Via Apartment Therapy, an amazing postcard series of Boston terriers on MCM-design chairs. That link lead me to the adorable blog Fuck Yeah Boston Terriers.

Lance set me off on an obsession about the hunting dog the Blue Lacy. How friggin’ cool is it that Texas has an official state dog breed? A dog that is part coyote! Look at how beautiful they are! And now this story, which will make you cry unless your heart is a shriveled piece of rotting plant matter.

Clear Lake family finds missing dog 10 months after Hurricane Ike

A few Fridays ago I took The Gus to Memorial Park for our weekly Happy Hour run. This is the ceremonial start to my weekend and it makes me feel good about myself to get out there and get sweaty and then wash everything down with a cold, golden libation. Gus loves it because it give him a chance to commune with other dogs and be outside in the sunshine and get lots of attention from suckers who think he is cute.

I park by the pool. This parking lot is small bit of a walk across a grassy, tree-studded lawn to the 3-mile gravel loop where I run. When I run I ALWAYS carry poop bags (in a handy leash clip thingy), and I always pick up my poop, even in the grass in front of my house, because it drives me crazy when other people don’t and as Gandhi once said, we must be the change we want to see in the world.

So there I was, walking from the car to the loop when suddenly Gus has a major scatological accident. It is foul, explosive and watery and there is a lot of it. Like, a whole lot. I kind of try to drag his macaroni-curled body over to the nearest tree to at least get it out of the way of where someone may walk but I am happy for the fact that we are not yet on the running trail. Most of what he has to eliminate comes out in the beginning, but he still spends a good five minutes curled up, trying to squeeze what little remains out. I see that he is making no progress and so I try and coax him to give up. “Come on, Gus, let’s go little buddy.”

As he’s straining I consider how best to proceed. For as you may have surmised, it is literally impossible to pick up a puddle. I look for some dirt I can kick over the shit to at least absorb some of it but there is none nearby. I try to pull some grass to throw onto it but the grass is too short to do much good. I give up and continue to attempt to coax Gus along, and as I’m waiting for him to unclench I look up and see a woman about 50 yards away, stopped in the middle of the drive, starting at me out of her car window. She has a five-pound fluff of white fur sitting on her lap. I wonder if I know her, she is staring at me so intently, wonder if she is a member of my running club who I don’t happen to recognize.

Gus finally heeds my calls and heels up next to me so I continue my path across the drive and towards the loop. As I begin to run the lady in the red car follows me and pulls off to the side where I am running, rolling down her window.

“Excuse me,” she says. “Is there a reason why you aren’t picking up after your dog?”

It is at this moment, friends, when I make the crucial mistake. I should have ignored her, told her to mind her own business. But instead I feel the overwhelming need to explain myself to this stranger.

“I would,” I say, “but he has an upset stomach and it’s, uhhh, un-pickup-able.”

“Well I just think that’s disgusting. Maybe you shouldn’t bring your dog to the park when it has diarrhea.”

Again, I feel the need to explain. “It *just* happened. Look, lady, I have bags,” I hold them up so she can see. “I always pick up, I just couldn’t this time. It’s not like I brought him out here knowing he was sick!”

“This park is for everyone, you know, and I just can not believe people like you come here and let their dog shit all over where other people walk. Maybe you should just go home!”

And so it went, for about 10 long minutes, her basically screaming at me in view of everyone and me stammering in vain to defend myself, explain myself to this stranger because for some stupid ridiculous reason I do not want to be seen as an irresponsible pet owner in the eyes of someone I have just met and will never see again. Seriously, this lady was *yelling* at me, and the only thing that could end the standoff was me telling her to STFU and running away. Literally. I ran away.

But at that point I was so worked up I was almost on the verge of tears, which is how I manifest stress, and which makes things pretty inconvenient during confrontational situations. My heart was racing so fast and my limbs trembling with such verocity that I couldn’t even run anymore and so I had to sit down on a park bench and chill out for another 15 minutes before I could get up and run again. During that time a nice, sane woman, also with a dog in her car, pulls up next to me to say “Don’t let that bitch ruin your day! You have him on a leash and you have bags. Accidents happen!”

When I finally do finish my run I find my friend Diana and some other people gathered around the picnic table and I relay my story to her. “Fuck her!” Diana says but it still doesn’t make me feel better. “Think about what kind of life that woman lives. She’s probably going to go home and sit on her couch and think to herself ‘I did the right thing today.’ How pathetic!”

