Mopsy

Mopsy is dozing on my lap as I write, eyes closed, head nodding because she doesn’t know where to lay it down.

Mopsy is a two-year-old Shih Tzu who had a rather close haircut a few months back before she came to live with Jim and me last Thursday. Yes, instead of a chicken with a diaper, we chose a dog. I just couldn’t resist the look of Shih Tzu pantaloons bounding away down a garden path like a Beatrice Potter storybook creature. You remember Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, don’t you?

I haven’t had a dog for almost twenty years and never such a small dog. (Ah, she’s almost snoring with her head still up.) Even though Mopsy is well past puppy-hood, she has disrupted our calm senior lives as if she were brand-new human triplets.

Her well-known breeder, Bonnie Prato of Oakland, made no promises about house-breaking so we’ve been keeping a close eye out lest she mark our good rugs. This means we leap up anxiously every time she comes out of the kitchen, scoop her up to a piddle-safe lap or onto our bed. She’s still afraid to jump down, thank goodness.

She’s very cheerful, loves to explore our yard and eager for treats. Sits a bit, now. Doesn’t care for kibble but loves our food as much as we do.

But she does not really like her handsome new, Shih Tzu-sized black crate with a special non-spill water bottle she likes to lick. And the big chewy bone made of brown rice to gnaw on the fuzzy, double-folded saddle-pad mattress. Being in the crate means being away from me and hoo boy, she knows how to speak to us directly.

Night #1: no barking. This lulled us into complacency.

Night #2: all quiet until Jim began to snore. Then barking.

I had to laugh, all by myself in the dark, because MY snoring has so annoyed Jim for the past few years that he moves into the guest room, leaving me cold and alone, searching for the heating pad switch. Now HIS snoring has waked Mopsy. Ha ha! Then she stopped and I fell asleep, virtuously ignoring the gentle roars of my beloved husband.

Night #3: no barking, no snoring, just peace. Bliss!

Night #4: we shovel reluctant Mopsy into her crate, say good-night, firmly and pull up our covers. Silence. Then tentative barks. More barks with pauses to listen followed by steady barking and attentive listening.

“Should I go turn out the light?” Jim asks through gritted teeth.

“No! That’ll only encourage her,” I whisper. Continuous barking now. She’s really got our number. We’re trapped in our own bed.

We lie stiffly side by side, wide-awake. Now I would like to drop this darling Mopsy off a cliff. We quietly dig out the maxi-Ambiens and try to unclench our muscles.

“Damn,” Jim cusses, finally. He rises and heads into the kitchen. Mopsy is so thrilled to hear him come AT LAST that she shuts up. I can hear her moaning joyfully, wagging her tail and clawing gratefully at the crate door.

“NO NO NO!” Jim yells and then I hear him actually shake the crate! I didn't know he had it in him.

Complete silence.

We settle into our drug-induced sleeps and hear nothing until this morning.

Stay tuned!

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? Ask a kid:

You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming. -- Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with... -- Kristen, age 10

WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED? Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then. -- Camille, age 10

HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED? You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids. -- Derrick, age 8

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON? Both don't want any more kids. -- Lori, age 8

WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE? Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough. On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date. -- Martin, age 10

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR? I'd run home and play dead.. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns. -- Craig, age 9

WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE? When they're rich. -- Pam, age 7

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that. -- Curt, age 7

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them... It's the right thing to do. -- Howard, age 8

IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED? It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them. -- Anita, age 9

HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED? There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there? -- Kelvin, age 8

#1 Favorite is .... HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK? Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck. -- Ricky, age 10.

Thanks to Alex Pirbazari [alpirb@gmail.com] for this Monday smile!

My (Social) Medical Life

I don’t have a social life, I have a medical life. No time for lunch with Mary, who looks to me for encouragement and how flattering is that?—to hear what she’s writing. Too bad, Mary. I’ve got a toothache. A physical therapy appointment. Maybe a vision ‘field test’ where I spot the stars around the edges of my eyeballs.

No time for a good Yoga workout on the soft living room rug, the most perfect mat ever invented, so my abs are flabs. My knees are stiff and I really should stretch because most of my joints are like cement from rheumatoid arthritis. My teeth are rotting in my head, in spite of my obsessive brushing, flossing and rubber tipping, not to mention thrice-a-year ‘periodontal visits’. I don’t even try to find a dental insurance plan that would cover my $1,500 REroot canal—Oww, man, this sucker is just under my cheekbone. Maybe the endo could go down from my eyelid.

But no, endo must go up through the original, expensive crown. Gaaa! The why details are too gruesome to think about. Oh, did I mention my slightly too-high blood pressure? My hair is falling out. On top, in front where it shows.

Body maintenance. I am an old house. Speaking of houses, didn’t I just clean that range hood last week, okay, two weeks, and it’s sticky again. Darling little dustbunnies are swirling like tiny tornados along the edge of my bedroom.

Let’s not go into my terrible cooking. I’m soooo bored with my one chicken, one burger, one spaghetti menu that last night we ate take-out meatloaf and it was not only delicious but better than anything I can or would make. Better than any hot tray at Home Buffet. This is not just the winter of my discontent, this is a new nadir of my gourmet image. I used to chop the peppers for chile and stuff the organic chicken and spend an hour on an authentic ragu. Huh.

