Friday, February 14, 2014

The Other Door


inside the other door
If you'll indulge me, I'm going to talk about my damn dog. This post is self-indulgent and overwrought. You can't say I didn't warn you.

Groom and I took our beloved almost 12-year-old dog to that other door at the vet this week. The room with the separate entrance so nobody has to see you cry.

When Heebie, short for Herbert, was four, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was given a life expectancy of about two years. But, the vets told us, very few young dogs are diagnosed with that type of cancer, so the prognosis was based on an older dog's life span.

We opted to treat it.

While he was getting his chemo and his radiation, a tech noticed one kidney was much larger than the other. Upon further inspection, it was noted the kidney was full of urine and could burst at any time. We would have to remove it. Neither Groom nor I felt it made sense to spend thousands of dollars on chemo treatment to then let him die from a burst kidney a month later, so we had the kidney removed.

And thus began Heebie's life as a miracle dog and nearly a decade of our keeping him happy, comfortable, and relatively healthy.

Over the years, he has fallen prey to hypothyroidism, canine papilloma virus, seizures, mange, hepatitis, food allergies, repeated sprained tail, Lyme disease, acid reflux, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (for which we were required to feed him ground up beef pancreas ordered through some special farm in California or some such place), ectopic cilia (where the eyelashes grow into the eyeball), and chronic ear infections and chronic pneumonia. He went nearly completely deaf, was totally blind, and started to lose much of his mental faculties. He had been hit by a car, eaten rat poison, and devoured a bottle of Advil. He had numerous ultrasounds, MRIs, and surgeries. He was on 17,000 different types of medication and required near constant care.

But here's the thing. He never whined or complained or even limped. He had been sick for so long, he didn't know that he was sick. He was sweet and affectionate and curious and snuggly and quirky and funny.

I don't get attached to things or beings. And, if I do, I have a tendency to remove them from my life. I had a cat when I was in my early 30s. I adored that cat. I worried he'd be hit by a car. I worried he'd be eaten by coyotes. I worried he'd get locked in someone's basement and starve to death. I couldn't even name him for fear I would grow even more attached so I called him Black Cat.

I gave that cat away to an acquaintance and never saw it again. For all I know, he's still alive and meowing at the window.

Christ, I was dating my now husband for five years before I would even admit I had a boyfriend. It took 15 years for us to finally get married.

So, yes. I tend to keep things at an arm's length, which might be the reason, partially at least, for my ability to write such personal things in a public forum. I can't see your face. And, frankly, I don't want to. I don't require your sympathy and I don't want you to approach me after a few cocktails to talk about loss. It was a dog. Plain and simple. But he was our dog, our constant and cheerful companion, and I adored him.

As I remember our little friend, I cram my brain with other things to keep me focused on what I need to do rather than indulging in self-pity. Oddly, commercial jingles and pop music squeeze out the image of my dog on the cold, hard floor at the vet--the last thing we saw as we closed that other door and walked back into the icy parking lot.

Mourning is boring. It's boring for the person experiencing it because it is both all-consuming and painfully empty. It's boring for the person's friends because after a while, hearing about loss gets really old. How many times can you say you're sorry about a dead dog before it's okay to go back to talking about the fact that Jody in accounting is totally sleeping with Chris over in marketing?

(That isn't a real scenario, obviously. Everyone knows accounting will never be in bed with marketing. Ever.)

(Ever.)

When you mourn, everything seems to have weight: the gray day is gloomier; the crying baby at the grocery store is louder; the salt and dirt on the cars is darker; the icy parking lot is suddenly colder, meaner, scarier; my head is heavier on the pillow.

I have chosen to be happy in my life. I realize this oversimplifies and probably trivializes the chemical happenstance that occurs in the brains of people who suffer real depression. I cringe to think people might live like this every day. Getting out of bed is nearly impossible. Cleaning the house seems pointless. Going for a walk, albeit really good for every single person in the world, feels too active.

Heebie's collar sits lifeless in the back of our truck. His leftover food and pancreas sit on the shelves and in the freezer. A chewed dog toy rests beneath the couch. Slowly, I've been packing things up. I've noticed my husband has been packing things up as well. He matches the can of food I tossed into the trash by removing the dog bed from my home office. A bag of meds hangs from a hook in the kitchen, ready to be donated for those who can't afford to treat their own dogs.

What do you say as you drive toward that other door with the dog panting in the backseat? This animal who trusted us to do what was best for him, trusting us to the end to make the right decisions. And, in the end, his body was just giving out. He was quite simply very sick and he would not be returning to his normal self. This was it.

Emotions, like smells, can trigger memories and other emotions. The smell of pencils reminds me of the days when my sisters would return from St. John the Baptist School, their plaid uniforms thick with the smell of graphite and wood shavings. Lemon Pledge reminds me of Saturday chore days when my four siblings and I had specific cleaning tasks--dust the living room, vacuum the dining room (or dying room to match the living room), clean the woodwork around the doors. Pungent cologne reminds me of those moments on Sunday mornings when I had to shake hands with the fat guy in the pew next to ours while my father hissed "peace" at the church ladies who whispered about my mother sitting in a wheelchair near the choir so as to be closer to the handicapped ramp the church invested in once her battle with MS rendered her unable to walk.

Gun oil draws me back to my then-boyfriend's now husband's farm in college where he would sit at the table and fill shot shells while his roommate cleaned the guns. I was reminded this week, through this mourning, of a time when Then-Boyfriend's sow gave birth to a litter of piglets. It was a difficult birth for this 400+ pound Mama Pig and some of her piglets were stillborn. I stood to the side in the barn, watching this unfold. I couldn't help, other than to grab towels or water if someone shouted that necessity.

Then-Boyfriend delivered some of those piglets to the kitchen to keep them warm in the oven (yes, people do that), but he cupped the runt in his hands, kneeling next to the panting Mama.

It was so clear to me that the little piglet would not make it through the day. Then-Boyfriend refused to give up, kneeling there and stroking the near-lifeless tiny critter in his gloved hands. Finally, he rested the piglet in the hay and stood up.

"It's over," he said.

I had known him for less than a year at that point and I knew I wanted him to be around me for the rest of my life. That tenacity and focus up until that acceptance of loss. It was stunning to me.

These emotions now. I mourn every loss at once, pain triggered by pain. The wind outside during today's winter blizzard reminds me of the solitary breeze that lifted my hair at my mother's graveside. My phone buzzes and I think back to the phone calls I have received over the years in regard to friends and family members who were taken either by disease or some other means.

The timing here makes me question whether someone really is in charge. My father died the first week in February. My husband shattered his leg the first week in February. My favorite dog has died the first week in February. If I were to live by the rules of three, I could feel assured my next February will remain disaster free.

On February 10, 2014, to borrow from Arundhati Roy, we walked through that other door to leave a Heebie-shaped hole in the universe. As Groom stroked his head, I stood up.

"It's over," I thought.


Saturday, February 8, 2014

new device

I have never been what one might call "on the cutting edge" of technology. I did get an iPod in late 2001 and was the talk of the itty-bitty small town I was living in at the time, and I have relied on those moments since as my example of being "timely" with my gadgets.

And the iPod was a Christmas gift.

I didn't join Facebook until 2008. Twitter came to me in 2011 and I still don't Tweet with any regularity--I think I have maybe 10 followers. I am on LinkedIn, but it still lists a job I left about three years ago. I finally joined Instagram but I can't get out of the annoying habit of posting images to both Facebook and Instagram. I got my first iPhone juuuuuust before iOS 3 was released and I have been playing catch-up ever since. I'm trading in my iPhone 4s for a 5s as rumors swirl about an iPhone 6 getting released in late 2014. I still use my first iPad. I drive a 2004 VW. And as much as my fantastic hairstylist works otherwise, my hair always defaults to something akin to what Martha Plimpton wore in The Goonies. I can't even have a hip retro haircut.

