Posted in Everyday BS on May 29, 2013| 2 Comments »
All the puppies are gone. As I handed over the last one, I almost pulled her back.
You know they liked Go The Fuck To Sleep, but do you remember the movie The Jerk?
She didn’t have a name. She was my ‘poor black child.’
I know she belongs to somebody new now, but I’ll never hear this song without thinking of her the most. They liked this song, too.
#heartbroken
I hope I never have to go through this again.
Posted in Everyday BS on May 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Lest you all get the impression that taking care of these puppies has been nothing but pure joy–said through gritted teeth–I present this video and the story behind it.
For the last six days, the puppies eat, pee, poo, play, sleep, repeat. Only sometimes the sleep part doesn’t come easy. A few days ago, I’d been seriously pulling my hair out trying to keep them and my spare bedroom/office clean and needed to mop, but I had puppies hanging off my tennis shoes and the legs of my jeans.
I can’t mop until they get over on their covers in a pile and sleep. SLEEEEEEEP.
Dear gods, please go the … wait.
I jetted over to Youtube just for some comic relief.
It worked.
They heard his voice and the music and they all stopped and looked up at me. One or two heads cocked, one or two butts sat down. Then a couple laid down and yawned.
Within two minutes, every puppy was asleep.
The Youtube window has been open for three days straight.
I’m exhausted.
Posted in Everyday BS on May 25, 2013| 3 Comments »
Picture the scene:
Yesterday, I’m on the living room floor with a lady (good job, great home, my kinda potential mom) and all six puppies. I’m trying to keep all their attention on us instead of every corner of my living room that they’ve not yet had the chance to explore before today (This is exhausting in case anyone doesn’t know!) when my phone rings.
Person: Do you still have the puppies?
Me-struggling with puppies and the phone: Yes.
Person: I want the one boy with the blue eyes and one other one. Can you bring the whole tub of puppies out to blah-blah-forty-miles-away?
Me, blinking and snorting: Um, no. There’s six of them and one of me right this minute, and none of them have blue eyes, anyway. You might be seeing the flash reflecting in their eyes. All puppies have “blue” eyes.
Person: Oh.
Me, deciding to test her motive and purposefully do not tell her exactly which puppy it is I’m talking about: There’s one that has what I call “messed up eyes” because they’re gonna be a strange color, but I don’t know what yet. It’s a girl, though.
Person: OH! I want THAT one. My boyfriend’s birthday is tomorrow and I want to surprise him.
Me, whose eyes are narrowing: Does that really sound like a good idea to you?
Person becomes Idiot: He’s always wanted a pit bull, so yeah! Can you bring just that one? I’ll be here until 11p.m., so you don’t have to rush.
Me, grinding my teeth: Can I call you back? There’s someone here looking at the puppies.
Idiot: Sure!
I hang up and go to the call log, choose the number and name it NO PUPPY so when she calls me back, I won’t answer. This is some kid who thinks it would be neat to give her boyfriend a pit with “cool eyes.” Just… no.
The lady with me wants one of the puppies, but wants to think on it hard, because she wants to be fair to herself as well as the puppy: question being, does she have time to properly potty-train and care for such a young puppy. I give this woman total props for being honest and wanting to be certain she was doing the right thing for herself and her family, and the puppy. She does ask me to save a certain one until Saturday. Sure can, because my boss’ wife wants her, too, so I have two people who are now debating that one little girl. Not a problem. Well, it might be, depending on how long on Saturday they take to decide.
The one I’m “saving” on the right. Girl with the “messed up eyes” on the left.
Notice I said I had six puppies. Honey came back the next day because while mom and daughter loved her, the father had a fit. That’s fine, Honey went right back to her spot in my little wolf pack.
Trouble
Lemme tell ya, my daughter has been great about the puppies. She has three jobs and yet has spent the night over here every night, and spent every spare bit of time here helping take care of them. My daughter wants to keep Trouble. There were tears when she left for work yesterday. There was a text later, meekly asking me “did they take him?” No, pumpkin, they didn’t. The other texts she’s sent haven’t been fun to read, either. Telling her we could not keep him was no fun AT ALL.
