What Doesn't Kill You

On the Monday before last, I walked into the gym for my normal work out. It has become rather boring because the range of things I can do to get my heart rate up is reduced to one single machine. I noticed however that they were running a spin class and inquired about pricing and wondered out loud if my knee, which as well as every other joint in my body, had been giving me hell, could take it. The golden God at the front desk responded with,

     ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Melody!’ With a smile and a horrid wink that made want to poke him in the eye and say:

     ‘That didn’t kill you… did it make your eye stronger?’ I did not say this, however, and gave him the thumbs up sign with a grin on my face that may have looked more like an insane clown rather than a you-just-encouraged-me smile. But as I climbed on the dreaded elliptical machine that I have to torture my body with, so that for a few hours a day I can function at 80% normal capacity, I pondered his words. The pain I had been in over the last week was not killing me but was definitely not making me stronger… It was however making Alan stronger because he was carrying me everywhere slung over his shoulder like a continental soldier. (By the way what does that song even mean? Ears hanging so low you can throw them over the shoulder like a continental soldier. It’s bad syntax and, if not, rather rude to continental soldiers that may have had big ears. Here, I use the term as I picture heroic continental soldiers carrying their fallen comrade from danger. And this is how Al has been carrying me.) So I grizzled a little at the stupidity of the bronze God. Or more accurately played my angry workout music and pushed harder on those damn foot things until I nearly threw up. At which point I was unsure if I had proved my point or his… But then, It seemed, that we were to put this very clichéd line to the test.

     Alan and Amelia left to walk princess buttercup AKA Percy. About half an hour later I get a phone call.

     ‘Ummm Mom?’

     ‘What’s wrong?’

     ‘Ummm… Dad fell over and he can’t get up.’

     ‘What happened?’

     ‘Umm… the dogs ran him over.’

     ‘Put Dad on the phone.’

     ‘Hey Mel, I have to get off. I am waiting for the ambulance to call me back.’

      ‘What?’

     ‘I can’t walk. I tried but I can’t move so I called an ambulance.’

     ‘I can come get you.’

     ‘No. I am in the middle of nowhere and you can’t get me out. Meet Amelia at the skate park. I have to go.’

     The line goes dead. I drive to the skate park. The sun disappears taking the last shred of light with it. It is pitch black and I do not see Amelia anywhere so I start limping toward the wetlands where Alan is. Eventually I hear rustling and a red-faced, wide- eyed Amelia appears out of the bushes.

     ‘I ran all the way here. IN THE DARK!’

     ‘Where's Dad?’

     ‘Umm really far - or not that far- or just this way.’

     She heads back the way she came. We use the pathetic beam of light on my cell phone to navigate the uneven ground, me limping (remember Al is unavailable to carry me as was my habit) and Amelia trying to control Percy who just wants to get back to his dad. The cell phone rings.

     ‘Mel? The ambulance says they can’t come and get me.’

     ‘What?’

     ‘They are saying they are going to have to form a search party.’

     ‘What?’

     ‘I have to go they are having a nurse call me back to triage me.’

     ‘What?!’

     The line goes dead and I resume following Amelia who is being dragged along by Percy.

       When we have been wandering for about half an hour, we are passed by Al’s walking buddy.  (He has broken into and driven his four-wheel-drive into the gated swamp with the walking tracks) We breathe out in relief; now we can get a ride and find Al.

     He rolls down the window and says in his heavy Eastern European accent,

     ‘You need to go move your car. You parked in a bad place. Someone will hit it. I will go get Al. Search and rescue won’t be here for hours!’ Then he drives off. We stand there a moment and Amelia says quietly,

     ‘Umm why couldn’t he give us a ride?’

     ‘I’m not sure.’  I say  as we begin hike-limping out again. Eventually, because we are so slow, the SUV arrives again now with Alan in the truck and this time we are allowed a ride. We pile in and I get the full story of the collision.

