Tag Archives: animal

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. People in large groups. Concerts are one of the very few times I’ll concede to intentionally heading out into a crowed place. In just about every other endeavor, I make efforts to avoid finding myself in that situation. As Agent Kay well knew, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.” The sheer density of people in large venues makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I’ll overcome it given enough motivation, but I’ll never manage to be entirely comfortable with it. 

2. Pope Francis. According to a news report I read, “Pope Francis praised Indonesians on Wednesday for their large families and suggested that people in other countries are choosing to have pets rather than bring up children.” That’s fine, but Jesus Christ there are now more than 8 billion people on the planet already. How can someone with such reach and influence honestly believe that the solution to any of the current problems facing the planet is to throw more people into the mix. The world population has grown by one billion people in the last 14 years, and you can see the hash we’ve made of that. Maybe, even with the words of the Holy Father to the contrary, it’s time we look at trying something else, because just throwing more bodies at our problems clearly isn’t getting the job done.

3. Clothes shopping. One of the many “fun” facts about weight loss is that clothes I was wearing at the beginning of this past spring no longer fit. Coats, sweatshirts, sweaters, long sleeve shirts of all varieties – not one in ten winter/cool weather things in my closet come close to fitting properly. I’m attempting to rectify that through online shopping, but my house has mostly become a waypoint for clothing as I shuffle it from a business’s shipping office back to their receiving desk in hopes that a refund may eventually be applied. Nothing fucking fits right, sizes make no sense, and I’m once again sick to death of shopping. I honestly have no idea how anyone has a good time with this process.

Irreplicable…

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Over the weekend I saw three separate posts on Facebook saying some derivation of “They’ll replace you at work before your obituary is published, but you’re irreplicable at home.”

Based on my decidedly unscientific observation of human behavior, this has to be one of the greatest lies we tell ourselves. Not the part about being utterly replicable to your employer, of course. That bit is gospel truth. But being indispensable at home? Please. 

Looking around at the number of people who are regularly being cheated on, cheating on their significant other, getting divorced, meeting the 3rd “love of their life” in the last year, having kids they don’t see or support, barely functioning due to chemical dependency, or otherwise contributing nothing to their family or society at large, it seems to me that a fair number of us are every bit as dispensable at home we are to an employer. I suppose that’s the kind of thing we’re not supposed to say in polite company, though.

Look, I guess you’ve got to tell yourself whatever it takes to get through the night or to give some semblance of meaning in the face of a universe that truly does not give one shit… but realistically, we’re mostly just impressively complex electrochemical bio-machines designed to propagate our genes. Maybe it’s not as comforting, but it has the stench of honesty that I’ve increasingly come to appreciate.

The kind of guy I am…

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When the temperatures rise towards 100 degrees, some people want to go out and take folks to cooling centers or hand out bottled water to those working in the heat of the day. By contrast, when I got home today I gave the begonias a big drink and then jury rigged an old cracked bird bath to hold water in case any of the fuzzy or feathered critters in the area don’t feel like trekking 300 yards down to the stream.

I’m not sure if I could have explained what my priorities are and the kind of guy I am any more clearly in a 1000-word essay. Make of that what you will.

Hello, George…

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We all know I like animals way more than I like most people. If money were no object, there’s a pretty good chance that I’d be living on 500 acres surrounded by a herd so varied as to make Noah himself blush with shame. As it is, I’ve decided to add a 3rd mouth to my brood.

photo (8) George is a Russian Tortoise and from what I’ve been able to gather from research, his shell size indicates he’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 years old. Conveniently, he’s an herbivore who favors the same dark greens that I like in my own salads (translation: feeding means picking up an extra bag of spring mix and mustard greens when I go grocery shopping. He doesn’t do ant tricks, or really do much of anything other than hang out under his heat lamp and look like a tortoise. That’s about as low maintenance as you can get in an animal.

Before you decided to leave any smartassed comments, remember there’s every likelihood that George will outlive me, so one of you suckers might just end up with him camped out at your house one day. Talk about things you never worry about when picking out a puppy.

Guilt…

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I’ve been feeling guilty lately. Because I’ve never really trusted them not to either pee all over everything or shred every rug in the house, Winston and Maggie have slept in their kennels at night since they were puppies. They seemed find with it and since dogs sleep about two-thirds of the day anyway, I sort of figured it was no harm/no foul. It was leaving work late the last two days that got me thinking, though… On a typical weekday, when I leave on time and get home on time, they’re in their crates about 17 hours a day. That leaves seven hours for wandering around, sniffing, pooping, barking, and doing dog stuff. When I leave early or get home late, of course, that number decreases dramatically. And that’s when the guilt started.

Intellectually, I’m convinced that both of them are perfectly happy snoozing in their crates as they are on the living room floor. Emotionally, though, I felt a compulsion to give them a shot at having the run of the house at night. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable enough to let them wander all day while I’m gone, but surely if I’m there at night there’s a limit to how much trouble they can get themselves into without waking me up, right?

Well, it’s so far so good. Last night was the first step in this grand experiment. When I went to bed, Maggie sprawled out taking up more space than seems possible for an 80 pound Labrador. I’m not sure how big a fan of that I am yet, but it seems that the precedent is already set. Winston, I’m fairly certain, slept in the basement until around 3AM, when he came upstairs wanting an early morning belly rub. I’m not sure I’m going to be a fan of that, either. Other than those relatively minor issues, the test run went well. Nothing got destroyed. Nothing (obvious) got peed on. And they both seemed perfectly happy to lay around the bedroom until I got ready to take them out this morning.

Like I said, I know it’s nothing but my own guilt at getting home late that’s driving this, but I secretly hope they’ll prove trustworthy enough to justify this new degree of freedom.