Thanksgiving Greetings from an Ingrate 2022

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JC Schildbach

Thanksgiving 2022 in the Seattle area arrived, as Thanksgiving often does, bright, shiny, and obnoxiously cold in the way it can only be cold here when there is no cloud cover. Okay, it was really only bright and shiny once the fog lifted. And the temperature didn’t quite drop down all the way to freezing. But there was frost, and I’m very cold-averse.

As I went to knock out the title for this piece, I almost put a 2023 there on the end.  Then I got to thinking about how I’ve neglected to mentally update my age after I hit my last birthday. It’s not that I don’t know what year it is or how old I am, but that I have to think about it at all is a bit odd.

I’ve been joking for quite a while that the pandemic made time meaningless. The company I work for sent us all home (with our work computers) and we had to adapt to working remotely, with the vast majority of our communication switching to Instant Messaging. This wasn’t all that remarkable a change, as we have multiple offices in different parts of the country, and a fair amount of our communication was already conducted via IM.  But it was a bit rough to completely lose the face-to-face in exchange for now having to respond to a constant blast of message pings and rarely having regular old conversations with co-workers. 

Lemmy, a chihuahua-bulldog mix, and one of my office mates (in the physical world) for almost the last 1.5 years, enjoying a Thanksgiving morning sunshine nap in the ‘doggy chair’ from my childhood home.

Coming up on the two-year anniversary of us all having been sent home, and with the office lease expiring soon, the company decided that since the operation hadn’t completely fallen apart without us seeing each other in person, and given the insane real estate costs in this region, they’d leave everyone from our office at home and just not renew the lease. The other two offices, on the other side of the country, opened back up shortly after that on a “hybrid” basis – employees working from home some days, and being in the office others.  The back-in-office folks had some very mixed reactions to this, which is not to say that all the permanent-work-from-home folks weren’t dealing with our own conflicting emotions about the arrangement, and how we may or may not have made changes in our lives based on a sense of an impending return-to-office edict.

At any rate, with most of my days having become a routine of waking up about a half-hour before my shift and wandering into my office, where I used to enjoy my off-work time writing, reading, and goofing off on the Internet, things tilted a smidge or more out of balance. With mostly-only-IM communication at work, it became very easy to lose touch with co-workers if they didn’t specifically need something from me, and I didn’t need anything work-related from them. I’ve maintained regular communication with most of my colleagues I was closest to, but am occasionally surprised when I hear from some others. Even people working directly under me, on my team, can go weeks without a (typed out) word between us.

And a lot of the usual markers for the passage of time faded.

I am exceptionally grateful that I was recently able to meet up with a former co-worker. It was a bit strange to realize we had last worked together over a decade ago, and aside from infrequent exchanges online, a presentation of sorts I gave at her work way back when I was still doing assessments and treatment of sex offenders, and one of my pumpkin-carving parties that she attended well before COVID came about, we hadn’t otherwise seen each other in all that time.

As we were catching up, what could have been brief updates turned into swirling, involved stories, as more and more pieces of background were necessarily added in order to make sense of where things were at now with former co-workers, family members, and life in general. And in that swirl, I kept realizing that I was adding a “but because the world shut down” to events that had occurred well before the pandemic. Then as I tried to pull back from the pandemic excuse and place the events in context of other events, realized that no, I was still commuting to work at the time, or no, that was just after we were in Hawai’i with the MiL, or no, that was when the kid was working at job X. 

I ‘get’ that part of the jumbling of events is likely due to my aging brain and my ongoing failure to provide it with appropriate maintenance and support. But I also have to wonder at exactly how much of my memory is being compromised by me spending an average of well over 90% of my time in my house, with roughly 35% or more of that time spent sitting in the same room at the very desk where I am composing this post, staring at my personal laptop or my work computer, much of that time spent necessarily or unnecessarily responding to whatever pops up. When you add in the (if I was getting adequate sleep) 30-ish percent of the time I’m not awake, that makes for some very odd calculations.

So this year, I am grateful for the opportunity to spend a little more time getting back out into the world for things more stimulating than a trip to the grocery store, even if it has a tendency to highlight just how much I’ve been disconnected, even while I’ve been totally wired (or wirelessed) in, and for how long.

I am posting this so late, after Thanksgiving Day has already ended in all of the country aside from Hawaii and parts of Alaska, because I started writing several hours into the morning and hadn’t yet finished when I had to get ready so we (M, the kid, and dogs Bobby and Lemmy) could travel to West Seattle for a joyous Thanksgiving dinner at my niece’s (temporary) home. Because I met new people, had a vegetarian meal, played a few rounds of Scattergories, and walked the dogs through the neighborhood to see my niece’s fire-damaged house, I have a few more markers to remember it by than the last few years, when we were at home, with no guests, and may or may not have prepared a traditional Thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving Day, instead opting to have the meal a few days late. (And, hey, if you were a guest at a Thanksgiving meal at my house within the last few years, sorry, but you should have been much more memorable).

Or was that Christmas when we postponed the meal? Working for a 24/7 operation also means I work on some holidays, so that doesn’t help with the jumble-and-swirl memory mess, especially if the holiday basically consists of making a big meal at home for just the people you live with, knocking back some cocktails during the meal preparation and dinner, and probably spending much of the day binge-watching some series or other, much like most other days off. 

I feel a sense of hope, though, since I do remember M’s birthday earlier this year. Perhaps this is because there were multiple particular details to remember. We were visiting my mother and having, per M’s request, a Christmas/Easter-style meal, with multiple other family members, and, according to the heat thermometer, couldn’t get the ham up to the proper internal temperature for safe consumption, so finally decided to just eat it anyway. This is not to say that in the future I’ll be able to place that birthday dinner by a specific year without looking up things online. But at least I’ll (probably) be able to remember it as “post pandemic” or “post vaccination”.

And now, to close this out, and to celebrate the absurdity that is using the Internet as a repository of the details of our lives instead of being able to track them in our own heads, I will share with you this “memory” from Facebook, which turned up in my feed today:

On this Thanksgiving, I am ever more grateful to be drawn into the traditions and spiritual life of my wife, as well as to have my own spiritual foundations that contributed a great deal to what I have become (well, the good parts, at least). And with that, I offer an “Itadakimasu”–essentially meaning “I humbly receive”–an acknowledgment that our own lives depend on the lives of others (of all species). Happy Thanksgiving!

So Long, Ding Dong

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J.C. Schildbach

It’s the end that’s most difficult, but that’s where I need to start in order to process this all.  If you want the more amusing tales, without all that painful ‘closure stuff’, skip ahead to the “***” or just pass this one up.