     Percy and his best friend were running full speed at Alan who was momentarily distracted; they hit his knee forcing it back the wrong way. This sounds very bad and I am sure ligaments are torn and he needs to get to the hospital. I get my first look at the bulbous mass that is his knee when we catch up to the paramedics who have hiked in. Despite dispatch telling Alan they were not coming, they have traversed the wetlands with backboards and pillows and a wheelchair with the wheels the size of a five-year-olds bike training wheels. That honestly looks like the chairs they use to torture people with water boarding or in a mental institution: no arms and tiny wheels. They apparently didn’t get the message to give up…

     As they reach us they get a more urgent call and say that Al can go home if he wishes because nothing is broken. I am doubtful and say, 'I think I will take him to the hospital.'

     ‘Up to you,’ they say and drive off.

     When we arrive home, Alan collapses into bed and then refuses to go to the hospital. Our friends Liz and Tyson are begging us too (they can’t imagine how I will take care of him as they have frequently seen me being carried by the injured man.) And they are pretty sure the injury is worth the trip as I am. Al says he won’t need anything and he will be fine.

     ‘The lady said I will be much better in the morning.’ (He really liked the ambulance lady and decided, even though she had barely examined him, she knew EVERYTHING.)

      ‘I don’t think you will be! If you tore something you could be in really bad shape.’

     He refuses and, as it turns out, when you are severely injured, you do need things in the night. So, at two a.m.  I hobble around taking twenty minutes to get pills and water and yell at him that he should be at a hospital with nurses getting proper care. He demands to know why I am so mean and I respond with because I’m mad that you are being stupid. We have a restless night’s sleep .

     The next day, things get worse. We drive to his doctors which is also an urgent care clinic. The nurse practitioner says she has never seen a knee like that in twenty years.

     She sends us for X-rays and ultra sound. They can’t do the ultra sound there so we drive across town for the ultra sound and then back across town to get the results then race back across town to the emergency room (five minutes from where the ultra sound was) because, as I have been saying all along, the X-ray has shown (not the useless traveling ultrasound) he has managed to mutilate his knee and needs to see an orthopedic specialist.  This self important man takes one look at the knee and announces - Al  needs surgery. His femur has shoved into his tibia breaking the plateau and he needs bone grafts and plates. Al asks,

     ‘What happens if I don’t have it?’

     The doctor is a little confused by this question; because he is used to a world where, if he says you need surgery, you grab a scalpel and start operating on your own leg. After recovering from the shock, he says that Al needs it because it will heal better and other I-am-so-important-words.

     ‘Can I stay awake or do you have to put me out?’

     The doctor replies,’ Ummm what do you mean?’

     ‘I mean, can I just have a spinal?’

     ‘No.’ Then the doctor looks at me, I think to check if Al is sane. I take over – the poor doctor-man is in such shock…

     ‘Al you do not want to know or hear or remember what they are about to do to your leg.’

     The Doctor says, ‘Yes.’ And holds the paperwork out to Al.

     ‘Ok then.’ Al says signing.

     I race back the 50 minute drive to get Amelia from school and as we are preparing for the return journey I get this text

     I call to confirm that he has been put in the room with criminals and he says,

     ‘Yes the roommate is “attached” to the bed. Please don’t bring Amelia back here.’

     I confirm that the “emergency rush" surgery has been cancelled and  we say good night and head to bed.

     At four forty-five a.m. I hear the dissonant beeping of the dying battery in the smoke alarm. I lay in bed wondering if it will give up or if I can sleep through it. Half an hour later I realize I have no choice. I limp through the house collecting a step ladder and try to balance my non-functioning feet on each step. Then I reach up to the offending device and realize that you actually need working hands. As I have told you before, often my hands are more like stumps rather than functional appendages. So I am just poking at the damn thing with my stumps for about ten minutes until I get the battery out. For a few terrifying minutes the fire alarm complains and I wonder if we will be doomed to listen to its wailing all night but then it gives up.

     We navigate the next few days being bumped for more severe injuries, Alan barely eating because they keep almost taking him each day and driving back and forth to our rural home. Liz and Tyson feed me and Amelia food fit for restaurants and Friday arrives. He is third on the list and I can’t find cover for the class I am teaching that morning; so he tells me to go. While on the phone to my sister Michelle, I lock myself out of the house with no way in. I call our piece of *&^% landlord and ask if he has a key. He says, “yes, but not with him” and hangs up. I can get into the garage so I focus my intellect on the door that goes from there into the house thinking, it is the weak spot.

