Funny Duck

Rebekah and Z’nah stopped by yesterday, ‘Bekah more-or-less to stay and Z’nah for a nice long visit.  Clem and Z’nah had a grand old time together, parties interested in a photographic record of these canine revels can find one here.  I hope that Clemmy’s throng of South American fans won’t crash the server.

At some point, Rebekah realized that she was out of Ambien.  Since her insomnia is no joke, and since she is grouchy as all get out when she doesn’t sleep, she headed out to the pharmacy to replenish her supply, Z’nah in tow.  Out of idle curiosity, I asked whether she intended to leave Z’nah in the car or take her into the store.

“Oh, I always take her in with me,”  she replied.

I wondered if there were stores where this was not allowed, and asked, half-jokingly, whether, since Z’nah is a German Shepherd, she ever pretended that she was blind, and Z’nah her guide dog.

“No, I just try to look really pathetic.  I figure that way, people will wonder what’s wrong with me, but good manners will keep them from asking, so they’ll just leave me alone.”

Oh, that Duck of mine!

Grievance

It is happening again.  ‘Bekah is being tapped by an over-protective dog owner to dogsit overnight, leaving me lost, lorn and lonely.  I always feel abandoned when ‘Bekah has to sleep over at her charge’s place, which means that she will be home somewhere between seldom and never for the duration – in this case through Saturday.  What makes it even worse this time is that it is Merlyn’s dog Z’nah that ‘Bekah is dogsitting.  Z’nah!  That dog has more native intelligence, common sense, and responsibility than most latch-key kids!  Merlyn could probably just leave her his credit card and have her check herself into a hotel, where she would sit, quietly watching Telemundo to improve her Spanish when not preparing her own meals or going outside to potty.  This is the dog that ‘Bekah insists must be attended at all times, even if it means that me and Clementine must be left unsupervised.  Clementine!  Me!  With nobody watching us!  Last time this happened I was reduced to a state of howling savagery, roaming the neighborhood in makeshift garments composed of discarded bathroom mats and paper grocery bags and foraging for food – which has gotten a good deal harder now that Ella May has stopped leaving pies out on her windowsill to cool.  Clementine, meanwhile, had taken my wallet and clothes and disappeared for nearly the entire time ‘Bekah was gone, losing both before staggering through the front door in the wee hours of the morning smelling of cured meats and debauchery.

This is just an awful situation, just awful.  I certainly hope you are happy, Z’nah, you homewrecker.

Congratulations, Duck!

It is time to confer some recognition on Rebekah, who has been the family MVP lately.

After waiting out an unnecessarily long approval process, Rebekah has formally been admitted to CSU.  She is now being told to wait 2-4 weeks for further instructions, but she will be going back to school in the fall.  I was mightily impressed by how rapidly Rebek put together her admissions packet, and I can’t wait ’til she gets to register for classes, meet her adviser , visit the financial aid office for a grant…

In addition, Rebekah has submitted applications to half-a-dozen greenhouses and nurseries around town, so perhaps she will get an interview in the near future.

In the meantime, she has been offering her crafts for sale via her etsy site (link imminent), which she has just got up and running.

Finally, Duckers has been a real help around the house with her increase in discretionary time – yay!

Ain’t No Sunshine

Recent developments have raised the surreality quotient around here.  For one thing, Rebekah has been dog/house sitting for a week now, which entails her sleeping elsewhere.  Although the overprotective pet owners she does this for pay her well for her time, it has the effect of bachelorizing me and orphaning the cats (though not Clem, who is her own support network), since Rebek is home for maybe two hours a day.

The absence of our home’s bright, shining center makes the cats incredibly clingy.  As I write this, Cleo is draped across my shoulders, a position she crawled into, with much scrabbling on her part and many muttered imprecations on mine.  She has been preceded this morning by Gypsy, whose awkward attempts to snuggle are rendered poignant by the fact that neither of us really like each other.

