This will be the last post for the Blind Dog Blog, and one week from today I'm freeing the bandwidth it's taking for more useful purposes.
When I started this blog, I thought I could write DiDi stories forever. Turns out I can't, and since I ran out of them, all that's been left is my family. And I am really uncomfortable writing about my family. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I was not raised to be so public with something that by its very essence is private.
That leaves writing about me, which I've done, and I find the results vain and disgustingly narcissistic. It's no wonder that hardly anyone bothers to leave a comment. I give you no reason to care.
In short, this has become pointless and there are other far more useful things to do with life. If I can come up with something to blog about that doesn't involve me, maybe I will, but I'm just not cut out for this kind of writing. If you've enjoyed it, I'm glad; but everything I see coming to this page tells me you're in the minority.
Thanks for your time.
No kidding, folks, I'm actually to the point I sometimes forget this blog even exists anymore. Just been busy, nothing else. Here's a quick update of life in the Blind Dog Country:
* Our cat Smokey is now having porch-door staredowns with DiDi in the Great Pet Beyond. The poor critter apparently had a stroke, making her unable to move her rear legs. My stepson got home from school and found her crying in a puddle of pee in the family room, unable to move. He got her to the vet and Mom met him there and the prognosis was, well, literally grave. They said their goodbyes tearfully. This was just over a week ago. Since, my stepdaughter has agreed to leave her cat Cuddles with us (go back to the 2008 posts--I think it's in March or April--to read a fascinating story about Cuddles) while she's honeymooning with her husband in Hawaii.
* Speaking of which, one year to the day after they eloped at the newspaper in Pittsburg where a copy editor just happened to be a licensed minister, my stepdaughter and husband are having their "official" wedding ceremony May 9. It'll have, surprise, a Hawaiian theme. Just maybe I'll put picture of it up here so you can see how we all look in our nice clean LOUD Hawaiian shirts. My wife's outfit is purple. I've never seen a purple Hawaiian shirt before, not to mention a matching skirt, but it looks nice at least hanging in the closet and should look lovely on her I'm sure. We'll see. . .
* Finally, the "publishable" version of my NaNoWriMo novel is submitted to the good people at createspace.com, meaning I'll have the proof copy in a few weeks and y'all can drop $16.00 on it through Amazon so I can have 90 cents for each copy you buy. Wow, this sounds like a promising enterprise. . . I also apparently have the option of setting up my own e-store through them so I can make much more money from suckers, er, literary enthusiasts willing to pay for a PDF the same price as sane, er, ordinary people would pay for a genuine paperback book. Any advice on getting a book REALLY published would be most welcome.
All for now--until I start my next Great American Novel, I should have more time for this silliness. Feel free to encourage (or discourage) me with comments below. :-)
Can you handle a long entry, friend? Long time since I posted and lots of goodies to write about, starting with the most important thing: Right about now, I don't remember exact dates, is the time a year ago that DiDi lost her sight and we had to have her put to sleep. I may write more about that later in the month, if only because the philosophical bender it sent me on is something that still bugs me to this day. Yes, she was just an instinctual animal; yes, she was suffering; yes, it was the right thing to do, yet it still feels strange to know that my signature is on a death warrant. That's pretty much what they have you sign at the veterinary clinic when you have a pet put to sleep, you know it? A death warrant. The actual title for it is something like "euthanasia authorization," but if you read it the actual verbiage says you are giving your permission for them to kill your pet. "I hereby give permission to kill my walking buddy of the past ten years" is what it may as well have said. If you let yourself think about it, it plays with your head something fierce. Much like gout.
Yep, at 45 years and almost four months, I was officially diagnosed an old man today. Lots of uric acid building up around the old big toe joint made it all but impossible for me to walk. Somehow I could drive to the doctor okay to learn what I already suspected. A couple of Aleves has made it more bearable, and I'm supposed to keep popping them to the tune of four a day to keep myself functional. What's really bothering me is how relatively little it hurts. Hell yes it hurts, but not to the point I scream when it's touched, like when my brother had his first flareup. My stepson and I were in Oklahoma to see him at the time. Purely by accident, my stepson gave his foot a soft kick while we were playing cards, and I swear my brother was going to jump across the table and kill him had I not threw up my hands. Mine's not so bad. I can function. I can speak to you without screaming. Tomorrow I'll go back to work.
But what's fascinating is how the pain twists with your head. The smallest misunderstanding, the smallest slight, gets amplified. Where normally I'd let it go as nothing, I start to think "Didn't you hear what I said? Why the hell aren't you LISTENING?!" and it takes a good five to ten minutes to calm it down.
So there's your update. I'll write more coherently later when I'm not pain, I'm sure. :-)
Yep, at 45 years and almost four months, I was officially diagnosed an old man today. Lots of uric acid building up around the old big toe joint made it all but impossible for me to walk. Somehow I could drive to the doctor okay to learn what I already suspected. A couple of Aleves has made it more bearable, and I'm supposed to keep popping them to the tune of four a day to keep myself functional. What's really bothering me is how relatively little it hurts. Hell yes it hurts, but not to the point I scream when it's touched, like when my brother had his first flareup. My stepson and I were in Oklahoma to see him at the time. Purely by accident, my stepson gave his foot a soft kick while we were playing cards, and I swear my brother was going to jump across the table and kill him had I not threw up my hands. Mine's not so bad. I can function. I can speak to you without screaming. Tomorrow I'll go back to work.
