My feet arent't on backwards; yours are.

Abby had a seizure at the vet where Mike was going to kennel her until I could take her to the sanctuary next week. The vet suspects brain damage and it's too risky to kennel her. So Mike's having her put to sleep.

You know, the day after we decided to get divorced I was on Craigslist trolling for dick. But I will never love anyone like Abby.

Here's some pictures of my baby.

( Abby )

Back from the kennel. Abby was very good in the car. (I played The Transplants, which are her favorite.) When we got there she let everyone pet her and didn't bite them. Then they had me walk Abby to her room, which was actually a room, and not a cage. It had a door, two windows, a bed, and a television. It was nicer than my first dorm room.

Then they took me out to see the backyard, which is a former farm, so it has huge pens for the dogs to play in, and they take them out once an hour. I took her to this, more expensive, kennel because her usual one was booked, but I think I want to switch to this one. Abby doesn't like cages. We'll see how she's acting when I pick her up Monday.

As we were walking from the backyard to the front entrance, we passed the rooms again, and the woman asked me, "So does Abby usually behave well?" I said, "Oh, yeah. She's great." Just then we walked past Abby's room and heard the unmistakable noise of her clawing at the tile floor trying to burrow under the door. My baby.

Do Not Want to drop off my Abby at the kennel. Who will love me/comfort me/scare away the groundhog who lives under the shed/kick me in the throat when I hug her/jump up in the air and bodyslam me when she wants a cracker/kiss me on the mouth after she eats her own poop/bark at the methheads on the sidewalk/protect me from monsters? I'm going to cryyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Because Mike and I are classy people, our backyard is a big pile of gravel and a shed, and we use this area for our dog, Abby, to go to the bathroom.

In the beginning of Spring, I noticed that our pile of gravel was sprouting some weeds. I have an aversion to gardening because 1) bugs, 2) dirt, and 3) feminism*. So I figured I'd leave the little sprouts alone, and they would soon be killed off by living in gravel, getting peed on, or the onset of winter.

( Then this happened. )

My mother has informed me that most of that is rhubarb. The thing that troubles me is that this rhubarb has grown to Valerie-size proportions with no care, no actual dirt, and while covered in dog pee. Which makes me wonder if they are even really plants at all.

I wanted to post that here so you can laugh, and so that I have "before" pictures, because I'm going to clean it up, bugs, dirt, and feminism* be damned. I will either do it tomorrow or Wednesday. If I don't return, avenge my death.



* While I realize that gardening in and of itself is not intrinsically anti-feminist, it is a traditional woman's role, and my personal brand of feminism includes not falling into traditional women's roles when/if I can help it. Also, Mike already mows the front lawn, so he can do the rest of the stuff while he's out there. Also, I don't give a crap about flowers, except for maybe hyacinths, but just because Oscar Wilde used them as a metaphor for penis in a letter once.

Yesterday I was sitting next to my dog Abby (pictures here) when my phone rang, and I swear she did a little head-bop to my ring tone, which is DJ, DJ by The Transplants. So not only can my dog dance, but she has excellent taste in music.

She hates The Used, though. Every time Bert screams she barks at the speakers.

Abby (my dog) sleeps with me all night, and then I get up and do stuff during the day, and she sits on the couch and...sleeps. How can she possibly be so tired? Unless, once I fall asleep, she gets up, and plots the revolution under cover of darkness. This is my current theory.

I've been writing lesson plans all day, and I needed a passage to insert intentional spelling errors into so students can correct them. I used part of Malcolm X's autobiography where he talks about educating himself in prison by copying the entire dictionary by hand. This way, for the rest of the semester, if they complain, I can say, "At least you don't have to copy the dictionary!"

Here's one of my favorite Malcolm X quotes:

“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”

By the way, the next time I see a Malcolm X quote online attributed to Denzel Washington, someone's going to get stabbed.

My dog Abby is really good about not chewing things. We leave her alone in the house all day, and she's never destroyed anything.

She does, however, rearrange things. Mostly she rearranges throw rugs. We have three throw rugs in our bedroom, and every time I arrange them nicely, it only lasts about a day before she picks them up, moves them all into one area, and makes them into a nest where she can sleep. (She has nothing but contempt for her dog bed.) We had some throw rugs in the living room that I eventually put away because she kept moving them. Those she didn't sleep in; she just relocated them. It was like, left to her own devices all day, she decided to redecorate.

But we have a lot of little decorative thingies she's never messed with. I have a bowl full of seashells she could easily choke to death on, and she can reach my table of action figures, but she's never eaten Buffy.

I also have a collection of those Willow Tree angel figurines that my lovely mother bought me, and they're on a table right next to the chair where Abby likes to sit and look out the front window. She's never chewed them up, but sometimes I find them moved slightly or turned around. Lately I've found some of them in the chair or on the floor, but never broken.

Then this morning I noticed this.

( pictures )

One of the angels is suspended by a leaf and floating above the chair where Abby sits. Mike and I never go by the front window (most days you have to jump over Mike's amps to get there), so Abby was definitely the last one sitting there.

So either Abby knocked over a little figurine and by some freak accident it got hooked just the right way on a leaf, or Abby is trying to tell me that she is magical.