All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

Well, folks, we're trying again. In spite of the Cookie debacle, we've continued to feel like we want a second dog.

I guess I don't know what you all are thinking, but I know a lot of people would wonder, "Haven't they learned their lesson?" But we're dog people, and we really are good dog owners. (And we were with Cookie, regardless of what the rescue kooks think.) Freya has been talking for a long time about wanting a golden retriever, and Matt is quite fond of them as well. So I started watching Craigslist to see if the right dog might show up.

It's possible that we've found her. This is Daisy:

Her owners need to get rid of her because the economics of having 3 kids and two dogs isn't working out, and they can't legally downsize kids. Daisy is 2.5 years old, spayed, and has had some professional training. Matt went over this afternoon to look at her and was slightly smitten, and called me with a positive report. When I got home, we loaded Freya up and went to look at her as a family. The owners offered to let us give her a 2-day trial, and after asking lots of questions, we accepted.

Daisy has mainly been an outside dog, but is (ostensibly--cross your fingers) house-broken. She and her brother lived outside, either in the backyard or in a kennel. But the family played with them a lot, and she seems to be superb with kids. Freya has kissed her on the lips many times already. You can tell Daisy didn't get quite as much interaction as she needs, though: she had a bunch of matting in the hair behind her ears and on her tail, so I gave her a good grooming. If we keep her, I'm going to give her a full-on summertime haircut.

We're hoping she passes a good night tonight. She isn't crate-trained, but our plan is to have her in the crate with Grover in another crate right next to her. If that goes well, we're going to take her by our vet tomorrow and have him check her health. It'd obviously be the shits to get a new dog and find out she's got hip displaysia or something.

So far, she's been magnificent. She's extremely mellow, gentle, and quiet. She really liked it when I was grooming her. (And holy crap, I'm going to have to buy a Furminator--she sheds Persian carpets worth of hair.) Right now, she's laying quietly by Matt's feet on the patio.

Wish us luck with this!

Freya and I watched the newest iteration in the "Scooby Doo" franchise tonight. It just premiered this month, and we had some of it DVR'ed.

There's...been some changes. For one thing, the animation is a little different. It's fine, just different. Additionally, Casey Kasem isn't doing Shaggy's voice anymore, and that's flat out annoying. I don't know what kind of money he was asking for, but they should have either given it to him or not done the show.

But the biggest thing? The worst thing? They're putting Shaggy and Velma IN A RELATIONSHIP!!! Yes, I'm shouting! It's totally squicky! That's like...like...dating your cousin or something. People are just going to feel uncomfortable about it.

I actually wrote e-mails to both Warner Brothers Animation and Cartoon Network about it tonight. I've been watching that damn show for over 25 years, and lord knows we have every Scooby movie and half the episodes on DVD. (For Freya.) They owe me their ears at this point.

Shaggy + Velma = No thank you

I am seriously trying not to waste a minute of time soaking up culture here. I mean, I am definitely focusing on my training, but once we get dismissed, I'm out pounding the pavement.

Today at lunch, I walked across the street from the training and went through part of Millenium Park, where I saw The Bean:

The sculpture is actually called Cloud Gate, and was inspired by liquid mercury, according to Wikipedia. It's enormous and you can walk all the way under it. At the center underneath, there is an omphalous or navel, which creates a strange optical illusion with your reflection being multiplied and distorted. It's very cool, and I find it really beautiful. I've been trying to find a replica to take home with me to use as a paperweight or something, but haven't had any luck so far.

As I stood there at The Bean, I heard live classical music coming from elsewhere in the park. I walked toward it and found a huge amphitheatre with an orchestra rehearsing. I stopped at an information booth and found that it was the Grant Park Orchestra, and they frequently rehearse during the day. Anyone is welcome to come watch and listen. Even better, they offer free concerts many evenings during the summer. You can bring your picnic blanket and food and just sit out and enjoy. I have a ticket for reserved seating for tomorrow night's performance!

