Since the death of our little dachshund, Poni, back in June we have been mourning and looking for a cause of her death. It is profound how large a hole a 9 pound life can leave in your world.
K started looking for another dog after about a month. We had our hopes pinned on a little one from Louisiana, but the woman turned out to be as flaky as grammas pie crust, just no where as good. After several false starts and promises, we had to cancel that adoption. It seems the darling Star, a blue piebald miniature dachshund, had a skin condition called pyoderma, or puss in the skin.
We then tried to adopt an adult from Connecticut, but the woman running the adoption foster group had to leave suddenly to be with her daughter who was, quite ironically, bitten by a dog.
So now we search more, or K does.
A group of rescued puppy mill dogs was sent up to LI and a colleague found a picture of them in PetFinder.com. A little red piebald mini dachshund named Rikki caught our eye. She is small, but chubby and has a story to tell.
I am inferring and assuming many things here, but I doubt I am far wrong.
She was kept in a cage and used as a breeding bitch. If she is 7, as the adoption group has listed her, we can assume the puppy mill operators ( I want to call them so many worse things, but not her, not now) started to breed her around one year of age. If she had 5 litters at 4 puppies each, then she has borne about 20 puppies. She is a little fat from that. Her feet are soft and smooth, not rough like a dog who walks on concrete, grass, gravel, floors in a home. the tiny nails at the ends of her toes are pointed. Any dog that walks on any surface that can abrade, has flat ends to their nails. A white scar crosses from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, a swath with no hair in it. One of the volunteers offered it is probably a bite from another dog.
Rikki is in heat now. They won't spay her due to the increased vascularity in the uteri. Hopefully, she will be spayed today and come home to us tomorrow. But there is still a chance we will have to wait.
We go see her when we can. She relaxed enough, while I held her yesterday, to rest her head on my wrist. This is a very good sign.
I want to bring her home, to live with us and have a chance at a normal and full life as a dog, a friend, not a slab of attractive dog meat that produces money on four legs.
Soon... soon she will be here and integrated into our family.
Waiting is.
C
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Who Knows...
It has been a long ass time since I posted a story.
So much has happened. Puppette blew out her CCL, the canine equivalent of the human ACL and now has a permanent limp since she is a poor surgery candidate.
Poni died in June from kidney and liver failure. We still have no idea what caused this. This was the first time I ever had the gift of being present at the death of my loved friend. Sad and wonderful and painful and amazing and horrible all at the same time.
We are rapidly running up on THREE years here.
I look forward to the colors of fall.
We have seen two Broadway performances, Wicked and Loan me a Tenor, we went to the Jimmy Buffet concert at Jones Beach. Mark Cohn is next month.
We are looking at adopting a rescue dachshund, Rikki, who lived the first 7 years of her life as a breeding bitch at a puppy mill. So we will bring her into our home and give her a loving retirement. She is shy, uneasy around humans and not house trained. Let the challenges begin!
Does any one still read this. Does anyone post comments besides spam bots?
Peace, all.
C
So much has happened. Puppette blew out her CCL, the canine equivalent of the human ACL and now has a permanent limp since she is a poor surgery candidate.
Poni died in June from kidney and liver failure. We still have no idea what caused this. This was the first time I ever had the gift of being present at the death of my loved friend. Sad and wonderful and painful and amazing and horrible all at the same time.
We are rapidly running up on THREE years here.
I look forward to the colors of fall.
We have seen two Broadway performances, Wicked and Loan me a Tenor, we went to the Jimmy Buffet concert at Jones Beach. Mark Cohn is next month.
We are looking at adopting a rescue dachshund, Rikki, who lived the first 7 years of her life as a breeding bitch at a puppy mill. So we will bring her into our home and give her a loving retirement. She is shy, uneasy around humans and not house trained. Let the challenges begin!
Does any one still read this. Does anyone post comments besides spam bots?
Peace, all.
C
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A long time
Since my last post...
I have been looking at the artifice of time.
Why do we parcel and portion the day into minutes seconds and hours. What are days... thos are defined by sunrise and sunset, moon rise and moon set. Seasons are defined by temperature, foliage, growth death and quality of light.