     I try first picking the lock with a safety pin this is not working which is strange; from my extensive love of movies and TV shows I had assumed I would be able to pick a lock with no training. Next, I take the hinges off the door (We need to pause here to acknowledge that I TOOK THE HINGES OFF THE DOOR. My inner spy has been unleashed!)  but it still won’t budge. Michelle has her husband Bryan call me and he does a series of visual demonstrations of how to break in to a locked door… from America… with patience and locking himself in a room and freeing himself multiple times so I can see. Paying attention to every little detail, telling me what is wrong with my knife (yes Al keeps knives in his tool box??) and repeatedly begging me to put the door back on the hinges so that he does not have to watch me being crushed when I succeed. Which he is confident I will. But I don’t have time; plus this is my only contribution to the effort. Finally, I find this knife.

     And drum roll (for real - if you have drums - go and roll them)   I finally do it and it turns out I am Bloody MacGyver! (note the disemboweled smoke alarm in the distance...)

     AND I am only 4 minutes late to my class - meanwhile Alan has been taken to surgery. I arrive at his room ten minutes before he is brought back.

     SO while I have many issues with Nietzsche my biggest one is with his “what doesn’t kill you” quote because right now we are weaker than we were two weeks ago and we nearly died. However I will admit that I did find my inner spy and as it turns out this inner spy is *&^%ing MacGyver!!!

On being a mom and an ex-nurse.

 

I loved being a nurse as many of you know. Since I was little, I used to be suspicious that I could save the world. My usual fantasy was that I actually saved the whole world in some sort of covert spy ops. But when I became a Neonatal Intensive Care nurse this need to save the world was satisfied on a daily basis in tiny little ways in tiny little bodies. I loved that when I left my shift I had made a difference in either my patients life, their families or both.  I had to give up nursing because my body is, let’s be honest, ridiculous… (Although, I keep trying because: screw you body - I will win!! And Al keeps carrying me from the car, after a shift, asking me to stop “winning”…) However just because I am not a practicing nurse it seems the mantras all my teachers were terrified I would forget are still ready and waiting in the most paranoid parts of my brain. This can be a problem when a friend says she has this slight ailment and you proceed to give her a "head to toe assessment" (mantra one) with asking questions she would be hesitant to tell her doctor and then declare she must get immediate medical attention because it is probably cancer. (To be fair I usually don’t say cancer out loud… that would be unprofessional. I just think cancer and try to get her freaked out enough to go but not cancer freaked out. Also it is usually not cancer…) And it also becomes a problem when an ex-nurse becomes a mom. Moms in general can be a bit neurotic (or maybe that’s just me?) but throw in some medical knowledge, with no medical equipment like MRI’s and blood tests at your fingertips, and you are just asking for trouble.

While visiting family just over Christmas Amelia got sick... REALLY sick really fast. We were out on a treasure hunt (so fun running around downtown Denver like real tourists!) when she started to look a little pale and started wandering a little like a  lost freshmen on the first day of school. She refused to quit though (because fun always comes before comfort… and going home would "ruin it for everyone") and powered through. When we had finished, freezing cold and tired but triumphant, Grandpa convinced everyone to come home and skip dinner out; her cousins were so sweet and agreed, so off home we went.

She collapses into bed and falls asleep. Now being at my parents’ house I have no way to take her temperature. Well, according to my mom she has an “excellent thermometer”… It is a strip of plastic from 1985 that you press against the forehead for 5 minutes and it heats up little colored dots to then give you a range. I.e. green dot means 101-103…which is quite the gap. Also you have to match the color. Sometimes its between a dirt brown and a vomit green and so you can't tell if you should go with the range 101-103 or 104-107. In other words high fever or eminent death. Mom loves the damn thing and when I was younger I did too - because I could use it to get out of work - because it almost always said I had a temperature! However now that I am a nurse, I refuse to use it despite her insistence that it works great. So I have no reliable way of taking Amelia’s temperature. I can tell its high just by feel and when I take her pulse it is 160 (resting heart rate for her age is 60 – 80) Now this is alarming and I begin freaking out texting Al on Skype wondering if I should rush her to the emergency room (he is back in New Zealand and does not answer… Why? Because Princess Buttercup needed a walk… I will introduce you to Princess Buttercup, AKA Percy,  in a later blog.)

