life. And it was clear that they didn't really know how to be concerned parents. Perhaps they didn't even like being parents, who knows? But there was never any dialogue about how they felt about us kids, never any positive affirmation about our joys or any support about our sorrows.  That's a huge generalization, of course, because I do remember them being very excited when one of my younger brothers won some science fair award and went on to the state contest. But other than bland comments about grades on report cards or a mediocre, short-lived response about a hand-made Mothers or Fathers Day card, there wasn't a lot of personal interaction.

Now, I could be wrong. I could have entirely forgot that my Mom read to us every night or encouraged us to tell her about our day at school or guided us through making cookies for the first time. That might have happened. But I don't remember it.

The relationship with my siblings is fine. We are all very different people but we all get along. (Mostly.) I know people who haven't spoken to their siblings in years and have no interest in doing so. At least the six of us talk on the phone now and then and we hold no rancor against each other. But I wouldn't say that we are all really connected. Some of us are in touch frequently but some of us, not so much. Do we love each other? Not for me to say. Do I love my siblings?  Yes. And that's a stronger "yes" for some than others.  I like them all as well, some of them more than others but that's probably just because some are more familiar than others, I see them and interact with them more frequently.  And because we are all very different, it's easy to like each one as a separate entity, not just as a sibling.  Would I answer a call from any of them in the middle of the night and drive to their house if they asked?  100% yes.

But there is a coolness in our relationships. A slight distance that one doesn't usually find with really good friends. Maybe it's difficult to be friends with your siblings, maybe there's too much shared genetic language, too much knowledge of our past that precludes close friendship.  I don't know.  

Anyway, just mulling over the past.  And the present. 

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Talking to my dead dog

 It's true. I talk to my dead dog. Watching TV. Cooking dinner. Driving in the car, walking through the park, sitting on the deck under my umbrella while having a cocktail.  I talk to Cooper.

No, he does not respond. I have not gone that far off the rails. Yet. 

This past week I watched Hannah, Gabe and Annie's dog, and several times I called Hannah "Cooper" as in "wasn't that a great sunset, Cooper" while Hannah looked at me askance. 

I realize that having Cooper die after living with me for 15 years means a little cognitive dissonance is appropriate on my part.  I get that. It's not that I am delusional about his death. It's simply that I lived with that dog for a long time and now that he's gone, he's still my trusty Pony-Pal-Pokey. (If you don't get that reference, well, too bad.) So I still talk out loud to him, I address comments to him and in some odd way, it is comforting.

When creatures you love die, whether they are human or animal, there seems to be a resistance to letting them go. Not so much for old parents, but for peers who die too young or really good friends who die and of course, for pets. We know our old parents need to die, so we welcome (in a way) their demise.  But friends and pets, not so much. How surprising is it then, once they are gone, that we continue to converse with them? Not surprising at all, at least to me.  

With my pets, I simply talk to them, make comments that they would understand and, in the end, I simply wish they were still in the room with me. How cool would it be if my great dog Webber, the large, goofy Golden Retriever, had been friends with the small, stellar dog Cooper?  What fun they would have had.

I will continue to talk to my dead dog Cooper and my previously dead dog Webber and all the dead people I loved and have known.  If they listen, great. If not, also great. In the end, it's all good. 

Missing Cooper

 It has been one month since I had to let Cooper go. The first couple of days were odd, not as sad as I would have anticipated, just rather flat. Then I had Hannah, Gabe and Annie's dog, for ten days and that kept me occupied.  But eventually Hannah left and I was then ambushed by the reality of Cooper's absence.

Cooper was not a rambunctious dog; he was a stately breed of canine. Not too noisy, not too barky, not too friendly. Definitely not a Golden Retriever type of dog. But Cooper had some very rigid habits and those habits became mine as well because, well, we lived together for many years and thus shared space and time.  For example, every day at 4:00 p.m. (in the cottage where I currently live) we would walk down the path to the large swimming pool and we would walk around the pool twice. Cooper would then bound up the stairs like he was a puppy, back up the path and wait by the cottage door because 4:00 was when Cooper got his Greenie. No exceptions. Cooper could be sound asleep at 3:59 but at 4:00 he was wide awake, waiting by the door.

