Application for Job #277349, Vatican City

Dear Sir or Madam:

(Oh, who am I kidding)

Dear Sir:

In reviewing the job board this morning at Vatican.God I found a position for which I am uniquely suited. I think if you review my qualifications, you will agree that I am the best Candidate for the Papacy you will find.

• The Church I was baptized in has the word “catholic” in its title.
• I speak enough Latin to do a Mass. Except the Credo. I mean, I could do it with a prompt copy, or an acolyte available off stage to feed me lines when I panic and forget. Also, I can read all manner of dirty classical graffiti.
• I’m familiar with Canon Law. I don’t like to brag, but I served on the Vestry at my church for an entire three-year term and I never once killed anyone, even those who really, really deserved it.
• I have inhaled a lot of incense – so much so that I believe the transitive property of frankincense renders me at least a Bishop, and possibly a Cardinal. Seriously, my church uses a lot of incense so I am like super-holy.
• Look, the wafer is all well and good, but I can cook a way more sacred (and tasty) host. Hire me, and I’ll share the recipe with all the Cardinals. (hint: start with the recipe for One Bowl Brownies on the Baker’s Chocolate box, but add awesomness). I can guarantee this will lead to greater Mass attendance, and congregants so devout they will partake in the Body of Christ every day.
• I hate to bring up the recent Ugliness your establishment has been dealing with lately, so I will just say that you will have NO PROBLEMS from me on that front. I don’t even like kids, so I will avoid them as much as possible, except for the baptisms, of course.
• Church Doctrine recognizes the holiness of the Blessed Virgin Mary – so Holy in fact that we can’t refer to her as just “Mary”, but that we be reminded of the state of her hymen at every turn. I will ensure that we accord Christ the same respect by referring to him as the Blessed Virgin Christ, since he was, of course, unmarried. Repeat it with me – Virgin Christ. Don’t you feel more reverent already?
• Married clergy? You won’t get any crazy liberal controversial views on my front; I’m a confirmed spinster and will likely remain so, God willing and the creek don’t rise, and also  that I don’t lose my health insurance for any reason and need to marry someone just to get my annual pap smear without skimming off the collection plate.
• I look fabulous in those princess-seamed ankle-length gowns you guys have. They really define my waist and emphasize my curves without looking trampy. Also they make me want to twirl and I look highly inspirational twirling.
• Speaking of frocks and accessories, I have some ideas for the mitre – have you ever thought of adding a bubble machine or some subtle pyrotechnics for extra-special Holy Days? These are just a few of the ideas I have – hire me and I’ll make the nave a blessed catwalk every Sunday.
• I have a really lousy memory, so the Confessional will remain completely sealed as I’m certain to forget what was just confessed as soon as I’ve given absolution.

Having reviewed my qualifications, I am confident you will want to contact me for an interview. I am available via Skype, or you can fly my out to Rome business class or greater. I do not require a PopeMobile transfer from the airport as that would be gaudy. References available as soon as I can find a clergy person who is devout enough to write one.

Yours in the Virgin Christ -

Nerdycellist

19

In August of 1991 I turned 19.  I had graduated high school two months before and would be starting at community college in a few weeks. Like many (most?) others, the four years spent in High School were not the best years of my life. They were not the worst – that would be the two years in jr. high – but they certainly didn’t do me any favors. My first mistake was underachieving. I’m awesome at that – a world class lazy smart-ass. I have a brain like a lint trap and I test well, so everyone’s academic expectations were high. Needless to say, I disappointed them. The place I did excel was in music. Starting with the orchestra, I worked diligently and managed to hold onto first chair. I loved playing the cello. I still do. Soon I discovered I could sing and made what is, in retrospect, one of the worst decisions I could have made. I joined the choir. As someone who didn’t start out in freshman girl’s choir, I had to audition for the choir director, also head of the music department. It was the most thorough audition I’ve ever had, involving not only the standard scales and tonal memory bits, but also a song (no biggie) and some random “find the notes in these chords. face away from the piano. now pick up the middle note in this triad. how about the second highest note in this tonal cluster? Can you sing the notes in this diminished 7 jazz chord as an arpeggio?” (yes. yes I could. Can’t everyone?). I am not exaggerating when I say that my successful audition for the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus was a healthy verse of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” next to the half hour that choir director put me through. After all that, I learned that he was considering not allowing me in concert choir – I didn’t have any stage presence.

