[10:59] thegeorg42: *thump*
[10:59] thegeorg42: *thump*
[10:59] thegeorg42: *thump*
[10:59] thegeorg42: *thump*
[10:59] thegeorg42: *thump*
[10:59] thegeorg42: (that's tyson jumping)
[10:59] thegeorg42: We've put the balls ona shelf. He saw us put the balls there.
[11:00] thegeorg42: He's trying to see if they've moved.
[11:00] thegeorg42: *thump*
[11:00] thegeorg42: *thump*
[11:00] thegeorg42: *thump*
[11:00] thegeorg42: *thump*  ¶ 11:05 AM

  OT/OOC

Tyson, day 2.

Jazz was sick earlier in the week, so the expected arrival date was later than we expected. Cliff didn't want Tyson to disturb Jazz if he was still sick, so he didn't even call us on Thursday. He is indeed a happy hyper dog with no real off switch, just as advertised.

He came yesterday about noon. Cliff was exhausted from moving his things and was more focused on re-hydrating than the dog. So I played with Tyson and my dog Kenya. If I stand just right, I can play tug with Kenya and toss the ball upstairs for Tyson. He does get tired faster if he runs up stairs. I didn't realize that he could overtire, but apparently he can. He still wanted his ball, but he would stop and lie down with his legs stiffened out. He did manage to have enough to drink- he kept dropping the ball into the water dish. I managed to find a way to lie on the couch to where he could see the ball and my hand wasn't touching it, and I could pet both dogs. This helped him calm down.

Later Jazz took the balls from him. I say balls because Tyson is very ball focused and will find balls we didn't know we had. Take one ball, and he is driven into search mode and he will look for another ball. Or keep looking at where the balls have been put... can he figure out a way to get there from here? This is just as exhausting as actually playing with a ball.

Right now, he's got a golf ball. He's playing at my feet, running the ball around my chair and foot pedal, and then running the ball elsehere in the room. ihave never seen a golfball get so torn up (even when I play golf, I'm not that mean to the ball). But he's not throwing the ball on my feet, which is fine.

He's very ball oriented. The only time he pays any attention to Kenya is when she is also after the ball or between him and either the ball or the ball thrower. And Kenya is very happy to stand between Tyson and me. He was curious about Spider. He seemed intent on displaying dominant behavior with her. But then, she's the only cat he outweighs. The rest of the cats he completely ignored.

He spent the night in the crate. I put in a nice bed and some food and water. He did bark and whine initially, but I could not hear it in the bedroom. Jazz stayed downstairs for a while after I went up, and he says the dog quieted down after a minute or so, and that's good. The cats, I'm sure, were grateful.  ¶ 6:42 AM

  OT/OOC

It is so hot out...

We are taking several showers a day.

I work at home with an icepack in my bra or tucked in the back of my pants.

When I take my typing gloves off, I put them in the freezer. Otherwise, they are too damp with sweat to get back on.

I have an AC for the office, but I'm thinking of getting a fan in here too.

I have an AC for the living room, but Gosh. I can't tell if it's working or not.

I'm drinking twice as much as usual, and peeing half as often.

It rains, and I walk outside in the rain. When I come back in, I'm just as dry as when I went outside.

Instead of sardine races, I've been offering ice cream to the cats. I've been tempted to offer them frozen fish, or just a frozen chicken neck or three.

I hate complaining of the heat. I always prefer to be too hot to too cold. I rarely complain about being too warm. I'm just too dang warm.  ¶ 9:57 PM

  OT/OOC

Tyson, the hyper Jack Russell Terror, is coming to stay with us tomorrow. I really hope we are up for this. He's cute, but he's got to learn to play with Kenya, and Kenya has to learn to share being the dog again. It's been 10 years since we had two dogs in the house. Beauford was the last other dog we had, and he was such a great dog. Maybe I do idealize him. He was such a "broken" pet that the instinct to take him home and spoil him was overwhelming. Beauford was one of 3 dogs that were pushed out of a car at the closed Schuyler Drive-in movie theater (it had been closed for more than 10 years, and was surrounded by abandoned fields and woods). Beauford was the only one the dog-catcher managed to catch. It's no wonder he was caught- he was old and arthritic and mostly blind. The vet guessed his age at 16, and he was a basset-beagle mix. He was our first portable dog- he loved the car, and rode with us to the shelter every day and was the "office dog." Kenya was never social enough for this. To this day, she is still fond of biting people's ankles (never painfully).

