People are always saying crap like, "dog is man's best friend." Every year you get a Christmas card from a family who sends along a picture of themselves with their dog. Dogs have been trained to do everything from reading to sniffing out bombs and drugs to sensing seizures before they occur. They are truly amazing, intelligent animals, and at times seem eerily human.
I took Cal swimming this weekend. Chesbro Reservoir is just a few miles from home, so we drove over that way for some fun times. I parked in a lot on the side of the road, and walked down the really steep boat ramp with Cal. For a good half hour I stood at the bottom and tossed a tennis ball up the ramp. Cal ran up it like it was nothing; he's so strong and fast. After that I started throwing it into the res. I threw it further and further and before I knew it, he was swimming! He is so driven; he'd dive right the hell in, swim out to his ball, turn himself around slowly, and paddle back with the ball in his mouth, staring at me. He is so intense.
Here he is swimming back to me:
Here he is "giving eye." Giving eye is the term used for the intense stare that herding dogs give to whatever they're working, whether it's sheep, cattle, or a ball.
After playtime at the res, I was headed back into Morgan Hill. It was raining, so I was just heading home. But just as I got near the dog park, it stopped raining. I took this as a sign that it was dog park time. We were the only ones there, and it was a sloppy, muddy, disgusting disaster. In short, Cal loved it. He was running and slipping all over the place. We played for about a half hour at the park and wore him out. Here's a picture of him when we got home (the mud isn't entirely noticeable until you look at his back legs):
So we promptly took him into the bathroom for a really long bath. It took about a half hour just to rinse the mud off. Then it was time for a double shampoo. He doesn't love baths, but he was OK with this one. I bet the warm water felt better than the cold dirty res water. A few highlights:
He's totally my baby, and sometimes I think he's my best buddy. He's so loyal and so happy all the time; he's a joy to be around and we have such a strong bond. Having a dog is so much work (I don't have kids and don't know if I ever will, but I imagine that this is at least kind of similar in that he's totally dependent on us and is pretty needy) but it's totally worth it. I also love that we rescued him from a shelter on his last day; he has no idea how close he came, but we do. I wish more people realized how wonderful shelter pets are; Cal is definitely a testament to the resourcefulness and resiliency of dogs.
I booked my flights today for a visit home in early May. I will get to go to my brother's college graduation and see my dad's side of the family at the graduation party in western Pennsylvania. Then I'll be home in Columbia and Baltimore for a few days. I'm hoping to take my beautiful pink track bike so I can ride through the city with the wind in my hair (under my pink helmet, of course). I can't wait to see my parents, my cats, my brother, my friends, my family, and my first true love...Baltimore City.
I'm so excited to be going home, but I'm also kind of sad. While I've been gone, things have been changing. I know that several downtown buildings have been completed since I've been in California, so the city will look and feel different. My parents and brother are getting older. The trees in their neighborhood are growing (we moved into the first completed house on our street in June, 1991; the trees were almost nonexistent at that time).
Their cats are getting older too (they were adopted from the local animal shelter as kittens when I was a kid; one when I was 11 and one when I was 16). After I left home, their one cat, Belle, started having medical "issues." First she developed a tumor in the tip of her tail. She had to have it amputated twice. First they cut off all but two inches of it, but she chewed on the stump (yummy). Then they cut it all off and gave her a nice E-collar. Later, she got an infection between the two layers of skin in her ear. It puffed up and flopped down and now it doesn't stand up anymore. She looks like some kind of war victim, when she's actually lived a charmed indoor life since she was tiny.
ANYway...I'm so excited to go home, but nervous to see and quickly adjust to all the changes. I am not good at accepting change, and I get really nostalgic and emotional about "how things were." I think I'll be OK and that the trip will be great overall, but I have a feeling that it'll leave me wanting to stay home in Baltimore.
Even as a student of political science and a reader of The Economist, I am getting fed the fuck up with this election crap. More and more it's becoming apparent that politics is all a game. It's a game to get elected, and it's a game to stay in office and then get re-elected. The pandering to the lowest common denominator is making me angry.
When did the US start going backwards? Our social policies (explicitly disallowing gay marriage or even civil unions, implementing abstinence-only education, limiting access to safe abortions, etc) are centuries behind those of many European countries, and the economy is going to shit because of rich white guys and their predatory mortgages and their tax cuts for themselves, not to mention the wars they start to make themselves richer.
Every candidate is campaigning on a platform of change. Oh, you want to effect change? Not too risky a platform when you're running against the president with the lowest approval ratings in history (not to mention that he should be impeached and tried for war crimes, but whatever). But what kind of change could we expect from Mike Huckabee, the evangelical Christian pastor who doesn't "believe" in evolution and thinks a woman should "submit to her husband?" What kind of change could we expect from Rudy Giuliani, whose scare tactics have even surpassed those of George "the terrorists will win if Democrats are elected" Bush? What kind of change can we expect from any politician (including the spineless democrats except for Kucinich) who panders to the Christian right, won't give a straight answer to any question, won't state outright his or her support for gay rights, who says he or she is against the war but continues to vote to fund it, and who won't begin impeachment proceedings on the most criminal, despicable, and greedy little man to ever occupy the White House?