This past week, I saw a device I had never seen before and I thought, HUZZAH! I'm going to be ahead of the curve. A woman I was working with was wearing it on her wrist. I thought it was a watch, but noooo. It tracked her walking movement and her sleep patterns. While we were together, she had walked nearly seven miles a day, and since we spent most of our time together, it meant I was walking nearly seven miles a day. But she had proof.

This woman, by the way, is a hummingbird of a person. She's tiny and has the most enviable arms--much like a bird might have if it were transformed into a person. They're well shaped and strong. So, of course, I noticed this little black wrist band.

As I mentioned, I was traveling last week and I was traveling without workout clothes or sneakers. (Do we call them sneakers? Running shoes? Workout shoes?) Anyway, due to circumstances beyond my control and due to a story way too long and a little too private to tell here, I was without warm-weather clothing for about a week.

I worked my way to a sports attire shop to buy some walking (?) shoes and as I was standing in line and making fun of the impulse purchase aisle--the aisle they make you stand in while you wait for a cashier, the aisle with  water bottles and workout journals--and declaring, "What kinds of things do the shop owners think people will buy and who impulse purchases things--hey, there's the wrist band Rachel was wearing!

I had an audience of cashiers as I went through my "impulse buys are stupid I think I'll buy this ridiculously stupid item on a whim" routine. And, as I put the $100 wrist band on the counter, the cashier maintained her poker face until I finally said, "Can you believe what an asshole I am?"

She laughed. Thank god.

In short (or long, really), I bought a Fitbit Flex. It's a bracelet you wear all day/all night with a small interface with little LED lights. When you get up in the morning, you tap it twice and see that you have only one light flashing. At the end of the day, the goal is to have five solid lights. 

 The Fitbit syncs with your phone (well, not my phone until I get that cutting edge iPhone 5s and upgrade to iOS 6) and tracks your walking steps (goal = 10,000), your sleeping patterns, and you can use the online tracker to record food and workouts and such. You can set it up to buzz at you as a reminder to get up from your computer and walk around the block or just stretch, which I definitely need. It's pretty cool.

Dali Museum. Very Serious.
So, I laced up my new walking/running/workout (seriously, what should I call them) shoes, donned my linen work skirt (no warm weather clothes means no shorts), and took a 40-minute walk along Bayshore Blvd. in Tampa while my sister and my brother-in-law went running (I'm still not ready to start running but good god am I ready to start skiing again). A quick trip to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, and I had accomplished all 10, 000 steps. As someone who never reaches a goal, I was mildly disappointed. If I can reach this goal, I thought, it's not much of a goal at all. It's about an hour's worth of walking. I felt cheated and more than a little smug.

I need to get more sleep. Noted.
Then I came back to Maine where it's cold and snowy and icy and I hate walking outside. Yesterday, I was thrilled to see I had achieved four lights on my little Fitbit. Today, I have achieved one single light. Smug be gone.

And, to add to my humility, the FitBit products have been around since 2008. The super new gadget I'm wearing? May 2013. The super newest gadget that everyone is wearing now to be au courant? That's called a Fitbit Force, but people apparently are getting burns from the new gadget. Mild consolation when I find myself, yet again, just slightly behind the curve.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

calling an ace a spade

Today, I found the answer to the question I have been asking myself for years. Who the hell is sitting at Shipyard Brewing Company outside security at the Portland Jetport and why is there even a need for such a thing?

I will offer you my response in two parts. A) Me. I am sitting at the Shipyard Brewing Company outside security at Portland Jetport. B) Because Groom doesn't get out of a meeting in Bethel until 3:30 and my two-day late flight arrived today at 2:30.

I always thought it must feel lonely to sit in this weird little spot at the airport. But, after sitting for only a few moments, I decided it was actually kind of cool, with a view of the happenings on the tarmac and such.

Then, I heard "Daddy!" from over the partition as some super sweet loving Portland family reunited at the bottom of the escalator. Did I mention the little brewpub is located at the base of an escalator where families reunite? Yeah, that doesn't sting. (To find that "Daddy!" link, by the way, I spent about 20 minutes watching footage of soldiers meeting their families in airports so now I have the added embarrassment of actually crying while sitting in this weird little brewpub at the base of the escalator on the outside of security at the Portland Jetport. Fabulous.)

