lost and found

the escapee

on sunday, charlie escaped.

he decided that the lady walking by the boyfriend’s mom’s condo with her baby in a stoller and leashed dog posed a threat to him and to the entire family and he needed to be the brave hero and save us all from… i don’t know.  but he did.

so he pushed the screen door open with his little flat face (someone *ahem* had not closed the door completely) and made a break for it.  the neighbor in the townhouse across the way apparently saw the fight my little a-hole dog was picking and managed to somehow capture him and put him in her fenced backyard.  i didn’t know any of this was going on as i was upstairs in the boyfriend’s room watching it’s always sunny in philadelphia dvds while indulging in my greatly deserved, in my opinion… and probably only in my opinion, sunday afternoon nap.  it wasn’t until my cell phone started ringing over and over (i ignored the first call because the caller id revealed a 1-866 number which i assumed to be a d-bag phone salesman hell bent on ruining my coveted sunday nap), but then i saw that this strange number had left a voicemail which i still chose to leave for later since i again assumed it was probably just blockbuster harrassing me about returning a dvd that, yes, is severely overdue, but honestly who the hell cares– blockbuster’s probably going the way of circuit city and tower records anyway so fuck off.  but then my dad’s name flashed on the screen and i love my daddy and don’t ignore his phone calls so i answered and dad said that home again pet recovery (the people whose microchip lives in my precious pooch’s neck fat) had called the house to alert me that charlie had been found.  well, i didn’t know charlie had been lost so the idea that he had been found seemed ludicrous and i immediately ran downstairs and interrogated the boyfriend about where the fuck is the dog, when was the last time you saw my dog and what do you mean you don’t know??!!

panic quickly replaced any semblance of rational thought even though the reality of the situation was that charlie had already been recovered- someone had already found him and called the home again people with his id number which he wears on a little yellow tag on his harness.  however, this fact did not comfort me.  rather i chose the hysterical mother whose child has been kidnapped and the kidnappers have just called to make their ransom demands route and acted accordingly: nutso.  i pretty much just hung up on my dad without thinking and tried with shaking hands through ragged sobs to dial the home again number from my voice mail, which had told me to select option 1.  well, i kept hitting 1 until the button practically jammed and i finally (it felt like minutes but it was literally seconds) got connected to an operator who i told my story to and charlie’s id number.  he then connected me to the lady who had charlie and i tried my best to keep calm as we spoke but my voice wouldn’t stop shaking and i was starting to panic even more because as the panic rose my irrational brain began to send me messages that this woman was not the good guy– she was the bitch who stole my fucking dog.

i wandered out the front door sort of aimlessly looking for the townhouse she said she lived in but i don’t live in the damn community so her telling me in her bitchy, exasperated, just-come-get-your-asshole-dog voice that she lived in townhouse number 2 wasn’t exactly helpful.  for all i knew townhouse number 2 could have been on frickin mars.  but this pretentious bitch acted like i must be a grade-a moron not to know exactly where her precious townhouse was located.  as it turned out, it was literally maybe 50 feet away.  i made the boyfriend go the door because by now i was not only puffy eyed, hysterical and barefoot (a la amy winehouse minus the crack addiction and enormous beehive), but also pissed off at this woman… that may have been an irrational reaction, but at the moment i couldn’t care less.

i. just. wanted. my. dog. back. now.

he did so and was led to the neighbor’s fence door and out came charlie all la-dee-dah, like, “oh hey guys what’s crackin?”  the boyfriend placed my beloved pug in my arms and i clutched him to my chest, buried my face in his neck and bawled.  i didn’t even take one look at the woman who pretty much saved my dog before rushing back into the house with my baby, ran upstairs to the boyfriend’s bed and sat rocking my dog back and forth in my arms while i cried and cried and kissed and hugged him until he started to wriggle, which made me squeeze him even tighter.  finally, i let him go, he gave me a look like i had lost my mind, which i guess i had for a while, and ran back down the stairs.

the whole thing lasted about 10 minutes.

