A Pit Bull Took My Baby

Over 200 mothers in the United States kill their children every year.

Now that is a sobering statistic. I really don't understand killing your kids, at least not until they reach puberty.

I think it's just easier to leave them with family or neighbors and not come back. Sure, the grandparents, aunts and uncles, or neighbors are going to be pissed over it, but hey! It's better than killing them in the long run.

You can also drop your kids off at an emergency room or a fire station or police station and it's perfectly legal in a lot of states. In California, I think the upper age limit to drop kids off and relinquish custody is 27.

If you feel obliged to go through the old "somebody must have come in and grabbed that baby in the night while I was sleeping/drunk/watching a movie/having sex with my gay lover", then I think it would be better to take a page from the old "A Dingo Took My Baby" scenario.

The "dingo" substitute in the photo is my pit bull, Zoe. She has run off with a teddy bear actually, not a real baby. It really doesn't matter. When I go back outside in a few minutes the "baby" will be completely gone. There will not be a trace of it left.

Zoe ate almost an entire cactus. She also ate a remote control and a computer mouse. I think she also ate my husband Alex's "doo doo". Okay, that came out wrong. His "doo doo" is the plastic thing he used to shove into a slot on his laptop to activate the secure line on it. The "doo doo" is missing in action. Gone!

I still think leaving the kids off with the neighbors is a better idea.

She Has Arisen!

I came very close to killing Honey, my favorite dog.

We got Honey from the shelter about 6 years ago. She was about 5 at the time we got her. Unfortunately, we soon learned that Honey had severe problems related to arthritis of the back and hips and that she would require medication for pain management. We took Honey to an orthopedic specialist who told us that surgical solutions were out of the question. We also hired an acupuncture vet to work on her.

She's stoic. Honey doesn't really let you know she's in pain, but you can see it in her movements. She is now about 11 years old and she's had a comfortable life, or as comfortable as we can make it for her. Honey takes quite a bit of medication. She takes Osteo3 for her joints, Rimadyl for pain, and something called Tramadol also for pain. The Tramadol is a tiny white pill and we give that to her in a pill pocket. The other two pills are chewables.

One afternoon, I told Alex to get Honey a Tramadol because she was having a hard time getting up and walking. He brought her a pill in a pill pocket and Honey took it and settled down for a nap. Several hours later, I saw that she was still in her bed and seemed not to even be breathing.

Panicked, I shook her and she opened her eyes. The only thing is, her eyes were rolled back in her head. We immediately loaded her into the car and called the vet office saying we were coming and to have a stretcher for her when we got there.

Honey's vet looked very concerned. She said that Honey's symptoms looked like she might have been poisoned. I asked about a stroke, and she said it was possible, but that poisoning was more likely. (Privately, I thought that was ridiculous. Who would have given poison to Honey!)

The vet said we could leave her overnight, or just monitor her at home. We opted to bring her home. I also asked for the card for a vet who would come to our house and "put her down" if need be. Both Alex and I were in tears as we drove home with Honey semi-comatose in the back seat.

We placed her in her bed and I made a pile of blankets for myself to sleep on the floor next to her. During the night, her bowels evacuated several time and I carefully cleaned her up with warm towels. Alex kept coming in to check on us and was upset when I told him, "we need to call the house-call vet in the morning".

At 6 AM, we made coffee and decided that we would call the euthanasia doctor at 9 AM. We went back to Honey's side and watched her sleep. About 8:30 AM, Honey opened her eyes, got up, and walked into the kitchen. She drank some water and then started licking her food bowl.

What the hell?

As the morning progressed, she ate breakfast, drank water, went out into the backyard to do her business and seemed pretty much normal. I called the vet and reported the progress. Again, I asked "Could it be that she had a mild stroke and she's recovering?". Again the vet said "Unlikely. She must have ingested something." Hmm.

A few days later, I was cleaning up in the kitchen and saw a bottle of pills from the vet on the counter. I looked at the bottle and saw they were for Harry. These were tranquilizers that were given to us for Harry because he dislikes travel in a car. We had never used them. There were 10 pills ordered. I opened the bottle and saw they were tiny white pills, looking exactly like the Tramadol that Honey takes.

A horrible realization hit me all at once. I poured the pills out in my hand and counted them. There were 9 pills, not 10.

Alex had given Honey the wrong pill. It had put her almost completely under for over 12 hours. I was getting ready to have her put to sleep. I had practically called my vet a quack because she insisted that Honey had "ingested something". And I hate to be wrong!

I telephoned my vet and told her. She was very relieved to find out what had happened, because she really could not imagine what could be causing Honey's rapid demise unless it was poison.

I tossed the damn tranquilizers.

"Just Like Your Father"

If I had a dollar for every time I heard my mother say those words to me, I'd be a 1% 'er.

