It's My Dog's World: I Just Live In It

What Dogs Can Do, And What They Can't

I don't remember exactly when I stopped fearing dogs, and I don't really remember the first time I thought, "I love this dog." What I do know is that dogs have changed my life.  For the better. For the way, way better.  I look at the world through dog-colored glasses.  I barely remember the person I was, the person who would cross the street when she saw a dog, the person terrified to pet a dog, even the friendliest, sloppiest dog.

And I don't have an easy dog. She is a great dog; don't get me wrong.  But she came to us scared, and clearly abused, with scars and a burned tail.  And we thought adopting her would be like a Disney movie. And it wasn't. And it was harder than we ever imagined.  On the days when I am not so happy in my life, I remember that my husband hung in with our dog when others might have given up. And she changed. And I changed.  And it was worth it. But that was a long tunnel to be in before we saw the nice light.

Meanwhile, I learned recently that author David Foster Wallace died, an apparent suicide after a lifetime of struggle with depression and addiction.  I haven't managed to conquer Wallace's big fat book Infinite Jest, and I've read a little of his brain orgasm non-fiction.  But here's one thing I do know:  he loved dogs.  You can see it in the picture. And apparently, according to Whitney Pastorek's lovely essay in Entertainment Weekly, he even planned his life around his dogs' needs.  A reminiscence of DFW on Slate includes a lovely vignette of him training OTHER people's dogs while he was an artists' colony.  Look at him there in the picture. He even looks like a big shaggy dog himself.

I've been around a lot of addiction and depression in my life, and both diseases are cunning, baffling, powerful.  In the grip of one or both, sometimes even the love of a dog can't save you, even when you love your dogs hard enough that they become the center of your life, when you love being with dogs so much you'll seek out strange dogs to teach them a better way.  If only it were so easy for you, but you drew the short end of the stick when it came to brain chemistry.  If only your brain and your spirit would arise, radiant, when you called them. But no.  And when they refuse, a hundred dogs couldn't pull you from that darkness. 

Sorry for the long silence...

But it's been a month of dental work, air conditioning conkouts, the death of our dishwasher, a car accident, a lame dog...anyway...all are fine and I am back.  Breathe, breathe, breathe...

Things to be grateful for:

1. Trader Joe's Volcano brand coffee.
2. Raul Esparza's going to be in a MAMET PLAY!  With Ari Gold!
3. Dogs on the beach, baby!  Happy summer.  And thanks, BadRap, for the videos.  (More good dog news here.)

Christmas Gratitude...

I'm on the other coast right now, loving being with my family, missing my husband and my dog something bad.  I even went to a dog park in Dublin, CA today, to get a little dog fix.  I met a dog, Samantha, a lovely rescued Golden Retriever, who was going to a dog park for the very first time.  Her mom was nervous, but she did beautifully.  Yesterday, I met a dog who "plays" a guitar in Sausalito, and a pouty pug who wasn't allowed in the Muir Woods. Still, I miss my dog. So much, though, to be grateful for:

Going to Isaac Mizrahi's holiday show...FOR FREE. Thanks, Modern Fabulosity.  Isaac was in good voice and great band, and not only did he make ginger snaps with Sarah Moulton (sensible yet glam), he regifted the audience: earplugs, dog biscuits, beautifully hideous Xmas sweaters, and...a defrosting ham.  I went with the lovely Pookie, whose page I will link to as soon as I'm on my own computer.

Holiday episodes of Futurama.  Robot. Killer. Santa. Enough said.

My family is healthy.  And funny.  In that order.

My dog is healthy. And funny. But I don't think she knows it.

Endless good coffee at a Residence Inn. 

Catching up to the New Yorker's fiction, and being gobsmacked by Jennifer Egan's blisteringly sad short story, "Found Objects." I can't tell if the hope in the story is flickering, or going out.  Keeps you going to the last word.  I've always admired her non-fiction, and meant to read "The Keep."  Next book group, it goes on the list.

Happy holidays, all.

Three Months Left to Live, and Still Blowing People's Minds: Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch is dying.  Well, we're all dying, but Randy Pausch, a brilliant, generous computer science professor, knows he's dying--after a year-long fight with pancreatic cancer, the newest scan shows that it's gotten to his liver.  It's a matter of months.

I don't know Randy Pausch, exactly--during a very difficult project several years ago, I discovered his sane, lovely rules for running meetings, and I wrote him a fan e-mail, and he wrote me back, and we ended up discussing stuffed animals, because Professor Pausch liked to win them at carnivals and amusement parks, and my boyfriend and I had begun a collection.   We talked about Carnegie Mellon, where he taught, and co-founded the  Entertainment Technology Center with the indelible Don Marinelli, whom I met in the 1970s when he was an avant-garde theatrical impresario.  Now, they were in the business of building virtual worlds with crazy teams of artists and scientists.

I worked at Carnegie Mellon for a year in the early 1980s, and it is safe to say that between the painters making art on computers, and combustion engineers singing "Aida," not to mention seeing a show where a very young Rob Marshall sang and danced his heart out as a Beethoven era musician who accidentally discovers rock'n'roll (it was called, I believe, "Rachinoff"), working there regularly blew my mind. So I was thrilled to learn that in the 21st century, it was still in the business of blowing people's minds, thanks to people like Don and Randy Pausch, who believed in the miracles that came from an unlikely and weird team, being one themselves.

Last week, Randy Pausch gave one last lecture at CMU, which dealt with how to fulfill  your childhood dreams. It is funny and unexpected and heartbreaking, though never maudlin.  Go here to watch it.  And then, in Randy's honor, go help someone, go make some art, and then blow somebody's mind.

