Letter to my inconsiderate neighbors.

Hi There.


You may remember me, I'm that chick that lives next to you. You know, the one that said hello to you on three separate occasions? Like that time at the mail box where I was about two feet away and you pretended I wasn't there. Or the time I waved and you looked away. There was also that time when you were in your yard and I said Hi AND waved.

Perhaps you are mentally disabled, and can't understand the generic, American, human greeting ritual. Perhaps, you are deaf or blind or a combo of those afflictions. I think though these things are not true. For when we constructed a fence, you came out of your house and spoke to my husband the MOMENT I went inside to fetch him lemonade (or whatever). So you either have a penis preference for your speaking partners, or your a vagiphobic.

Your wife/girlfriend/baby momma at least acknowledged me before running away as fast as possible. She also made it clear through her body language (staring at the ground, running away, turning her back to me in terror) that shes very socially frightened of me and does not want to interact with me further. I get that. I'm a reformed social screw up myself. I just hide it a bit better than she does. She at least got the first Hello out of the way like a decent person.

Btw that day you offered to fight me in gorilla body speak. That was lame. You're fat and I can probably outrun you. I'm a 120lb girl, and the fact you even offered makes me wonder about your penis size. I was throwing a BALL for my DOG. Fetch and all. Som'thing you know, and your dog knows, nothing about. I presume at least, since your dog owns no toys and I've never seen you interact with her aside from yelling at her.

My ball hit my fence, NOWHERE near you, and you turned and puffed up and started coming at me like I said your mom was good in bed. (shes not) I had to talk to my dog and fetch the ball myself, all exagerated like an Idiot repeating "OH LOOK EMMA, YOUR BALL" (granted my dog conviently had a duh moment and couldn't find it) so you could translate that this wasn't a concert and I didn't throw a beer can at your balding nazi haircut head... which brings me to my next question...

WTF are you anyway? Are you white? Mexican? Both? Either or both is fine, but I just can't tell for the life of me. You act and dress like you want to go kill Jews, and your friends look like members of the Aryan brotherhood, yet you speak Spanglish, and appear to have a kid with another chick that looks 100% Hispanic. Yet you can talk about raised trucks and "tha river" like the best of the bros. Its just confuzzling is all

Oh and your kids. Thank you for at least keeping them quiet/non annoying. Though I think my new fence has more to do with that than you and your parenting skills

I remember on about day seven, your unattended toddler was sticking her hand through my fence and saying "doggie". Her babysitter, a drugged, young guy, would occasionally walk outside and laugh, then go back inside. Leaving your kid alone with your dog 80lb aggressive dog, in the middle of a yard in pseudo suburbia, about three doors away from a registered child molester. Whats up with that?

That brings me to your dogs. I hate your dogs. I'm a dog lover. I love animals. But for yours, I'll make an exception. Your dogs want to eat mine, and that makes me angry. Your dogs reduced my pit bull to a shivering mess for over an hour when she made the mistake of play bowing at the fence line. Your dogs are unaltered, bored, pissed off, reactive, human and dog hating messes that I'm so annoyed with I have lost all pity for them. Thanks to you, I've had to fill the holes they've dug with dog shit, to deter their visits. I've had to spend $300 and a whole day building a fence so I can be outside and not crap myself in fear. If they come over my fence, its going to ruin everyone's day. Trust me.

Btw where is dog #2 anyway? You know, the one that was slightly less aggressive. The one that didn't got batshit rabid every single time it saw me, but only went batshit som' of the time?? Did you lose it? Give it away? Eat it? God knows you can't keep that extra dog when your Babymomma just birthed you ANOTHER screaming kid you wont help raise. Oh, you think I don't know about that? Your walls are THIN my friend. You like sports, you like sending your kids away when they try and talk to you and show you things. You like asking your slave woman for a sammmich during commercials.

So all I'm asking you, dear neighbor, is to water that damn half dead tree in your backyard, play with your kids and dog, and say hello. At least once. Its the decent thing to do.

Thank you for your time

Spleeps.

I've finally come to terms with the reason, the REAL reason, I like the tiny Mexican morsels so much.

I've always liked chihuahuas, and if som'one asked me WHY, I'd give these reasons, generally.

Little poops.

Cheap to feed.

