Oh the Terror!

Finals week. Oh, my God! Deliver me from grad school. I kiss the feet of any professor that does NOT give a final. But this one does . . . and though it's an on-line final, it's still a test. A test called a final. A final worth triple the points of any written assignment. Short answer questions. Two huge essay questions. A variety of multiple choice questions. Interestingly, I do far better on the essay questions. I tend to over-think the multiple choice -- or in some cases -- read them completely wrong and I always miss a couple. Even when I honestly do the know the answers.

I have huge test anxiety. Couch-potato analysis would attribute it to my grade school years. I have never been a good speller, it is NOT an innate talent for me: I don't hear the letters, I never learned phonics, and in grade school the weekly tests were always spelling tests. I failed a good many of those. I hated memorizing the words . . . so I didn't. I could define them. I just couldn't spell them. Then there were geography tests and I'm not very good with maps, either. And math tests. I failed almost every one of those from fifth grade on until someone (my grandmother) realized when I got to high school that I never learned my multiplication tables.

So huge test anxiety. Sweaty palms. Heart palpitations. Sleepless nights. Stomach aches. I get them all.

Studies show that one of the common nightmares among adults is about not showing up at the right time for a test. I go one step further and in my recurring nightmare of the last 30 years, I have enrolled in a grad school class but then forgot to show up until it was time to test. Then I remember I need to attend the class so I drive to campus and can't find a parking place or the the right building or the right classroom -- and when I finally get to the testing room, with only 20 minutes left on the clock, I open the test booklet to discover I also forgot to read the text and I can not answer a single question. Every time I've had this dream I've always awakened KNOWING that I have my masters and that I never need to go back to grad school. You can imagine my delight in being back after a twenty-five year absence.

The final is Thursday. It is open book, it is web-based, there are only two essay questions and I've done all the research on the reviews offered by the professor. Over the weekend I finished off the last three papers for the class. Now, all I've got to do is endure the test terrors that will overtake me until the last question is finally answered.

Our Loving, Gentle Boy

While Wolfie, of the previous post, may have been my heart dog, the dog that came a week after Wolf died has proven to be the sweetest, best behaved, calmest of dogs that we have ever owned. Little Gus was found wandering the streets of Ottawa, Kansas and though he was tagged, his owners never answered the repeated calls to come collect him. This wasn't the first time he had wandered away and been turned over to animal control, so the Bea Martin Peck Pound took him and advertised for a family. Though my heart was never up for his adoption, Fritzy (who had also come from Bea Martin Peck) and Hubby were definitely in the market for a second dog. Hubby completed the adoption; I merely rode along to pick up the dog.

Gustav is small and sturdy. His eyes are huge and amber colored. His fur is almost white. He is, and has always been, serene but as he ages he becomes more contemplative and introspective. He does not dance with joy just for the sport of it. He will dance, of course, to see his pack return from a trip or when offering him a ride in the car, but he never dances just because he's alive and the world is good. He needs a reason to dance. He does not sing as some Schnauzers do. He is a fairly quiet little boy.

Gus does not hump his housemate. Ever. He does not care about being alpha dog. Fritzy humped him weekly -- and now Luie has taken Fritzy's place. Gus does not care. He simply stands, serenely quiet, as if to say, "let me know when you think you're through you silly goose for both you and I know you haven't the balls to carry through with this stupid activity." And when Luie loses interest in riding Gus's backside, Gus moves on as though nothing untoward had happened.

Gus does not care if he is fed first. We make it a point to do so -- giving Luie who is dancing for all he's worth the first bowl would just increase his demands to be alpha of everything he surveys. Gus simply wants to be sure that he has a bowl of food. He doesn't care what is in Luie's bowl and he does not wander over to nudge Luie out of the way to see if Luie has something better. The humans, though, have to stand guard to make sure that Luie does not nudge Gus out of the way, because Gus will NOT go over to Luie's bowl and dig in. He just wanders off looking sad.