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?              

--Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

I am grateful for :

 .

I am grateful for:

1. Free streaming of Patton Oswalt’s new album that had me snorking with laughter, especially about the KFC bowl of sadness.

2. Listening to the Butchies on Pandora.com.

3. My dog kissing me.

4. Jeff ordering awesome Malaysian food for us. Not sad food at all.

5. The Office, The Office, The Office.

6. The fact that nearly everyone in my family has a peculiar, unique connection to Ed Grimley, Martin Short's immortal character...including my sister who dressed my adorable nephew as Ed when he was just an infant. 

Complete with cowlick.

Yesterday: The Day of Non-Stinkosity

I am grateful that:

1. I have started writing again…something about dogs…on 100words.com.

2. I could take this day off to work on book publicity.

3. That my damp, flooded town no longer smells like discarded shrimp tails.

4. That someone called my dog “wise” today.

5. That Shera (see picture) has found a new home!

Why I Heart New York, Part One

I went to the East Village to get my hair cut and colored Friday at Salon 7, where I’ve been going for a zillion years.  A few minutes after Saori, the colorist, deposited the gook on my hair, two large, cranky Eastern European workmen entered the salon and announced that they had to shut the water off because there was a leak on an upper floor.  Might be for 15 minutes..or it might be for HOURS. 

A mild moment of panic---rinse me out early, and have the color come out crummy?  Start over?  Hang in there, and hope they’re fast and good and truthful?

….and then Mark, the unflappable owner of the salon, former haircutter of Madonna, the man who calls one and all "Buddy," said, “Ask the girls down the street if we can use their sink.”

Turns out that there are five salons on this particular block, and the girls down the street—another salon---have borrowed a sink or two from Salon 7. 

So when my hair was done, Saori led me (with my glasses off) down the street in sub-zero temperatures to the “girls’” salon and rinsed my hair out.  I am sure I gave someone a laugh, but I was too blind to see.   

The "girls" were cheerful. And my hair looked fantastic.

Who says New Yorkers are unfriendly? Who said miracles aren't possible?

 

Sappy, Atheistic Gratitude List....

Oprah tells you to do it.

Martin Seligman, papa bear of Learned Optimism, makes it part of his treatment.

And I do it, but I keep it a deep, dark secret.

I make gratitude lists.  Crabbily.

In fact, one of the books I have written in my head, but not actually, you know, done the wordsmithing thing on, is a book I like to call "Crabby Gratitude: Why You Don't Have to Be Nice to Be Thankful."   It would sort of be...Goth Grateful.   Because I think gratitude lists actually work. Not through voodoo, or chakras, or even quantum physics, badly explained.  Gratitude lists work because they teach you to train your eye on what you have, not what you don't got.  And I suspect that it actually rewires your brain (in fact, some research suggests that it does just that).

So:  what am I grateful for today?  A lot.

• My dog diet book got a super nice shoutout from one of the coolest pet writers in the business, Julia Szabo, who writes for the New York Post.
• My six-word memoir contest entry to the Smith magazine was selected, first for text message on Twitter, and now, for publication in their new book.
• My six-word resolution (also co-sponsored by the Smith) made the final cut at the Huffington Post, and it means that all the world knows that I want to "kiss Jon Stewart on the mouth."  But who doesn't want to, really?
• I got to hear Michael Musto interview Rupert Everett at Barnes and Noble, where a furiously brainyEverett suggested that we were in danger of "entertaining our tits off"  (too much  Friends has made our minds mush...which was the ONLY thing that Everett said that offended someone in the audience),
• but then...Everett  entertained OUR tits off by doing, in turn, impressions of Orson Welles, Bette Davis, and a  very campy French chef hiding his Barbie doll collection from a butch Stalinist director.
• George Takei, Mr. Sulu, is playing Hiro's dad on HEROES.  How perfect is that?

Guy Makes Up Stuff in His Writing; I Will Survive

OTHER PEOPLE'S PROBLEMS

Yes, it is shocking that James Frey is actually JT Leroy's illegitimate son, and that he may not have snorted all of Bolivia while shooting a man in Dallas while having sex with Star Jones Reynolds.  When we find out that what he really did was attend too many keg parties and Never Learn When Not To Capitalize, will the earth stop rotating?  I submit not. 

MY PROBLEMS

I gained the holiday 3.5. But you know what? I kind of don't care. When I flew back from a most delightful visit with my family, the plane went through brutal turbulence, and I sat across aisle from a well-dressed, probably unmedicated or overmedicated woman (think Carmela Soprano, but brunette) who kept accusing the pilot and staff of "bullsh*tting." At the top of her lungs. The pilot's drunk or new or both, she kept shouting.

Sad to say, she was probably right. The pilot had to make the descent a couple of times, supposedly because of backed-up planes, but...we flew far too close to an IKEA for my pleasure, thanks, and the landing was beyond bumpy. The woman continued shouting. The rest of us...well, we were glad to be home.

I've been in a couple of close calls--a bad car accident that destroyed the car but we survived miraculously (go, Ford Taurus!), an eating disorder that nearly killed me--but this has really stayed with me. In a good way--I've felt so much lighter, almost giddy, since I touched the ground two weeks ago.

Which is not to say I won't be making...hm...themes. And I'm actually giving a lecture at the library on how to help your pets keep their New Year's resolutions. But boy, am I glad to be alive, and especially glad not to have my last moments be sitting next to a shrieking crazy woman with perfect nails.