For the love of grapefruit

Just when I think I'm nearing the end of my rope, believing she would be so much happier, so much better off, housed with a human pack whose individuals do not come and go so frequently without her, and does not confuse her with mixed messages and conflicting commands, Zenzi gives me one good day -- one really good day, and then a not terrible day, and then a pretty good day -- and I think, "maybe, finally, we've got the meds right," or "maybe it's been me and my negativity all along."

Well.

So.

You'd think a holistic guy wouldn't offer his patients candy, but Witchdoctor usually keeps a tin of Altoids on his reception counter. Right there, for the taking, next to a dispenser of zinc & C chewables, is a tin of peppermint Altoids: Serving Size: 3 mints (2g), Calories per serving: 10, Total Fat: 0g, Cholesterol: 0mg, Sodium: 0mg, Total Carbohydrate: 2g, Sugars: 2g, Protein: 0g. Altoids, the curiously strong, 100% nutrition-free breath mint.

He's a nice guy.

He admits readily to his problematic love for carbohydrates. He might as well admit to it; he's been looking more than a little pudgy since I saw him at a party wearing vericose veins-revealing shorts in August. He was huffing a bit and sweating profusely in the heat after climbing the inclined driveway to say hello.

It was a little upsetting to me to see that my doctor is not taking better care of himself. It's personal, because I like him, but it's also bad advertising or at least poor testimony to holistic, chiropractic, naturaopathy when I've been telling MrZ (also attending the party) for years that I wouldn't trust his pasty, fat, pimply MD because he so obviously has no clue about how to take care of his own body. It was my mother, though, seated next to me in an Adirondack who, freed by half a glass of Chardonnay, said, "That's your doctor?"

Who doesn't love a good comeuppance?

Wow. I was going to hyphenate comeuppance, but no hyphen is called for, and what a beautifully uninterrupted parade of letters we now have waving flags and beating drums to celebrate my just deserts!

My doctor looks like shit these days, but I still trust him.

Recently, after he adjusted the Eena's and I was paying the tab, he reached into the pocket of his perfectly pressed trousers and pulled out a container of Tic Tacs:

Sugar, Maltodextrin, Tartaric acid, natural and artificial flavors, rice starch, Gum arabic, Filling Agent (Magnesium stearate), Artificial colors, Glazing Agent (Carnauba wax).

Each Tic Tac weighs just under 0.5 g. Since US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5 g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero, and since a single serving of Tic Tacs is a single Tic Tac, Tic Tacs are labeled in the US as containing zero sugar.

Fascinating stuff!

I said, "Pink Tic Tacs?"

He shook them playfully, smiled at the girls, and said, "Grapefruit -- limited edition -- have one!" They accepted and thanked him and he passed the little soon-to-end-up-on-the-bottom-of-a-polar-ocean-floor plastic box to me.

I said, "Thank you! I love the flavor of grapefruit, but I can't eat a real grapefruit anymore."

"What happens when you eat grapefruit?" he asked.

We were five in the reception area: Witchdoctor, Joe (the Saturday receptionist whom I keep calling "Jeff," or the converse -- I'm not sure), the Eenas, and me. I allowed myself to be graphic concerning my issue with grapefruit. Think CLR Power Plumber.

Witchdoctor said, "Hm. That's usually either gall bladder or liver."

"Liver would make sense." Little smile. From me. To him.

I do still love, so very very much, the grapefruity flavor of a New Zealand Sauv B, but truthfully a bottle of Barefoot will do.

And, yes. Yes I do admit shit right in front of my kids. It's pointless not to because they live with me; they know things. And anyway, lying is bad and omitting the truth is lying, and I've ended up with these remarkably honest kids who actually come to me with the occasional difficult-to-admit-to item, and knowing is one hell of a lot easier for me than wondering or worrying. Just putting that out there. For whomever. For some unlucky Internet traveler who might need to think about it.

So, right there in front of Jeff/Joe-Joe/Jeff and the Eenas, Doc tested my gall bladder. My grandmother's was stolen by unscrupulous surgeons, so I'm glad mine is fine. Then he tested my weak, sluggish, struggling-from-nightly-abuse liver.

Poor liver. I'm so sorry. I might have been kinder toward you, a little more thoughtful anyway, without the built-in loneliness and boredom of traveling husband, or if I had at least inherited my father's tendency toward brutality when drunk, but probably not. There are no reasons or excuses. I do have friends and I'm quite capable of finding ways to amuse myself, and, who besides me would even think to suggest that if only I were a violent asshole when drinking I would not drink? That's just stupid, that's what that is.

And I won't say "never again." Not for nothin' will I say, "never again."

