Chapter Twenty-eight: RIP, my fine-feathered friend.
I am a planner. I plan and schedule and plot, much to the delight of my engineer/cyclist husband, who loves to live by a plan. Even more, he loves for me to make a plan and then for us both to live by it. And what he loves most of all is when the plan I make and live by includes a healthy dose of us bicycling and swimming together. I believe a plan is a structure within which to make reasonable changes, while Eric sets his plans in cement. Obviously I am right, so there usually isn’t much of a problem.
But I did not plan what happened to us in the Good Old Summertime Classic, a sixty-nine-mile bicycle ride along some of our most favorite roads for cycling, anywhere. The bike route runs in and around Fayetteville, Texas, including the tiny old town of Roundtop. We had trained for it. We had talked about it with joy and reverence. Eric even accidentally went to get our packets a full week before they were available for pick-up (don’t ask).
The night before the race, I developed a PMS17/hormonal migraine. Because it was the middle of the night, I took one of my gentler migraine prescriptions, hoping that this pill plus sleep would be all I needed. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the mother of all migraines. I caved in and went for the elephant tranquilizer. Unfortunately, I was so nauseous from the migraine, I couldn’t eat. My husband, a man of immense patience and even greater kindness, suggested we stay home.
But we had made a plan, so I got in the car anyway under the theory that I had no idea now how I would feel in two and a half hours. Although I kinda did know, and just didn’t want to admit it.
I should have listened to my husband.
On the way to the race, driving in the dark, the unthinkable happened. I had my head on Eric’s shoulder, sweetly sleeping (make that “snoring and drooling under the influence of the elephant pill”), when he let out a tiny swear word. Actually, I believe it started with an F, and was preceded by the word “mother,” and that his voice blasted through my cranium and echoed madly inside my impaired brain.
“What happened?” I screamed, heart pounding, hand clutching throat, eyes sweeping the road for signs of the apocalypse.
“I hit a cardinal.”
OH MY GOD. HE HIT A CARDINAL.
Since the time he could speak, my husband has proclaimed himself a fan of the Chicago Phoenix St. Louis Arizona Cardinals football team. His screen saver at work has always been a giant Cardinal head logo, until very recently when he finally switched it to a picture of us, under teensy-tinsy little applications of subtle pressure from me. He watched their playoff game in 2009 at 2:00 a.m. through a webcam picture of our TV on his laptop in his hotel room in Libya. He collects cardinals and Cardinal paraphernalia and insists on displaying them prominently in our bedroom.
Back to ear-splitting expletives and wife-under-the-influence. “Honey, I didn’t feel an impact. Are you sure you didn’t miss it?” I asked.
“They’re awfully small birds,” he said.
Ahhhh, good point. We drove on somberly. We arrived at the race. I stumbled off to the bathroom. When I came back, Eric was crouched in front of the grill of our car. I joined him, confused. He held up a handful of tiny red feathers.
I swear it was the drugs, but I burst out laughing. “You, you of all people, you killed a cardinal?”
He glared at me as he picked the biggest and brightest of the small feathers and tucked it reverently into the chest strap of his heart monitor. “I’m going to carry this feather with me in tribute, the whole way.”
So we got on our bikes: me, wobbly, cotton-mouthed, and somewhat delirious; Eric, solemn and determined. This, the ride for the cardinal, would be the ride of his life. Sixty-nine miles to the glory of the cardinal.
I made it all of about two miles before I apologized. “I’m anaerobic, and we’re only going twelve miles per hour on a flat. I’m really messed up from these drugs.”
“You can do it, honey. We came all this way. Now we’re riding for a higher purpose.”
I gave it my best, I really did, but a few miles later after a succession of hills where going up with a racing heartbeat was only slightly less awful than cruising down with a seriously messed-up sense of balance, I pulled to a stop.
“I’ve never quit before, but I can’t do it today, love.”
A beautiful male cardinal swooped across the road in front of us. Eric bit his lip. “I understand. Do you want to flag a SAG [support and aid] wagon?”
“I can make it back if we just take it easy. I’m sorry, honey.”
My husband treated me like a princess that day, but all the excitement had drained out of him. This race we had planned for was not to be. And a teacup-sized bird had sacrificed his life in vain, because I had overdosed on Immitrex and ruined the plan. The waste of it all, the waste of a day, the waste of a life: it was hard to overcome. But Eric tried; I’ll give him credit for that, the man really tried.
That night, after we did a make-up ride on the trainers while we watched We Are Marshall (interrupted occasionally by Eric’s sobs, because the only thing worse than a dead cardinal is a dead football player), I pulled our sheets out of the drier and brought them into our room. Eric—wearing his new Fayetteville Good Old Summertime T-shirt—helped me put the warm, clean cotton on the bed.
As we hoisted the sheets in the air to spread them out over the mattress, a tiny red feather shot straight up toward the light and wafted down slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until, pushed by the soft breeze of our ceiling fan, it landed on the pillow on Eric’s side of the bed.
Above: Actual cardinal feather on Eric’s pillow.
Steeling myself for the worst, I shot a glance at him to see if he had noticed. I did not exhale. Maybe I had time to brush it off quickly? Too late—he was staring at the feather. “Is that damn bird going to haunt me for the rest of my life now?” But he smiled.
“Probably. You did senselessly murder a cardinal, Eric.”
And he laughed.
17 Technically, I suffer from PMDD—Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder—but try to say, “I’m feeling PMDDy” or “I’m really PMDDing right now.” Yeah. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
~~~
Chapter Twenty-nine: Crackhead Possum Moves In
One day, shortly before noon in broad daylight, Eric and I came upon a strange sight. Weaving down the middle of our street toward us, its eyes glazed and fixed, its feet stumbling, came a possum. Not just any possum, but a big, scraggly possum. A possum that looked like an overgrown rat sick with radiation poisoning and male-pattern baldness. I kind of think they all look that way, but anyway, it was an ugly possum.
This possum was confused. Possums, or “opossums” as those with more class than me call them, are nocturnal creatures. Either this one suffered from jet lag (having just arrived on a direct flight from Mumbai, possibly?), or it had mistaken day for night.
“Poor possum. He needs to go home and go to bed. Do you think there’s something wrong with him?” I asked. I popped a handful of macadamia nuts into my mouth and concentrated on their salty yumminess.
“Maybe she doesn’t have a home,” Eric said.
“Maybe he did have a home, but his possum wife kicked him out because he never shut any cabinets,” I said, nodding my head.
“Maybe her possum husband booted her azz because she writes a blog about his fictitious gender-confusion issues and Ironman underpants,” Eric suggested, his eyebrows arched into points.
“Or maybe he’s on crack, and he’s jacking the neighborhood cars for loose change,” I said. We live in a nice neighborhood, but our cars have been broken into twice recently, so it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.
So we carefully dodged said possum and pulled into our driveway. But we couldn’t get it out of our minds. Later that day, Eric, ever the softie, took a bowl of dog food out into our front yard. The possum stumbled drunkenly to the bowl and had a meal. When it was done, Eric moved the bowl to the back yard. Theoretically, our two hundred pounds of doggies live there, but they are far too spoiled to eat outside. The possum dined in peace.
That night, we heard noises out back. “What’s that?” I whispered. My stomach twisted with nerves. I moved closer to Eric, my nose practically under his armpit, which gave me a comforting whiff of Irish Spring body wash.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch. Something was scratching the back wall of our bedroom. Something possibly out of a Stephen King movie, or worse. Something that would drag us from our beds and eat our brains, leaving behind only the empty skulls and the words “Juicy Couture” scrawled in our blood across our deck. I dived in for another huff of Irish Spring.
“I think our crackhead friend is trying to move in,” Eric said.
It took me a moment, but I realized he meant the possum. “IN, in? Can he get in?”
“No, she won’t make it. I’ll let the dogs out to chase her off.”
“NO! You fed him, we can’t let the dogs out there. They’ll kill him.” I should have seen this coming.
We debated, but in the end we decided to leave it alone. Our casa es su casa, I whispered. Feliz navidad, poco opossum. Call it restitution for the frogs.
~~~
A photo of sweet JuJu, who usurped the dog pillows and enjoyed the fire. The giant canines were too scared of the slightly unbalanced cat to challenge her.
JuJu got up to use her box, though, and Cowboy and Layla tiptoed in and stole their spots back. Such big, brave doggies.
After the dogs reclaimed the pillows, anyone want to guess what the cat did next? Hint: Rhymes with “slay” but has a “pr” in it. Yeah. I did an extra load of laundry. The battle was on. Just another exciting day at the home office.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-one: Our Dog Whisperer
Cowboy the Big Yellow Dog has a lethal tail and a bony head like a dinosaur. Eric sometimes calls him Chewbacca—not because of his size, but because he talks like Chewbacca. A lot.
Cowboy’s heart has always belonged to Susanne. At 120+ pounds apiece with silky blond hair, they are a great match. Susanne loves to curl up with him nose to nose. He wraps his paws around her arms to make sure she doesn’t leave him.
When Susanne would ask him, “Do you love me?,” he would answer in Chewbacca noises that sounded shockingly like “I love you.”
“Do you love only me?” she asked.
Chewbacca responded with something that sounded quite similar to “yes.”
“Do you love me so much, more than anything in the world?” she asked, and again he replied. This would go on for five or six iterations of question and answer until they tired of the game.
I tried to recreate the scene myself once. I slipped into Susanne’s position next to Cowboy and asked, “Do you love me?” His eyes smiled, and he wacked his tail like a club against the ground, but he did not answer. “Do you love Eric?” Nothing. “Are you a good dog?” Silence. “Do you love Susanne?” Chewbacca agreed enthusiastically with a loud “Rarrr rarrr rarrrr.”
The only thing he ever says to me—and he says it each day at eleven a.m.—is “out.”
Forget Cesar Millan. That girl is the Dog Whisperer.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-two: Raptors 1, Industry 0
Eric was supposed to do some work at an oil refinery in St. Paul, but it was indefinitely postponed. It seemed that one of only three pairs of mating peregrine falcons in the state of Minnesota had made their home in the exact stripper18 tower of the exact fluid catalytic cracking unit that his team was scheduled to work on. The refinery was working with state agencies on a relocation for the birds, but it appeared Eric’s trip would have to at least wait for the little hatchlings to arrive.
How would you like to be the guy that took this picture? That bird looks like it is ready to do some damage. The operators from this refinery reported that any time they got near this tower, she and her mate dive-bombed them. Also, see the band on her leg? She had been tagged and was being tracked.
Note that she placed the eggs the perfect distance from the warm toasty flange in the upper left. She didn’t even have to sit on these eggs, and no need for a nest. Girl Power!
18 No, that’s not another name for an exotic cage dancer. A stripper tower is a piece of equipment in a refinery.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-three: New Favorite Pet
After sweeping animal hair from tile floors every other day for eight years, I decided something had to give. I tried making the kids take over, but they missed spots or sometimes just skipped the entire exercise. I wanted something as tireless as Cowboy, as eager to please as Layla, and as independent as Juliet. So I found a favorite new pet. No, it was not the rabbit, although I sort of loved him. It was the Roomba robotic floor cleaner! It followed me around the house, talked to me, didn’t make a mess—and in fact, cleaned up after others, did what it was told when it was told, and went to its bed for a time-out when it was tired.