Tyson is outweighed by two of the cats... most importantly, by Tom. And Tom is the one who will have trouble adjusting. Tom Does Not Like Dogs. It took him a good 6 months to come to a truce with Kenya, and even now they still have the occasional misunderstanding (I want over there, and you are in my way type).

Tyson doesn't know how to play with another Dog. The only times he tried snipping at Kenya was when she tried to chase the ball too. It's now His ball, and his job is to play with it- not race another slower older dog to the ball. He also doesn't care that she out weighs him 3 to 1- he thinks he's faster, and he's probably right.

He'll stay for about 6 weeks. We shall see how it goes. I really worry that as soon as he adjusts to us, is when he will have to leave. We shall see.  ¶ 8:03 AM

  OT/OOC

This is for Dana, on the TV show RockStar.

The band was having trouble explaining to Dana what she needed to do in order to "bring it" and really perform. So were the other rockers. However, since I think most of the rockers have the same problem, I think I'll attempt to explain it here.

Dana, darlin, yer an Ice Queen on stage. You hold the audience at a distance. You hold the music away from you. Your voice is amazing. But that's only maybe 1/4 of the show. That's the keyword, baby- SHOW. You can move your hand and you can walk. Good. You can look at the camera and occasionally the audience. That's nice too. But none of that means a damn thing if you aren't the music. You have 365 bones in your body and there are joints between every one of them. MOVE them. Your powerhouse isn't your pretty face, and no one in the back row can see your face anyway. Maybe in the small coffee houses you're used to, but not in the arena honey.

Have you seen Shakira? Even when she sings entirely in Spanish, you know what she's singing about. Why? Watch those hips. Watch the chest. She can move them and she does. Somewhere in the line, she's had belly dancing lessons, or something like it. I suggest this highly for you. Swing those hips, girl. Feel the music in your bones and don't let a beat of music pass that doesn't affect your bones.

Songs are emotion- it's why it's a powerful medium of expression. You need to feel the emotion as you sing about it. Break into tears or feel overwhelmed with love or lust or hate or whatever emotion the song drives you to. Put the emotion in your voice. Sometimes, yes, you need the clarity and sometimes yes you need the rough edge, but I don't mean you need to scream to be Rock or Emotion. You must feel what you sing. Let the drum control your heartbeat and breathe that music in your soul when you sing. Don't hold an ounce of energy back- give it all to the song.

If you can learn to do this, you can be a rock star. If you can't, you'll just be a singer. Strutting on stage only works if it's time to the music and *means* something to the song. Not just, "Okay, I've stood in one spot long enough, I'd better move now." I detest how I can see that go across your face while you attempt to perform. You are so disconnected, I want to smack you and yell this rant at you.

So consider yourself smacked. I am twice your weight, and I CAN perform.  ¶ 1:04 PM

  OT/

We may be getting a new dog.

This isn't something I wanted to do- Kenya, our current dog, isn't a fellow dog lover. She's 14 and never really enjoyed sharing a house with other dogs. The Shar Pei puppy that we took home with us (because it was only 4 weeks old when dumped in a snow bank) would have been horrifically abused by her had we permitted it, mainly because of jealousy, and the puppy was certainly in no shape to defend itself. So we let another Humane Society volunteer take it home to raise for a month or three before coming back to be adopted, but that became the forever home. She had some issues with Beauford, our beloved basset-beagle mix that came to us already dang near blind, deaf, and arthritic. Beauford behaved wonderously with Kenya, and she soon quit the dominance display attempts, and the jealousy. We've always wanted another basset-beagle mix or a basset rescue since Beauford passed on- we only had the old duffer for a glorious year. I have the basset rescue site bookmarked, and I look longingly at the dogs often. We haven't wanted to have another dog just yet. 4 cats plus one dog is a lot of pets.