My Mother was not implying that I was 6 foot tall and 200 pounds because I wasn't.

She was not saying this phrase with the intent of complimenting me either. My dad was a cop, a womanizer, and a gambler. I have done a little gambling but not to excess like he did. Dad could never resist a pretty woman or a horse race or a card game.

I like pretty women myself but that's the only similarity I can find.

Oh wait. There is one other thing. Nobody ever heard my Dad say "I don't know." I doubt anyone has ever heard me say that either. I just make something up if I don't know and present it with authority. I'm sure my Dad did the same thing.

I also was (in Mom's opinion anyway) promiscuous. Well, looking at it from her viewpoint, I guess I was. I never worried too much about sex and it seemed pretty normal to experience different people. It was fun. I never felt bad over it because I didn't see it as wrong.

I did bet the rent money on that one horse called "Another Color", but I won so I don't have to count that, do I?

Maybe I am my Father's daughter.

Oakland, California, West Coast Life

I worked in Oakland for several years.

Basically, it's a scrappy city. There's a lot of crime. It's dangerous after dark in the wrong neighborhoods. And it may have the highest number of "drive by shooting" incidents in the country. I have a lot of friends who still work and live in Oakland. I like the place, myself. There is a "flavor" to Oakland that's hard to miss. Upscale restaurants and clubs, pretty ladies with gardenias in their hair, men dressed up in suits with fedoras and shiny shoes. There is charm and character to the place. Oakland is across a drawbridge from where I live in Alameda.

The black population is larger than the white population and if you add hispanic people into the mix, black and hispanic people make up well over 50% of the residents. There is a very diverse but largely African American power structure.

On June 9th,2010, a major protest was held in Oakland over the shooting of an unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, by a white transit cop. The jury had just convicted the cop of "involuntary manslaughter". By nightfall, the scene turned violent and ugly. Downtown store and business windows were shattered, graffiti marred every available surface, and looting and violence were everywhere.

This night of violence came after a late afternoon of peaceful protest and prayer. Most of the legitimate protesters went on home when the sun went down. That's when the self-proclaimed "anarchists" stepped up their game.

Oddly, the hoodlums had come from other areas to cause mayhem. Many of them were white. Of the 80 people arrested, only 19 of them were Oakland residents. The Oakland police department exercised a lot of restraint in the entire situation. As a result, most of the culprits were not arrested at all. The millions of dollars in property damage and stolen goods were left to the insurance companies and business owners to handle. It was a costly evening.

Currently, we have the "Occupy Oakland" fiasco to contend with. People and their tents simply moved in to the Plaza outside of City Hall and put up their tents making an instant tent city. When ordered to disperse, the protesters refused. The police were receiving numerous complaints because of a sexual assault, violent attacks, threatening behavior by the protesters to passersby, and a fire in the encampment. Also, although there were portable toilets provided, human waste was saturating the areas around the tents.

The police staged a pre-dawn raid and took the tents down. The police were pelted with bottles, paint balls, rocks and utensils from the camp's rat infested kitchen area.

After numerous warnings that this was an "unlawful assembly", the police started using rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd. It is estimated there were about 1,000 protesters and approximately 500 police officers in the stand off. A couple of people on both sides sustained injuries, most notably, an Iraq War vet and protester who suffered a skull fracture.

One thing I did notice from watching the footage of the riot is that the majority of the protesters involved were white, and most of the people arrested were not from Oakland. The black people were few and far between in this mess.

In other cities, the "Occupy" movement has been handed with dignity and lawful behavior by the protesters. Why was this not the case in Oakland?

I'm tired of people coming into Oakland to make it their personal garbage can. And I support the police action for dispersing the unruly crowd. Go back to your suburbs and trash your own backyard. Get out of mine.

Heart Shaped Red Sunglasses

I like whimsical things.

This dog looks very much like my late dog, Mitch. Mitch was a girl, a cocker spaniel, and I bought this clock because it reminded me of her.

I get bluesy during this time of year. There's a watery quality to the sunshine and the light starts to fade too early. Waking at 7 AM, it's still dark outside with just a hint of dawn on the horizon. Never mind. I don't get up until 9 AM anyway.

I took the sunglasses off the dog clock and put them on myself. For some reason, those goofy sunglasses made me feel happy. I saw a woman going to work one morning wearing a hat with cat ears sticking up on top of it. I think this is kind of the same thing.

I wore my red heart shaped sunglasses to the store this afternoon. Everybody smiled at me. That made me feel happy too.

I guess I'm old enough now to wear heart shaped red sunglasses. People may think I'm a bit "touched" and they might be right.

Still, it's better than dressing up like Cat Woman. I used to do that when my grandson Cyrus was about four and wanted to be Batman and I tied pillowcases across his shoulders to make a cape.