I'm half-finished with this bottle of stuff that smells worse than Valerian root extract. It contains a boat-load of B-12, pantothenic acid, B-6, C, Folate ... blah blah blah ... milk thistle, inositol, betaine, L-methionine, green beet leaf, fringe tree root (I wonder what fringe tree looks like -- sounds pretty), celandine root ... in other words a buncha stuff I mostly never heard of that when combined smells like shit but is supposed to cleanse and strengthen the liver.

I had a glass and a half of Rioja and a snifter of Drambui with MrZ, Saturday evening, on our anniversary. I felt a little drunker than I've felt in years. Not in a bad way. And I did not chase the celebration with a B-complex and 600mg ibuprofen as had become my practice when feeling not even quite that drunk but probably should have been feeling even drunker than that given what I'd consumed between the hours of six-ish and eleven-ish.

Since Saturday the 14th (don't feel like counting days) I've been as relatively sober as I've been in however many years (don't feel like figuring it out, and MrZ is not here to do it for me) it's been since my first trip to New Zealand. Relative sobriety, in AA circles, is not sobriety. It's "dry drunkenness," I think. Anyway, aside from sleepiness, which may be due to another cause, on day three, I think it was, I went a little emo -- I mean there was a near-complete parade of emotions I wasn't expecting.

Rage did not make an appearance, but I did get a little pissed off after having written and sent what I thought was a rather meaty email to MrZ only to receive cracker crumbs in return. You know, "Hello? Did you read one goddamned word, asshole?" but I didn't say that (write that) to him. I mentioned it to Ange, cracker crumbs analogy and all. She got it. Diffused it. Ange the Bomb Squad. ABS. (Gonna order P90-X for the Eenas for Christmas, by the way. They want it.)

MrZ's just like that. Wrapped up in his own stuff. Doesn't realize he's doing it. Makes up for it later, sometimes without so much as a hint. No sense going off on him about it.

I feel good. Overly sleepy on and off, but mostly good.

I'm also wondering two things:

1) What would it take for me, personally, ever to experience the whole "pink elephant" thing my step-father went through multiple times and

2) when this bottle of beneficial stink is finally consumed in its entirety, and I dare to extend once again the timid, self-doubting hand of friendship to Ms Ruby Red, will she accept, or will my little sacrifice, made only for the love of grapefruit, be rejected?

I hope I never discover the answer to the first question.

I fully intend to get the answer to the second one.

By the way, it is not lost on me, I have not failed to consider, I mean, the possibility that my dog feels better and behaves better when I behave better and feel better.

That's not lost on me at all.

Awaiting daybreak

I will be traveling today, on a mission to relieve my mother of some porch furniture she no longer wants. I'll be listing a few items, including Fido's old dog crate, with my local Freecycle group, in order to make room.

I feel reluctant to go but I do need to get out of this town, out of this house, away from this dog, if just for a day.

Blameless, blameless, innocent dog. And she's still so damned beautiful to look at. I mean, if people selected dogs the way they select shoes or purses or wristwatches, Zenzi is precisely my style. If she were inanimate, if I could sling her over my shoulder, if I could wear her jauntily, she would be ideal.

So.

My fantasy is that the doorbell rings. Zenzi takes off, a barking rocket, to see who it is. At the door, I've got her by the collar, commanding OFF-SIT-DOWN-WAIT, which she ignores. I open the door anyway.

On my stoop is a weather-worn silver-haired man. Not very tall, broad shoulders, cinched waist. Compact, taught, solid, strong.

Skinny, fading but creased and tatterless Levis, button-down starch-collared blue striped shirt. Tucked in, of course.

Braided black leather belt, black square-toed cowboy boots.

I haven't decided yet about his glasses. I'm thinking Ray Ban aviators, but they're either perched atop his crew cut or slipped into his shirt pocket. He's polite like that. He wants me to see the honesty and kindness of his clear blue eyes.

He says, "Good morning."

I say, "I'm sorry. She won't bite, I promise -- unless you've got a schnauzer in your hip pocket."

He says, "Sit."

She sits.

He says, "Stay."

She stays.

I say, "Wow. That's never happened before."

He says, "I'm here for my dog."

"Pardon?"

"She's mine. There was a fuck-up. You got her. I was supposed to get her. I had dibs. Car trouble. Goddamned Toyota."

"I don't see a Toyota. I don't see a car at all."

"I walked. 156 miles."

"But you look so ... fresh and crisp."

"Good posture, good hydration. You should try it."

"Would you like a glass of water?"

"Thank you, no. I'm just here for my dog. Please."

"You really don't want her."

"Of course I want her. She's mine. She's was always mine. It took me forever to find her, and now I've found her, and it's up to you to do the right thing, so just do the goddamned right thing, lady, so I can hit the road and get back to my quiet, solitary life."

I'm speechless.

