Just Do This

"Do it yourself Nikes"

This is the way things seem to start around here.

Someone picks up a flyer in Starbucks and shows it to the other person and asks, "Ya think we could do this?" Then an e-mail to two people. "Ya think we could do this?" Asking two more friends and by this time feigning some sort of confidence they ask, "You wanna do this?"

This:

What is the Nike+ Human Race?
On 08.31.08, Nike is making a statement like no other before. Nike is putting on the World’s Largest Running Event. The 10k event will be the ultimate runner experience. By combining our digital running world with the physical, the Nike+ Human Race is open to anyone, anywhere. Nike is hosting race events in 25 cities around the world, but by logging into nikeplus.com, every city and every road can become a race-day course.

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And then the next thing you know, you're sitting in front of your computer scanning your pseudo Nike and waiting on your results.

Remarkable.

The Corner

Fair Oaks

We interrupted an unauthorized dog walk past where Scoville turns into Fair Oaks.

Fair Oaks. Kinda uppity, no? 

So yeah, we're doing our final super long training walk this evening(tomorrow we rest) and who approaches us but a giant dog intent on meeting Grantley. I have a good healthy respect for loose dogs, unlike the people I run into down here where the oaks are not so fair. People who are afraid of dogs do the exact wrong things nearly in order. 

If you're a child and you're afraid, you start screaming and running. Nothing makes a dog more interested than a three foot tall, arm-flapping squeaky toy. If you're a frightened adult? The first thing you seem to do is lock eyes with the dog. Also wrong altho somewhat understandable. 

There are three things to do when you meet a loose dog. One. Don't make eye contact. They might take it as a challenge and you haven't even been properly introduced. Two. Turn your body sideways. It's a sort of a sign of dog respect. Three is my own invention. Just start talking. 

I do like a sort of a: Hey you crazy knucklehead, what are you doing out here alone, ya big silly? Is this your house? Come on, let's go see. And I start walking toward the house using Grantley like cheese on a mouse trap until I can reach the doorbell. The reason I go with such an odd and rambling sentence is because I figure one of those words is going to sound like something he's heard before-especially words ending with the e sound. A lot of people name their dogs something with an e on the end. For instance: Grantley. 

If I said the word 'noodley' right now? Betcha I'd wake her up which would be cruel and unusual considering she assisted in a search and rescue and went on to  stroll three more miles and the man that came to the door to reclaim his dog said she deserved an extra cookie tonight. 

Starbucks

If you knew her like I do, you would most certainly consider The Shish to be a successful person. I've been watching her for over a year now, and something concrete just passed by my eyes and I thought I should share it-eventho there's a part of me that dares not speak my admiration for her aloud because of the high level jinx factor. I remember being a married person and doling out advice-as if I knew something about how to do that correctly and I remember wondering then, if my words about how to have a successful union were for the benefit of others or just to reassure myself. Go figya. We were young and delightfully schtoopid and that was, as they say, a long time ago. My newest observation happened thanks to our friends at Starbucks.

If you join The Shish at Starbucks, you will observe the most complicated ritual known to man. She orders, puts money in the tip jar, they hand her filled cup to her, she goes to the fixing counter and makes several adjustments, she hands it back to the barista, they complete her instructions and she walks away smiling. One day last week, she told me she's not going back to Starbucks X during the day, because the woman behind the counter was miserable. That's what The Shish says when she runs into people who can't grasp her flavor of joy and it doesn't happen often (I'd say 75% of the people at Costco know her by name and umm Costco's a giant chain.). It usually goes more like it did at Food 4 Less, our new favorite grocery store.

We were at the back of Produce and she asked the produce manager if there were more bagged lettuces, because there were only the iceberg/orange carrot snippings/purple cabbage combos left and seriously now, who buys those? Honestly(and she's not going to like this), The Shish is so physically attractive that she occasionally elicits an initial negative reaction from some people but that lasts exactly ten seconds if it happens at all, but it did that day. The produce lady was a tad snippy right off the bat but The Shish broke the ice so much so that the next time we came back? The produce manager called out: Hey! How was Vegas?

I mean they were like bonded for life.