Same thing with dinner.  He liked his meal served at precisely 5:00 p.m.  At that hour Cooper would stare at me unflinchingly until I got up, got his bowl and gave him dinner.  Didn't matter if we were at home, at a friend's house, in a different time zone. He knew when 5:00 came and he wanted his dinner right then. No exceptions.

When I made toast for myself, Cooper always got a bite.  I would always cut a small corner off of the toast and when I was done eating he would get his bite. Several times after he was gone I was still reaching for a knife to cut that little corner off for him. 

Cooper was a quiet dog but he made a lot of noise when he slept. Not just snoring (although he was good at that) but little snorting noises, long musical sighs, tiny barks as he dreamt.  Nighttime is so quiet without those little dog noises. I miss that.

So many other examples....living with a creature for more than 15 years means you are connected in more ways than I can describe. He knew when it was cocktail hour,  he knew when to trick me into going outside so he could get a cookie, he knew how to look so pitiful that a second cookie was inevitable. He knew which of my friends was a softie for dogs and which didn't really care about dogs, and he respected both of those opinions. Cooper loved parties because there was always a chance of sneaking a bite from some sympathetic dog lover.

I do miss his jaunty walk and his disdain for cats, his eagerness to chase a squirrel and his disregard for birds. Undoubtedly I will be missing him for quite some time. His absence is keenly felt.

Obituary: Cooper (2006-2022)

The details of Cooper's early years are a mystery. It is possible that his life began in the Central Valley, where over breeding and inbreeding are rampant.  Cooper was lucky to be rescued from an over-crowded shelter and brought to the SPCA in Marin county. No one really knew how old he was but looking at his teeth they thought about 14 months. Cooper (he didn't have that name then, of course) was neutered and washed and fed. And he waited.

Fifteen years ago, on a random Monday, two people set out to find a dog. Those two people stopped at the SPCA in the morning, found nothing that moved them, and thus moved on.  They visited a couple of shelters in SF. None of the dogs spoke to them. They had lunch and drove back north, a bit disappointed they didn't find a dog that day but they knew there were other days and dogs ahead. It was close to closing time but they decided to stop at the Marin county SPCA, just in case a new dog had appeared.

There was one new dog that wasn't there when they stopped by earlier. He was small. He had tall ears. You could see those ears peeking up from the gate of his 10 foot run. The two people wanted to see him closer, so the SPCA attendant went into the run and she had a difficult time picking up the little guy and an even more difficult time putting a leash around his neck. But finally we were able to take this dog into the "visiting area."  He did not want to visit. He wanted nothing from us. He didn't want to walk on the leash, play with a ball, look at us.

One of us wanted him, even though he was the opposite of what we were looking for.  He was small, he wasn't social, he wasn't friendly.  But he needed us and I needed him. We took him home, realizing, on that car ride, that he was terrified of everything: cars, noise, overpasses (he would duck) and possibly air.

The first night was OK. I let him sleep on my tall bed and he slept well. The second night I put him on the floor and it was a battle for about 15 minutes: he was small but he could jump the four feet onto the bed. I put him back on the floor. He jumped up. Back on the floor, jumped up, back on the floor.  Finally I acquiesced. He could sleep on the bed. That was that.

His name from the SPCA was "google."  I changed it (very quickly) to Cooper.  Cooper slowly learned to trust a few people but in the beginning I had to leash him to a table leg to keep him from running away. My daughter tells about the time when she first met him: he was cowering under a chair. Knowing that her words would not work, Jenn sat on the floor next to the chair for an hour or so, just putting her hand near him, chatting to the rest of us in the room. Eventually, he came out and let her pet him for a few seconds before retreating back to the chair. 

Cooper, after about 8 months, was less terrified of the world. He never warmed up to kids (I am sure he experienced kids being mean to him) and he had a true sense of distain for most other dogs until he got to know them well. In our family, he met Hannah when she was about 6 months old (and he was about 20 months old) and they became fast friends. Cooper met Bebe in Texas and gradually accepted her, especially since she outweighed Cooper by about 60 pounds. (He knew when to pick his battles.)

We often called him the "gay professor" because he had that demeanor.  Cooper looked proper, especially when he wore his bowtie, and he looked wise. But he also looked a tiny bit gay. He wasn't, at least as far as we knew, but seriously, who knows? And maybe right now he is at Big Gay Al's Animal Sanctuary.  That would make us all happy.