He continues, "Look. I'm a retired marine drill sargeant -- no wife, no kids, no cats. I'm off the grid. I pick up my mail monthly from a PO box. I raise ostriches. I like my life but it won't be complete until you let me have my dog. Goddamn foxes are always after my flock. Zenzi's late for work."

And since he's put it that way, "Zenzi's late for work," I have to let her go.

Sun's up in 13 minutes. Time to kiss MrZ goodbye.

Hello, hello.

Some things have changed, some have remained the same.

First, at the request of Eena the elder, our custody arrangement has been significantly altered. For years -- nine years, I think -- during the school year, the Eenas have been with me only from noon Fridays through 8am Mondays, with an occasional weekend off, and during all school holidays and all but a couple of weekends during summer vacation.

Why I ever agreed to this arrangement may deserve some discussion but the temptation would be to point fingers and I will not point fingers at those I blamed. Simply put: I was stupid.

At the first realization that I had been stupid I asked, politely, and without even a hint of desperation, for a return to our original custody arrangement. This was six years ago. The Eenas' father's response was unkind: he called me an unfit mother and said no. I won't offer here his ridiculous explanation of this assessment but I will assert that he was speaking from his asshole rather than from his heart. Who's never done that?

So. Since September we, meaning I, have been enjoying a new custody arrangement. We split custody more or less evenly, two weeks at a time, thus reducing transitions and the stresses that transitions bring, and this all came to be because Elder Eena made some brilliant arguments for it.

At the moment I'm in the dead center of two weeks without Eenas sleeping under my roof. MrZ has been away, in Palm Desert/Palm Springs for a few days; his travels continue despite business being slow. Beanpole is away at college. Myrtle's at home with her family in East Lansing. Moose stops by now and then between shifts.

***

Cubby, Redeeming Past and Future Acts

1997 - September 28, 2010

Our Foster cat, Cubby, was hit and killed by a speeding car at 10:30 at night, just as I was drifting off to sleep. MrZ alerted me to the accident. I was dressed and by Cubby's lifeless side in less than five minutes. I examined him -- making sure, you know, making sure because there was so very little blood, only a telltale pool of urine and absolute, undeniable, pulseless stillness.

I scooped him up gently, sealed him in a large plastic bag, and placed him on a shelf in the freezer in my garage. Nobody wants that phone-call at 10:45 at night; nobody wants to say, "Can we put this off until morning?" The next day I arranged to return him to his original, ultimately allergic family. Offered the option, they decided to bury him at home alongside their collection of once-loved bones: Jazzy, Cubby's predecessor; Sonny, the Australian cattle dog; and a horse whose name I never could remember because I was always pre-occupied with judgments about oats and hay purchased on revolving credit or some such typically-me holier than thou bullshit.

The above photo was taken by Beanpole's mom, on Beanpole's bed, the night after her cancer diagnosis. Her wife was traveling for work and she did not want to be alone with her diagnosis. Cubby slept with her, in the room where he had never before been allowed, the entire night. This is the picture I sent to the eldest daughter of Cubby's original family -- the daughter who resented her mother for sending him to live with me.

We had struggled with him. He was a handsome bruiser of a cat, tormenting Ivan and Koko and Zenzi at every opportunity, often leaving nail sheaths and blood behind. He shredded our upholstery and defecated and urinated in younger Eena's closet.

But. He also did this one very good thing: he comforted Beanpole's mother through a very long, very dark night.

***

There were some notable dogs in my childhood: Fang, the Doberman across the street who had to be killed for biting a child; Laddy the Springer Spaniel who received the yelp-producing sting of my father's Daisy pellets for pissing holes in my father's weedless lawn; Jo-Hunny, the Cockapoo whose too often too-soft dogpiles I dodged while mowing, free of charge, his divorced mistress's crabgrass; Zippy, the Cocker (so fat she looked like a small, black ottoman) who growled and nipped if ever I got too close; Honey, the other, slimmer, tawny Cocker with goop-filled eyes who was too stupid to realize her tether was not attached to a post so she stayed in her own yard anyway, smelled so foul -- so unbelievably rotten, that it was impossible ever to drift off during sleep-overs at her home; Hobo, the three-legged Chihuahua next door who yapped incessantly when I arrived home from school unless I quieted him with peanut butter on crackers; Cleo, the always drooling Basset Hound, who was so endearingly ugly with her bloodshot eyes and full acre of sagging coat that she was actually worth luring (most effectively with a steak bone, but a bit of bologna sandwich would also do) the entire block back to her own yard before Dad could get his pellet gun down from the closet shelf just in case she showed signs of squatting. The yelping Springer Spaniel was upsetting. A yelping Cleo would have killed me on the spot, she was just that pathetic.