But really, what is a second? What is a minute but and arbitrary 60 seconds. An hour even more arbitrary being built on the shaky foundation of seconds and minutes. Who defined them, where did this dicing of the day light come from.
I am ignorant.
But the older I grow, the faster it flits away on the wings of hummingbirds and snap dragons.
Puppette's face is white.
The floor is lower and harder for both of us to rise from.
There is not enough arbitrary hours in the definition of sun up to sun down to play fiddle, love K, work, love my dogs, train my dachshund, fly my kites, talk to my nephews, stare out the window at a furious passing winter storm with sheets of rain you see in movies.
It goes faster.
When summer vacation came in school, it lasted a long time. By high school it flashed by like a roadside billboard advertising your life while the car sped by at 65 and the windows allowed a whirlwind of sound and smell and activity to mix around you.
I work in geriatrics, by definition people over the arbitrary age of about 60-65. They are defined by years, measured in the farthest most point the sun reaches at solstice in the summer and winter. Summer and winter are defined by heat and life and cold and dormancy. My geriatric patients are young and old in heart. Some stove in and rounded down by the erosion of the seasons and the defined. Some stand slightly eroded to soft edges but still solid and resolute to stand and resist the arbitrary minute, second and hour that pulls away your life.
I am not old. No, in comparison to my average patient, I am still young and alive and have so many things to see and do.
If only there was enough time.
What is time?
What is time.
C
I have been looking at the artifice of time.
Why do we parcel and portion the day into minutes seconds and hours. What are days... thos are defined by sunrise and sunset, moon rise and moon set. Seasons are defined by temperature, foliage, growth death and quality of light.
But really, what is a second? What is a minute but and arbitrary 60 seconds. An hour even more arbitrary being built on the shaky foundation of seconds and minutes. Who defined them, where did this dicing of the day light come from.
I am ignorant.
But the older I grow, the faster it flits away on the wings of hummingbirds and snap dragons.
Puppette's face is white.
The floor is lower and harder for both of us to rise from.
There is not enough arbitrary hours in the definition of sun up to sun down to play fiddle, love K, work, love my dogs, train my dachshund, fly my kites, talk to my nephews, stare out the window at a furious passing winter storm with sheets of rain you see in movies.
It goes faster.
When summer vacation came in school, it lasted a long time. By high school it flashed by like a roadside billboard advertising your life while the car sped by at 65 and the windows allowed a whirlwind of sound and smell and activity to mix around you.
I work in geriatrics, by definition people over the arbitrary age of about 60-65. They are defined by years, measured in the farthest most point the sun reaches at solstice in the summer and winter. Summer and winter are defined by heat and life and cold and dormancy. My geriatric patients are young and old in heart. Some stove in and rounded down by the erosion of the seasons and the defined. Some stand slightly eroded to soft edges but still solid and resolute to stand and resist the arbitrary minute, second and hour that pulls away your life.
I am not old. No, in comparison to my average patient, I am still young and alive and have so many things to see and do.
If only there was enough time.
What is time?
What is time.
C
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Museum of Natural History
We boarded a train in the early morning heat and humidity to rendez vous with the nephew and his dad. Into the steaming NYC we went, passing the smaller towns leading to larger suburbs until we entered a tunnel and came out in NYC, Penn station.
There is a point, in Queens, where you can start to see the sky scrapes from the scratched train windows. I thrill at the sight of the Chrysler Building and The Empire State Building.
The train station is crowded and bustling. In a city with so many people and so few cars, people tend to carry everything through the sub way system.
At Pennsylvania Station, I saw dogs panting and being so nonplussed at the chaos surrounding them as they walked in a good imitation of a heel on their masters left sides. People push or pulled luggage carts with produce, groceries, ironing boards, air conditioners, clothing, one man raced by in flip flops carrying a beach umbrella and a cooler with a beach chair over hsi shoulder on a strap. I love Penn Station.
Then to the sub way. It is so hot and close here. It smells of people and tar and oil and ozone. Trains rumble by with a predictable frequency as the platforms shake and the very loud CLICK CLACK CLICK CLACK of the rails on wheels and undercarriage supports.