I want someone who lives and lets live. I want someone who doesn't care what consenting adults do in their bedrooms. I want someone who is black, who is a woman, who isn't a rich white man with corporations in his pocket. I want someone who's done drugs and will admit to it as it is: something fun you do when you're young, and something that is generally harmless when done responsibly. Someone who is an atheist and doesn't believe that an invisible being is commanding him to invade a country that posed no threat and was completely contained. Someone who will stand with the poor, the mistreated, the forgotten, the veterans, the drug addicts, the children. Someone who will stop fucking cutting funding for education, state parks, and the criminal justice system. Someone who will raise taxes and who will say that out loud. Someone who has experienced hardship and loss and has become better for it. Someone who knows what it's like to have to choose between feeding a family and feeding oneself. Someone who doesn't think that birth control is a "sin," and who realizes that human overpopulation is a real problem. Someone who is a humanitarian who won't let religious dogma destroy a continent. Someone who doesn't reject science because it's not convenient. Someone who can help this country regain its dignity and the respect of the rest of the world. Someone who understands why the rest of the world hates us and knows how to fix it. Someone who doesn't think the Constitution is just a "goddamn piece of paper." Someone who's real.
I came across this a few months ago and I think it's pretty cool. I don't agree with all of it but it definitely got me thinking.
There's things I remember and things I forget
I miss you, I guess that I should
Three thousand five hundred miles away
What would you change if you could?
I wish, I wish it was a small world
Cuz I'm lonely for the big town
I don't keep up with this thing. Anyway, my 25th birthday was Monday. I cried a LOT. I don't want to be old, and I don't want to be spending my birthdays away from my family and friends. Last year I went out to dinner three times during my birthday week, and got THREE birthday cakes. Birthday cake is my favorite food, and I had three of them all to myself. And I got to go to Copra on my parents' dime. Last birthday was great. This birthday...I spent it 2872 miles from home in an apartment that I hate, with no drinking (Chip can't drink anymore), no family, and SO much homesickness. I listened to “Raining in Baltimore” at work and watched "The Wire" at home on my birthday, which didn't help me feel less homesick. It's been seven months, but it feels like yesterday the last time that I flew down Guilford on my track bike on the way to work. It feels like yesterday the last time that I walked down to Iggie’s for the most delicious pizza in the world (their pizza called the Alice will make you swoon; spinach, goat cheese, tomato, garlic, pesto…my mouth is watering). It feels like yesterday the last time I rode down to the farmers’ market under the JFX and got some Zeke’s organic fair trade Sumatra Gayoland coffee. I miss those things.
If I were to leave here today, I don’t know that there would be anything like those that I would miss about Morgan Hill. I wouldn’t miss driving everywhere I go because it’s suburbia. I wouldn’t miss sitting in a gigantic office filled with desks and no walls. I wouldn’t miss the 8% sales tax or the $1425 rent (rent in Baltimore was $650). I don’t know what I would miss. That’s pretty sad. I think that, in keeping with my last post, I need to take action. It’s time to go back home. Yeah, it’s “only” been seven months, but what amount of time is long enough to be miserable? Do I have to waste a year out here before I can say, “yeah, I’m coming home”? I don’t want to do that.
So...stay tuned for my homecoming plans. I hope they're not too far off.
Last night as I was falling asleep with Chip, I started an intense conversation. Well I suppose it could have been intense, but Chip is very sure of himself in matters of the world and places beyond (both real and imagined), so the conversation was pretty brief and to the point.
"Do you think it's empty to think that this life is all we get? Do you think there might be something else after this?"
"No. You know that."
"I know, but I always read religious people saying they think it feels empty to consider that there's nothing else after this, like an afterlife of sorts. They think atheism is hopeless. I agree with you, I just wasn't sure you felt that way."
"It's just not possible to me that there is a God. And why, of all animals, would we get an afterlife? Do we think cats and cows and spiders get afterlives?"
"I know. I think it's sadder to consider that people spend their entire lives thinking there's something after this. People who lives their lives in self-imposed misery. Like the evangelical minister who preached against homosexuality and sexual deviancy who was found dead of auto-erotic asphyxiation wearing TWO rubber wetsuits and with a dildo in his ass. If he didn't think this behavior was unacceptable, he would have been safely engaging in it with a partner and wouldn't have died. Like Ted Haggard, who is buying meth and having gay sex with a prostitute because he doesn't feel he can be openly gay. Like Larry "Happy Feet" Craig, who is supporting crap like the Defense of Marriage Act while soliciting gay sex in restrooms, pleading guilty, and then denying his guilt. If he thought "God" approved of his being gay, he would have a boyfriend and would be having sex with him at home, not soliciting sex in a restroom. I feel sorry for them because something they can't help (being homosexual) is something that everyone has told them is wrong. They feel so conflicted because of religion, and that is a fucking shame. On top of that, Haggard and Craig, once caught in the act, could have used their situations for good. They could have said, 'I'm gay, and there's nothing wrong with it. My only crime is hiding it and being a hypocrite." Instead, Haggard talked about "sexual immorality" and further reinforced that being gay is a choice that he made and that it was wrong. Without religion, these people would feel free to do what makes them happy, and to not worry about "hell" and "heaven." Another sad example of religious extremism is the machismo of Muslim law. Women are raped, and their brothers and fathers feel that they have to kill them because they were "adulterous." And they do it. They actually kill their female relatives. There's no way that crap like that doesn't just destroy them inside, no matter how much they think "God" wants them to do it. You can't murder someone, especially a family member with whom you grew up, without dying inside a little. It's sad to me that people live their lives like this. I'm going to make the most of my life, because it's the only one I've got. The world will go on forever without me; I'm part of the beautiful cycle that is life, and that is OK with me. I'm not going to spend my life waiting for "the next one." I'm going to do whatever makes me happy and fulfilled now."
Time for bed.
