No Big Deal

So, you know how when life is just going along and you find the little irritants of the days just grinding you down? It's been a week like that for us here. The dog needed to have emergency surgery, but only on an ear. She has to wear one of those delightful dog collars so that she cannot reach her ear to scratch at it and get to the drain in her ear. Annoying as all get out, but not really all that bad.

The humans in the house both got the flu on the same day and were dying in concert and of no help to one another. Although it would have been nice to have some sort of support system, neither of us actually died, no matter what we prayed for.

I was forced to go out on an errand. I like listening to books on CD in the car. I usually have two books going, one in the car and one in the house. But my one in the house was completed, so I brought in the one from the car. And I didn't want to have to listen to the same stuff over again and I thought there was only a little more than one five-minute track left to listen to before a new CD would be needed.

Instead it was three and a half tracks, but I had my breakfast and did the dishes and then simply sat and listened to it finish the CD. It put me on the road to the post office a little later, but time is my friend and what did it really matter? I grabbed the next CD and got in the car and off I went on a small trip to the post office.

As I turned onto the main road, I saw black smoke coming from ground level, rising for a distance, and then being caught in a breeze and dissipating. The smoke looked oily and menacing. After a minute or so, the black smoke turned into a grayer smoke, then whiter, then white, and then it ceased to exist.

By that time I was close enough to see the emergency vehicles. There were fire trucks and cars and police cars at the scene. As I pulled along side of what had once been a car, I could see nothing but a charred and blackened frame. On the other side of the road was a stunned woman carrying a toddler and holding the hand of a pre-schooler as they walked toward a place with a phone.

She was stunned and not devastated, so I assume the burnt wreck was hers, but that she and her children were safe. I couldn't see anything that looked like people may have been trapped in the car. The emergency response teams were not doing anything that would lead one to believe that anything more than damaged property was at stake.

So I went on my way, secure in my little world of petty annoyances. Happy that my life doesn't include cars burning up around me as I frantically get my children away from any flames.

Perhaps the woman and her children will have nightmares from the event. Perhaps they will, instead, be amazed and grateful that they were not trapped in the car. I am grateful that I don't even have to pick which response as I have my car alive and well and tucked safely inside my garage.

My Dog and Me and God

I have a dog named LC which stands for Last Chance but is pronounced Elsie. Like the cow. She was abused before we got her. I would assume it was because she ate furniture. She was 3-4 months old when she came to live with us and ate two rocking chairs, a dining room table and two chairs there, a loveseat, the carpet, and one sofa. She finally grew out of that phase.

She is MY dog although she will now allow my husband to do things for her. It is our opinion that the father/husband in her first house must have beat her and he probably used a broom. It took a year for her to stop shaking when our father/husband came home.

She was supposed to be a lap dog but she got too big. She still fits on my lap, but not very well. She still loves it there, but my lap can't take it for long. She is a mixed breed and her body is very long and her legs are very short and she mostly looks like kindergarten drawing of a dog.

She is, however, very cute. When her ears are perked up, she looks very smart. Right now she cannot perk her one ear. She has ears that are in some way odd and make her prone to ear infections. I'm used to ear infections and have spent hundreds of dollars over the years on curing them with over the counter and prescription medicines.

This time is different. One half of her outer ear is swollen and filled with fluid. It is so heavy that she can't perk her ears up at all. Well, her other ear perks, but the fluid filled one can't. This started on Friday. In the morning she was fine and I put the cleaning stuff in her ears and all was well. After dinner when I went to pet her head, her ear was all horrible. So I will be spending more money when the vet is back in his office during the week.

My dog thinks that I can and should do everything. I am the person in charge of the food and water and mostly the treats. I can get and dispense cookies and rawhides. I am the one who brings new squeaky toys into the house. I'm the one who plays chase and goes for walks. I'm the one who controls her world. And so she thinks I am the one who has injured her ear.

She is slinking around the house. She won't come when I call. She won't go outside and go to the bathroom. She is miserable and it is all my fault – in her eyes (ears?). When I ask if she needs to go outside, she puts her ears back flat against her head (that part still works) and gets low and doesn't make eye contact. She looks like an abused wife. And all it makes me want to do is kick her. I don't. I know she is miserable. And I know I didn't make her have bad ears.

Is this how we treat God? Things go wrong and we blame him and why isn't he fixing it and fixing it right now? Isn't this all his fault? We did things like overeat and smoke and drink and drive impaired, but hey – isn't God supposed to take care of us?

My dog can't figure out that scratching and digging in her ears is not good for her. I make her stop when I'm home and catch her at the behavior. I use the over the counter stuff to ameliorate the symptoms. But even still, sometimes it turns into a full blown infection. I know this and take care of her the best I can.

I wonder if God, the head honcho, the dude or dudette running the universe, Supreme Being, science, whatever you want to call the thing that makes the chaos be controlled in knowable ways, that one. I wonder if he/she/it ever feels the same way about us that I'm feeling right now about my dog.

Yeah, things aren't always nice. Life is full of stuff that can irritate or hurt or even kill. But that doesn't mean that the overseer is uncaring or unfeeling. Just that you have to wait.

The vet will be in on Monday.

Thanks Angel

I used to play racquetball. When I was 26 I got hit in the eye with a flying little blue orb. By the time I was 39 I had developed a cataract. I could no longer see the E at the top of the chart with my left eye. I have poor vision and have worn corrective lenses since I was ten. My right eye is even worse than my left. Except that now with a cataract, my good eye had turned into my bad eye. I had surgery and they put an implanted lens in and now I could not only see the E, but colors were magnificently bright.