This dog is a Jack Russell Terrier. With Papers. JRTs are notorious high energy dogs. They are hyper, intelligent, hyper, bundles of energy, clever at inventing games when left alone, need frequent playing sessions, destructive if bored, charming, small and easily excitable dogs. I am not a high energy person. Neither is my husband. Kenya has two modes... mildly interested and asleep, and fits well in our lifestyle. If given my choice of any dog breed in the world to have, I would not in good conscience choose a JRT.

His name is Tyson. His story is far too fucking typical. JRTs are the embodiment of short-haired cute. He was in the window of the pet shop, putting on a show and yet managing sad and pathetic, as a puppy can. Our friend bought the puppy because "he felt sorry for it" and "didn't think anyone else would buy it." When he told my husband and I that he had gotten a dog and mentioned the breed, I informed him of the need for JRTs to have lots and lots and lots of exercise, and was he prepared to do that? He said no. But he could not resist buying the dog, at a price that assured him the registration papers were real. The dog spends the entire day Cliff is at work in the crate. He sleeps in the crate all night. If Cliff goes to school or goes out in the evening, the dog is barely out of the crate enough to potty outside. If the dog was left alone in the house outide of the crate, he'd shred the furniture. Duh. He's a high energy dog, bored out of his gourd. Cliff is moving. He found a place to live for two months between his eviction from his apartment to moving into his new house (without a fenced yard) and that temporary place won't let him bring the dog.

He knows us and how we feel about our animals. Do I need to say he wants us to dogsit while he's in the temporary housing? Do I need to say he'd love for us to take the dog permanently? Do I need to say that he hasn't thought beyond other options for the dog besides us or euthanasia like we want or deserve that sort of treatment? Add to that another friend informed us that his cat Shelby had been adopted out of the no-kill shelter where we got Tom. Shelby was Sassy's roommate at Fat Camp. We sent our fat Sassy over to live with them for a year. I paid for all of the diet cat food plus her vet bills and visited often - Sassy was still OUR cat. I made friends with Shelby. Had I known he was going to even consider ditching his cat, I'd have first beat him upside the head, and then taken the cat. And yes, we don't need another cat. But neither does the shelter. Shelby had to be 5+ and that does limit the adoptability.

I am going to contact the JRT rescue group. At the very least, I will get advice on how to deal with Tyson. He was over here to visit (with owner present) for quite a while. Kenya did display jealousy, but did not do anything aggressive or abusive. (she whined when Tyson was the only one getting attention. She snapped at the air if he came close to touching her. She did nothing worse. She did not seek his company for any reason, and he did not force himself on her either). He got on well with Sassy immediately. She licked his ear the first time he bounded over. Spider ignored him. He may not have met Pepe, who hid from the company. Tom, on the other hand, showed him Tom was boss, without even offering a claw. Tyson explored the basement (we leave the door open and there are litter boxes down there). Tom decided he would make a point, and sat at the top of the steps and refused to let Tyson back upstairs. For more than 45 minutes. No injury was offered. No growling. Just an evil one-eyed stare from Tom, every time Tyson tried to bounce up the stairs. The impasse was solved by human intervention. Otherwise, I think he'd still be down there.

Tyson will make a few more visits here this week and next. We shall see how it goes. The next biggest concern will be housetraining. He drank all of the water bowl and widdled twice on the rug in different spots. He was playing with the water while drinking, and everyone was watching him, so he kept doing it until his bladder was full. Then he didn't ask to go out, he just widdled. Housetraining is always harder with smaller dogs. Tyson is about 18 months old.