Portable.

Can pick up and run away with them if you're attacked by birds/hobos/zombies (falls into portable, turns out portable has many advantages)

Single coated.

Plentiful (see; free/cheap)

Pointeees for earses.

Come in many colors/patterns/sizes/energy levels (thank you backyard breeders!/sarcasm)

If you look at these reasons, they are based in logic. Except pointy ears, which only seems to make sense to me. Well I discovered the other reason. The linch pin. For why myself and the tiny mexicans get along so well.

Sleeping. They LOVE sleeping.

I don't sleep any more or less than the average person. Eight hours + or - an hour. Occasionally + or - three hours if alcohol is involved, but my sleep is very important to me. I need it, and I don't like it cut short or interupted.

Emma and Kiwi. The resident non-chihuahuas. Have the standard dog ideals when it comes to sleeping humans. Like most other dogs they believe...

If I'm awake, you should be too!

You moved, that means you're getting up!

You breathed different, that means your getting up!

OMG when you get up, it will be the BESTEST thing EVER!

I shall dance in your face in anticipation.

This is the standard dog thought process. Of course, there are also the accelerated-awakening methods they employ. These generally involve staring at you. Breathing on you heavily (usually used in conjunction with staring), walking on you, and making noise. Or in the case of the pit bull, putting your head behind the curtains, then walking, which floods the hibernaculum with sunlight.

Kiwi actually learned that shaking her head will wake me up. First using her collar. So we began to remove collars at night. Then she learned that if she shakes her head hard enough, the sound of her pig ears, flesh-slapping against her big head works just as well. A lesser owner would have cropped them off, but I've settled for earplugs.

The chihuahuas, on the other hand, are completely happy to sleep as long as you want too. 12hours after drinking all night? Sure! Stay up all night on the Internet and get 4 hours sleep, that works too. You stop moving, I stop moving. Perfect.

There is a downside to this however. Mexidogs need recharging frequently, so they must dock with their charging station. Which is, of course, human flesh. Its like a twisted zombie energy draining ritual. A chihuahua cannot sleep without being in/on/under a human.

thus, things like this ensue

Imagine three of these paperweights on you at once. In the middle of summer. I awoke last night about three in the morning about to have a heat stroke. I was completely sopping wet in sweat, stuck to the couch, not sure where I was delirious. The one sheet I was using was also sopping wet, and yet I was rendered immobile by three, very hot dogs, all Gulliver's travels style. It was very unnerving.

Why can't the chihuahuas take their siesta without smothering me to death???? I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't the real way that Che Guevara died. He was known to be in cohorts with the spicy ones. Maybe he owed them, and they ordered a hit.

We may never know....

Embarrassment 101

Lessons in too much trust too soon.


So things have been going well with the little bat dog, we did som' training in the street, where we practiced recalls, default check ins and just general Stay-wif-dee-hooman stuff. He did fantastic. Like Emma or Chili type fantastic. Very focused on me, not a care about anything else. Very "show me what you want" or "phhht, my last owner taught me this" Good stuff, really good stuff. So that, coupled with the "omg don't leave my sight to go to the bathroom, or to turn off that light in the other room" syndrome filled me with a sense of trust. This dog likes me, wants to be with me inately, and will respond to me if I need him too.

A false sense. Apparently.


So I decided this morning to take the smaller dogs to the dog park. This is an ordeal because I have to get collars on them all, which is fairly normal until Chili's collar comes out. Now we know som'thing special is happening. Chili's collar only goes on him if we are actually going som'where, because Kiwi feels the need to "play" with him by grabbing his collar and picking him up. *sigh*.

The way I get 4 very excited dogs into my car and maintain sanity breaks down like this.

I bring the car close to the gate. I open the passenger door. I check for cars, dogs, cats, people. Anything monkey wrench really. I then go to the gate and open it. The dogs wait in a sit until I release them with "go to the car". Dogs then turn left and go to the car. Treats inside car waiting. Point A. to point B. Simple stuff.

Especially easy since they seem to understand the concept of car rides being the prelude to the park or whatever. So they tend to just want to be in there. Car equals cookies, car equals rides. Yay, fun fun fun.