It is now 11 o’clock at night. I give her Ibuprofen to get her temp down and, hopefully, her heart rate and proceed to check her pulse every five minutes (who am I kidding? Most times it is every 30 seconds and it takes me 30 seconds to take her pulse so I am basically scrunched under the top bunk hanging on to her wrist) to see if it is coming down. It comes down to 130 eventually and I keep checking wondering what the hell is wrong with her body until 1 am when I realize if I was a mom with no nursing background I would not have checked her pulse, been grateful she was asleep, and gone to bed.

Another side effect of being an ex-nurse is you have to be the calm one in the room telling the parent to calm the $%&* down (really nicely and with absolutely no swear words…). Except now I am both the parent and the nurse so the conversation goes: Her pulse is high because she is sick and still has a fever. Her body is doing what it should and you have gotten the pulse to come down. Then the parent says, but it is still too high! Then the nurse says, yes it is a little high but you need to calm down and get some sleep because if you stay up all night twisting into odd shapes to take her pulse without waking her up, you will be in bad shape tomorrow. Now GO to bed. This conversation takes another hour and I finally fall asleep at 2 am. Of course she is fine (well, REALLY sick but not sick enough to brave the superbugs at the hospital… we’ll get into that another time…) and gets better over the next few days.

Mantra two was: how to be calm in emergencies. I was fairly good at it. Sort of prided myself on it actually. Calm and level headed but fast - like a nurse should be. Apparently this was a façade… A few weeks after we arrived back in New Zealand Amelia had taken a shower. Now there is one poisonous spider here.  I have been told there is another one but I only ever see the White Tail; so I am suspicious that New Zealanders are lying to make them look tougher and have made up another one so that they can be more like Australians. Although, let’s be honest who wants to live in a place where like half of the nonhuman things can kill you?? Anyway Amelia gets out of the shower and comes out to the living room with this crawling up her arm

I proceed to scream. Not calmly get up and brush the poisonous spider off her arm for her, nope, just screaming - no words and waving my arms until she brushed it off screaming herself. Not only had I managed not to assist her but freak her out so much that she was shaking for ten minutes afterwards. So in summation, being a nurse was great. However, apparently I pick and choose what I apply to my mothering skills and I am only picking and choosing the most deranged parts. And now, rather than a "healthcare provider" I am more like someone who dressed up as a nurse for Halloween and  doesn't know it's over and not real...

Is it January? Ok but January 2015 not 2016... Right?

It feels like I sort of stumbled into 2016. Like I had been walking along a sidewalk humming to Sunny Side of the Street and then someone shoved me so I tripped and had to start running very fast for some reason. (Probably because you should run away from people who shove you so hard that you trip.) Or more like, I was walking along and a cloaked man whispered something in my ear (something important, and by way of explanation, but I couldn't hear it) and shoved me through a large old door with a very ornate handle where I time traveled ahead one year. These past few weeks have passed in a blur. There was fun with family, I vaguely remember through a haze of jet lag or (more likely) old person tired. There are plenty of things that happened to me that may be amusing… one day… peeing of pants… but not funny yet. There are other things too; but, it seems, I haven’t quite come to terms with my sudden intense intolerance of others nor am I willing to admit this to the public yet. I am still hoping it is just a phase and all my angry looks and ranting will disappear behind my trusty smile soon. If not, I can always do that angry blog I keep hinting at. 
So, January has come and gone in a fog and it appears things may be falling apart...

I went from this hair:

To this hair in just a couple of days

You should know this was me checking how I look in my phone as a guest was arriving... Also, when checking, I realized I had gone to visit my friend probably looking just like this. This was a week and a half after arriving back from Denver so I can't really blame anything but myself.
Then our attempt at cool oasis building went from this:



To this in four days:


Also Al bought this coconut one week ago... we still have no idea how to open it or what to do with it...