But I confess, the whole buying a dog because it's cute is No Fucking Excuse if you don't think about how this highly dependent on you thing works. Buying a breed that doesn't fit your lifestyle is stupid. I don't care how cute it is. I don't care how much you may think no one else will buy it. If no one bought pet shop dogs, there no longer would be a market for puppy mills, and they'd STOP. The only way to permanently erase the blight of puppy mills is to STOP BUYING DOGS FROM PET SHOPS.

If you want a pet, Think about your lifestyle. If you go out of town regularly, like I do, what are you going to do with your pet while you are gone? If you spend 12 hours in the office, what will the animal do while you are gone? Dogs need regular trips outside unless you teach them to use a litter box or other designated locale. Dogs need exercise and human interaction. They crave our attention and if you don't have time for a dog or the ability to offer adequate care, DON'T GET A DOG. Don't get any pet you can't adequately commit to and keep for the rest of its natural life. Older pets are simply not as adoptable.

I adore getting older pets. They already come housetrained. They often know tricks and their personality and needs are well established. I know what to expect. Puppies and kittens are moldable to a certain extent and will change their attitudes and learn. Puppies and kittens also have the cute factor working for them. People find it harder to resist the baby.However, that doesn't mean they should not!  ¶ 2:49 AM

  OT

After a while of living with one person, you get the feeling of what is most important to your loved one. I am aware of how deeply Jazz is going to mourn the loss of Syd Barrett.

With the advent of the internet into our lives, I remember him spending one particularly long evening - I think I walked by for the final time near 3 a.m. He confessed he was looking for Syd, and told me the story about how he left Pink Floyd on the verge of the band hitting megastardom. I admit, I am not fan of Floyd. Some of the stuff when I am in the proper frame to hear is mind-numbingly good. When I am not, it is mind-numbingly boring if not down right irritating.

But Jazz told me about how he had visions of some day making it across the Atlantic, acquiring a bicycle, and some how touring England looking to find where Syd was living in obscurity. Jazz found an article posted by a Syd Barrett found group that tries to keep tabs on the gentleman, and how irritated Syd was by any publicity or any contact with fans. What with Jazz's current movie making phase, I could picture us heading off on such a grand adventure on bikes and a camera, only to end with Syd throwing his fish and chips at us or something. It would have pleased Jazz a great deal to be the target of such invective.

So I understand why he grieves.

There's probably more to say about the appropriateness of the date- this is the anniversary of the Hamilton-Burr duel after all. But I don't think I want to go there.  ¶ 2:44 PM

  OT/OOC

On the flooding:
The boil water advisory has been lifted. The only danger to my house is the leaky roof and the leaky basement. We ran the dehumdifier in the basement and put a bin under the leak. I filled a couple of carboys with water before the majority of the flooding, so we had water with no problem.

We helped our local bar get ice. Danny's ice machine had to be shut off because there was no way he could boil the water before putting it in the machine- it's a direct water tap. He didn't know that Ice is trucked into grocery stores, instead of being made there. It might be more sensible to make the ice onsite at the grocery store, but not in times like these.

Gas prices shot up again. There were shortages throughout the area, coupled with the holiday weekend, and up more than a dime it went. Gas prices drive up costs of just about everything. It really makes me wish we could have a realistic garden and get a lot of food out of the earth ourselves. But I have trouble staying outside, between the flowers and the neighbors doing laundry. At least I can smell what I react to most of the time. I have met another multiple chemical sensitive person who could not- and she had seizures as a result of pesticides. It made it very hard for her to go anywhere. I worry about how the increased gas prices are going to affect the costs of necessities throughout. Relatively speaking, we'll all be poorer as a result.

