Wagon: The thing that I get off and on depending on my mood.

Yesterday was day one of not being a lazy-ass whiner chubby-bunny face-stuffer.

Really. After more than a week of sleeping 10-12 hours a night, and evenings spent in the company of my couch and a bowl of spaghetti (Really, at one point a friend stopped by, and I was watching Sex and the City in the dark, eating a bowl of spaghetti, in a filthy house. He asked, "Where's Roomie?" I told him, monotone, "He's out of town." My friend looked around the room and said, "So, are you just pissing and shitting yourself where you sit, too?" "Uh huh. I'll clean it up before he gets back.") I've decided it's time.

Yesterday, I did my first pilates class in ages, and discovered my that one of my instructors' sister is a poet. Now, when I heard that, I thought, "Oh, poet. Uh huh. Sure. I'm sure she's a real good poet." But it turns out she recently won a prize I was familiar with, and was recently published in Poetry, the journal I have a collection of going back to 2007. She's a real muthafuckin poet, y'all. Not sure why that matters, except to think that there are real poets out there who are related to real people I know somehow lets a tiny light into the black-ass darkness that's descended over my head, Eeyore-style. (Poetess also apparently went to college with a close friend of mine, who doesn't know the pilates instructor. It's all very strange in my world. Everyone knows everyone. Especially ex-boyfriends.)

Then this morning a good friend came and met me and Margaux to walk That Damn Butte, as I decided to name it. "Somehow, today, they made the road to the top extra long and extra steep," I thought all the way up, as my friend's ass disappeared ahead of me as the road curved around the butte. I think it may have had something do do with a) Only getting about 5 hours of sleep last night b) Did I mention all that couch time? All that delicious, wonderful, yummy nummy snoozy couch time? God, I could go lay down right now ... and c) All those cigarettes I've been smoking.

Gasp! Cigarettes! The horror!

You're telling me. I am starting to get wrinkles, people. And even though I quit smoking for almost five months recently, my stupid face decided to start the shadow of one of those heinous smoker lines around my mouth. The thing is, I have a real purdy mouth. Or at least I used to! Wah!

Anyway. One self-improvement project at a time.

Everything sucks

I thought about not writing about this here, because it's just so depressing. But I have to. (How's that for a winning lede?)

Wednesday morning last week, I went to wake the dogs up and let them out, and right away knew something was wrong. Rio (of turd fairy fame) had moved a few steps from the bed the three dogs share, and was lying on the floor on his side, whimpering quietly. His front legs were quivering. When I moved to the door and called the dogs, as I do every morning, he pushed up on his front legs into a sit and looked at me.

"Rio, come on buddy," I said. He tried to push forward, but that was it. His eyes were wide. He tried to shove forward, but his bum stayed put.

Now, I've lived with Rio for a year. Roomie's had him for six. He's a little bit of a drama queen. A hurty paw, a tiny sliver in the pad, could leave him three-legged. A subtle breeze could elicit a squealing plead for mercy.

But this was no drama queen moment. He was paralyzed from mid-waist down.

Over the next couple of days, the vet tried a few of the less expensive diagnostic and treatment options. But the prognosis wasn't good. There was little hope for recovery. He was going to be paralyzed. He was going to be incontinent. And his personality wasn't going to change; he would still be an anxious little guy. The kind of dog who, at the slightest bit of stress, would lick his paws raw.

And now, as he pissed all over the pee-pee pads we'd tucked underneath him, shitting medication and stress-induced diarrhea all over himself and his bedding, it bothered him. He fretted. He tried reaching his back side, tried licking himself clean. He buried his head in his paws when we were cleaning him.

You see where this is going. We decided to put him down. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever been a part of -- and I won't even begin to imagine or explain what it was like for Roomie.

Now for the part where I piss off the cat people: Dogs are a bigger deal than cats. Sure, cats are companions, and they're sweet, and they can be affectionate, and I can really see why some people are "cat people." I mean, dogs are a pain in the ass. Hooboy don't I know it. Dogs smell. Dogs can be a liability. They make it hard to go away, even for a weekend. They kill people sometimes. But cats aren't dogs. Dogs have soul -- and I don't mean they have something crafted by god that other animals don't have, I'm staying away from the whole god argument. I mean they have the kind of soul James Brown talks about. Dogs totally look at you and see you, all Avatar-style, whereas cats look at you and you might as well be a lamp. Perhaps your cat looks at you and sees a lamp that gives good belly rubs or a lamp that puts food in his bowl, but you're still a fucking lamp.

The last morning we had Rio, we took him to McDonalds and bought him an egg McMuffin. We took him to the park and pet his velvet toffee ears. And we stayed with him until the end. If you've never put an animal down, you can probably imagine what it's like, and how much it sucks. I thought I could imagine how awful it would be before I had to go through it on Friday. But here's the thing: It's so much worse.

The day we put him down, I went to the going-away party of one of my best friends, who's moving to Utah (Utah, for chrissakes). The next morning, my Roomie left for most of the next month for work. Oh and the gee dee tire store called and won't put my summer tires on because they're bald and 'we have a nice tire we can put you in for $6,000 and why don't you also bend over for us lady.'

I think I'm going to write a country song. I'll start with something about how I haven't been sleeping right. How at first, I can't get to sleep, then, in the morning, I want to stay in bed all day. I'll also write about filling up two bowls with breakfast instead of three, and about Margaux pacing the back yard with too much energy, looking for someone who wants to play.