So I figured, me, and three other well trained dogs, all going to "the car". It would be safe to just let Radar hobble along with them. Unhindered. I don't have a harness for him yet, and he can't have anything on his throat because of the infection. A leash would make him more excited and less focused. Plus its only about 10 ft from the gate to the car. Call me lazy, but leashing four very excited dogs and walking them 10 ft, and then unclasping them all is a circus, usually involving som'one getting stepped on or choked. I figured if the old man strays a bit, I'll just redirect him. I figured the worse that would happen is he would pause to smell the mailbox. Besides he'll just naturally want to follow the other dogs and me, Chihuahuas are very group oriented.

Ha. Wrong.

So I open the gate, release them and several things happen. Emma, being the saint she tends to be, goes and gets in the car like instructed. Radar on the other hand, takes off full tilt in the other direction. I mean, FULL TILT. How an old dog with two luxating patellas and hip dysplasia runs that fast is beyond me. He looked like a fleeing rodent.

And of course, Tippy follows him. So Chihuahuas ARE group orriented! Just not in a way that benefits me. Fantastic.


Tippy also runs alarmingly fast for a neuro dog that falls over, shes right on his heels.

Chili, confused by the whole scenario, runs into the center of the street, and starts sniffing the ground in obvious displacement behavior, perhaps deciding between the car and the chihuahua 500 thats occurring.


So I scream Tippy's name, and she stops. I recall her, and while shes running back to me, I tell Chili to get in the car and he does. Tippy cannot jump into the car, so I now have to wait for her to recall, then pick her up and load her. The guy across the street raking his dirt has decided to pause to watch the "dog trainer" as her world disintegrates.

At this point I don't know where Radar is anymore. I did see him run into one particular yard, so I start there. I call his name. Nothing. So I listen and hear his tags clinking not far from me and follow the sound. I see him, as far into my neighbors yard as possible. So I now have to run across their yard, in front of their open front door (I could hear them inside talking) past their cars, boat, etc. Basically if there was any privacy left to violate, I'd probably have to walk inside to do it.


I see him. He sees me. Hes now cornered more or less. Im about 15 ft away from him. I call him. He looks at me, then at the gate hes in front of, weighs his choices and then decides that their iron side gate is the better choice than coming to me. He starts to climb through it. WTF is the only thing running through my head. You want to escape my yard to climb into another one???? Why are you running away from me???? Every interaction we've ever had has been pleasant and cookierific!!??? Right??? Gah!!!

Oh, and nevermind the 80lb unaltered Rottweiler that is dog aggressive that lives there. I'm sure they can be friends. Right.


So I snatch the little punk up about 2 seconds from him having a very bad day.




Back in the car, we drive miles to the dog park. I'm still anxious and upset over the whole thing. Everytime som'thing you think is trained, fails, you feel like a complete idiot. Its not the dogs fault, at all. Its mine. At the same time, while I do expect a little falter, most people dont expect a fullblown meltdown of expected behavior. You do expect your spouse to perhaps, admit he/she hides a tiny bit of money from you, or say, hasn't told you this or that. You don't expect an out of the blue "I have 5 other families, I'm gay and Im leaving you". Such things hurt the head a bit.

Not helped by the fact that Radar doesn't seem to like car rides, and is now throwing himself at the windows, trying to escape. I'm so upset that I almost miss the exit, and have to cross a tiny bit of paint divider on the freeway as to not miss it.

Which of course, many miles later, turns out was full of nails. When I arrive at the dog park, my tire is hissing at me and rapidly going flat.

Have you ever drove four excited dogs AWAY from a dog park without actually going in? It much like taking a bus load of kids to Disneyland, parking, and then telling them tough shit and turning around. Its full blown mutiny generally. I don't advise it.

I'm too scared to take the freeway at this point, so I take surface streets home. I figure if its going to blow out and we all spin around in flames, the car ejecting a dog here or there, it would be better to do it at 45mph instead of 80.

Do you know how many traffic signals are between the dog park and my house? Nineteen. I know because I counted them as I sat at nearly all of them on our epic quest to get home. On an empty tank mind you. I figured I had enough gas to get to the park, and would just get more on the way home. Doesn't matter anyway, because on the surface street route, there are no gas stations! One less thing to worry about.