But what's fascinating is how the pain twists with your head. The smallest misunderstanding, the smallest slight, gets amplified. Where normally I'd let it go as nothing, I start to think "Didn't you hear what I said? Why the hell aren't you LISTENING?!" and it takes a good five to ten minutes to calm it down.
So there's your update. I'll write more coherently later when I'm not pain, I'm sure. :-)
My NaNoWriMo novel is almost as complete as I can make it. I've already sent early PDF copies to close friends asking what they think. I've not heard back from any of them in several weeks. This means one of two things:
* They're real people with real lives that don't leave them a lot of time for casual reading, or
* My book sucks.
Just as well. Actual criticism can be rather misleading. To show what I mean, here's what some people have said about my work, and what I learned often later than I should have was its proper interpretation:
What they said What they meant
"I liked it!" "It sucks."
"I liked it! It's really good!" "It sucks, but I don't want to hurt your feelings."
"I liked it! It's really good! "It sucks so bad I had to keep reading it to see
I couldn't put it down!" if it ever stopped sucking. Nope."
"You are such a good writer!" "I can't believe YOU wrote this sucking mess!"
"You should get this published!" "So other people can tell you how much it sucks!"
"The characters are so real! "Publish this suckage and I'll be one of several
I think I recognize some of them!" people who'll sue your ass!"
"It has a great plot and interesting, "When you wrote this suckfest, were you smoking
original characters!" a crack pipe or just a bong?"
"I think it should be a movie!" "It could only suck more as a porno flick!"
"This is a brilliant work. Its "Just like everyone else, I think this book sucks
exposition is flawless, it has an like a Hoover; but I took a couple college-level
unexpected and explosive climax, English courses so I'm going to snow you like
and its denouement is sheer genius." Buffalo in January for cheap, sadistic laughs."
It's fun being a writer. Trust me. :-)
My favorite muse is having a drink or two tonight. I don't want to talk out of school, but she's been dealing with multiple fronts of stress and needs to break it. I asked her to have one for my wife and me, stuck in counseling tonight for the stepson's problems already touched upon in earlier entries on this blog. I told her (jokingly) I don't drink at all but this situation had me almost ready to start.
"Deal," she said.
One reason this lady is my favorite muse is she almost effortlessly gets inside my head with whatever she does or says, so naturally I've been thinking about drinking. Here's what I'm thinking: how come no one ever asks me why I don't drink?
It didn't used to be that way. In my late teens to mid twenties, everyone asked me why I didn't drink--and then tried to talk me into starting. To the point I lost a lot of "friends." No crisis, they weren't friends anyway; friends respect your right to be who you are. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe the friends I have now just accept that I don't drink and move on. Maybe it's just maturity.
But it is a good story. There's a lot of things that play into it. This scene from the Clint Eastwood movie Hang 'em High is exactly my granddad's thoughts, my father's father's thoughts:
You're now looking, for the last time, at the mortal body of Francis Elroy Duffy, born to John and Edna Duffy, good, God-fearing folk. Who raised me up to be a good man and a good Christian, and I was a good Christian, a good husband to my beloved wife, good father to my children, who I leave behind, hoping that they, and all you, will learn this here lesson which I leave you with. When you take the devil into your mouth, you're doomed! For he is lying there in wait for you inside that bottle of whiskey. Waiting for you to take him into your mouth. Waiting to get down into your guts where he can do his devil's work. Liquor is the most foul, evil thing in this here world. It destroyed good men like myself. It'll destroy you too. Beer is not much better - it's slower, cheaper. So take these words of advice. And remember, you heard them from a poor sinner, got no more cause to lie, 'cause he's going to meet his Maker. Now he's ready. Well that's all I've got to say.
Granddad thought exactly that--that drinking alcohol was taking the devil into your mouth.
I don't think that. I know plenty of people who drink responsibly. I also have known, especially when I was young, people who would not have any kind of social conversation with you unless it was with alcohol around. I have a very sad, sickening memory of a party in college. One of the staffers at the radio station where I worked held it. I went, thinking it would be a great time; I knew all these people and they knew me and I could just be myself. But it wasn't to be. The keg was late. No one would talk to each other beyond a couple of terse sentences followed by "Where's the keg? Where's the keg? Where's the $#!@#@& keg?"
And then the $#!@#@& keg finally arrived--and everyone ran to it with empty cups as if they'd just arrived after forty days in the desert fighting the Persian Gulf War (though this was 1983, well before that). The keg wasn't just a big beer container. The keg was their God. Their idol to be worshiped and a blasphemy to deny it. Suddenly, Granddad's viewpoint seemed reasonable. I got the hell out of there. I'm not ashamed to admit I cried once out of everyone's sight. It was horrible to see that. You think you know people and you don't, it hurts!
