Random Esquire

1.  I watched The Sound of Music last night with a friend.  What a scandalous movie, really.  He stole a nun and then took her on a month long honeymoon.  I mean, I get that she’s got a lot to discover… but a month?  They’ve pretty much guaranteed themselves additional brood.  And at one point, Uncle Max called the children a bunch of “gloomy pussies.”  I bet they re-write that line in modern productions.  It got better when it went all Indiana Jones at the end and the Nazis got their comeuppance. Then I realized that if this whole thing happened in the present, it’d be a reality show.  Nun mom trying to deal with 7 step children… while pregnant.

2.  Little Filthy got a bath.  This has endeared him to me.  Enough that I sent a text message to his mom, Boss, who is currently in Florida with family:

RE: When you comin’ back?

Boss: In a day or two.

RE: Hurry!

Boss: Why for?

RE: Cause the dog is cute right now, how he’s sleeping.

Boss: Ok.  Don’t let him move.  For 48 hours.

RE: He won’t.  I glued him.

3.  My Neighbor was over for a bit yesterday.  She brought Barnabas, her pug, over.  Little Filthy promptly showed him how to remove kleenex from the box.  Neighbor and I gaped as Barnabas delicately tried to pull a kleenex from the box.  She said to me, “You realize who you’re raising?”  I turned to her and said, “Uh oh. Who?”

She said, “Alvin.  You’re raising Alvin.  And my dog is just one of those innocent other chipmunks.”

I said, “Oh, like Simon?”

She sighed and said, “I’m afraid Barnabas is more like…Theodore.”

We’re raising monsters.

Fox and Hound

Got mine today!

Don’t forget, if you buy a stamp before the 15th of December, I’ll be entering your name into a drawing for $50.  Debra has been kind enough to enter you upon order. (Thank you, Debra!)

All profits go to the American Cancer Society.  Another big thank you for Debra at Rubbermoon and Gretchen Ehrsam, the artist.  Thank you.

GET YOUR STAMP HERE.

1.  I heard Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer today.  I just gotta ask, when is there ever a warm, moist air mass moving over the North Pole on Christmas Eve?  Is fog really an issue at the North Pole?  So I decided to figure it out.  Turns out that because the air is so bitterly cold, it takes a really small amount of water in the air before it saturates, resulting in fog.  But not of water droplets – of ice crystals.  And this is not an infrequent thing.  So I guess the song does sort of make sense.

2.  And then I realized that I’d spent far too much time thinking about that.  Because, really, is the fog part where the song loses credibility for me?  Not the anthropomorphic reindeer?  Or Santa or the LED nose animal?   No.  See, I quickly pinpoint the fog and question that.

Sometimes, my brain is useless.

3.  You may have heard – I have a new service that I’m offering.  But you’ll have to visit QT’s blog Friday morning to hear more about it.

Speaking of, check out that little Meg Ryan.

4.  I am the product of miscegenation.  This means that rarely a week will go by when someone does not ask me about my ethnicity.  However, I fully admit that it sometimes gets tiresome.  I would probably not mind except that most people seem to think that this is an acceptable way to inquire about your ethnicity:  “What are you?”

Sometimes, because I have decided to be playfully difficult, the conversation goes like this:

Person: “What are you?”

RE:  “American.”  Big smile.

Person: “No, I mean, like, where are you from?”

RE: “Oh!  Sorry – I’m from Chicago.”  Big smile.

Person: “Where were you born?”

RE: “Ohhh, Minnesota.”  Winning smile.

Person: “But what language do you speak?”

RE: “…English.”  Confused look.

Person: “I meant other than English.”

RE:  “Oh!  French.”

I don’t look French – even though I am 1/4 French.  I do appreciate the curiosity but sometimes, I want to make something up.  So I’ve decided to start saying, “I’m Caraway.  Perhaps you’ve heard of our seeds.”

5.  I realize that I have shifted this posture to Little Filthy. Once, while dining al fresco with the pooch under the table, a man walked by, did a double take at him and clearly wondered what breed he was.  The beast is pug-chihuahua.  The man said slowly, “What….is he?”

I said slowly, “He…is   a     dog…”

1.  Wait..wait….before you go in there…let me just explain why I was so interested in the kleenex.

2.  Tell me about this Santa again.

3.  QT, we need to talk about your drinking.

1.  Little Filthy is donating a library to a local elementary school.  His portrait is going to hang over the Berenstain Bears bookshelf.

The artist?  A good friend – Abby McMillen – whose Folk Dogs are soon going to appear on boxes of Barkwheats.  She was recently featured on Phetched.

2.  As you may recall from the *cough* asshole conversation *cough*, a friend wished to set me up.  Circumstances prevented me from attending an event at which I would have met her and really, that was fine with me.  Frankly, I don’t know how I would have ever explained why I was looking under her dress to see if she had a peg leg.  I shouldn’t joke.  Like I said, she could be a perfectly nice whoman.