After the training session, I jetted over to The Art Institute of Chicago to check out the gift shop, just looking for a Bean replica. I didn't find that, but as I browsed the shop, I realized that my all-time favorite piece of art (besides Freya), The Great Wave off Kanagawa was housed there. How could I not pay the $18 to go look at it. Unfortunately, the museum was closing a mere 20 minutes later, but if you pay for a ticket that late on your first day, they let you go in all the next day for free. I didn't have time to look at a map, so I just followed my nose. My nose didn't lead me to the picture, but here's what it did lead me to:

Renoir

Van Gogh

...and Seurat. When I walked around a corner and saw this painting, my breath was literally taken away and my heart just started hammering. I don't know how to explain away the feeling. Maybe it's partly because it is so damn LARGE. And, as much as it pains me to admit, it is iconic for my generation. Why? Well, if you must know...it's the scene in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" where they're at the Art Institute and Cameron has sort of a tragic break-through moment while staring at this painting. Maybe that makes me a dork; maybe it just means that I was pretty isolated from true culture when I was growing up. Regardless, it's a moment I'll remember forever--when I was there.

I'll be heading back to the Institute tomorrow, both during lunch and after the training, in search of The Great Wave. I may just sit there and goggle at it as long as they'll let me. I am terribly excited to see it.

Greetings, people of the ether! I'm writing to you tonight from downtown Chicago, where I sit in my hotel high above Michigan Avenue and listen to the taxi drivers honk at each other like they were OCD sufferers checking to make sure the Easy Button was turned off. Seriously, if you do not turn wheels the instant the light changes to green, you're going to get your ass honked at by at least five people. What tickles me is that cars five and six spaces back honk at you, as though the first four people in line aren't going to honk at you fast enough or loud enough for you to get the message. What a town!

Matt, Freya and I came back to Wisconsin last week to attend Matt's brother's wedding, which was wonderful. We spent our first few days visiting the family and sunning our buns beside Potter's Lake, and then all migrated to Chicago yesterday for the wedding. I have stayed behind to attend a training for work, and Matt and Freya returned to the northlands this morning for a few days before they join me back down here.

In the meantime, I met up with a dear friend of mine--she is actually the general manager of this hotel, so I have a pimpin' suite to myself. The movie "Transformers 3" is filming literally right behind the hotel, so we've seen a couple of the sets and lots of the associated trailers, rental equipment, hired security shills, etc. No movie stars yet, but seriously, it's the third movie in what I don't think has been that successful a franchise, so I'm not holding out big hopes.

Anyway, tomorrow holds more training for me, and then I'm going to go exploring in Grant Park and also check out the old library building. If I can make it, I'll cross the river and check out the Magnificent Mile, as well. See you in the funny papers!

In e-mailing with a friend of mine tonight, we discussed mental health. She mentioned being worried about taking pills that she'd had prescribed to her for (well, I didn't get the exact details) what I assume is depression/anxiety. She said she didn't want to take them, possibly because the stigma around them.

So here's the thing: we're all batshit crazy. We may be normal, highly-functional, few bad habits, etc., but every last one of us has some kind of mental disorder. I really do believe this. It's just that there's this stigma about it, and either people don't analyze their situations closely enough to realize they have a condition, or they're afraid to mention it to a doctor, or they've been getting treated for years and just don't talk about it outside a close circle of friends.

That bugs the hell out of me, frankly. We, as a society, cannot get better if there is this feeling of judgement about mental health issues. So what can we do? We can talk about it. We can normalize these things. I'd love it if someday, "Hey, baby, what's your disorder?" became a pick-up line. And the responses: "Oh, you've got an addictive personality? You should meet my friend--he's an enabler, loves dogs and is a newpaper editor."

In all seriousness, I think about people trying to deal with these problems on their own, without the support of the medical community, or even their own personal community, and it makes me so sad. These things that I'm doing (in taking my anti-anxiety medication and getting counseling) are helping me a lot. I am an extremely functional person and I do a lot of things really well. But one thing I can't do is get past some issues all by myself. Some of them are chemical in nature, and the medication addresses that. Other things are part of my growing up and how I learned to deal with pressure, and the counseling helps me with that.

