What's Happening?

Back in the day, I loved to watch after school television. One of my favorites was called “What’s Happening?” I don’t know why I loved it so much but if I missed it, I’d be very upset.

The show was about three African American friends by the name of Raj, Dwayne and Rerun. The plot of the show mostly dealt with their meeting up in diner everyday and talking about their problems and each of them making fun of each other. The diner had a waitress named Shirley who had attitude and pretty much disliked everyone. But boy could she come up with great comebacks and one-liners! She was my hero.

Raj was a total nerd and he had a younger sister, Dee who often made an appearance on the show. She and Raj didn’t get along too well. They showcased the typical sibling rivalry especially that of the older, protective brother over a precocious little sister. Occasionally, we’d see their mom and she was always the voice of reason. She also had the most calming voice I had ever heard.

Rerun had high hopes. He wanted to be a star but he lacked something. He lacked a small frame. Rerun was heavy set and often a lot of the laughs on the show came from his being big-boned. He had a good heart, as they all did but he was just misguided.

Dwayne was the ‘dumb’ one in the group. The picnic basket was definitely missing some sandwiches with him. But he was cute and lovable and had a nice smile. He always got the girl, including this one. I had a little crush on him, I admit it.

The reason I bring this up is that I was talking to a friend about how good tv shows were back in the day. Perspective is an important thing. While I loved Shirley when I was young, I’m pretty darn sure she’d annoy the heck out of me in real life. Her negativity would aggravate the crud out of me of me now-a-days. I guess I should try to track down that show and see if it is as great now as I thought it was back when I was a kid.

O Canada!

More than a month ago, I went to Vancouver and Victoria B.C. in Canada. I had been to Vancouver before and remembered liking it immensely. Going again only solidified my original idea. Vancouver is such a lovely and green place. The people there were super friendly and overall, it was clean and easy to get around.

Stanley Park, one of the main attractions in Vancouver, was verdant and immense, even if it was raining a bit while we were there. The views of the water and the mountains surrounding Vancouver made it look like a postcard!

We took a ferry to Victoria one day and although it was a bit chilly, the views were worth it - lush greenness everywhere. Seagulls flew alongside our boat and didn’t caw at us like the seagulls in the States do.

I’ve been to Canada a number of times and each time I am so blown away by how polite everyone is. One of the public buses actually had a note on the front saying ‘Out of Service. Please wait for the next bus.
Sorry for the inconvenience”. I nearly fell on the floor because you would never see Manhattan public transit take responsibility for any of the transportation issues, much less be nice about causing the inconvenience.

It just makes me wonder why we’ve become so rude and impolite here in NYC. I know the idea of the Big Apple is all about getting ahead and it’s dog eat dog. But is it really any better to be nasty to each other? I don’t think so. We could learn a lot about niceness and leading a more pleasant life by taking some pointers from our neighbors to the north.

Exercise Partners

In the summer months I tend to spend the weekends out on Long Island at my parent’s house. As much as I love going there and enjoying the place, I don’t have access to my local gym to do my daily workouts. To make up for this I do exercise DVDs. I have an array of them – mostly from ‘The Biggest Loser’ line. I find them helpful and challenging and I get my exercise in during the weekend.

While I work out, I get the occasional assistance from Foxy. She’s my personal trainer. She comes over when I am doing ab work and licks my face to let me know I’m doing a good job. Often too when I am working on my butt and thighs, she’ll lean over and lick the sweat off my face. Whenever I do yoga, she encourages me by showing me exactly how to do ‘downward dog’. She says I don’t put enough emphasis in my shoulders. I couldn’t agree more with her recommendations. Whenever I’m cooling down, she’ll come over and help me with straddle stretches by getting between my legs and giving me her belly. This way as I rub her stomach, I’m going lower into my stretch.

Foxy is far more interested in my well being but that doesn’t mean Bonnette doesn’t care. Sometimes when I am doing crunches, I see her between my feet and she smiles at me. She too enjoys licking my face to remove the perspiration that is accumulating.

Last weekend, I encouraged my sister to do a yoga workout with me. It was challenging in the extreme humidity. Foxy made sure both my sister and I were not overheating by going back and forth between us and kissing us. When it came to the cool down, my sister and I were doing some stretches on the floor, pulling our knees to our chests. Foxy decided that it was a good time to show us how she does this stretch. She got on her back too, showed us her tummy and pulled in her knees and arms. While doing this relaxing stretch, she showed us how important it is to stick your tongue out when doing rigorous exercise in the heat.

The Mexican walked by while we were doing our stretches and wished he had a camera to capture the yoga class that we were conducting. I called this yoga session – ruff yoga for Foxy. I’m grateful that she’s always so on top of my health.

Bad to the Bone

Rat Terriers are a spunky breed of dog. They are small and very energetic as puppies. They get a little less energetic as they grow older but not by much. The one thing I know for sure is that they know what they want and they know how to communicate it.

Bonnette has always been a vocal dog. From the first day that I bought her home, she didn’t want to stay in her crate that night. She cried and began to bark her little bark. She gave me those eyes when I went to check on her and well, that was pretty much the end of it. So at 2 months old, she knew how to manipulate. And she was good at it.

After the first couple of weeks, I had to lay down the law with her. There would be no chewing of my shoes, no eating of paper, no begging for food. I trained and trained her and she became manageable. She still barked every so often – bizarre noises, the ‘you aren’t paying attention to me’ bark - but she was much better. She would sit, give me five, lie down, stay and leave it. ‘No’ would get a look but she’d ultimately obey.