This was a particular time of my life where I gave an awful lot of deference to authority. That choir director was treated like a god, and I learned to consider him one as well. By the time I got into choir I learned that about 80% of the kids couldn’t read music. And we never sang anything classical or in a foreign language. He would not permit us to go to state competitions. It was a whole lot of show tune medleys and concerts standing on risers in choir robes and high heels (the girls anyway). But he was in charge and I wanted to please him. It never happened. By my senior year the orchestra teacher had broken her wrist, so the orchestra was being run by one of the band teachers, who used me as his TA. As a “thank you” he arranged some music and gave me a lovely solo for our winter concert. I struggled, auditioning for the fall play and spring musicals my junior and senior years. The choir director was in charge of these as well, so you can imagine the outcome. I considered dropping out of choir, but he had promised that any misbehavior in any class or extracurricular of his would result in a failure grade in anything I did in the music department. At that point, he controlled about 40% of my GPA. Cognitive dissonance being what it was, my authoritarianism told me that I was terrible. I should not have wasted my time singing.

Taking one last chance, I applied as a vocal performance major at Harper, and a crazy thing happened – first off, we sang Mozart. And Palestrina. And Faure. And hundreds of other real composers. I adored it. I loved the sound we could make together, I loved being in the middle of a chord, I loved all of it. I learned that singing the Cantique De Jean Racine could bring tears to my eyes in the middle of rehearsal. Much to my surprise, I got into the chamber choir, and we sang music suited for a smaller group. Learning that singing the notes on the page wasn’t sufficient – that in order to make transcendent music, you had to rely on your ear to listen to the people around you. I missed more than one entrance being carried away by someone else’s vocal line (usually the basses – once a cellist, always a cellist). This choir director announced that we would be going to Europe, and I attended the first informational meeting. It all sounded wonderful, but I was regretful as I left to go to my shitty job. When the next meeting came and went without me, the choir director sent me to his office. He wanted to know why I hadn’t turned in the first bit of paperwork. I told him the truth – there was no way my $4.75 an hour was going to pay for the flight. He smiled and told me not to worry – just between us, they could take care of it. Please come to the next meeting. I left, stunned. My mediocre no stage-presence, no role in the high school musical voice was getting me an all-expenses trip to Europe. So, I guess I was wrong?

“I blossomed” is a cliche, and a mildly gross one at that, but I did. I met some wonderful people that year at Harper. Unfortunately, I continued my pattern of underachievement, quickly giving up a subject if I deemed it too difficult (I’m sorry, but math is fucking hard and I will never understand anything more than basic arithmetic and whatever is useful for cooking and balancing a checkbook) but the music!

And the trip to Europe, in 1992, when I was still 19 was eye-opening. I had never been to a foreign country before, but suddenly we were deposited in Germany. 2.5 years of indifferent hoch schule deutsch – wherein I consistently frustrated my stereotypical German teacher by my refusal both to do homework or to get less-than-perfect scores on the tests (and someday I will tell you how that german teacher and the choir director made things more sucky for students like me, and it’s all my fault) – meant that by day 2 I didn’t even realize when people were speaking German rather than English. It also meant that the first warning of each our our pre-tour meetings “Do not go off on your own!” was quickly ignored by me. I had a watch and spoke the language – I didn’t need to be with the group. I’ll never forget wandering through the Mozart Disneyland that had sprung up in Salzburg (which he hated, hated, hated!), visiting the concentration camp, my “conscientious objector” status on the side-trip to Berchtesgarden (a few of us refused to visit Hitler’s bunker and stayed behind in the village below). I especially won’t forget the shock of going from the opulence of Vienna to the so-recently post-Soviet Czech Republic, our hotel rooms in a menacing concrete tower with razor-wire and broken glass decorating the awning, and an elevator so terrifying that some of us chose to walk the 20 flights of stairs for our meals. One of our leaders took us aside and admonished us as spoiled westerners – up until a year or so ago, Czechs would be on a waiting list for several years for the chance to live in buildings like this. Duly chastised, we settled in at the table, replete with linen tablecloths, napkins, good china and crystal and had some of the best food I’d ever tasted. That I had to play the squeamish girl card (look, I had been a vegetarian for 6 years before this – I wasn’t really “playing”), while one of the tenors distracted me with small-talk and a bass (the singer, not the fish) removed the head from my trout is perhaps the only thing that mars this tale of burgeoning independence.