It was like scheduling a good friend’s execution, all for the crime of growing old and getting sick.

Or at least that’s what it felt like this time.

With Joy (our first dog) it felt a lot more like an assisted suicide, a sacred act of mercy killing.  She had been on her way out for a long time and was finally at the point where, even though she seemed pretty damned aware of everything around her, she just wasn’t able to squeeze out any more life.  At the end, she just plain couldn’t get up off the kitchen floor and was done trying.  

Darby, a.k.a. Ding Dong (owing to Al Yankovich’s “Fat” video running on TV at some point on the day we brought him home – “Yo, Ding Dong, man, Ding Dong, Ding Dong, yo!”), who I had also been referring to as ‘Old Man’ for at least the better part of a year, due to his deteriorating physical and cognitive health, was spiritually (as M pointed out) as accepting as ever of everything happening around him, regardless of his level of awareness at any given moment.  It was nearly impossible to tell if anything was ever bothering him if it didn’t result in the kind of immediate, hostile reaction that was mostly reserved for those times anyone dared touch his paws.

When the lymphoma first started it was so pronounced and rapid that we assumed he’d captured another bee in his mouth, or perhaps a spider or some other stinging insect. I’d witnessed him chomping at bees before, and the swelling from his ‘successful’ efforts looked identical.  We gave him a small dose of Benadryl and the swelling went down within 24 hours, and, to our eyes, was essentially gone within 36.

And then his face swelled up again a few weeks later.  I was a bit surprised that he would have eaten another bee so soon.  Usually, a good mouth-stinging kept him from repeating that action until at least the next summer.  I tried to remember if he had ever done such a thing twice in such close succession.  But, with him seeming more and more distant lately, taken to long spells of standing and staring off into space, it didn’t seem all that odd that he would have taken another shot at tasting a bee.  It also occurred to me that I had purchased a new kind of ‘bone-broth-infused’ treat for him around the time of the first facial swelling.  And with the rotation of various meat sticks, breath fresheners, rawhide chews, meat-flavored joint medications, and all-natural general-bodily-grossness remedies that he was receiving on the semi-regular, it seemed this new treat might be the culprit.  

At any rate, the swelling was gone again within 36 hours, Darby seemed none the worse for wear, and I decided to shelve the suspect treats.

Then it happened again about a month later.  Only this time the swelling came up late in the day, and was gone by midday next.  In our heightened concern, though, we noticed things we hadn’t paid attention to before.  Perhaps they came up fairly suddenly, or perhaps over the course of a longer period, much the same way you don’t notice the slow changes in a friend’s appearance if you see them frequently, but if you’re apart for a long stretch, that same change can seem quite drastic.  

Darby’s eyes were more obviously clouded and rimmed with red, inflamed tissue.  Although his legs and neck still seemed muscular, his ribs, spine, and hipbones were much more pronounced.  And there were new developments: staggering while trying to stand up; clear difficulty navigating rooms, hallways, and stairs; and most alarming of all, the swelling in his face had morphed into two golf-ball sized, hardened nodules in his neck, just below the back of his jaw, only apparent through touch.

With a weak promise to take Darby to the vet on an upcoming day off, and a much stronger sense that any proposed cure would be worse torture than the disease, especially at his advanced age, Darby settled the issue in short order with what I will politely describe as some violent, disturbing, ‘productive’ coughing fits.

So I called the doggie death angels, the poochie euthanizers, the canine Kevorkians.

But seriously, folks, I can’t express how grateful I am for this service that allowed Darby to pass out of this existence lying in the shady grass of our back lawn, rather than in a sterile-but-stinky vet’s office, the smell of animal fear, anxiety, and mistrust (not to mention bodily waste) filling the air.

I wasn’t entirely sure Darby was ready to go if he’d been the one making the decision.  Shortly before the doc arrived, Darby decided he’d had enough of being outside and wanted to head back in—not frantically, but patiently standing by the back door, quietly trusting somebody would eventually open it for him, in contrast to his past behavior of barking at progressively shorter intervals until he was let in.  Still, it gave the impression of him trying to escape his fate.  It didn’t help that, even though he came back out to us on the lawn, he was standing, hoping for more treats from the doc, when he received the shot of sedative prior to the ‘final dose’, then staggered about and dropped, looking for all the world like Brandon Lee/Eric Draven in ‘The Crow’ when he’s lost his powers and taken a bullet – I half-expected him to mutter “Aw f*ck” on the way down. Only we caught him and helped him to the ground, his frailty and near-weightlessness in that moment a sharp contrast to his past strength and solidity.

For several nights after, I woke multiple times with a start, sensing an absence, wishing I had made a point of hugging him one last time, just so I would have that physical feeling to hang on to.  Ding Dong wasn’t much for being hugged, but he would tolerate it for a bit before mock-snapping at your face to get away, sort of like a teenage boy, embarrassed by parental displays of affection towards him.

That sense of absence was fraught with feelings of guilt.  Did I let go of him too early?  Did I act in haste?  If I had recognized the swelling for what it was earlier, would I have been able to get him help? Would he have even wanted that? Was this decision one of convenience more than what was best? 

Rationally speaking, I know we helped him to avoid extra days, or perhaps weeks, of suffering, even though it was tempting to imagine him lying out in the grass in the sunshine, passing away quietly and content, in spite of how unlikely such an end was. Still, it was the polar opposite of the ‘mistake’ we made with Joy, waiting until the end was entirely inevitable, and then having to wait extra days to get somebody to come out to the house to help with the exit. With the desire to avoid a delay in getting the lethal injection figuring into our calculations with Darby, it was too easy to think we’d panicked, especially since there were multiple appointments available on the chosen day and the day after. I didn’t ask about anything beyond. It’s a maddening equation, trying to figure out just when your friend should die in order to achieve the best possible outcome for all involved.

***

When people asked about Darby’s breed, I always said he was a mutant. In truth he was a pit bull mixed with something – the shelter had somewhat arbitrarily paired his pit bull side with an Australian shepherd, although I didn’t really see the Aussie in him. At any rate, it’s more fun to think of him as a mutant in the X-men sort of way, or perhaps a damaged survivor in a post-apocalyptic hellscape than to imagine him something of a runt who may not have survived if he were born in the wild. His were adaptations, not deformities. 

Darby’s right “pinky toe” was set back from his other right forepaw toes, and high enough that it never touched the ground while he was standing.  Since he would try to murder anyone who touched his paws, he perpetually had a vicious-looking, hooked claw, perhaps equal to the task, growing from it. I think the kid managed to trim his nails all of once in Darby’s entire lifetime, nearly at the cost of the railing by the stairs that she had attached his leash to in order to keep him from fleeing.  

