The Passing of a Mighty Little Guy

Smilin’ Spike

On May 1, 2024, my beloved dog, Spike, passed on to a better place. He was a sixteen-year old Parson Russell (or maybe a Jack Russell) mix, plagued by arthritis and Cushing’s disease, and barely eating. He’d take a treat or two from me, but he wasn’t eating his dog food no matter what I mixed in with it, even his favorite polish sausage. He had a rough time walking, especially on uneven ground. Spike loved to explore, but he no longer could navigate the terrain of the landscaping.

I’ve written many a post about Spike. Stories about adopting him, how he has been such a big part of my life, etc. At 30 pounds in his prime, he was a tough dog. He was a mighty little guy who backed down from no one, neither man nor beast. He was constantly on guard, protecting me from strangers, who, in his mind, were not to be trusted.

I think the hardest part of no longer having Spike here is he is not following me around our home. He would never let me leave a room alone. He had to be right with me the entire time. As he got older, he sometimes slept so soundly that he didn’t notice me walking away. But quick as a wink, he would wake up, and I’d hear his dog tags jingling as he came romping down the hall to find me. I still find myself looking for Spike behind me.

On the rare occasion when I did have to leave our home for such things as grocery shopping or going out to lunch with a friend or family, Spike would position himself in the hall right by the entryway so he would see me the moment I returned.

These last few days without Spike have been very lonely. He used to wake me up to go for a quick potty walk at four o’clock in the morning. One of the symptoms of Cushing’s disease is an insatiable thirst. That, of course, leads to frequent peeing. Those 4AM walks became 2AM, 4AM, and 6AM walks. It was hard on me sleep wise, but he really didn’t have a choice. In his last few days, he became incontinent and wet his bed in his sleep. I would clean him up as well as his bed. I could see he was embarrassed. I pet him and told him it was OK. I still loved him.

So now Spike is off running leash-free at last and chasing squirrels and wild turkeys and a deer or two. I bet when his day is done he parks himself by the door waiting for me to come home.

What the Heck is Stuttering?

I am a 74-year-old male. I stutter. I have for all my life, at least as far as I can remember. I’m writing this not for sympathy but in hopes someone out there will be educated or maybe someone will be relieved to know he is not the only one and it doesn’t have to cripple you and you certainly don’t have to be ashamed of who you are.

For some odd reason, there are far more male stutterers than female ones. In my lifetime, I’ve met only a handful.

There are different “styles” of stuttering. Rapid repeating of a sound or word, a sudden tightening of the vocal chords so the sound rises in pitch. Me, I get a block where my throat tightens and nothing comes out or sometimes the sound is just a prolonged “n”. But please do not finish my sentences for me. You’ll only make me mad.

I rarely discuss it. Most people I’ve talked to have never asked about it and it’s not something I like talking about. But then how is anyone to know what this thing is?

I’ve talked with many people in my life. I’ve given presentations.I’ve led department meetings. I even served as an officer on my Home Owners Association for 17 years. People I’ve talked with rarely bring up the topic. My guess is they don’t want to embarrass me. I stopped letting stuttering rule my life a long time ago.

Let’s start with my growing up. I was pretty much sheltered by my mother because of this curse which is probably not the best thing to do. The more I hid in silence, the less I talked and the worse my stuttering got. Grade school was fairly subdued. Kids ask questions but they are just being curious. Questions like:
“Does it hurt?” (No);
“Are you retarded?” (No, in fact, I have a rather high IQ and scored in the high 90’s percentile on my SATs);
“Why does it happen? (Nobody knows);
“When you stop talking does your brain stop thinking?” (On the contrary. I’m thinking, “SAY IT! SAY IT!”)
“How come you can sing in the school choir and not stutter?” (Beats me)

Let me expound on that last one. Yes, I can sing without stuttering. I can also talk to animals and babies and not stutter a bit. I get a free ride with animals and babies because they aren’t really understanding what I’m saying. At least that’s my personal theory. Go figure!

One of my long line of therapists said it takes two to stutter. That is, it only happens when I am speaking to someone or recording an announcement that someone will eventually hear.