Anyway, myself at Starbucks? Ack. I can never get my order properly spoken. We'll be standing there in line and I'll ask The Shish for the thousandth time, okay what do I want? And just when I started to grasp my grande iced coffee in a venti cup with extra ice and whipped cream, I gave up coffee and now I stand there trying to negotiate the perfect iced wild sweet orange tea. Sometimes I think to have little cards made up with my order pre-printed because I get to the front and I see the board with all it's choices and I think:isn't grande grander than a venti? I guess I should be thinking Venti=Vesuvius like the mountain. Or something.Anyway, I think The Shish by her actions, demonstrates for all of us ninnies, how to ask for precisely what she wants, immediately affirm perfection by anticipatory-tipping and if they don't get it right within a reasonable time frame? She moves on.

Grand, eh?

In public

I bet this woman wasn't more than 29 years old. I tried to
indicate her form using the least amount of lines possible.

All things considered, the blister on my right foot doesn't feel bad at all.

Extra Double Super Long Walk-Dog Version

Convention

Someone asked me what they thought it took to make a good writer and it's not like I haven't been obsessing on that very topic for the majority of my adult life but okay yeah, I have. We even formed a secret women-only subgroup on an Internet cartooning bulletin board because we had to talk about it. You have to have the 'why of it' in place so that when someone tells you she spent $260.00 bucks getting her hair fixed, there would be an established island in your brain that allowed you to keep you from spontaneous internal combustion for not accepting a job in the Sears Home Appliance Department and living a proper life. You know, that whole why did I end up on the road less traveled and how come it's all the time so God damned bumpy thing.

Well, I took a deep breath as the women in my family are wont to do when they begin a story and I shared the theory that my female cartoonist pals and I came up with and it goes a little something like this. (I'm actually quoting from my own e-mail here. Lay+zee.)

I'd put something out there. Some twist on an experience. Here. This is old but it ran in Glamour and the way it came about, was that I worked nights in security at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I'd come home and get undressed in the dark in front of this mirror in the living room and I kept seeing this image and finally got a line to go with it and it actually ran internationally. And I knew it had found an audience when it sold but they when it got printed-I felt like a baseball player who swings and connects.

That's what I sorta seek to do. Swing and connect. Conceptually.

Therefore, in my opinion, the best writers just continue to swing. And when something connects and goes out of the park it's awesome, but as long as their bat doesn't break, they've already won because the joy is in swinging the bat.
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I announced the arrival of my Obama button and all I heard was crickets. You thought it was the end of summer, huh? Uh-uh. They chirp for me.

In my experience, you make a splash like that and about three days later you get some sort of reaction. Good. Bad. Something. Not crickets. And I began to feel just slightly along the lines of what one of my old friends said when I told her I charged 800 bucks for my dog portraits. She said, "Yeah. Good luck with that." Which is another way of letting you know you're not-as they say-all that.

Tonight I caught some of Michelle Obama's speech and I remembered why I'm here with my $27 (don't cry for me Argentina/I think it's quite fabulous myself)dollar haircut. It wasn't about the outcome. It was that the bat had to be swung.

Play ball.

Extra Double Super Long Walk

The Pantry

If I started out telling you how I like to check out ant hills, I'm guessing this would be a very short conversation. I try to get Grantley to look at them and she either doesn't see them or refuses to humor me so it's just me standing there for a minute. I'm not obsessed. I just like to look at those giant ant piles that spring up overnight. It's sorta like stopping to smell the roses only more wiggly. 

I dated a man who, when we stopped to look at the ant hills, poured some of his Dr. Pepper right into the little ant city and I wasn't sure if that was a benevolent act or plain old torture, but what I know now is that if a gentleman caller shows up at your doorstep carrying a single can of Dr. Pepper, somethings just not right about that. 

There was a time when I first got here that I left a brand new opened bag of dog food leaning up against the wall and the next morning there was a conga line of little anties parading into the bag and not only was I completely grossed out but I didn't know if the food was tainted by ant feet and unsuitable for serving. 

That is the reason I can't shop at our local dog bakery. If my Mah caught me spending 49 cents for one owl shaped delight for the dog who delights in sidewalk smorgasbord, she'd have my head in a sling. She being a member of the generation that sees a bag of potato chips and cheerfully exclaims,'Why for that price you could have ten pounds of potatoes!".