The age of 19 was the first time I realized that sometimes Old White Dudes in Authority are wrong. And sometimes I am right. Not always, of course. 19 was also the age when I was certain I was fat at, oh, say 80 lbs less than I am now. That I thought that a tuxedo jacket and a bustier were worth precious luggage space on a trip to Europe. When I gave up too early on music theory. But that year? I’d say it was a pretty good one.

Just don’t ask me about the next couple…

An Open Letter to Julian Fellowes, Creator of Downton Abbey

Dear Baron Fellowes:

Thank you so much for your thought-provoking series on the tragic fall of the English Aristocracy. It is not often that a peer of the realm who was a speech-writer for Margaret Thatcher proves to have such sympathy for the long-suffering underclass and women of all classes. Portraying Lord Grantham as an incompetent who does nothing but try and destroy his family from within – from complaining about the use of a tiny portion of his estate as a desperately needed hospital, to sabotaging a middle-daughter’s marriage to a gentleman considered more than suitable for the eldest, to alienating a son-in-law over lack of dress-up clothes all the way to frittering away multiple fortunes and refusing to listen to anyone’s opinions regarding the birth of a grandchild -not even the opinions of those who had actually given birth, or even the father of said grandchild – and therefore bearing (despite the opinion of his mother) no little responsibility for her death – this demonstration of the fecklessness and cupidity of the Upper Classes and their gormless patriarchs would be bold coming from a pleb such as myself, but for you, Lord Kitchener-Fellowes, it is nothing short of revolutionary!

Applying similar standards to the “Downstairs” staff, who seem to think that prostitution is catching – prostitution brought on in no small way to the summary firing of a woman who was taken advantage of by an Upper-Class Git who suffered no consequences whatsoever (aside from a Plot Expedient Death) should go well in quieting the grumblings of your fellows in the House of Lords.

I’m just glad to be clever enough to enjoy your subtext in the same manner that I admire the fine haberdashery on the show. Power to the People! Eat the Rich! You Will Be First Against The Wall When The Revolution Comes! Etc, Etc.

Your Obedient Servant
Dame Ophelia Quickly, Dowager Countess of Corgis.

Did I Mention I’m A Huge Sexist? And Also A Fan of Swift…

Preface:  My first defense against stress is extreme sarcasm, and sometimes I say some harsh, triggering things. Sometimes I even mean them.  This is my own personal little diary. It’s not monetized, and it’s not an interactive blog for the purposes of open dialogue. Sometimes I don’t want to try and be rational. So if you leave a comment that in any way annoys me, I will delete it. It doesn’t mean we still can’t be friends…

When someone wants to curtail my constitutional rights, I have to admit, I get a little twitchy. But let’s be honest here: we’re not exactly behaving like a bunch of grown-ups when it comes to guns. I’ve looked at this logically and come up with the following plan.

Straight Men are no longer allowed to have access to guns.

Women and Gay people should be legally required to carry concealed weapons.

Look, I know many people who are gun enthusiasts. Who enjoy hunting and shooting, who feel more secure with a firearm. I also know and love many straight dudes. But seriously guys, you fellas are responsible for nearly all of the gun-related mass killings. You’re also responsible for the majority of violence against women and gays. So from now on, you don’t get to have guns any more. I’ll make an exception for hunting; I think hunting is actually less cruel than the way I procure my meat, and takes some skill. So straight dudes who want to hunt, well – you’ll be able to choose the non-automatic firearm of your dreams, which will be provided to you during hunting season, and will only work within designated hunting areas. It will have a breathalizer and can only be operated if you’re sober. When you leave the hunting area, the gun will go back to the Gun Library until next year. If you accidentally shoot someone’s livestock, pet, another person, you lose your hunting privileges.