However, I not only am very short-sighted (go ahead, my liberal friends, this is a good place to laugh). I will amend this to near-sighted and I have an astigmatism. That means that even with an implanted lens, I needed something else to correct the blurry, zigzag line thing. Since the age of 16 I have worn contacts. I wear the gas permeable or hard contacts.

After my surgery, I got contacts, but my vision as I said, was poor. In order to read anything, the eye works in mysterious ways. The lens of your eye flattens so that your eye can focus in a different way that allows you to read things close up rather than see things far away. When you have a cataract removed, they emulsify the lens of the eye and vacuum it out and replace it with a little winged disk. The disk does not flatten, it is flat. I couldn’t read at all with my left eye.

I wore reading glasses to read, but to just read something quick, like a price tag while shopping, I would close my left eye and read from my unaltered right one. I was winking all the time. Eventually I tried to get bifocal contacts, but the difference between what I need to see distance and what I need to read with my left eye is too great to make that possible in a contact lens. So I went to monovision contacts. My left eye is corrected (and since it is a long time since my surgery it is now corrected slightly for visual acuity and mostly still for astigmatism) and my right eye is for reading. It usually works.

Thursday my reading on the computer was difficult. I have been wearing contacts for nearly 40 years and I don’t do the heavy duty cleaning nightly. I’m lucky if I do that once a month. It’s worked for me. Usually if I’ve spent too much time on the computer, my contacts get foggy, but the regular solution I use at night makes everything okay. Friday morning I was having a heck of time seeing. I took out my right contact and did the heavy cleaning. I cannot then use it until it has soaked for four hours.

My vision without contacts is odd. I can see things in the distance but they are a little fuzzy because my mind doesn’t completely block out the very fuzzy right eye and there is the whole astigmatism issue. But I can function. To read, I have to have something about five to six inches from my face, but I don’t mind as long as I can read.

I got through the four hours and put my contact back in my eye. My vision still sucked. I tried working all day. At one point I even went so far as to get they eye doctor’s number out. But I didn’t complete the call. My vision was crappy. I had increased font size on my computer but it was horrible. I was confused, but … I was also able to read a book and get through my day.

It was finally bedtime. I always take out my right contact first, I did. Then I tried to take out my left contact. I couldn’t. Sometimes those little buggers move around. I worked for a good ten minutes trying to find a contact. Then it dawned on me why my vision was so horrible all day. I had lost my left contact. So I resigned myself to calling the eye doctor the next day. I looked down at the little throw rug in my bathroom and saw something shiny. It was my contact.

I don’t know how my guardian angel did that. It must have been there all day because I never did see clearly all day. I was in and out of the bathroom, as was the dog. And yet it was safe. I cleaned it with the heavy duty cleaner and soaked it overnight. It was ready and waiting for me in the morning. I actually got it in my eye and my vision cleared up tremendously.

Thanks angel.

I Am Not Making This Up

I mistakenly moved into a development that is controlled by a Home Owners Association. One would do well to notice the word "ass" is included that name as the slang word "ho" and the screech "ow." It is in fact, very painful to be here.

The HOA is guided by a "covenant" that was written up over ten years ago by a group of lawyers far away and not at all involved in the day-to-day part of living here.

One of the rules as written in the covenant is what I'm sure is a typo. Fences may be 4 foot or 5 foot high. Fencing comes in 4 foot and 6 foot heights. Ten years ago vinyl fencing was new and not so good. Today, we can't have them in our neighborhood because they are six feet high and unsightly. Unlike the untreated and decaying wood fences that are popping away from the posts that were not planted into cement and are leaning. Much better.

Included in the community and covered by the annual fees is a pool and playground area. The pool is gated and only accessible if you pay your fee and your swipe card works to unlock the gate. OR if you have friends that let you in.

The playground is a couple pieces of play equipment, a few swings and a couple slides. Unlike the "shoddy and undesirable" area that is close to this community but not part of it and not covered by the Hitleresque rules. Their play area and pool are fabulous and cost over $1 million to construct. Ours looks like it might have cost a buck ninety-eight.

While the pool is locked for the winter, the playground is open. There are fields nearby where kids could go and play football or soccer.

Someone or perhaps many someones are littering while there. This is an abomination and should cease immediately. I even agree with this.

I started asking for a garbage can in November. There was a cry against such an eyesore. And the work! Can you imagine the work? I have also asked if there couldn't be a little doggie bag dispenser for collecting any "trash" a dog at the play area might leave. What, asks the board? That is not our responsibility.

Instead, it is the board's responsibility to complain that people are leaving trash and dog poop at the play area. When I again asked for a garbage can, I was again told that it was too much work and furthermore, the bags were an outrageous thing to even think of asking for. Besides, poop cannot be placed in a garbage can. It must be carried around forever more. Unless you put it in your own garbage can and then I'm not sure what happens. But poop cannot be thrown away in a public garbage can. But if you leave poop sitting around, you can and should be fined and possibly burned at the stake.

So I continued to press for a garbage can because people continue to complain about litter being left at the play area. So I asked if during the summer, the garbage can that is now locked behind the gate with our keys that will not work, is actually used.

I feel like Dave Barry here, but I am NOT making this up. The Board President, a Very Important and Brilliant Person, said not only was it used, but during the summer when there are people at the pool every day – it sometimes has to be emptied twice a week. So apparently people WILL use a garbage can when it is available, but it cannot be made available because it will be used and someone may have to take it to the curb on occasion during the winter months when far fewer people are near the pool area.

We cannot have people using a garbage can! We can only complain if they litter and whine that we have to pick up trash. But if a trash can were there … it would be used. And we simply can't have THAT.