 

He says he bought it for nostalgia of his Papua New Guinea trip but I guess the "nostalgia" was not quite strong enough to conjure up the memories of how to open the damn thing.
So here's to 2016. Let's hope I can pull myself together in time for my birthday. However, it does not bode well as I was shocked to find I was turning a year older than I had thought all year. Apparently, at my last birthday, I stopped counting

The Crippled Children Fund

The following is true, almost word for word… really…

Liz and I are running errands down town. We see the young man standing anchored in the busy lunch-time crowd. He is the perfect package of holiday cheer and guilt, wrapped in a pristine lime-green polo shirt. His smile and bright eyes radiate the confidence in his world view and his sense of purpose.  Knowing what he wants, we separate around him so he doesn’t know where to look... we are unsuccessful.

“Ladies!” he says “You look like wonderful caring people!”

“No!” I answer “I am an evil mastermind.”

“Oh…” he says, pretty sure I am joking but his heavy eastern European accented face betrays a little concern that he is missing the sarcasm hidden in my English.

“What are you selling?” Liz asks, straight to the point.

“I am not selling anything. I work for the Amazing Crippled Children Association (I changed the name because… well you’ll see). What would you say if I told you, you could solve their problems without changing anything about your lifestyle?” Liz and I both laugh loudly.

“I have already solved all the problems.” Liz says and I back her up –

“Yes, she is a genius. I am evil and together we plan world domination.”

“Haha…” he says, though it is a little forced, still wondering if his very perfect English is up to the gauntlet we are throwing down. “Well, for just a dollar a day you can make a huge difference in their lives.”

“How, how does our money help?

“What?” he says, the nerves starting to show.

“Where. Does.The.Money.Go?”

“Ahhh I’m glad you asked! 80% goes directly to the children! For someone to go into schools and talk about disability! Also some children get wheel chairs! It’s more help because they don’t get enough from the government!” At this Liz and I laugh so hard we are almost crying and his confusion is complete and his perfect selling smile disappears. He crinkles his brow and tries, “So do you want to help?”

“NO!” I say daring him to look me in the eye. “Well actually, I am disabled and she” I say indicating Liz, “has been dealing with health issues with her child for a long time…”

“And the government doesn’t help us already!” Liz adds.

“What’s wrong with you!? His accusing eye roams up and down my body. Clearly I am better off than the children he is desperate to help.

“Well I’m walking today but sometimes I can’t walk and must be carried everywhere like a true evil genius!”

 “So can we give you money and then you give us money?”

He is so confused all he can say is “So… so…Can I sign you up?” he shows us his iPad.

“No!” we both say and turn to leave throwing a pathetic apology over our shoulder. As we go, we realize what we have just done and wonder when we became the people who not only say no to charity but decide to torture the poor young man just doing his job. When did I begin to think that the pre-ghost-visited Scrooge was the hero? But then, as I continue to freak out about our confrontation, we realize we don’t want to pay someone to go into schools to talk about disability. We can’t imagine anything worse than a child who just wants to be normal, being wheeled into an auditorium where their differences are discussed on a grand scale. And then I realize Liz should be with me more because she helps me say what I actually mean. So if you need anyone to help you deal with the steady stream of charity donations seekers during the holiday season, apparently Liz and I are available for hire. We get to the point so you can decide if the charity is actually doing something useful. But we only come as a pair because if I come alone, I will cave and all of your money will be donated before a single word is spoken. Liz gives me super powers.

Facebook

Dear Facebook,
Stop tugging at me, like a small child in the candy aisle, with catchy lines that are supposed to be written by “friends”. Like: "this guy thought he knew what was coming but when he saw what was really going on, his mind was blown". Or "check out this list of crazy things, when I got to number eleven my jaw dropped”.  Or "woman is robbed but what she does next is priceless." Really REALLY really?????  It’s priceless? (Just to let you know, number six was way better than number eleven.)And the pièce de résistance: "here is a list of things to make you cry". Stop making me self conscious and doubt that I know who my best friend is or that if I just click I can see what I will look like when I am older AND who will still love me when I look like that. No matter how much you pry, you don’t know me!!!! I think… although you were right about which Muppet I would be if I was a Muppet … NO stop it! You have gotten me to "take this test" for the last time! From now on I will just assume I am a cross between a Disney princess, Jedi knight, Black Widow, Juliet, and Elmo and I will base all future life decisions on this assumption. 
Next, please stop sending my mom bogus political things about how the other political party is trying to end the world. ALL political parties are trying to end the world and take all the money - stop confusing her. Also please stop sending me tests that no one but me can solve (unless of course it is for real and you are recruiting for a super think-tank where we get to save the world… then fair enough and I’m in!)