Then came junior high. The worst group of tormentors are 7th and 8th graders. They tend to find your deepest flaw and make it headline news. The last thing I ever wanted was to draw attention to my stuttering so that got to be the target on my back. My school offered speech therapy which did no good except to make the target bigger.

High school was no picnic either. Class participation counted towards my grade in most of my classes. That made it rough. Armpit sweat stains were part of my normal attire. In my senior year, I ran for student body vice president just to push myself into speaking before a crowd. I didn’t sleep for the 2 days prior to the rally and spent the hour before it throwing up in the boys’ bathroom. While I was speaking I could hear the snickers and whispers, but I got through it. Got elected, too. I don’t know if it was a pity vote or not, but I didn’t care.

I wrote earlier that speech therapy was a waste of time for me. It was and is for all the people I know who went through it. I think that is because stuttering is so closely tied with self-esteem. When I’m joking around with my friends I sometimes forget I stutter. Put some pressure on me and I start to spiral down the drain. If I think I’m going to stutter, sure as shootin’ I do.

The last therapist I worked with was one who understood that self-fulfilling prophecy. She worked more on me believing in myself than techniques on avoiding stuttering. The techniques were where the teachings were at and might still be for all I know. Avoiding it by substituting words I know I’ll stutter on with ones that my brain says are easier for me to say. There is no rhyme or reason to what words bug me, but it’s that way for most stutterers. For years I dreaded having to say the word “seven” for no reason except I knew I’d have one of those damned blocks and not be able to say it. W’s and M’s trigger my stuttering. This I figured was because those are the initials of my name. Saying my name had been a huge problem for me. Just in the last few years I’ve managed to get past that.

I recently fell in love again. She’s a dear, dear friend who decided she loved me, too. It’s an amazing feeling that I thought I’d never have again after my wife passed away. During one of our earlier, intimate conversations that lovers have, I asked her what she thought about my stuttering. Did it make her uncomfortable? Did she have questions about it? Questions like that haunt me.

Her response to my question was simply, “I rarely notice it, and it doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s part of you and I love all of you.” I must say that knocked me off my feet. I was afraid I’d have to go into my life’s story, and she said my stuttering doesn’t bother her one bit. Only goes to show that most fears are unjustified.

By feeling better about myself, I stutter less. In fact, I grew to look at it as it was not my problem. If it made you uncomfortable, too bad. It’s who I am. I still stutter but I don’t hide anymore. I acknowledge it And yes, sometimes the sweaty armpits come back, but hey, that’s who I am.

Tree Frog Pond

Tree Frog Pond

I grew up in a suburb of San Francisco in the 50’s. The part of town I lived in was a track housing development built right after WWII and was mainly for the GIs and their families returning to a regular life again. The houses on our block were all exactly the same except for the derivation of every other house being the mirror image of the one next to it. Each house was a ranch-style design with three bedrooms, one bath, a small but adequate kitchen with a breakfast bar and a living room-dining area.

In those days, everyone knew and socialized with everyone else on the block. Every stay-at-home mom had the legal authority of being the mom to every kid. If I got caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing I was scolded by whichever adult witnessed the infraction. And my parents knew about it before I even got home. That kept all of us kids in line most of the time. But there was, however, an adult-free zone on the other side of an eight-foot fence at the end of our street. It was known to all as “The Dirt Road”. This was an undeveloped place a couple miles deep along a hill. Nothing but Eucalyptus trees, gullies, ravines and dirt. Lots of dirt. Perfect for rope swings, playing “Army” or “Cowboys and Indians” and all-around hiking and climbing. Oh, and no adults.

The weather in our part of town was always very predictable. The summers were in the 60’s with fog rolling in every afternoon. It warmed up as soon as school started up after Labor Day. The warm days stayed through mid-October when it started to cool back down to the 60’s again. Mid-November was the start of our rainy season. It seemed the grassy, brown hills around us turned green overnight. The rain was just enough to keep those hills green until around May. Then, just as quickly as they turned green, they turned brown again. While other parts of the country had four seasons, we had but two. Some folks even referred to our two-season climate as the brown season and the green season.