I think my dad liked dogs, actually, even though a dog was the reason he wore a plate in his mouth. He removed the plate from his mouth to brush it and the nicotine-stained porcelain right maxillary lateral incisor attached to it. At some point after his permanent teeth had come in, he was playing a rowdy game of tag with neighborhood kids and Rusty, an Irish Setter. Dad tripped on a section of uneven sidewalk. He face-planted: bloodied lip, missing tooth.

That trauma did not prevent Dad from fostering, for the Lions Club, Vicky, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, scheduled for service dog training. Unfortunately, Dad spoiled the shit out of Vicky -- turned her into 70 pounds of tableside-begging, bed-hogging lapdog. She flunked out of leader dog school. Mom wouldn't have her back; we had no fence, no room for a dog to run, and too many piss-holes already in our weedless, postage-stamp lawn.

I was probably sad. I'm sure I had forgiven her for scratching the cornea of my right eye -- it wasn't her fault that my face had gotten in the way of her bouncy-pouncy excitement. My injury was not the reason she was going away, I'm neurotically sure of that. Anyway, I was five or six or seven when I learned that getting attached to the dog you were so happy finally to have because everybody else had one is simply an unwise thing to do.

And here we are again.

Here I am, again.

A Fifty-pound Heap of Heartbreak

Zenzi is, we hope, mending. She's been on medication for a soft-tissue injury, most likely a pinched nerve, in her back.

It's an injury that is likely to recur throughout her life due to the imperfect development of her spine.

She was prescribed Prednisone for inflammation and Valium for sedation. The Prednisone seems to help. The Valium does not work at all, even at double the prescribed dose. In fact, Valium does to Zenzi what Xanax did to Zenzi: it renders her hyper-social and just a little too busy for her own bodily good.

"If this is true," one might ask, "then why is she resting so cooperatively in the above picture?"

I took her off the Valium. The truth is, she's pining.

The minute MrZ takes his luggage from the closet, she becomes sad. She follows him closely as he packs his bag and refuses to go near her crate when it's time to take him to the airport. Even if we take her with us to the airport, and she watches him disappear into the terminal building, the entire first day of his absence, and for two days after, she looks for him every time we go outdoors, much the same way she looked for Cubby after he was killed. She finds MrZ's scent and drags me along his winding, leaf-raking, mail-fetching paths. If his car is here, she sits by it, looking at me imploringly, refusing to come when called. She does not want to go for a walk and she does not want to go back into the house. She wants her daddy to come home.

On the fourth day of an absence, the searching stops and despondency sets in. Her appetite wanes. She doesn't want to go outdoors. She doesn't want to get into his car. She balks at the very idea of a walk any further than what is required to accomplish elimination.

Once upon a time, I thought I could turn myself into a dog person.

The truth is, I am a cat person who went to the trouble to learn some things about dogs in order that I might get along with them better. Learning too much put me at odds, at times, with some people who consider themselves to be dog people. When it comes to human-dog relationships, it's hard for me to ignore the dog's point of view. Respecting the dog's point of view has taken some work.

Cats, I get. Entirely. I feel a strong kinship with them. I have to talk myself out of assigning them inherent superiority.

Oh, come on! How long have I been walking across your piano keys in the middle of the night? It was never a secret!

We are all very well aware by now of my aloof and arrogant sides, not to mention my willingness to purr and knead for personal gain. My antics have never been for your amusement, but for my own exercise. Spelling it out like this proves, perfectly, that I don't know which side of the door I want to be on. Some people hate cats, after all, and no person really wants to be hated, does she?

I have no interest in coming when called, no inclination to sit on command, no desire to fetch, roll over, play dead, or least of all stay. Two measured meals a day is bullshit. I will eat when I'm hungry and sleep when I'm tired, and if there's a barrel of brandy strapped around my neck, damn straight I'll drink it rather than deliver it -- unless I really, really like you, in which case I will gladly share it, but I might ask you to shake my hand before I fill your glass.

Like it or not, this is who I am.

I wish I had fully realized all of this, and accepted it completely, and understood the ramifications of it, before I went looking for a canine companion, before I first saw and immediately felt sorry for Zenzi.

My vet likes to say that I've "bent over backwards for," "busted my ass over," "been to hell and back with," my dog. True or not, her assessment simply does not matter. It does not matter because Zenzi is not happy with the comings and goings of my people. Her only constant of any measure is me, and the more I realize this the more resentful I become of this feeling, that with her long list of idiosyncrasies and complications, I have no choice but to stick around and see things through.

I could have gone to Colorado last month.

I could be in sunny California today.

I could have agreed to a trip to Paris, or New York, or Virgin Gorda in two weeks.

I'm curled up on the couch, fighting the urge to sharpen my claws on its upholstery.

Dogs deserve a dog person, a real dog person rather than a mere wannabe -- a dog person that will prioritize providing the constancy of a pack.

***

Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello.