Thankfulness Challenge – What Grinds My Gears

So yeah … I’m stealing this idea from Family Guy but I think I’m ok I doubt they will find this blog. If they do …. Seth McFarland feel free to reach out to Golden. She’s my representation and she will take care of any concerns you might have. Also please forgive me. I did at least give you guys credit, that’s good enough right!? Huh!? I mean please! :D

So I’m climbing on my soapbox for a few minutes to gripe and complain about some things that I won’t be able to talk about at Thanksgiving lunch in a few days.

News - Twitter is not a news source …. For the record neither is Facebook, and don’t get me started on Instagram  -  I used to love watching the news, reading the news paper, getting several different versions of the same story and researching further to get the “true story.” Nothing makes my blood boil more than hearing the words, “As he posted on twitter” or “she unfollowed him on Instagram” I know we are all addicted to social media but it’s not a news source. It isn’t to replace PR and it’s certainly not the freaking gospel. 

Politics - not politicians but the idea of politics. I used to live for presidential debates. The commentary before, the "spin room" after, the speeches, the issues oh how I miss them actually discussing an issue. However politics has become the place I flee from now. I can't stand the my side vs your side mentality. My father is a very smart man and yet is convinced everything wrong with this world can be traced back to Democrats. He stubbed his toe the other day and I said Damn Democrats and he just looked at me then smiled. I like to think he got my joke but he probably thought I was coming over to his side. See I'm not a Republican but on paper I am. Being in a red state most of the important races fall on the Republican side. So if I'm gonna vote in a local election that matters to me I gotta go to that side. The crazy thing is I often straddle the fence, seeing the argument on both sides being pretty equal in a discussion. I dread family holidays cause at some point the discussion leads to politics and you know what I do then. I go into the kitchen and refill the tea pitcher. Let them have their talk I just dont have to sit there and listen to it cause goodness knows no one wants to hear the other sides view anyway. 

Working the holidays – I’m soooooo sick of hearing people complain that places are opening early on Thanksgiving to get a jump on Black Friday and saying that companies don’t care about their employees or won’t let their employees spend the holiday with their family. First off. . . . when you got that job you knew that place was open on the holidays. Second off . . . if you don’t want to work the holidays then don’t take a job where you will have to work the holidays. My partner in crime, Golden, has to work holidays and yeah it sucks but that’s the job she has and she just does what she has to do. No body gives a damn when she works from noon to 2 am ? But God forbid she have to work on the 4^th Thursday of the 11th month. My brother has recently taken a job that is going to require him to work some of the holiday, not all of it mind you. Family members are acting like it’s insane he’s going to have to work …. I’m like wait what?! It’s not like they decided to open the holiday just to ruin his holiday ….. I mean they area always open the holiday the only difference this year is that we are aware of it.

Black Friday is Stupid – I think Black Friday is stupid, however I get that there are people out there that treat it like it’s their actual holiday and love it. That’s fine. You do you but don’t look at me like I’ve got a freaking lobster on my head cause I’m planning to spend my Friday off sleeping in and well enjoying my day off. I had a coworker today ask me if I’ve “made my plan” I was like for what? She said for the big day. I was like “oh we are going to my brother’s for lunch” she said “no idiot, Friday I could care less about Thursday, we have already had dressing” I was so taken a back by that. I told her I don’t do Black Friday. There is little they could give me that could make me want to get out there in all that madness.

Dogs suck – well not all dogs, I love dogs. I had one of the best dogs ever, Golden has had some pretty awesome dogs as well. However the neighbor’s dog makes me want to ask Santa to bring me a bazooka to take him out. In all honestly it’s not really his fault, I’m sure he’s a lovely dog. However the people that he belongs to that I should take out. See this dog starts barking around 6:30 at night and continues to bark until he literally passes out from exhaustion. Once he was yelping not just barking so I drug myself out of bed to look out the window. He had wrapped himself around the tree he was tied up to. That particular night I felt bad for him until about hour 3 of this but they never once came out to check on him, much less try to free him from his tree. It also doesn’t help that they have two dogs. However the dogs are chained up close to one another but not close enough to interact or keep one another company. Truth be told I feel for these dogs. If you don’t want a dog don’t get it. 


That’s all for now … I’m sure I’ll think of more but for now this is what grinds my gears!
Marcy

Furbabies

When I was in college I got the call. Come home, spend time with Tiger cause he’s not doing well. I packed up and rushed home spent the weekend playing with him, loving on him, hugging him and then he sat in the window barking at me as I got in the car to head back to school. When I got home I knew he wasn’t here long. I knew there was a tumor in his stomach that was keeping him from eating, I knew that he was at least 13 years old. I knew these things but it didn’t make it easier for me to walk in the door and have him not run up to the back door (he was an outside dog) and me have to fight him to get out as he tried to get in. I walked around the yard and found him in his favorite spot in my mom’s garden, which also happens to be his final resting place but more on that later. He lifted his head when I said his name, he looked at me gave a half hearted bark and wagged his tail. I sat down next to him and patted his head talking to him and started to pick him up into my lap when he barked basically saying “Hey nice lady….yeah don’t touch me there!” We must have sat like that for hours, until it was dark and then we let him in (as we did most nights) to hang out for a bit. It was a nice weekend I had the opportunity to say good bye.

The next week my mom took him to our vet and they put him to sleep. My father took the day off work, my nephew helped dad dig the hole in the garden, mom had them put Tiger in a medium Tupperware box with several blankets, to keep him warm, and the vet walked my mom to the car, hugged her and cried as she left. See Tiger was his first “patient” in his new practice after he had been working for another veterinarian. We still get a Christmas card from them, we understand that Tiger’s file is still in his filing cabinet. Everyone else in the cabinet is in ABC order, Tiger is listed as #1. We understand that an intern was hired to update records and she tried to throw the file away and the vet lost his shit over it and it was returned with a note saying “do not remove.” That’s how important a furbaby is, even if it’s not yours.

Tiger started out as my dog. We got him when I was 7 after I spent a week walking around with a box of roly polys which I called my pets. It worked out fine for me until dad looked in the box and realized that all of the roly polys were dead. I was pretty sure they were just sleeping but Dad is usually right. So off we went to pick out a dog. We picked out Tiger, or better yet he picked us. We went to the shelter, my brother, my parents and I and most of the dogs ignored us but Tiger barked at me. He was so little, so cute and was in dad’s price range. When he was a puppy my brother carried him around in a baseball cap. As kids often do we loved the dog at first but then life took over and Tiger became an after thought for us but for dad he was a constant companion. He and Tiger became shadows of one another.

True Story: My mom knew the second my dad left his office because Tiger would stop running around the yard and would sit on the back stairs looking through the window. He would sit just like that until dad walked through the room then Tiger would resume his chasing of squirrels or kids around the yard. My dad didn’t work an 8-5 job, he’d come home at 4, at 5, at 6, sometimes later. The point is no matter when he was coming home we’d know it cause Tiger would be sitting on the stairs. A few minutes later dad would walk in the door. It was crazy but it was a constant.

Roxy

As some of you may know Golden recently lost her furbaby. This is her second furbaby loss since I’ve met her. When we were in college Golden got Roxy, a cocker spaniel. Roxy was amazing, smart, and pretty sure she was a little girl. She wasn’t even sure what this “dog” thing was that we kept calling her. Golden taught her all these tricks and when you said outside she would go to the door, when you said bedtime she would go to the bedroom. Once I gave Roxy a hedgehog for Christmas and by the time I left (some 2 days later) you could say “where’s your hedgehog and she could go to a pile of toys and pull it out, bring it to you and then look at you like “are you a takerbaker?!” I often gave Roxy stuffed animals cause her favorite thing to do was pull out the squeaky thing on the inside. This also resulted in fluff everywhere which Golden would have to clean up – see it was the gift that kept giving! Roxy was a great companion she would keep you company on the couch she would protect you, as long as the threat was really far away, and she was loving. I didn’t miss Tiger as much because I had a surrogate furbaby in Roxy. Roxy developed health problems as she grew up from seizures to food allergies and blew out both knees (we believe because of a seizure while Golden was at work) and eventually passed away from breast cancer. I loved Roxy and cried when Golden called me, but my heart broke for Golden. For weeks I’d check on Golden and she’d be doing well until she pulled into the drive way and it hit her like it hadn’t before that Roxy’s nose wasn’t on the window welcoming her home. She sat in her car and cried and when she told me that I cried too.

Lulu

A little while later Golden got a new furbaby. The famous Lulu, a springer spaniel (but if you asked me there was some greyhound in her too). If you follow Golden’s twitter account Lulu was a crack addicted furbaby who spent a lot of her time wishing Golden would stop singing at her. Lulu was in fact a crazy dog. She would get super excited when people came over. She loved to attack the cat (the cat  didn’t love it nearly as much) she also loved to climb trees. No joke she climbed a freaking tree chasing some birds. She was also stupid fast hence the greyhound aspect of her. Lulu loved to play, she also loved to bite.  Her tail was her greatest weapon and it hurt like hell. The first time I visited after she came to live with Golden I’d be sitting on the couch and Lu would jump up and grab my hair, which hurt like hell. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was a puppy in a grown dogs body. It was her way of pulling my shirt tail. “Hey come play with me!” Golden had Lulu for about 5 years, when I realized that I was shocked in some ways it felt like she just got Lulu in others it felt like Lulu had been there forever. A week or so ago Lulu wasn’t feeling well, wasn’t eating, drinking very little and what she was eating/drinking she would throw up. Golden took her to the Vet only to find out she had the “puppy flu” which I admit I kind of made fun of. What your dog has the flu, is that a thing? Is that real!? In all my life I’d never heard of a dog getting the flu. Turns out it’s pretty freaking serious. Lulu passed away sometime Friday night/Saturday morning. Once again Golden watched as a furbaby took it’s last breath. Losing a furbaby is never easy watching them die the way Golden did has to be brutal.

I wish I knew what to do for her. I mean if it were say, her mom (God forbid) I’d drop everything, get in my car, call the office and say I have to go. No one would question it. They would rally around and make whatever needed to happen at work happen and I’d come back in a few days thanking them for helping me help my friend. I wouldn’t even question not being by Golden’s side at this moment. I wouldn’t feel intrusive, I wouldn’t feel in the way I’d be where I needed to be no questions asked. I feel helpless right now. I didn’t drop everything and rush to Golden’s side, I didn’t call her cause she was sleeping (it’s been weeks since Golden has slept), I checked in with text messages, watched her twitter account and as long as she was tweeting, liking things I knew she was….not ok…but here. I just don’t know what to do to make this hurt less and that breaks my heart. I feel like a crappy friend.

Golden will be ok I know that in my head but my heart is broken for her as I know her’s in broken for Lulu. I hope she knows I’m here if she needs me, I’m here if she wants to talk I’m here if she wants to call and talk about say … Dr. Who or Psych or anything else that she might want to talk about instead of talking about what she can’t talk about yet. So this is a post asking you to hug your furbaby, asking you to send love and positive energy to Golden (@theonlygolden) and a post telling you that a furbaby is important. If anyone knows of anything I can do for Golden that I’m not already doing, please let me know.

RIP Lulu ….. you will be missed …. By more than just your crack dealer.

Marcy   @beaslma