Women and Gay people – you will be issued the (non-automatic) weapon of your choice, which, James-Bond-like, will have some sort of fancy technology that enables it to fire only when the registered owner is holding it. You will take a Shooter’s Ed course, which the richer high schools will offer to all gay and lady seniors. Then, as with your driver’s license, you will take a written and Behind-The-Trigger exam. You will continue to re-take the Shooter’s Ed course until you can shoot with a reasonable degree of accuracy. You will need to re-certify every other year, which may seem onerous, but it sounds like a hellofa lot more fun than a pap smear. You will carry your weapon on you at all times, and can be outfitted with a camera. In the event of sexual assualt – including ass- and tit-grabs by strangers – you may shoot the perp with impunity. This last privilege may disappear as soon as there are no longer male politicians and judges on the bench who think a woman can avoid pregnancy or rape because of our magical female bodies. Gays? You too! If you’re in a place, holding hands with another person of the same sex, and someone tries to give you a shove? Go ahead and shoot. When all gays enjoy the privilege of Concealed Carry, then the epithet “Homophobe” will finally be apt.

Women and gay people, don’t get too cocky – should you start mass-shooting people like the straight dudes have been doing for the last several years, you too will be relegated to hunting only. Let’s say three mass killings within the space of 5 years and your Gender/Sexual Preference will have their guns taken away.

Straight men – I understand you’re probably not thrilled that you’re going to lose your gun rights. You are welcome to join the armed forces, if they’ll have you. I understand there’s a lot more discipline involved than just sitting around talking about how if you had been allowed to wear your weapon into elementary schools you would have saved the day through your manly and heroic actions. You may notice that the vast, overwhelming majority of policy makers are also straight dudes. Why don’t you get your cohort together over beers, root- or otherwise, and discuss some of the reasons why so many straight men seem to fall apart and decide they need to kill people. Is it lack of mental health resources? A sea of unexamined privilege which leaves young straight dudes at a loss when it comes to dealing with disappointment? Have the Alpha Males around you brainstorm and figure out how you can prove that you’ll be more responsible from now on. Because I’m willing to accept that idea that “guns don’t kill people, people do”, but you need to police your Straight brethren better if you want them to have access to the pretty, pretty guns.

In Which I Attempt To Enjoy 50′s Entertainment

I just read an article about how Kids Today are ruining the film business because they don’t like “Old Stuff” – Old Stuff being defined as the first Sam Raimi Spider-man. I am generally skeptical of My Generation Vs. Other, Less Awesome Generations arguments, but I have to admit to having some of the same prejudices. For instance, since the cancellation of Eureka, there is no longer anything for us to watch on Mondays. We decided to go for a movie and De pulled all of the stuff we hadn’t watched on DVD yet. I requested we stick with lighter fare, as it was Monday. That left us with a choice between The A-Team, The Expendables and Pillow Talk. Since we had not actually seen Pillow Talk, that’s the one we went with. I should have known better.

Now my tolerance for RomComs is not terribly high at the best of times, although there is nothing wrong with the genre in theory; I happen to count The Princess Bride and Strictly Ballroom on my top 10, and those are about as heteronormative and predictable as you can get (I also really like The Sum of Us, which is somewhat less heteronormative, but still well within the bounds of the RomCom formula). But hey – there was so much cultural freight given to Doris Day and Rock Hudson I figured I should know what people were talking about.

First off, I can’t deny that there were some positive things about this movie. Unlike most RomComs of the last 15 years, Doris Day has a job – a decent job that she does not have to give up in the end. She also does not fall down at all. Lots of the wardrobe on ladies is awesome.

But the rest…

Where to start? Doris is an interior decorator with a huge collection of high-necked peignoir sets who makes enough money to afford a fancy apartment with a doorman and an elevator operator and a (drunk) housekeeper, Thelma, in expensive Manhattan, yet she is unable to get a private phone line. Maybe I’m just a jaded suburbanite – perhaps rich people had a hard time getting phone service in the 50′s – but it seems unlikely that a woman in an expensive apartment would have to share a party line with some other dude in another building entirely. Doris can never seem to pick up the phone without hearing Man Whore Rock Hudson singing a conveniently customizable love song to  one random chick after another. Doris is frustrated, because her important job requires her to be able to use the phone. This is deemed silly, because she’s a girl, and why should her “career” needs come between a Man Whore and his swerve? Judging by the smirking snarkery from Rock Hudson, I believe we are meant to sympathise with him. Silly Frigid Career Lady!  These thoughts are echoed by her (drunk) housekeeper, who notes the only thing sadder than a woman alone is one who thinks she’s not sad. Really, I’m not sure why Doris has a housekeeper of any sobriety when her apartment shows no sign of habitation whatsoever – except for the tabasco, worcestershire and bloody mary mix she keeps around for said housekeeper. Of course Thelma’s a drunk! What else is she going to do with her time?

