Life with a Dog

Two significant events influencing my general health happened early this year: I started working a full-time desk job during the day on top of my teaching in the evenings; and my housemate moved in. With two jobs, my personal time has all but disappeared, so I don't do as much hiking, biking and paddling watercraft, and well, my housemate happens to be a fantastic cook... and he cooks a lot... and I always feel compelled to finish everything.
Sometime between April and September, I gained ten pounds. I didn't even see it coming. I woke up one morning and my pants, which had previously been too large and always fell down if I didn't tie the string around the hips, suddenly fit! And there was a definite pooch. And, for the first time ever in my life, the extra weight didn't go away when the school year started (I teach PE).

I actually teach a weight control course, and practicing what I preach is proving to be something of a challenge, at least from a food intake perspective. Go figure. The good thing is that I now have a jogging companion in the form of an akita/lab/border collie, which makes the exercise part easier, because labs and collies are working dogs with a lot of energy!

Because of my work schedule, I admit I don't do much with Piglet during weekdays. But last Saturday, after my morning tea, I decided to take Piglet for a spin around the neighborhood. I leashed her up, grabbed a couple of plastic bags, and headed out the door.

It's been years since I've walked a dog, but I have to admit Piglet is much better on a leash than most of my dogs were. Still, she pulled a little. We headed west toward the downtown area, past a little corner church where they were holding a fundraising rummage sale. Most of the ladies saw a big, black dog heading toward them and drew back in fear, but Piglet strode on by with barely a glance in their direction. She was on a mission!

As we got to the downtown area, there were more "dog" people out and about, so they saw a black lab with its tongue hanging out and a smile on its face and were completely relaxed. Piglet pretty much ignored them too.

Things went so smoothly, I took Piglet jogging on Sunday morning! This time, we barely saw anyone. I guess most people were in church at that point, since I think it was around 9 or 10am.


With dog on leash, I'm hopeful that the health issues will turn for the better.

New House Member

I got a puppy by proxy last week! Technically she's my housemate's dog, but since we're all there together, it's almost like I have my own dog. She's an akita/lab/border collie, about 8 months -- the 'mate was hoping for a pre-trained adult dog, but this one was confined to a kennel and so sweet that he couldn't say no to her.

We have the cats locked up for now, because she's still a little excitable about new things, but she has seen (and chased after) them. She chased my housemate's cat down the hall, up and across some bookshelves, and to a cat tree, where she proceeded to bark... and bark and bark and bark while the cat glared and growled. The cat now runs to my room, into my closet, and up a chest of drawers and some shelves to the top shelf of my closet whenever the dog is out and about in the house.

My cat hides under the bed and tries to make herself as small and quiet as possible. I figured with the 'mate's cat up on the shelf and my cat under the bed, the dog would be okay nosing around my room while I changed yesterday. As I started to pull on my pants, the dog found the cat under the bed and started barking and trying to scooch under the bed to get to the cat, so I had to drop my pants so I could pull the dog out from under the bed. 

My housemate runs into the room to see his topless housemate, with her pants around her ankles, clutching his yipping dog. If it weren't for the fact that the dog was still lunging for the bed and he knows my cat hides there, it could have been bad!

Devil's Slide

On the way home from work yesterday, I drove down the coast highway over Devil's Slide, which I haven't done in awhile. First, it takes about twice as long to get home that way. Second, parts of the hill the highway is on keep falling into the ocean.

But yesterday was nice, not too hot, not too cold, so I put the top down on the car and let the wind whip my hair up into a huge, un-tanglable (yeah, I know that's not a word) mess. This was the first time I'd driven Devil's Slide in the convertible. I'd always been in my beat-up CRX, hoping the car wouldn't lose a critical part while navigating the curves! With a sounder machine and an open roof, I actually had a chance to enjoy the ride and take in what is truly a breathtaking view -- waves crashing up against sheer, high cliffs, the seemingly endless view over the ocean. I was truly in awe of what nature is capable of producing. I'm glad I made the detour.

Since I was passing by, I headed out to Pillar Point Harbor to see what Captain Dan had on the Seabird. I buy fish off the Seabird, because Dan has a friend, Ron, who has a dog I like to play with. Alas, Ron, and therefore the dog, weren't there that day! Capt. Dan had a couple of 30+ pound king salmon, way too much for my housemate and me, so I opted for a couple of the live rock fish they had swimming around in a couple of barrels. They pummeled the fish to death for me so I could get them home, and instead of paying the couple of bucks to have the fish cleaned, I decided to do it myself.

