Alice in Wonderland- Ebook Review

My free copy of Alice in Wonderland did not come with the pictures. It was semi-ok because I have been to Disneyland, though my memories of the Alice in Wonderland ride are fuzzy because since I have had any choice in the matter I have refused to go on it because it scares me. (The same with Pinocchio, I absolutely refuse.) What I can say about this book is if I ever want to feel like I've taken some heavy duty drugs, I can just pick this book up and read and feel just as wacked out I'm sure. Someone please explain why we read this crazy nonsense to children? Soo not my cup of tea.

PDub Tracks a Gigantic Beetle in the Little Backyard

Quite possibly the best part of my day.

Return

My initial visual inspection of the Saratoga Animal Shelter after my return from my weekend jaunt to Portland for a wedding has resulted in no immediate dead or near dead animals. (That discounts the body of the bird which is by the pool filter. I've not decided how to get it because it's where a shovel won't fit and I don't know how to pick it up without actually picking it up.) I was a bit concerned because the Big Guy (in charge of taking care of the Shelter in my stead) said that he thought he saw Mr. or Ms. Squirrel run up into the dryer vent and so "you might want to turn on the dryer and flush it out." I cross examined the Big Guy several times to see if EDub was fine. He's a hostile witness because he never wants to answer a question directly so you have to go at it from several different angles. I have been forced to yell out on many occasions, "Objection-non reponsive!" in order to get him to just say yes or no to even the simplest questions like those I asked today: "So was she limping?" "Was she fine?" "Was she walking?" "Really, she wasn't limping?" "Are you sure she wasn't favoring one leg?" He said, "I didn't see her limping. She's fine." Whatever. Either the Big Guy is color blind and can't tell black from white or he smokes crack cocaine because EDub has a very noticeable limp. Still. All members of the Pack are fine, though there is what I suspect is blood on the brick on top of the duck food container. So either a) the Big Guy with his paper thin skin cut himself and didn't tell me because he didn't want my mom to know or b) Mr. or Ms. Squirrel was injured trying to bust into the duck food container. I've already put a call out to CSI Stokes to get him out here for testing.

I read my first e-book on my trip and I loved it! I read Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, another Jack Reacher novel and I picked it because I knew it would be interesting and easy to read on the plane. And it was. Now I'm reading Alice in Wonderland, so I can feel like I'm trippin on drugs without actually taking them. Also it's for book club.

Absurdistan- Book Review

I have not felt more ambiguously positive about a book in a long time. I'm not really quite sure what to say about this book. I finished it today at physical therapy and I really thought that there were at least ten more pages to come. I was like huh? What the hell just happened here? People said, "Is something wrong?" and I said, "Well, no, I just...well...finished my book." And I. Was. Confusèd. At times I felt too ignorant to get the symbolism of this country Absurdistan where Jewish Russian, Mischa Vainberg and his purple khui having been denied a visa because his Beloved Papa killed a man from Oklahoma, go to get a Belgium passport so he can return to the US, and to his one love who is currently shagging a pretty sketchy Russian Jew, . But the language. Oh the language. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed the words of a book so immensely. When the story itself was perplexing, the words kept me interested. Several times I thought, "This is absurd," or this guy is "absurd" and then I caught myself. What was I expecting? And then I was drawn back in with the beautiful prose. (And I am not one who pontificates on the beauty of prose.) Mischa is always talking about eating, about his toxic hump and the descriptions are just delightful. I bookmarked this passage after I read it at least three times because I was so amused by the language: "I let the wedges chill against my inflamed gums, then breathed in the cantaloupe, which coated my throat with orange lather before dissolving into the center of my body, gone forever, like everything else I've ever eaten."

In the end, I am very much looking forward to reading another book by the author, Gary Shteyngart.

Bliss

La Rentrée

Not gonna lie. My favorite part about the first day of school was that for the first time ever, I didn't have to count to ten or sing the alphabet or pantomime "My name is ..." 30 times in one hour then repeat two more times. For the first time ever, I have come home thinking, I could still have a conversation today. If Randi or Earl or Sarah or Clark or EDub the Cripple or PDub the Non-Egg-Layer could have a conversation with me, I'd be freaking ready.