The only alpha activity that Gus has commanded is pride of place in the car. Fritzy had moved into Wolf's position on my lap in the front seat of the car after Wolf died and there he rode for the next four years, Gus was always relegated to the back seat. The moment Fritzy died, Gus claimed the front seat -- and most specifically my lap. Fritzy was an agile, bendable dog and he rode comfortably on my right thigh, leaning up against the window. Gus is not agile. He has short, stiff legs. He frequently has back and hip problems. We've had him X-rayed twice and nothing shows up to explain why he suddenly goes lame, but this happens maybe every other month or so. Gus does not jump well. He cannot get on our bed by himself but must be lifted up. On my lap, he perches precariously, neither of us exactly comfortable. On long trips, I prop a pillow under him so he can lie down more easily, but even then, neither of us are particularly settled in our positions. Since this is the only alpha position Gus has ever demanded in our house, I am happy to give my lap up to him (except on those mornings when he has paraded himself through the mud and I'm wearing white pants to school -- then we argue back and forth, with me telling him to get in the backseat -- a command all our dogs have learned -- and Gus jockeying to clamber by hook or crook to have some portion of him, even if it's just a paw, laying on my body -- the kids now expect me to have paw prints on my clothes on rainy days).

Luie is frustrated by this alpha need of Gus to be in the front seat. He tries to worm his way onto my lap, squeezing out Gussie. Gus never growls, never moves a muscle. He may turn his head and look deeply into my eyes to be assured that I'm not going to displace him, but he never turns on Luie. But Luie is our attention deficit dog and even he manages to move Gussie, he never wants to be in one place very long. All Hubby has to do is open a back window and Luie is off to smell the outside world or chew on the seat belt or find the empty water bottle and try to kill it. Gus will then settle down uncomfortably on my lap, and lift a paw in hopes that a friendly hand might offer up a chest rub.

Last summer when Fritzy was dying slowly of kidney failure, I got quite sick -- first with a drug interaction and then with the flu. I spend nearly three weeks in bed and during that time, Fritzy laid listlessly on the bed with me, sleeping lightly, and demanding nothing -- not even food. Gus, still a young dog, laid between both of us, watching over us. He only asked to go out when absolutely necessary. In our house we must walk the dogs -- there is no opening the door and letting them out on their own. Gus would lay, quietly, on the bed with Fritzy and me, asking only that we keep the water bowl full and not leave home without him.

Gus does not pee in the house. Fritzy would sneak a little leak here and there. Wolfie, at age 17 (or 19 or however old he actually was) had lost the will to care about where he peed. If he needed to go, Wolfie went - and we quietly, and without comment, cleaned it up. Gus came into a house that still had Wolf's scent -- and never once peed on it. He has, once in a while, gotten sick, and had an accident -- but he has never, once, willfully peed in the house. That would be messy is what he seems to think.

The only time Gus has ever been unhappy with his family was the day he woke up from the teeth cleaning to find that nearly all his grabbing teeth were missing. Poor boy, he's both lame and born with rotten teeth. He kept his fangs, but all his front teeth, top and bottom, are gone -- and he was so disgusted with us because now he could no longer occupy himself with large chew bones. How in the world he was gnawing on them with those horribly rotten, wobbling teeth, no one ever figured out.

Gus is a gentleman. He does not growl or bite or nip. He does not paw on visitors for attention. He can bark to protect the front door, but that makes him pure Schnauzer. He is accepting in sharing his home with housemates. He is a good guest when we travel. He comes when he is called. He is never demanding. He will ask before he tries to jump in a lap. He walks perfectly on the leash (while Luie pulls and charges and refused to pay attention). He loves to cuddle next to me in bed but when the time for actual sleeping comes, he is happy to settle on the foot of the bed because I can never stay in one position very long (and if I could only convince him to sleep vertically instead of horizontally there would be room for both Gus AND my feet).

The truly sad thing is that Luie is the dog destined for the temperament of the humans in this family. We are the "take charge, barge ahead" people. We, like Luie, want to advance on life and bite it in the butt. We don't really understand what this sweet, gentle temperament is all about. We don't really "get" Gussie and we don't actually appreciate all his finer points. He's just so . . . passive. Maybe it's because he came right on Wolf's death and he innately go the message that he could never measure up to the "perfect heart dog." Maybe it was because we were so intense on making Fritzy alpha dog when Wolf was gone. Maybe we forced him into this submissive role. However, sad it is, we have to remind ourselves that Gussie is the perfect house dog. He is everything a dog owner would want.