I got the fish home and started scaling. Rock fish have large, thick scales that are pretty stubborn to remove. And then came the gutting. I haven't actually cleaned a fish in over 20 years, and the last fish I cleaned was a rainbow trout, much daintier than a bass! The guts were clinging to the fish with incredible tenacity, and everything was kind of slippery. I tried to sever the connective tissue with my knife, and failed miserably, so I just wrapped my fingers around them and yanked! Guts and scales flew everywhere -- counter, walls, floor, my shirt, my face, my hair... I had on gloves, but the ick managed to work its way down into them. I smelled like fish guts the rest of the day. Next time, I'm dishing out the two bucks for the professionals to clean the fish.

Driving in Strange Places

I have two jobs. I work my full-time day job, then head straight to my part-time night job. I leave my house at 8:30 am & walk in somewhere around 12 hours later. The way my time off has worked this year, I have 4-5 days for vacation, starting in a week and a half. It took until a few days ago to figure out when I'd be able to go, so now I'm scrambling to find someplace I can go last-minute within a few hours' drive or flight that isn't too expensive. I have two options so far: see my friend in Seattle; and get lost in the woods for a few days.

The friend has first priority, since I can pretty much walk in the woods anytime and I haven't seen him in about a year, but he won't know if he can spend time with me until this week (even if he can, I'll probably be on my own most of the time). I don't know the area at all, so, I'm relying on him to find a hotel for me, but he said I'd probably want to rent a car.

I was hoping the transit system would be decent or I could hoof it, because I have bad luck driving in new areas, particularly in cities. Middle of nowhere? No problem! But cities have hazards like pedestrians, cyclists, one-way streets, non-parallel streets, narrow alleys, no u-turns, heavy traffic, road rage. Plus, parking is practically non-existent in most cities, and when you can find it, it's expensive.

Some things that have happened to me while driving in unfamiliar cities...

...I was in a line of traffic at a dead stop in New York, and the guy behind me starts leaning into his horn. We're all completely stopped, so no one is going anywhere. He continues for a minute, then gets out of his car, walks up to mine and points to the space between me and the car in front of me, as if moving up three feet will make a HUGE difference in the flow of traffic! It was hot, I didn't have air conditioning, he was big and hairy and I was alone, so I rolled up my window, locked my doors and grabbed my tire wrench in case he decided he wanted to beat me up (hey, I wasn't going down without a fight).

...I was double-parked in Manhattan picking up my housemate at her parents' apartment, and a delivery van that was turning right cut too close and took off my rearview mirror. Okay, I wasn't lost and it was my stupidity, but I'd have never found the right parking garage without my housemate and I had to pick her up somehow (this was before cell phones).

...I was leaving Burbank airport and the instructions I had told me to turn left on some street to get to the freeway. I see the street name, turn left... and see the freeway entrance to my right, on the other side of a solid divider and I can't get over. Apparently, I was supposed to turn left at the NEXT light instead of the one I took and the streets seem to have the same name. The street I was on was busy and had a solid divider line, and it took awhile before I found a street where I could turn around and come back -- I couldn't turn right to get to the adjacent street because the berm seemed to go on forever (or maybe it was a railroad track or one of those freeways that's been built up, I'm a little fuzzy on that). A few months later, I was driving the same road with one of my bosses, who has the map, sees the intersection and says "Turn left!" I kept going. "You missed the turn!" If he made the same mistake I did, I guess I don't feel TOO bad about it.

Car wash

I washed and waxed my car yesterday, and I must say it looked good -- clean, shiny, smelling of Maguire's (that scent is almost lickable).

This morning, the pitter-patter of water hitting ground brought me to a gentle state of semi-wakefulness. Wiping the sleeep from my eyes, I threw on t-shirt and slippers and padded to the kitchen to start hot water for tea, then continued to the office down the hall, which faces the driveway, looked outside and saw... my car! Forgotten to put it in the garage last night. Grabbed keys, ran outside dressed only in t-shirt and flip-flops to save the wash job, but alas -- mud had splashed up from between the widely-spaced bricks and grime had splashed down from my neighbor's tree. I sprayed the ick off, parked in the garage and wiped it down.

Ran back into the house on numb feet just in time to answer the phone.

My boss: "Could you drive to the other side of the bay to pick something up?"

My heart sank as outside, the gentle shower turned into actual rain and the wind suddenly picked up. Couldn't tell him I'd just waxed my car and besides, I was cold, wet and wanted to hang up to jump into a scalding shower.

Me: "Sure, no problem."

I washed my car tonight...