The one solid (mostly) black girl? Well, I kinda dig her. I like quoting that line from The Jerk to her every time she cries and I pick her up. “‘I was borned a poor black child’, huh, sweetie?”
My husband adores Honey because she, the most shy and timid of them all, found the courage to come running out, wagging her tail to him, thereby saving the entire litter.
But we’re not keeping her, either.
We have a reason for not wanting to keep any of the puppies, which I’ll get into… later. Not today–don’t want to jinx it.
The point of today’s blog, other than boggling over the idiot who wanted me to drive six puppies to Bum Fuck Egypt, is this: This is Bobby’s first summer working at the canal and we know this will not be the last puppies, or dogs, or cats, or kittens, that he finds abandoned, and that he brings home. We’d like to say, bless the people who do animal rescue and can still maintain their cool because I couldn’t do it–any of it. The amount of total ass-hattery and irresponsible people out there is astounding, and I have a mostly broken filter on my mouth, so I couldn’t not raise hell at people. The only reason that idiot on the phone didn’t get a blistering string of expletives is because I had a decent, responsible woman sitting beside me and I didn’t want to offend her. I’ve thought about fostering or even volunteering at rescues and shelters, but I’d seriously have to beat the flying snot out of someone who turned an abused dog over to me–if they were the one who did it. Bobby saw a man walking a grown pit along the canal yesterday. Poor dog’s neck was raw and bleeding from his choker collar–which was attached to a rusty chain–had cherry eye (don’t Google it, just don’t) in both eyes, and obvious dog fight wounds. The owner said the dog was fine. “He eats good.” Bobby replied, “Just because he eats ‘good’ doesn’t mean he’s healthy and being taken care of.” Bobby had to walk off before he beat the snot out of him.
The second reason I don’t think I could do it is because I–we, the whole family–get so attached and worry so much for their futures.
I just noticed how quiet it is in the room now, save for the sound of snoring and dreaming puppies. This means I have to quietly mop around them while I have a chance. They ate ten pounds of puppy food in five days and only have one bowl left, so there’s that to fetch, too. They may leave later today, instead of Wednesday, to go to a TRUSTED puppy rescue–which I’ll talk about at length later, if I can see to type because I know I’ll be balling my eyes out when they go–so I need to go and get back and spend what might be my last few hours with my ‘poor black child.’
How do people do it? Foster, then trust and let go? It’s tough.
Posted in Everyday BS on May 22, 2013| 3 Comments »
Yesterday’s blog. Yeah, that. I was in a hurry because I had puppies running everywhere before they finally crashed out at my feet. To explain, WordPress told me it was my blog’s second anniversary. I was stunned because it seems so, so much longer than two years. Anyway! Back to yesterday.
Thanks to everyone who liked, emailed me, shared, commented and otherwise showed support. Taking them in wasn’t a hard thing for us to do since these puppies are totally awesome. There is nothing in the world quite like being in the living room, making kissie noises, and having six fat, floppy puppies come scrambling down the hall. We’re so in love. But, again, thank you.
Then there’s the other side of the coin.
The absolute nerve of some people. The total and complete gall some people have flat amazes the hell out of me.
I was told, in a Facebook group dedicated to animal rescue and advocacy, that me giving the puppies away for free was a bad idea and that I was endangering their lives.
What the actual fuck? AYFKM?
Yes, I know that because of their breed people will want them as fighting dogs, or worse, bait dogs. But give me a bit of credit here. I own a damned Pit Bull. My husband has found, and reported to the police, two dog fighting houses in the area and will continue to do so. We do our part to vote down breed specific legislation (BSL). I do not need to charge anything for these puppies because I am blessed to have a great vet who charges me nothing. I have no losses to recoup. Rescues need to charge fees because they do so many great things, like spaying and neutering, so yes, they should charge. Sure, if I charge for them then you might think that someone willing to pay for a dog would possibly take better care of it. Possibly, but not always, and the “sleeze factor” involved in me charging someone for puppies that haven’t cost me anything but a large bag of dog food and some floor cleaner… well, that’s just goddamned stupid. And guess what?