Blogging helps, too. Having an outlet and sometimes an audience helps me put my thoughts in order and having to explain those things to someone else helps me gain clarity.

So here's the deal, folks: embrace yourself and those things that you might think are weaknesses. I'm certain you came by them honestly, and I'm certain you're totally normal. Even if you have a diagnosis, you're nothing but a little farther ahead of the rest of the people out there who don't acknowledge their problems or can't get the help they need. You know how there is a spectrum for the disorders like ADHD and Asperger's, and they say that really we all fall on it somewhere? I think the same thing holds true for things like anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, PTSD, etc. We're all in the same boat. And we're all batshit crazy.

I've been pondering what life lesson to draw out of this experience with Cookie, and I think I'm finding it. It's going to be an extremely hard one for me to really manifest, but I know it's in my best interest. Bear with me through the explanation, here.

When I first called the nicer of the two rescue ladies and told her we wouldn't be keeping Cookie, she sort of read me the riot act. While polite, she harangued me about us not taking appropriate action to address Cookie's problems (I'm not going to get into whether she was right or not). After hanging up with her, I spent the next day or two feeling really bad. I didn't feel bad because of what she said, though. I felt bad because of what I perceived she thought. I believed she thought I was a bad person.

That thought niggled at me enough that I brought it up with my new-ish psychologist when I met with her the week before last. She said, "So what if she thinks you're a bad person? How does that affect you?" I said, "Well, clearly it bothers me." She said, "Do you want everyone to think you're a nice person?" I said, "Of course...shouldn't I?" She went on to explain that it simply isn't possible for every single person you meet to like you. Even the Dalai Lama has people who don't like him--hell, probably a lot more people than I do. Does that mean he's a bad person? No, it just means that people have made judgements about him (or me), and judgements aren't always correct.

The psychologist recommended a book to me, and it echoes what she went on to tell me: I need to cut myself a whole lot more slack. The book talks about doing some self-care and nurturing, and I'm starting to realize I'm really bad at that.

It's not that I don't indulge myself with a new shirt, or that I don't go to the doctor (or shrink) when I think I need to, but that I don't take care of my self and I need to start showing myself the same courtesy and decency that I give to others. One thing I absolutely hate to see people doing is judging one another, especially from a fleeting impression. It seems so foolish to me that a snap judgement can be made (and believed) about a person based on their dress, their way of driving, the way you perceive they act in a store. We're never all at our best, and if someone sees me in a bad moment, I don't want them to think that's who I am the rest of the time.

When I feel that someone has judged me and labelled me to be a bad person, it strikes me so deeply. I spent a long time Friday night crying my heart out because I was so hurt that the scary woman had called me names and clearly judged me to be bad. A big part of me quickly believes that I must be bad. If someone sees me as bad, how can I see myself as good?

I'm starting to see that it comes in large part from my religious upbringing. There were no shades of gray in the Jehovah's Witnesses. You were either a good Witness, or you were going to burn at Armageddon. The actions you took were either good (because they demonstrated your godliness and your ability to follow doctrine), or they were bad because they were outside of the rules. There were no mitigating circumstances. Let's remember these are the folks who've taken an obscure part of the Mosaic Law stating that blood mustn't be eaten and turned it into thousands of people dying because they weren't allowed by doctrine to accept blood transfusions. Bleeding to death? Jeez, that's a real shame, but a great opportunity to "make a good Witness" and die for your beliefs that a blood transfusion is akin to eating blood. Maybe you'll convert a doctor or a nurse!

These days, I don't judge other people by those dark standards. But I see that I still judge myself that way. I think the lesson that I take out of the Cookie experience needs to be that, in spite of how things sometimes turn out, I'm not just a good person: I'm a person with all shades of light and dark in me, and all of those things are okay. I need to accept myself, and when I've done that, it'll matter much less to me how others perceive me.