My daughter was embarrassed about both of us in those days. I put on my black catsuit and boots, and put on a headband with cat ears and off we went! Cyrus was proud of his paisley cape. Sometimes he wore a black chiffon cape. Then his mother was really disturbed.

We didn't care one bit! Cyrus is 18 now. He still remembers going to the shopping center as Batman and me dressing up as cat woman.

He thinks I rock.

Spelling It Out For Men

This post is not male bashing.

I like men as well as the next girl. I think they are cute, smart, sexy, funny and all the good stuff. But they do have a weird characteristic. They have to be told exactly what you want them to do.

When Alex leaves his socks on the floor next to the hamper in the bathroom along with a pair of underwear, and I tell him to put his socks in the hamper, he will comply. That's fine as far as it goes. Does he also pick up the underwear and toss them in the hamper? He does not. I didn't tell him to put the underwear in the hamper.

If I ask Alex to feed the dogs, he does so. After feeding the dogs, as we are walking to the car to go out for an evening, I ask "Did you check the water bowls?" Of course, he did not. "The water bowls are right next to the food bowls, Alex."

When Alex was traveling, I had my friend Nelson carry home a 25 pound of kibble for my dogs. I further imposed on Nelson to open the kibble and pour it into the bin for me. He complied. What Nelson did not do is take out the plastic measuring cup that was in the bottom of the bin. When I asked, where is the measuring cup, Nelson said it was in the bin. "At the bottom of the bin?". "Yes," he responded.

My darling professional dog trainer, Todd, was here yesterday. We were taking Zoe on a walk to help me understand what needs to be done when walking her. Todd is emphasizing that we need to stay two steps ahead of Zoe mentally and watching our surroundings at all times. He had Zoe on the leash, and a young man walked up. Todd and Zoe were completely blocking the sidewalk. Zoe jumped up on the young man to say hello. Todd got so caught up in the mechanics of training that he completely missed what was going on around him.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

I think sending a man to the supermarket really makes my point. If you ask the man you live with to go to the store and bring home four things, he is going to have a difficult time. Let's say you ask him to pick up coffee, bread, a green vegetable and some olive oil.

Although he lives with you and knows what kind of coffee he drinks and bread he eats day after day, year after year, you'd never know it when he comes home. The coffee will be "Sumatra Roast" when you drink French Roast. The bread may be pumpernickel. A green vegetable may be a package of frozen peas. Or it could be grapes or a kumquat. And the olive oil will be a can of Crisco. And that's on a good day. If you don't make him write the list on his hand, you can forget getting anything you ask for at all.

Oh he'll pick up beer. And maybe a big bag of tortilla chips, plus some salsa. A couple of packages of cookies and maybe some ice cream. There may also be a package of frozen chicken wings. Great!

When asked about the coffee, bread, vegetables and olive oil, he will respond that he couldn't find them, or that the supermarket was out of those things.

Or he will hit his forehead with his palm and say "Damn! I knew I forgot something!"

What's Love Got To Do With It?

I'm just saying...

Most polygamous families are not like what is shown on "Big Love". First of all, they are almost always very poor. They don't live in nice houses in nice neighborhoods with nice cars and nice clothing for their families. They frequently go hungry. They go without medical and dental care.

Females are treated as brood mares. They keep having babies until they are finally used up. It's not unusual for them to have 10 kids or more. This is not because they love having babies. It's because having multiple wives and scores of children will give their husband an elevated position in heaven.

Could any of this sound even faintly reasonable to any thinking person? You whelp a bunch of brats who you have no intention of educating or even feeding properly or taking them to the dentist for that matter, and for what? So he can be a king after he dies?

Never mind that you only get to sleep with this "husband" once a week or so, if that often. Never mind that you resent him bringing the pretty 14 year-old in as a "sister wife". Never mind that you are supposed to defer to the husband in all matters. I mean, who would actually choose to wear those dumb prairie dresses and have those "whoop-dee-doo" hairstyles?

I understand the concept of a harem. Shoot, if you are a big time Sheik and you have 400 wives, fine. These babes are guarded by Eunuchs, live in palaces except when they are taken by caravan into the desert so they can roll around on Oriental rugs, have servants, get to eat and drink all they want, and only have to "service" the old Sheik once in a blue moon.

Now, admittedly, that's not great if you are a female astro-physics scientist, or a tax lawyer, but if you are a clerk at the local WalMart, it might be considered an upwardly mobile move.

I think some people would enjoy lollygagging with their girlfriends, watching cable television and polishing their nails all day while wearing those little "I dream of Jeanie" outfits.

I guess what I'm wondering is what is the "up" side for polygamous women? You get to continue being your husband's servant in heaven. Oh great!

What a concept, huh? I'd rather call old Sheik Abdul and take my chance in the harem.