I’ve turned down two people today because I don’t know them and no one I know and respect can vouch for them. No, they get no puppy.
One girl came by and told me about the other pittie mixes in her family, and was the most gracious and respectful gal. And she was so happy when she left with this little girl that her eyes were welling up.
Have a great life, Honey.
Yep. That was the name I gave her–I did not tell her new mom that fact because that’s not my puppy anymore, it’s her puppy, and she should make that choice. Her new mom has promised to share pictures and to send me one of them together the moment she decides on a name.
You know where the other puppies are right now? Asleep in a pile on the floor, on a warm blanket in a cool house, beside a bowl of food and another bowl of clean water, all with fat, pudgy bellies. Before that, they were all piled on top of my head, licking my face while I was laughing my ass clean off.
So… tell me again how I’m endangering their lives?
Posted in Everyday BS on May 21, 2013| 7 Comments »
Well, hot damn. It’s a great day all around.
~
Hubs: I never thought in a million years that I would call you and ask you this.
Me: Yes, you can have a pass to sleep with Salma Hayek.
Hubs: Um. No. Um… can you come down to the canal and get some puppies?
Me: PUPPIES? What? I’m at work!
Hubs: Someone.. hold on, they’re gone.
ME: WHAT?
Hubs: Someone dumped them. They were in a plastic tub and I let them out, now I can’t… hold on.
ME: WHAT? WHAT? *I start dialing my boss on the office phone, so I have a phone in each ear*
Hubs: *calls the puppies and they apparently all come running out of the bushes because I hear him cooing and *ooing*
Me: How many?
Hubs: Five. No, six. I’m so sorry, but I can’t leave them here.
Me: I’ll be there in ten minutes. *hang up on him, boss picks up* Bossman, it’s an emergency, everything’s fine, but I gotta go. It involves six puppies. I’m out.
I get down there and I see why he called me. Six “pit bull” puppies, and I put pit bull in quotes because the bully in them is obvious, but there’s something else in there, too.
I am DYING from the CUTE!
I got a text from a friend that said, “I’m so glad Bobby found them and you guys are who you are.”
Yanno what? So am I.
My husband, who does not WANT another dog, did not have to call me–there’s an animal shelter within one hundred yards of where he found these puppies.
He didn’t take them there, where most bully breeds are put down out of hand.
He called me.
He’s often told me that I can’t save them all.
Well, *we* can start with six.
Spay and neuter your pets, people. Adopt, don’t buy.
Posted in Everyday BS on May 18, 2013| 4 Comments »
We started off, at five weeks old, with this:
Nine pounds of cute.
At one year old, we have this:
Sixty pounds of I WILL LICK YOUR FACE OFF!
She’s destructive, yet affectionate. She’s hard-headed, yet so damned smart. She’s frustrating, and yet I couldn’t imagine life without her.
She touched a part of my heart I thought would never heal.
Happy Birthday, Lily.
Posted in Everyday BS on May 12, 2013| 7 Comments »
As mentioned here, I have Mother’s Day “off” in the sense that I’m being left alone by my kiddo, and my husband, to write. The dog is even in the backyard and not on the bed beside me. But, I’m not writing. I’m playing with a penny. A brand new, bright and shiny, 2013 penny. I briefly wondered when they started putting shields on the back instead of the Lincoln Memorial, then I couldn’t remember if it even was the Lincoln Memorial and I had to resist Googling that shit.
The reason I have this penny is because I’ve been stressing myself to death and I’m tired of that feeling. Timely enough, I saw a meme on Facebook.
When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you were hoping for.
