New Addition

We have a new addition to the Dingo family.  No, not that type of addition.  For the love of Todd, people!  Don’t you think I would’ve said something if Mr. Dingo and I were expecting?  Something like, “Save Me!” or “For Christ Sake, How Did This Happen?!” No, our new addition is of the feathered variety.  I’m just going to lay it all out there.  It’s a pigeon.  Now before you get your panties in a bunch and revoke my New York City citizenship, let me explain. 

Like all TRUE New Yorkers, I hate pigeons.  But this pigeon, well, he’s special.  You see, being a runt, his mama kicked him to the curb, which in this case, means our terrace. And there he sat looking up at the nest where his Mama and his fat fuck of a brother sat eating and lounging in pigeon luxury as he cried out, “Cheep, cheep, cheep!  Mama, I’m hungry!” and “Cheep, cheep, cheep, Mama, I’m scared!” It tore my heart out how excited he would get when his Mama would come out of her pigeon penthouse (the abandoned air conditioner unit from the apartment upstairs) only to have her ignore him and even chase him away.  I am tearing up thinking about it right now.  And so, I decided to feed him.  At least give him a chance to grow up to be the ugly, disease-infested vermin he was meant to be.

I refused to name him until I was sure he would live.  Having a dead baby pigeon on our terrace would be bad enough, having a dead baby pigeon that I named and anthropomorphized would be worse. 

Don’t ask me how Mr. Dingo got him to eat.  It was a Christmas miracle fluke.  It took a while but once he realized that the crumbs Mr. Dingo and I spread before him like a sumptuous buffet at The Luxor was food, he began to eat with relish.  In fact, if Mr. Dingo and I are a late with his breakfast or dinner, he bangs on the terrace door with his wings until we come out.  So, he’s going to live and I decided to name him.  Innernetz, I’d like to introduce you to McJagger.

Dingo Girl has learned that she is to chase all pigeons except for McJagger off the terrace.  McJagger has no fear of Dingo Girl or of me and Mr. Dingo.  He often hops onto our laps to make sure we really are out of bread and not just putting one over on him and he’ll dart toward a piece of bread to get to it before Dingo Girl does.  And Not a Dingo?  McJagger is not afraid of her either – bravado or stupidity, I’m not sure.  Mr. Dingo and I make sure we leave the terrace door cracked open enough to give her a peek at her foster brother but not enough so that she can pounce.  And pounce she would.  She eyeballs him through the door and licks her lips.

McJagger’s next obstacle is learning how to fly.  He doesn’t fly.  He flops.  He executes leaps worthy of Michael Jordan (without the grace and style) before landing in a hail of feathers and fluff.  But he doesn’t fly.  He crashes into walls.  He falls off the banister.  He hops around the terrace like one of those wind-up chicks and Easter eggs that are popular every Spring.  Mr. Dingo has pulled off the miracle of teaching McJagger to eat.  I’m waiting to see how he teaches our newest addition how to fly.

I started this post with the intention of writing about my encounter with the hostile Pigeon Lady that menaces the neighborhood and ended up introducing you to our newest family member.  I’ll write about Pigeon Lady another day – if I’m not arrested for grinding her bones to meal and feeding them to her feathered legions first.

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Geckos Ruined My Life

I hate geckos.  Don’t let those insurance commercials featuring the bug-eyed critter with the charming English accent fool you.  Geckos are the devil.  They ruined my Olympic dreams.  Three years ago I moved to Florida to pursue a half-baked idea my dream to ride horses competitively. 

I needed a fresh start, I needed a new challenge, I needed a new interest that would quickly drain every last cent of my divorce settlement and since I can’t drive a stick shift, fast cars and NASCAR were out of the question.  So, I turned to horses.  The fact that I was starting my pursuit of equestrian glory later in life than the snooty “I was born on a Hermes saddle” crowd did not deter me.  The fact that my bank account was so empty that it echoed when I opened my checkbook did not deter me.  It went something like, “Ha, ha, ha!  Ha, ha, ha!” Kinda like that creepy clown thing from the Saw movies.  And I tell you, trying to survive in the world of competitive horseback riding with little to no money was torture.