Tony Randall is a high-class business client and creeper who states he’s in love with Doris, and why doesn’t she marry him. (because you’re all sorts of gay, you fool!) He spends the whole film stalking Doris, first buying her an expensive convertible that she rejects, and continues to harass her through the movie. She cannot avoid him because he is her client. I believe this is called sexual harrassment now, and had she been as empowered as everyone seems to think she is, she’d have handed him over to the owner of the Decorating firm she works for.  Tony Randall must be the least sympathetic “charming” character in all of cinema-dom.

Doris Day goes to the housewarming of a one of her wealthy clients. Client’s son offers to drive her home in his schmancy Olde Tyme convertible. A scene wherein he has pulled over in a remote location and is attempting to rape her is played for laughs. He mashes, she flaps her hands near his person ineffectually. Ha ha! Isn’t it funny when a woman thinks she deserves not to be sexually assualted? LOL! Silly bitch! “No! You’re a Harvard man!” and “I’m telling your mother!” have little effect on the rapist, but eventually he relents – and she allows him to take her to some sort of supper club for dancing and drinking. I hate to blame the victim here, but is there any reason she couldn’t just walk out and hail a cab? Oh yes – I see the Plot Fairy has visited – where she runs into her Man Whore phone buddy, Rock Hudson, who ditches his date, puts on an accent and pretends to be a decent, if somewhat corn-pone, human being. Did I mention he knows who she is? On account of his best Hetero-Life Mate is Tony Randall, who has spilled the beans about intending to marry her.

The rest of the movie revolves around Rock Hudson impersonating a human being and Doris Day, in an  endless array of coordinated gowns, clutches and trapeze coats, falling for him. Sometimes she wears a hat that looks like a flower pot. How do we know they’re falling for each other? Not by any sort of clever plotting or cinematography – or god forbid, acting or even the much vaunted Day-Hudson “chemistry” (which there is NONE) – we know because at random moments we hear their interior monologues in cheesy voice over. In between are interludes where Rock Hudson calls her in non-Nice-Guy mode and taunts her about her supposed nice guy, they go to a club with an African-American band and an all white clientele and everyone sings a rousing ditty extolling the virtues of a fat dude. Srsly. this is what the media wanted people in the 50′s to think was fun: Going on chaste dates with rednecks and singing a syncopation-less song with no blue notes. If you did it right soon you might get married and have matching twin beds! If you were white of course; if you weren’t, well then you were permitted entertain the White Folks provided you showed no personality of your own.

Eventually, Tony Randall discovers that his Hetero LifePartner has stolen HIS woman (never mind she had made herself perfectly clear that she was unattracted to him – I guess maybe he pissed in one of her flower pot hats when she wasn’t looking and marked his territory) and he tries to force them apart by sending Rock Hudson to Tony’s Connecticut estate to finish writing songs. Forgive me, but I’m still unclear on why Rock is writing songs for Tony – is he a music publisher? A record company exec? Or is he just a rich dude with a sheet music fetish that gets off on bossing around tall, hunky man-whores?

Any road, Rock Hudson sneaks her into Tony’s estate and they start making out. Randomly, and for no good reason, she pushes him away and then lolls about lazily while he makes a to-do about wood. for the fire, you see. And then we see him carry the wood, while he talks about wood. Subtle, guys. He goes out for a huger, manlier, more tumescent piece of wood and she frottages his coat and accidentally finds the incriminating sheet music that with the interchangeable names. (Oh! That’s why they had the corny sing-along! So we knew she could read music! Damn, it’s like Chekov’s Gun in here.) Heartbroken that the dude she was going to guiltily redeem her v-card for was actually totally lying to her, and furthermore, was a complete dick, she breaks down just as Tony Randall swoops in to take her home. What a Nice Guy.

She cries most of the way home, and Tony, who allegedly loves her, rolls his eyes and gets really cranky that this chick has these stupid emotions. Stop crying! He insists. He takes her to a diner where the only two likeable characters, through dumbass sit-com style misunderstanding, deck Tony. Ha! Good for you, nameless toughs! Later, Drunk Thelma tells apparently heartbroken Rock that the way he can get back in Doris’ good books is to hire her to decorate his apartment. Then she’ll have to spend time with him!