 Now for the love of all the monkeys, when something terrible happens in the world and people react showing their grief and solidarity, for instance, changing their profile picture to honor the people who tragically lost their lives in France, don’t yell at us that we aren’t mad about all the other bad things happening in the world.  Don’t have a little temper tantrum claiming you are better than everyone because you care about other things that are also terrible. Just because people did not know about other terrible things, does not mean they wouldn’t care; clearly they do care because when they do know, they show their support. So how about, instead, you just calmly show your support to what everyone is sad about and then kindly share what you also support so we can be sad with you? But stop assuming you are a better person because you know additional terrible things happening in the world; that just proves you watched or read an obscure news story - not that you are a better person because of it. (It also just proves the media is biased which we all already knew...) It makes you seem mean and ignorant which is what you are accusing the rest of us of. Just stop it. Save your holier-than-thou rants for things that really matter, like stopping everyone from fighting each other. Clearly, in light of recent events, we should be finding what we have in common not what tears us apart. Right? And on top of that, showing empathy should not be a complicated or a divisive issue.  Also, if you haven’t noticed, something terrible is happening ALL THE TIME; should we not show our outrage and support when the next tragedy strikes because last week there was a tragedy in France? No. Even better, how about we use our powers-of-social-media-discussion to find a way to prevent the next tragedy from occurring until they all become a distant memory; but then, we would ALL have to stop yelling at each other! SO please Facebook let’s do our part - keep relevant discussions going BUT keep it civil.

However, you may continue to send me funny stories with babies, puppies or people falling down or dancing that I would not get to see otherwise. (You can send me video of people falling down while dancing if you have one... or babies or puppies falling down... or babies and puppies dancing...) You can send me minion memes but they better be good. None of that passive aggressive crap where the minion is really mad about a conversation you had with your friend last night; or you are using the minion to disown friends; or the angry religious fight hiding behind the cute minion. Minions can’t speak English, they are particularly fond of kitsch music, and they are good at cleaning, so they can’t possibly represent prejudices or have the final say on complicated religious beliefs. Also, I am not opposed to pictures of food if you can certify that it is organic, free range, environmentally responsible AND I can buy it.

Thank you for your time.

Barbeque Sauce

There is a thing. When life gets hard from injury or illness people bring meals. It’s not just in the bad times either. It can be exciting - like a new baby. However, no matter how happy it is, you still have no energy and are quite possibly crying all the time; so meals are appropriate in these situations as well. I have participated in this making-of-the-meals ceremony many times. I was even a little cocky about my ability to bring delicious food. Lately you have heard me talk about my friend Liz.  That’s because I love her and she is in most of my life. And, in my life, I get up to all sorts of things as you all know… Anyway I got a text with this picture late on Thursday night.

 

 

Her oldest daughter had severely broken her leg and was possibly going to have surgery. This is very sad news; I saw, stretching out in front of them, difficult nights sleeping and long processes just to get a shower. Now since Liz is one of “those" friends - the kind of friend who you can count on, I wanted to be the same for her and wanted to make a meal. Now as recently as six months ago, this would have been no problem: a trip to the supermarket, some scrounging of Campbell’s canned soup from the pantry and viola: a cheesy-comfort-food rice and chicken casserole would have been produced proudly on her doorstep. A very humble "It was no trouble"  would be my answer as they drooled and showered me with praise over my delicious food. Also, I would have made extra so I wouldn't have to cook again for multiple nights. However, about six months ago Al and I discovered several foods that make our stupid bodies worse. Gluten for him and chicken and cheese for me. As a side note here, what the heck is the problem with chicken and cheese? I mean why not protein and dairy products? Don't get me wrong, I’m not complaining that I can still drink milk but it seems odd that I can have milk but not a milk product, right?!  It seems like my body might be lying, like when a kid tells you they are allergic to broccoli and you think something is amiss but you are babysitting and accusing them of lying would be a bad idea. And why chicken and not beef which has always had more inflammatory properties “according to the research”. Anyway this is where it all goes wrong – the research. Recently I have acquired Netflix. (Quite the novelty in this country) and I have started watching documentaries - like, a lot. I am in research mode for my thesis and after watching one documentary, Netflix tells me I would also like “this one” and they are right; I do like that one too and so on. So I am learning heaps!  What I have learned so far is: The governments are completely corrupt; they are trying to kill us; in order to kill us they are poisoning our food, water and cleaning products. Also they want all the money; which is why they are trying to kill us. So this time, when I went to make a meal, I could not think of an easy meal that I could also make for us (they have dietary restrictions as well) that did not also contain poison. I stood in front of the fridge and pantry mentally searching for a go-to recipe. Nothing - just blank space in my head. Then I looked at our messy kitchen and decided I couldn’t clean it in order to cook in it because that would poison us , them and the planet.

