Hackles
| January 7, 2011 | Posted by Chin.Musik under pets |
Sometimes, when I’m in my jammies, I can’t be bothered to don the winter garb just to let Fritz outside to pee. I swear the little p*cker-head needs to go like 20 times a day. So I stand by the backdoor in my slippers and say c’mon, be quick. He knows what I mean, he senses the urgency in my voice, but is still liable to catch the scent of something and dart after it. And so I have to run after him, which throws off my neat (albeit slightly obsessive) routine of keeping dry slippers by the door. When he raises his hackles at me I say git. He slinks under the end table with a non-committal growl and I feel like I’m born and raised deep in the gut of Appalachia.
One of my wife’s consumers is terminally ill. She’s developmentally disabled, so she doesn’t even see that her landing gear is down or that her seatbelt sign is illuminated. Salley (my wife) has her chin set. She advocates for pain meds. The poor lady just turned 43 this week, too young to be dying. For her birthday, I bought her a poster of Derek Jeter. At the time, I thought she should be so hopped up on morphine that “Jete” inveigles her into a world-class tryst, capped off with a debonair escort through the Pearly Gates.
There are too many ways to die. Good can only be achieved by comparison.
We got our first foster kid on 12/17. I’d like to write something about him, but the truth is I got my ass fired for violating HIPAA not too long ago (more about that later). I know enough to steer clear of individual identifiers.
I’m sitting here looking at three books on the arm of the couch: A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Hunger of Memory, and The Power of Memoir.
The arm of the couch, the stowed tray table, and the luxury of skimming the clouds at 30,000 feet.
Hope he can re-claim his Jeterian magic at the plate this year.
I have a bushel of books to read, but can only absorb a few lines, a few pages on good days, since grad school ended.
[...] decidedly non-sports related post at chin musik on dogs and death. No [...]
Tip I found for extending my ability to read — find a completely professionally pointless yet engaging and exciting book to read (I’m into the Bourne series), and practice reading for extended periods of time. I build up the “muscles” of my reading and comprehension (usually have to start 3 pages back from where I left off, but so what?) with the stuff that “doesn’t matter” — no pressure. But it pays off professionally, as I use those same muscles to read and digest the kind of reading material that keeps food on the table.
And don’t forget to eat when you read — a bowl of cereal or something with carbs. Brain needs glucose. Pick good carbs, tho’ — with stuff other than pure sugar. It helps me. Hope it helps you, too.
Cheers
BB
Thanks for the tip, friend. I think it’s been hard because I;m going through a transition. Just finished grad school, just got our first foster kid, and I’m jobless. Have you tried the brain exercises at Lumosity?