i curled onto the bed and wept because i felt like part of my soul had been torn from me and because i knew that the whole thing could have gone down so differently.  what if someone had taken charlie’s harness off since he was just in the house and didn’t really need it on?  what if the dog he fought with (it wasn’t until the next day that i realized he had dried blood in his fur from a small puncture, probably from the other dog’s tooth, on his neck… it’s probably best that i didn’t notice the injury until the following day or it might have thrown me into another hysterical fit) had mauled my little dog who thinks he’s much bigger than he is?  what if that lady hadn’t called the home again service and just kept him or sold him?  what if he had run away farther to the busy street and been hit by a car?  what if i hadn’t gotten him back so soon, or not at all?

i’ve thought about the reality that dogs don’t live forever and wondered how i’m going to handle charlie’s eventual death (knock on wood, cross my fingers that that will not be for at least 10 to 15 years from now)… this incident suggests that i may not handle it so well.  i will most likely become a basketcase for at least a month, possibly requiring sedation or at least heavy doses of very strong anti-depressants.

so, yeah, luckily everything turned out fine, panic wasn’t exactly necessary, but for those minutes that i knew my dog was not with me i felt my life crashing around me.  i mean i always knew i loved my dog, but now i see how deep that love and devotion runs.  i need him.  he’s a source of comfort, a snuggle buddy, a friend i can talk to who always looks at you with sympathetic eyes.  dogs love you unconditionally and i realized that day how much i loved his squished face and bulgy eyeballs and the way he sneezes right in your face.  i never want to feel like that again, but i know i can’t be with him 24/7 and that someday i may have a new reason to panic.  hopefully next time i will not hyperventilate, but rather approach the situation more like the boyfriend who remained cool as a frickin cucumber, although at the time i accused him of not caring enough about the dog, but he was right because really he was never lost.

and i, for the first time in many many months, shot a little prayer up to god, thanking him for bringing my baby home safely.  and that microchip was the wisest investment i have ever made in my life.  if it weren’t for home again, well, i don’t want to think about that.  but thanks home again.  and neighbor lady i will bring you flowers this weekend to say thanks for rescuing my dog from a fight and getting him back to me, where he belongs.

stinky pugs, “slumdog,” and straights against prop. 8!

exclamation points elude to excitement or something interesting, but i’m sorry to disappoint you all because this particular exclamation point is misleading. don’t stop reading, i’m just trying to be honest about the content of this posting.

my dad fed my dog something that is making him fart a lot and really stink-ily. they are of the “silent but deadly” variety. so basically every few minutes the odor of rotten eggs wafts up to my nose with no noise to announce its imminent attack. i literally do not want to bring him to bed with me. the farting in itself is normal; he’s a very gassy dog owing to his random diet of organic dog food + whatever people feed him off their plates (i am just as guilty of this as anyone, i just tend not to feed him things that i think will contribute to his fart-iness). he also snores, so the farting and the snoring make for one very unpleasant bedmate. well, it’s not his fault so i will not force him to sleep alone, even if it smells like he rolled in a vat of egg salad.

i’m just catching the beginning of the coverage of the academy awards. i didn’t actually watch the award show this year, but i’m thrilled to see that “slumdog millionaire” won best picture because i was lucky enough to see it in class this past tuesday (in my class there’s a girl whose parent are members of the academy and get early dvd screeners of all the nominated films, so she brought the movie to class) and it was amay-zing. it is brutally honest, violent, cruel, and horrific– but you never feel sad for the character because they aren’t sad about their lives. i am a complete cry baby, like my mother, but this film just didn’t make me cry. it’s an examination of the brutality of the slums in india and the shit and torture the orphans endure, but they overcome, they learn to live any way they can and even though that often involves stepping on others or selling themselves or killing those who stand in the way of their destiny, then so be it. i will never forget the scene where jamal, the main character, as a child is spared from being drugged and then blinded with acid and a hot spoon by men who use the orphans to beg for them (“the blind earn double, you know”) by his brother who saves him by throwing acid in a man’s face so they can escape together. it seems like life will never be kind to jamal. but he isn’t concerned with money or anything like that, he just cares about latika, the love of his life, and how he can be with her. it’s bittersweet, it’s horrific, it’s emotional, but never sappy or overdone. i urge anyone with $10 to go see “slumdog millionaire” because you will come away a different person with a different outlook on life. seriously. and kudos to sean penn who portrayed harvey milk and gave life to a man long dead, a man who was martyred just like mlk jr., jfk, rfk, or malcom x, but who never got the credit he deserved because he was gay. growing up mormon has caught up with me lately with all the prop. 8 talk because i’m being lumped with the conservative, close-minded, and confused mormons who think that homosexuality is something to be campaigned against, something to be shunned. all i know is that god made us in his image and god made us as we are and loves us just that way. god is infallible, so to say that being gay is wrong or a sin is to accuse god of making a mistake. he didn’t. gay people are just like anyone else, they just have one more obstacle in their lives. not to say that it’s a handicap, but it’s a struggle and it sets you apart from the crowd which is never easy. but it doesn’t make it wrong. i hope that someday the church will change its stance on homosexuality and its denouncement of gay marriage. i believe that if they don’t that it will be something they will regret in the future. hate. it’s so easy to feel and so hard to erase.