 In the end I made barbeque sauce. Yep I mixed together some spices, ketchup and tomato sauce and stuck it in a Tupperware (BPA free Tupperware of course which apparently is not my entire plastics drawer - to my horror. Apparently I just assumed that once everyone knew BPA was dangerous they stopped putting it in plastic – according to the documentaries, NO!). Now this may not have been odd had I put the barbeque sauce in a little jar with a cute checkered cloth lid; but I put it in a Tupperware which then had a tumultuous journey to their house. So it had splashed up the sides and looked a mess.

        As I got in the car I thought to myself how far I had fallen. And I didn’t even manage to make safe food; there is enough sugar in the barbeque sauce to cover their requirements for a year. But I could not come empty handed. I presented her with my ghetto bbq sauce which she accepted gratefully, although, slightly confused. Then she prepared sandwiches for everyone for lunch and a delicious-nutritious-bone-broth-based beef stew for dinner. That had no allergens. So in case this blog is hard to follow: My friend had a difficult week – I made her barbeque sauce – sat at her house all day while she and her husband made me delicious coffee and nutritious food. Thanks a lot Netflix, now, with all the knowledge you have given me, I am a delinquent friend.

 

Puppy School

You get a puppy and people tell you it’s not the puppy that needs training it’s you… I am not convinced this is entirely true.  It seems like for the most part I am perfectly trained. I can go to the bathroom where I should - behind closed doors and into a receptacle that makes it all disappear. Often, not always, I find I am able to greet strangers without jumping on them. Next I feel like, and correct me if I am wrong, if I grab something that isn’t mine and start chewing on it and you say, “Hey that’s mine! Stop chewing on it!” I would stop. If I don’t (maybe I think you are being unreasonable or something and I should be allowed to chew on your stuff) I know for sure that if you are mad at me and try to take the thing I have not stopped chewing on, I would not start a new game where you have to chase me for an hour. Yet I have been told I am the one that needs training.

I have never had a dog so I am willing to admit that everyone else may be right but I am growing suspicious that there is a new conspiracy. Puppies. They came along so cute and the face!! And so much love!! And they are so excited about a teaspoon of peanut butter… or treat… or a stick… or a rock… heck a bit of dirt is AMAZING. So there we are, minding our own business, with our semi-functional lives and the puppy comes along and goes I AM SOOO CUTE! And we are like, you are so cute; and then, when we are all sleeping (sort of because the puppy loves us so much he wants to see us all night) the puppies play subliminal messages that say yooouuu neeeeed trrraaiinniinng… noootttt meeeeee. And we wake up and book “puppy school”.