All the rain was enough to turn our adult-free zone into muck and mire. There was one low-lying spot where a pond would form each year and stay about knee-deep until March. We dubbed this pond Tree Frog Pond. Within days of the pond filling up, thousands of tadpoles could be seen swimming around in the murky water. I don’t know where they came from. I never saw any frogs before seeing tadpoles.

My best friend and I had BB guns as did every ten year-old boy in the 50’s. We’d take our guns into the wild, making our Army or Cowboy games even more fun. Luckily, none of the boys ever decided it would be great fun to shoot at each other. In our minds, these BB guns were just as deadly as any other gun and deserved total respect. I can’t even remember anyone getting accidentally shot in the crossfire between shooters and targets. No one ever lost an eye.

One day on our trip to Tree Frog Pond, we took our BB guns along. By then, some, no, lots of the tadpoles had turned into frogs. The little green things were hopping and crawling all over the place. I don’t remember who shot first, but suddenly we were picking off those frogs one by one until we ran out of BBs.

I glanced around and suddenly I was sickened by the sight. There were countless frogs littering the edge of the pond. Visions of the evening news documentaries with photos of the bodies of soldiers at Normandy Beach flooded my brain. We silently turned around and headed home. We never talked about that day. That night I had awful nightmares of death and killing. Frogs and people. And I never pointed my BB gun at another living thing.

Are You Breathing?!

Yes, it’s definitely NOT breathing

I caught myself looking at my dog, Spike zonked out on the living room carpet and me checking to make sure that he is breathing. I have no idea what brought that on. He’s in good health. A bit pudgy, but then so am I so there really is no reason for me to be paranoid. Could this be a parental instinct? Something we are bound to do without realizing it?

I remember my wife and I would constantly check to see if our babies were breathing when they were asleep in their cribs. I guess that’s just part of being a parent. Then, too, this was in the 80’s when Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was constantly hogging the headlines. After that, the big one was the milk carton kids. News media can be so heartless in the topics they pick for the flavor of the day news-wise.

My dog is no less a member of our family then our kids, but a rational man of senior years should not be checking his dog to see if his dog is still alive. It should be a given.

Do you monitor your pet’s respiration? Or am I just a weird guy? What do people who don’t have dogs or cats do? What if you only have fish? Well, that’s pretty much moot. A fish is obvious in it’s breathing with those gills opening and closing. If it’s floating on the top of the water in the aquarium, odds are greatly in favor of a no-breathing status.

But what if you don’t have pets? Do you stare at your plants? How the heck can you tell if a plant is breathing, er, uh, photosynthesizing?

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Intro: I email-blasted this farewell message to all my fellow employees on my last day of work (yes, I’ve finally retired. That’s “stopped working”. Not “I re-tired my car”). But I didn’t really think it through. All their heart-warming replies as well as any sneering comments that I would have loved to archive would be lost to me the second my work email account was deactivated. I decided posting my message in my blog would be the better way to go. I’ve asked a former colleague to pass along a link to this post so that they may comment or throw rotten tomatoes.

OK, so Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” might have been a satire that Hollywood didn’t get. They turned it into a sappy production where everyone dies in the end with many a tear shed. This, however, is a tear-less, albeit heartfelt, farewell letter.

I’ve worked with some fantastic people over the 20 years of being with my last employer. I hope my sense of humor has left no one offended. I don’t willingly bow to what is PC, and that tends to get me into trouble at times. Somehow, my bosses have turned a blind eye to some extent to my faux pas over the years. I appreciate the poetic license. In case you missed it, that picture of Spock on my retirement slide at the division meeting was a face-swap of me that my manager sneaked in for me.

I look at work as a way of giving back what life has endowed me. Just as when I was a chef and every meal I turned out had my heart in it, every task I performed at my job did likewise. I build many in-house software for whatever my users needed. I’ve been involved indirectly in patient care through my dialysis application and my help with the financial reporting part of the not-for-profit Foundation. And, of course, my job as a database administrator turned out to be something completely different as far as my skill set goes and was even more involved in patient care.