You had to see me at Costco. I held a case of these dehydrated apple chip things in my hands as my head repeated: You could have ten pounds of apples for that price. But I digress, which is the subliminal name of this blog, you just can't see it. 

When Tinkle was here, I was pulling an Old Mutha Hubbard and I approached the Tupperware Milkbone container in the pantry and what did I hear but that conga song again and I peeked in and discovered I was the proud owner of an entire ant farm which I've always kinda wanted but in actuality? Yeah. Not so much. 

I guess I'm more of a Sea Monkey person, after all. 

In a book

I found this line in a book and I liked it.
Ready?

"If I can repeat failure, I can repeat success."

Good one, eh?

The pen is mightier than the sword and blogging is faster than needlepoint.

The Calendar

Somebody told me that somebody else said that this person(hey listen, I'm not going to say who this is while there is still a possibility of them coming to their senses, right?)announced that they're not going to celebrate their birthday anymore.

Hmm, I thought, if this person isn't going to use their birthday, I wonder if I could have it.

I hate to waste joy.

Kitchen Floor

We've had a house guest for a couple days now. She came with a single bag, a pound of sliced turkey and a prescription.

Fred (of Fred and Ginger) saw us all out trotting along this morning and he exclaimed(because Fred is an exclaimer),"Now I know who can take care of Ginger when I go away!". I smiled and said, " Do you think you have enough money to afford me, Fred? This kind of care doesn't come cheap." Fred said," It's called FRIENDSHIP."

Uh-huh.

I thought I had a pretty good handle on dogs taking pills which is another way to say: Peanut Butter. I took the pill and opened it and stirred the white stuff into the chunky style, distracted Grantley and Voila! Meds are served!

Yeah no. She's not a laced peanut butter fan.

So, I took the peanut butter and I put it on a slice of cheese. Dogs love cheese. Remember when Loren Green used to say that on those live commercials? (Or was it Ed MacMahon?) Yeah well, Tinkle wasn't alive during the Golden Years of Television because she wasn't having it.

The Shish had instructed me to roll the pill in a slice of turkey and have a second one ready so that Tink wouldn't stop to think about what was in her mouth. I had the additional task of preparing some unlaced turkey for Grantley just to keep the entire charade authentic.

Gulp. The pill was gone and I was rolling my eyes and thinking about following directions and why I find that so difficult sometimes. That was this morning. Tonight? Same game, new rules. She regretted to inform me in her own(P-tooie!) dog way, that turkey or no turkey, the pill was not going down.
After the fifth attempt, the dogs both now sleepy from L-Tryptophan and the moistened pill stuck to the floor, I retired from my career as a K9 RN.

Fred was right.

I like Tinkle way too much to torture her with the same soggy pill and the very best thing is that her people get home tonight.

The Button

I wanted to see if I could change the world.

The seven times we'd ever be at a restaurant as kids, we'd all go around and say what we were having and my Dad would always say the same thing,"I'll never tell." Now it makes me wonder if he was doing math in his head to see what kind of bill we were creating or did he have enough dough to score himself a steak, but it was always the same line.

When it came to elections, I had the kind of family that stayed up into the wee hours for the conventions, not the Oscars, the conventions. My sister and I would wake up the next morning to find out who was actually running for President because we wouldn't know by the time we went to bed. But my Dad, when I'd ask him, explained to me that people weren't obligated to say who they were voting for. That it was a Private Issue. That's why there's a voting booth.

I always vote. I'm a master voter. I remember being in Queens, NY and having the election judge comment on how I hadn't ever missed an election. I always wondered why that and how many library books you read, didn't actually qualify you as higher on the glamoroisty scale-as opposed to owning what a blonde acquaintance had to educate me about-a few personal ad-type years ago which is called "a late model car". I thought I had a late model car because it's a 1995 but apparently I have it backwards. Late as in lately.

Oh.

This election, someone asked me to come up with something for Obama. It threw me because I had been happily dwelling under the 'I'll decide when I get there' umbrella, which also allows you to pretty much stay out of it which is so much more convenient, than poking holes in your lawn for sign posts. I also liked Hilary. Not 100% but.