We ride in a blissfully air conditioned car up to 82nd street? where we leave the train and walk right to the underground, subway level entrance to the Museum.
Very little english is spoken. We are in line with people from all over the world. I hear french and german and I think farsi or arabic, yiddish... I can't tell you, there was just too much.
The Museum is so busy with people pushing baby strollers, children running around and harried parents trying, somewhat ineffectively to herd them toward the exibits.
The first room is dark and cool. It is geology at its best. Depictions of ejecta from vocanos, layers of sediment and transformed rock that are polished on one side, to show the detail of the inside compositions, and rough hewn on the other sides. you can touch them all, feel the anciant stone in the modern air conditioning. I turn a corner and here is a picture of a familiar formation. It is basalt from the giant basalt flow that makes up eastern Washington State. I reach out and touch a piece of my home 3000 thousand miles from home. I am home sick.
A whirl up a spiral ramp depicting the big bang to the present in universal growth and development. Intelligent design my ass. God started it all billions of years ago and pushed where it needed pushing. But the universe. I fervently believe, is billions and billions of years old and we are just a passing gnat to it, so small, so insignificant, so trivial.
Then a room that defies my concepts of display. A long high wall with branches of the Kingdom Phylum Species Order of biology. A display of crustaceans and shell fish, clams, shrimps, lobsters, crabs. A line of mamals and at the top is my most treasured creature, hidden in a case next to an aardvark or armadillo. I see the first specimen of platypus, ornithorhynchus anatinus. God's spare parts animal and so humble, so far away but right in front of me.
It is now I discover my new camera has killed its battery. No pictures. I run to the gift shop and buy batteries abut they fail so fast. Maybe they are old, maybe my new camera has a short in it that kills batteries so fast. But I can't waste time on this now... soo much to see.
We enter a room so large, so vast that I have seen theaters smaller. Across the cieling is a life sized model of a blue whale. I am back to feeling small and insignificant again, humbled. We look at the sharks, the sea life in displays, listen to wave noises and whale song.
Lunch next in the cafeteria which was crowded noisy and surprisingly good.
Back into history. We are here for one thing, really. K wanted the blue whale, I need the dinosaurs. My ornithorhyncus anatinus was a sweet surprise, but I need to see my child hood love. Here a pteranadon, there an ancient tortoise or turtle so large as to be thought a fakery. A towering lumbering sauropod, used to be called a brontosaurus, now called a brachiosaurus, the menacing Tyrannosaur and the ancient cousin the allosaur. But then, the mammoth and the "irish deer" the largest deer species ever discovered looking like a love child of a moose and an elk.
I am so over loaded. SO much history, so many wonders that I am growing numb to each new discovery. How many times have I sworn under my breath at the seeming impossibility of the wonders I behold? How many times am I reduce to "oh wow" which is no honor or justice to the pageant before me.
A quick trip through a hall with pictures of birds, my favorite, on the walls. An osprey with two rainbow trout, one in each taloned foot, a double breasted cormorant, a coopers hawk with a kinglet in its feet, two bald eagle fighting for a scrap of food, a white tailed eagle being shadowed by a gull awaiting scraps from a kill. But the centerpiece is a majestic and haunting pair of yellow eyes looking straight ahead, at me, with long downward swept wings ending with the first primary wing feathers bent upward form the force of air displaced, an arctic snowy owl flies right at me. I stop and stare and become over full.
The Museum.
C
There is a point, in Queens, where you can start to see the sky scrapes from the scratched train windows. I thrill at the sight of the Chrysler Building and The Empire State Building.
The train station is crowded and bustling. In a city with so many people and so few cars, people tend to carry everything through the sub way system.
At Pennsylvania Station, I saw dogs panting and being so nonplussed at the chaos surrounding them as they walked in a good imitation of a heel on their masters left sides. People push or pulled luggage carts with produce, groceries, ironing boards, air conditioners, clothing, one man raced by in flip flops carrying a beach umbrella and a cooler with a beach chair over hsi shoulder on a strap. I love Penn Station.
Then to the sub way. It is so hot and close here. It smells of people and tar and oil and ozone. Trains rumble by with a predictable frequency as the platforms shake and the very loud CLICK CLACK CLICK CLACK of the rails on wheels and undercarriage supports.