Rock hires Doris, she’s angry and passive aggressive and decorates his abode as befits the finest of Captain Kangaroo’s bordellos. He sees this and goes to her apartment, drags her out of bed in indecent mock turtleneck pajamas, and carries her like a sack of potatoes through the streets of Manhattan literally kicking and screaming (I would normally attempt to edit these egregious cliches out of my writing, but I fear that the cliches are all present in the film). Once again, screaming and flailing her limbs adorably, but ultimately fruitlessly, and this is again treated as the height of humor. Mothers hide their children’s faces not because a man is kidnapping a screaming woman, but because she’s clearly a bed-sheet wrapped harlot. He even passes by a policeman, who gives him an “atta-boy!” for assaulting the frigid slut. Arriving at his apartment, he angrily demands to know why she would decorate so poorly for a man who was going to propose?! (I think this is called gas-lighting) and she stops mid-argument to swoon winningly into his arms with a relieved sigh. The End.

W.T.F.

And please do note I didn’t even get into the idiot “gags”, one involving Rock trying to get rid of Tony in a restaurant by implying he wants Tony to spend time with a super-cute fat red-head who doesn’t dance and is called “moose”. And the part where the elevator operator demands that Thelma stop drinking so he can marry her (and wouldn’t you know, she’s just been waiting for a man to tell her what to do so she obeys, swooningly) And also, the beyond stupid running gag involving Rock attempting to hide from Doris in an obstetrician’s office and complaining of “Stomach Upset”, which is somehow code for “I’m a pregnant man”. This whole thing is too stupid for me to even bother explaining it.

Anyway, I just wanted to send Doris a copy of “The Gift of Fear” and a Krav Maga manual so she can totally kick these awful, controlling, stalking ass-hats’ testicles directly into their body cavities, never again to descend upon humanity. And then I wanted a shower, and to read the S.C.U.M. Manifesto.

This. This is what the NuRepublicans want to return to: a  Movie Studio’s fictional, highly toxic view of the 50′s, where men told women what to do, and we liked it , gays were so far in the closet they could only be obliquely accused of being interested in dip recipes, minorities existed just to entertain whitey, and women wore flower-pots on their heads. Fuck that noise. And fuck this movie.

Great Moments in Human Intelligence

I never got around to writing my annual sappy Happy Birthday Ardala post, so I’m going to make up for that here. Ardala was adopted in 2006 from the Pasadena Humane Society. She was identified as a German Shepherd Mix, but at around 25 lbs, I had my doubts. We really have no idea how old she is (they estimated 2.5 years, a vet guessed up to 5) or even how many owners she’s had – she had been picked up as a stray by another shelter, spayed and adopted and then relinquished to PHSSPCA a few months later. Our best guess as far as breed is corgi mix. Or maybe Swedish Vallhund. Though she may possibly have some Australian Cattle Dog too… basically, she’s got some herding something in her. She may even have been trained to herd by her first owner; when learning a basic “STOP IMMEDIATELY” command in our intermediate training class, we chose an arbitrary word and hand gesture and she not only did it perfectly the first time, she dropped into what the trainer called a “cattle-dog down”, meaning lying on her belly, totally still but in full alert mode. That was also the class where she herded the cocker spaniels during her free play time. Mostly she has been tremendously lazy and happy to act as a sponge for all sorts of affection from all people, dogs and the odd cat. She came to us fully housebroken and friendly as anything and we cannot for the life of us figure out who would let this dog go.

Maddeningly, Ardala’s spent most of the last 9 month sick or injured. It started with a 1.5 month ordeal of a mystery disease misdiagnosed as pancreatitis, complications due to spondylosis and a possible slipped disc. It was actually a pretty severe e. coli infection. Then there was the psych-out CCL tear, the bonus Christmas actual CCL tear and subsequent TPLO surgery and recovery, ending with the latest bout of god only knows what, characterized by inability to use either back leg, the right one pulled tight to her body, the left rigidly extended. About $1200 spent on xrays, hospitalization and drugs later, we were left again with the slipped disc diagnosis, which will be a $1500 MRI so we know where to operate, thank you very much. Following our gut we decided to take her to physical therapy, both her back legs are positioned normally, she is off the steroid, the anti- back spasm pill and the narcotic she had been prescribed, and are now working on getting her walking again. For the first time since October, she seems to be back to her old self. I had almost forgotten what her personality was like.