I found myself talking to it: “Way to go, little buddy!” or “Great job in the living room!” Sometimes “Do you need a rest?” and “How about I clean those filters for you?” Embarrassing but true. I could go on and on about this clever little thing, but I’ll spare you.
Pet shmet. It was my new favorite child.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-four: Not A Beaver
Every day when she came home from school, the first thing Susanne did was pick up the rabbit and snuggle it, pet it, carry it around, shove it in my face, and try to put it on my bed, because “he just wants to come see you, Mommy.” And every day after Beelzebunny bit her, Susanne would go into my bathroom for the hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls, band-aids, and Neosporin. She was as unconcerned about the daily biting as she was about leaving the first aid supplies all over my counter. On this particular day, though, she had something different to tell me.
“Mom, I can’t find Ninja.”
This didn’t sound like especially bad news to me. Just that morning when Eric went into Bunnicula’s domain to feed him, he’d found him asleep in the cat box, which the cat had been using for several days for cat box purposes. Ninjapoo had gotten all tuckered out after digging to China; litter and unmentionables were scattered all around the room.
Only one day before, said hare had displayed another charming quality: the gnawing ability of a beaver five times his size. In that one day alone, Eric repaired four bunny-bitten cords: my elliptical trainer and three cords to our Wii and its various accessories. And Thumper had already eaten through extension cords and lamp cords, and even destroyed a plugged-in laptop entirely.
The bunny’s charms were wearing thin.
So, I answered my daughter with the memories of Ninja’s bad behavior in my mind. “I’m sure he’s just hiding from you. We’ll find him when Eric gets home. In the meantime, I need you to finish your homework and pack a bag. The Weather Channel said we’re going to have a hurricane.”
“Cool,” she said. A hurricane was nothing new or scary to my island girl. If anything, it was, well, cool.
That afternoon, I wrote a post to my blog, bemoaning the bunny’s flaws and making fun of him for his beaver impersonation. I lamented that if we left town to avoid the hurricane, he’d have to ride the storm out alone. When Eric came home, I told him about Ninja’s AWOL status.
Eric is a methodical searcher. Susanne is our finder of all things, but with her that’s all intuition-based. Eric hunts for the missing like he’s a crime scene specialist on CSI with a search grid and an ultraviolet light. He made a first pass of the house. No Ninja.
“Could he have gotten outside when a door was open?” I asked.
“Maybe. I searched the front and back yards, though, too. No sign of him,” Eric replied.
After dinner, Eric resumed the hunt. Now he took it to another level. Furniture was moved. Doors presumed closed were opened anyway and he combed their interior rooms. Attic spaces were searched. Meanwhile, after I shepherded the kids into packing their “just in case” Hurricane Ike travel bags, I did what I normally do in the evenings when we aren’t training or supervising kids: I stole a few moments to write. Forty-five minutes later, when I was lost in the world of Annalise and Katie, Eric came into my office and shut the door behind him.
“I found him,” he said. His tone and face said that his good news wasn’t.
“Oh no,” I replied.
“He was behind the weight bench. Stiff, or starting to be anyway. Like the guinea pig19 was when I found it dead in its cage back on St. Croix.”
“What in the world? He was fine this morning.”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I have a theory.”
“The cat poop?” I asked, then immediately felt silly. That made no sense. “Did he throw his back out doing a crazy bunny gainer twisty hop?” That didn’t seem right either. Rabbits were born to do that maneuver.
“I think that table leg he chewed yesterday did him in.”
“But how?”
“Maybe a varnish on the wood? Maybe he couldn’t pass wood through his digestive system. My money’s on the varnish, though. It’s poisonous.”
Unbelievable. An overdose of wood chips did him in? This was horrible. Worse, I felt guilty, oh so guilty. I had groused about the bunny. Worse yet, I had regretted that we got him. I hadn’t exactly wanted him to die a horrible and premature death from poisoned wood chips, but still.
“And another thing,” Eric said. “I caught the news a minute ago. We need to leave for Austin if we’re going. We can stay for the storm if you want to, but they’re not calling for a mandatory evacuation. It just seems like if there were ever a good excuse to go visit Marie, this would be it.”
“Yes, of course, let’s go.”
We assembled the children hastily and told them we were leaving to visit their sister at the University of Texas, STAT—and, oh yeah, the rabbit died. Other than morbid curiosity about the circumstances, the kids took the news well. They’d received news of a lot of dead pets in their time. By now, hurricane evacuation had their undivided attention, so poor Ninja was given a very rapid service and burial in a shallow, unmarked grave.
I do want to assure everyone that we’d always given him bunny-recommended and bunny-appropriate chew toys, and we encouraged him to play with those instead of eat the furniture. Unfortunately, the force of his personality was stronger than we were.
Ah, the guilt.
RIP, Bunnicula.
19 Note again the common link in pet deaths, too numerous to recount in full in this book. Makes me wonder: where was Eric when Chester the pig died, hmm?
~~~
Chapter Thirty-five: Redneck Adventures
So my long-suffering island-boy-to-Texas-transplant husband convinced me that the perfect retreat for our family would be in a secondhand20 trailer on a bug- and snake-infested piece of property five miles from Nowheresville, Texas—yeah, for real—much to the chagrin of our kids, especially Clark, who announced that his weekends were 100% booked from now until infinity in Houston with debate, robotics, and a girlfriend.
We looked for Texas Hill Country acreage for quite some time. The conversation between my husband and me about this one went something like this:
Eric: I lahhhhke this one. It has a POND on it.
Me: Stop me if I’ve said this before: Some cowboy is going to kick your ass and good one of these days for making fun of our accents. And ponds have snakes.
Eric: That pond is nahhhhhhce. I lahhhhhhke that pond.
Me: I like that it is only an hour and a half from your office.
Eric: And it has a real nahhhhhce pond.
Me: I think you’ve mentioned that. But I can’t camp out there. Too many bugs and snakes. And Africa-hot. Plus there’s those bugs and snakes.
Eric: We’ll get us a travel-trailer. That’d be nahhhhhhce. You’d lahhhhhke it.
Me: Forget the cowboy. I’m going to kick your ass. And I made a promise to myself years ago—no RVs, no travel trailers. Sheets, running water, A/C, indoor potties, and no trailers.
Eric: You’re not being very nahhhhhce.
(Sounds of scuffle and pummeling, and Clark laughing at seeing his mother beating the crud out of his stepdad.)
Well, of course we bought the land, which we dubbed Shangri-La. Then we bought and fetched the trailer of a redneck’s dreams from a real nahhhhhce couple even further away from Nowheresville, Texas. It came time for Bubba-mon, Clark, and me21 to stash the trailer—soon dubbed the Quacker because Mallard was emblazoned on its front window cover—on Shangri-La.
Surprise, surprise, we had some issues.
First, five minutes before we got there, we took a shortcut detour which, it turned out, included an overhead bridge under which our trailer could not pass. As we turned around to take the long way, Cowboy whimpered once, shot Bubba-mon an apologetic look in the rear view mirror, and unloaded the entire contents of his freakishly large digestive system out his back end and down the spare tire well of our 2000 Suburban. This is how we discovered, to Clark’s eternal horror, that four hours really is Cowboy’s limit in the car. Oops, had it been that long?
Second, a mere thirty minutes later, this is how Clark discovered that no matter how logical it seems to him, toilet bowl cleaner is not the appropriate thing to use to clean dog poo from your vehicle’s carpet. No, we don’t always carry toilet bowl cleaner with us. We had stocked up on supplies for the Quacker. Luckily, those supplies included alternative cleaners to deal with the vaporized carpet.
Third, as my Bubba-mon pulled downhill on our narrow, winding drive into Shangri-La, he swung wide to avoid planting the Quacker into a tree. This is how we discovered the large tree stump under the skinny bush that he had assumed the Suburban would easily skim over. Fourth, when Bubba-mon was unable to free the Suburban from its high-center position on the stump through techniques such as teeter-tottering forward and backward, lifting, and lightening the load, Clark, after many unhelpful and highly irritating suggestions, came up with one good one. He suggested we use our jack to achieve clearance and then gently pull off and over the jack. This is how we discovered that there was no jack in the Suburban, after all. I’m not going to blame the teenage driver of this Suburban, but, well, there is the issue of custodial possession and responsibility. If you’re reading this, Liz, honey, I love you, and all is forgiven.
Long story short, Bubba-mon ultimately decided that the stump and Suburban were conjoined at a noncritical area, and he got aggressive with the gas pedal. It worked. He employed his superior trailer-backing skills, and we hid the Quacker in the woods and headed home to Houston. Where we slept like the freakin’ dead.
Three weekends later, we loaded up the truck and we moved to Beverly . . . Shangri-La that is, big ponds, bugs and snakes (cue banjo music). Of course, we ran into a few issues.
Upon entering the trailer, a horrible smell assaulted my princess-and-the-pea-like nose. Since the trailer had sat in the sun for weeks in the Texas heat, this was not entirely unexpected. Yet, somehow it was. Unexpected. And really, really awful.
Me: There’s something dead in here, Eric.
Bubba-mon: Turn on the A/C. You’ve got an overly-sensitive nose. It’s probably just musty.
Five minutes pass. Meanwhile, Clark made a tactical error: he flushed our brand-new thirdhand potty. A noxious odor filled the trailer. The LP gas detector went off immediately, screeching out its warning to everyone within a five-mile radius.
Me: (running from trailer with towel over my face, Clark on my heels, gagging) OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD RUN ERIC RUN IT’S GOING TO BLOW
Bubba-mon: (running) (IN THE WRONG DIRECTION) What the hell’s going on?
Me: I don’t know. Clark flushed the potty, it got really stinky, and the alarm went off. I’m afraid we have a propane leak. We have to evacuate.
Bubba-mon: Hmmmmm, but the propane isn’t even turned on. (Sticks head foolishly into trailer.) Oh SHIT. What’s that smell? (Turns to me.) OH, shit. That’s methane gas. (Reaches over and turns off LP gas detector.)
Me: What do we do?
Bubba-mon: I can fix this, no problem.22
So, first, this is how we discovered that, despite the instructions on the toilet tank treatment bottles that promise one dosage takes care of a whole load, you can’t leave anything in that tank in the hundred-degree Texas sun for three weeks. We could have driven a Prius to Houston and back on the amount of methane we discharged into that twenty-six-foot trailer. Ace Ventura’s “Whew, do not go in there!” took on a whole new meaning for us that day.
Second, after a honeymoon phase that lasted until darkness fell and the strangely disturbing night calls of the [7,521,999] frogs began, Cowboy and Layla crawled under the Quacker and cried half the night, until they finally moved closer to the thundering white noise of the generator, beside which they dug sleeping pits and curled up against its motherly presence like two puppies. And this is how we discovered that city dogs—like city girls—grow soft and become great big pansies after a few years away from the Cruzan rainforest.
Despite all of this, or maybe because of it—I dunno—I will grudgingly admit that Bubba-mon was right: This place is nahhhhhce and I lahhhhhke it. I am head over heels for the Quacker, Shangri-La, and Nowheresville.
20 Make that thirdhand, but who’s counting?
21 Clark’s sisters conveniently found ways out of helping. Not that their help was ever much help, anyway.
22 This was the first time we were to hear what became an oft-repeated phrase in the adventures of Bubba-mon and the Quacker in Nowheresville.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-six: How do I love thee?