Open Letter to the Squirrel that Just Ran Out of the Duck Food Container

Dear Mr. or Ms. Squirrel,
It appears that you have discovered the duck food container. I understand that this must seem like an easy way for you to eat and possibly feed your squirrel family. Perhaps you are the one who knocked over the shovel by the duck food in the middle of the night a week ago, throwing the entire Pack into a frenzy. Let me be clear, Mr. or Ms. Squirrel, you are not welcome at the Saratoga Animal Shelter. We are currently full to capacity and not even accepting applications. While I am perfectly content to ignore the families of mice that are feeding off of the duck food, they do not open the lid and help themselves. They wait until the cloak of dusk to feed off of what the ducks have left behind. I am not prepared to start feeding you and your little ones. I'm sure you can understand that if I start letting you feed here I will have to open the place to all kinds of unsavory critters. A line must and has been drawn. I have placed a heavy brick on top of the container to prevent you from opening it again. It would behoove you to not even try. Likely the brick will topple on top of you and kill you and neither of us want that. The Saratoga Animal Shelter is not welfare for animals. If you continue to come around in search of duck food, I will be forced to take even more drastic measures, including, but not limited to: a cease and desist order, getting a shotgun or screaming a lot. I thank you for your kind understanding in this delicate matter.

Sincerely,
The Saratoga Animal Shelter

Pobrecita

Google Street View

Look for me on the south side at the intersection of Bear Valley and Navajo Rds, Apple Valley, CA 92308! You might even see me all the way down Bear Valley since I followed the Google car for a couple of miles.

House of Pain- Update

EDub- More mobility every day. I expect a full recovery by this weekend.

Earl- Robust, particularly after finishing my dinner last night, while I was out with the tow truck guy when he was putting the spare on the truck since I woke up to a flat tire.

Me- Damn disaster and Coach Box said, "I don't want to scare you, but you might have to get a hip replacement if you don't get this taken care of." Eeegads.

Sarah- Oh, Sarah. I'm not sure I've said because I didn't want everyone to be all up in Sarah's business, but since she is increasingly Very Old Girl, she has been having some incontinence issues and peeing her pants while she sleeps. You can imagine the problems, especially since Sarah doesn't wear pants. Night before last she had three accidents and subsequently yesterday morning had to have a bath. Last evening I did not properly supervise chew bone hour and Earl knocked Sarah on her back and landed himself in extreme time out for a good moment. At 2:00am this morning, when I got up to let Sarah out, I nearly had a heart attack because she wouldn't move. Only her tail wagged and she wouldn't stand up. I yelled, "Sarah, Sarah get up." When I realized she couldn't get up I switched to, "Oh my god. Oh my god." Because I thought she was paralyzed. This was not helped when I finally gently picked her up to put her on her feet she collapsed. I continued with "Oh my god," while I let the rest of the Pack out and tried to figure out what I was going to do at 2:00am with paralyzed Sarah and how I was going to get my tire fixed and get to work and put Sarah to sleep which is surely what I would have to do if she were paralyzed from the neck down, when Sarah shook it off and marched out of the bedroom like nothing had ever happened. Then, I cried because I don't ever want to wake up to having to put Sarah to sleep.

Aurevoir mon été

Summer is over. I have to officially unofficially be back to work tomorrow (even though I have unofficially officially been back to work for a few hours every day for the past 2.5 weeks.) Here's the summer review:

Quilts completed: 2 plus one table runner
Miles ridden: approximately 500 (dismal)
Seasons of TV watched: 8 (My Name Is Earl 3 & 4, True Blood 1 &2, Leverage, The Mentalist)
Books read: 16 (I'm restarting the list tonight.)
Days I went down the hill: 4
Days I ventured out of Apple Valley: 4
Days I never left the house: Total days -8
Pages scrapbooked: 15 (dismal)
Percentage of my yard I weeded: 15% (dismal)
Days I started drinking before 4:00: 3 (and one of those is when Cesar was over so it doesn't count.)