Yesterday De went into her room to Skype her parents. Being a herding mix Ardala gets agitated if we’re both in the house but she can’t see us simultaneously. Since she’s only on 2.9 legs right now she’s also a bit bored, and acted out as bored dogs often do – through barking. Whatever kind of mix she is, it is one possessed of a bark roughly five times louder than it should be, and as apartment dwellers, we do not have the luxury of being good trainers about this and just ignoring her. I decided to help her into De’s room, where Ardala’s exercise pen and bed also reside. I brought my book and we all sat around for a few minutes while De continued her Skype call. Ardala sniffed around the room looking for stray treats and settled on her bed. I was ready to go back to the living room when the barking began again, this time from her nest. I was reading my book, De was chatting with her parents – and Ardala was getting absolutely no attention.

Look, I know the wrong thing to do in this case was reward her, but come on! Poor thing was sick or hurt for nearly a year! She can’t run and frolic with her friends! Also, loud barking and neighbors! So I made the second Bad Servant Monkey decision of the morning and went in to her ex pen to give her pettings and attentions. She immediately gimped off her bed and pushed past me through the open door of the pen.

I’m not proud to say that I actually sat in the pen for a minute or two just staring at the empty bed and then deciding I was bored. Turning to get my book and noticed Ardala sitting quietly in alert posture, back to the ex pen door, guarding me against all intruders – or possibly preventing my escape. My own f-ing dog herded me into her ex pen.

Dog people, do not ever underestimate your pet, no matter how lazy and indolent they might seem. They are only waiting for the right moment – and the opposable thumbs – to herd us together, lock us in an ex pen and take over the world.

Interlude

I spent a goodly amount of last night preparing my room for rearrangement. My bed, which was too high, (srsly, I pulled something a few months ago trying to hoist myself into it) was to be de-box-springed and be-slatted. Bulky Item Pick-up had been arranged for early this morning so cleaning and vacuuming ensued.

At the appointed time, I wrestled the mattress off the plateau which had served as my bed for over a year. This was not as easy as it might be – the mattress is memory foam, which is both heavy and non-rigid. It flopped about malevolently as I attempted to remove it from the frame and then lean it against the wall. Eventually, it leaned against the opposite wall I had intended, but at least it leaned.

For the box spring, I enlisted De’s help. For some reason known only to jerkface mattress manufacturers, there were no grab handles on the box spring. Trying to pry the damn thing out of the frame without crushing my fingers was a challenge I hope never to repeat. Eventually we got it out and tetris-ed it through the narrow hallway and into the living room. I took a break to prepare a peanut-butter kong for Ardala so she wouldn’t get under foot. The dog pacified, we continued to scoot the ungainly base through the hallway when we were beset by another problem – how to get the thing into the elevator. It was too “long” to fit in the elevator, but too “tall” to tip up on it’s side in the hallway. There was much staring, shoving, cogitating and swearing. Since the box spring had itself been delivered through the selfsame elevator and hallway, I was determined that I could figure it out.

Luckily our next door neighbor, an architect, saw us struggling and explained how the box spring could be moved through 3 dimensions (canted towards us and then tipped up – hurrah!) and we were able to make it to the elevator and similarly able to unload it from said elevator, push it through the garage and up the driveway to lean it against a conveniently located palm tree. Sweaty and gross, we went back upstairs, where I excitedly unrolled my new slats onto the bed frame.

You know what’s awesome? When you realize you’ve been misusing your bedframe for over a year due to the upside-down installation of your side-rails. The center beam was a good 3 inches lower than the side-rails. Suffice to say, this configuration is not the most conducive to having an even surface to lay a mattress on.

I spent the night on the single mattress in the living room. The bed will be partially disassembled and reassembled (right-side up!) this evening. There will probably be drinking. But at least I learned something about myself. 1. in the event of future Ikea purchases, I will pay to have the Ikea people assemble the furniture. 2. I am now of the age that any atypical physical exertion requires the dose of at least one NSAID. 3. no matter how feminist you are, sometimes you have to be the re-inforcer of sexist stereotypes – in this case, spatial reasoning, which men are reputed to be better at. And maybe 4. eff that rancid “Girls” show about a bunch of spoiled dumbass white chicks in NYC, someone needs to film two middle-aged fatties trying to move furniture around. That shit would be funny as hell to watch. Call me, HBO!