I am cheap. No, not that kind of cheap. I am fiscally tight. Notoriously so. Hold that thought; it’s important to a story I want to tell you about Cowboy.
We went out to Nowheresville recently. Yeah, it was awesome, as usual. We even lured Eric’s youngest daughter and her boyfriend into coming with us. We ran and biked; they fished and swam. We saw five black wild boars with a bevy of white piglets. We cooked out and made s’mores over a bonfire under the stars. Liz and I picked june bugs out of our food. The men carried the heavy things. It was all good.
Things went awry when Eric turned on the A/C in the Quacker. Or, rather, when he attempted to turn on the A/C, and realized it no longer C’d the A, so to speak. So off he trekked to Home Depot. He toted back a schnazzy portable A/C. Since it was ninety degrees (on March 26th!), I applauded this decision. I did not know we had a few more expenditures to go along the way.
Our next calamity struck when the generator came to a grinding halt. Oopsie. Out of gas? Nooo. Out of OIL. Bad. Dead generator. Cha-ching.
But the big tragedy of the weekend, while expensive, cost more in terms of fear and suffering than dollars. Cowboy, bless his little heart, got snakebit right between the toes on one of his front paws. We didn’t know at the time that it was a snakebite, because we didn’t see it happen. At first we thought he stepped on a thorn. But when his paw swelled up to look like a cow’s hoof and all the poor animal could do was lay on his side in a fever and moan, you didn’t have to be Steve Irwin to know something more had happened. By this time it was Sunday night, though, so we veterinarianized him ourselves, with some advice from my Dr. Dad. Mostly this consisted of rubbing his tummy, cooing to him, and soaking his paw in hot water. The paw went poof in the hot water and a cloud of yellowy gunk came out. I let Eric take care of that part, because it made him feel manly. And because I nearly vomited.
The next morning, the swelling had gone down considerably, but he still sported a fever and wanted us to know it. My gosh, that dog is talkative, even when he’s sick. He couldn’t put weight on it, and it looked awful. We were really worried about him. So I took him to the vet.
Now, long history makes me terrified of the financial implications of entering a veterinary office. This whole Cowboy-snake fiasco reminded me of vet visits gone by, with Layla and with Karma. The vet we took Karma to in Houston had a way of not only overcharging us, but also making us feel like the lowest form of dog-and-cat-owning humanity on earth when we didn’t want to upgrade every service they offered to the limousine-and-caviar level. We are awesome pet owners. We love animals. However, we do not think they poop gold bricks. They’re our pets, not our children. With apologies to people who believe their pets are their kids, we find it unavoidable to spend a much greater portion of our income on the human offspring than the canines and felines. That’s just the way it has to be, because of that whole not pooping gold bricks thing. Sometimes we like the canines and felines better than the humans, but still we have no choice.
That night, I went on a desperate internet search for a new vet, but I didn’t get very far Googling “veterinarians who don’t think your pets poop gold bricks.” Eric came to the rescue. He had noticed a small house with a veterinary clinic in it about fifteen minutes from our house, in a more rural and less high-income area. The online reviews of the vet were of the “walks on water” variety. I was at their door at 7:30 the next morning after lifting 125-pound Cowboy in and out of the back of our Suburban to get him there. Man, I’m glad I took up swimming and weight lifting.
The only comments they made when I walked in?
Nurse: “Oh my, that’s a very big dog.”
Vet: “Oh wow, your dog is large. I’m glad he’s friendly.”
“Why, yes. Yes, he is,” I said.
This vet rocked. Seriously, y’all. If you need a vet in Houston, I’m the one to call for a referral. I felt like the by-God queen of all pet owners when I left, and I gave them only $165.37 for the visit, his antibiotic shot, and a bag of painkillers, ointment, and amoxicillin. Add to that the $4.39 cents I spent on chamomile-scented spa-footbath Epsom salts, and throw in a smidgen for a pair of cotton tube socks, baggies, and some masking tape, and that’s it. No unnecessary platinum-plated treatment suggestions, and no “you must buy a doggie treadmill for this tub of goo along with a $2 million special prescription available-here-only diet dog food immediately or you will go to hell” lecture. Yes, he’s chunky. He can’t help it. Lady Gaga told me he was just born this way. Oh, and the vet said it was a poisonous snakebite.
Liz’s boyfriend offered that he thought it was from a water moccasin, because Cowboy bounded into the shallow pond and started limping immediately thereafter. Not to gross you out too much, but that weekend, the normally two-acre pond was down to about a hundred square feet and was a teeming, concentrated, writhing black mass o’moccasins. Ick.
So, he didn’t like the footbath. Not even a giant beef-basted rawhide bone could make it more attractive to him. His foot looked like a hoof, and it was half the size it was the night before. He was too sick for a full body scrub, so he looked pitiful and muddy from his weekend in Nowheresville.
Poor tootsies. By now, he was hurting so much and feeling so betrayed that he wouldn’t even look at me. Or touch his bone. I applied the ointment, and gave him his meds tucked in a hotdog. I masking-taped the tube sock on over his foot. He turned his head even further away. I put him outside, but he had wear to a baggy over his sock and that did not go over well. And all of this we have to repeat twice a day.
Finally, he hid on his pillow with his bone. After a two-minute chew, he fell into a traumatized sleep. Sick kids and sick pets are heart-wrenching, aren’t they? The vet warned us that if his foot didn’t heal, Cowboy would have to have minor surgery to explore whether there was anything stuck up in his foot. But the chances of that were slim.
Weekend tally for that little Nowheresville jaunt? Close to a thousand dollars. How do I love thee, Eric and Cowboy? Let me count the one thousand ways.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-seven: Felinity
Excerpt from the novel Going for Kona23:
The alarm on my phone didn’t know that Adrian had died, and it dutifully chirped at 4:45 a.m. “Adrian, Charlotte, get up! Time to train! It’s going to be a great day!” it seemed to say. I considered smashing it to bits.
But what day was it, even? I thought back and realized that it was Sunday, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what had happened to Saturday. Wait, yes, I could remember: tears, sleeping, hugs, sleeping, and my mother taking care of all of us.
Sabrina didn’t know that Adrian had died either, and I could hear her helpful meow outside the bedroom door. She took her role of morning drill sergeant to the Hanson family seriously, and she seemed to derive great joy from it, in a restrained manner befitting her felinity.
I pushed snooze. I hadn’t planned for this moment. The melatonin I had taken the night before still fogged my head. What a paradox. My heart felt dead, and my brain felt like a plate of scrambled eggs, but my body tingled and itched to get up and do it; it was Sunday morning, and that meant bicycling was on the agenda.
Maybe it was the right thing to do: keep training for the Ironman, manage my anxiety, and take care of myself. Other than the fact that it felt wrong to be alive—much less doing this without Adrian—it was a normal activity. If I stayed in this bed any longer, in these sheets that smelled like Adrian, I would not want to get up at all.
The alarm blared again. I gave in to the obsession in a way that Adrian would have understood and appreciated. I snuck into the living room, put my beloved pink road bike on the training stand, and hopped on. The spin of the pedals and wheels matched the spin in my head. Whursh whursh whursh whursh whursh. Faster and faster, into a trance. The schedule dictated that I ride two hours this morning. I concentrated on my form, on my cadence, on not thinking at all. Whursh whursh whursh whursh whursh. I didn’t have the TV on. I didn’t have music. Just the sound of my own breathing and the bike going nowhere in my Houston living room at eighteen miles per hour.
Into my “not thinking at all” broke a thought. No, not a thought, more like an image that became Adrian’s face. Then a sound: Adrian’s voice. The image grew vivid, the sound grew louder, and they transported me back to a moment that morphed into the present.
“Get your speed up, and then lay yourself over, one arm at a time. Find your inner cat and just relax. Balance. Don’t get in a hurry about it,” Adrian said.
I remembered this. Adrian had been teaching me to use the aerobars on my bicycle.
“I’m off-kilter, Adrian. I’m going to fall.”
As I looked back on it, I could see myself overreacting to the subtle balance shifts. A car zoomed past and surprised me, and the gust of wind nearly knocked me over.
I squealed.
He said, “You should probably sit up when cars pass us for now.”
“I can handle it.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I know you can.”
I froze his face in my mind, lingering on each laugh line and the whiskers he’d missed in his hasty morning shave. Oh, Adrian. Adrian.
Sabrina hopped up on a bookshelf and watched me expectantly. Adrian’s image flickered and died. I turned my attention to the cat.
“You’re the only one I didn’t tell, aren’t you, Sabrina?” I asked. “I’m sorry, you’re part of the family, and you have a right to know. Adrian is not with us anymore.” Tears joined the sweat dripping off my face. “He’s not just on a trip. Don’t be mad at him.” Sabrina would bite our ankles whenever we had the gall to leave the house overnight. “I’m going to need you to snuggle Natalie and Sam a whole lot more. Remember that dog in Peter Pan? Nana? Well, you need to be like that dog. Protect them.”
The cat’s demeanor didn’t change, but she didn’t break eye contact either.
“I don’t think I’m going to need your help, though. I’m a strong woman, Sabrina. Worry about the kids. I’ll be fine.” I needed to practice saying this. Why not start with the cat? “Really, I will. I will be fine. I will be fine. I will be fine. I will be fine.”
I kept whispering the words over and over, fast in time with the pedal strokes. I am so very not fine.
23 Not a sequel to anything at this point, but I’m not above pulling a George Lucas and doing some prequels. Prepare yourself for new characters, people.
~~~
~~~
Chapter Thirty-eight: Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?
It turned out that two dogs just weren’t enough.
Weighing in at a full 6.5 pounds, Petey at three months was a dead ringer for Dumbo. He is a Boston terrier, although we suspected a Chihuahua got in on the action at some point in his lineage. I gave him to Eric—who was in the dumps in the wake of his youngest birth-child’s departure for college—to cheer him up, after he hinted for only four months. Eric also tried to snow me into a miniature potbellied pig. I didn’t feel that sorry for him. He had to settle for Petey.
We’d selected the Boston terrier for its short hair and size, but I had to find the perfect specimen for Eric: a calm and diminutive dog with a white face and a dark body. Calm was a must, because Eric had once had a Boston terrorist. Bowie was the Tasmanian devil, and an escape artist to boot. Petey is super calm24 and a world-champion snuggler.
Cowboy and Layla took their time forgiving us. Petey is smaller than Cowboy’s head, so we wooed Cowboy first, hoping to make Petey a friend, rather than a snack. We presented Cowboy with a giant yellow squeaky duck and a few treats, and that seemed to get him over the hump.
Eric wanted everyone to know right off the bat that, no matter what she thinks, this will never be Susanne’s dog. He whispered, “Susanne’s a big meanie,” in Petey’s sleeping ear over and over. It didn’t help, but it made Eric feel better.
24 Everyone who has ever owned a Boston terrier is laughing their asses off here.
~~~
Chapter Thirty-nine: Bitten by the five-second rule.
I adhere to the five-second rule—not because I have children, but because when my brother Bruce and I dropped something edible on the ground when we were kids, my father would say, “It’s Vitamin D.” As in dirt. “Good for you.” In hindsight, I know that he instructed us thusly because he is a tight-ass cheapskate frugal soul who worried about starving children in India his wallet our planet.
For my twenty-seven years alive (plus a few), I have put the five-second rule into practice with no mishaps. This recently ended in tragedy.