It wasn’t even the fact that during my first week of training the gigantic mare I was riding in an elevated ring decided that she just didn’t want me on her back anymore.  I was thrown, catapulted, launched a good seven feet outside the fence.  And at least six feet down the embankment.  Face down in a crumpled heap under the Florida sun, my trainer thought I was dead.  I heard her screaming into the phone for 911.  I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, someone’s really hurt!” as I picked my battered and bruised but miraculously unbroken body off the sandy Florida ground.  And got back on that damn horse.  No, all this I could have overcome.  The snootiness, the poverty, the soft tissue injury and torn ligaments that still bother me to this very day (usually at mile two of a six mile run) were mere challenges. It was the geckos.  Those damn geckos.

As you can see in this photo below, those damn geckos are everywhere.  It ruined one of the few pictures of me on my horse:

Being a city girl I was accustomed to pigeons, squirrels, and even rats the size of subway cars.  But my encounters with city wildlife were limited to the outdoors.  They did not live constantly underfoot and squish sickeningly under my bare feet if I made a mad dash to the car to let my windows up during one of Florida’s incessant rain storms.  The pigeons, squirrels, and rats did not come into my apartment.  They did not cling precariously to the screen windows and make chirping noises that kept me awake all night long wondering if they could get inside.  Everyone, it seemed, delighted in telling me that it’s not “if” the geckos get inside your apartment, but “when.” These same asshats loved to tell stories about the time they were in the tub, cooking dinner, watching TV, or whatever you do in the safety and comfort of your own home when you are not expecting geckos to drop from the sky when a gecko does just that — drops from the sky.  These geckos are evil.  You can’t tell me that these fuckers that can cling to the side of buildings with the tenacity of cat hair on black pants suddenly lose all suction as they traipse across your living room ceiling.  Oh, no.  It’s just one of those gecko practical jokes. 

Rats and pigeons do not play practical jokes.  They may threaten to CUTCHU if you don’t turn over that crust of bread you are hoarding from lunch, but they are not joking.  They mean business so just hand over the bread.  Rats and pigeons also do not gross me out by licking their eyeballs.  I mean, really, who thought this was a good idea to make a creature with no eyelids and then plop it down in sandy, tropic climes.  So, to moisturize and clean their eyes, geckos lick their eyeballs.  How is this evidence of intelligent design?

Six months after arriving in Florida I was ready for my first riding competition.  I’ll have to tell you more about my riding experience some time.  It was incredible.  Jumping a fence (and in my case “fence” is used loosely, it was more like a speed bump) is what I imagine it’s like to fly.  But this post is about the geckos.  Those damn geckos.  I was talking on the phone to a friend, preparing a nice, tall glass of good ol’ sweet tea when she asked me about gators.  “I’ve only seen one or two gators since I’ve been here,” I said.  “But I tell you what, these geckos are everywhere.  The first time I see one in my house, I’m packing my bags and I’m outta here.” Those words had barely left my mouth, in fact, they were still making their way through the airwaves and had yet to land with dulcet tones upon my friend’s waiting eardrums when a big-assed gecko darts across the kitchen counter. 

Does it try to avoid me?  No. 

Does it see me and run the other way?  No. 

What does it do?  I’ll tell you what that eyeball-licking lizard did.  It ran right up my arm and stuck itself to my cold, refreshing glass of sweet tea.  As it was on my way to my mouth.  I don’t know whether it was my scream or contact with the wall that shattered the glass but I do know that the Florida Marlins called me the next day asking about signing some kind of contract.  Apparently, they’ve never seen anyone throw like that.  Sadly, I had to turn them down.  I had too much packing to do.

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Taxes Not Included

By now you know that no visit to Mom’s is complete without a trip to Target.  Or an encounter with Odd Boy.  But I think GeekHiker jinxed me a few days ago by mentioning that Odd Boy would one day grow up to be Odd Man.  Well, yesterday I met Odd Boy’s future, and it is odd. 

I was sitting on the front porch reading — I know, I should just go read in the back yard, right?  Wrong.  It is a mosquito-infested bog.  And besides, the hammock is broken.  If I am going to be assaulted by West Nile assassins, I want to do it in luxury.  And although the sounds of frogs, toads, and other unidentified insect-eating amphibious creatures punctuate the night air disrupting my beauty sleep as they belch the alphabet, they have had zero impact on the mosquito population.  Zero. 