We ride in a blissfully air conditioned car up to 82nd street? where we leave the train and walk right to the underground, subway level entrance to the Museum.
Very little english is spoken. We are in line with people from all over the world. I hear french and german and I think farsi or arabic, yiddish... I can't tell you, there was just too much.
The Museum is so busy with people pushing baby strollers, children running around and harried parents trying, somewhat ineffectively to herd them toward the exibits.
The first room is dark and cool. It is geology at its best. Depictions of ejecta from vocanos, layers of sediment and transformed rock that are polished on one side, to show the detail of the inside compositions, and rough hewn on the other sides. you can touch them all, feel the anciant stone in the modern air conditioning. I turn a corner and here is a picture of a familiar formation. It is basalt from the giant basalt flow that makes up eastern Washington State. I reach out and touch a piece of my home 3000 thousand miles from home. I am home sick.
A whirl up a spiral ramp depicting the big bang to the present in universal growth and development. Intelligent design my ass. God started it all billions of years ago and pushed where it needed pushing. But the universe. I fervently believe, is billions and billions of years old and we are just a passing gnat to it, so small, so insignificant, so trivial.
Then a room that defies my concepts of display. A long high wall with branches of the Kingdom Phylum Species Order of biology. A display of crustaceans and shell fish, clams, shrimps, lobsters, crabs. A line of mamals and at the top is my most treasured creature, hidden in a case next to an aardvark or armadillo. I see the first specimen of platypus, ornithorhynchus anatinus. God's spare parts animal and so humble, so far away but right in front of me.
It is now I discover my new camera has killed its battery. No pictures. I run to the gift shop and buy batteries abut they fail so fast. Maybe they are old, maybe my new camera has a short in it that kills batteries so fast. But I can't waste time on this now... soo much to see.
We enter a room so large, so vast that I have seen theaters smaller. Across the cieling is a life sized model of a blue whale. I am back to feeling small and insignificant again, humbled. We look at the sharks, the sea life in displays, listen to wave noises and whale song.
Lunch next in the cafeteria which was crowded noisy and surprisingly good.
Back into history. We are here for one thing, really. K wanted the blue whale, I need the dinosaurs. My ornithorhyncus anatinus was a sweet surprise, but I need to see my child hood love. Here a pteranadon, there an ancient tortoise or turtle so large as to be thought a fakery. A towering lumbering sauropod, used to be called a brontosaurus, now called a brachiosaurus, the menacing Tyrannosaur and the ancient cousin the allosaur. But then, the mammoth and the "irish deer" the largest deer species ever discovered looking like a love child of a moose and an elk.
I am so over loaded. SO much history, so many wonders that I am growing numb to each new discovery. How many times have I sworn under my breath at the seeming impossibility of the wonders I behold? How many times am I reduce to "oh wow" which is no honor or justice to the pageant before me.
A quick trip through a hall with pictures of birds, my favorite, on the walls. An osprey with two rainbow trout, one in each taloned foot, a double breasted cormorant, a coopers hawk with a kinglet in its feet, two bald eagle fighting for a scrap of food, a white tailed eagle being shadowed by a gull awaiting scraps from a kill. But the centerpiece is a majestic and haunting pair of yellow eyes looking straight ahead, at me, with long downward swept wings ending with the first primary wing feathers bent upward form the force of air displaced, an arctic snowy owl flies right at me. I stop and stare and become over full.
The Museum.
C
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Boston
A short time back, K and I drove up and spent some time in Bean Town.
I have read about Boston, who studying American history has not? But to stand in a city so pivotal and integral to America, freedom and liberty was wonderful.
We drove up through Connecticut and stayed near a casino where we ate at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. We love his restaurants and this one was no disappointment.
Then to Boston. It is a big city, but it drizzled on us off and on for the time we spent there.
The first stop was Old Ironsides. She was one of the most complex models I built as a kid. Undefeated in naval battles with the British, cannon balls bounced off her hull giving her the name. She is the USS Constitution, the oldest still commissioned warship in the world. She was de-masted and undergoing deck repairs, but I realized yet another life long dream/goal by standing on her decks. All the personnel on board her were in period garb and told involved stories about what life was like in Colonial Times on a US warship.