I actually had eleventy-billion several things to choose between, but because I don’t know where my d20 are anymore (I bet I could find them), I spent the last week or so whittling down those choices, wondering if I could live with them or not, until I was faced with only two. That was hard, whittling shit down, but made easier because of this thing that Lily wrote on fear-Lily was on vacation when she wrote that. I emailed her and told her to get of my head, she refused-and this video and the whole post that went with it.
Now, I’m staring at this coin and wondering if I really do have to make the choice between two things, because a third could be awesome, too–but really, the third is a part of thing one.
In case you haven’t gathered, I’m debating my next book. Again.
I know, I know, I’ve started The World Below already, the bones are in place, and it would be “easy” to dive in… if it weren’t for the whole fear thing. I have no idea what paralyzes me so about that book, but it does. My OCD wants it finished first, my OCD wants my Faerie book done after that, but… my muse, and my sanity, are calling me elsewhere. That’s a tough battle right there. It’s more a war of the two worlds–the two people–in my head; one who lives in my long loved and adopted New Orleans, and the other who lives way up in the mountains of North Carolina. One that’s afraid to briefly (relatively) part with New Orleans and embrace the boondocks, the other that’s screaming, “DAMMIT! Let’s go!” for various reasons, not the least of which is that I’ve never seen anything like it done before. Now watch me find fifteen billion books of the same ilk–my luck.
See, I have a series plan that I’m fairly certain I may have only mentioned in passing on this blog. It’s based in the North Carolina mountains and involves Indians native to the region, and Bigfoot. I have a general idea for the thing, that’s it, but what’s solid are the titles of two books. No, I will not tell you because teh awesome would probably make you spontaneously combust and I won’t have that on my conscious. They are that bad ass.
The coin is in the air.
*ting*
I’m not even going to look at which side it landed on, because it doesn’t matter. It’s been mentally in the air since like last Monday-Tuesday, whenever Blake’s team sang Boondocks. And when I was reminded that even talking about something gives it power, especially when it has already been given a name.
Yanno what? *BAM* I have not yet been rejected on Ordinary World. For all I know, it’s a trunker, but someone important has it and they haven’t said no, so it must have some merit. If they say yes to OW, I’ll can always hop off the mountain and finish The World Below. I can still throw OW to other people while writing… you thought I was gonna say it, huh huh? No. Why that’s been so hard for me to consider when plenty of people skip around on projects? Because I’m writer and we’re all inherently bonkers.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have research to do, cereal to eat at noon, and an email to write.
And country music to listen to. *shhh*
Posted in Everyday BS on May 12, 2013| 3 Comments »
How did I start my Mother’s Day? I dropped an eight foot, hundred-and-whatever pound railroad tie on my foot. Well, it actually hit the top of my thigh, slid down my shin, my ankle, bounced on the top of my foot, made a twist and then dropped, smushing my big toe. Crafty suckers, they are. They have a mind of their own, and you know what I mean if you’ve ever handled them.
Top o’the mornin’ to ya!
*ouch*
Last year on Mother’s Day I wrote this post about forgiveness and the gods adding aroma to diapers. It was about me, yeah, but it was mostly for Katy. Little did I know Katy found out that day that she was pregnant. I have never cried so hard and with so much joy to learn someone was going to have a baby. I cried again when she said it was not a baby, but twins. I cried harder still the day Hall and Oates came into the world and we got to see those babies. OMG, those babies. It should be illegal to be so damned beautiful.
Katy’s been on her end of the mom journey with dueling diapers and spit-up for a few months now, while I’m way over here at the part where my daughter is over twenty-one and in college. I don’t have to worry about diapers, but I still buy the child clothes. I don’t have to worry about breastfeeding, but I still grab the child her favorite drinks. I don’t have to worry about babies rolling off the bed, but I do worry about her Facebook posts that tell me she’s at a bar downtown on a Friday night. I’ll reply, “Really??” and she’ll say, “Sorry, mom!” Not because I mind that she’s at a bar, and not because she’s got anything to apologize about. She knows I will worry–so she really shouldn’t broadcast to the crazy mom that she’s out at a bar–not about her actions so much as about other people’s actions. She’s got good sense in her head, I worry about the idiots that don’t. I don’t have to wonder what the hell the next gurgle means–is it a colossal shit, a happy thing, or just gas? We are, my daughter and I, in a different place in the journey. No less laughter and worries, just different ones.