Being a part of the IS (Information Systems) team has been more than just a job. It has been an honor. I’ve never met such a wonderfully kind and supportive bunch of people. To all of you who have already sent your well-wishes, thank you very much. Moving from you is not what I ever expected to do as I thought years ago that I’d work well into my own sepulcher. But now moving on to a life where I will no longer interact with you all is rather sad. I’ve made some “work” friends whom I hope will stay in touch. But more importantly, I’ve made some real friends that I know will stay in touch (unless I get one of those pesky court restraining order things). If you want to join that motley crew, let me know through your comments or contacting me directly. You will always be warmly welcomed. Don’t be discouraged if I let it go to voice mail. Spam calls are way too prevalent. I will get back to you in that case if you leave a message.

On the other hand, freedom to pursue things that have intrigued me, frankly… intrigues me. I’ll leave the details to sort themselves out.

As sad as it is for me to leave all this behind, retirement with all its freedom is opening a door to whole new experiences; many of which will not include Zoom.

Happy ‘Don’t enforce the law cuz it takes too much effort’ Holiday

Once again, Hayward, CA Police has proven to be July’s safety standards to be as effective as tits on a boar. Sorry to be so graphic, but it’s true.

A city that has banned ALL fireworks and publically brags about it and has no way to enforce that ban is embarrassing. I called the non-emergency line to report countless explosions on our local streets only to be met with a busy signal (same as “too bad, so sad”).

City council take notice. Next election will tell tale. We are being stripped of our protection, and taxed to support wasted man power, and we will not lie back and accept that.

My poor little dog is cowering in the corner of my shower stall as countless explosions happen around us. My dog takes little comfort in the no-action police department. The dry grass hills around me are even less comforting by the lack of law enforcement. We just might die tonight with no warning and no effort to stop this senseless attack of COVID19 MORONS that feel immune to the disease plus thumb their noses at the residents just trying to survive.

Don’t tell me HPD is short-staffed or that this is a low priority with gang stuff on the rise and COVID killing us all off one by one. This was bound to happen. Knowing that your city is under siege every July 4th should only prep you for combat.

The Time has come, the Walrus said…

Briny Beach from ‘Through the Looking Glass’

One of my favorite poems is “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll. What that has to do with anything is a mystery to me. But then so is the poem. It tells a story about two characters who take some oysters for a walk promising a good time but delivering a very bad time. Sheer selfishness disguised as altruism. In case you have never read the poem you can enlighten yourself here. And shame on you for not having read it before. Some things in life enrich your soul at no real cost to you. Try and take advantage of those things. While you’re at it, read the entire book, “Through the Looking Glass”. It’s a sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.

The Walrus and the Carpenter have no mission in life. They just live and take what they can without a care in the world. Unlike me, I’ve lived my life trying to police everyone and everything around me. Some sort of personal control over the uncontrollable, I suspect. So far, it hasn’t done any good. Not for those in my life and certainly not for me. Being the sheriff of anything is a thankless, pointless job, especially a self-appointed sheriff. In the days of the Western Frontier, the town sheriff or territory marshal was paid little to nothing for being the one who led a demanding, near perfect life, morally speaking, of protecting the average person from the lawless scoundrels who took advantage of the weak or, more accurately, the not-in-my-yard settlers.

I pick up trash discarded by my neighbors even though I can never hold them accountable for what they purposely do to the common living space. Those who toss fast food plastics and paper don’t recognize the fact that those acts are destroying the harmony of the universe. They just don’t get it. Someone in my building thinks nothing of leaving a soda cup or a chip bag in the stairwell. But I think much more than nothing about that. In fact, I can’t ignore that garbage anymore than I could ignore my hair being on fire. So I pick it up and properly dispose of it, cursing the unknown perpetrator for sullying up the environment.

Then there is my job. My job is nothing special. I do what I can to make sure the things I am responsible for get done so no one else has to pick up the slack. Isn’t that what a job really is all about? Isn’t that what we get paid for?

But, just like picking up other peoples’ trash, I find myself constantly trying to keep everyone around me doing what they should be doing…keeping the slack in some kind of orderly chaos. The thing is this: doing all this slack-tightening is hard work. And stressful. There is no end to it and no logical sequence. As soon as slack over here is tightened, slack over there is so loose it almost touches the floor. I don’t know why some people actually take on the responsibility of managing projects.