Could there be any silver lining in this cloud? How about this: Perhaps it’s cheaper to buy just the amount we need than to shop for the ingredients, pay the electric bill on the fridge, cook and clean up with gas, $$, and then have to eat the leftovers. Leftover salad, for instance, uh uh. Steak, possibly but old meat needs a lot of support. And with take-out, Jim can have what he wants and so can I.

Wrap it up. I’ll stop by on my way home from whatever doctors I’m visiting.

The Best Years of Life

Childhood is short. There’s just ten years or so of it, from two to twelve at the most. That’s not long from my point of view.

Ten years, fifteen. When I look back at my life, my friendships, the cities and villages I’ve lived in, I see that I give the most credit to those early years.

Why does childhood matter so much? Because those years were the archetype for the rest of my life. They set me on my particular path and taught me where to seek safety, warmth and space.

Childhood signed my consciousness with an indelible pen. The shape of my tall father coming into the house, the contrast of sunlight on the floor and shadows at night. The vertical panic of the airy stairwell and the moist, warm aromas of kitchen. The stillness of grass in winter. For all my life I have compared every other man to Father, every woman to Mother and every house to that first house.

I’m not saying the comparisons are odious. This is not a moral or Freudian concern, this is a mirror I hold up to see back to then.

First impressions embed in us like the Ten Commandments. The first sounds are the basic musical patterns laid down on my mind. Voices, dogs barking, the car starting up, crunching away down the drive.

The look and feel of the outer world on my body. The miracle of tadpoles in the spring ditch below my grammar school and the lush May grass that grew thick on the banks. Forty, fifty years later as my horse pulls toward just such delicious, green grass beside the Santa Fe River, at the end of my driveway, I am again six years old on my belly in that same sweet fodder.

The long path of my life has been filled with joy and terror, pleasure and pain but childhood images are the brightest. Recent memory has to fight for space on top of all the layers.

It’s not so important to remember where my keys are in the grand scale of my life. But to recall how my mother sewed me prom dresses at the dining room table--if I have to choose between the keys and the dresses, well..

The longer I live, the fewer contemporaries are left to corroborate my history. A really good reason to keep old friends. Stay married, if you can.

Damn.

What’s ten years when you’re almost seventy? I’ve forgotten whole chunks of time in my life. I don’t recall my infancy--I don't care who held the bottle. I’m forgetting the humiliations of my youth, my first marriage, the boyfriends, movies, books, trips. I’ve even forgotten articles I’ve written although they look pretty good now when I come across one.

But my childhood—that’s ten Technicolor years.

It’s your childhood. And it’s not too late to make it a happy one.

Winter everywhere!

Government surveyors came to Ole and Lena's farm in the fall and asked permission to certify his property boundaries. Ole agreed and Lena even served them delicious lutefisk at noontime.

The next spring, the two surveyors stopped by.

"Because you were so kind to us, we wanted to give you this bad news in person instead of by letter," they said.

"What bad news?" Ole asked anxiously.

"Well," the surveyors told him, "after we finished our survey we discovered your farm is not in Minnesota, but is actually in South Dakota."

Ole smiled happily. " This is the best news I have heard in a long time. Why I just told Lena this morning, I don't think I can take another winter in Minnesota."

That's the version from Marty Swanson. But I'm never satisfied until I can make it a blond joke.

Try this:

When a government surveryor completes his work, he knocks on the farmhouse door and tells the blond farmer her property is not actually in Minnesota as they thought but in South Dakota.

"Thank goodness," the blond replies. "I couldn't take another Minnesota winter."

Ah.

Sun Lover

Outside my window tiny birds are singing and chirping and bouncing off the branches, way too early in this New England Yankee’s opinion. It’s only the first of February, for Pete’s sake.

And those tulips six inches out of the ground, please be careful. It’s too soon! Children walk to school in tee shirts and uh oh, something red is blooming on a bush over in the neighbor’s yard. Surely a frost will burn every petal.

Maybe not. Maybe I really do live in California where the temperature rarely drops to thirty-five. When it does I’m the only citizen of this state who shivers.

You can take the girl out of Connecticut but you can’t take the Connecticut winter out of this girl. Brrs, who knew even fifty degrees was so hard to take?

If I get my lazy butt off this chair and go into the back yard to pull a few thriving weeds, I’ll warm up. Then I can shed my winter jacket the same as the kids and start blooming like that bush.

Yesterday the sun burned through the heavy clouds and struck my pale face with the same hot caress I remember from all my summers. For many years now I let my shins burn while I incorrectly roasted my body in summer’s luxurious heat.

I thought back to all those springs I’ve been toasting myself, darkening those horrid age spots without giving a damn. It’s been a long time. Me and the sun, we don’t count years so we don’t get older, we just meet up every spring at the same time.

When Old Sol slides out from behind a March or April cloud I slide out of my jeans and into the skimpiest shorts I can dig up and I ask him to give me that long, lovely kiss that burns my thighs and spackles my face with no-doubt-damaging red spots. By tomorrow those enthusiastic inflammations will be a lovely pale gold and I’ll expose my backside to Old Sol.

Have you way with me, again, Sir.

I know my annual affair with the sun will not go on forever. One day I’ll be a wizened old woman, lost in her brown wrinkles, still begging for one last kiss. And these birds, such busy little creatures arguing over a seed or a mate, they’ll be too busy to notice that I’m getting another sunburn. The sharp leaves of the umpteenth generation of tulips will look just as premature as they do today.

Careful, I might wheez at them. But what I really mean, Thank God you're up. Winter is over. The Sun is back and he’s going to have his way with me one more time.