Not the best summer ever, but pretty darn good.

Physical Issues

Something is wrong with EDub. When I came home yesterday at 10:00am she was fine. When I came home at 5:00pm yesterday, she was not fine. She wouldn't get up. She was sitting in a pile of ants, in her own crap and unable or unwilling to get up. I picked her up and checked her feet (paws, or whatever they're called) then put a pile of food in front of her and went off to have dinner with Stephen and Jenny, figuring Stephen could tell me what was wrong with her. He said maybe she got bit by an ant. That rendered her paralyzed? In any case when I got home she had moved to a different spot on the grass and when I got home today she was on the patio. I picked her up and held her in my lap for about five minutes trying to get her to tell me what had happened. Then I turned her over and saw what could possibly be her hooha. And let me say, it is stinking odd looking. (If that's even what it is. It could be a giant tick.) But since I hadn't ever checked her hooha before I can't say. And I am not going to Google duck's hoohas for images. She's moved around some more, so I am going to consider that by tomorrow she will be back to normal. Or she will be going to school with me on Thursday in Jessica's cat carrier so Stephen or Duane the Ag teacher can tell me what's wrong with her at the first staff meeting of the year.

My Empire of Dirt- Book Review

After spending the morning tripping over and around five dogs who all needed to be next to me in case I wanted to bestow attention and they did not get any, and after spending 45 minutes trying to figure out Blackboard and deciding it has to be the most complicated, ridiculous piece of merde that I don't need for French 102, 103 or 104, I returned the Snickerdoodle to her native habitat and thwarted my mother's booby trap to see if I fed Emmah as instructed. Last year was the first time my mom booby trapped Emmah's food. She left me a present under the bowl I was supposed to use for Emmah's feeding and so when I responded, "No, I didn't see a present," my mother's suspicions that I was not following the Snickerdoodle Care Instructions as fastidiously as I should have, were proved correct. Today she stuck some erasers I had forgotten right by the food, but I'm no dummy and fed the dog as instructed, and took my erasers so my mom knows that I always follow directions. Then I told the Snickerdoodle one last time, "Ha ha, your momma left you. Ha ha. She doesn't love you. Ha ha. No, really, she'll be home tonight, but she still left you. Ha ha." After the motivational speech, I decided against all my better judgment that I was going to go for a walk, dammit. And I did. I only had to stop and sit in the desert about five times and of course now, I'm too sore to move. Tuesday I have my first real physical therapy appointment. The lady said I should be there an hour and one half, for the physical therapist to evaluate me. I guess a real physical therapist evaluates her patients. I'll be she'll even be on time.

Book Review:
I decided to move the book reviews to this part of the blog. Anyhoos. I finished My Empire of Dirt: A Cautionary Tale and I was disappointed on so many levels. I had seen this guy on the Colbert Report and he had thrown out words like locavore, and made it seem like he believed that. But no. Manny Howard doesn't start a farm in his backyard because he's interested in eating locally, or having organic food, or any of that. He starts it because an editor calls and says, "Hey, we think this'll make a great story and we'll pay for it." So he is not wedded to this farm financially because he's not paying (in dollars, he pays a price emotionally) for the farm. In fact he spends a crazy amount on stuff; that if you were truly interested in the idea of having your own farm you would, I think want to consume less. The whole fact that he was starting this just because of an article made the whole concept tainted for me. Where was the heart? It was a merely a stunt. My friend Kent has decided that for his 40th birthday he's going to live off his land for one month. He's been working for years to get his 'farm' up to producing that much food. He and his wife, Holly, have planted amaranth, so they can have their own grain. The two thought processes are completely different.

So in the end, I ended up skimming most of the middle of the book. It's hard to feel sorry for his missteps when so many of them happen because he's not finished something or done enough research. (Buying rabbits without even constructing the rabbit hutch for them, for one.) There's only a brief mention of the month in which he tries to eat off the land. I kept invariably comparing this book to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, whose year of living on the land was not conceived by a book deal. In the end, I'm glad I got this book from the library.