Got home and unloaded everyone. The white bat was carried from point A. to point B. and is now sleeping as if he had the roughest day of his life. Chili is looking at me like he got shafted, and Kiwi can't get over the fact that OMG YOU'RE HOME.

So apparently, dogs love trucks, but cars are another matter.

Criosphynx and the tiny thieves.

I try to go out at least once a month and photograph the garden, and the dogs. Try being the operative word...when the weather is nice, say may -nov, it generally gets done, but the rest of the year, save one photoshoot in Dec, is a mystery.

That's probably for the best, after all the plants are not in bloom generally, and this past year were VERY frost damaged. The dogs are all wearing silly sweaters and don't want to move around anyway...so I guess I'm not missing much

Tippy is driving me nuts. She had decided to take a break from ripping apples off trees and eating all my strawberries to stealing tomatoes. Not eating, just taking them. I currently have so many tomato plants in so many places that I quite often have no idea where the little snot got it from. She doesn't even LIKE tomatoes. Each one she kinda tastes, makes a "wait this isn't a giant strawberry" face and then walks away from it. While I'm cleaning it up shes found another one. I finally just picked everything within 3 ft of the ground. This worked for about five mins until she decided the green ones must taste good too and tried that...I don't think she'll try that again though.

Chili seems to ruin almost every set we take. First, hes not the most attractive dog, and he never sits still. He does however seem to like to pose in front of whatever dead, ugly thing he can find. Note the uncut weeds/grass and the lettuce I let go to seed. So if a person just browsed Chili outdoor pics, they'd think I live in a vacant lot. Anyway, I think that he, as usual, is just trying to make us all look like chumps.

So I have som' OMG adorable pics of my new little man. Sans cone o' shame

I think he looks like a jackolantern here, a happy one. Then he has on the "Imsoseriousface". Nothing beats the chihuahua signature pant/squint thing they do. This guy also does seriousface pretty good, almost as good as a cat. I have no idea why he was sitting with the ball. Perhaps he has photo sense and knew it'd make a good prop.

Kiwi ponders the sprinkler head. I swear this dog does nothing interesting, unless you count ignoring me, blowing me off, looking at me when I call her and then going back to what she was doing, and avoiding me. When not doing those things, she does things like this.

Emma finally figured out there were blackberries to pilfer, which is ok with me since this year there are more than I'd care to eat alone, and plenty of those are up high, out of the reach of tiny dog thieves.

The amount of food stealing that goes on here in the yard has already convinced me that dogs are omnivores. That or my dogs are simply tiny, furry kleptomaniacs.

anyway, until next time. Radar bites his lip in your general direction.

Busted Seams

Anyone who I come in contact with on a fairly regular basis knows about the "new" dog.

New as in pre-owned.

Pre-owned as in...missing the mirrors, slashed the upholstery and the tires are flat. Or gone


An "as is" type of sale.




Whats really ironic about the whole ordeal of removing the cancer bits and sewing him up to keep the stuffing from falling out, is that he is a really, really, nice dog.


A nice dog being, well, the polar opposite of everything Chili is.



I love his little cone that he was forced to wear. Actually, not forced, ENJOYED, dare I say, wearing. He'd stand there and let you slip it on him, and fix his ears. Then he'd wander away and nap. All with happiness.

Chili, on the other hand, tried to rip out my trachea this morning when I tried to apply 3 droplets of Frontline to his shoulder blades. This was after chasing him. Yes, chasing the little shit around my tiny house for a good 5 mins. I must admit, we do this for fun, so its possible he thought it was a game, but I usually can catch him during the games...I couldn't this time. Mr. SpringyStep seemed to have extra incentive today.

He took one look at the tiny, terrifying tube of dog death juice and decided not to cooperate. The trainer in me kept saying "make it a fun training session! Condition him to like it! Hes only biting you because hes afraid of everything! Its not his fault!!"

The normal, human, frustrated, primate part of me, chased my dog, grabbed him, and told him "tough shit" while I squeezed frontline onto his flailing body. I must note that this is not "normal" for us, but I was having a very bad day, admittedly.

Keep in mind I don't think Chili is actually afraid of the frontline. More like "anything without som'thing in it for me, I wont do it! sort of thing.


I know better than to say that dogs are "stubborn" or "will full". But when I tried the same thing, 10 mins later, in a official "training" session (I had guilt) he didn't object at all. In fact he practically took it out of my hand and applied it himself.

My dog is too smart. Despite me not bribing him, hiding the treats, never showing him the reward first, keeping treats in other rooms. Etc. He is fully aware as to whether I plan on paying him or not. I don't know how he knows. But that little shit knows. They call these types of dogs "Wise".

As in, the dog is RingWISE or collarWISE....it means, in training colloquialisms, that the dog had figured your plan out. He knows your next move before you do. The "you blink different when you don't have treats and I know it" sort of thing. All Clever Hans and such. IN. YOUR. HEAD.


It doesn't even matter what I pay him with. It could be half a Kibble. The human equivalent is probably like getting a $2 check from grandma for your 21st birthday. Chili doesn't care. All he cares about is being paid. Its like hes stuck on the principle of the whole thing.

So maybe next time the preowned dog is being stitched up, I can get a tattoo on Chili's tongue that says "pay it forward".

Until then, don't shoot the dog.

Brain wipes.

Sweet beans, I'm glad that's over.


I returned from frolicking in the trees, the bug less trees, but I digress, to find that the infants have vanished. This must be how parents feel with the kid finally, finally goes to their first sleepover. Som'where else of course.

We have a running joke here that the dogs are easier than kids, way easier. I mean, dog kids go willingly into their cages and don't poop in their pants. I think those two facts alone is enough qualification.

Well, having 4, trained dogs, is probably as much work as half a well behaved, decent aged kid...as in a kid that's old enough to pour their own cereal and dress themselves, my dogs are easier than that.

Puppies are not easier than that. Puppies are, mathematically between 3/4 to 2 1/2 times as much work as say, a two year old child. The three quarters puppy being robotically perfect, small sized and low energy and the 2.5 x puppy being a nipping, shitting, screaming, 80lb beast from hell.

I figured that the Muppet's were about a 3/4 of a two year old child, each.

So mathematically, I went from having less than one behaved human kid to essentially 2.25 human children. Human children that don't speak English, keep odd hours and eat doors


Thankfully my brain didn't explode, and all is normal now. Which brings in a new issue.

Wtf to do with myself.

Today I walked in circles, I cleaned, but not in a focused manner, I brushed a few cats, trained a dog or two, but mostly I ambled around going "what were my hobbies again??"

No wonder people do this puppy thing over and over. Motherhood gives you amnesia.

Poopmares

Its official.

I've lost my mind.

Out of all the deep thoughts swirling in my head all day. Dolphins and physics. Polymers and behavior...what does my brain chose to dream about?

Poo.

Not just in a "there was a turd in my flying dream last night". No, as in the whole dream was about poo to the point I became so anxious and upset I woke up and had to determine if it had really happened.

A Poopmare.

I had just, just enough sense in me to not ask if it was real. I had the thought of "if its real, you'll deal with it when you get up, if its not, you'll never hear the end of it"

Anyway, I feel this is fitting, because I'm positive the cause of my poopmares is actually experiencing them herself. Tippy is a sleep pooper.

She was "the bed pooper" before all of her sleeping in bed privileges were revoked. A once in a blue moon thing became clockwork like an incoming train. So the bed pooper sleeps alone

She is bonafide asleep when this happens. So every morning, she awakens to several nuggets amid her bed.

I suppose I can't complain to much, my dream was waking up to find the floor alllll around my bed was covered in Tippy nuggets...

but Tippy gets to live the dream. Live the dream Tippy, live the dream.

Things I've learned this month part twooo

The second you spend $300 building a fence, and half a day, the reasons for it will be tied up on the other side of the yard.

There is a fine line between arrogance and confidence, and its blurry to everyone but you

Tippy must poop in her sleep at least once a day

usually at night

usually in the dog bed that you just washed

yesterday


Monitors like to eat their own eggs

The weather is all over the effing place

My Anna apples are growing in funny shapes


The duck will never fully appreciate his 200sq ft enclosure...preferring to use about 10 of it

I probably will never eat tuna in large amounts again

California only has enough water for another 10-20 years (at most)

Birds get in som' nasty, nasty brawls over bitches.


thats is all.

No thank you, your dead things violate my belief system, Sir.

