the spawn of satan

at least that’s bailey’s name according to chewkie.

bailey is the 14 (?) year old cocker spaniel that parents didn’t want to take down with them to atlanta. i can’t entirely blame them considering the circumstances: georgia and sadie (two very large bloodhounds) in the back of a chevy blazer driven by steve (stepdad).

i’ve seen them play ragdoll with bailey once before, but i don’t think they need to prove what they can do to steve. (i might add that by ragdoll, i mean that sadie grabbed the back leg, georgia the front, and delilah going for the other side.) 

everyone except for rachel has a love-hate relationship with this dog, mostly because of her jekyll-hyde personality (although, steve’s is more like a hate relationship). one minute she’s this cute, snuggly little dog, the next minutes she’s trying to bite you – and we have been bitten.

at 14 years old, her age shows. her cataracts are blatantly obvious, she’s half deaf, her body is scattered with lipomas (benign fatty tumors), and she’s very cachectic. chewkie and i have tried a number of things to beef her up, but i can feel just about every crevice of her pelvis, her spine pokes through her hair, and i can strum my fingers down her ribs. my favorite part is her easily palpated afib (atrial fibrillation – see dictionary) causing her repeated mini-strokes, where one eye will roll in the back of her head.

despite all of these problems, she insists on living with such a vigor, we have begun to think it’s to spite us all. for awhile her control of bowel function disappeared, leaving her to crap everywhere. this prompted some mentioned of putting her down if it persisted, but after giving her some time, she pulled through.

i should mention that when this discussion was held with rachel, this would be the response i got, “that’s inhumane“. clearly the humane thing to do would be to let a dog sleep in her own dog shit through the night (because that’s when she would manage to crap) over putting her down.

it’s not like we are scrambling to put her down just because she poos in the house occasionally, this was frequent, mass diarrhea. 

turning into my mother

i’ve already told her this, so there will be no “i told you so” from her, but only because she already said it.

when i came home from my exam yesterday, i promptly began to clean. i started by cleaning out the spice cupboard which was long overdue for a proper cleaning and filtering through. who needs 14 different ways to season poultry or seafood? i only threw away the ones that looked really gross and old, and by this i mean the packaging looked like there were from the 1970s.  the cupboards were my next victim, but this was more a matter of reorganizing than trashing anything.

as i go around cleaning the kitchen and i pick up the boys’ messes, i notice the same things irritating me that irritated my mother as we grew up. chewkie had a planner sitting on the ledge about the kitchen sink – just a small black planner in no one’s way, but i demanded he take it to his room. all their junk on the table? ‘put it in your room’. the mail strewn about? ‘put it in your room’. and it’s not just the junk left around. it’s also choice items like food caked on the stove, counters not being wiped properly, the sink not being wiped til sparkling clean…and i have to ask myself…WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?

however, the one trait i have yet to inherit, and i’m hoping i stave it off (it’s chewkie’s least favorite, too). my mom would be sitting comfortably watching tv, and we’d hear her call one of our names.

“[unlucky chosen child] will you get me a pop?”

mind you, our pop (or soda or coke, depending where you live) was kept in the garage, and with my mother being in the living room, there was a 100% chance she was closer to it. unfortunately, “you’re closer” doesn’t work on the woman who birthed and raised you (even if she cheated with a c-section).