And now, with apologies, here are some pictures of Rio. He was even cuter in person.

Miracles

When I visited Ssadie in Idaho last summer, I was a runner. She was not. She'd go to the gym with me and hike with me, but the few times I tried to get her to run with me, it just wasn't happening.

But since I've been down with this (motherfuckinggoddamnitshit) heel injury, she's picked up her running shoes. Oh, and roller skates, too, since she's now a derby queen.

This weekend, she ran her first race, a 12K. She love it, of course, and came back with this little story:

About .5 mile from the finish I heard a man clapping and hooting (like a gazillion other spectators). "You're all amazing, keep going!" he cheered, "Almost there, it's a blessed miracle you're running today!"

I turned my face to send him a weary smile, and I saw him; an old man, perched awkwardly on a stool. He was an amputee.

It's hard to run and cry at the same time. fyi.

Toldyaso!

I tried to take pics from the top of the butte this morning, it was so clear and lovely and the mountains were spread out against the blue sky like meringue, but my camera sucks and you couldn't even see the gee dee mountains in the pics. WTF?

So, here's how I shall entertain today: Serial's back, bitches!

Check it out at Datingisweird.com.

Shit

Best part of today's outing? When Margaux rolled in human shit.

Wait, did I say "best"? I meant worst. Yup, that was the worst. I couldn't even bring myself to look when Roomie took her over to the pile to be sure she knew what she was in trouble for. But I'm also a lil pathetic; her terrified yelps when he dunked her in the creek to clean her off still sort of broke my heart.

Another awesome thing about when your dog's wearing human shit? Being paranoid that she's going to brush up against you for the rest of the day. Because she has shit on her. Human shit.

And why do dogs like to roll in shit, anyway? Google tells me it may be to mask her smell so she can hunt more effectively, but, hello Margaux: Humans are the most dangerous animal on earth. Masking your pathetic little 45 pound dog smell with the smell of shit from some redneck who doesn't know not to leave his turds and toilet paper in the woods isn't going to help you catch a squirrel. It's going to make the squirrel think that a) you may be a human, so you may have a gun and b) you've been drinking Budweiser, so you're probably in a foul mood.

Okaaaaaaay

It's Tuesday, and my big plan for the week is already blown. The big plan wherein I wake up early every other day and walk as fast as I can up the hill behind my house. Except, you know, the hill behind my house is Pilot Butte.





(I like the nasty industrial stuff in the foreground from this pic. This town was suuuper classy in 1984.)







I know it's only 500 feet up, but -- wait, yup. 500 feet is a lot. Or it feels like a lot in a 20-minute fast walk. Especially at 6 a.m.


Anyhoo, here's how I've been entertaining myself this week:

Blogsite soundtracks via Frequency (Click the button! You know you want to!):






Imiagining the awesomeness of living in New York and thus being able to participate in Karaoke Chatroulette, a combo of everyone's favorite things, jerking off and karaoke, over at Unapologetically Mundane.




Watching Date Night with the Roomie, and beginning to plot our next Halloween costumes: Sex Robots. Also, in case you were wondering:





(Yes, please.)












Oh! And if you miss the dirty dating blathering of everyone's favorite nearly-defunct blogsite, DatingIsWeird.com, know this: Good things are on the way. New guest editors, a new look, hell, maybe even a post or two.




And lastly, if you, too, are depressed by craptastic weather (it's snaining here today), and you don't already know who The Snuggler is, go check it out. I'd embed the video, but everything I try keeps on not working, and it's really pissing me off. So now I have to go watch it on a different page, because the weather and Adult Swim are out to get me.

Also, if it happens to be nice and spring fresh where you are, please shutupaboutit already.

Schadenfreude

If I was feeling whiny about my stupid heel injury, I got a dose yesterday of how much worse it could be.

A girlfriend of mine came over to show off her favorite new toy:



(That is not my friend. She is actually quite attractive, has a very full head of hair and doesn't live stepford village.)









She has the knee scooter (name brand: Kneal. You know, get on your knee while you heal? Get it?) because she just had surgery to fix a broken metatarsal in her foot. She broke the foot by dropping an anvil on it. Yeah. An anvil.




(don't worry, she's aware of the hilarity of the situation)











You know who else gets anvils dropped on him?








This guy.








But honestly, watching her scoot merrily on the hardwood floors of my living room the other night I was impressed. "Check out the action on this thing!" she said, flipping a gear and letting the back end of the scooter spin. "The brakes are better than my bike. And it has a basket!" she said, loading up the salad dressings from the fridge to carry into the dining room. In her eyes, the scooter was a modern marvel in comparison to the bane of crutches.

And this is someone who has a lot of reason to complain. She recently got accepted into nursing school and was just embarking upon a hectic six weeks in which she'd try to power through 10 weeks of classes (while also packing up her belongings) in order to hop states in time for the beginning of her first term -- for which she hopes to begin in a walking cast and cane. And these are not easy classes, the kind I favored in college. (Sociology, anyone?) There's, like, sciencey stuff. Chemicals? Anatomestry? Something like that. She told me, but I wasn't listening because I was too busy bitching about how hard my life is with my sore heel, my tight hamstring and my annoying little dog.

I think I need to take a lesson from this one.