I was writing. I like to reward myself with snacks while I write. Write one hundred words, get a cookie, write one hundred words, have some ice cream, write one hundred words, book my liposuction. And so on.
I was noshing from a bag of expensive school-fundraiser whole salted cashews. Not only were they worth their weight in gold, but the little suckers tasted much better than my generic brand cashew pieces. Heaven.
When a cashew spurted out of my hand and hit the floor across the room, I thought, Hmmm, I’ll get that next time I’m up. Later, I did just that. I looked down at the floor and saw what I believed to be a broken piece from my whole, yummy salted cashew. I popped it in my mouth and chomped.
Only it wasn’t a cashew.
It took only one chew to know for sure THIS WAS NO FREAKIN’ CASHEW. It didn’t crunch like a cashew, it stuck to my teeth, and it didn’t emit that oily, salty goodness of cashew.
Gwack. Gwack. Gwack. I started gagging before I reached full speed as I careened through the house. Gwack. Gwack. Gwack.
“Mom, what’s wrong?!?” Clark asked.
Gwack.
“Honey?” Eric said.
Gwack.
By now a three-foot-long drool trail streamed behind me, and I foamed from the corners of my mouth. I reached the kitchen sink and started splashing water up into the accident site. Splash. Swish. Spit. Splash. Swish. Spit.
“Pamela, what ARE you doing?” Eric asked.
I tested my progress by gently closing my mouth until my teeth met. GWACK. It was still there. It was like I had bird poo—crunchy on the outside, gooey-sticky in the center—molded and stuck against my tooth. GWACK.
I reached back to my molars and scraped frantically with my fingernail, trying to get whatever it was off my teeth. Something that tasted nothing like cashews (don’t think about it) fell from my tooth onto my tongue. GWACK. Splash. Swish. Spit.
Clark and Eric both stood beside me now, their eyes wide, helpless to figure out what was going on, unable to assist, Eric with one hand on speed dial for the wacky ward.
“Five second rule—not a cashew—stuck to my teeth,” I gasped.
I dashed to the bathroom, desperate to unload the full force of my Braun Oral-B Triumph and half a tube of Colgate Total on this bad boy. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
By now, my devoted husband and son were also in the bathroom. You might imagine them expressing concern or running for the ipecac, but no. I think Eric actually peed himself laughing, and Clark, all 5′11″ of him, rolled around in the bathroom floor howling, crying—real tears, I swear—and pointing at me.
When Eric had changed his drawers and resumed his composure, he said, “I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t gotten rid of the cleaning service two months ago.”
Yes, that is how long it has been since anyone cleaned the floor in question. I’m a writer, a mom, a wife, an attorney, a consultant, an athlete, but I am NOT a housekeeper.
“Mom, what if it’s from one of the dogs or Juliet?” Clark asked.
Gwack.
I know what my dad would say: “Hopefully it was a good source of protein.”
~~~
Chapter Forty: The Pain of Puppy Love
How quickly Eric’s little Boston terrier became the canine love of my life. It took, what, one week? I knew I loved him madly, but I did not grasp the depth until one Thursday at 6:45 a.m.
I was in the kitchen with Petey, who had stopped bounding around the house like a bunny rabbit with his ears pinned back long enough to gobble his Fromm’s gourmet puppy food, milk, and chicken, that I’d warmed up to the perfect temperature for his eating pleasure. Clark and Susanne were shoveling muffins down like zombies. Our big dogs were wolfing their breakfasts about thirty feet away, down a long hall and in another room.
And then I heard one angry snarl, followed by a squeal and frantic, breathless crying.
Petey. My sweetie Petey.
I ran toward the big dog area, my mind whirling. Hadn’t Petey been at my feet? How could he have made it back there so fast with none of us seeing him?
When I got to the room, I saw that Petey had scrambled under the electric piano, and his cries ripped through my gut. Our beloved Cowboy was on his belly, crawling toward me in supplication.
“BAD DOG,” I yelled, and whacked him. I didn’t have to see it to know what had happened. Petey had come between 125-pound Cowboy and his food bowl. If there’s one thing Cowboy loves, it’s food. Layla normally waits to eat until Cowboy is done, because she doesn’t want him to even think she’s after his chow.
“Petey, Petey sweetie, come here,” I cooed, and crawled after him as he ran from me, crying, under tables, chair, and piano. I was faster, and I soon scooped him up to soothe him. I held him to me, and his cries lessened.
“What did he do? What did Cowboy do to him?” Clark yelled, and he grabbed Cowboy and held him to the floor.
“He got upset when Petey tried to eat his food, but I already took care of it.”
“Don’t hurt Cowboy,” Susanne yelled at Clark.
Clark couldn’t help it. Petey’s yelps were tearing all of our hearts. Cowboy took another few lumps, and Clark put the big dogs outside.
That’s when I saw it.
The room was dark—it was early, there were no lights on yet—and I had not seen any damage, so I assumed Cowboy had been all bark and no bite. But I was wrong.
Petey’s bloody eye had popped out of its socket and was hanging from his face.
I screamed. I sobbed and ran for our bedroom with Petey in my arms, yelling for Eric, my mind white with panic. I don’t remember what I was saying. I think I said, “Cowboy’s hurt him. Cowboy hurt Petey badly. He’s hurt. He’s hurt bad.” Something like that. Over and over.
Eric was in the shower. He ran out in a towel, and the look I saw on his face matched the anguish I felt.
“I don’t know what to do, Eric,” I cried.
“I don’t either.” He pulled off his towel and wrapped it around our whimpering, shivering baby.
“I’ll find a vet,” I said, and I started simultaneously Googling for emergency vet services and telling Eric what happened. I wrote down a number incorrectly, wasted time retracing my steps, and finally reached a vet who talked me through what to do. There was a clinic five minutes away that opened in twenty.
“Is he in shock?” I asked as I pulled clothes onto my husband.
Eric held Petey tight against his chest. “I don’t know. We just need to get him to a vet as fast as we can,” Eric said.
We sprinted through the house with both teenagers and Clark’s girlfriend Alayah, who had arrived during the pandemonium, on our heels.
I spoke through shaking lips, through my tears. “You can bike or walk to school. I’ll get you an excuse note later. We have to take Petey to the hospital.”
Three stricken faces nodded. Susanne dissolved into sobs and put her head on the kitchen bar. There was no time to comfort her.
Eric sat in the passenger seat with Petey and I immediately took a wrong turn out of the driveway.
Relax. Pull it together. Don’t make this worse for Petey.
“Damn Cowboy. Stupid, stupid Cowboy,” I said.
“If he had wanted to hurt him, Petey would be dead. He didn’t mean to hurt him,” Eric said.
I pictured our giant yellow dog on his belly, whining, crawling toward me before I had even found Petey. Cowboy. Our big yellow lab, our pet whom we loved.
“I know. I know. I know. I just hate him right now. I can’t help it. He hurt Petey. And I could have stopped it. How did I let Petey out of my sight? Why didn’t I feed Cowboy outside? I let this happen. Oh Petey, oh Petey.” I could hardly drive, but we were almost there.
The clinic wasn’t open yet, but I rang the bell anyway and a kind young man opened the front door. “Our puppy, his eye,” I got out, then Eric was beside me with Petey and showed him to the man.
“His eye and his face, it’s an emergency, it’s bad,” Eric said.
The young man nodded and ushered Eric straight back to the surgical suite as he yelled for a vet. I tried to fill out the forms but I couldn’t remember the date or our zip code. Less than ten minutes later, Eric was sitting beside me and five people were clustered over Petey, taking care of him. Eric put his arms around me and I pressed my wet face into his shoulder and let my sobs bounce us in a oddly calming rhythm.
We started a dialogue by text with the kids, who had decided to wait for us and worry about truancy later. Susanne was terrified we would give Cowboy away.
Eric and I looked deep into each other’s eyes, and he shook his head no.
“No. He is family,” Eric typed.
Before long, the vet came with an update, then invited us back to be with our little buddy, who was under anesthesia.
“I consulted an ophthalmologist. This is the worst swelling I’ve ever seen. The eye was intact, but the optic nerve was damaged. It’s not uncommon for breeds with flat faces and protruding eyes to have an eye pop out. Sometimes they keep their sight, sometimes not. But Petey has only about a one- to two-percent chance of seeing out of this eye. He may not even keep it. But we’ll do everything we can to make both things possible, and even if we have to remove the eye later, it won’t affect his quality of life. We’ve managed to get the eye back in the socket, but just barely. Thank goodness you were able to come quickly or we wouldn’t have been able to. We’ve sewed it shut. His stitches will stay in for four weeks, then come out one stitch a week. You have your work cut out for you.” She put her hand on Petey’s side for a moment, looking at him. She explained the complicated regimen of creams, pills, and ice packs. We stroked Petey’s warm body. I cried some more and a vet tech held a box of Kleenex out to me.
“Your main challenge is that in twenty-four hours, he’ll want to resume normal puppyhood, and you need to keep him still enough that he doesn’t pop the eye back out. Keep him away from the excitement of the big dogs as much as you can.”
The big dogs. Cowboy. We had already explained how it happened. I didn’t know how to reconcile Petey’s eye with my love for Cowboy or my personal guilt, and frankly, I wasn’t ready to do either one yet.
As if she could read my mind, she went on. “Petey acted like a terrier puppy. Cowboy acted like a normal dog. This kind of thing happens. They’ll probably be best friends someday.” She gestured toward Petey. “Don’t be too hard on your big dog. There are no lacerations to his face or eye. It could have just popped out from a blow, like from the big dog’s head, or from furniture or the wall. I’ve seen bug-eyed dogs like him run into walls and ruin their eyes more than once. They have no structural protection.”
Images flashed through my mind in a crazy high-speed slide show. Cowboy crawling toward me on his belly. Petey’s swagger as he sidled up to Cowboy and sat on his leg the night before. Petey leaping up to lick Cowboy’s mouth. Petey’s dangling eye and bloody face.
They brought Petey out of his anesthesia and he immediately sat bolt upright, looking loopy but ready for a fight. He got a round of laughs.
“What a tough little guy!” one of his helpers exclaimed. Yes, he was.
Four hours later, I brought Petey home. It was stressful, emotional, and very busy, and I confess, I cried for a good part of the first twenty-four hours. We had a few high-risk moments, like when Petey got excited and leaped into the air in a sideways twist and body-slammed himself bad-eye-side first into the floor. He fell into our backyard pond, completely immersing the eye I was supposed to keep dry in dirty water. He managed to sneak a back-footed scratch of his eyelid when I wasn’t looking and drew blood. He beat his eye against the floor playing with Stinky Bunny. He bumped into furniture on his blind side. Over and over again, I heard his yelp of pain.
But he thrived. He ate like a champ, he tolerated his eye meds, and he gave kisses just as freely as before. He dashed around like his cranked-up jackrabbit self. He discovered that he likes the T-bones I tried to bribe him with even more than he likes Boston Market chicken. Being an injured dog had its privileges. He even got to sleep in our bed so I could keep him from scratching.
Above: Teeny-tiny ice pack.
And the biggest thing? The thing that made heart swell like a water balloon in my chest? Cowboy. Yes, Cowboy.
Cowboy was banished to the backyard for a full twenty-four hours post-incident. I couldn’t even look at him. It took Eric three full days to speak to him. Susanne pleaded with us to forgive him, but just the thought of him threw me right back into the trauma.