I too have decayed at an alarming rate, like a building abandoned in the jungle one week and discovered as a vine-choked ruin the next.  I’ve stopped shaving, stopped sleeping, and the last time I saw my pants was when Clem ran off with them two days ago – since then I’ve just been wrapping a towel around my waist before I go to work each day, but how long I can keep this up is anyone’s guess.

In addition, I am embarking on a new career.  Like most new careers, it will involve extensive making of good impressions upon potential employers/clients.  Now, I am pretty insecure about my appearance, mostly due to my weight.  While I was merely “soft” at my wedding, I have steadily let myself get heavier in the years since, until recently I’ve found myself parked firmly in “frickin’ porker” territory.  I decided that this had to change if I was going to possess the necessary aura of confidence to win new clients, so I started a diet.

I have tried various formulas for weight loss before, but none have ever worked as well for me in the long term as exercise and the Atkins diet, so that is what I’ve gone back to.  I’ll probably post more about it in a couple days, assuming ‘Bekah comes back and halts the our slide

My Charming Wife

Rebekah is charming.  People instinctively like her and want to help her out.  While I have long known this, I got a chance to see the phenomenon in full force the other day.  We went into a business together, and ‘Bekah asked the fellow behind the counter for something that was, strictly speaking, against company rules.  He found a way to stretch the rules and help her out, though, and without her having to plead, threaten or make any kind of a scene.

Mere moments later, at a different counter, ‘Bekah asked the lady to go above and beyond, and she did as ‘Bekah asked without even batting an eye.

Now, this may not seem remarkable to some of you, but it is not how I generally go through life.  In the same situation, I would be given any number of dismissive comments:

“Sorry, sir, I can’t help you”

“Rules are rules”

“That’s really not my job, sir”

“But I don’t have the combination to the safe!”

“If you persist in using that kind of language you will be ejected from the premises”

And countless other less-than-helpful responses.

How is it that Rebekah just glides through these transactions so effortlessly?  In the car after this twin killing, I decided to ask her.  This is what she said:

“Well, I been grifting for awhile now.  Worked most of the major cons – women’s clothing, jewelry, children’s clothing, even greenhouses.  I got plenty of experience telling people ‘Oh, you look stunning in that dress’ or ‘what, orchids? – they’re just about the easiest plant to take care of’, and I don’t know how many grandfolks I fleeced working with the Children’s Mercantile mob out of old town.”

I must say that I don’t find the answer convincing, however.  I have worked my share of retail jobs, and I don’t seem to have cultivated the same way with people.  I’m pretty sure that there is such a thing as raw natural charm, and that ‘Bekah possesses a double share of it.

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

It turns out that if you put a lot of celebrity names on your site, your traffic will double.  All those poor, sad little perverts searching keywords “Meryl Streep and burro”…

Anyhow, the latest news here is that Rebek is down with a flu-like virus.  She couldn’t keep food down for a good chunk of yesterday, and she ran a pretty stiff temperature for much of the night.  In keeping with my established position, I will blame Phoebe (and possibly the little incubation-pods Rebekah teaches all day long).  Right now, Phoebe is maximum-pissed, due to the whole divorce/cessation-of-free-ride thing.  In her world, Merlyn must resemble his namesake, because he has all but vanished from Phoebedom at this point.  Abbey, too, is a great distance from the scene of the action, which is doubtless not the unadulterated blessing for her that it would be for a selfish fellow like me.  In short, they are both out of the line of fire.  Rebekah works with Phoebe.

Under normal circumstances, ‘Bekah finds this trying, as Phoebe is capable of demonstrating the ruthlessly selfish mindset and predatory cunning of a wolverine.  These days, however, the wolverine has been caught in the cruel steel jaws of a bear-trap.  It is nearly out of its mind with pain and fury.  Rebekah is sitting under the same tree.  The wolverine can reach her lap.