Now this seems to be a misnomer because I have spent a good deal of my adult life in what we traditionally call a “school”; there is order, assignments and I rarely get any treats. However puppy “school” seems to be an entirely different place. Our new puppy, Sir Percival Bryan Jones, has taken us to puppy school. Now we were told it is a bit difficult for the puppies the first day; they can be quite afraid and tend to hide between their “master’s” legs. I put quotation marks around master because who are we kidding… really? So our new puppy arrives and runs up to the teacher to say hello which means jumping on her and nipping at her pants. Then he spends the next ten minutes, while all the other normal shy puppies arrive, barking and trying to get off his leash to go meet them. Now the other puppies are pretty sure their owners have brought them to the horrible dog place with tiny scary puppies. Then I spend the next five minutes hoping the other people don’t know I came in with this particular puppy by hiding my face in my hands. Thinking if I can’t see them then they can’t see me. Later, it occurs to me if I had convinced them I did not come with Sir Percival they must have been wondering why someone with no puppy came to puppy school. Maybe they thought I was taking it all very seriously and everyone, even those with no puppies, need training. Because clearly we have all been brainwashed. Anyway, all my trying to blend into the background was for naught because they had us sitting on tiny benches like ones for small kittens and my stupid body is in rare stupidity form at the moment; so every time I had to get up or down, Al had to try and control our “enthusiastic” (teacher’s word) puppy and lift me up and down off the hobbit bench until finally they offered me a chair. I kept saying I was fine but apparently I’m not as convincing as I used to be. Or perhaps it was because I was saying I was fine with my face in Al’s chest because I had toppled forward after he helped me up. So it sounded more like mmm firn. Which, as we all know, means please bring me a chair in martyr language.  So now I will be known as the demanding person who brings her own servant to lift her off things with the “enthusiastic” dog.  

           Otherwise what we learned at puppy school (and this is where the conspiracy really starts to take shape) is that treats are for all things. They get treats when they sit and when they lie down. Now this in-and-of-itself should be enough evidence of a conspiracy because really, sitting and lying down are so much of a reward already. So you would have to have a pretty significant network of conspirators and years of planning to achieve this coup. I mean, if I could swing it, every time I sit or lie down I would have little cookies or chocolates hand fed to me. This clearly is an excellent start to a conspiratorial plan. But it got worse and this is where it all was confirmed - a conspiracy in world domination proportions. As they were playing, we had to walk up to the puppies, grab their collar, give them a treat and then let them go play again “immediately” (teacher’s word). So now they were getting food delivered while playing. We humans have things like this but usually we don’t make the delivery people pay for it as well as bring it. In the end though we did learn a little about our puppy; it seems he is the perfect sibling for Amelia. He had to make sure every puppy knew that this place was not puppy school as advertised but a secret puppy Disney Land and he was not satisfied until EVERY puppy had experienced the full epicness of this utopia. There was a very scared and shy puppy that would have been quite happy hiding the entire class. We were told to please not approach her as she had a very bad start to life and approaching her might just send her over the edge of insanity. Percy, pretending not to understand English (as he does often with words like “no”), decided this was a stupid rule and despite terrible starts in life (he himself was rescued from a dumpster at one week old) everything should be fun from now on and he managed to get even her to play. Every once in a while, (between knocking over all the other puppies; it was like his own personal bowling alley) he would sneak into her hiding place and coax her out. Once that job was done and it was time to go, we walked to our car and our little guy planted his butt firmly on the ground refusing to get in the car. They did not teach us what to do with this scenario and we had no treats because they were supplied by the school. Plus we understood his dilemma: he didn't know if he was ever going to return to this Shangri La and staying seemed way better than leaving. So Amelia and I stood guard so the other students (people and puppies) could not see us pleading with our tiny lump of fur to get in the car. In the end we remembered we were bigger than him and Al quickly scooped him up and placed him in the car.

So what did we learn in our first day of puppy school? We weren’t giving him enough treats. So now he gets more treats everyday as we try and coax him into believing we are the masters here. Treats for sitting; treats for coming inside; treats for getting in the crate for a nap; treats for lying on the couch. They have us all fooled I’m telling you. But I must say if you have this unbridled power to control the species at the top of the food chain and you decide to use these powers to get more cuddles, yummy treats, and eventual championship title holders for man’s best friend you can hardly be considered evil. In fact we could all learn something from these guys. Yes I am talking specifically to you cats and corrupt corporations (I see no distinctions between the two species). Why must you always use your powers for evil? What is your problem exactly? 

Here are some photos they are blurry because Percy was moving at hypersonic speed and Amelia was trying to take photos on the sly.

You can see here: Percy barking and straining on the collar while all other puppies sit patiently waiting for orders