Cooper hated car rides but he and I drove from SF to Texas many times. Cooper would put up with the drive because his reward was staying in a hotel. He loved hotels. He loved that they were not the car, that he could sleep on the bed and listen to TV while I went out to find dinner.  Cooper loved running down hotel corridors, chasing a toy, getting exercise.

Cooper had small legs, a long body and very tall ears. He had a jaunty walk and his confident manner made people smile out loud. "What kind of dog is that?" people would ask as we walked by.  "The good kind" was my answer. 

Cooper had no college degree, had no resume, didn't have a bank account, but he leaves behind a world of love and good energy. Cooper made me laugh every day and looked at me as more than his food provider. (Hmm, well, who knows about that!) I think Cooper was a discerning spirit, but for those to whom he opened his heart, the payback was huge. If you loved him, he loved you. Forever.

I loved him and will, forever.

Cooper leaves behind his owner, his aunties Jenn, Dar, Annie, Sue, his uncles Gabe, Steve, Tom and Mike and many others.  He will also be missed by many friends. The list is huge.

There will be a small burial service in a few weeks.

Looking at the night sky for ... meteors?

There was a sort of meteor shower that was maybe suppose to happen tonight. Or not. Even the scientists said "could be great or could be nothing." But since it wasn't in the middle of the night, like most meteor showers, it seemed easy enough to go outside to check it out. However, the perils that exist in the dark, outside, for a north-of-middle-age person are huge! 

First, of course, is the darkness. To see stuff in the sky it must be dark so all outside lights are off, except for one's flashlight. OK, that's all good. The flashlight will illuminate the path to the patio and the patio chairs. Cool. Find those, sit down. Then get back up and move the chair to see the best open area of the sky. Then move the chair a little more to escape the ambient light from the landlord's house. All good.  I sit there in shorts and a t-shirt for ten minutes and realize two things: 1) I have no idea if the meteors are in the north, south, east, west and 2) I am chilly.  Flashlight back on, back inside. Sweatshirt on, pajama bottoms on and since I am outside, in the elements, I get an ounce of cognac to fortify me against those elements. 

Back outside in aforementioned chair. Sip cognac, don't really care about the direction of the meteors because there is just one area of sky that is dark and clear. I wait. I see a shooting star! Is it the start of a meteor shower?  Hmm.... if so, it's a very low flow of a shower. Five minutes go by and I see another shooting star. My neck hurts from looking up but it is so lovely outside that I don't mind. It's quiet and not cold and medium dark and crickets are chirping away. Wait! Another shooting star!  It's not a meteor shower but three stars in 15 minutes is okay.

Now my neck is getting crinky. I lower my head and just roll my eyes up, like the saints on those holy cards we got as kids. St. Catherine or St. Ashley or St. Bonnie.... they all had little scarves draped around their heads and their eyes were rolling up, looking for.... meteors?  Jesus?  Spiders? One can't really know. But my eyes did that roll thing for a few minutes until I realized that this meteor shower, for this night, was not happening.

But it was fine. I saw three shooting stars and was happy to be outside for a bit in the dark. Of course, when I came back inside I couldn't find my phone or my glasses. Because they were outside in the dark!  HA! Took my flashlight and me a while to figure that out but all's well that ends well.

There's another chance to see stars falling (aka meteors) in August. Hopefully they will not be falling in the wee hours of the morning and will do their dance before midnight. We'll see. In the meantime, I suggest that on a nice evening, when the temps are mild and the skies clear, take a flashlight and find a chair, take a little libation, sit outside in the dark and look at the sky. Enjoy being outside safely and without any real purpose. Ponder the universe. Remark on the clarity of the stars and the planets and watch and wonder: what's going on out there?

Validation of Boomer Parents Parenting Techniques

Not that we need validation, especially when one considers that us Boomer parents are now in our 70's (more or less) and our kids are in their 40's (more or less) and thus are no longer children but full-fledged adults (more or less.) But an article in the NYT about some of the differences between how we raised our kids vs how parents today (the Gen X group) are raising theirs made me feel like we did all right.