Time went on, I was out walking the dog-where I do my second best thinking, and I thought about the primaries and the muckraking and the mud slinging and just for a second, I thought, Huh, is all this The Best We Can Do? Couldn't we take the best of all we have, as a country, and move forward from there? I was thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. that day and I do think of him when I walk around my town, for as much as they know how to jack the rates on parking meters and they do, people really try and live together here. I thought, you know, when it comes to the future of the planet? I dream too.

There was only one name that seemed qualified to sit beneath that line. And so, yesterday(with the assistance of about five or six people (including my vegetarian Dad who said,"Wait until I tell my golf buddies what I was up to today.") I set off to change the world.

They say it's still possible to make that happen.

A person can dream, can't they?
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Ooops. Here's how to order.
They are limited edition, signed and numbered(but I just noticed we've got a bit of a smudging issue happening so I'm going to have to fix that) Miniature poster shaped(1 and 3/4s X 2 and 3/4th) pins. Looks best worn on dark clothing and if I could have everything I wanted, only seriously cool people would wear them. Please no idiots.

$20.00 complete.

Send me an e.
ann-no-e@sbcglobal.net

Airspace slightly above Scoville

It's Not Always Sunny on Grantley Street or The Episode in Which Grantley Clotheslines An Innocent Boy.

One glorious day we were on our usual route passing our favorite blond petters who were playing football in their front yard. They know us. The Dad knows us. The Mom knows us. We feel good about that because you know, altho Oak Park offers a trolley service, this isn't The Neighborhood of Make Believe around here, ya know.

Anyway, one of the small blondest boys ever was petting her and he must have looked at her funny or touched a certain spot or maybe the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars but she went coocoo for cocoa puffs, which she's known to do by tearing around a yard in these giant concentric circles which is usually wildly amusing except for the time I whacked my head with the retractable leash case ala the Statue of Liberty trying to stay out of her way. That was also funny but not until way later.
So, she's tearin' up the grass making larger and larger circles and who gets caught in her retractable leash but one of the blondest boys on the planet and he goes down. Hard and fast. Pow. And cries. Hard.

And one of us is demolished thinking: Why-o why-o why-o didn't I just drop the leash? And another of us is still doing the,'Woohoo! Come on everybody! Let's go around again! Canine Play Invitation Display Action Pose.

On their end, one of them was crying, one had a giant question mark on his face and the Dad, who didn't catch any of the shenanigans shouted at the crying boy to be more careful.

It was a bad day in dogland.

A year later, one of the boys-if not older and wiser-older and more experienced, was petting Grantley on the head and he said, Remember when she knocked me over? I said, Oh no no no no no. You're not supposed to remember that.

The moral to the story.

Even when they're on the leash, they can be unpredicatable.

A dog is not a toy.

Trees

Someone told me that without trees? Squirrels would be dog sandwiches because they're not exceptionally fast but they can scoot up a tree like nobody's business. 

Maybe you're not perfect at everything but if you look around, you might be standing in the middle of a forest. 

The Lawn

After a few years, you get really good at this.

Far North Oak Park

Yesterday, we were on an extra double super long walk and when we got to our 7th black lab(What, was there some sort of sale?) the black dog dropped to the ground and what that means in dog land is, "Hey! Come on over! I'm not threatening at all now, am I?". I know this because I've seen Grantley do it to smaller dogs especially for some reason, white toy poodles. 

Up front, it looks so friendly, but as soon as the unsuspecting smaller dog falls for the gag, the larger dog becomes so filled with glee at his cleverness he can't help but leap to his feet and all hell breaks loose and leashes are suddenly macrame and owners become uncomfortably physically intermingled and here is where you start to believe that dogs can laugh upon seeing such a fuss, hey hey/diddle diddle.

So, the black lab drops to the ground and who reads it as classic Canine Play Invitation Display but our heroine and she's off.

Off the leash and out of her collar. Fwoosh. 

In my early days, what I'd do is freak out clapping and yelling her name and much to my dismay, watch her run in larger and larger circles even into the street. I even remember trying the patented 'drop to the ground fake-out', which is supposed to get your dog back to you like a high quality boomerang.

Not this dog-she didn't get that instruction manual. So, I'd be left tumbling and grabbing for her like the boob that I can (occasionally) be. Not a good scene.