I'm considerably older now and know I wasn't witnessing sacrilege so much as a mass relieving of perceived stress (NOTHING in college is as stressful as the real world, friend). I even tried to drink a little bit. I'll toast at a wedding with champagne; one New Year's Eve I spent with a couple who broke out the bubbly at midnight and we each had two glasses. It had no effect on me at all. So why do I still not drink? Two reasons.
"Deal," she said.
One reason this lady is my favorite muse is she almost effortlessly gets inside my head with whatever she does or says, so naturally I've been thinking about drinking. Here's what I'm thinking: how come no one ever asks me why I don't drink?
It didn't used to be that way. In my late teens to mid twenties, everyone asked me why I didn't drink--and then tried to talk me into starting. To the point I lost a lot of "friends." No crisis, they weren't friends anyway; friends respect your right to be who you are. Maybe that's the reason. Maybe the friends I have now just accept that I don't drink and move on. Maybe it's just maturity.
But it is a good story. There's a lot of things that play into it. This scene from the Clint Eastwood movie Hang 'em High is exactly my granddad's thoughts, my father's father's thoughts:
You're now looking, for the last time, at the mortal body of Francis Elroy Duffy, born to John and Edna Duffy, good, God-fearing folk. Who raised me up to be a good man and a good Christian, and I was a good Christian, a good husband to my beloved wife, good father to my children, who I leave behind, hoping that they, and all you, will learn this here lesson which I leave you with. When you take the devil into your mouth, you're doomed! For he is lying there in wait for you inside that bottle of whiskey. Waiting for you to take him into your mouth. Waiting to get down into your guts where he can do his devil's work. Liquor is the most foul, evil thing in this here world. It destroyed good men like myself. It'll destroy you too. Beer is not much better - it's slower, cheaper. So take these words of advice. And remember, you heard them from a poor sinner, got no more cause to lie, 'cause he's going to meet his Maker. Now he's ready. Well that's all I've got to say.
Granddad thought exactly that--that drinking alcohol was taking the devil into your mouth.
I don't think that. I know plenty of people who drink responsibly. I also have known, especially when I was young, people who would not have any kind of social conversation with you unless it was with alcohol around. I have a very sad, sickening memory of a party in college. One of the staffers at the radio station where I worked held it. I went, thinking it would be a great time; I knew all these people and they knew me and I could just be myself. But it wasn't to be. The keg was late. No one would talk to each other beyond a couple of terse sentences followed by "Where's the keg? Where's the keg? Where's the $#!@#@& keg?"
And then the $#!@#@& keg finally arrived--and everyone ran to it with empty cups as if they'd just arrived after forty days in the desert fighting the Persian Gulf War (though this was 1983, well before that). The keg wasn't just a big beer container. The keg was their God. Their idol to be worshiped and a blasphemy to deny it. Suddenly, Granddad's viewpoint seemed reasonable. I got the hell out of there. I'm not ashamed to admit I cried once out of everyone's sight. It was horrible to see that. You think you know people and you don't, it hurts!
I'm considerably older now and know I wasn't witnessing sacrilege so much as a mass relieving of perceived stress (NOTHING in college is as stressful as the real world, friend). I even tried to drink a little bit. I'll toast at a wedding with champagne; one New Year's Eve I spent with a couple who broke out the bubbly at midnight and we each had two glasses. It had no effect on me at all. So why do I still not drink? Two reasons.
I'm the youngest of four sons. My late teenage years, my dad apparently had what they now call a "mid-life crisis." He dealt with it by drinking a lot of beer. It didn't make him happy. To be blunt, it made him impossible to be around. He wouldn't eat dinner after Mom made it and he constantly accused me of "not caring." As in "Whatcha doin', Dad?" "I'm opening these crawl space vents around the house so it won't mildew down there, but you don't care, you're too busy with your friends at school. Go play with your toys."
We'd covered heredity in health class enough that I saw if, intoxicated, my father was an insufferable ass, most likely intoxicated I would be an insufferable ass. I learned later that what my father was displaying was signs of alcoholism. I don't think he is one, though. He still drinks beer, just not nearly as often, and even after having a heart attack in 2006 he's in far better humor than those days. I've never brought those days up to see what was going on because that's not how my parents tick. They're not into navel-gazing; they prefer to deal and move on. I think it's a Great Depression thing. Not a lot of Great Depression survivors are introspective; ever noticed that?
Reason number two is knowing my own mental makeup. Remember the movie Tootsie? Bill Murray's in it. He's an unsuccessful playwright. Very early in the movie, his character is drunk. That's me if I ever let myself get that way: quiet, sullen and so sickeningly full of himself he's impossible to be around. I know, "how do you know that if you've never been drunk before?" Trust me, I know. There's stuff in my head I don't want anyone getting hold of.
Again: As long as they're not doing it just to get stupid sloppy drunk, I have no problem with drinking in general. My wife likes a margarita now and then (what is it with women and margaritas?). Fine, I tell her; I'll drive.
I think I've figured out why no one ever asks me why I don't drink: Because they know they'll get a long-winded answer like this. Hope I didn't put you to sleep. :-)