When I let Cowboy in the house for the first time after Petey’s injury, I held our little Boston in my arms. Petey with his giant swollen eye. Petey who would likely never see again from his left eye, and who would never look the same.
Above: Thirty-six hours later, with a T-bone.
Cowboy walked straight up to Petey and me, sniffed Petey and licked his face. He nudged Petey’s belly with his giant muzzle. Petey was in ecstasy. His body wriggled in my arms. He strained and stretched to lick Cowboy back. Then Cowboy put his bony dinosaur head into my hand and stared up into my eyes and wagged his tail slowly. He talked to me, he cried to me in his Chewbacca language. Can a dog feel remorse and ask for forgiveness? This one sure seemed to.
Above: Forty-eight hours later, first trip to Nowheresville. Hanging with his big yellow friend.
I put Petey on the ground and he pogoed up to kiss Cowboy. Cowboy hung around for some Petey love for a moment, then ambled off to lie down in his favorite spot.
Someday they will be best friends. Petey will be fine. If their hearts were big enough to love past that horrible, traumatic incident—that tragedy—then mine was, too. Puppy love. We’ve got it bad.
I ♥ Petey, the slightly-less-beautiful-than-before dog. I love him even more than I did when he had two big black eyes that shone with mischief. In fact, I love him twice as much with one eye as I did with two.
And I love the big yellow dog; I have since he was our silly puppy. I always will.
~~~
Chapter Forty-one: A Waking Dream
Excerpt from the novel Conceding Grace25:
A hand touched my shoulder, then pushed it. “Katie? Katie, wake up. It’s me,” Nick said.
I fought waking, but my eyes opened after he had shaken me a few more times. “What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s three a.m. I know it’s late, but I need to tell you something.”
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Don’t you remember, silly? I went shopping for presents to make you smile.”
“Oh, yeah. You told me that.”
My eyes closed. His hand shook my shoulder again.
“Katie, wake up, listen to me, because I can only talk for a moment. I need you to know I am all right. Don’t stop looking for me. Take the picture with you. I’m counting on you.”
“Wait! What? Nick?” I jumped up, the cotton sheets sliding to the floor as my feet hit it. “Nick?”
Nick was not there. Of course he wasn’t. You’re dreaming, I thought as I climbed back into bed, tears falling. It was just a dream.
Crash. I jumped. Annalise’s agitation sparked in the air around me, and I realized she had hurled something to the ground. I got out of bed again, and this time I flipped on the light switch. The sound had come from Nick’s closet. I opened the door.
His tackle box sat upright on the floor, five feet down from its shelf above Nick’s hanging clothes rack. What do you mean, Annalise? A tackle box?
I squatted down beside it and placed both my hands on its lid. I closed my eyes. “I’m all right. Don’t stop looking for me. Take the picture with you. I am counting on you.” Nick’s voice filled not just my head but my whole body.
I opened the box and pulled out each item, one by one. Hooks, leaders, and rubbery squid. Odds and ends I couldn’t name. And a picture. A water-damaged picture of Nick and his father on a fishing boat. The Little Mona Lisa. “What is this? Annalise, Nick? What am I supposed to get from this? Annalise? Help me, please help me.” Stillness. Complete quiet.
After several long minutes sitting on the floor in front of Nick’s closet waiting for an answer or an idea, I gave up. I tucked the picture into my travel bag, and returned to bed. I slept the last hour and a half, but not well, Nick’s voice and Annalise’s antics in my head.
By five a.m., Kurt and I had grabbed the coffee cups Ruth held out for us, and I had pointed the nose of the Silverado toward the airport. We sipped our coffee in silence as we drove to catch our flight.
Nick, I’m coming to find you.
25 We goin’ back to de islans, mon.
~~~
Despite the full-time job that is nursing a Boston terrier puppy through a devastating eye injury, my world kept revolving on its axis. I was thankful, though, that the client I’d had scheduled for the next week called to reschedule. God granted me time to keep an ice pack on Petey’s eye during his naps. But not much time.
Clark qualified for the state tournament in cross-examination debate, Susanne swam two swim meets (and won the 500 free in one of them) and sang in her first choir concert, Liz celebrated fall break with the season’s first snow and a bear on campus, and Thomas visited us (yay!). Only Marie required no special attention, which earned her favorite-child status for the week.
I got a rejection letter from an agent after a nearly five-month-long review of one of my novels. Since this happened on the afternoon of the day Petey hurt his eye, it didn’t impact me as much as past rejections have. Instead, it fueled my conviction that traditional publishing is on its way out. I am embracing the new era. And icing Petey’s eye.
Above: “I fought the pig, and the pig won.”
About one week after Petey’s injury, we took Petey, Layla, Cowboy, and JuJu to the vet all at the same time. Those four, plus Eric, Clark, Susanne, and me, all in the Suburban. It was quite a show. They’re building an addition onto the clinic and naming it in our honor.
~~~
I don’t know what you call it where you live, but the lifestyle we call redneckin’ is alive and well under many names in this fine country. In south central Colorado, for instance, we found it at the Colorado Gators Farm. So, duh, the gator farm became the total highlight of our trip.
We came to be in the vicinity of said gator farm while visiting our daughter Liz, whose college is nearby. In other words, the gator farm is so awesome that whole towns and universities have sprung up around it. It’s like the cultural spoke in the wheel of SoCo.
It didn’t start that way. Originally, the gator farm was a tilapia farm perched (get it?) atop a natural hot spring. While fancy fish can survive in cold and even frozen water, it turns out they like eighty-seven degrees way better. This little nugget of information raised my respect for fish intelligence tenfold.
The first gators at the farm were nothing more than green garbage disposals: they ate the dead fishies. Dead fishies stink, and aren’t good for much else than feeding gators. The founders of the gator-Dispose-All concept were so forward-thinking in their greenness, in fact, that they didn’t even buy the gators. They recycled the cast-off gators that no one else wanted. So if you ever wondered where those cute little caiman gators at the local pet shop ended up, I’ll tell you: they’re freezing their asses off eating dead tilapia in SoCo.
When we visited, it was a balmy nine degrees outside, and the gators were “resting.” Even water bubbling up at eighty-seven degrees from down below gets a bit nip when it’s that cold outside. This makes the gators very, very sleepy. Did you know a gator can survive while frozen? It can. Not for all that long, but the record at the gator farm is forty days after a good freeze for a gator to emerge, thaw, and resume somewhat normal brain function, which wasn’t all that much to begin with.
I don’t want to suggest that working at the gator farm is high-risk, but we did see three different memorial posters to employees who had died prematurely, cause of death unknown. Two brave gator wranglers remained when we were there. I think the stress of their jobs may have gotten to them a little. About all they wanted to talk about was duck rape26. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to explore the social crisis that is the rape of defenseless female ducks, I highly recommend a tour of the Colorado Gators Farm.
There was way more to see than just gators (and hydroponic farming and tilapia tanks) at the gator farm. For instance, we saw a biodome. It reminded me of Mad Max and the Thunderdome, except smellier. A whole lot smellier. We also enjoyed the rescued tortoises, snakes, geckos, frogs, possum, parrots, emu, goats, horses, donkeys, sheep, ostrich, and cats. Cats as in plural. Cats as in prolific breeders. Apparently the gators’ diet does not include much cat. There were a lot of goats, too, and I’m pretty sure one of the donkeys was knocked up. It is possible that ducks aren’t the only things getting raped at the gator farm.
No redneck story is complete without potty humor, so I want to tell you about Monster, the generously-proportioned tortoise/toilet paper roll holder. When Monster was rescued, he weighed three times what he should have, because his former owner lovingly hand-fed him meat for years. Monster hangs out by the potty so often that the handlers keep a roll of toilet paper on his back. When unsuspecting guests reach for the roll and it rises up under their hand, they run screaming and half-decent from the bathroom. Hilarious to the gator-wranglers, but not necessarily to the guests themselves.
I don’t want any of this to scare you out of a visit to the Colorado Gators Farm, because it is totally worth the price of admission, if for nothing else than a chance to see Morris, the resident movie star, whose many film credits include Happy Gilmore and Doctor Doolittle 2. We didn’t actually see Morris, as he has a special private gator enclosure appropriate for a star of his caliber, but we did have the chance to. He’s (supposedly) right next to the pile of frozen gators that didn’t make it past forty days, and just down the path from the bone yard of gators past, who shall rest in peace until someone requests a gator skeleton. And then, if the price is right, the wranglers will exhume the body, hose it off, and ship it UPS wherever you would like.
We loved the gator farm and made it out intact with certificates of bravery in hand for holding Albuquerque the sleepy caiman alligator, who even signed our certificates with a full imprint of his teeth. The wranglers encouraged us to come back during the summer, when they personally teach gator-wrestling lessons. I know we’ll at least send Susanne, because we’ve had one too many tours through teenage girlhood at our house, and we were going to put her up for sale on eBay, anyway. If she survives the gator wrestling lessons, she’ll have picked up some skills that we hope she will use in her dating years.
We saw We Bought A Zoo the night before our visit, and when we saw For Sale signs everywhere at the gator farm, we started thinking it would be a great idea . . . for some other family.
26 OK, y’all, as a victim of sexual assault myself years ago, I know rape is a serious topic. And that’s exactly why it is odd and thus ultimately funny that they brought it up and talked about it at length with my two teenage daughters present.
~~~
Chapter Forty-four: For Sale, $5.00—One-Eyed Dog Who Pees on Bed
Text from actual (short-lived) ad on Craigslist:
***
For sale, $5 OBO, to a good home: one-eyed dog who pees on the bed. This Boston terrier puppy eats his body weight daily and later expels roughly 1.7 times that on the master bed and in high-traffic areas. He is prone to bumping into walls, bicycle stands, furniture, etc. He is excellent at finding all the tchochkes you have lost under the couch. Loves to chew and prefers things that smell like humans. A specialist at whipping the rest of the animals into a frenzied mob. A gatherer and a hoarder, he steals anything he can grip with his mouth. Oh, and he only has one working eye, but it’s real pretty. His vet bills come with him. Act fast, this one won’t last long at this price.
***
If he’d had both eyes, I’d have had to charge $10.
~~~
Chapter Forty-five: Ewe’s not fat, ewe’s just fluffy.
——Original Message——
From: Pamela Hutchins
To: Eric Hutchins
Subject: Petey pic
He put the bear under his chin as a pillow himself
Tired little bugger after playing outside
__________________________________________________
From: Eric R. Hutchins
To: Pamela Hutchins
Subject: Re: Petey pic
He is SOOOOOOOOOO cute, and he looks really fat in the picture
__________________________________________________
——Original Message——
From: Pamela HutchinsTo: Eric R. Hutchins
Subject: RE: Petey Pic
Maybe he had a teeny tiny snack right before the picture
Or maybe he’s retaining water
__________________________________________________
From: Eric R. Hutchins
To: Pamela Hutchins
Subject: Re: Petey pic
You are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAD
And that was funny
__________________________________________________
Above: Petey as Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
What does a one-eyed dog who looks like a zombie wear for Halloween? Why, a zombie pirate costume, of course. And how does he celebrate Halloween? He does a lap around the vet’s clinic decked out in his pirate garb, his legs outstretched in a joy-prance.