All this is quite tiring. I beginning to think sheltering in place is not such a bad idea after all. All I need to do is stop working for the day and get off the computer. No rush hour traffic to contend with; no hurrying to get home before my poor dog has an accident on the carpet. Suddenly there are walls that do a nice job of containing the space I live in, limiting slack to what’s in front of me. And no surgical mask to fog up my glasses. Quite peaceful, don’t you think?

Oh, The Shame Of It!

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My fellow Americans have once again shown they think of nothing but themselves unless they can squeeze out a media clip to make them look magnanimous. Hospitals and clinics have no masks, gowns, gloves, or other PPE to give them the protection they need to administer medical help to the infected. Nurses, techs and doctors go home to spread the virus to their loved ones after spending the day trying to contain and treat it.

I went to the supermarket today because my carton of milk was waning , and I used the last of my yellow onions to make some pasta carbonara sans bacon (cuz there ain’t none). I can’t believe the human locust attack that my local big chain supermarket had withstood. Shelf after shelf was bare. No rice, no sugar, no pasta, no canned soups, no nothin’.

No Toilet paper is a given. No bottled water is a given. These are the 2 major items that the human locusts have targeted. Their creed is: Never mind that we all need TP. Let the last in line do without. If the public water supply be sabotaged, so be it. We’ve got our bottles.

I’m not a religious man, but maybe we should take heed. Mathew 20:16 prophesied it as: So the last shall be first, and the first last. Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changin'” echoed the same thought.

So my curse upon the human locusts is thus: May the Apocalypse descend upon those that deserve it. A garage flooded by a broken sewer pipe would make that stash of TP very questionable. Maybe even more toxic than the COVID-19 virus. If the rice is spared, try wiping yourself with handfuls of that. Otherwise, let the sludge seep into it.

Please, please! Just take what you need for now and let others have what they need for now. It’s not like the factories are going to disappear or the truckers are going to call it quits. Things will return to normal. Hopefully, the people will, too.

Staying Sanitized in a Corona World

It amazes me how people panic and then hoard. The Corona Beer virus shows up and Whammo! First it was toilet paper and bottled water. I guess I get the toilet paper thing. Not many substitutes available for that one. But bottled water? Are we expecting the tap water departments to collapse as Corona beer virus (or as it’s known in the trade COVID-6pk) spreads?

Now it’s sanitizers. First to go were the factory-made ones. Then some expert posted a recipe for making your own on the web, and rubbing alcohol became as scarce as hens’ teeth in a matter of hours.

But fear not. I’ve been told that turmeric spice is very effective at sanitizing. Turmeric has long been known to have many benefits. It’s anti-inflammatory, it cures acne, dark circles under your eyes, stretchmarks, age spots, and warts. The jury is still out on whether or not it can cure ingrown toe nails but feel free to sprinkle it in your shoes.

Turmeric was not known to kill COVID-6pk until a local herbalist in Santa Cruz, California started doing the research. She noticed none of her 17 cats had contracted the virus. Not a single one! The three possums in the garage were equally healthy. She figured it must be the turmeric that she religiously added to their food every day. Through trial and error… OK, there was little trial and no error… she found that all you need to do is just eat a 1 teaspoon per 123 pounds of body weight unless you are unusually tall (7’3″ or more). In that case add a smidgen more.

Hopefully, this secret won’t get out to too many people and turmeric starts disappearing from the spice shelves in Costco. But even if that happens we’ll still be OK as long as the granulated chicken bouillon holds out. Have you ever noticed how brightly yellow granulated chicken bouillon is? It’s because it contains a boatload of turmeric!

But you just can’t eat granulated chicken bouillon or even dissolve it in hot water as a broth for it to be as potent as straight turmeric. For best results mix the bouillon into a paste with about 3-4 drops of water per tablespoon. Make sure the paste is thick and evenly moistened. The denser it is, the more sanitized you’ll be.