Shadows

No matter which room I'm in, there's 5 dogs with me.

Party in the 92308

Blessed with the presence of Her Highness Emmah Snickerdoodle.
Always a pleasure.

On a Lighter Note

I had the best conversation this week with Nina (pronounced Nine-uh), Gretchen's daughter. I think she's 5 or 6. We were in my classroom.

Nina: Bethany, what's this?
Me: That's a cassette tape.
Nina: What's a cassette tape?
Me: (Realizing I am freaking OLD) Well, it's for listening to music.
Nina: (incredulous, curious and staring at the cassette tape) How??
Me: Well, you have to put it in a tape deck. (Realizing I don't even have a tape player any more, so a demonstration would be impossible.)
Nina: Like this? (Then she held the cassette tape up to her ear and shook it so it rattled.) Is that the music?

Eat, Pray, Go @#$* Yourself

I may have to boycott the Internet if I see one more thing about the movie Eat Pray Love. I can't escape it. This morning Firefox was hijacked with an advertisement and the only escape was to close the tab. Everywhere there's advertisements and Julia Roberts was on Oprah today talking about it. Let me say that I have not read this book. I will never read this book. I will never see this movie. Just the thought makes my blood boil. All of this constant advertising is ruining my day. My absolute disgust of this book, author, promotions, movie and anything to do with it, stems from the author's appearance on Oprah several years ago and how the book was presented on the show and is why I broke up with Oprah. I've not watched Oprah since and I think Oprah knows everything. Here's the story:

I wanted to read this book. I was interested in this woman who was trying to figure out what her life was going to be like sans homme. I wanted to hear how she was going to figure out who she was by eating, praying and loving. It was during a time in my life when I really wanted to know about how someone was living by themselves, alone and making it work and not crying hysterically most hours of the day. I thought I could learn something from that. Then, the moment that ruined everything was when Oprah said, "And when we return, all about her Fairy Tale Romance!" And that was the sentence that lost me forever. I nearly choked on disgust. What a farce! What rubbish! This lady didn't learn how to live by herself. I was infuriated! Infuriated in the same manner as when I watched the final episode of Sex and the City. These ladies spend all these years single and then the 'ending,' the only possibility for their characters, for them to be happy is that they all have to be in relationships? Why the "fairy tale ending"? There was nothing different about this book. There wasn't anything to learn from it. It was the same story that doesn't end until you find a man and have a 'fairy tale ending.' And I thought the whole point of the book was to find peace in the fact that you are man-less. "Fairy tale romance" changed the whole point of the book. No longer was Eat Pray Love the goal, but only a temporary and necessary state before finding another man and I didn't want to hear about that story. I wanted to hear about the story about the woman who was single and not with a man and for whom that wasn't a temporary state and how she was dealing with that.

I understand that my reaction is irrational, sprinkled liberally with acute bitterness and that the urge to shout "Fuck you!" at the computer when the advertisements come on is juvenile and useless, but I'm going to continue to do it.

Surprise

I guess when you gotta lay an egg, you gotta lay an egg. And since PDub took over the nest, the grass is just as good as a place as any. That's sunlight patches, not dead patches.

Deep Throat

I have been advised to not reveal* the source of my knowledge about how to get out of being on a jury. I suggested to the 'anonymous' source that I could say that I got it from a district attorney or someone named Nemo. He said a big no on both of those. It's not like I was going to print a works cited page on my 3 X 5 card to sell outside the courthouse. (Not enough room.)

*Grammar note because of my recent rants about grammar - I absolutely believe in splitting infinitives because it is a dumb ass rule that was made up based on Latin and not English. It's also the same reason that I also believe it is perfectly ok to end a sentence with a preposition. At least I know that there is a rule that you are not supposed to.