I had more to say, but while I’m writing this I get a text message from her. She has impeccable timing. Impeccable, I say.
Kiddo: Did u wanna do anything for Mother’s Day? Or did u want me to just leave you alone to write? lol Figured you never get a day with no interruptions to write, so that could be my Mother’s Day gift (: other than the awesome Pandora bracelet I gave you two months early. lol
My kid GETS me, probably better than anyone else.
I say: haha I dunno. Up to you. I’m blogging right now, so I dunno how much writing I’ll get done.
Kiddo: We should do our Mother’s Day tomorrow. (: We can watch The Voice and hang out. Sound good? I’m always a fan of nontraditional Mother’s Days. haha
I smile and type: I love you. That works just fine.
Kiddo: Love you, too (:
Notice, she only used “u” a few times. Can a mom be proud that her kid doesn’t use text-speak as a first language? You-fuckin-betcha.
~
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there, but especially to Katy. It’s things like that up there that you have to look forward to.
Ain’t it grand? 🙂
Posted in Everyday BS on May 10, 2013| 6 Comments »
Notice I said ‘red’. You will know what the word is; don’t make me type it.
On my about page you will find me referring to my “ridiculous combination accent of North Carolina Sandhills and Georgia Red Clay drawls.” People that don’t know me very well confuse my current accent with something closer to Louisiana born and bred, and I totally understand why–the whole New Orleans thing and the fact that I have, over the years, worked very hard to curb that twangy bitch down and make it sound like something it’s not.
When I first arrived in Georgia I was five years old and I’d spent most of the first five years of my life on a farm with pretty much nothing.
Lemme tell you a few things about that farm in North Carolina.
The house was so old it had no bathroom at all. Seriously, there was physically no bathroom. Which meant no toilet, obviously, but also no bathtub/shower/sink. The kitchen had no plumbing whatsoever despite having a full size kitchen sink (My gramma said she wanted a damned sink. She shoved it into the hole she cut in the counter, plugged the hole and used it). We had a well, one of those with a crank and a bucket. My cousin, one year younger, and I bathed in a kiddie pool beside the well (*BRR* because that water was COLD) in the summer. I’ll admit I don’t remember what the hell we did in the winter besides freeze because we had oil for heat and it was a creaky old farmhouse. Yeah, we had electricity (don’t get all crazy). If we needed to go to the bathroom, we were screwed, winter or summer… and I’ll leave it at that. You’re welcome.
\scene – pertinent to this blog post
Coworker comes in and asks, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“You’re listening to country.”
*snort*
/scene – yes, I was writing this at work, and this will make sense soon
But what we did have was a working farm. I remember snapping beans and picking corn, and eating cornbread and buttermilk with a spoon out of a glass. There was a large chicken barn, not a coop–a barn, long and narrow. There were two ponds, an apple and apricot orchard, pigs, cows, guineas, and even crawfish in the stream along the road. At night I played with stacks of pennies or sewed doll clothes (yes, at that age) on the living room floor while the Grand Ol’ Opry or The Lawrence Welk Show played on the black and white tv. The tv had one channel and a crooked set of rabbit-ears.
We had the… weirdest neighbors about five/six miles down the road. They had one room of their house entirely filled with clothes, as in ceiling to floor in one huge pile, and they were even more broke than we were. Our place was a freaking mansion in comparison. Of course, their weirdness drew me and the kids and I became best friends. My cousin? We’d encourage him to pee on the electric fence. It worked. Once. I fed dead flies to my cousin because I could and he liked it. Ask him. Hey, we lived in the middle of nowhere. We were bored.