“What did she look like,” Diana asks.

“She was young, actually, and she was driving a red sports car and she had a little yippy dog on her lap. In fact, she was kinda pretty.”

“No, what exactly did she look like? What color was her hair?”

“She was white with long dark hair, straight. She looked tall and skinny.”

Diana disappears in the direction of her car. A few minutes later she returns. “I have something for you,” she says, and this is what she thrusts towards me:

It’s a voodoo doll. An effigy of the Poop Patrol, made out of dog poop bags and random paper towels floating around in Diana’s car. And it made me feel better immediately.

Gogol Bordello restored my faith in rock-n-roll last night. Best show of the year, so far, but Dengue Fever is next weekend so we shall see.

Before the show I was walking Gus* as the sun was setting when we crossed paths with a small gray creature moving slowly along the sidewalk. On a couple of evenings Gus and I have come across a huge possum chillaxin’ near the dumpster in the alley across the street. By huge I mean bigger than Gus, who weighs 25 pounds. I think someone feeds it — there is a hole under the fence through which it always scurries and in the mornings I see paper plates with what looks like cat food lovingly placed in the escape path.

But last night the possum we saw was quite small, probably juvenile, and slow to climb the bush where it sought refuge from my canine. Gus was straining at his leash and I was curious to get as close to the joey as possible, but the kiddo remained calm and cool, not quite playing dead but not ignoring us either. I damned myself for not having my camera and briefly considered running inside for it but was afraid the dude would be gone by then. It was cute! I wanted to snuggle it, but the thought of it’s tiny possum paws scratching out my eyeballs made me keep my distance. That and the fact Gus was FREAKING OUT. Anyway, I think it’s pretty cool that I live about one minute from downtown off one of the busiest streets in Houston and I have wildlife literally in my front yard.

Here comes the sad part of the story: this morning as we were walking before work Gus and I came across a stray cat near the same dumpster where we see the big possum. Cat looked dirty and skinny from afar, typical for a stray, but it was lazing in a patch of sunlight and seemed undisturbed until it noticed us and Gus noticed it. Then it raised it’s head and I could see what looked like a long, thick string of either snot or pus hanging from it’s face. One of it’s eyes was swollen closed. And instead of darting away it got up real slow and then I saw that it’s tail was almost nearly hairless and as thin around as my pinkie. It didn’t even have the energy to run away, only to hiss a weak warning at us.

The whole sight was so simultaneously saddening and disgusting that I felt physically ill. I’m am not much of a cat lover, but jeez, even a raging bastard could understand why I had a hard time choking back tears as I walked back to our door. Poor, poor baby. I wonder now if the cat food was actually for the cat, not the fat possum, and if so then someone is severely neglecting that cat, even if it’s just someone who’s feeding a stray.

I couldn’t be party to that neglect, so as soon as I got to work I called the HSPCA. I’m not entirely sure I’ve done my good deed for the day though. If the cat gets rescued and rehabilitated then I’ll think I have, but even if it’s humanely put out of it’s misery I will feel better for having called. Uhg, even the small amount of recollection it takes to type this has my throat tightening and my heart hurting for that poor little baby.

*Speaking of Gus, this month my sweet little clown is turning six years old.

It’s made me a little lovesick, actually, because there’s almost nothing better than CLH’s winter beard, cold from standing on the roof where he goes to smoke his nightly pipe, and which I bury my face into and absorb the smell. One week down, two weeks to go.

Jirisan was a beautiful as usual and for the second year in a row we had banner weather. Last year I hiked the highest peak, starting at 600 meters and ending at 1900. It took about 9 hours round-trip and, having done it once, I didn’t feel the need to do it again. This year I hiked to a lower peak, Banyabong , about 1700 meters, but starting at 1100 meters. It took right at 5 hours, including a break during which I ate lunch and had my gipfelschnaps, which was actually rum, not schnapps.

Sunday I visited a nearby temple, Hwaomsa. This was by far the largest and most spectacular temple I’ve seen in my time here. It was also one of the most bustling. The complex was made up of several smaller buildings, and inside of each were monks and meditators chanting and banging their hypnotic, regular beat. You could stand in the middle of the grounds and hear several different beats at a time, intersecting and reverberating off the hills that flank the temple. Or you could walk up to each building and listen more closely, the sound of one chant drowning out all the rest. At one point, I approached a small room in the corner of the complex and stood, transfixed for several minutes, while listening to the monk inside chant and beat, chant and beat. I left feeling quite moved.

