b Papa Dog's Blog: A Miscellany of Stuff Attempting to Disguise the Fact that I Don't Have Much on My Mind Today (and Like That)

Papa Dog's Blog

A Thing Wherein I Infrequently Write Some Stuff

Monday, August 09, 2004

A Miscellany of Stuff Attempting to Disguise the Fact that I Don't Have Much on My Mind Today (and Like That)

So, yeah, I've finally started to hear from a few people who've been reading this Faversham, which is a bit of a relief. I was starting to feel like a crusty-looking guy babbling to himself in the park. Really, don't be shy about posting comments (you don't have to be a Blogger member to do so). And if you know anybody you think might enjoy this crap, feel free to send them the Earl. (I guess that would be the Earl of Faversham.)

Anyway, it's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my home town. Yesterday was anomalous in that I spent it worrying that Baby Dog was sleeping too much instead of too little. The Fisher-Price Aquarium Swing has been working maybe a little too effectively. All was back to normal at 7 p.m., though when Cranky Time reared its regularly scheduled ugly head. When I spent the hour between midnight and one swaddling, rocking, and shushing her to sleep (only to have her wake and resume screaming the second her head touched the sheet), it seemed comfortingly like old times.

Doggy Dog (and if you have a better idea for what I should call the dog given the nomenclature herein, please let me know) has been getting short shrift, but seems to be coping well with his demotion from Centre of the Universe. He mostly gets his three walks a day...sometimes he'll miss one because I got too tired or busy or forgetful, in which case he can use the large grassy toilet beyond the back steps. One time round about 10 p.m., he stared at me for about ten minutes before I finally realised I hadn't given him his supper. We brush him even less than before and the foxtails have been a constant vexation. He's had several get embedded, and one formed a cyst a while back. We had the vet look at it, gave him some antibiotics and cold compresses. It went down but has never really gone away. We're mulling a return to the vets and of course worrying about cost should surgery be deemed necessary. Never did get around to buying that pet insurance.

Years ago, I met an African-American fellow in Seattle, and he talked about how the campus (UW, I suppose, though I don't really remember) was so overwhelmingly white that if he saw another black guy across the quad, he always felt obligated to give him The Nod. We've discovered that parenthood is kind of like that, only not because of any shortage of fellow members in our secret society. Here in "Lower Rockridge," the Land of the Stroller and Home of the Bjorn, one could quickly develop whiplash nodding and smiling at all the passing sling laden tot toters. Worse still, if sharing a line with a fellow spawner, one is expected not just to give The Nod but to make actual conversation. Typically, the main avenue of inquiry is regarding the number of weeks or months the bairn in question has thus far spent free of the womb. Is someone keeping a record of the answers? I'm not. If the aim is some sort of demographic analysis, we should really be writing these things down. Also de rigueur is some pleasantry regarding the perceived cuteness of said bairn. Often, this requires a comment that might be described in a Clintonian context as "legally accurate," or in more extreme cases an outright falsehood. Not applicable to our baby, of course. She's unspeakably gorgeous.

Last night we managed to watch all but the last 20 minutes or so of Conrack before Mama Dog ran out of steam. 1974, Martin Ritt. Jon Voight stars as Pat Conroy (who later perpetrated The Prince of Tides), rescuing little African-American kids in rural South Carolina (ca. 1969) from insitutionalised ignorance. The underlying racial politics seem a little suspect today, but I found the movie surprisingly entertaining, and Conrack's quest to give the kids a proper Hallowe'en actually made me feel a little thrill for a holiday I normally abhor. The last 20 minutes could still ruin it for me, but so far, a guarded thumbs up.

Reading Update: Finished a few more chapters of Fifth Business whilst rocking the Li'l Puppy, but I've still hardly made a dent. I continue to quite dig it, though.

Newspaper Update: A new feature wherein we'll monitor my progress catching up on my old stack of SF Chronicles. As of yesterday, I was midway through the Bay Area section from Saturday July 24. In My World, Google is getting ready to announce their IPO, and we're all waiting with baited breath for the oratorical heights to come in the Democratic convention.

1 Comments:

Blogger Tarz said...

Actually, Doggie Dog had an abcess, not a cyst. And, we applied hot compresses to said wound, not cold.

About coming across fellow baby owners in our neighborhood: The questions I mostly get asked and ask are "How old is it?" and "What's its name?" Then, as Papadog said, comments pertaining to the other person's infant's pulchritude normally ensue, even if the thing resembles a herpetic baboon.

Contrast this to what you get asked when you encounter a dog person in the neighborhood:

"How old is he?" "What's his name?" and "Do he bite?"

11:31 AM  

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