While he was there, he got another stitch out, and did great. He still had no sight in the eye, though, and because there was muscle damage and the eye was turned wrong, only the white of his eye (which was red) had been visible since the accident. Only when we put the medicine under his eyelid could we see his big beautiful iris.
His wandering eye looked Looney tunes, but with a swagger. Go, Petey.
~~~
For the last year or three, a male gecko has used our master bedroom sliding glass door as his bug-hunting hang out. I adore him. Nothing defuses whatever ugly mood swing I’m experiencing faster than spying his little green body creeping on spongy toes across the glass. He only comes out at night, and only in late spring through early fall.
In the past, he was always alone. Solo gecko. A bachelor. The gecko man about town. Until June of this year. I looked up one June evening and saw the blessed sight of Mr. Gecko with a Miss, who later became his Mrs. (or at least his baby mama). I snapped this blurry shot. Where did she come from? How did they meet? GeckoMatch.com? Were they betrothed from birth by gecko parents eager to ensure the perpetuation of their shared genetics and culture? Or did Mr. Gecko’s friends tire of his partying and set him up with a hot young thing to entice him to settle down? Whatever and however, it was gecko love.
One month later, I discovered that a tiny red gecko baby with bulbous eye-orbs under translucent lids had found his way into our master bath. We watched him until he escaped without a whisper under our cabinets. Within two weeks, I saw another of the offspring on the glass with Mom and Pop. They were all too far apart to get a snap of them together, but Pop huffed out his chest/neck in obvious pride.
How cool is gecko love?
~~~
Chapter Forty-seven: Tiny Catholic
In Amarillo where I grew up, you were religiously diverse if you were anything but Church of Christ. So, as someone who was on the outside, I thought I had sensitivity for religious diversity, I thought I got it. I was raised Methodist, chose Disciples of Christ, and now go to a Baptist church. Eric has had a similar Protestant journey.
So let’s just get this out there: Petey is Catholic, y’all. We found out during Lent, when he came home on Ash Wednesday with the remnants of a cross on his forehead. He’d obviously tried to scrub it off, fearing our disapproval.
We really should have picked up on it sooner, with his Boston background. And it’s going to be okay—it’s not like he’s Pentecostal, after all. He’s just a Catholic, and we’re not in Amarillo anymore. We’re in Houston, and there’s a heck of a lot of Catholics here. It’s just that most of them speak English as a second language. Come to think of it, though, English isn’t Petey’s first language, either.
It will be fine. Really, it will.
~~~
Chapter Forty-eight: At least we’ll always be able to find it.
Petey the one-eyed Boston terrier went under the knife for the snip-snip. You know, neutering. Why, you may rightly ask, would we do this to our sweetie Petey?
Well, when we picked him up from boarding at the super awesome Polka Dot Dogs two weeks before, they said, “Your little darlin’ is trying to become a father and has his one eye on that Chihuahua over there. And the cockapoo. Oh, and also the Maltese.”
Pooooooor Petey. In his defense, he told me all three were super hot little bitches. And he loves Polka Dot Dogs. Instead of kennels, they let all the dogs of similar size and temperament play in open rooms together. He’d like us to take him along wherever we go, but if he can’t go with us, he prefers PDD.
PDD, however, has a policy: At the age of seven months, little boy doggies no longer get to stay in open-room boarding if they can’t keep it to themselves. While I think anyone would be lucky to get the bonus of little Peteys along with the price of their boarding, I guess I can accept this.
So, Petey visited his very intimate buddies at the vet’s office. After three months of eye treatments, they know and love him well. After neutering my poor baby, they know him even better. Before the procedure, they asked me if I’d like them to put a microchip in Petey, in case he ever gets lost. I said yes, but then I remembered that Eric and I had agreed to partner on all parenting decisions, and Petey was our newest child, after all.
I called Eric. “Do we want Petey to have one of those Pet Finder microchip thingies?”
Eric said, “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“Excellent, because I already told them yes,” I confessed. “They said they can put one in when they remove his you-know-whatsies.”
Eric paused. “Wait a second. They remove his you-know-whatsies and put the chip in the space left behind?”
“I didn’t ask, but that sounds likely, since this only came up because of his procedure.”
“So he’ll have a tracker in his ball sack??”
“I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but, yeah, I guess that’s about right.”
Another pause.
“Well, I guess we’ll always be able to find it, then,” Eric said.
Ew. I’m thinking this microchip may tell us a little more than we really wanted. Whatever happened to the right to privacy? What do we do when Petey starts dating? Or, God forbid, gets married? Wouldn’t it be enough of a challenge that he couldn’t father little Peteys without his anxious parents tracking his every move with his beloved? Not to mention the whole one-eye thing. This is a little more intrusive than, say, a GPS tracker in a car, which I’m not above installing in my kids’ vehicles if they deserve it. But a ball sack tracker? Could I do that to him?
As I pondered the horrors, Eric broke into my reverie. “I’m kidding, Pamela. It’s a good idea. It’s fine. I’ll bet they don’t even put it there. I’ll bet they just use the occasion of anesthesia to tuck it in somewhere else.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I exhaled. What a relief, because I was pretty sure that wherever they were going to put the microchip, it was a done deal by now.
Later that same day, I picked up our Petester. Oh, what a pitiful sight he was, head hanging, eyes downcast. He seemed awfully low, even for a dog that had lost his manhood. I paid and whisked him to the car, whispering supportive and encouraging words in his ear about his bright future and the long line of female dogs who didn’t give a rat’s ear about puppies, citing to our own Layla and Cowboy as examples of devoted and puppyless partners.
Nothing worked. I just couldn’t cheer him up. We were almost home when a cold dread seeped over me. I pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park. I knew even before I carefully searched his sixteen-pound body for a microchip incision what I would find—nothing.
The only point of entry? Yes, you guessed it: the poochy pouch. Little tears of guilt welled up in the corners of my eyes. I stroked him and begged for his understanding and forgiveness. This appeared to mollify him a bit, and we headed for home.
As I was making dinner that night, Susanne came in. “I guess that surgery didn’t work. Petey’s humping his stuffed German shepherd.”
A few minutes later, Clark swung by. “What a stud, Mom. Petey’s giving it to that kangaroo. Didn’t he just get his balls chopped off today?”
When he walked through the door, Eric exclaimed, “Wow, Petey, you aren’t letting a little pain stop you, are you?”
I could only imagine. As I pondered his actions, even I had to admit it. Our Petey is a total slut. Maybe the vet put the tracker exactly where we need it to be.
~~~
Excerpt from the novel Going for Kona27:
Here on the island of Kona, I followed the training plan that Adrian had laid out for us nine months before, when he’d qualified for the Hawaii Ironman. I stayed in the Kona Awesome Condo he had rented because he got such a kick out of the name. I ate the egg-white omelet at Lava Java and passed on the coffee. No caffeine within forty-eight hours of race time, per previous instructions by Adrian. I attended all the events and expos and dinners he would have wanted to go to.
Of course, I expected that any minute now, somehow he would join me, that I would feel him, that he would be here, but he remained stubbornly absent. I coasted on autopilot, programmed to my course, and I did not give in to the pain. I felt nothing, not even scared, betrayed, or tired anymore.
Wandering through the town, I saw fliers announcing the memorial for Adrian taped up everywhere. This service sounded like a bigger deal than I had imagined it to be. I hated the thought of attending, but Adrian would have loved it. I would go for him, and behave graciously. As graciously as I could, anyway.
I walked down to St. Peter’s. Adrian and I had planned to visit it together on the night before the race. The little blue clapboard church was right on Ali’i Drive, near the start/finish of the triathlon. It stood on the beach, surrounded by a lei of pink bougainvillea bushes. The setting sun cast light that filtered through the etched glass window above the doorway to the church onto the aisle between the pews in a rainbow of color.
I took my place inside.
The priest spoke to the gathered athletes. “Tomorrow you may need an angel. You will put your body and mind through an incredible test. Believe in your angel, and he or she will come to you when you need it most.”
I would look for mine tomorrow, that was for sure. If I couldn’t find Adrian at Kona, I didn’t believe I could find him anywhere.
An older woman sitting under the third station of the cross caught my attention. “Of course,” I thought. I was looking at my triathlon idol, Sister Madonna Buder, the seventy-nine-year-old Roman Catholic nun famous for completing over 325 triathlons, thirty-six of them full-length Ironmans. She didn’t even start triathlon until she was fifty-two. I remembered a quote Adrian had attributed to her: “I train religiously.” Now she was kneeling at the altar in St. Peter’s with me.
And tomorrow was the big day. I prayed and prayed and prayed.
When the service was over, I walked out of the church and down toward the starting line, the site of Adrian’s memorial. Hundreds of people were gathered there. Hundreds. I fought back the waves of emotion. Stay strong. Not yet.
A loud voice snapped me out of my fog. James Harvey, an Austin triathlete Adrian had known for many more years than he had known me, spoke through a bullhorn. “Thanks for coming, everyone. We are here to honor our friend, writer and fellow triathlete, Adrian Hanson. You all know Adrian. His words painted the picture of our sport. There’s his beautiful wife, Charlotte, now.”
James waved to me and hundreds of heads turned. I waved back, smiling gamely but glad for the growing darkness.
“If I passed the microphone around, we could spend all night here telling stories about Adrian, but Adrian would not approve of us missing our beauty sleep before the race.” The crowd tittered. “Instead, volunteers are passing around Bic lighters and Sharpies. Here’s what we want you to do. Take the Sharpie and write a message to Adrian some place that won’t conflict with body marking tomorrow, but make it someplace that will show. Write his name, or ‘in memory of Adrian,’ or some such. Whatever you want. Then, when we are all done with the Sharpies, we’ll use our Bics.”
The crowd hummed as people wrote on their arms and legs. I finally cried. No one had told me this was the plan. It was perfect. I wrote “For Adrian” on the sides of both my shins.
“You guys, please spread the word to everybody that couldn’t be here tonight about our special body marking. I’d love to see Adrian’s name plastered on every leg in Kona tomorrow, OK?”
The crowd cheered. I felt vulnerable in this teeming mass of people that had gathered to honor my husband. They engulfed me, and I lost my balance in a rush of vertigo. I wanted to reach out and hold onto the person next to me to steady myself. Better yet, I wanted to turn to find Adrian beside me and grab his arm.
“Time for lighters, everyone. So, light ‘em up, hold ‘em high, and let’s observe one minute of silence while we remember our lost friend, Adrian Hanson, who we will forever miss.”
The snapping sound of Bics lighting up resounded in hundreds of small clicks around me. I lit mine and held it aloft. The man standing next to me watched me as I swayed.
He leaned toward me and whispered, “Charlotte?”
I cocked my head in answer and nodded.
The stranger reached down and held my hand.
I struggled not to sob, to stay upright. Then the woman next to me put her arm around my waist. The minute stretched on a very long time.
“Amen,” James said.
“Amen,” the crowd answered.
James wrapped it up. “Thank you all for being here. Please drop your lighters and Sharpies in the boxes on the pier as you leave. Don’t forget to spread the word about the extra body marking. And hold up—I almost forgot, Charlotte is here to race, keeping up the family tradition for her husband. Y’all encourage her out there tomorrow. Go get some rest, see you here tomorrow bright and early.”
I turned to thank my angels, but they were gone.