Forty-some years ago, we were not helicopter parents.  We didn't have time for that. Most of us were working, mothers and fathers, and we left our kids to their own devices quite often. We taught them how to do their own laundry when they were in grade school, rudimentary kitchen skills so they could contribute to dinner prep, where the extra key was hidden in case they lost theirs.  Many of the Gen X kids (our kids) came home alone from school, got a snack, did homework, watched bad TV and perhaps indulged in nefarious behavior, all before the parental figures got home from work.  We had a necessary trust in our kids, trust that they would take care of themselves and each other and not break too many rules.

For the most part, that philosophy worked pretty well.  Of course, rules were broken now and then, kids got grounded and that trust had to be reestablished.  But giving them room to get grounded, to break the rules and pay the price, also gave them a measure of self-reliance and taught them that actions have consequences.  Their parents couldn't (and wouldn't) cull out all the scary stuff and pave the path with shiny yellow bricks as they skipped along to a perfect childhood.  

The NYT article (link at the bottom) asks this:

Do you offer your kids broad exposure to the world, in all its beauty and foulness, and hope they make good decisions? Or do you try to protect them from ideas and activities that you see as dangerous or immoral — and also hope they make good decisions?  

Two different parenting styles, of course, and I am so happy John and I, probably more or less unconsciously, chose the first option.  Our kids saw both beauty and ugliness, meanness and kindness,  safety and insecurity.  They accepted life as it came (although not without arguing quite often) and the lack of helicoptering, the lack of shielding them from danger and proverbial doom did not harm them. In fact, I argue that it made them strong and perceptive and bold.

This leads me to wonder what our parents were thinking when they raised all of us Boomer kids. Did they have a conscious idea about parenting, did they read the Dr. Spock book, was it all by the seat of their pants? As a victim  child of that era, I can say with conviction that there was little or no parenting "style" in my household. Too many kids, too little money: that was the relevant fact of my life as a kid, and probably the guiding force of my parents' attitudes as well.  There was certainly nothing like a helicopter parent, no one watched over us at all. There was guilt and shame, maybe those two forces were the guiding principles in parenting after the war.  But we survived.

As I said in the beginning, us Boomer parents really don't need validation of our parenting skills, it's too late for that anyway.  But it's nice to read an articulation of something we did because we knew no other way. Thank goodness it worked out!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/opinion/culture/children-parenting-good-decisions.html

Baking bread, again

 I don't remember a time when I didn't bake but I can't remember how it began.  Perhaps I watched my Mom make cookies and maybe she drafted me into the baking world. I am certain I was making chocolate chip Toll House cookies, the recipe on the back of the Nestle's chocolate chip package, from the time I was about 12 years old. Then peanut butter cookies and oatmeal and cookies that were called Cowboy Cookies which had oats, chocolate chips, coconut and walnuts. They were delicious.

My baking branched out from there: brownies from the Joy of Cooking, from the Los Angeles times came the famous Sour Cream Coffee Cake with brown sugar crumbly bits and eventually Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting. Linzer Tarts, flourless chocolate cake, Petit Fours, fruit crisps, biscuits.....  I baked everything.  I have even made two wedding cakes, one for Gabe and Annie's wedding and one for my brother John's wedding to Emily last year.  (Both were Carrot Cakes with cream cheese frosting, by the way.)

Somewhere along the way, when I was in my late teens, I started baking bread as well. No one in my family baked bread so it certainly wasn't a family tradition but once I started, I was hooked.  I loved the feeling of kneading the dough as it went from sticky to smooth and elastic.  Watching the bread rise over a few  hours was like culinary magic to me. Punching it down, rising again, popping it into the oven and smelling that luscious smell of baking bread.... few smells are better than that. 

Who doesn't like homemade bread? Who would say "No" to a piece of warm, fresh-from-the-oven bread slathered with soft butter? While I can't really remember what kind of bread I made initially, I am guessing it would be the honey oatmeal bread that I still make today.  It was a recipe in a series of cookbooks produced by "Woman's Day" magazine, in the section about  baking at Christmas. (I made dozens of varieties of cookies from that same Christmas section as well.) The honey oatmeal bread wasn't difficult and always turned out perfectly. It's slightly sweet, soft in texture with the nutty taste of oats. It makes perhaps the best toast in the world.

Lately I have been making a loaf a week. Sometimes it's honey oatmeal, often it's a plain white bread or a crusty loaf of rosemary bread. Making bread is very easy and is very cheap to produce. No preservatives, just simple ingredients: flour, yeast, salt, sugar, water or milk.  The rest (oats, honey, molasses, butter, eggs, herbs) are all optional.  