Then she got to spend some time with her grandparents and all hell broke loose. When I got her back, she was a barking machine. When she didn’t like something she would certainly let me know. One time on a trip to Vermont, we took her and Foxy on a walk to a waterfall. Along the way, we encountered some puddles and Bonnette got very wet. She turned around and barked at us and ran towards the car. She got to the car and barked at us to get over there and open the door. She seemed to say ‘I’m dirty and cold and I need to get in this car pronto!’. We have been joking since that day that Bonnette is punctuating every sentence with ‘bitches’. “Give me my food, bitches’, “I need to go for my walk now, bitches’ etc.

Despite this barking, she’s very affectionate and protective and I love her tremendously. It’s her attitude that makes her adorable at times. Other moments it’s just that even though she is 12 years old, she’s still a puppy. She’s still got that plucky personality that made me fall in love with her all those years ago.

Cone Head

About a month ago, my dog Foxy got bitten by some kind of bug. It produced an allergic reaction all over her tummy and legs that made her itch like crazy. In her attempts to relieve her itching, she bit and chewed off parts of her fur and had actually made herself bleed with all the itching and chewing. It was horrible to see.

We rushed her to the vet where she was given a cortisone injection to relieve the need for itching. She was given a lot of medicine to alleviate the need to itch and to ensure that her open wounds would heal. All of this would have been fine. But she was also given a cone to wear around her head to keep her from continuing to bite at her wounds.
For a while I wasn’t even sure what was worse, seeing her bite her wounds raw or watching her being frustrated with a cone on her head. For the first day, she attempted everything imaginable to remove the cone. She put her face on the floor which resulted in a sight that looked like a lampshade on the floor with a curved fuzzy animal bending out of it. She pawed at the end of the cone to try to pull it off. No luck. She walked into trees with the side of the cone in hopes that it would just bounce right off. She used a hydrant to pull on the string that kept the cone tied to her neck. Every attempt was foiled.

She finally got used to it – as much as she could be, I guess. She walked around dejected and sad – as if she was being punished. We kept encouraging her that it was temporary and that it was so she wouldn’t have to go to the vet again (the visit to the vet alone caused an insane amount of panic in her which broke my heart as well). She just sat with her tummy on the floor and the cone around her head and gave us sad eyes. An occasional sigh could be heard emanating from the cone. She was so depressed.

After cleaning up all the food that got trapped in her cone and clipping all the matted hair around her face due to the saliva and drool that collected in the cone at night, I decided to give her a chance. The chance came when I was trying to drive my car and she kept hitting me with the cone…it was time to remove the cone.

When it was pulled off her head, she was ecstatic! She started wagging her tail again. She gave me ‘paw’. She kissed my hand and face to show her appreciation. The smile returned to my doggy’s face. All this begs the question – isn’t there a better way to get dogs to not bite themselves?

The Book by Its Cover

Recently I read a book called ‘Marry Him: The Guide to Marrying Mr. Good Enough’. Strange as it seems for me, a married woman, to read a book like this – I wanted to see what this author had to say for my single friends. The author makes a good point that occasionally a book looks interesting from the cover and then you get into it and you can’t believe how great or bad it is. What she means to say is that sometimes the superficial is fantastic in a potential mate but the inside is horrible. Or the inside is fantastic but you need a little time to get to see that with a person as well as you would with a book.

It made me think about how many books I started and was seriously trudging through until at a certain point they picked up speed and I couldn’t put them down. But I had to invest the time to get to that point where I didn’t want to put the book down. And I had to invest some time to get to a point where I could decide that I’d rather have needles inserted into my retina than to continue reading a book.

Her whole argument is that women often say there is no spark or chemistry after the first date. And that’s just not enough time to make that call. I had to agree with that. Even my husband for instance, who I met while he was wearing a hideous bright red Hawaiian shirt, would never have gotten past the book by its cover phase if I had used the criterion that so many women use.

I knew I liked him that first night. It was easy to talk to him and he was funny. I can’t entirely say if we had sparks or chemistry, I just knew I liked his sense of humor. But he had that shirt and he was plagued with two left feet. If I had abandoned him that night, I’d need to read that book right now but from a different perspective.

I kept thinking about my husband and all the fantastic books I never would have read or experienced if I had just left them at the cover and the first few pages. So women, please let some of the hang ups go! Give some people and books a little bit of a chance.

Hole-y Moley

Social graces elude me on a consistent basis. I've walked around with two completely different shoes on around the office a couple of times. I've forgotten my regular bra and had to wear my sport bra under my work clothes a few time. Mismatching socks are good and trustworthy friends. I've even left the house with a jacket that still had the security tag on it from the store.

Scatterbrained ---maybe?

But what happened when as I'm tucking my shirt into my pants in the bathroom at work today I notice a big hole in my pants right on my rear end? Well, I tried to tuck the shirt in and it just seemed obvious as the white shirt poked out of a space on my grey pants. So I decided to not tuck in the shirt, but the occasional reflection of my bright fushia underwear made its appearance on the white shirt. So, I got out my jacket. And that covered it to a point. The bottom of the jacket hit just below the hole. But that meant, I had to consistently verify that the jacket was covering the hole.

That was ok but I realized that as I sat down,the pants gave way a bit and the hole showed whenever I got up. Cinch it to the rescue! I pulled in as much of the pant as I could into the belt I was wearing. And then I collected all the extra material like a group of clothing petals that formed over my belt.

My tactics worked, luckily. Stylish, I was not! But I was successful at keeping others from noticing my holey pants!