Cannons
The Deck, covered during renovations
A ladder to bellow decks, watch your head!
Then we were going to go to the North Church, to see where the lantern were hung to signal Paul Revere to ride. But Boston is a confusing town. We got lost, my blood sugar tanked so I was useless as a navigator, the Tom Tom GPS was lost and I could not read the map. We left town and got food.
A great brew house pub with marinated staek tips that were wonderful.
Day two took us to the Aquarium and an Imax movie.
A walk to Faneuil Hall brought us to a wondrous mall with shops and vendors, restaurants and food food food.
We saw CHEERS, but opted not to go in.
We walked the Hall and the surrounding area looking for a place to eat. Karen wanted shepherds pie, I wanted a lobster. We settled on a place:
Durgin Park
340 Faneuil Hall Market Pl
Boston, MA 02109
It was not quite the atmosphere we wanted but oh my was the food good.
I ordered a 1 1/4 lb lobster whole. It came and I made quick work of the tail, legs and claws. When our darling waitress came back, I told her this was my first whole lobster. The incredulous look on her face was priceless. She could not believe I had never had a lobster before. I toldl her if she put a whole dungenesse crab in front of me I would know exactly what to do, but I was lobster lost. She had me crack the carapace and pointed out the edible and non edible. It was delicious.
We spent one more night and then headed home through Rhode Island, adding one more state to my inner Magellan's delight.
We stopped at Battleship Cove in Fall River MA, home to the USS Lionfish, a WWII submarine we got to walk through, the USS Massachusetts, a big beautiful Battle ship, two PT boats, the Joseph P Kennedy destroyer and a former East German ship. That was a grand day. The exibits and walk throughs were fantastic.
Then home, with a ride on a ferry boat across the Long Island Sound.
It was fast and wonderous. We can't wait to go back.
C
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Reason...
I started this blog with the intent of chronicling an amazing journey across the USA. When we arrived here in NY, I then used it to point out things that I noticed were different between the east coast and west coast way of life.
I have bitched and complained in a petulantly whiny way about what I do not like out here. I will continue to do that.
And I have posted pictures and tales of a few trips. I have yet to post about Boston, or the WWII submarine and the USS Massachusetts.
But what I have failed to do is post the reason, the real reason, we left God's own heaven and moved to the outskirts of hell...
I have asked permission from all parties, warning them that they will be on the interweb and that it is a big place to put pictures. Everyone of adult decision making age has agreed.
M, at age 5, is a rascal who gets very moody and melts down amazingly well if things are not to the script in his head. He is a real joy when all is right in his world. His vocabulary and conversation skills blow me away.
But then again, all my nephews and my niece have dazzled me with their language skills.
This is T. He is about 2.5 and he was slow to learn to talk. Just after we arrived here, he was diagnoses with normal pressure hydrocephalus. His head was too large for his age and the pressure inside his brain was normal but odd. He can identify every letter accurately, can count to 10 only missing the number 9. He is a love and has a smile that I crossed a continent for.
M and Grandma. Grandma is the energizer bunny. One brain surgery, one minor stroke, one new kidney. Her purse is the lost room at Area 51 I am sure.
Three generations.
Grampa, K and T. Grampa is twice retired and is a trove of trivia and lore. I enjoy this man. He is truly a curmudgeon and I know my friend Nicole would love him too.
The mom of these darlings hates having her picture taken so I did not and continue to keep her un-photo'd. I did not ask the Boys dad if I could post his pic so I am leaving that out for now as well.
And there is one more nephew, J who I did not ask for permission and I have no good picture of. He is 15 and a math brain, excellent student, soccer player and loves to kick my ass playing Halo 3.
We recently went to the latest Harry Potter film with J and his father, who is K's brother in law from her first marriage.
The boys are the reason we came. When it gets shitty, when I am so done with rude ignorant asleep lemming that I want to cry and go climb into The Cascade Foothills and not come out again, I remind myself that we are here for the nephews, and how much fun they can be.
There you go, the reason, or should I have titled this:
The Reasons
Be well.
I have bitched and complained in a petulantly whiny way about what I do not like out here. I will continue to do that.