Gus is so loving and accepting and innately good, that sometimes I think we don't deserve him. He has to compete with a dog he never knew to get love from a heart that is forever cracked. But he has managed, with his big amber eyes and his sweet, giving disposition, to heal over many of the seams in my broken heart. He is probably the very best dog we have ever owned, even compared to the incomparable Wolfie -- and he has given us a generosity of spirit that we simply have not earned. We love you dearly, sweet Gus, and we thank you from the bottom of our broken hearts. We will try, from here on, to do better by your sweet self.

Butts

Written in May, 2002, I came across this old e-mail and it so summed up how much I loved my Wolfie, I thought I re-post it in his memory. During this time I was still running my own business with a contract at the local #3 telecommunications company. Wolfie, my heart dog, died in October 2005 -- and though my spirit is once again strong, my heart has never totally healed. This is just one reason why:

It's been a long week in Kansas City (sorry Garrison, had to borrow your line).

I've been working long, stressful hours -- and showing it. Road rage attacked me twice on my way to work last week. I actually treated a coworker like one of my students, even if she did annoy the crap out of me, this was not appropriate. She's very young, though, and she responded just like my kids at school used to -- hopped right to the task she had been avoiding for three weeks. I quit talking to my best friend at work because I wanted to wring her neck, too -- and silence was better than an explosion. Stress has been bringing me low -- and playing havoc with my common sense.

Last night I walked in the door after a 12-hour day and the doggies were home. Usually they spend my working hours with Hubby, but he had things to do and people to see, so he had left the dogs at home. I opened the front door to find Wolf and Fritz beside themselves with joy.
Well, sure, they are always happy to see one of us return, even if we've been gone only two minutes. Fritzy did his normal "look at me -- pet me - I'm glad to see you - I'm gonna go get the ball and YOU can play with ME" routines.

But my Wolf is a very special boy. He started wagging his tail. And then he wagged his whole butt. It was just like a clock pendulum -- swinging back and forth, side to side, over and over. His eyes smiled and his butt swayed.

I'd come in the door typically evil. Feeling nasty, thinking of all the stuff I had to do the next day, pissed cause I'd had a rotten lunch and no dinner was waiting on the table for me. And there was Wolf. Eyes filled with love, butt working overtime, swaying back and forth, stubby tail moving as fast as a Wolf could work it.

And suddenly I was less tired. I dropped everything -- briefcase, purse, pager, cell phone, key cards, software carrying case, water bottle, door & car keys and plopped down on the floor right at the door. And Wolf -- still swinging his butt as hard as he could, put both paws on my chest, stood on his hind legs, and put his front legs around my neck, to show me how happy he was I had come in the door. He kissed me over and over. And I kissed him back. And we hugged.
Fritzy ran hither and yon, scampering over the house, dropping toys as fast as he could trying to distract us into playing. Wolf and I just hugged . . . and hugged . . . and hugged. And Wolf's little butt just kept up the rapid sway.

No butt ever looked so good . . . or brought such joy. The stress began to ease, the tension fell away, and Wolf settled into my lap, offering up his full attention until I could finally rise, again, renewed, at peace, and ready to face the world.

Keep the faith -- and take the time to appreciate the love – Milly

Brain Melt

It is HOT here in Kansas City. I know the entire Midwest is H O T! A friend in lower Minnesota is complaining about 98 degree temps while here it is only 95. The humidity though sends the heat index to over 105. Another dog friend in Chicago has had high temps with power outages. Now that's awful! I'm grateful to have a powerful house AC that keeps us cool indoors. Hubby has finally found and paid for a radiator for the Aurora and they are picking up my car this afternoon to install it. That means that hopefully before the week ends we will have air conditioning in my little car. It's been darned hot driving around without it.

This morning I went to the dentist. I go to the UMKC Dental School -- have for the last 20 years. I really like it. If a mistake is made, they fix it, no questions asked -- and because you have students working on you, everything they do is scrutinized and supervised. Last summer we filled my last cavity just before my student graduated. Unfortunately, I had swallowed four Ibuprofen before I left home, not knowing that it was this aspirin that was interacting so badly with my prescribed meds. Anyway 90 minutes into the filling, I get violently sick to my stomach and then proceeded to throw-up every seven minutes until they got the hole in my mouth filled and could send me homeward. My student dentist, as would be expected, rushed the job -- and then immediately graduated (probably blessing the day she never had to see me again). I was left with a filling that did not make contact with my other teeth -- a huge yawning cavity that every piece of food that enters my mouth seems to get stuck in. This summer my brand new dental student, a strapping young man, is repairing the filling and also replacing a very ancient one in a back molar next to it. It's all good, but it was very hot driving to and from the dental school without air conditioning.