But this is not about mosquitoes.  Nor is this about the time earlier this week when I stepped out onto the back porch with bare feet and the perfect pedicure to let Dingo Girl out for her evening poop patrol and kicked a big-assed toad.  It had a J. Lo.-size ass and it wasn’t happy about having my size 8 ½ foot, (perfect pedicure or not!) imprinted on it.  He belched his protest and instead of hopping away, three more J. Lo. toads jumped onto the porch to back him up.  It was an ambush!  I was trapped! 

I screamed like a city girl and jumped away from my slimy attackers, landing five perfectly pedicured toes on a giant garden slug.  I am sure that I have never before heard the sound that rose from my throat.  I think it was a shriek garbled by vomit.  And so, that is why I don’t go into the backyard anymore unless I’m wearing my combat boots.  And it’s just entirely too hot to wear those this week.

So I sit on the front porch where the breeze kisses my face, the scent from what’s left of Mom’s flowers hangs in the air, and the “curse-said” (thanks, Mrs. Chili!) crop circle taunts me.  The front porch also makes me the prime target for Odd Family across the street.  I saw Odd Man pull his 1970’s-child-molester brown-on-brown conversion van into his driveway yesterday but I did not look up from my book or wave (in the South, y’all, you wave to everyone so look at what they have reduced me to!).  It didn’t stop him from coming over to talk to me.  Now, before y’all go thinking that I’m not neighborly, let me just say that Odd Family moved in a few years after I’d already left for college so I don’t really know them except from holiday visits home and phone calls conducted in hushed whispers.

Me:  Mom, speak up, I can’t hear you.

Mom (strained whisper):  I can’t.  Odd Family just pulled in across the street and I don’t want them to know I’m home.

Me:  They can’t hear you from across the street.

Mom (frantic):  Yes, yes they can.  They’re like bats!  They hear everything!  Well, darn it!  I left the porch light on, here they come.  If you don’t hear from me again, remember, you were always my favorite.  Always!

Me:  Mom?  Mom?  Moooooooommmmmmm!!!

Odd Man can talk the ears off a mule.  Except a mule would probably have the sense to walk off and leave Odd Man with his jaws a-flappin’.  I just sit there with a polite smile stuck to my face and murderous thoughts drifting through my head.  Although I truly believe, that even from six feet under, Odd Man would continue to talk.  He would be the one dead man to tell a tale.  And then another.  And then another.  So when Odd Man saw me sitting on the porch, I knew my peaceful afternoon had come to an end.  I immediately regretted shunning the company of my web-footed companions in the back yard.  At least if the big-assed toads annoyed me badly enough, I could seek my revenge with a frying pan and a pound of butter.  Odd Man has no such redeeming qualities.  His legs are knobby and hairy and should be kept hidden under long pants. 

Odd Man walked to the edge of the road and stood there for a few seconds.  Then he walked slowly up Mom’s driveway, stopping to smell the roses, before coming to stand in front of me.  And he started talking. 

Odd Man:  You reading that book?

Me:  Yes.  I don’t have a lot of time to read for pleasure these days so I —

Odd Man:  I have to read a lot too.  With my new tax business, blah, blah, blah…yaddah, yaddah, yaddah…snooze, snooze, snooze…so that’s why I have the docking station in the van.

Me (waking up):  You have a docking station in the van?

Odd Man:  For my laptop.  For when I go visit clients.

Me:  You see tax clients in your van?

Odd Man:  Yes, I make house calls.

Me:  Wouldn’t house calls mean that you go to their house?

Odd Man:  I do.  I park out front and then they come out to the van and that way I can show them stuff on my computer.

Me:  You have a laptop.

Odd Man:  *blink* *blink*

Me:  Why don’t you just take the laptop into their house?

Odd Man:  Ohhhhhh....  Say!  Didn’t you used to have a dog?

That Odd Man, nothing gets by him.