On a trip to the veterinarian, I asked if I could get Darby’s nails trimmed. The vet asked me to have a seat in the waiting room while he took care of it. After a loud volley of barking, combined with some pained groaning from the vet, Darby emerged from the examination room with a big smile on his face, and one brutally short and bleeding nail, the remainder of them still exactly as they had been, the vet refusing to ever attempt that again unless Darby was sedated. In addition to attempting to murder the vet, Darby had emptied his bowels and bladder while standing on the metal exam table.

Darby’s eyelids were ‘inverted’, meaning he had to have surgery to remove a portion of them in order to prevent his eyelashes from perpetually scratching the surface of his eyes, resulting in him having no eyelashes at all.  And he had a misaligned jaw, preventing him from having the trademark vicious clamping ability that causes people to so fear pit bull terriers.  That misaligned jaw also meant that he was perpetually drooling out of the right side of his mouth, which was somehow funnily endearing when it wasn’t totally gross.

When he first moved in with us, it was that malformed jaw, perhaps in accord with the absence of a vicious killer instinct (nail trimming attempts notwithstanding), that spared a number of my neighbor, Ruth’s chickens. For days after his arrival, Darby, like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, spent a fair amount of his outdoor time looking for weaknesses in the fence surrounding our backyard.  Arguably, the target points weren’t all that hard to spot.  The fence was old, decaying, and one of Ruth’s many pine trees had fallen onto our property during a storm less than a year after we moved in.  So, in addition to various “naturally occurring” gaps and soft spots, some large portions of the fence had essentially been obliterated and patched up with whatever was handy at the time, from cast-off basement wood paneling, to spare bits of chain-link fence, to various bungee cords, spare 2x4s, rope and felled branches.  Darby spent each trip to the backyard exploiting these weaknesses while we attempted to shore them up, one by one, as he found them.

When he did find a flaw big enough to exploit, he was off.  Fortunately, there is a reasonably functional gate between our backyard and Ruth’s backyard, or it could have been a disaster making the long trip all the way around multiple houses to reach the front of Ruth’s massive property where we would have otherwise had to enter.  Instead, we were able to pull the gate open, being careful not to collapse the surrounding fence, as we set off to retrieve Darby in his pursuit of chickens.  

Now, Darby could be exceptionally clever and fast.  Between finding the desired gap and making use of it, he was deceptively nonchalant, looking simply like he was choosing an appropriate place to relieve himself, when really he was figuring out just how fluid he had to make himself to get through that gap, and how best to make that happen.  One minute he was peeing, the next minute he was bolting.  And he caught Ruth’s chickens more than once, tearing around her yard, as the chickens squawked and fled, Darby constantly changing his targeting, until, like the problem areas of the fence, he found a vulnerable hen.

On those occasions when he managed to secure a barnyard fowl in his jaw, it was never all that secure. He would snag it, run a few more paces, toss it aside, then come back to me, smiling and wagging his tail and tongue, satisfied that he had proven his usefulness, one of Ruth’s poor girls left stunned and shaken (but not shaken too hard), hopefully happy to go on living another day.

Darby soon tired of busting out of the backyard and running down chickens he had no intention of actually capturing, and settled in with everyday life.  While he seemed like a big goof, he frequently ran schemes like pretending to want the affection of one of the humans in the house, all in a bid to get his big sister, Joy, to vacate a choice spot and come over to try and displace him in his bid for attention.  Once Joy had diverted all the scritches and rubs, Darby would trot off and install himself in the pre-warmed chair Joy had just left.

I’ll admit I never realized just how helpful Darby was around the house until a few days after he was gone.  He was the first line of defense against dropped food…food of any kind on any floor or dog-friendly furniture.  We had become incredible slobs, taking essentially no notice of any food we let go or spilled, knowing Ding Dong would come along and, aside from a small number of items he was not particularly fond of, horf it up. Within a week after his death, M was finally considering hiring (as I had been suggesting for years) someone to clean our house at least once every couple weeks or so.

If you read the first section of this post, you might wonder at my casual attitude toward Darby’s swollen face in his final days and his propensity to eat odd things.  We have a fantastic, framed picture our friend Lisa took of Darby on a multi-family vacation years ago, as he watched sparks pop off of logs in a campfire, trying to catch them in his mouth.  In the photo, he stares intently at the fire pit, waiting with heightened focus for another cluster of orange cinders to blast off in all directions.  If you didn’t know what was actually happening in the photo, you might mistake Darby for trying to unlock the secret of fire, as opposed to waiting for a mildly painful, probably wholly unsatisfying snack.

Darby may also have been some barometer of the supernatural, or perhaps just the dog equivalent of a human with long-term, low-level psychosis. He frequently stood at various random locations around the house barking. Sometimes this was readily attributable to light reflections on the walls or ceilings that he was clearly tracking, but other times it made much less discernible sense. Often, it involved him refusing to enter rooms or move from one space to another, occasionally while growling and/or taking a ‘fight or flight’ posture. 

I’m not a big believer in the supernatural, but g*ddamn if Ding Dong didn’t actually freak me out sometimes with his insistence that something was wrong. And g*ddamn if I’m not at least marginally sure a lot of that behavior of his didn’t stop around the same time I ‘felt’ the original (and only previous) owner of our home “move on” many years after we all moved in. But I’ll just plop that in the ‘Cosmic Web of Coincidence’ file for now rather than trying to parse out just what I mean by all that.  I will say, though, that Darby demonstrated a decided return to this behavior, minus the fearful parts, over his last few months.

I could go on with stories about Darby’s various charms and peccadilloes, although I think I’ve covered most of the ‘bigger’ ones. Darby was never a particularly difficult, destructive, or demanding dog, beyond his toenail issues and a propensity to enjoy being loud when he was having fun. 

But for the most part, he was just a relaxed, grounding presence in our lives, sort of a Zen pit bull (mix). So now, at the end, I’ll say about Darby what I hope can be said about me when I’m being memorialized, which, with any luck, will be very far in the future: he was a good dude – a little weird – but a good dude.

So long, Ding Dong.

What Did You Think was Going to Happen?

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by JC Schildbach

Following the “events” at the U.S. Capitol on January the 6th, I kept thinking of Ed Norton’s character The Narrator in Fight Club (yes the film that introduced “snowflake” into the popular lexicon, but not quite in the way it’s used now) saying, “You morons. What did you think was going to happen?”   

You’re running around in ski masks, blowing things up…

Yes, what did you (Trump, Trump-supporting politicians, ‘news personalities’, radio hosts and ‘influencers’) think was going to happen when, for months, you repeated the falsehood that the only way Trump was going to lose re-election would be if the election was “rigged”? 

