Not letting the dog lie

 

He's a liar. I love him so much, but Sparky is just not being fair or telling the truth.

You might have read his most recent claims about us here and I want to defend myself and explain a few things.

First, we let him sleep on the bed, so much so that he often pushes me off the edge of my side and he takes my blanket. I do nothing about it because, well, frankly, I'm scared of him. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and he's sitting there, watching me, glint in his eye. I mean, he's cute and all but I wonder if he's planning something.

I often ask him in the morning if he wants to go out. He growls at me and snaps. He likes to sleep late so I let him and he gets let out on his schedule. He goes out and uses the facilities and I wait for him to come back in on his schedule. If he wants to hang out, I let him. Then when he comes in (on days when I'm home) we sit together on the sofa or I make a little bed for him in a sunbeam so he can relax.

I try to ask him throughout the day if he wants to go out (I don't want any accidents in the house!) but usually he just sits there like a lump, rejecting the offer unless he hears a squirrel, a dog, a delicious child or a particularly noisy leaf outside. Then he runs to the door and I run after him to open it up. If I could teach him to open it, I would but 'til then, I'm the doorman.

He also does not eat his food so much. Part of this is my fault. When I eat (because of my low-carb diet) I focus on fats and proteins. Sparky thinks that there are two food groups -- fats and proteins so he constantly asks for my food and I indulge him. I eat chicken, he eats chicken. I eat hamburger, he eats hamburger. I eat eggs, he eats eggs. I eat fish, he eats fish. Bottom line is that he eats my dinner at larger volumes than I get to. But I spoil him because I'm afraid that the sentence will read "I eat my own food and he eats my face while I sleep."

But we also fill his bowl with one food that he is willing to eat. But he doesn't just walk over to the bowl and eat -- he plays this game where he sits in the middle of the room until someone gets between him and his bowl. Then he runs to the bowl and growls, "defending" it. Weird, right. But if you walk away to let him eat, he won't eat. You have to return to his bowl and pretend to block his access and he growls and snaps louder and louder. Eventually, he starts to eat, once he feels that he has "earned" it through showing how brave he is. I get a headache from the noise and find it very inconvenient, but if this is what gets Sparky to eat, nothing is too good for him. But anything he says about not feeding him simply untrue. He will look at me while he is still chewing the last bite of cheese and make a face that says "you never give me anything!" Hello! You are still eating what I just gave you, Sparky! 

He is like a boy dog version of a teenaged drama queen. So please, don't believe him. We treat him very nicely and he has anger issues. Thanks for your understanding.

two tired

I got a flat tire yesterday.

Thank you for your sympathy. Fortunately, the weather was nice and there was ample room for me to put on the spare so I spent 20 minutes in the evening air and moved on with my life. Just slower and more carefully.

This isn't the first time I have gotten a flat. This particular car seems to have a tendency to invite flats. Behavior that other cars laugh off, ours takes personally. I know, it isn't the car, but the tire, right? So the tire should stand up to how the road rages, but I think that the car is insulting the tires, making them more likely to be deflated.

So a few years ago, I came out of a gas station and had to merge onto the highway. I didn't quite clear the curb so I popped 2 tires -- both on the passenger side. I found my way to the local branded tire place and waited and waited, and then paid and paid. I shelled out money for 2 new tires and made sure to get the warranty because, you know, tires.

Yesterday, after putting on the donut (and before driving away) I called said tire store to invoke the warranty. 

"Come on in," they said, "and we'll take a look." So I did. And they did.

I was told that this tire was not one that was covered. Strange, I thought...this is the same place on the car -- front right. Why wouldn't the tire be the same? I got lucky, though. He checked in the computer and found an earlier incident which required that this tire be changed so I was covered, just not because of the more recent incident. While I'm happy that I will get a slight discount on the replacement tire, I'm confused. Why wouldn;t the tire be covered based on what happened more recently?

Then I saw it -- and a conspiracy theory was born. And I thought, what better place to post a conspiracy theory than on my blog? So here it is.

When they replaced both passenger side tires, they also rotated them figuring "if this is where this guy gets flats, he is likely to get another flat in these tires and we will have to keep servicing him on the cheap! We should move the tires around so he won't be covered!" And that's what they did. they moved the new tires to the driver's side (I have yet to confirm this by looking at the serial numbers as I'm afraid that this might destroy a perfectly unreasonable conspiracy theory) and moved the driver's side tires into the passenger spot.

The joke was on them, though, because an even earlier incident had forced them to replace the driver's side tire, so they still had to honor the warranty! This is a hollow victory and I'm still going to be out another hundred bucks (plus time, energy and my dread as I drive on the donut), but at a certain point in life, I celebrate the hollow victories also.

Stop depresses

 

I'm not going to feel bad. Understand that. I am a mean old man and I lack certain sympathy for those situations which seem to reflect things that really aren't that bad.

In this part of the world, we are subject to limitations on our behavior because of the current pandemic. Masks, distance and a reduction of social contact. Word has gone out from some quarters that we need to be especially concerned about our young people and the sense of despair and depression that these limitations will engender. 

Oh, boo hoo.

Am I being callous? Maybe. Are there those already saddled with depression whose feelings this will exacerbate? No doubt. But they need not be isolated in any extreme way and their needs do not need to be ignored because of the current rules about school, religious outings and personal contact.

And I hate to turn into the old man who starts sentences with phrases like "when I was a boy" but, Hell, when I was a boy, we survived without the constant contact with peers afforded by technology. If you lived someplace distant from your friends, then from the time you left school to the time you returned to it, you simply didn't have contact with your friends. I also had significantly fewer TV channels, little to no internet or equivalent and much more rudimentary electronics to amuse me. And yet somehow I emerged with only the garden variety of emotional trauma.

Have we raised our children to be so dependent on interpersonal contact that they can't adjust to standing a few feet apart, not having sleepovers or (heaven forbid) spending time with their own family or reading a book? Are they starting so debilitated as to suffer incredible harm if we tell them to sit outside and a bit away from others instead of in the basement, sprawled out with legs intertwined? Can they not adjust to the new normal of wearing a mask and being aware of their bodies during the day that they must cry themselves to sleep at the loss of I don't even know what?

Some break the rules. Some also break other rules and we come down on them when appropriate in ways that are appropriate because we have these rules to maintain social order and well-being. If that means that a kid can't spend his sabbath afternoon playing basketball with his friends and maybe has to stay inside holding a conversation with a parent, then so be it.

Those who are in that exceptional category and do need to have clinical issues should have them addressed, but that is not the rule, so let's start expecting that our children are less fragile and explain to them that they are doing their part to protect lives.

And if WE can't follow the rules because we find them unfair, illogical or onerous, then we have no one to blame but ourselves when the laws become mandate and absolute. And we are probably the ones who have been poor role models and poor parents so we can't expect any better from our children.