Confusing

Two things I say all the time that I think might cause Earl some distress if he were inclined to be distressed. (Maybe why he started smoking pot? Because he's anxious?)

"Maybe I'll eat early tonight." (Why is it only me she wants to eat?)
"Good girl" (I wasn't even doing anything.)

Timmy fell into a well, again, this morning.

Today in Numbers

# of miles Pete and I rode on the road: 25.1
# of new gloves Pete gave me: 2 (1 pair)
# of dogs I guessed would be waiting faithfully at the gate when we got back: 1
# of actual dogs faithfully waiting for us at the gate when we got back: 1
# of ears on said dog that are not right: 2
# of dogs I saw wandering around and did not bring home: 4 (2 puppies, 1 pit that looked like Baby Shila, and a black and white chihuahua) A record.
# of times EDub tried to eat Section A of the LA Times: 10
# of articles in the LA times about Mount Everest: 1 (Read it here.)
# of times I told her I didn't have any bread: 5
# of times she pecked at the stucco: 4
# of times I tricked her into letting me pet her: 3
# of times that she pecked at my fingers and legs: 6
# of lopsided eggs I found not in a nest and had to throw away because their born on date was unknown: 1
# of eggs PDub has laid in the past week: 0
# of tickets Bobby did not get me to see Rent at the Hollywood Bowl because he did not wear provocative enough clothing to his lunch on Friday: 2
# of times I got up to clean the house, but decided my back hurt too much and sat back down to do pretty much nothing: 4

Baby Shila (with the big head)

Emergency

Lassie Wannabe alerted me this morning at 5:24am that somewhere Timmy had fallen into a well. Or was going to be hit by a train. Or was being taken by bandits. After a quick verification that Lassie was not being antagonized by someone looking at her, done by counting the number of canine bodies slumbering with me on the bed, I told Lassie to shut the hell up because I didn't care about Timmy unless he fell into the well trying to rid the back yard of weeds and even then I didn't care. Lassie responded with more urgent barking. Maybe Timmy had the cure for cancer for him when he fell in the well, but he must of got out after about 15 minutes because Lassie went back to sleep.

Also my camera is broke. The lens won't go in an out anymore. How'd that happen? MISCHIEF. That's how.

Happy Sarah

Sarah before she was Old Girl with the duck Adam the White Guy won me in Vegas when we did not get married by Elvis Impersonators. (Pre-France) I still have the duck. It's head is still in that position.

New Game

The most bestest new game is the "I sit in the rolly chair I got from my sister and Randi jumps up and we go rolling all the way across the room game." I don't know who enjoys it more; me or her.

Haiku Poems from My MRI Results

Multiple small disc

Osteophytes. No central

Canal stenosis

There's multilevel

Degenerative endplate

Facet arthropathy

Irregular disc

Foraminal stenosis

Mild encroachment, fuck.

Ditto

Experiment

This morning, after being awaken simultaneously by Sarah who was barking incessantly at nothing (none of the usual suspects were at fault; Earl was not looking at her and the door was open so she could get out) and by Randi who wanted to lick every part of my exposed body, I wrestled Randi into a position where her tongue was nowhere near any skin. This was when I discovered that as I was talking to her her tail would wag at various speeds. I decided to see what she was interested in and to what degree.

"Randi" wag, wag, wag, wag
"Earl" wag, wag, wag, pause, wag
"Clark" wag, wag, pause, wag
"Sarah" wag
"Bad Girl" wagwagwagwagwagwagwagwagwagwagwagwagwag
"Good Girl" no response

I'm not sure what these results mean, but at least now I have some data to analyze.

Monster

What happens when I go outside sans bread. Luckily ducks do not have teeth, because if I'm not paying attention she'll try to nibble my fingers and toes.

The Chase Is On

To add insult to injury, PDub took over EDub's nest and is just sitting on a bunch of feathers. No egg for me today. Jerk.

Bully

PDub keeps aggressively chasing EDub around the yard. This morning she bit at her neck after chasing her around for a couple of minutes. She's a jerk when she's laying eggs.