Its been a hard month, Critter passed and quite suddenly, my house has started to less resemble a fort, but more the need to be a fort. We've always prided ourselves on privacy, and keeping undesirables out, but those "undesirables" never materialized...in fact I've always figured people thought of us as paranoid wierdo-urban hermits...but now I can see my fears are founded.

One of the more positive aspects of Critters absence is I now have a tremendous amount of free time. Most of which must be actively used indoors, for now, due to the dire wolves that have materialized at my fence line, but I digress.

I guess I never realized how much time I spent putting up and taking down baby gates. Mopping up pee in the morning, evening and night, off tile. Using the carpet cleaner when I wasn't lucky enough to be cleaning tile. Time spent wandering around the house aimlessly searching for the giant, invisible bottle of white vinegar. Having to do a potty break ever half hour, all hours of the day, in a futile attempt to keep the floor clean. I'm exhasted thinking about it just typing this up.

Don't get me wrong, I love my dog, and I'd endure "pee feet" every morning for the rest of eternity to have her back...but man that dog peed a lot, and in all the wrong places.

Now that hospice duties are over, I've been getting to know my other dogs. I thought I knew my dogs pretty damn well. I mean, I spend all my time with them, so I thought. I feel like that dad that has a great relationship with his kids, that just lost his job, and is now home all the time and coming to the realization that there was a lot more to know. A lot more to do.

My first impulse was to replace the gaping hole with another dog. Not to replace her, but to occupy my time/mind while I heal. This is how we acquired Emma and Kiwi . This model works out for me logically. Dogs need homes. There is a vacancy at the inn. Sorry no pool. Pets allowed with deposit. Please no peeing on the carpet. That sort of thing

This transition was different, so I laid low and allowed myself to feel the awkwardness. I kinda felt this time, like I didn't deserve another dog, and this time, like it would be an insult on Critters memory. I let the emptiness eat me this time, in between cleaning everything in sight.

We went on a hike the other day. I took the three able bodies, and left Tippy to sleep on her pillow, which she'd probably rather do anyway, to the trail up off of Ettiwanda. It was cold and my hands wouldn't work. The dogs were beside themselves. For the first time I didn't feel any guilt for leaving the "others" behind.

Emma is a turnkey dog, if I could replicate her and sell her to new owners I would. On this trail, Kiwi must be kept on a long line, or else in her glee, she'd get lost. Chili stays by my side, sniffing this, or that, but staying with me, I watch for dogs and people which could potentially ruin both his and my day. Em, on the other hand, is having the time of her life, looking for rabbits, she must have inspected every shrub on that trail, all the while, staying near and checking in with me, of her own volition, which required no training to accomplish this.

I never in my life thought I'd be comfortable, letting a 25lb dog, run out of sight, with prey around. Never in my life. I trust this dog that much.

Chili followed her into the brush for a brief moment. I do see that the other dogs are role models for him, as hes gleamed a bit of behavior from them all. But I could see in his face that he had no idea why the hell this was so "fun" and eventually came back to me. Probably the same feeling I had as a kid, backpacking, miserable, all the while my dad was toting it as the best thing that could have ever happened to me... "your not tired! this is fun!"

There was a place where the trail doubles back on itself, and as a result, Em had emerged quite a bit ahead of us on her "check in". I could see her, but she could not see me. Hilarious. She wasn't panicked, but had this look of "stupid human, I left her RIGHT HERE" funny to see the dog look for the "lost" person rather than the other way around. I highly recommend it


So wikipedia, defines religion, partially as such

Religion is a cultural system that creates powerful and long-lasting meaning, by establishing symbols that relate humanity to beliefs and values


I mention this, because today, on impulse, I almost said "sorry, its against my religion" when a guy came in selling flowers. This struck me as odd, since I've always prided myself on the absence of religion in my life.

I took note of this, because my head didn't miss a beat, so I must assume it was genuine. Kinda like a Freudian slip.

But now, when I look at the definition, perhaps my subconscious was onto something.

For those that don't know about Roses, specifically the hybrid tea rose...I wont bore you with details, but essentially its an over bred hybrid, with pretty much no resistance to insects of disease, grown for the long stems that us Humans prefer in our cut flowers. They are readily available at garden centers at huge prices, yet almost never in garden, since unlike other roses that are hard as nails, these teas die.