27 You remember this one: the sequel to nothing yet.
~~~
Not long ago, I confessed that Petey had converted to Catholicism during Lent. But what a difference a week made. I walked in a week later and found him in this pose. There was no yoga DVD playing to explain his body position, no reason for his devout prostration other than, you guessed it: a change of faith. Petey is now a Muslim, and below is a photograph of him praying, facing Mecca.
He needs to work on his form, methinks, but he’s only an eight-month old dog. Even so, I have to wonder if his religious experimentation is genuine, or if Petey’s setting me up for a discrimination charge. Maybe he’s caught the lawyer ads when he watches Oprah with Susanne. I have come down on him pretty hard for his refusal to potty train, after all, and he’s sharp enough to have noticed the other dogs aren’t catching hell.
I’m rethinking everything now. What could he sue me for? Discriminating against him for his disability? He could have stuck his head in Cowboy’s mouth intentionally. His bi-racial heritage, as evidenced by his half-black and half-white coat? Might be nothing more than a stencil, masking tape, and black hair dye on a white dog. And now? The Tiny Protestant became the Tiny Catholic who has become the Tiny Muslim. Next week I’ll probably find him in dreadlocks with a yarmulke perched on his head, meditating and chanting mantras.
Or maybe I’m just paranoid. Oy vey.
~~~
Chapter Fifty-one: Cold Nose, Warm Feet
You know that age-old saying, “rednecking can lead to redneckedness?” Last weekend, it didn’t hold any water. We spent the weekend rednecking, and there wasn’t a damn bit of redneckedness.
Here’s what happened. Eric and I hoofed it to Nowheresville for another idyllic weekend camped out in the Quacker. For once, I had no poo stories to bring home. Nor did I bring home any naked stories. Not that I usually share any naked stories; I’m simply confirming there were none to bring home.
And the reason for no naked stories? 1) Gas and 2) Petey, the one-eyed light of our lives. No, not that kind of gas. Although there was some of that, there is no causal connection between that “gas” and the “no naked” issues. Instead, I’m talking about propane gas. Eric, AKA Bubba-mon in Nowheresville, ran out of propane in our two propane tanks. Guess what kind of heater we have? P-r-o-p-a-n-e, yes.
On that same day in Houston, it was a balmy seventy degrees. But on that fateful propaneless night in Nowheresville, it got down to twenty-five. Twenty-five is a brisk daytime sunshine temp. It sucks for camping, however. Which is what you are doing if you are in the wilderness with no heater, even if you are on a mattress in a trailer.
So, for starters, it was wayyyyyyyy too cold for naked. It was flannel-jammies-double-comforter cold in the Quacker. But I mentioned reason number two for no naked: Petey.
Since it was just the right temperature for the abominable snowman, but not for a sixteen-pound dog with a thin layer of hair, Petey did not find his own bed a satisfactory place to spend the night. Actually, Cowboy and Layla didn’t, either; they were living the high life in the back of the old Suburban. Don’t scoff. There’s a big difference between the windless inside of a vehicle warmed by their breath—and away from the yelps of coyotes and calls of the wild hogs—and twenty-five degrees on the ground outside the Quacker. Worry not, friends, the broken seals around the windows gave them ample oxygen as well.
Where was I? Oh, no naked and Petey. So Petey suggested that he join us under the double comforters in our bed. Normally, Petey is a no-people-bed kind of dog, although not for lack of trying. He only spent a night on the bed with us once before, and that was the first night after Cowboy put Petey’s eye out. You would have let the little bugger sleep with you that night, too, I guarantee.
On this night, as we breathed whole storm systems of frost clouds over our heads, I felt sorry for Petey.
“Just for tonight,” I said.
“Just for tonight,” Eric agreed without hesitation.
We didn’t even have to say, “Come, Petey.” He sensed the change and leaped up between us, where he tunneled under the covers to the foot of the bed. I couldn’t have asked for more. My feet were blocks of solid ice, and his warm little body thawed them right out.
As Eric and I finished Eskimo kissing goodnight a few moments later, though, a rocket shot out from under the covers, and when we pressed our lips together for a people kiss, Petey’s cold, wet nose and wetter tongue made contact with both of our lips. It may not have been the most romantic way to end the evening, but I’d trade my cold feet for his cold nose anytime. So, after a few dry heaves, we bid our little critter a fond goodnight and fell asleep three abreast, all snuggled up and warm as a summer day.
~~~
Chapter Fifty-two: Running Out Of Time
Cowboy, our big yellow dog, the mutant labrador, the dainty little waif who talks like Chewbacca and steals hearts like a master thief . . . Cowboy is no longer a young dog. Now, after a weekend in Nowheresville, he lay at my feet. Occasionally he moaned. If I talked to him, he answered in what could best be called a wail. Our last visit wasn’t such a tough weekend for him, comparatively, but every weekend of physical activity is hard now. The temperature stayed cool, which helped, and we walked more than ran, which did, too, but the end result was the same: an old, arthritic dog, heavy on his feet and feeling the passage of every day.
Once upon a time, Cowboy ruled the rainforest of St. Croix. He was master of his domain and a pack of six dogs at Estate Annaly. He ate up the ten-mile runs Eric and I took along Scenic Road overlooking North Shore on the west end of the island. He lived the life, man, he lived the life. He had his own swimming pool out back and a pond out front, and took trips to the beach every weekend. He regularly made the magic hike up the stream to Caledonia Springs. How could it get any better?
Then we moved him to Houston, to a city-sized backyard whose ponds were barely deep enough for wading. He was little more than a captive there. “Don’t worry,” we told him, “we promise this isn’t the end. We’ll find you a new home to rival Annaly someday.” He wagged his vase-breaking bass drum mallet of a tail in understanding. He trusted us to make it right.
Oftentimes, though, we would pull up in our driveway to see his huge mournful head behind the bars of the gate, only his long nose sticking out. Even if he went for a run, it was on a leash, his feet pounding the concrete. Years passed this way. He made the best of it. He held it in. But he had lost so much, and the clock ticked forward steadily.
We bought sixteen acres in Nowheresville, a beautiful place. He would cry with joy when we pulled up to its gates in the old Suburban. From our earliest days there, though, it was clear he had lost a step. The charm of the place wore thin after a few hours. He’d limp around on city paws. He would stay curled up in the shade rather than join Layla in a game of chase-the-Suburban or on a forest explorations. He lost a fight with a water moccasin, although even that couldn’t stop him for long.
We plan to build our someday house there and make a permanent move when our youngest child graduates from high school. Susanne the Dog Whisperer, Susanne, Cowboy’s best friend. Only one problem, though: Cowboy will be nearly fourteen years old by then, which is ninety-eight in normal dog years, and nigh impossible in giant mutant labrador years.
Only a few months ago, we had allowed him to join us on a seven-mile run. It was 6:30 a.m., but it was summertime Texas. Ninety degrees and humidity were too much for him. He crawled under our Suburban, which we had parked at the halfway point, and lapped up all the water and ice from our open cooler. Layla galloped along beside us. He watched silently, licking his sore paws and panting in the heat. Earlier that same summer when we had gone for a run, Cowboy simply laid down in the road three long miles from home and would go no further. We had no way to help him except to continue on without him back to our vehicle, then return to cart him home. We found him one and a half miles from our property, laying in the muddy bottoms of an empty pond. Eric coaxed him back to the Suburban and lifted his limp, stank, and steamy body waist-high and into the truck bed.
Just last weekend, Cowboy had stumbled along the loamy trail at the end of our single file line: he brought up the rear, then me, then Layla, the ever-vigilant guard dog and accomplished runner, who was lagging well behind Petey, the sixteen-pound distance terrier who had churned out the canine equivalent of a ten-mile run twice over the Christmas holidays. Petey, the dog I had thought too small to run more than a mile or two with us. Petey, with his one eye and giant swagger, was, in a twist of fate so painfully ironic that the angels wept, the heir apparent to the kingdom of the giant yellow dog who had stolen his eye. To the home Cowboy was to have at Nowheresville, the home that should have replaced his beloved Annaly, but maybe never will. Layla will grow old there. Petey will spend his prime there, a runty little dog no match for a coyote or wild pig. But Cowboy, who in his best days could have kicked the coyote’s ass and still had enough left in him to give the hog a thrashing? These shorts visits may be all he has. For Cowboy, the dog that ran rings around life and all of us on St. Croix, is running out of time.
So, God, my God and the God of all creatures great and small, if I could ask for just one thing of you for our old friend, it is this: Please let Cowboy stay with us long enough to spend peaceful evenings in front of a Nowheresville fireplace, knowing he has made it back to the promised land of a home fit for a kingly beast, a real home at last. Amen.
If God doesn’t see fit to grant this prayer, I comfort myself with this thought: I’ve come to believe that there is so much more out there beyond myself and what my eyes can see. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Cowboy accompanies us to Nowheresville, no matter how he has to get there. And if I can remember that there is life outside the center of the universe that is me and my perceptions, I’ll bet I find him there.
Someday.
The End
Now that you have finished Puppalicious and Beyond, won’t you please consider writing an honest review and leaving it on Amazon and/or Goodreads, or any other online sales channel of your preference? Reviews are the best way readers discover great new books. I would truly appreciate it.
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Pamela Fagan Hutchins holds nothing back and writes award-winning and bestselling mysterious women’s fiction and relationship humor, from Texas, where she lives with her husband Eric and their blended family of three dogs, one cat, two ducks, four goats, and the youngest few of their five offspring. She is the author of many books, including Saving Grace, Leaving Annalise, Finding Harmony, How To Screw Up Your Kids, Hot Flashes and Half Ironmans, and What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes? to name just a few.
Pamela spends her non-writing time as a workplace investigator, employ-ment attorney, and human resources professional, and she is the co-founder of a human resources consulting company. You can often find her hiking, running, bicycling, and enjoying the great outdoors.
For more information, visit http://pamelahutchins.com, or email her at pamela@pamelahutchins.com. To hear about new releases first, sign up for her newsletter at http://eepurl.com/iITR.
You can buy Pamela's books at most online retailers and "brick and mortar" stores. You can also order them directly from SkipJack Publishing: http://SkipJackPublishing.com. If your bookstore or library doesn't carry a book you want, by Pamela or any other author, ask them to order it for you.
~~~
Twitter: @pameloth
Facebook: http://facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author
My blog: http://pamelahutchins.com/blog
~~~
Other Books by Pamela Fagan Hutchins available on Smashwords
Fiction from SkipJack Publishing:
Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise #1)
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise #2)
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise #3)
Going for Kona coming Fall 2014
Nonfiction from SkipJack Publishing:
The Clark Kent Chronicles: A Mother's Tale Of Life With Her ADHD/Asperger's Son
Hot Flashes and Half Ironmans: Middle-Aged Endurance Athletics Meets the Hormonally Challenged
How to Screw Up Your Kids: Blended Families, Blendered Style
How to Screw Up Your Marriage: Do-Over Tips for First-Time Failures
Puppalicious and Beyond: Life Outside The Center Of The Universe
What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?
Other Books By the Author:
OMG - That Woman! (anthology) Aakenbaaken & Kent
Ghosts (anthology), Aakenbaaken & Kent
Easy to Love, But Hard to Raise (2012) and Easy to Love, But Hard to Teach (coming soon) (anthologies), DRT Press, edited by Kay Marner & Adrienne Ehlert Bashista
Prevent Workplace Harassment, Prentice Hall, with the Employment Practices Solutions attorneys
~~~
Audiobook versions of the author’s books are available on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon. The Katie & Annalise books are narrated by Ashley Ulery, http://ashleyulery.com.