There are piles of crap abandoned on curbs throughout. Vultures are descending to pick through the rubbish heaps to try to find salvagable things, and I'm not above trashpicking myself, although there is little of value amongst the stuff. The Elks Club in Fairmont Park threw out all of the chairs and many tables. The golf courses are completely covered in mud. The local quilt shop had water to the door, but not in the store thankfully. Sadder though are the piles outside people's homes, and the calls on the radio requesting volunteers to come clean out homes belonging to the people who aren't physically capable of doing their own homes. Wally World is donating the cleaning supplies. I am troubled by 95% of all cleaning supplies + the smell of the flood itself, and am not brave enough to risk my health to volunteer. This makes me feel guilty, because otherwise I'd like to. Even the flood plain areas are brown well above the deer browsing lines. There's an awful lot of brown in this valley, and it's not a coffee brown. It's dirt and mud and khaki instead of the verdant happy July green. The fields of corn and other things are all brown and while they may be better fertilized for next year, this year's crops are mostly a loss.

There is a bill being put forward about the State of NY buying flood plain housing back and declaring it no-build zones. I think this will be too expensive to be realistic, but dang it, it's about time the government starts thinking ecologically over economically.

On my vacation:

Life at camp was best summarized when I was growing up in a poem I wrote around the age of 16ish.

Father fixes.
Mother itches.
Brother fetches.
Sister bitches.
I paint.

Only I can't paint any more. There isn't a single building that I haven't painted at least once up there. Some of them I did more than once. Maybe that's part of why I have the trouble I do. When you are young, you don't think of the chemical agents or what they can do to your body. You think, I am young and healthy and I can do anything! I am indistructable! And then you discover in your mid 20s that it just ain't so.

Da's big project this week is replacing the roof over the main cabin. My brother was helping, of course. He started work at 8 a.m. or earlier every day, so sleeping in was Not an Option. Grumble. The main part of vacation that I like is sleeping in. Not that the dog was oblidging of course. I got up around 5 every morning, because that's when Dog's bladder wakes her, dressed enough to open the door without shocking anyone, and let the dog out. Then waited 5 minutes, and let her back in. Jazz and I stayed in a separate cabin called the Winter Cabin. It's one bedroom, a water closet (room just enough for a toilet and nothing else), and a kitchen. Cozy, but what all does one need for two people and a dog? It meant we could have our own meals and schedule, and we prefer it that way. My brother took the Hodgson, so named because that's the brand of modular home from the early 1950s. It's a full bathroom, bedroom, living room and kitchen. But they had their niece (on his wife's side) and their 2-month-old baby with them, plus they fed their boys, so they needed more room. The main cabin has 5 bedrooms, but mom doesn't let anyone sleep in the Attic (too many bats and mice etc). There is one bathroom in that cabin too. So that's 3 toilets for 13 people. The aforementioned boys share bunkbeds in my old bedroom. The front bedroom on that side is my sister's old room, and her son Danny slept there. If you want to be technical, the front room was my aunt Lois' room, and my room was my aunt Carolyn's room. The master bedroom of course belongs to my parents now. It creeped mom out initially to sleep in there, but they changed the bed and now she's okay with it. The back bedroom on that side is a 1.5 bed- between a double and a twin. It's very cozy for two. My sister slept there. Have you counted beds and heads and noted a discrepancy yet? My sister's boyfriend didn't get a bed. He was put on a cot in the Dining Room, which is another building. You see, the Winter Cabin used to be the camp kitchen when it was owned by a Person with Money. The room behind was where the cook slept/lived. The Dining Room was where the Family ate. It has paper outlines of fish caught and written on it type of fish and who caught it and the size and date pinned up all over the walls. The earliest is from 1921 or so. There's a huge gap between 1931 and the 1970s. The table itself was covered in K'Nex and Legos. He had to put all of his stuff under the table every day so the kids could play in there.

My impression of my sister's boyfriend: Well. Let's just say there were a lot of flags going off in my brain and that he reminds me of several exes of mine that I'd rather not think of. The creepy factor was very high. He was talking about plans for next year. He mentioned never being married because he hadn't found the right woman to settle down with and spawn, while looking suggestively at my sister, and she just squirmed uncomfortably. If I do ever see him again, I'll try to make more of an effort to be nice. Not that I made any effort to be rude. I love my sister dearly. But I do worry about her and the fact that she seems keen on trading down.  ¶ 9:18 AM