The news reports that Ed McMann died at the age of 86 today. I know he had been sick for some time. And the family with eight children, Jon & Kate something-or-other, are divorcing. I'm not sure why that story is topping the news. Their kids are cute but frankly I could care less whether the parents are happily married. The supreme court, contrary to expectation, upheld the voting rights act -- except for that complete idiot Clarence Thomas who wrote a dissenting opinion (of course). Three adults and one child were killed in the neighboring city in which I teach and no one seems to know why. A neighborhood just 40 blocks from my inner city house was judged the sixth most violent neighborhood in the NATION. Iran has election woes. Certainly the picture of the dead Iranian woman that topped international news last night was highly disturbing.

Tonight I have class from 5 to 8 p.m. I got my paper completed but I'm aware that it isn't up to my usual standard. I've delayed putting it in the Internet drop box so I can give it one last re-reading to see if I can fill in a couple of the wholes I know exist. I used the National Archives site to develop my Universal Design for Learning lesson plan for social studies. It's a wonderful site and if you haven't checked it out, plan to spend some time there clicking around on all the links.

The heat has me beat. I slept well last night but I think I'm ready for nap again this afternoon. We have at least five more days ahead of us like this. I wonder what the neighbors would think if I set up the lawn sprinkler and just went outside and laid down in it?

Slowly on Saturday

Another paper is due on Tuesday for my grad school class. Three more chapters in the text book need to be read besides the three I only skimmed from last week. The stereo cabinet is still not completely redecorated. The bottom two shelves need arranging. A whole heap of wash has piled up both in the bedroom and in the basement.

My heart just isn't feeling industrious today. Last night was a long night of non-sleeping. I caught up on the news magazines and People while the boys snored softly curled next to Hubby. Eventually, when my legs could no longer stand the tingling, I got up and read on-line journals until my eyes were bleary. Then I tried again to sleep. Eventually around 4 a.m. I managed a couple of hours of dozing in and out. Consequently, I feel all fuzzy headed and disoriented today.

The weather isn't cooperating either. We have had a succession of days with temps hovering in the low 90's but the humidity has caused the heat index to read over 100 every day. My body feels like it's infested with mold and damp rot. This especially happens in my little car which has no air conditioning - and the 5 p.m. drive to class is like I've put in 40 minutes in a sauna. In the house we're blessedly cool and dry with a very powerful central AC system -- but anytime I venture outdoors, I'm miserable.

Somehow I seem to run through all the USA network NCIS reruns -- and now I have no TV to watch during my down time. I'd start a book - but I need to read that darned text book so I can't justify opening a new novel. The boys would love a walk in the park, but it's sooo hot outside. I don't want to clean, do the wash, or write a paper. I don't want to read a text book. I've already caught up on all the on-line journals and played my computer games until I'm bored with them.

Whine. Whine. Whine.

And that's the news for today from my world. I'll be better tomorrow (I hope).

Let there be -- TEA!

Many years ago, when Hubby was young and strong, he built a stereo cabinet for our house. Remember stereos? Record players, tuners, speakers -- we even had a reel-to-reel. He built the cabinet to contain all his "equipment" which, after five years of living together, he decided was safe to bring into "our" house.

Many people feel we have the best of all worlds -- Hubby kept his own house after we bought the little bungalow we share. For a while his adopted mother lived there. Then it stood empty after she died. Eventually he rented the house. Then a tenant who was on the wrong side of the law got in trouble with his drug-running buddies and they tried to burn the house down in retaliation. Actually, only the garage and back part of the house burned but because of water and smoke damage, the entire house had to be rehabbed. So we gave up on tenants and turned the house into an office . . . and Hubby, who must always be busy, keeps his tools and workshop there and runs little business ventures out of it. Actually, the current venture isn't so little, but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, back to the stereo cabinet. Hubby built a floor to ceiling (10 feet?) wood cabinet with spaces measured to fill all his equipment AND records. This cabinet is SO huge and heavy that it takes up half a wall and requires a team of men to move (it's made of wood, remember?). But then stereo equipment began to shrink. The reel-to-reel was the first to go. Then the cassette players. Finally we boxed up the records and sent them to Hubby's house along with the record player. Now we have the CD that plays multiple discs, a tuner, and hundreds of CDs which need racks to hold them, not shelves.