Today was a very good day, and boy, did I need a good day. Yesterday was simply insane.

There I was, minding my own business, when I got a very hostile phone call from one of the ladies with the rescue agency we'd adopted Cookie from. In spite of the deadline we'd given her of Sunday the 11th to have Cookie rehomed, they'd had other dogs to prioritze in the foster program, and they hadn't found a place for her. So the lady asked me if we'd board Cookie while we were on vacation. I said we would not, as it would be a great expense for us. Things went downhill from there, ending with her hanging up on me.

I was pretty irritated about the whole thing, and got to wondering what on earth we'd do if the rescue didn't come pick Cookie up on Sunday. I talked to a lawyer friend of mine, who advised me to write them a letter documenting the timeline of Cookie's adoption and all the communication we'd had with them, and then state that if they didn't come and get her, we'd consider the adoption agreement null and void and would take Cookie to the pound the following day.

While that does sound harsh, I knew it was time to let them know we were very serious about them holding up their end of the agreement. As I may have mentioned, the agreement said that if it didn't work out with the dog, that we'd surrender her back to the rescue as opposed to rehoming her ourselves. I wanted them to hold up their end.

Well, I pissed off a crazy woman. with that The woman we'd been dealing with previously was fine, but her partner went wiggity-wack. She sent an e-mail calling me a manipulative con, and stating that once they had Cookie back, she would take care of me. Literally, she wrote in a comment to the nice rescue lady, "Once we get Cookie back, I'll take care of her," meaning me. Not knowing what the hell she meant by that, I had myself a little freak-out. I had no idea whether she meant that as a physical threat, or if she thought there was some sort of litigation they could take against us.

Matt calmed me down, though he acknowledged that she'd very definitely crossed a line and made a threat. The nicer of the two ladies had given us her address and a time to drop Cookie off at her home Sunday, so I simply replied back that we'd have Cookie there at the appointed time.

When I woke up today, I determined that it was just going to have to be a much better day than yesterday was. I went out for an appointment this morning, and came home to find two young people in our house checking Cookie out. They said they were looking for a high energy dog to be friends with their three year old boxer, and they fell in love with Cookie at first sight. They loaded her up and took her home with them.

I'm still in sort of a state of shock. I'm very happy that nice people showed up and felt an immediate connection with Cookie. I'm very happy that she's what they were looking for, and that she's going to have a happier life as a result of being with people who can better meet her needs.

However, I'm still scared of this kook with the rescue. What the hell is she planning? Most of me thinks she's full of bluster and is totally bluffing. Another part of me is pretty freaked out.

It's strange; I told Matt several months ago when Cookie was in a very destructive phase that I was still waiting for the good karma that I thought would come after adopting a rescue dog. I think I'd better give up on that... Still, I hope to figure out what the life lesson is from all of this.

Since I had my IUD out, my period has returned. Oh, I should have mentioned for my two male readers, this might be one of those posts you want to avoid. On the other hand, Sisyphus and Delmer both dive right in to posts lableled this way, and often have interesting insights, so...whatever.

The period has got me thinking: how did humans evolve with the messy menstrual cycle we have? If the females in your tribe are hemmoraging five days out of the month, aren't they much more likely to attract predators?

I've come up with a few thoughts; they aren't explanations, but they are perhaps related to our current views of menstruation. I'm sure there's research on this somewhere, and I even posed this question to Jen at BlagHag to see if she had any thoughts on it. In the meantime, all I have are my own musings:

1. I'm sure our female ancestors spent quite a bit more of their fertile years pregnant and/or breastfeeding. Both of those things stop or greatly limit the frequency of menstruation. So there was actually a benefit to the female or the tribe (from a prey standpoint) to be procreating--if you bleed less, you're less of a target. Then there's the whole obvious evolutionary benefit of more breeding equals a higher survival rate for your species. So while it doesn't explain why menstruation didn't evolve OUT of the human species, it at least gives us a reason to find ways to do it less.