I finally remembered learning this a long time ago from a guy in Section D, which is what they call the group of people who clean the Metropolitan Museum of Art at night. We were talking about how, when his two year old son would wipe out, instead of freaking out and running to his aid, the guy from Section D would say: Wheeeeeeee! Like a superhero instead of a victim.

There I was, holding an empty leash and I said, "Ha ha ha. You are so funny. What do you think you're doing, trying to get away from me, ya big silly?" She turned and if a dog ever actually laughs, this one had tears in her eyes from wheezing laughing and she made a bee line straight back to her dangling red collar and let me pop it right over her head.

The black lab's person said,"Now that's a good dog." and all I could do was agree.

Registering at Petco

Oh, how I have been dragging my feet on this one. The jokes are too easy. Last night, I even thought about Grantley sticking around at the end to eat up the rice that gets tossed at the maythelordhavemercyonmysoul dog wedding and I thought oh, this is just wrong-wrong-wrong and a half o rama. Then I broke into my rendition of, Old Man River, just because I can.

My town is planning to attempt to break an existing Guiness World Record for Worlds Largest dog wedding. Uh-huh. That's what I thought too.

As much as I like to love to flip through the Harriet Carter catalogue and Good Lawd I totally do, I worry about stuff like this. Is Jesus/God/Santa going to look down and see how we turned away from the fact that there's no High School in Austin, but 10 blocks away they were trying to get 80 kajillion (actually 358 to break the record) dogs to stand in pairs on a red carpet o luv?

Oh and the bad jokes.

We were recalling the other day, talking to my sib about People of Other Nations, I have been employed by three different Chinese food establishments in my lifetime and I ask you? Can one person ever hear the 'Fried Lice' joke enough?

As Fred of Fred and (his dog) Ginger down the street said about the event, "Some people just have way too much time on their hands."

Of course, he's the same guy that on the occasion of my release from the bed of flu doom, on my first woozy walk accompanied by The Shish, he passed us and he said, "Ladies of leisure, that's what you two are." We noted that every time Fred sees us out for a stroll, he's out too and hello? His dogs name is Ginger. Does he even warrant a vote? I think not. (Call us when you learn how to put your dog on a leash, Fred. Then, maybe we'll talk.)

I also think of how hard it is to get people out of their groove. They say they want to have fun, but if it doesn't involve cup holders, all of a sudden they're all about the Law-N-Order Extra Special Victim Unit marathon. Here's a game. See how many minutes into each episode it takes to realize that you've already seen it or does it just seem like you did? Is this CSI or Law and Order and does it really matter in the end?

And here is where they begin to sway us. It's For A Good Cause.

Damn. The five bucks it costs to obtain a marriage license goes toward the Animal Care League and they can use all the help they can get.

When last we all discussed this, Zack(MK and Bob's dog) was going to be the pimp and Tinkle and Grantley are his bitches. This is, after all, Oak Park. Where we embrace alternative lifestyles and we wouldn't have it any other way.

5k

A couple of years ago when I was still using gasoline, I mean, using Lake Street, there was a story on the news with this headline: Man Charged With Murder In Wife's Beating Death. Subhead: Estranged Wife Dies After Beating With Hammer. And you could say, stuff like that happens all the time and you'd be absolutely right, but it happened in a spot I passed all the time. 

All the time.  

And you know how that is. One minute there's police tape and then there's some sort of make shift memorial and then that fades and then there's nothing, so it goes out of your head. A regular person can't carry things like that around in their head every minute and still manage to move forward. 

Saturday is the Second Annual Walk With Therese To Stop Domestic Violence at 400 Keystone Avenue in Keystone Park in River Forest. Last year, we gathered as many people as we could to show up and this year, I just don't have it in me to hear why people can't make it, so, I think I've stopped asking and I think I've even stopped trying to put it into words how or why this one matters to me, because then it makes it about me and my internal drama queen's kingdom and this is about a woman who was trying to make a new life for herself, away from this man that news articles describe as 'dangerous, but very charming' when he attacked her. 

Here. This is from the NBC 5 Site:

Police said James Pender hit his ex-wife in the back of the head four to five times and was carrying a briefcase with train schedules, a chisel, a large knife, a ski mask, and a change of pants.