Since hybrid teas are what are raised for cut flowers, and they essentially, suck. They are raised indoors in huge greenhouses with heavy fertilizers and pesticides.

My other understanding, is for the sake of cheap labor and lax chemical laws, they are grown primarily in South America...where workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and paid less than they are worth, probably without the knowledge that they are killing themselves.

Somehow my brain accessed all the above, and in an instant took a stand. No. I do not believe in this. My second thought however, was that this guy wasn't aware of any of these things, and chewing him out would do no good.

I could have educated him on it, but I didn't, which IN FACT goes against one of my OTHER beliefs, about educating the ignorant. So now what?

I guess if my hypocrisy is going to send me down the road to hell, I'll at least have Emma escorting me down that road, checking every damn bush along the way.

Enviromentalism with a side of bipolar.

I have been manic lately. Massively manic

Not in a good, clean the house, paint the ceiling sort of way. More of a recycle the bottle caps, tempted to root through the neighbors trash kinda way.

I've known the sky to be falling for a while now, but the combo of dolphin eating footage, that dude skinning the golden retriever, and the large amounts of people I run into with far to many children finally got to me. If I could have had a seizure, I would have, pant crapping and all.

I am not the depressive type, quite the opposite, I have pep talked myself out of som' heavy shit. Even if I was crying uncontrollably. But it all finally got to me, my brain went into death mode, and why are we here, and nothing you do matters etc etc.. even as I was thinking these things, I was totally aware my brain was slitting its own wrists.

I am currently out of my funk, but like everything, I have learned from it. I overdid it. Much like an athlete pulls a muscle, I am an intellectual that overloaded and pulled my empathy tendon. Resulting in an accute case of emphadepresalitis.

I read once, that empathy was kinda like a floodgate, once you open it, stand back, or else your sneakers are going to be more than a little wet. This is held true for me, as I have in the last five years yo-yo'd from not giving a damn about anyone but me and my fuzzy minions to caring about every goddamn thing in this world, crying at not just aspca commercials, but at infomercials and everyday things, like some crazy pregnant woman.

So now I sit in a zen state, partway between my "I only care about me"  and the over the top "feed the world, save the whales" overly emotional brain. I find, that this is the state that I get the most done, and feel the best doing it.

stay sane everyone, you can't save the world alone :)

Squats like dis mom?

Kiwi has the muscle memory of a rock.

The 'wi has gone from impossible to train, to OMG I LOVE YOU WHAT DO YOU WANT like a ball-sick labrador after you've been gone all day. These are also peppered with the occasional fit of OMG DON'T BEAT ME. Which occur at complete random, usually when I am not even interacting with her. Take last night for example, I was putting my phone on the table and whatever motion that involved gave her the impression I was about to gut her and serve her raw. No amount of anything would "fix" her. So I eventually gave up. Today shes my buddy again. I think a wire is loose in there. If she kills me in my sleep, it'll all make sense.

Anyway, back to rock muscles. I have been trying to convince her to "sit pretty" for about a month straight now. Its a behavior I have been capturing and shaping, and since its not perfect, there's no lure/hand motion/cue for it yet. She just does it at random when she feels its time for her and I to party. Which is many times a day.

She would only hold it for a split second, before either dropping back into a sit, or doin' som' zoomies-ish motion, or standing up completely like a weirdo. Paws high like a 6 year old kid stands when mom is about to put a shirt on them. After selective rewards for over a month now, shes not making any progress in the duration department. So my conclusion is simply that there are no abs-o-steel in there, and those muscles instead are in her ridiculously muscular pit bull beef legs that she has, despite the only exercise she gets being nap marathons.

Chili, on the other hand. Has decided to once again make all the other dogs look like chumps, and just randomly one day decided to basically stand in front of the 'wi as it flopped around, and do the trick with 110% perfection. He even held it until I said "OK". Hes like that gifted kid in high school that really should be the one beat up, vs the people that have to actually put in effort to get things. Its so sad, hes like "like this mom?" with a pathetic expression. While the others just emanate a long, low durrrrrr sound that fills the room.

I think kiwi is debating stuffing him in his locker and eating his homework.