Over the years there have been dismal failures, of course. A few times I killed the yeast with too hot liquid, a couple of times the yeast was too old and wouldn't rise, now and then I bake it too long. But 95% of the time the bread is damned good.

It's time to make a grilled cheddar and tomato sandwich with the loaf of white bread I made yesterday. Sorry you can't be here to have one with me.  Maybe next time.

Saying "Goodbye" to someone I didn't know

 The father of one of my "extra daughters" died two months ago and there was a memorial for him today. His name was Jon Marshall. Other than being Stacey's Dad, I didn't know him. We met a couple of times, of course, because Stacey is a big part of my life, but we were, in essence, passing strangers.

It makes me sad to say that. It makes me sad because when you get to have an extra kid you should get to know from whence they came. The extra parent/adult should take the time to know the other real parents involved. But I didn't.

Today, hearing stories about Jon, listening to those who loved him tell their heartfelt tales about his influence in their lives, made me wish I had known him for real. The memories his kids and friends shared created a picture of a good, kind man who not only made people laugh but made people live. Jon seemed to be the one who could talk you into anything but knew how to make it all come out fine. Jon was the guy who was always on your side, never letting you down, always confident that it would work out well, but could also take your money in a wicked game of poker.  His kids and friends had great stories to tell about him. I wish I had known him.

There is something about being in a room with people who are there for only one reason: to honor one man. And that is profoundly humbling. It puts things in a perspective that haunts you as you drive home. It makes you question your small place in the world, with your kids, with your friends, with your family. And with yourself.

If we have learned nothing from the past two years, we must have learned this: embrace those you love, either metaphorically or really.  Tell them you love them. Be kind and help people. 

Yes, I know. I say this all the time but it's a preach that can't be helped. Do it. Just be kind. Love. Help. Reach out.  

I thank the Marshall/Jennings family for re-teaching me this today.

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A single moment of beauty

 The sun shines on spider web strings (actually called "draglines") all the time but this morning was the first time I've seen those single line webs glow iridescently.  It was early in the morning, the sun was still low in the sky, and there were dozens of single lines from tree to tree. They were like small rainbows, changing in color from blue to red to yellow as they moved in the breeze and caught the sunlight.  I cannot explain how incredibly beautiful these simple little spider strings were, shifting from one color to the next, iridescent, glowing. Line after line, one at a time. Each single line of spider string had its own color show happening and seeing so many of them all at once was a kind of light show in and of itself. My words can't do it justice, but it was mesmerizing. 

It's amazing, isn't it, that nature and the earth still manage to surprise us with such beauty? Something that could only be seen at that single spot, at that one moment, with the sun at that particular angle?  

Even in a world that has such ugliness and hate, if we pay attention we can sometimes find that small moment of beauty.  Be on the lookout for it. Be surprised. Be grateful.

Talking to my Mother

 Every Sunday for the last twenty years of her life, until the week she died, I would call my mother to chat. It didn't matter if I was at home or on a journey, Sunday was my day to call Mom. Sometimes the calls were short, just a couple of minutes, but it was a kind of ritual for me (and probably for Mom as well) that I enjoyed. 

I didn't have a warm and fuzzy relationship with my mother growing up.  Indeed, there were times when I couldn't stand her and wouldn't talk to her for months. But once she was in her late 70's and I was in my late 40's, neither of us had any use for the old parent-child dynamic and so we could simply chat.  Like adults.

During the end of the 20th century and the first decade of this century I was fortunate to be able to travel a lot. I went to Europe every year, sometimes twice. Airlines were competitive and thus there was a lovely interlude when airfares were very cheap. Non-stop round-trip flights from San Francisco to Paris could be found for under $300.  Small hotels might set you back $35 - $50 per night, especially when each country had its own currency, before the arrival of the euro.  There was no reason not to travel and I loved every minute of it.

Mom always liked my Sunday calls but she loved it when I was out of the country. Many of those calls were made from phone booths, using a phone card purchased at a tobacco shop. I have a great memory of standing by the side of a small, local road in Lipari, an island off the coast of Sicily, having just finished hiking up the side of a dormant (but still alive) volcano, wreaking of sulphur smell from the plumes of  sulphur smoke coming out of the volcano.  It was a sunny day, I was hot and sweaty but eager to share my adventure with Mom.