No wonder her immune system has quit under the truly staggering amounts of stress.

A Grudging Retraction

Some of you are likely familiar with Rebekah’s birding blog, easily the most fabulous of all birding blogs extant.  Well, early in its existence, it was dealt a crippling blow when a certain advocate for donkeykind responded to a post about penguins by leaving a comment which denigrated the hauling capacity of the torpedo-shaped waterfowl and further asserted that “Donkeys rule, birds drool.”  This seemingly indisputable claim withered interest in the fledgling blog and indeed the pastime of birding in general (although, honestly, people were going to figure out that birdwatching was dumb sooner or later), as people flocked to the much, much cooler quadrupeds.

The Duck is plucky, however, and persisted in her quixotic quest to make people care about the various feathered vermin of the world.  She enticed readers back with snazzy photos and hit singles.  Still, the undeniable panache and verve of Equus Asinus repeatedly bore out their claim to superiority.

That is, until recently, when this bombshell was ferreted out of obscurity (the italics are part of an in-joke – move along, nothing to see here).  After seeing this, I cannot help but conclude that birds are (grumble) approximately as good as donkeys.

Technical Difficulties

The internet has become a coy and elusive creature at our house, due to the vagaries of our service provider.  It was actually kind of nice to take the weekend off from managing my various internet concerns, I may make a habit of it.

Anyway, the cracking and grinding of tectonic plates continues here, and I feel like I probably ought to share a little bit more of what is going on.  I’ll stick to what concerns ‘Bekah and I most closely – ‘Bekah has decided to give up teaching at Children’s House and return to the pursuit of higher education.  It was a very difficult decision for ‘Bekah, who has invested not only plenty of blood, sweat, and tears in the school, but also a great many of her hopes and dreams.  Unfortunately, the relationship between Rebekah and her mother has just become too complicated and, frankly, dysfunctional for them to continue working together.

One’s relationships with one’s parents are tangled and intricate webs, to be sure, and far be it from me to attempt any further analysis of or commentary on  the situation.  It wouldn’t help anyway.  It is so tempting to take a simplistic view of these sorts of conflicts, or play blame games, when the reality is so fraught with layers of meaning, idealization, and contradiction that the “truth” is probably not recoverable even by those most intimately involved.

For those of you not intimately involved, however, who don’t need the truth as much as a working explanation, you can get by with this brief summary – it’s pretty much all Phoebe’s fault, because she is a bad person.

Dedication

If the world were mine

I would dedicate green pastures

To the beasts of burden

Grown old in service

Carrying everyone else’s load

i

And if the sky were mine to give

I would dedicate the horizon

To the mallards winging

Desperately toward it

Through whistling clouds of birdshot

i

And if I had possession over Judgment Day

I would find a way to requite

The grace you’ve shown

In all these bitter trials

Which you did not deserve

St. Valentine’s Day

This year, just as we do every February 15th, ‘Bekah and I celebrated Valentine’s Day.  We tend to keep a low profile on the actual holiday, emerging afterward to slink over to our local Barnes & Noble and spend any Christmas giftcards we may have received.  Merlyn has made it kind of a habit to bestow $100 gift cards on each of us at Christmas, thereby giving us our Valentine’s Day.

Part of our tradition is to select one book for each other.  This year, I picked out Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran for Rebekah, and she picked out Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes for me.  I know ‘Bekah couldn’t wait to tear into all the birding books she bought, and I am in the middle of The Bourne Supremacy, but we will probably get down to reading each other’s selections soon – after all, Rebekah’s past picks for me have included some terrific books, like Kevin O’Hara’s Last of the Donkey Pilgrims and The War for Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis De Bernieres.

For the last couple of years, the book store romp has been followed by a stop to pick up carryout from the nearby Hunan restaurant, which also happens to be my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world.  Then, our galleon laden with our new treasures, ‘Bekah and I set sail for home, done with another blissfully low-key Valentine’s Day.