I began to turn the huge wooden stereo cabinet into display shelves. I collected those Christmas houses for a while. The top three shelves held them. I collected tea pots and the bottom two shelves held them.

And then I quit keeping house. Hubby, who had never kept house, didn't seem to notice. Clearly the dogs didn't care. The dishwasher broke and we didn't replace it for seven long years and during that time, I just didn't go into the living room. Well, I dusted it maybe once a year. And then I kind of stopped even doing that. The room was filled with blue glass and flowers and art work and winter houses and tea pots - and the job just became too massive to tackle without a dishwasher for the glass. Oh - did I say there was a baby grand piano in the room, loaded with art glass and expensive statuary?

Only Fritzy ever really visited the living room. And his purposes were less than altruistic. He made it his job to water the tea pots and tea cups on the bottom shelving. Whenever I'd actually go into the living room, I had to clear off the bottom shelf and empty the tea cups of his pee. You might want to re-think if I ever invite you over and offer you a fine porcelain cup filled with fresh brewed tea. I didn't clear off the shelves to stop him because I actually had no place to store the things displayed there. This house is crammed full to the rafters. Just when I'd think I finally had Fritzy trained not to pee on the bottom shelf of the cabinet, I'd find that he has sneakily discovered a new way to hide his activity.

Getting the CD player working this past weekend made me re-evaluate the stereo cabinet. Hubby has offered to remove it. I've thought about it, but he made it -- for us. It was a labor of love -- and trust (Hubby loves his music probably better than anything in his life, even now, when he no longer makes music -- I imagine he would trade me in to get his voice back - and I don't begrudge him that thought - if I had a talent like that I'd do anything in my power to keep it -- time and age are ugly masters). Anyway, I'm keeping the stereo cabinet.

My grad course this summer is about UDL -- Universal Design Learning -- which means making everything, including learning, accessible to EVERY one. This got me thinking about making our living room, once again, accessible to the family. The one thing I would like to do and can't, is replace the wall-t0-wall carpeting with that fake wood flooring you can wipe down in a jiffy. Old dogs, sick dogs -- we've had them. And frankly, carpeting with incontinent dogs is less than attractive. You just never get rid of the smell, especially to new dogs, when the sick dogs have gone on to better rewards. The guests might not know, but the new dog can tell immediately where the favorite pee spot was for the old dog. Consequently, under the baby grand is where every sick dog (young or old) goes to have accidents. And this old body of mine is less than agile in getting under there now. But the piano and the wood stereo cabinet are simply too big for us to move out if carpet is to be replaced. Hubby, not yet ready to concede that he can't fix this problem for us himself, has at least had the seed planted. The carpeting must go -- if not this year, in the near future.

The piano will probably go first. It was his piano; he acquired it for $50 and kept it in his living room during his bachelor days. When I first saw it, he had dirty underwear and a handgun laying inside the lid. We had it restored, refinished, and for 25 years it has been our prize possession, but now no one plays it. Hubby doesn't play and twelve years of piano lessons only gave me the ability to read sheet music - not to really MAKE music. My back is so destroyed with arthritis now that I can't sit at the backless bench for more than ten minutes or so at a time -- and consequently, the automatic knowledge that once made my fingers play specific notes is pretty well lost. We've talked about selling the piano -- but can't bring ourselves to advertise it. Lately we've talked about giving it to someone who will love it as we once did. Now, it sits in grand, dusty splendor, taking up most of our living room, untouched, untuned, and only the dogs visit it for nefarious purposes.

So . . . the winter houses are going to be mostly put away. The stereo shelves are so deep that I can leave a few for height interest. I found that the ugly plastic CD holders, if turned sideways, will fit in the spaces originally intended for the reel-t0-reel and cassette players. The cabinet is once again holding music as it was intended.