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West Nile is not a Vacation Destination

I haven’t been sleeping well lately.  Yes, my To Do list is longer than this election process feels and I am under no delusion that I will complete everything before we somehow manage to eliminate our national debt. In other words, I’m screwed.  Mr. Dingo is always telling me that I take on too much.  To prove his point he sent me an email that listed all the things I said I was going to accomplish that day, all the things I wished I could accomplish that day, and then, for kicks, because he’s silly like that, he added on a few things that no one in their right mind would think was doable in the amount of time that I have.  I, never claiming to be in my right mind, added them to my To Do list.  Yes, it is possible to learn Italian before I go to Florence, to train Dingo Girl so that we can win the Obedience Competition this Fall, and to find Osama Bin Laden before summer break begins.  I. CAN. DO. IT. ALL!!! 

I feel as if I am in a constant state of motion.  I can’t slow down or I’ll fall behind.  I don’t even know who or what this thing is I’m afraid of falling behind.  Whatever it is, though, all I know is that I don’t want to get behind it.  Maybe it poops a lot. Or drives down the highway with its left turn signal on.

The other night I woke up from a nightmare in which I dreamt that my English Literature Subject Matter test was in November and not only had I not started studying for it but I hadn’t even begun working on my applications to Ph.D. programs.  And then as the blood started pooling on the bed as I frantically pinched my arm harder and harder to wake up from the nightmare, I realized it was not a nightmare. 

For those of you who don’t know about the English Subject Matter test, it’s a test that you have to take to get into most English Ph.D. programs.  It doesn’t test you on the things that you’ve learned in undergrad or grad school.  Oh, no, that would be too easy.  Instead, it tests you on arcane literary devices and novels, essays, and quotes that no one who wasn’t alive to smoke opium with Poe would ever know.  Things added to my To Do list this past week: read every single Norton Anthology; write a personal statement for my Ph.D. applications worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, memorize and/or tattoo onto my inner thigh esoteric poetic devices; break into a big blubbering puddle of tears; eat Entemann’s.  I’m pretty sure I can accomplish the last two without much effort.

If my To Do list was all I had to do, I could do it.  I would be a raving, foaming at the mouth, hopped up on amphetamines unwashed, disheveled bitch, but I could do it.  I would not be happy, Mr. Dingo would not be happy, Dingo Girl would put herself up for adoption, and Not a Dingo would go on as usual, sleeping on my keyboard and only waking occasionally so that I could drop a treat into her mouth.  I. CAN. DO. IT. ALL!!!  But I can’t do any of it without sleep and I haven’t been getting much of that. 

No, it’s not these worries keeping me up at night, Valium Xanax meditation helps me with that.  It’s the damned mosquitoes.  Yes, you read that right, mosquitoes.  I am a magnet for bloodsuckers. 

As I sat down to write this, I counted 31 mosquito bites on my body.  No, I am not exaggerating.  No doubt by the time I hit Submit, there will be more.  The itching and scratching keep me awake at night and no amount of hydrocortisone or calamine lotion helps. 

During the day the itching is bad but I can sometimes forget about it in the frenzy and activity of my life.  At night, when the world is silent except for the mosquitoes buzzing above my bed like a cult of Satanists ready to drive their knives into my veins to bask in my blood, it’s all I can do not to climb out of my own skin.  It’s not just summer, although that’s when the fuckers are at their worst, but year round.  Mr. Dingo thinks that it’s somehow a point of pride that I am the only person in New York City who can be bitten by a mosquito in December.  By the way, Mr. Dingo never gets bitten.  Ever.  Mosquitoes find him thoroughly unappetizing.  He is the rice cake of the mosquito world.  Sometimes I wonder whether he is one of them.

The mosquitoes can’t just bite me and be done with it.  Oh no.  As it happens, I am allergic to mosquito bites.  Whereas most people get bitten and have a small red bump to show for the experience, I swell up like a bloated corpse.  By the end of the summer, I will be covered with enough mosquito bites that people will think I am in a Tyler Perry movie.  And because I can’t stop scratching, I have a scab or two.  And then, because my skin hates me, I don’t heal well so I have scars that will not fade until the next appearance of Halley’s Comet.  Am I creating a lovely visual image for you?  Aren’t you just picturing a misshapen mass of a woman with enormous bags under her eyes from lack of sleep plugging away at her keyboard stopping occasionally to pick her scabs and shoo away a swarming mass of nature’s vampires between bites of Entemann’s?