When I traveled to Vietnam I would call Mom from my hotel phone at 6:00 a.m. because the 15 hour time difference meant I would catch her before she went to sleep for the night. She was amazed and a bit nervous that I was in Vietnam alone and my calls opened up a portal for her, a new way to look at a country that we all felt wary of and guilty about.

Istanbul, Tunisia, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam, Bruges, Lisbon, the Azores Islands...... so many different  cities and countries and so many phone booths.  Every single time I would call, Mom's first question would be: "Where are you today?"

It is Sunday, today. Maybe it's because I haven't traveled anywhere in two years, longer than that for being in Europe, but memories of those calls are swirling around me today. Maybe it's because I wish I could still speak with her or maybe it's simply a good memory I have of my mother. Whatever the reason, it makes me wish there was a phone booth at the corner of my block. It makes me want to hear that question again: "Where are you today?"  It definitely makes me wish I was somewhere else.

Philosophy of Old Age

 When does Old Age begin?  When one is 30, it seems like it would begin at 60.  When one is 60, perhaps 72.  Maybe when one gets to be 80 and is still coherent that person could argue that it never begins. Or it began a long time ago and who cares?

I am 71 and a half. I don't feel old, except sometimes and that's pretty much just physical stuff that happens when you get old: tired muscles, creaky joints, arthritis, dry skin, runny nose. Maybe the physical complaints shouldn't define Old Age. But they do.  Along with the slowly waning mental acuity and the ready acknowledgement that death is no longer an abstract. 

Therefore, I am in the Old Age period of my life.  The question is this: what comes after Old Age and before Death?  Really Old Age?  I don't have an answer, nor do I want one.  It's bad enough to be in the Old Age category.  Let's just all acknowledge that what comes next is the Terminator: Death. So what if Old Age is the obvious precursor to Death?  We all knew it would arrive at some time, so it needs no introduction and there is no illusion about it all. We are here now. We will die.  Let's move on.

But being in this age group doesn't mean giving in and dying. If anything it means the opposite. I feel far from death and most people I know do as well. So my philosophy of Old Age is simple:  fuck it all.  Acknowledge the aches and pains and the waning mental acuity but, at the same time, kick ass, don't whine, drink wine, and go out and have a jolly good time.  Everyone dies. Why worry about it? Stay happy and healthy and listen to good music. 

What a lame-ass blog this is.  But I am posting it nonetheless.

Dry January? HA-HA-HA!!!

 Please note that I am not talking about the weather here.  I am talking about that unnatural phenomenon that some people voluntarily embrace this time of the year: abstaining from alcohol for the month of January.  Thus "Dry January."  

One must think that the person who started this alarming trend had a really bad Holiday Season. No doubt from Thanksgiving until New Years Day this person was tipsy, drunk or hung over every day.  I mean: Every. Single. Day.  Then on January 1st this person thought "Oh my god, this must stop. For the next thirty days I am not drinking. My liver and kidneys will die otherwise."  And that person stopped drinking, at least for a week.

Fast forward several years: "Dry January" becomes a cultural thing. People feel righteous about their commitment to a month of sobriety, like it's going to do them a world of good. They will lose weight!  Their skin tone will improve! Their children and friends will like them once again! Their boss will give them a raise or they will win the lottery! Anything is possible with this self-imposed sort of flagellation. Come February 3rd, all that lost weight has been found back on their body, no one likes them any better than they did a month ago, no raise is forthcoming and the lottery..... well, let's just say that dream was like melting ice in a shot glass. Gone and done.

Listen: January is a tough month. Why stop drinking in a month that gives us so much pain: cold, gray, wet days (which I love, by the way), credit card bills from all the crap we bought for Christmas gifts, more Covid variants and a chance to get very sick, ten extra pounds because of the pound of See's Candy consumed on December 28th, resolutions that didn't even last a week, gifts that need to be returned to stores that are cesspools of germs and so many more negative factors.  This is when we need a drink!  This month fortification is necessary just to survive.  If you want to stop drinking for a month, pick a happy month, like April or October. Those months have flare and promise and new seasons. January has nothing except depression, debt and over-indulged dietary concerns. 

