Month: May 2013

Most people know that I am not a dog person.  I don’t dislike dogs and I “get” how people feel about their dogs.  Their dogs are a part of their family as important and loved as any other member of their family.  As some of my friends and family dog’s get older, I worry about the grief they will experience when their dog dies.

Heck, I was even a dog owner for a while.

When I was a kid we had a beautiful Irish Setter.  His name was Ranger and he came to us from an abusive owner.  This poor dog was scared and never barked.  My brother, finding something amiss with a dog that never barked, got down on all fours and taught the dog to bark.  An endeavor he most surely regretted later when the dog barked every time he came home late.  The dog barked at every car that went by and every rabbit within a half mile radius.

Ranger loved to run. The only person capable of taking the dog for walks was my brother who mostly connected the dog leash to his bike and took the dog for a run.  I still have a scar on my elbow from my one attempt at taking the dog for a walk.  As soon as Dad handed me the leash, Ranger took off, knocking me from my feet and dragging me through the neighborhood as Dad screamed “Don’t let go of the leash”.  I let go of the leash leading to one of  Ranger’s many escapes. Ranger loved to run so much that he often escaped his dog run by scaling the fence.  Normally he would be found by a neighbor, who would call and ask us to retrieve our crazy dog.  One time though he was even held hostage prompting a call to the police to get our dog back from some crazy lady who thought she could make a few bucks off our dog.  He was hit by a car once when he ran away,  got stuck on ice of the Fox River and more than a few times brought home by the local police, head sticking out of the back window.  Dad kept building the fence around the dog run higher until finally the dog could no longer climb it and jump over.  Eventually, he went to live on a farm (or so they said) and we were promised a new dog once we settled in Colorado.  Mom and Dad reneged on that promise and we remained dog-less.  Evan is deathly afraid of dogs so we are one of the few families in Highlands Ranch without a dog despite my fantasies of a Portuguese Water dog to protect me on my runs.

So I don’t hate dogs, but lately I am beginning to hate some dog owners, especially the ones who live next door.  Last February, my next door neighbors got a puppy.  A very beautiful Golden Retriever that they decided to chain train.  This means they leave the dog chained in the back yard for most of the day.  This poor dog was barking for hours on end.  One day Brian worked from home and after 10 hours of barking went next door and asked (very nicely) if they could please bring the dog in for a while.  They complied but then the father came over to complain that we had asked that the dog be brought in.  He said chaining the dog in back yard was the only way to train it and once it was trained it would stop barking.  He said that Animal Control had even confirmed after a barking complaint that he was doing nothing wrong.  So we put up with the dog barking.  Luckily, the weather was so awful in April that the dog was rarely outside.  Now as we approach warmer months, we are again treated to the dog’s barking.  The barking begins at 4:30am lasting until we a no longer able to take it and get up.  Again someone called Animal Control and again the neighbors have taken no action to keep the dog from barking.  I do not even set an alarm clock anymore. I just depend on Rover next door to wake me up.

So Sunday night, I had a bit of Black and White Cookie experience (remember that Seinfeld?) after dinner downtown.  So after feeling sick for two hours and then being sick for an hour, I finally crawled into bed at 1:00am exhausted.  It took me quite awhile to fall asleep and once I did Rover began barking and continued to bark off and on until 7:00 am when Evan came in to tell me he was hungry.

Now we don’t want to be evil neighbors and file a complaint and we did address the situation personally with the neighbor.  So what do we do?  I sleep with ear plugs and I am contemplating a white noise machine.  I have even looked into a myriad of devices that are said to keep a dog from barking.

Are we being crazy to think that we should be able to sleep at night?  Is this Karma for my crazy dog from childhood? What would you do?

A Mother’s Day Poem by Evan Maynes:

I love you the greenest

I love you the color of beautiful green grass in the summer

I love you the color of leaves on a tree

I love you tall like a stem of a rose.

I love you like an emerald because you are valuable

I love you like a leprechaun because you are tricky

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you

There is a story I love to tell about my mom.  One Sunday morning during my senior year of high school we were driving in the neighborhood and Howard Jones “Thing can only get better” was playing on the radio.  She turned down the radio and said “I hate that song, things can always get worse”.  My mom also hated it when people said “Everything happens for a reason”.   She could give you lists of things that happened that had no reason and finish her little lecture with “Sometimes shit happens”.

This rather fatalistic philosophy of life allowed my mother to be happy because in some way it freed her.  She never spent too much time railing on the injustices of life and lived in gratitude because “be thankful for what you have” always proceeded “things can always get worse”.   Her world view allowed her to ride out a personal economic disaster in which she lost everything. Through all the turmoil and uncertainty she was able to enjoy her life, without spending too much time being bitter.   Some of the more joyous and beautiful things happened during this time and she never lost the ability to feel true delight in those moments.

I try to focus on the positive and try to not be bitter.  I cannot imagine how she made it through without wanting to kick someone repeatedly and scream at the gods but she did and I wish I had her grace.

My parents came through their economic turmoil and the triumphant symbol that they had finally made it back was their town home.  For almost twenty years it was the center of our family.  It was where we celebrated Christmas Eve (which was also her birthday) and had summer parties in the garage.  It is the first place I went, with a mile wide smile, when Brian proposed.  It was the only place I would take my precious newborn babies sometimes just so I could get a nap or a few hours of adult conversation.  It was where we met before our epic shopping days.  If a relative from Ohio came to visit and we would all end up there, gossiping about the latest family news.  It was the place we gathered when we found out she had cancer and the place we ended up the morning she died.  It was a shrine to her as Dad did not change one thing.  It was where we went to be with Dad, where he and I had a million conversations about politics, hockey and baseball.   Just 4 months ago I sat on the couch at two in the morning trying to convince him to go the hospital not realizing it was the last time I would ever sit on that couch with him.

Today, their town home sits empty, devoid of the life that made it beautiful.  I signed the papers this morning and now it is the center of another family’s life.  I am thankful that we were able to sell it so quickly and smoothly but it is still bittersweet.  It was a closing in more way than one.

On April 24th, 1993  I was on a train to Toledo to attend my beloved Aunt Dolores’ funeral.   My sisters and I had taken the train to Ohio, 24 hours in a cramped, smoky Amtrak car most of which I spent thinking about the guy I met the night before.

A few months before, I had been lamenting to Karen about the lack of available men.   She claimed to have met the perfect guy for me but he had a girlfriend.  I explained to Karen that the presence of a girlfriend made him less than perfect.

The night before my aunt died, Karen called to ask if I wanted to go to Old Chicago’s.  I said I was tired.  She said the perfect guy was coming and he no longer had a girlfriend.  So we went to Old Chicago’s.

I remember that night like it was yesterday. I remember the mullet and the snake-skin boots and how he told me I was too smart to work at the DMV.  He drove me home and asked for my number so we could go out the following night.

The next day was spent planning to get everyone to Ohio.  When he finally called, I had to cancel our date because my aunt died.  He thought I was trying to blow him off.

I told my sisters about him on our train trip. Karen and Meg convinced him that my aunt had actually died and invited him to a party the next weekend.   When I got home, we went to the party together and have been together ever since.

20 years later, the mullet is gone but the boots are still pulled out for rock shows.  After two kids and all the craziness that life has thrown at us there is no one who I would rather be with on this roller coast ride.

Moral of the story: Karen is always right!