i guess i truly am my mother’s daughter.

p.s.  i watched the acceptance speech for the guy who adapted the screenplay for “milk” and was moved to tears.  he said he grew up mormon and had to learn to be okay with himself, he had to learn that god didn’t hate him for being gay, and that he was lucky enough to have a mother who loved him, even when it wasn’t popular or considered acceptable.  if you haven’t seen it you might want to look it up on you tube.  you don’t want to miss it.

at least i only have one!

voila! no capital letters allowed

ok, so this is all pretty new to me. i mean, i used to be on myspace, but that seemed so self indulgent. this blog will be, too, because i’ll be mostly blogging about myself, but somehow i feel like blogs are less tacky and more intellectual than myspace where people mostly post pictures of themselves taking bong rips and leaving lame posts for each other about how much they love themselves.

i decided this would be the opposite of that. plus, my mom, my big sis, and my sis-in-law all blog nearly qd (qd is pharmacy speak for everyday) so i’m starting to feel it pulsing through my blood. i also figured the writing practice would be good for me, although you will never catch me

my snuggle pug

using capital letters. it’s just my thing. if you devote yourself to reading my blog qd, you will quickly find that i have a lot of things.

anyway, i’m typing away on my increasingly obsolete laptop balanced on one thigh while charlie the erstwhile pug snores away on the other. he’s a good boy, but no matter how many episodes of “the dog whisperer” or “it’s me or the dog” or how many of cesar milan’s books i read, this dog is still a total a**hole to anybody who comes to our house outside me, my mom, my dad, and my boyfriend. he hates children (my nephews and nieces call him the devil dog… that actually hurts my feelings a bit, but he has tried biting all of them so it’s understandable), he hates the guy who reads the meter, he hates the mailman, he hates knocks on the door, and he really hates our neighbor’s puggle. but he really loves me so it’s hard for me to give a rat’s arse if he hates anybody else. he’s my little snuggle pug and he could eat kittens for breakfast and i’d still defend what i call his “quirkiness.”

already filed my taxes because being a journalism student i’m all up and up on the news, so i heard that since my dear state’s congressmen and the governator can’t agree on a budget (lazy, stubborn s.o.b’s) that instead of issuing refunds citizens may receive i.o.u’s. but i.o.u’s don’t exactly pay the bills do they? no, they do not. so i figured the sooner i stake my claim on my share of my tax refund, the more likely i will be to actually receive money. we’ll see how that turns out in a couple weeks. if i’m not over $1500 richer, than the irs will get a nasty phone call from me, and they don’t want that. i spend a good chunk of my work days calling insurance companies and trying to convince them to pay for services they should be paying for anyway, so i’m used to yelling and acting all snippy on the phone with douchebags who are trying to save money.

douche and douchebag are two of my favorite words. i even caught my 68 year old father calling someone a douche. it’s just so insulting, yet incredibly descriptive. it’s almost as useful as the f-word. how would i live my life without that word?

also, if you ever want to curse somebody in french- see me. i did an entire project while i was still at de asia community college on verlan (derived from the french l’envers, the reverse) and swear words. Verlan is common french slang in which you take a word, like, for example, merci, switch it up and say it like cimer. it’s really hard to understand if you don’t already speak fluent french, which i don’t, but just knowing about it will get you in with les jeunes de paris. trust moi.

cimer for now, au revoir all.