Of course, since I have almost zero social life, I don't have that Thanksgiving-to-New Year's problem of too many parties, too many cocktails with friends.  I have zero parties and zero cocktails with friends during the jovial Holiday Season.  (I do have a lot of cocktails, but they are with myself.) Come January, I have not been hung over, nor have I over-indulged (well, except for that pound of See's Candy) in anything except toasted, salted, spicy nuts and hummus.  And let me tell you that overindulging in hummus will never get you in trouble.  No DUI for hummus, that's for sure!

So my January is not dry. It is not a monsoon, either, just so you know. I am not upending bottles of alcohol at a rapid pace but I do continue to have my cocktail(s) at 5:15 every evening.  And then some wine, and then some more and maybe a nightcap and a sleep aid in the form of another nightcap. I sleep well and peacefully, secure in the knowledge that my Dry Month will come sometime in the next ten years, when my social life has picked up and I am out drinking, dancing and dining with friends and my liver needs a break so I will willfully stop drinking for a month week few days.

Yeah. Sure. 

Here's looking at you, kid.  Cheers!

Cooking for oneself

 Cooking for one person is not as fun as cooking for someone else, but there are advantages: you can do it whenever you want, the criticism is all yours, no one complains about the details. You can experiment, you can combine recipes and ingredients in clever and unusual ways and if you don't like it, you can toss it in the trash and have Triscuits and goat cheese for dinner, which is always a delicious meal.  If you make something really good it is sort of sad that no one is there to share it but since that happens somewhat rarely it isn't really a deterrent to solitary cooking. 

However, the one big negative about cooking for yourself is the clean-up.  If you cook for someone else, or many others, you can often wrangle someone into helping you with the mess.  Or if you leave the mess for a while, someone usually starts to feel guilty and they at least do some triage in the dirty kitchen. This NEVER happens when you cook for yourself. The mess is yours. Sure, you can ignore it for the evening and then look at it in the morning, which is so incredibly sad and disgusting that it happens rarely in my tiny home. 

Some people are neat cooks. They clean up as they go, pop things into the dishwasher (a dishwasher!  What a concept!) and get dinner on the table without the kitchen looking like a small, localized tornado ran through it.  I am not a neat cook. I am a slobby cook. Small bits of parsley or garlic or ginger are always lurking about. Those little papers from onions (I believe they are known as 'onion skins') seems to always be on my kitchen floor, with garlic papers as well. If flour is involved there are always patches of what can only be described as "scabs" on the kitchen counter, hard little rough-edged bits stuck on until one scrapes them off. My cooking top is an electro-magnetic thing, smooth as glass (because it is a kind of glass) and thus shows every tiny drop of everything, and looks pathetically sloppy once cooking (or even boiling water) begins.

Is it no wonder that I sometime opt for eating nothing for dinner, except the above mentioned Triscuits and cheese?  (I prefer the little thin ones, by the way.) Yes, there will be Triscuit crumbs and cheese detritus but it's a lot simpler to clean up that mess than wet and dry and chopped and grated and strained things. Even making a simple salad means some oil and acid will be dribbling somewhere.

There is no solution to this problem because I live alone and plan on doing so until the End of Days. However, I can see my eating habits getting whittled down the older I get.  There will be no canned soup or canned chili but there will be plenty of hard-cooked eggs on toast (with mayo) and I will bite the bullet and make batches of food, like pasta sauce and chili, soup and bread, cookies and ice cubes, and store them in freezer bags so all I need to do is thaw them out and heat and eat.  (In the case of cookies, that's not even necessary: frozen cookies are wonderfully tasty!)  Of course the ice cubes will remain frozen at all times. One must have one's cocktail before diving into the plethora of frozen goodies.  Or maybe, just maybe, a really nice restaurant will appear in my neighborhood that has good take-out and I can indulge in that now and then.

Tonight I am making a soup..... combining two recipes, using homemade chicken broth, some sort of coconut-curry-spicy-chicken soup with rice noodles, spinach and a large glass of white wine. It will be okay. It will be warming and tasty (I hope) and filling. And I will put off the cleaning until it's bedtime..... and acknowledge that solitary cooking is like solitary living: there are ups and downs, goods and bads, but these are my choices and I am sticking to them.