On our walk through the park this afternoon Gus and I found a tiny, slender snake, the same color of dead grass. Gus snuffled it and scared it into a defensive coil, and it sat there, tiny and pathetic compared to the two of us, and shook its rattle-less tail at us. I managed to drag Gus away and hopefully left the little bugger in peace.

I think Gus was nipped or bitten by it though, because as we walked back to the building he began to sneeze in the way you do when you bonk your nose, and there was drool swinging from his jowls. The snake was so small I assumed it was harmless, and Gus has been acting normal (well, normal for him) since then, although he now has a small red spot on his snout. Boy scout he is not. Silly dog.

My friend Alice buys already-loved stuffed toys for her chocolate lab by the bagful at the thrift store.

If I didn’t have four hundred other sewing projects awaiting attention, frankentoys might be a good alternative.

When C came home from work last night I was standing in the downstairs bathroom, wearing an old tank top and a pair of his boxer shorts, yellow rubber gloves on my sponge-wielding hands and my arms elbow deep in the toilet no one but the dog uses. To drink out of, that is. And the wonderful man immediately commented on how hot I looked.

In approximately two months, I will quit my job to become C’s kept woman. He’s going to whisk me away to South Korea, where I’ll surely spend my days being gawked at by locals while I try to memorize the Korean phrase for “Yes I’m blonde and totally Anglo and, like, almost six feet tall AND American, but I’m no sideshow, y’all!”

Since C is getting off on the whole “provider” thing, I feel like it should be my duty to try to act a little more womanly, which means doing things like Taking Care of The Homestead! And Learning How to Cook Dinner! You know, since he’ll be working all day long and I’ll be doing nothing but essentially living off his money.

I’m absolutely positive that in the two years C has owned his house he has not swept the floor, not even once. I have seen him clean the toilet before, but only when he knew we were going to have guests.

And in the two months since he let Gus and me move in, Gus has shed enough dog hair to practically carpet the entire house. The floor didn’t even feel cold anymore, which is pretty gross considering every square inch of flooring in our house is stained concrete. I can’t believe that dog is not bald yet.

When he was still a bachelor, C bought the greatest bachelor gadget ever created, and that gadget is The Roomba. It is an electronic toy! That cleans your house for you! My soon-to-be husband is a total yuppie! Last night we pulled so much hair out of the Roomba that I could have used it to weave a king-size bedspread.

One time early in our relationship, I was at his house one afternoon and he decided he needed to run the Roomba. I’ve never seen a vacuum with so much personality. The two of us sat on the couch for hours watching the little electronic butler clean the living room floor.

The Roomba can’t navigate the stairs, though, and the staircase is Gus’ most favorite place to hang out, because when I am upstairs and C is downstairs he can act like the nosy little dog that he is and keep his buggly eyes on both of us. Up and down, up and down. Maybe Female Human is doing something fascinating upstairs, but wait Male Human is playing his guitar downstairs and I think it might be helpful to him if I go downstairs and press my cold wet nose against his calf while he tries to play the guitar but Female Human is upstairs in the kitchen and I smell food and if I whine just long enough she’ll give me a piece of cheese or a slice of banana and whisper to me “Don’t tell Daddy, okay?”

Last night I swept each of the stairs, one by one, to get all the Gus hair up. Sweeping is one of Gus’ favorite games, one of the very few times when he barks. I guess through his eyes the broom looks like some sort of bristly little animal dancing back and forth, begging to be chased, because the broom puts Gus in attack mode. He’ll hop back and forth, buck like a little bronco, lean down in pouncing position with his stubbed little tail nub in the air and bark bark bark.

When I am finally able to sweep some of the dust and dog hair and dirt into a pile, suddenly Gus changes his plan and decides, Wait! This furry little creature isn’t moving! I can pounce on it with much less effort and energy! And then he proceeds to run right over the neat little pile I’ve made, stirring up all the dust and fuzz and stuff, so I have to resweep that area all over again. So over the dim of the Roomba and the radio and the barking, there is also me yelling in my serious stern exasperated Serious voice, “Gus! NUH UH UH!”

All this sweeping and dusting and Roomba-ing had every single member of our household sneezing last night. Sneezing in the bathroom, sneezing in the dog room, sneezing in the kitchen. And just when I had swept the last pile of dust into a neat stack to be put into the dust pan, that damn little dog had to go and stick his nosy, cold, wet snout right into the pile, sniffing at it frantically to see if it wanted to be chased.