I've been traveling for about two weeks and if I've been a fraud at any other time, there's no time like the past two weeks. I was staying with my sister in Florida for some of those travel days (with a bonus two extra days because of all the freshie pow pow falling in New England--and, yes, I owe a dollar). Sister--the one who runs, not the one who swims--was really careful about the kinds of food she offered me. It was so nice and so thoughtful and I felt like such a hypocrite because all I wanted was cheese and meat and more cheese and maybe some cream. Fried cream. Why doesn't that exist?

I've mentioned it before, but I have lost sight of my goal of living the vegan life. I'm starting to identify myself as an occasional vegetarian, which basically describes every single person on this planet. Did you have oatmeal and yogurt for breakfast? (Ha! You are a vegetarian.) How about a nice grilled cheese for lunch? (What, you have a problem with meat?) And, for dinner, let's just eat some pasta with cheese and broccoli. Would you like some Lindt dark chocolate for dessert? (I thought you'd never ask, you delightful non-vegan vegetarian.)

Traveling can be tough on the diet, much like it can be tough on the ears. Do I really need to hear Let Her Go or Say Something one more time? But, traveling with dietary restrictions (no, I dislike that word), traveling with specific dietary requirements (oh sure, that's better) can be tough. Between the lack of choices (it is a fact I ate a doughy piece of pepperoni pizza while driving Alligator Alley in Florida this week because there was nothing else available at the roadside rest stop) and the crazily tempting treats (I did eschew the truffled fries I saw during my travels but I still think about them which means I will likely eat some bad fries as compensation), it's really difficult to stay on track if you're pretending to be vegan(ish).

[While looking for the Say Something clip, I stumbled across this little nugget of cuteness. Skip to the one minute mark. It's like Muriel entered the X Factor.]

I ate what?
I deliberately choose to fly Jetblue through JFK out of PWM when I travel because there are so many healthy alternatives at the Jetblue terminal in New York. But that just adds to my guilt. I did eat a "chef's choice" sushi salad on my way out of town and it wasn't until my stomach gurgled on the plane that I thought, "Did I just eat sushi at an airport?"

I forgot to mention the
Maker's Mark Mint
Iced Tea. I had that too.
I did. And the wine.
By the time I was headed home through JFK this afternoon--after a week at a conference where I'm supposed to be some sort of expert, but where I felt more like the fat kid at the popular cheerleader's party swinging blindly at a pinata as a bunch of baseball recruiters looked on, and comforting myself with cheesy lasagna, homemade meatballs, bites of delicious steak, and finally a very necessary pool-side Cuban following a night that had wrapped itself into the next morning (Cuban sandwich, not Cuban man)--I had convinced myself that arugula with parmesan cheese and cheesy wild mushroom arancini would pass as healthy. Nothing about that decision was healthy. To make matters worse, I read gossip magazines. And it wasn't even People magazine, which at least highlights real people making a difference in the world.

I mean, not that I read those articles about the blind man who climbs Everest or the one-armed woman who coaches inner-city youth, but I feel better giving money to a magazine that celebrates those good people. Instead, today, I bought OK, Star, InTouch, and Vanity Fair, but only because it's the issue that was supposed to eviscerate Gwyneth Paltrow but instead sort of talks about how wonderful she is. As editor Graydon Carter wrote, "It's a story I might read. I just don't want to publish it." Bastard. That's $4.99 and an hour of my time I'll never see again.

I've even reverted back to my habit of "If there's a Mounds bar here, I will buy it. If not, it means the cosmos are telling me I shouldn't get a Mounds bar" method of avoiding bad foods.

I should have just bought a steak and been done with it.

It's time to call it. I'm an occasional vegetarian pescatarian who takes cholesterol medication. Except in the summer when I shall be a mostly vegetarian localvore pescatarian who takes cholesterol medication and has a tan.

We'll talk about sunscreen later.

[The title to this post is a deliberate nod to my friend Nate who said "let's just call an ace a spade" one night over a decade ago after a couple of beers. I have yet to stop laughing about it.]