What did you think was going to happen when Trump lost, yet you amplified the idea that there was election fraud, based on nothing but fabricated tales of ballots thrown out, dead people voting, and machines switching votes, among other lies?  

What did you think was going to happen when Trump’s legal team was bringing evidence-free lawsuits into court, based on wild claims of voter fraud, yet wouldn’t even directly answer the questions of judges, so as not to perjure themselves, all the while Trump-supporters were led to believe that judges “throwing out lawsuits” meant the judges had refused to look at the evidence?  

What did you think was going to happen when Senators and Representatives signed on in support of Trump’s unhinged and delusional ranting about a ‘stolen’ election, just to score points with Trump and his base, all the way up to, and even after, the insurrection?  

What did you think was going to happen when a rally was held immediately before the storming of the Capitol with the President, his son Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and many of those same Senators and Representatives, calling on Trump supporters to ‘fight’, ‘be strong’, ‘take back our government’, ‘stop the steal’, ‘kick ass’, and engage in ‘trial by combat’?

“What did you think was going to happen?,” The Narrator in Fight Club asks his followers after one among them is killed while carrying out a ‘mission’ The Narrator has personally given them, The Narrator being completely unaware of the role he played in directing the mission, because (spoiler alert for a 20-year-old movie) he doesn’t realize his cool new, charismatic, and violence-prone friend, Tyler, is actually a suppressed part of his own personality.

As much as President The Donald would like to pretend (and has pretended) he knew nothing about his role in what went down at the Capitol, while also occasionally pretending he acknowledges it was kinda bad, but he ‘loves’ the ‘special people’ who broke into the Capitol screaming for blood, he doesn’t have the same almost-impunity that The Narrator in Fight Club does. The Narrator struggles against his most anti-social and violent impulses in the person of his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. President The Donald does not even acknowledge that he has anti-social and violent impulses, in spite of daily ‘tweets’ and comments and rants to the contrary.

One big problem with President The Donald’s insincere flip-flopping is that either he is fully aware of what he is doing/what he did, and is loving it; or he is completely disconnected from reality and has no idea how he’s involved at all in the violent insurrection he spurred; or perhaps he doesn’t think anything he has done is wrong at all, but merely that he gave a rousing speech that resulted in a desired ‘show of support’ by ‘enthusiastic patriots.’ But, really, which possibility is better or worse than the others?

Democracy overwhelmed by the miasma of too much “information” and too little understanding.

To those that took part in the insurrection, what did you think was going to happen, when you shared the evidence of your crimes with the whole world via social media?  Perhaps, like President The Donald with the many crimes he’s committed, you thought all you would have to do is deny it and create further distraction and the world would just move on, especially since you were so sure of your righteous purpose that you knew you couldn’t help but emerge triumphant from your mad rampage.

So to close with another quote from Fight Club for the treasonous mob, “How’s that working out for you?”

Thanksgiving Greetings from an Ingrate, 2019

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JC Schildbach

 

I don’t know if I’d call it a run of bad luck, but our Thanksgiving Dinners out at fancy restaurants took a bit of a turn a few years ago, and never quite got back on track.

 

M, in particular, had a rough go of things.  Three years ago, we had to cancel our reservations at Ray’s Boathouse last-minute, when a bad reaction to some sort of hair-care product caused M’s scalp to start burning – not in a literal, Michael-Jackson Pepsi-commercial sort of way, but in a painful, hot sensation that was making her want to dig at her head with a fork.  This led to a last-minute trip to Safeway, where the kid, her then-boyfriend, and I grabbed up all manner of potentially scalp-soothing products, along with a turkey breast, a bag of potatoes, and a few pre-packaged sides.  Turkey breast in the pressure cooker, potatoes boiled for mashing, sides in the microwave, and Thanksgiving was saved, more-or-less.  We ate in our dining room, M’s hair slicked back with a heavy coating of some aloe-based goo, John Coltrane playing quietly in the background, as we talked and laughed aboutt all manner of things, including our abandoned holiday meal plans.

 

The next year brought a return to Preservation Kitchen, albeit with a different group of people than the previous time(s) we had been there for Thanksgiving.  Things started off well, beyond my uncomfortable collar/tie combo. Drinks ordered and received; dinner ordered and received; lively conversation and laughter. Then, as the main course was coming to a close, M fell silent. In the midst of a raucous exchange I was having with current and former co-workers, and with M sitting right next to me, I didn’t notice what those across from her began to notice – that she was absolutely not feeling well.  She had gone pale, and was staring down at the table, occasionally looking up wide-eyed, blinking and sweating. She let me know she needed to leave.  In my oft-clueless fashion, I told her we still had dessert on the way, and implored her to let me continue on with the party just a bit longer.  Before long, other guests were interrupting the conversation(s) I was having, to tell me to maybe just pay attention to her and help her out.  By the time it sunk in that this wasn’t just M feeling tired after a long meal, she was bolting from the table to the bathroom.  After a few minutes of vomiting, she returned to our group, and Thanksgiving dinner came to an end…roughly 90% successfully (and, no, the food had nothing to do with it.  M was in bed for the next few days with an illness that had been rolling around her school).

 

By Thanksgiving of last year, the owners of Preservation Kitchen had retired, and it was no more. And while this was disappointing, we had never gone to the same restaurant two years in a row.  Also, with a slightly larger party than most years, and a much greater geographic spread for the members of the party, we looked for something somewhat central to the majority.  I won’t spell out specifically where that was, as I like to give the benefit of the doubt to businesses who may not be performing up-to-snuff.  But we were seated in a very awkward location, practically a hallway, with another large party so close behind us that the wait staff had difficulty maneuvering between us (as did numerous other diners on their way to and from the restrooms).  In addition, the staff seemed to be the ‘B’ team–forced to work on the holiday in order to keep their jobs. Before we had even ordered drinks, a glass of water had been launched onto the table, the waiter perhaps not understanding the dynamics of weight distribution of items on trays, leading to more than one in our party enjoying a soggier-than-expected experience.  A trip by a few of us to the same restaurant on a ‘regular’ day several months later, though, suggested that the restaurant may not have an ‘A’ team.  And truly, truly, truly I try to look for the good in restaurant visits and not be overly critical, knowing the difficulty of the jobs involved.