3.  Instigator and I had lunch today.  I can’t wait to take a picture of her eyeball because if you thought my eyeball was interesting, wait until you get a load of that ball-o-color.

4.  Little Filthy tore another pad off his paw.  This time the other back paw.  And this time, he ate the bandaid.  *sigh*

5.  I need a back massage.  My back feels like a box of rawhide knots.

Little Filthy has tried corn, peanut butter and watermelon.  Let’s add banana to the list.

I decided to place the banana on the kitchen counter and let Little Filthy jump and try to snag it.  To capture the picture, I climbed on top of the counter and looked down at the action.  Captions are above the photo; click on the photo to see the full size.  Did he get the banana? Find out after the cut.

Temptation.  The banana sits innocently on the counter.

A closer look.

Planning: Working out a strategy to get the piece of banana off of the counter.

(more…)

Little Filthy has tried corn.  And peanut butter.  Today, he tried watermelon.

A sniff.

Give it to me, please.

Looks promising.

(more…)

Sometimes, having Little Filthy makes me wonder what I’d do if I had a kid.  Which, considering that I’ve greased up his feet and he slid into the front door… or that I almost killed him by sticking bananas to the bottom of his water bowl… it’s not typically very encouraging.

I noticed him licking his foot today and  decided to take a closer look.  I don’t know how he does it but every so often, he’ll scrape off the entire outside of one of the pads on his paw.  I flipped him over and saw that his pad was still hanging on by a thread.  I clipped it off with some small surgical scissors and the raw skin below was red.  A cotton pad in cold water took the color away and must have felt good because he quit watching me, put his head down and started to doze.  Antibacterial + Q-tip + Band-aid = Limping dog.  But he must be feeling better because I just caught him in the bedroom, standing on my pillows with his hurt back leg up in the air, leaning over and plucking Kleenex out of the box on the nightstand. Rotten beast.

That’s right.  Before and After pictures for your benefit.  They’re going into my portfolio in the waiting room.

As we’ve previously learned, I could have been a doctor.  I’m pleased to add Veterinarian to the list of professions I could have pursued had I not decided to disappoint my mother by becoming an attorney.

1.  Editor and I met up last night for a night of Guy Stuff.  This involved hitting a local pub, having a few drinks and then some basketball.  Have you tried drunk basketball?  I recommend it.  The night was just what the doctor ordered after my week of somehow experiencing Kübler-Ross Stages of Grief without actually having lost anyone.

2.  Long walk with Little Filthy this morning and brunch with Boss.  The monster waited patiently under the table while we ate.

3.  Yesterday, a co-worker showed me a Macy’s ad and asked me if I noticed anything unusual about it.  She said, “Trust me, you’ll know when you see it.”  And sure enough…something caught my eye.  I snapped a picture of it for your benefit.

4.  I will be attending an Emmy party at a friend’s place tomorrow evening.  Said friend actually won an Emmy last year. Another friend who will also be attending said party is, I am quite sure, sleeping her way through award winners.  So far, she’s slept with an Oscar winner and an Emmy winner.  I suggested she skip the Grammy’s and I believe she has her eye out for a handsome Pulitzer.  Good luck with that.

I almost accidentally killed Little Filthy yesterday.  Here’s the thing:  After Little Filthy eats, he drinks an entire bowl of water.  He eats all his food, drinks, then licks the food bowl repeatedly, then drinks some more, then licks the food bowl again – back and forth until every last bit is gone.  Then he uses the bathroom repeatedly.  This is normal for him.

The other day, I noticed a full water bowl despite the fact that he’d just eaten.  It was the same way the next morning and he didn’t drink much in between.  I started to put more water into his food.  But then I had this brilliant idea of dropping some small treats into his water bowl.  I dropped in a few.  They floated around on the surface and he was able to fish them out relatively easily, not drinking too much.  I thought maybe if I had treats that sank to the bottom, he’d have to drink the water first before he could get to the treat.  So I decided I’d slice up some banana and stick it to the bottom of his bowl before filling it with water (See #3e here).  But then I realized something about Little Fitlhy.

I won’t lie.  He’s not a Rhodes Scholar.  He can’t herd sheep, lead a blind man across the street, or even consistently come when you call him.  He’s more likely to bang his head into a wall from running too fast, eat a dirty kleenex (see #3 here) or drag your underwear across a room (See here or #2 here…or #1 here).  It occurred to me that, considering his love of bananas, he’d probably go nose down and try to fish it out and probably drown himself in the process.

At that thought, the banana slice dropped from my hand back on to the counter.  So much for that idea.  So instead, I cut a small piece of banana and mashed it with the side of a knife and then whisked it into a big bowl of water.  He drank it all.  Two bowls of it.

Yeah.  I probably need a girlfriend, huh?