And I have posted pictures and tales of a few trips. I have yet to post about Boston, or the WWII submarine and the USS Massachusetts.
But what I have failed to do is post the reason, the real reason, we left God's own heaven and moved to the outskirts of hell...
I have asked permission from all parties, warning them that they will be on the interweb and that it is a big place to put pictures. Everyone of adult decision making age has agreed.
M, at age 5, is a rascal who gets very moody and melts down amazingly well if things are not to the script in his head. He is a real joy when all is right in his world. His vocabulary and conversation skills blow me away.But then again, all my nephews and my niece have dazzled me with their language skills.
This is T. He is about 2.5 and he was slow to learn to talk. Just after we arrived here, he was diagnoses with normal pressure hydrocephalus. His head was too large for his age and the pressure inside his brain was normal but odd. He can identify every letter accurately, can count to 10 only missing the number 9. He is a love and has a smile that I crossed a continent for.
M and Grandma. Grandma is the energizer bunny. One brain surgery, one minor stroke, one new kidney. Her purse is the lost room at Area 51 I am sure.
Three generations.Grampa, K and T. Grampa is twice retired and is a trove of trivia and lore. I enjoy this man. He is truly a curmudgeon and I know my friend Nicole would love him too.
The mom of these darlings hates having her picture taken so I did not and continue to keep her un-photo'd. I did not ask the Boys dad if I could post his pic so I am leaving that out for now as well.
And there is one more nephew, J who I did not ask for permission and I have no good picture of. He is 15 and a math brain, excellent student, soccer player and loves to kick my ass playing Halo 3.
We recently went to the latest Harry Potter film with J and his father, who is K's brother in law from her first marriage.
The boys are the reason we came. When it gets shitty, when I am so done with rude ignorant asleep lemming that I want to cry and go climb into The Cascade Foothills and not come out again, I remind myself that we are here for the nephews, and how much fun they can be.
There you go, the reason, or should I have titled this:
The Reasons
Be well.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Juxtaposition
For the first time in many many moons, I went to a dentist.
When I was a kid, my dentist was an older man who had great teeth and was very kind and gentle. Outside his office window was a tree. It was, of course bare in the winter and leafed out beautifully in the summers.
In the Great Pacific Northwest, outside my dentist's office window was a great array of shrubs and a few smaller trees. I would watch the small birds flit around and sit in the trees.
This dentist had a tree outside the window as well. That dentist was also older than me, grey at the temples as well.
A common theme it would seem.
The venetian blinds were closed so I could not see any birds. But the leaves could be seen through gaps here and there.
But the thing that threw me off, it seems to happen more and more often now, the nice young dentist was younger than me.
There is a new gaggle of baby doctors (not pediatricians) has started at the Hospital and they are all way too young to be doctors.
But I stepped out of the dentist office to a hot ass muggy afternoon and was momentarily disoriented. I could have been stepping out of either of my last dentist offices in either city I grew up in.
There was a brief moment when I did not know where I was, when I was...
But as I came around to the oppressive muggy humid New York Long Island summer, I could smile and be happy.
No cavities.
When I was a kid, my dentist was an older man who had great teeth and was very kind and gentle. Outside his office window was a tree. It was, of course bare in the winter and leafed out beautifully in the summers.
In the Great Pacific Northwest, outside my dentist's office window was a great array of shrubs and a few smaller trees. I would watch the small birds flit around and sit in the trees.
This dentist had a tree outside the window as well. That dentist was also older than me, grey at the temples as well.
A common theme it would seem.
The venetian blinds were closed so I could not see any birds. But the leaves could be seen through gaps here and there.
But the thing that threw me off, it seems to happen more and more often now, the nice young dentist was younger than me.
There is a new gaggle of baby doctors (not pediatricians) has started at the Hospital and they are all way too young to be doctors.
But I stepped out of the dentist office to a hot ass muggy afternoon and was momentarily disoriented. I could have been stepping out of either of my last dentist offices in either city I grew up in.
There was a brief moment when I did not know where I was, when I was...
But as I came around to the oppressive muggy humid New York Long Island summer, I could smile and be happy.
No cavities.
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