 

So, this year, by the end of summer, when Thanksgiving reservations started opening up at restaurants that offer Thanksgiving meals, I began asking (to M first, of course) if our ‘regulars’ would be willing to turn up at our house in the event we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner.  While all who didn’t already have plans agreed they would be willing, more than one floated the condition that if we were going to host, the hosts should not be put in the position of cooking on top of hosting.  In the spirit of the low-hassle Thanksgiving, they encouraged the ordering of a Thanksgiving meal from a grocery store, rather than going to the hassle of shopping and preparing all the items.  While M, at first, enthusiastically floated notions of an extravagant meal we would cook and dish up with love and thanks (as we had done multiple times prior to starting our restaurant tradition) she quickly acquiesced when I presented her with the truth(s) that if we decided to make the food, not only would we (well, I) end up doing a boatload of shopping, but we (all of us) would end up cleaning house, while the cooking chores would fall to God-only-knows who, as each of us (M, the kid, and I) are all kitchen divas who don’t cook well with others. I then showed her offerings from several local (well national-local) stores, appealing to her “sense of fanciness” with a trip to the Whole Foods website, and their various meal options.

Thanks 2019

Oh, so fancy.  Catered, kind of, by Whole Foods.

Ultimately, the decision was made that Whole Foods would be cooking for us. We’re just reheating what they provide. Compared to what we, as a group, usually spend at a restaurant on Thanksgiving, it’s a very reasonable cost—even while ordering a meal for many more people than we’re expecting.  And I suppose if we aren’t happy with dinner, we can try another restaurant or grocery store next year–or maybe go back to full-on hosting.  At least this year, we’ll have nobody but ourselves to blame for the service—which, I’m sure, will be fantastic.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Happy Halloween 2019! – The New Decoration

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

The Octopus Project started last year, but in the final lead-up to Halloween, I realized I just didn’t have the time to bring it all together. Hell, I almost didn’t have enough time to bring it all together this year.  In part, the lack of time this year was because I spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out how to make my vampire ghosts more reflective (liquid rubber with inlaid ‘airport grade’ glass beads was the answer — the resin experiments definitely did not work).  I also had to completely repaint the pink demon due to the knots in the plywood bleeding through the paint — not sure if that was a problem of the paint or whatever chemicals they treat plywood with.

Octo 1

At any rate, the inspiration for the octopus came partly from the kid destroying the back sliding-glass door.  This freed up the ‘window panel insert’.  That is, all the windows on the front of our house, along with the back sliding glass door, have a metal insert in between the two layers of glass in order to make it look like there are several, roughly one-foot-square window panes. I kinda hate these inserts.

I also had a 5-foot x 4-foot painting that I did in high school — the kid and one of her friends were going to turn it into something a few years back, but only got so far as whiting it out. I had thought several times of painting it to look like a window with some sort of monster inside, but with the 6-foot x 3-foot metal window/door insert, I thought I could make it look like something was busting out of a window.  But what?  In the course of scribbling out ideas, the thought of tentacles hit me. I sketched a few tentacled monsters, but decided a giant octopus was the direction to go. I got the canvas done last year just before Halloween.

Some very thin ply-board that was here when we bought the house seemed like a good way to maybe give the tentacles a bit of motion, as the board is not particularly sturdy (why did I think this was a good idea?).  An outlet hole had been cut out of it, and it was cracked in places, but I managed to sketch out one large tentacle and fit two smaller ones in the remaining spaces, away from the damaged parts of the board.  Over the course of working on the project, I had to think and rethink how to put the pieces together. Ultimately, it was clear I had to attach a frame to the frame on the canvas in order to assemble everything in a way that looked more-or-less like I wanted.

Octo 2

Making this all come together was something of a nightmare, and involved me out in the cold last night having to rig up various bits of fishing wire, nails, and screws to keep things in place. I have no idea how I’m going to store this thing — just how much of it I have to take apart before I can fit it reasonably back into the workshop.  There are six different parts — eight if you count the 2 x 4s on the garage door that it’s hanging from — and I dread the idea of having to detach and reattach at least some of them.  Now that it’s all together, I really want to get some more of that ply-board, and make that tentacle on the right much bigger.  Maybe next year.

Happy Halloween.

Peace out, Joy

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JC Schildbach

The kid and I had been making offhand comments about putting Joy down for so long, that once I actually made the call to have it done, I was caught off guard by the flood of emotion a few minutes later.  I went through the call pretty much like a straightforward business matter: What’s the cost? What’s the soonest you can send someone out?

But when I went to relay the information to M, I made it through the date and time no problem, then choked up when I tried to explain the cremation options.  I paused long enough for M to ask “Are you ok?”

I meant to say, “Not really,” but all that came out was a squeak of a “no” followed by me closing my eyes in a vain effort to stop any tears from escaping.  The cremation options discussion would have to wait until later.  I was heading out to Costco.

To back up a bit, the kid and I had been making offhand comments about putting Joy down for quite some time, because Joy was clearly getting weaker and struggling with pain issues, not to mention breathing heavily after just minor physical exertion. For close to a year, we’d had had to coax her outside by offering a treat – and by ‘coax her outside’, I mean we had to bribe her just to get her to stand up.  She would occasionally, of her own free will, get up and move to a different location, usually to be with M or to move to a cooler or more comfortable location.

On multiple occasions, we had tried to springboard these comments into actual discussions of why it would be beneficial for Joy to ‘move on.’ But M wasn’t having any of it. She could see that Joy was still alert, and appeared at least reasonably happy much of the time. Joy spent most of her time asleep—and usually only screamed and cried for a few minutes when trying to get up from a long rest, or in the middle of just about any TV program or movie we were trying to watch.  We were able to manage her pain, for the most part, with OTC CBD.

The turning point in the whole situation came when M and I returned from a weekend trip.  The kid had texted us the day before that Joy had cried/screamed for almost four hours straight on Saturday. On our arrival home Sunday night, Joy made her way to the top of the stairs to greet us, and there she stayed for hours, occasionally bursting into loud crying jags.  I used a sling to try to help her get up and move, but that only led to more crying, and some awkward escape attempts that propelled her into furniture or far afield from any destination we might have been aiming for.  She eventually struggled her way into the kitchen and slurped up as much water as she could.

Joy would stay in that same basic spot for her remaining hours.

Joy lying down

Joy: 10/15/2004 – 9/24/2019

I stayed up late, attempting to read and write, and not making much headway on either project—frequently reverting back to screwing around online. Joy woke up every so often, engaging in loud crying jags. I couldn’t get her to get up and go out, and the CBD-filled treats I was feeding her clearly weren’t getting the job done, aside from making her comfortable and sleepy enough to go down for a half-hour or so at a time.