Now take that paste and smear it all over your hands. If you live or work in an area where the virus is spreading it might be beneficial to smear it on your face as well. Especially around the nostrils and mouth. Be careful to get a nice, thick coat of the paste. While it’s drying try not to flex your fingers as that might make the paste crack and fall off. After it’s good and dry (about two hours under normal room humidity of 65 – 70%) you can go about your day. You are sanitized! No nasty COVID-6pk is going to get you by golly! If the paste starts to flake off, that’s OK. As long as your skin retains that bright yellow color you’re safe.

If you should go outdoors (and there is no reason to stay inside now that you are sanitized) you might notice a few birds circling overhead. Those would be chicken hawks. That’s just the bouillon doing its job, and they have a very keen sense of smell. Just don’t lie down to take a nap. The chicken hawks might work up the nerve to land on you and start pecking at your yellow fingers.

Hang in there, my yellow-handed friends. We’ll get through this together.

Lisa the Elder

Lisa

I’ve written about my dog Spike a few times, but I haven’t introduced you to Lisa yet. Lisa is my old American short hair cat. She was born on Mother’s Day, 2000 along with several brothers and sisters. I can’t remember how many of each there were. Probably because we never met her mother. Someone we knew had a bunch of kittens they wanted to parse out so we took Lisa and her brother Bart.

Those of you who know me also know that I am a huge fan of the Simpsons, hence the names of our cats. All personality aside, Bart was a mellow little guy who was constantly pushed around by his sister. He started spending more and more time at a neighbor’s house up the street from us. One day he took all the bullying he was going to take, packed his little cat suitcase and ran away from home. He ended up being taken in by the neighbor he was previously frequenting, and, as far as I know, lived a long, peaceful life. I’d see him every now and then. He’d come up to me and beg for a petting. Then off he’d go again back to Paradise sans Lisa the Tormentor.

Lisa stayed on at the Mosca estate content with being not only the queen, a queen with no heirs vying for her throne. She passed the days slinking around the backyard honing her hunting skills. She’d occasionally bring home a dead lizard or sparrow to my wife from time to time like an offering to the Goddess of Cat Treats.

I’ve never been much of a cat person. I like cats, but they don’t impress me much and are no where near as entertaining as a dog (at least in my opinion) so Lisa and I would nod a “good day” to each other when passing in the hall, but we left it at that.

Four years after we got Lisa, we moved from the house we were in to the top floor of a four-story condo building. Gone was the backyard. Gone was the safari. From then on, Lisa was an indoor cat. Man, she hated that! I thought of possibly training her to be lowered by a basket on a rope so she could still go outside once in a while, but that is as far as the idea ever went…a thought. As I said, I’m not a cat person and even if I figured out the training that whole concept would have turned into a pain. Not to mention the countless wild creatures who wandered in and out of our complex that may have imposed a physical threat to Lisa. There are deer, turkeys, raccoons, the occasional coyote and who knows what. Deer and turkeys not so dangerous, but a coyote would definitely been one to watch out for.

So instead of being a hunter, the change of environment led to Lisa becoming fat. Way fat! Before the confinement, she weighed about 18 pounds, slender but rather large for a cat. Within a year of living indoors she weighed in at 25 pounds. When she sat around the house, she sat AROUND the house.

Then one day she faced the ultimate betrayal. We adopted Spike. Her life as she knew it had ended. No longer was she the center of my wife’s attention. Sure, the treats kept coming, but now the affection had to be shared with a stupid dog.

Ever since my wife’s passing I’ve paid more attention to Lisa. She actually is loved by me and has a good life. She gets her favorite food and her favorite treats. She now tolerates Spike but avoids him other than to take a quick little sniff of him when Spike and I come back from a walk. I guess that’s her way of staying up with what is going on outside. She has arthritis and is a bit stiff when she first stands up, but she still gets around fine. She uses her litter box a lot more frequently than she used to. Sometimes she doesn’t get all the way in before she starts peeing, but a training pad keeps the peeing “outside the box” under control.

All in all, I think she has more years in her future. I hope so. I’ve taken on the responsibility to care for her and give her the affection all mammals need. Humans are unique in that they rend their choice of pets away from the animals’ mommies with the excuse of offering a better life, but who are we to say that a kitten or a pup should be ripped from its family? But that’s another topic, isn’t it?