There was a one-eighth of a mile gravel driveway to get to the house. Redbugs lived in the grass, so I was told not to pick the Queen Anne’s Lace that grew wild along the edges of the drive lest I get “‘et up.” There were lilac trees and a field of daffodils. (I later learned that my grandmother would buy a handful of bulbs every year and had planted that whole field herself.) Our farmhouse had some kind of siding that was almost like tar shingles, but it was embedded with tiny glittery stones that made it magical. Directly across the dirt road was an old two-story plantation house complete with the Gone With The Wind columns across the front. Mr. Marshall lived there and he was about as old as the house, I swear. (I feel blessed now that I was allowed to play among his giant oaks, because back then, faeries lived there.) We had peacocks that made the most fucked up noises in the middle of the night. We had legends of Bigfoot and ghosts in them there hills… and you can bet your ass I believed them. And I loved it.
Then I moved to Georgia with my mother.
Let me assure you that I’d seen a toilet before then, because we did have friends and family that had one, and I did live with my mother in a trailer, and an apartment in Charlotte, for a few months along the way. But still. That farmhouse was ninety-nine percent of what I knew. The only thing I really took to Georgia with me was a doll and my accent.
I still have the doll.
It was a bit of a culture shock to have a paved drivey-way (yes, that was on purpose) and roads with actual asphalt. Going to the grocery store (which in NC had been rare) no longer took an hour’s drive and we could wash and dry clothes at the house with our own machines instead of a tub and a washboard and a clothes line–or the occasional luxury of the laundromat near the grocery. And the tv? It had like six channels. It was the life of freaking luxury as far as my five-year-old mind was concerned.
I’d been here a few years when my elementary school had a car wash to raise funds for whatever because that’s what we do. That’s when it happened. My accent was still so thick I said warsh instead of wash. In front of a cute boy. Who called me on it. Imagine this–someone from Georgia, with that drawl of theirs, telling me I sounded like a dumb hick. That’s how thick my accent was.
From that minute forward, I was determined never to sound like a hick again. To never say anything with that twang again. To learn proper English. To fill my brain with whatever knowledge I could so I wouldn’t ever sound “dumb.” To never, ever, own up to being born and, mostly, raised in Bum-Fuck-Egypt, in the fucking *boondocks.
*payattention
With every visit back home my cousin would say I was turning more and more into a city mouse, as in the The Country Mouse and The City Mouse. We’d still ride dirt bikes and get into general no-good, and as we got older hide in the tobacco barn with friends and drink wine coolers, but I was no longer the same and it wasn’t just the loss of the accent. I knew it, and he certainly knew it. My cousin still lives up there, but I rarely see or speak to him anymore, even if he did walk me down the aisle at my wedding seven years ago. I feel his loss and the loss of that farm, I truly do, in many ways, no matter how often I’ve denied that I do.
My husband and I have a thing about the tv show The Voice. The other night Blake Shelton’s team got together and sang this song. ((Go listen. I’ll wait, ’cause I’ve forgotten how to embed videos into the blog. *eyeroll*))
I feel no shame
I’m proud of where I came from
I was born and raised in the boondocks
One thing I know
No matter where I go
I keep my heart and soul in the boondocks
I fell in love with the song. I’m talking hardcore, play it over and over in love… and felt like such a hypocrite as I sat there singing along. Kinda like I felt when my co-worker walked in just a few ago and looked at me like I was nuts because I was listening to country music. He doesn’t know me any other way than how he knows me–not many people do, and none of that involves country music or a backwoods drawl. Sometimes, I let the old accent fly around the very few people with which I am the most comfortable. The rest, they get one I’ve honed so well.
So, here’s my confession:
The accent you hear now was once much, much worse. I can turn it on and off at will.
Truth is, I was born just down the road from 818 State Road 1546 in Pittsboro, North Carolina, in a little bitty doctor’s office that’s now a veterinary clinic.
True story.
Today, I’m owning it, and loving it: I was born and (mostly) raised in the boondocks.
And we will never mention this again, m’kay?
astrea baldwin 