2. Then I got to thinking about how a menstruating woman could need greater protection from her tribe. You're bleeding, you're attractive to predators, and you need to stay close to the tribe so that you can get the protection from your peers. In many ways, I see this as being debilitating to the notion of female independence for many millenia. Maybe once predators stopped being so much of a risk to women in increasingly hunted/industrialized areas, notions of female independence really were able to gain a foothold because the need for protection wasn't so strong.

3. I understand that many cultures once isolated menstruating women, labeling them as "unclean." I wonder if that originated because of the vulnerability as prey. I can see it happening in a couple of different ways: one might be in order to have all the menstruating women in one area in order to be able to defend it better. Alternatively, setting them apart from the rest of the tribe might keep the tribe safer during that time, since that which draws the predators would be kept away from others. Since women in close-knit social groups all tend to start cycling at the same time, I'm more inclined to think it's the former; it might be more desireable/survivable to all menstruate at once so that those who were isolated together could be defended. You're also less vulnerable as an individual when you're in a group, even when the rest of your group has the same lure as prey.

So there you have it. My deep thoughts on the evolution of our species with everyone's favorite Aunt Flo. Do you have any corresponding thoughts of your own?

Here I sit at the end of the Fourth of July weekend, wondering where it all went. And wishing I had a three day weekend every week, but who among us doesn't wish that? Only the people with four day weekends, I suppose.

We didn't watch any fireworks at all, with the minor exception of a few kid-friendly things I'd bought to share at the home of friends tonight. I'm not really into the pyrotechnics, much. Some of it is having to work so many holiday weekends when I was with the Forest Service, and by the time my work day ended at 9:00 at night, I was so damned sick of damned people and their damned holiday, that I sure didn't want to watch any damned fireworks. I just wanted them to go back to their damned homes and leave me in damned peace.

Another reason is my JW upbringing, and the fact that we didn't get to do Fourth of July. As JWs, you put a great deal of emphasis on "putting God before man," and "not showing allegiance to a country or its symbols." (This is also why I have never said the pledge, including now, after leaving the religion.) The Fourth was a time when we were told that all the (literally) damned went around worshipping their flag and their George Washington, and this strange notion of Country. We pure ones abstained from the whole thing, and sat home relishing in our self-righteousness.

So, I can't say I get into the holiday that much. I still cannot fathom patriotism, frankly. I know this bugs a lot of people when they know it about me, but I don't know what to do about it. I think there are a lot of really good things about America, but I'm certain there are just as many good things about a hundred other countries around the world. Just like people, there's good and bad in each nation--I certainly can't say mine is the best, especially because I have never lived anywhere else. How would I know?

This is absolutely not to rain on anyone's parade--I'm glad that people get excited and are happy and having a good time. I definitely enjoyed all the time we spent with friends this weekend, and hope that everyone was safe and happy.

Just because I don't "get it" doesn't mean I'm not glad for those who do. I hope you and yours had a wonderful time and that no one got their fingers blown off.

I hope you guys don't get a chance to get tired of hearing me stress about finding Cookie a new home. We're less than a week into it, and it's causing me lots of worry and frustration. Which is kind of weird, because she's been here for the last six months--it's not like we're not used to her at this point. It's just one of those deals where you finally come to a decision, and then you end up having a lingering resolution to it that is very trying. I'm one of those people who just rips the band-aid right off, arm hair be damned.

Cookie's "ad" went up on the Rescue's Facebook page on Monday night, and by Tuesday night we had an appointment with a lady who came out to look at her yesterday. She seemed really nice, but she was a little shocked at how big Cookie is. (She's very leggy and tall, which speaks to her having some strange mix in her--maybe greyhound, like the trainer guessed.) I hadn't heard anything from her one way or the other, though she'd been talking about fostering Cookie rather than adopting, and so I sent her a gentle e-mail tonight asking if she was still interested. Unfortunately, she isn't.

It's a huge bummer. I want Cookie to find a place where she's going to be happy. I want us to be happy, and I want our stress levels to drop. Soon.

Please send good thoughts that we'll get to the right outcome soon.