That leaves the tea pots. I found the last saucer yesterday that was still yellow from Fritzy's pee. It made me sad when I put it in the dishwasher. Poor little, stubborn Fritzy who died so young (okay, he was 10 -- but that's young now-a-days) from kidney failure. He had spent all eight years of his time with us filling up those tea cups. The new dogs don't water the tea cups anymore. They sniff them inquiringly (because clearly I hadn't cleaned up all that pee from last summer) but they don't add their own scent. Luie only visits the living room to leave a little something under the piano. Gus only visits if he's sick.

I'm putting the tea pots back on the shelves, only this time higher up. They will now go where the winter houses have sat. No dogs will get to pee on them. Holding each tea pot brought me a measure of joy I haven't felt in household things in some time which is why I'm leaving them out. The ones that didn't (only two, actually) were stored away with the houses (I found a couple of boxes -- Hubby can figure out where to put them in the garage after I have them filled.

Slowly, the stereo cabinet is cleaning up. The dust has been wiped away. The CDs are organized. The player works. The tea pots are slowly being washed, dried, and admired. At least one corner of the living room will be clean come July. Another era of our lives has passed, though. It's all bitter - sweet.

A picture from several years ago (not the stereo cabinet) showing how packed out little house is with stuff. The blue glass was mostly stored away ten years ago.

Let there be -- MUSIC!

I am so excited! So very thrilled! There is once again music in my house.

The savage beast in me needs music, beautiful classical music, lyric tenors, sopranos who screech even, basses of the profundo variety, an alto here and there (Jesse Norman! yeah!) and a few "easy listening" CD's thrown in for variety -- a little Celine, a little Barbra and some Josh.

For the last four years the CD player has sat silent. Hubby got one I couldn't make play easily -- six slots and I'd push buttons and nothing would happened. I don't like complicated appliances. I want them to go automatically with little to no help on my part. After Hubby also hooked up the player so it would play in both the computer room and the living room and I had to decide between A & B buttons, I was truly lost. I had a CD player at the construction trailer so I used that as my outlet. At home I watched TV or played on the computer. Then I started teaching three years ago and going to grad school at night, so there was no time for music. If I wasn't working on classwork, I was studying, and if not that I was trying to keep up with the laundry and get some sleep (another story all together). Music was relegated to church activities. Then those, too, stopped.

Hubby had the aneurysm and music went clean out of our lives. He no longer sings. The man who always made music is silent. The CD player with all the speakers arranged around the house collected dust. Only at Christmas, when we were traveling on the road, did we drag out the CD's to play driving in Oklahoma (ever try to find a decent classical music station in Oklahoma?).

All through this spring I looked at the assorted CD's scattered all over our house, CD's that had been pulled from their cabinets, taken out of the their cases, stacked up here and there on various corners, just collecting dust and never being played. Like a good book that needs to be read, good music simply needs to be heard. I decided that my one of my summer chores would be to gather the CD's, put them in cases, resort them, and store them in all the respective CD holders (floor and table-top) around the living room (and in the garage).

All morning and afternoon today I worked on them. Hubby, having a summer cold, napped and peeked out at me every now and them while I sweated my way through hundreds (yes, hundreds) of CD's. I'm still not through, but I have all the Christmas CD's now in traveling cases for Houston (there are at least 150 of these). All the divas and tenors are back in their respective slots next to the CD player been turned on in over three years -- because when you pushed buttons nothing happened.

Finally, Hubby dragged out of bed and wandered into the living room. He pulled a wire here and then one there and determined the player wasn't plugged in -- the problem with finding where the plug was missing was difficult because of all the speakers hooked into the machinery. But 40 minutes of grappling on the floor with various chords, I suddenly heard music. Oh! Bliss! Seems one of the "dogs" had managed to unplug the machinery.

I still don't exactly know how to make the CD player work. When this set of six CD's is finished, I may not be able to change them - but then, I like what's playing. Kiri Te Kanawa (oh, my god! what a wonderful voice) is singing Berlin. Brightman will be thrilling Andrew Lloyd Webber (don't judge -- I like most of his stuff). Donny Osmond (okay, you may judge but he has a very nice voice and his adult stuff is really, really good) is singing Broadway. Il Divo is cued for my tenor needs -- if one tenor is good, four are fantastic. And, of course, Andre is in the mix. Who couldn't listen to all that again if I can't change out the CD's?

My entire being is relaxing just hearing the beautiful music wafting through my house. How I've missed it!