I eventually started researching in-home euthanasia for dogs. Being as it was the middle of the night, and I didn’t imagine we’d have much luck moving Joy to the car and getting her to a 24-hour vet, I was hoping to find some humane, in-home method we could legally administer ourselves. Virtually every article that mentioned some way or other to euthanize a dog (beyond the ‘call an in-home service’ or ‘take your dog to her/his regular vet’) urged readers to ‘check local ordinances’ – which, of course meant, ‘this is probably illegal where you live, so good luck.’ The same basic warnings went along with the idea of burying your dog on your property.

Around 2:00 a.m., Joy started crying again, and was clearly struggling with trying to get up on the slippery kitchen floor.  I helped her onto the living room carpet, where she generally has an easier time getting up, only to have the struggle continue, culminating in the realization that she was trying to get up and go outside to relieve herself…in a big way. I cleaned and cleaned while Joy’s breathing went through a variety of odd stages…mostly very rapid and shallow, with brief periods of gasping for air, or settling in to long, labored, moaning breaths.

Convinced Joy was on her way out, I went to wake up M, who, in turn, woke up the kid.  We all gathered by Joy, now back on the kitchen floor, along with our other two dogs, Darby and Bobby, who were clearly frightened by whatever was going on, and tried to keep their distance.  Roughly 45 minutes passed with us all expecting some final death rattle and exit.  Instead, Joy’s breathing returned to it’s relatively normal-but-labored state and she seemed to say ‘thanks for your concern, but I’m gonna be around a while longer.’

We all went to bed, or back to bed in everybody’s case but mine.  It was 4:00 a.m.

Four hours later, I was startled awake by Joy’s crying, somewhat confused Joy was still alive. I’d been – well, I wouldn’t say hoping—but thinking she would have passed in the night after the display we’d witnessed. I rolled out of bed and headed upstairs, where M was on the couch watching videos on her laptop.  Joy was right where she’d been hours before. M told me she had called out from work, also thinking Joy would pass.

I went back to bed for a few more hours, occasionally being wakened by Joy’s cries. Eventually, I called our vet’s office. They gave us contact info for a few in-home dog euthanasia services. Ever the smart shopper, I called the first number they gave me and booked an appointment, jotting down names and prices without giving much thought to whether it was a good, or even reasonable deal, or if it was normal to have to give 24 hours notice to have your dog put down.  Given the number of dog owners in the region, I have no doubt that these services are probably booked all the time, and 24 hours hardly seemed a stretch.  I set up the appointment for the latest available time the following night, unsure of what the kid’s schedule was, or if M was planning to go to work or not (I was on my usual days off, in addition to having taken vacation days, in no way anticipating that this is how I would be spending my time away from the office).

Our ‘euthanizer’, Dr. Audrey, was, perhaps younger than we expected…but, really, not having done this before, I didn’t know what to expect. Wearing a pony tail, a light-beige sweater, and deep-red pants with an autumn-colored leaf pattern, she seemed a pleasantly non-threatening angel-of-doggy-death.

Just prior to her arrival, I was getting frustrated with the pressure cooker not allowing me to set the cooking time appropriately for a corned-beef brisket, and continued in my button-poking while Dr. Audrey gently eased M into accepting Joy’s passing. I eventually dug out the operating manual for the pressure cooker, set the damn thing as best I could, and got down on the kitchen floor with Joy, M, and Dr. Audrey.  The kid, Darby, and Bobby all kept a bit of sorrowed distance.

When it was all over and Dr. Audrey had taken the body away (we opted for the private cremation where we would get the ashes back, the kid offering to design and build a special urn), we toasted Joy with martinis, and sat in the living room comforting our remaining dogs and each other with tales of Joy’s antics….among my favorites…

On the way home from the shelter where we got Joy, she repeatedly kept climbing into my lap until I just decided it was (slightly) less dangerous to drive with her in my lap than to try to fight her off again and again. On arriving home, she didn’t leave my side for nearly two weeks (I was working out of our home then), except for one escape attempt, where she took off down the road for several blocks, constantly looking back over her shoulder to make sure I was still following.  When I stopped, she apparently decided it was better to come back than to keep going…

Prior to bringing her home, we were thinking of different names for Joy, since Joy was not (as far as we knew) her actual name from before she arrived at the shelter.  However, because our landlord left town for several days after telling us it was ok to have a dog at the house, and the shelter couldn’t reach him for almost a week, we got used to calling her Joy while visiting her daily, waiting for the shelter to confirm it was ok for us to take her home.

We bought a house a few years after getting Joy, and realized that on July 4th, we could see all kinds of fireworks around the region from our roof. Not a big fan of explosions, Joy, not wanting to be alone, climbed up a ladder onto the roof to join us in watching the fireworks (I had a picture of M, the kid, and Joy sitting on the roof, but can’t find it – not sure if it was digitally wiped out in a computer incident, or what). Getting Joy back off the roof was not an easy task, and I’m surprised neither she nor I were injured at all in the process.

Joy was a champion tennis-ball fetcher.  She would make insane, twisting leaps into the air to catch a ball.  She especially loved chasing them into the water and swimming back with them, just to get us to throw them as far away as possible, over and over.

Joy waiting for a throw

Joy — waiting at Lake Cushman — ‘you think you jackasses could stop the jibber jabber and maybe throw a ball?’

One time, we had gone out to dinner, leaving Joy at home alone.  On returning, she was standing on the kitchen table, eating an almost full stick of butter. Rather than leaping away to pretend she wasn’t doing such a thing, she stood her ground, rushing to finish the butter before we could get to her.

I won’t go on about all the times Joy bit or nipped people out of some misguided sense of a need to protect her pack, or growled and whined and barked at people over at our house.  If you were here, you know exactly what I’m talking about and how loud and aggravating it could be. It was a fear behavior we never managed to cure her of.

Still, she was (mostly) a good dog.  She was the first dog all three of us ever had as our own. We loved her, and we’ll miss her.

Peace out, Joy.  See you when we see you. Just know you’re still here with us forever.

 

 

The Texas Chainsaw Ice Sculpting Contest

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

TX snow 7

— With special thanks to Funko — their Dorbz line — which I have zero permission to use.

I saw this Leatherface (from ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ — also, no permissions here) toy online years ago, and immediately thought of doing a photo like this, so bought it in what was certainly a bout of intoxicated Internet purchases.  I finally got around to taking the photo thanks to me getting off my ass on one of those sunny days following a rare Seattle-area snowstorm…although such snowstorms have not been nearly rare enough over the past few weeks.  Oh, yeah…not sure who manufactured the ice cube tray that allowed me to put these ‘ice ducks’ in the pic, but I don’t have any permissions from them either.

No Year’s Resolutions 2019

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

New Year’s morning, my wife roused me from a dream to tell me it was time to help set up the dining room for Osechi (Osechi Ryori:  Japanese traditional New Year’s Day food).