He threatened her that if she filed an order of protection against him he would kill her and he did. 

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This isn't a fancy, super-organized 5k. This is her family and friends and the 15 dollar donation(that goes to the  Constance Morris House) will score you a t-shirt you won't ever feel like wearing and a 5k walk you never really wanted to take. 

Registration begins at 8:00 AM on Saturday.

The Paranormal

When I was a mere twerp, it's been said that I rose from my afternoon nap draped in a sheet and moved about the living room seemingly invisible to all who might see me. Seemingly-defined in this case as-it seemed to me that I was invisible, but apparently I was the only family member who had been touched with that gift of extrasensory sight.

Everyone else found it wildly amusing.

I was leaving the Jewel behind this woman who had The Coolest Pants Ever and before you speak to a stranger, you know you have those two seconds to think it over, but I went for it and said, "Hey, where'd you get those awesome pants?"

She turned and smiled and we got into a fierce conversation about thrift stores and consignment shops and My Sister's Closet and we got to my corner and she said, "I know you."

I said, "You do?" Trying to be polite because that's what people customarily do in this situation. Play along.

"You have a cute little dog and I see you all the time."

"Oh. Heh. Yeah. That's kinda funny, isn't it?" said I.

I know I have friendly people continually monitoring my automobile to check on my whereabouts and that's all goofed up now that I'm walking to work. Mary Next Door has the code of Grantley's barking cracked. If I'm here she barks like crazy, but if I'm out she's stays quiet. But generally speaking tho, you kinda think you're moving about the planet relatively undisturbed, don't you?

Uh-uh.

Better, as my Mah would say, put a little lipstick on, no?

Hope

Her food delivery being off-schedule due to my internal distress, I picked up Grantley's bowl, carried it over to the big plastic can that sits in the kitchen, filled it and as I lowered it in her direction, I caught her trying to track the scent of what was inside which was the same brown rocks I've been feeding her for the last month.

I wonder.

At night, does she dream of souffle?

Inbox

When you're in the universal dog club of life, you'll get these urgent e-mail warnings and you'll know they're urgent because in the header it'll say something like: NOT A JOKE. It might occur to yourself that the majority of those mass e-mail jokey things should be marked: NOT THAT FUNNY, now that would be funny, but this is about dogs and hey! It's urgent!

Make haste! Make haste!

Wicked dogs everywhere have taken it upon themselves to begin to chew gum. I mean, what's next, seriously, smell phones? I suppose this unpleasant habit started when they all gave up smoking, right? And they had to do something with their paws? Or is it the new trend of teeth whitening gum? Is that what they're after? Fresher breath? When did we start putting so much pressure on our dogs? I want our dogs to go back to chasing cars like in the good old days when your letter carrier was a grimacing mailman called Smiley who hated dogs and small children the way all good mailmen should.

Yeah, well. Saunter on over to the Wrigley site, if you please, kind sirs and/or madams, right there on the front page in minty wintergreen-like type: Cautionary Note To Dog Owners. (Like I don't have enough street loaf to worry about living down the street from a Popeye's Chicken inter-canine-planetarily-speaking.)

Right under, "Say everyone, if you don't mind me asking, just how would I remove gum from my clothing?" (Uhh apparently your dog will do it for you if you simply look the other way)You will find the answer to the burning question: Is it okay for my dog to eat/chew sugar-free gum?

This is a frequently asked question. You wonder why Wrigley struggles with world gum domination when they have to take time off to answer a question like this and on top of that? Answer it frequently?

No, you shower of maroons*, say our friends at Wrigley. Chewing gum products are not intended for use by dogs, cats or other pets. *They didn't say maroons but you know they wish they could.

With the elimination of those incessant chomping sounds and snappy popping and the endless rattling of silvery paper that used to keep us awake until all hours. I think you'll agree, once again, thanks to modern technology, we'll all sleep better tonight.

Atmospheric Reentry

If I can boast any current success as a human, it's that I don't let anyone else walk my dog. (The irony, and there are always heaping teaspoons full of irony, is that before I got her, I only knew how to have a dog as a team sport ("family style") so I questioned my ability to perform alone. Imagine that.))