~~~
Huge thanks to my editor Meghan Pinson, who managed to keep my ego intact without sacrificing her editorial integrity. Thanks of generous proportions to my writing group, without whose encouragement and critiques I would not be publishing this book. Mega thanks to Cowboy, Layla, Petey, Juliet, and Annalise, the stars of this book, for shining so brightly. Thanks to the power of infinity to my husband Eric, without whom I would be half of a whole. The sad and lonely half.
Thanks also to Alex Dumitrescu and Heidi Dorey for fantastic cover art. Photography credits go to Eric and me.
~~~
Excerpt From How To Screw Up Your Kids: Blended Families, Blendered Style
Chapter One: Despite Our Best Efforts
It’s not that we didn’t try to screw this parenting thing up. By all rights, we should have. We did everything that we possibly could that we weren’t supposed to do. We gave them refined sugar when they were babies, didn’t enforce nap times, spoiled them with expensive and unnecessary gifts. We said yes when we should have said no. We said no when we should have said yes. Our swear jar was always full.
Oh, yeah. And we were one of those “blended families”—you know the kind, the ones with broken homes, divorces, stepparents and complex custody arrangements. Those people. The ones other parents are leery of, like divorce is a communicable disease or something. Who knows? Maybe it is. My own parents even told me once that I had made my children a statistic by choosing to divorce their father. That I had created an at-risk home environment for them.
Me? Perpetual overachiever, business owner, attorney, former cheerleader and high school beauty queen? The one who’s never even smoked a cigarette, much less done drugs? My husband? Well, he’s the more likely candidate for an at-risk homemaker. Surfer, bass player, triathlon enthusiast. Oh yeah, and chemical engineer and former officer of a ten-billion-dollar company—but you know how those rock-n-rollers are. We probably teeter somewhere between the Bundys and the Cleavers.
But there we were, watching yet another of our kids cross yet another stage for yet another diploma, with honors, with accolades, with activities—with college scholarships, no less. Yeah, I know, yadda yadda yap. There we were, cheering as the announcer called Liz’s name. Three of her four siblings rose to clap, too. The fourth one, Thomas, couldn’t make it because he was doing time in the state penitentiary in Florida. (Just kidding. He had to work. At a job. That paid him and provided benefits.)
We tried our best to screw it up. We had the perfect formula. But we didn’t—not even close. Somehow two losers at their respective Round Ones in love and family unity got it close to perfect on Round Two. By our standards, anyway. Because we didn’t give a good goldarnit about anyone else’s.
What’s more? We got it right on purpose. We made a plan, and we executed the plan. And it worked. After all that effort to screw things up, after the people in our lives who loved us most wrung their hands and whispered behind our backs (and those who didn’t love us chortled in anticipation of our certain failure), we went out and done good.
Now, I’m no expert on child rearing (although I’ve had lots of practice), but I am an expert in helping grownups play nice and behave at work. How annoying is that? I know. I’m a scary hybrid of employment attorney and human resources professional, blended together to create a problem-solving HR consultant. And from where I sat, our blended household—or blendered family, as we call it—looked a lot like a dysfunctional workplace in our early days.
Or a little warren of guinea pigs on which I could conduct my own version of animal testing.
The HR principles I applied at work were, in theory, principles for humans, humans anywhere. Blendering occurs in workplaces when a leadership team gets a couple of new members, and it happens in a home with kids from different families of origins. HR principles = people principles = blendering principles. Right? That was my theory, anyway.
Statistics tell me that you, dear reader, are or will be in similar straits: divorced, starting over, trying to make it work. If you’ve already been there and done that, I hope you’ve disappointed all your naysayers, too. You’ll enjoy this book all the more as you relate to the pains and the joys of blended families. But if you’re on the cusp of what feels like an express train descending into hell and wondering how to buy a ticket back, I can help you.
Really.
Okay, probably.
If not probably, then quite possibly.
At the very least, maybe I can say I warned you, or made you laugh. It’s a crazy and unpredictable ride, but the destination is worth it.
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Chapter Two: How did the Bradys do it?
Blendering Principle #1: It’s hard to get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going.
Most of the members of my generation know all we need to know about blended families from the Brady Bunch, right?
Not.
Please, folks. That was just a sappy television show, and didn’t Florence Henderson have an affair IRL with one of the TV sons? Sounds a lot like incest to me. We clearly need a new set of role models, yet I'd be vacationing in Fiji right now if I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, "Oh! You're just like the Brady Bunch!"
The Bradys wove their magic through engaging scripts and clever sets, cute young actors and the star power of Florence Henderson. Eric and I didn’t have those crutches to lean on. Neither will you.
Real blended families start with two adults who want to pledge their troth, which in English means they want to marry. Or at least cohabitate with commitment. Oh, hell, maybe not even that. But that conundrum brings us to the genesis of our blended family success, and IMHO, a critical element.
Each of our kids had already endured one familial breakup. Were we ready to provide them stability and an example of enduring love? If not, why would we knowingly put them through sure trauma again? Nothing is certain in life, but Eric and I were all in. Not only were we all in, but we both had a consuming desire to demonstrate to our children the type of relationship we dreamed of for them, and neither of us felt like we had done so in our past lives. Scratch that. We absolutely knew we had not done so in our past lives.
So, we were madly in love and promised forever. Believed forever. Were confident in forever.
Still, this left a lot up to chance.
Pretend for a second that you married a touchy-feely HR consultant. Imagine that she had a penchant for things like mission, vision, and values statements. Picture her love of goal-setting and accountability. Some of you have mentally drawn up your divorce papers already.
Eric didn’t. He and I created a relationship operating agreement (ROA) for ourselves as a couple. I may or may not have promised years of sexual favors to secure his participation, but his attitude about the project was good. Now, this isn’t a relationship book. Well, it is, in a way. It is a book about our relationships with our children within a blended family. But it is not a couples’ relationship book, so I’ll spare you the gory details behind the ROA.
While we entered into our ROA to make our great relationship stronger, we did so knowing it would set the framework for co-parenting. Why? Because our kids were the most important things to each of us, besides one another. And since most second marriages break down over issues of stepparenting, money, or sex. Hell, many first marriages crash and burn on those issues. We had less than ideal co-parenting relationships with our exes, for sure.
So here’s how our ROA looks:
Our (Exceptionally Wonderful) Marriage
Mantra: Make it all small stuff.
Our relationship’s purpose is to create a loving, nurturing, safe environment that enables us to
make a positive, joyful difference in each other’s lives,
respect each other’s needs and differences,
encourage each other’s spiritual, emotional, and physical needs and development,
practice caring, open communication,
role-model loving relationships to our children, and
work as partners when we parent and make major decisions.
Because we recognize that life is not always about the incredible highs, we are committed to these strategies:
Stop, breathe, and be calm.
Allow ourselves to cherish and be cherished.
Be positive. Assume a positive intent and give a positive response. Speak your mind as positively as possible.
Be reasonable. Am I being oversensitive? Am I dragging my own issues in unnecessarily?
Be considerate. Is there anything to gain from what I am about to say? Is this the right time to say it?
Be respectful. Don’t mope, don’t name-call, don’t yell, don’t be sarcastic.
Be open. Explain your intent.
Be present. Don’t walk away, physically or emotionally.
Be aware of time and energy. After 60 minutes, stop talking. Schedule another conversation for 24 hours later if there’s no resolution.
Make it safe to cry "calf rope."
Be it. Do the behaviors you’re seeking in each other within an hour of the first conversation.
Be loving. Don’t go to bed angry or with things unresolved.
He asks of her:
Trust and have faith that I love you, enough that we don’t have to solve everything the second it happens.
Assume a positive intent.
Listen, don’t interrupt.
Don’t be sarcastic.
She asks of him:
Come back to me faster and don’t drag things out, because I need you.
Speak your mind assertively, and don’t be sarcastic.
Don’t assume the actions I take are always because of you.
Assume a positive intent.
We didn’t get this smart on our own. Both of us were trained to draft this type of agreement in our work lives, one of us more than the other. I specialize in working with hyper-competitive, confident-bordering-on-egomaniacal executives who are somewhat lacking in people skills, so I’ve spent years mediating, soothing, recalibrating, and at times walloping high-level business people into line. One of the best tools to get all the warring co-workers from different backgrounds to reach détente is an operating agreement. Even better? An operating agreement grounded in shared values, vision, and mission.
This worked so well for me with one of my problem executives that we ended up married. In fact, you just read our operating agreement.
Blendering Principle #2: Your mom was almost right: Do unto others as they would have done unto them.
So we addressed parenting, but more importantly, we addressed how we would handle ourselves in situations of higher stress and greater conflict. All of our commitments about behavior applied equally to the parenting context. Now, when a parent/stepparent decision point arose, we could act in accordance with pre-agreed principles.
Or we could try.
Execution got a little sloppy at times. When it did, we always had the agreement to return to, a touchstone, a refocusing point, a document which reminded us that for all we didn’t agree on, there was oh-so-much-more that we did.
We filtered our day-to-day co-parenting decisions through this model. Chores, allowances, length of skirts, cell phones—you name it, we used it. Even better, we used it when we designed our family structure and plan. Did I mention I believe in planning? I believe in plans. And I believe in modifying the plan within the context of agreed principles when new circumstances arise. We got the chance for a lot of planning and re-planning, right from the start.
When Eric and I first married, his eldest son Thomas had graduated from college and had a real job, Eric’s middle daughter Marie was entering college in the South, and his youngest daughter Liz lived with her mother on the East Coast. My Susanne was in elementary school, and my ADHD son Clark was in middle school; they split their time between their father and me. Our original parenting plan called for the two youngest kids to live mostly with us, for Liz to visit frequently, and for us to see Marie and Thomas as often as possible.
We envisioned all of our children, and someday their children, in our home as frequently as we could get them there. We bought a house in a great school district in Houston, with a veritable dormitory of four bedrooms upstairs and our master bedroom on the far side of the downstairs—because we love our kids even more from a distance. And how could we resist this house? It has a lush back yard with a three-level pond full of fat goldfish and koi that reminds us of the home we left behind on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Just as this is not a book about couples’ relationships, it is also not a book about divorce or custody battles. I could dish on those, but I won’t, because even though I’ve changed the names of all parties in this little tome to protect the innocent, some things should and will remain private. They were painful. Isn’t that the case in all divorces? You don’t divorce because the relationship exceeded your expectations. You don’t divvy up with a light heart the time you will spend with children you cherish. Most of you don’t, anyway, and we sure didn’t.
So, for whatever reason, within four months of “I do,” Liz had taken up primary residence with us in Texas, and a year later Marie transferred to a university two hours away. I had never pictured myself taking a role of such primacy with two teenage stepdaughters. Teenage girls get a bad rap for good reason. It’s not the easiest time in their lives, or the easiest time for the people that love them, even with great girls like Liz and Marie. Yet this new arrangement fit the model we envisioned. We just needed to flex. A lot.
I held onto my husband’s hand for dear life and sucked in one deep, cleansing breath after another. We could do this. I could do this. We would have no regrets or remorse, we would give our kids the best we could, and be damn happy doing it. Yeah!
And so, very carefully and very cautiously, we began to blender.
Click here to continue reading How To Screw Up Your Kids.
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