I mention the dream because it has stuck with me—or, rather, a portion of it has stuck with me—since then. A particular image from that dream has entered my thoughts multiple times daily since then—whether because I’m hanging onto it or struggling to forget it.  The image involves me surveying the damage from a shart (shart: what happens, as the saying goes, when one gambles on a fart and loses; a combination of sh*t and fart).

I don’t recall much of anything that happened in the dream before the shart occurred. But I do recall that I was wearing blue underwear and the aftermath was very much like a runny version of the gravy from almond chicken (almond chicken: a staple of American Chinese restaurant menus, where breaded, boneless, fried chicken is covered in a light brown American-style gravy –flour and fat— full of chopped almonds).

baby-new-year

Just what am I looking at?  And what does it mean?

I haven’t looked up any of the elements of the dream in any dream dictionaries, online or otherwise – not the blue, not the almonds, not the shart, not any of it.  So, if you’re into dream analysis and have a clear understanding of what these elements add up to – well, I probably don’t want to know. Keep it to yourself.

Perhaps this image has stuck with me because most dreams I (and I would guess most other people) have that involve, what I will call “bathroom stuff” are usually tied to bathroom functions that never come to fruition.  For example, a dream where one is running around looking for a place to pee, only to have each option for relief somehow thwarted.  One eventually wakes up and realizes that the dream was trying to push one to wake up and go take a piss in a completely ‘normal’, non-thwarted, perfectly relieving fashion.  I do not recall any of these previous dreams resulting in actually finding ‘release’ while in the dream, much less, having a ‘release’ with unintended consequences.

I’m happy to report that, in this particular instance, there was no corresponding pushing or expulsion activity married to the dream.  That is, despite a flash of anxiety on waking, there was no indication the dream had come true.

I bring all this up, in part, because for several years now, initially starting in an annual series of posts on Facebook, and later moving to my blog (and a few connected social media sites), I put out New Year’s resolutions.  These started out as lighthearted, silly jokes, usually concluding with one ‘positive’, ‘real’, but vague, resolution.  For instance, I would have three resolutions that suggested I was going to do spectacularly impossible things (establish the ultimate matrix for determining whether a ‘Men’s Rights’ Internet account or website is a parody account or actually intended to be serious);or completely bland, totally achievable goals, (resolving to actually trim my toenails regularly). Those would be followed by one resolution involving haircare, which would be followed by one that said I would live joyfully or some such sh*t.

Then, at the end of the year, I would write up a ‘year end review’, where I tracked my success in meeting the resolutions (silly and not-so), before I moved on to a new set.

In the process of doing the review of my 2-18 resolutions, I realized that maybe a bit too much seriousness had crept in, too much silliness leaked out. It had, at least to me, a darker tone about it than previous years.  Then again, in spite of numerous good things in 2018, the whole year had a darker tone to it.

2018 was a year of numerous things going to hell, and me struggling to reel them back in— none of which I will share here now.  All in all, things turned out okay, but not without a lingering, nasty aftertaste…or several different lingering, nasty aftertastes.

2018 also had some great moments of joy—specific moments of laughter and happiness I can vividly recall, also none of which I will share here now.

This far into 2019, it would be a bit strange to be making resolutions anyway, unless maybe I was claiming they were tied to a little procrastinating around the Lunar New Year. But, still, I’m abandoning the idea of resolutions, at least for 2019.  And I’m trying to learn to accept that much of life is way beyond my control, and that I’ll be okay…or I won’t…and that not being okay will probably be okay as well.

I tried to attach some meaning to the dream of the shart – that it was advising me not too push things too hard or they would become messy – or perhaps to push hard because even if the outcome was messy, it would still be fine—I’d wake up to a fantastic meal with some of the people I loved most, or a disgusting mess in my pants that really wouldn’t be that difficult to clean up.

At any rate, the (forced) meanings kept coming back to how I should or shouldn’t force things, how forcing things would turn out either good or bad.  And then it got all meta – about how I keep starting posts, only to abandon them because they seem too forced –and therefore too bland, like almond chicken –or too sloppy, poorly planned, and offensive, like a shart.

The whole concept of intentions –push to get a reaction, or hold back to make the right, polite points, merely led to almost every writing effort over the last year turning into either a dull essay, or a mean-spirited rant – with those efforts usually being abandoned to steer clear of that dullness, or to unload that spite on somebody in some pointless, online argument that added up to nothing beyond the sound of clacking keys and the fury of unanswered tantrums.  For the most part, the posts just didn’t get finished, or if the writing was more or less completed, did not get put out into the world…much like I’ve been struggling over the whole idea of posting a shart-centered missive, ostensibly connected to New Year’s resolutions.

Ultimately, I realize I’m attempting to assign meaning to this dream because 1) it occurred on the first day of the year; 2) I was woken out of the dream at the point of a particularly striking and unpleasant visual unlike anything I recalled from any previous dreams; and 3) I’m struggling with just how much energy and effort I can and ‘should’ be devoting to writing, especially pieces that feel obligatory/how much energy I can and ‘should’ be devoting to engaging in patterned behaviors in general/how much energy I can and ‘should’ be devoting to breaking old patterns of behavior.

Maybe it all just comes down to the message that I should sh*t or get on the pot…and sh*t…or get off the pot. At least don’t sh*t my pants unintentionally?

Or perhaps push it. Push it real good.  But with intention.  Although I’m pretty sure that wasn’t initially related to scatological…uh…actions.  But then again…

I know it’s gotta mean something about making sure you know what you intend to accomplish, or that you are making reasonable efforts to make sure you have some kind of control over the outcome of your actions, or…?

Anyway, Happy (belated?) (Lunar?) New Year!

 

 

 

 

2018 Year in Review

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JCS Bach, LMHC

father time, yo!Ok, time (well, a little late, but still time) for the obligatory review of last year’s resolutions and the pass/fail ratings.