We were up and out briefly yesterday, thanks to the generosity of Le Shish who offered to join us in a stroll* and here's where the investments you make in 6 week-swear to God-toenail clipping desensitization programs** and individually-wrapped heart worm pills that look like stew beef begin to pay you back.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, dogs gotta go out and if you're halfway intelligent, you will allow them to pull you out of bed and back into the universe-even if your hair does look severiously goofy.
___

*It's a tremendous gift, isn't it? Offering to accompany someone as they find their own way? Almost as good as a big fat jar of raspberry jam with a spoon tied to it's neck, no?.

**True story. I guess Corgis are especially not fond of having their nails clipped. Someone said it's because they're diggers, but Grantley only started digging when she saw Fresser unearth a section of his newly re-seeded back yard and flop on top of the cool mud underneath. She now happily demonstrates this wicked behavior to younger pups free of charge at the dog park.

We were visiting one particular vet tech and something went way wrong and Grantley started to balk and the vet techs response was to get even. We could possibly understand that sort of behavior, if it was someone else's dog but, yeah, uh, probably not.

Ever since, we've been exposed to dramatics the likes of which you will never be treated to on stage or screen. Head tossing, fur flying, bloodshed from her very own tongue when she was muzzled, howls that would make a werewolf envious and that's all before she gets up on the table. My favorite is when she tries to hide behind the chair.

We went through an extensive desensitization program where we were instructed to make 87 jillion appointments and come in and have only a few toes done at a time, with a whole serving of sweet talk and many delicious dog cookies on the side. (Tell me my dog is not of superior intelligence, right?)

It didn't work.

What did work and I can't remember how Alison at Pet Vets discovered it, was to eliminate the audience.

Me.

Now Alison takes her Grantley into the back and wah+lah.

She still doesn't enjoy it at a rate equal to the financial outlay, but nobody gets hurt.

Bed

Owning a person requires continual maintenance.

ARF is down for the count this evening. She fully expects to rally in the morning and her Mah is
under strict orders not to worry. Or else.
Thank for your patience and/or understanding.

Night

Owning a dog is a perpetual game of charades.

The Neighborhood

Marky's person informed us, on a fine weekend morning at the dog park, that we weren't allowed to mention the story of Little Black Sambo anymore. "Do you have any idea," she asked,"exactly what a Sambo is?!?!"

Ummmnope, we replied dully. We had just recently regained consciousness as evidenced by our multi-directional hairstyle and droopy eyelids. We just liked the part about the tigers chasing each other around the tree until they turned into butter and oh yeah, the fine clothes and the ear shoes. We liked that part too.

Grantley scored a brand new Planet Dog red collar with a silver clasp for $1.50 from a store called Tuesday Morning. As she paraded(no, really.)around the neighborhood this evening, she reminded me of a character in a book that I'm not going to mention because it reinforces unacceptable stereotypes as well as dairy products which have fallen out of favor.

At least we still have Multiple Asian Siblings.

The Blackout

"I don't know how they found their candles before they had cellphones."

Graue Mill Near The Waterfall

If the birds are having a live concert and you're completely plugged into your ipod, do we still have to listen to you whine about how stressed out you are?

Soldier Field

Rex Grossman
c/o Chicago Bears
Halas Hall
1000 Football Drive
Lake Forest, IL 60045

Dear Rex,

My name is Ann Farrell and I was at last night’s Family Night event. It was my first time in Soldier Field. Cool place to work, huh?

Anyway, hey, I was embarrassed for those maroons who booed you. I thought about it and I think the thing is, they have some sort of delusion that given the chance, they could do what you do.

The reason I think that, is, how many of them brought their own footballs to the game. You don’t bring an action figure of yourself to the movies. You don’t bring your own skates to the roller derby. You don’t bring a wisk to a restaurant, right?

You are doing the exact right thing and I think no matter how things turn out, there will be people who remember you because you kept your chin up and you were brave.

Focus, focus, focus, and if you have to be the guy that falls, go down fighting.


Your friend,




Ann Farrell

Worlds Largest Laundromat

Look what I found on a bench beneath a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee at the Worlds Largest Laundromat.

Don't tell Grantley. She has a fondness for free doughnuts and reading programs where they give out bicycles to kids.