  1. Finish the damn downstairs: Definite fail.  I made some progress, in the same kind of way that sitting up in bed is progress toward walking from Seattle to London.  Ok, maybe it was a little better than that…some framing happened.  And I moved a light fixture (yes, it’s fully functioning).  So that was good.  At this rate, only about 38 more years to completion.
  2. Every Day is Halloween: Pass!  Well, pass in the way that the horrible sh*t in your life drives you to do something to distract you from all that horrible sh*t.  I got started early with Halloween decorations (early June(?)) and knocked out a lot of new decorations that I’d been thinking about for years.  You can see the earlier posts.  I also actually came up with the perfect use for a big, old canvas and some other cast-off materials I have.  Unfortunately, once I figured out what I wanted to do, it got more and more ambitious, and I ultimately had to bail.  It will be done in time for Halloween 2019.  That’s not a resolution. That’s a promise.
  3.   Read/Write—don’t watch/scroll. Pass/Fail? Hmmmm…I did a lot of reading…but plenty was of the scrolling variety.  I read some excellent books, but didn’t really keep up the idea of bailing on pointless Internet foolishness in favor of reading enlightening books. As for the writing…well, you can scroll back just a smidge and see the sum total of the writing I did this year…well, not ALL of the writing I did this year, but about 80% of the writing I actually finished this year…well, the writing that extended beyond stupid Internet arguments.  I did have a record number of my Internet arguments shut down by moderators. I like to think that was (mostly) because the people I was arguing with started calling me names, but moderators don’t tend to explain themselves once they shut something down.
  4. No more hair resolutions. Well, if I can make it through my next post without resolving anything about my hair (assuming I’m going to do a post about my 2019 resolutions), I’m in business with this one.  Stay tuned. I’m sure the suspense is killing you.
  5. Be better to those closer. I’m a little conflicted on my success with this one.  I guess it needs some clarifying definitions—which I’m not going to supply right now.  Things got rough on a pretty constant basis. Plenty of my friends/family/colleagues of one stripe or another got into some major life changes/deep sh*t that took up a lot of my time, energy, and, in some cases, cash.  A lot of those occurrences also drained a lot of my patience—patience I could no longer spare on those who are peripheral and antagonistic. So, with that I give a hearty, ‘Much love and/or go f*ck yourself!’  If I’ve been at all close to my target with this resolution (and you actually know me) you know where on that spectrum you lie. For the rest of you, consider yourself square in the middle—and please consider that a good thing.

Happy more-or-less New Year, you beautiful sods!

Thanksgiving Greetings from an Ingrate, 2018

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I have to feed the hummingbirds.

Well, actually, I have to fill the hummingbird feeders. The hummingbirds will have to feed themselves at that point.

I should clean and fill the hummingbird feeders much more frequently than I do– it really only takes a few minutes–I mean, minus the time to make the food and wait for it to cool down— for the health of the birds, and to make sure I won’t be subject to their angry chittering each time I step outside.

Okay. I don’t know that the chittering is angry, or aimed at me.  I apparently just carry a tremendous amount of guilt about all the things I’m not getting to, because of all the other things I’m trying to get to, only a small percentage of which actually gets done.

Distractions upon distractions.

And it’s getting cold enough outside that I need to rig up the Christmas lights on the hummingbird feeders, to keep the food from freezing.

 

I don’t want to get into clichés about an attitude of gratitude, but why don’t I just say I’m thankful for the presence of so many beautiful birds around my home – and happy that I can help our own local hummingbirds make it through the winter? (The Anna’s hummingbirds hang out all year round.)

 

I was going to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this November, as a way to try and jump-start my writing again.

But after one short sprint of writing early in the month, I haven’t gotten back to it at all.

In part, work has been too draining. And my days off have been spent in other distractions, from cleaning up the Halloween decorations, to a road trip to celebrate my kid’s birthday, to binge-watching TV shows in between loads of laundry.

 

Again, not to get into any clichés about an attitude of gratitude, but why couldn’t I just say I’m happy to have the opportunity to write when I want, thankful for a job, ecstatic at the chance to go all-out for Halloween, and delighted at the opportunity for travel and screen-time with my family?

 

Ah, laundry—the ultimate distraction—never done.

So easy to generate more.

There’s always bedding and towels if you get out ahead of the clothing.

 

No attitude of gratitude clichés here, but why can’t I just say I’m happy I can do my own laundry, right here, in home, and that I have a plethora of wonderful things to wash?

 

I’ve largely been absent from my blog all year due to all manner of distractions—self-generated, as well as external.

Office upheavals and client deaths.

All manner of medical and mental health concerns rippling throughout my world.

A childish, attention-seeking buffoon in the White House, dominating the news cycle all-day, every day.

An election that seemingly started two years ago, with alternating possible hope-filled and doomsday outcomes.

 

So, about that attitude of gratitude cliché – why didn’t I just say (again) I’m glad to have gainful employment, and that everybody I know and love is at least relatively healthy (well, the ones who didn’t die), that I have the opportunity to get information from a wide range of different forms of media, and that I get to exercise my right to vote?

 

And really, anytime I sit down to write, it’s always so much easier to pop online and shop for things I don’t need, scroll through numerous online feeds and articles, and pick dumb fights with strangers and near-strangers, or perhaps family and friends…some now former friends and estranged family.

 

It’s Thanksgiving, and I should be aimed, as clichéd as it is, toward that attitude of gratitude—meaning I really should have just said that it’s great that so many of us now have access to amazing forms of technology that allow us to communicate with people around the world, or buy stuff from almost anywhere on the planet—no matter how much we might abuse that technology.

 

There are all the other annual projects, bordering on obligations.

I already mentioned the Halloween decorations.

And then there’s the ‘gardening’.

Of course, the weather this year was so strange that the plants weren’t entirely sure if they were supposed to be doing anything, and most just squeezed out a few little fruits or vegetables, although I regularly watered and fed them.

Then, in late summer, a spell of cool weather, followed by a spell of very hot weather, followed by some heavy rains further confused the plants, leading some into dormancy and others into thinking the growing season had finally arrived.

But by then, I had moved on to trying to get a jump on the Halloween decorations and decided the plants could fend for themselves.

 

Yeah, yeah, attitude, gratitude – I should be focusing on how great it is that I have a place to indulge my inner farmer and my Halloween obsession.

 

But the inspiration for this whole piece was how the competing distractions have led to, perhaps, a higher-than-usual level of chaos around here, so that I look out my window in late November and see scenes like this poor neglected fruit on the vine (not to mention me not having cut back the plants and moved the pots to a reasonable location):

Tomato sad

But then Ding Dong photo-bombed my sad tomato plants, while also barking in my ear, so I got this image, which is, I guess, more gratitude-inspiring:

Tomato Ding Dong

Anyway, I’m not sure if my forced attitude-of-gratitude conclusion is that I should be like Ding Dong and be all grateful and loud for whatever I’m doing at whatever moment, or if it is more about how I should be like Ding Dong who is always and ever himself, regardless of whatever else is going on—which, in my case, would mean I can stifle that perceived need to express some clichéd attitude of gratitude just because it’s Thanksgiving.

 

And, really, anyone who actually knows me knows I’m not exactly an ingrate.

Although I may be overly grateful for the opportunity to complain.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!