Mr. Dingo and I have done everything short of having me bathe in Off.  I am hesitant to wear a chemical barrier to mosquitoes 24/7 because that can’t be good for your skin and it smells.  But I’m running short on options and on unbitten skin.  Then, this morning, in an answer to our burnt offerings (my last two turns at the stove ended short of calling the fire department but that’s a story for another post), I received an email from a friend about how to get rid of mosquitoes.  This is the text of the email:

The best way of getting rid of mosquitoes is Listerine, the original medicinal type. The Dollar Store-type works, too. I was at a deck party awhile back, and the bugs were having a ball biting everyone. A man at the party sprayed the lawn and deck floor with Listerine, and the little demons disappeared. The next year I filled a 4-ounce spray bottle and used it around my seat whenever I saw mosquitoes. And voila! That worked as well. It worked at a picnic where we sprayed the area around the food table, the children’s swing area, and the standing water nearby. During the summer, I don’t leave home without it.....Pass it on.  Also can be used to dab any bites you receive. It will stop the itching quicker and go away faster.

Really?  Listerine?  As it so happens, we have Listerine on hand.  Is the orange-flavored kind okay?  I’m not sure exactly where we should spray it.  We have already saturated the areas around our doors and windows with Raid, Off, and any other chemical repellant that, in two years, will be found to cause irreversible brain damage.  But I am open for anything at this point and have spent the day dabbing at my skin with the mouthwash.  Should I make a body spray out of it and douse myself with the mediciney smelling concoction?  I didn’t wear Off because I didn’t want to smell like a chemical factory, but will wearing Eau de Listerine make me smell like an alcoholic trying to hide her addiction?  Because really folks, if I can’t find some relief and get some sleep, I’m going to have to bring my buddies Jim and Jack out of retirement just to get some shut eye.  And then I would have to add another task to my To Do list: Rehab.

Update:  Several bottles of Listerine later and I have discovered that the email I received about repelling mosquitoes with Listerine is all a hoax!  Snopes.com, that faithful debunker of urban legends, has dashed my only hope of emerging from the summer months without looking like a life-size Connect the Dots.  They don’t say who started this rumor but I’m eyeing Pfizer.  Mouthwash sales down?  Start a rumor that has people filling their swimming pools with your product.  I smell a conspiracy.  And Listerine.

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YouTube is a Time Suck

You Tube is a time suck. I sat down hours ago to write a post about Dingo Girl’s birthday and ended up watching videos like the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s rendition of "Hey Ya," and at least three different versions of Kate Bush’s "Wuthering Heights." I finally realized that tomorrow’s lesson plan is not going to write itself and Scrubs is probably the best sitcom I’ve never seen. It seems they have a song and choreographed routine for every occasion. Hell, anyone that can belt out tunes and Boys2Men footwork at a moment’s notice is a friend of mine. And, if you can do it in a hospital without slipping on blood-drenched floors or tripping over bed pans, well, you’ve got my Neilson rating. Where has this show been all my life?

Like JD and Turk, I have a song for everything.  EVERYTHING.  You know that game where you have to start a sentence with a word beginning with the first letter of the last word in the sentence?  No?  Geez! What did you guys do on your long-assed family road trips, or was that just an ingenious game invented Mom to keep me stumped and quiet after she said, “Yesterday, I went for my x-ray?” Well, anyway, my life is kinda like that game.  I have a song for anything anyone says.  I’m sure it often makes Mr. Dingo feel as if he’s trapped inside a 1970s station wagon with wood panel siding and no air conditioning headed to the Grand Canyon but, well, he’s stuck with me.  I’ve been playing this game all my life and I’m good.  I’m also not proud.  I’ll dredge up Schoolhouse Rock.

Mr. Dingo:  I can’t find the macro function on the camera.

Me:  (singing) Conjunction junction, macro function?  Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.

Mr. Dingo: Are you done?

Me: (singing) Conjunction Junction, how’s that function?
I got three favorite cars
That get most of my job done.
Conjunction Junction, what’s their function?
I got “and,” “but,” and “or.”
They’ll get you pretty far.

Yes, now I’m done.

I admit that it’s probably annoying but I can’t stop. 

My blog should really be called, As I Was Singing.  A childhood raised on musicals, church camp, country music, Motown, and Casey’s Top 40 made me the most versatile singer not in the business.  I would stage musicals for my neighbors and, at ten cents a ticket to my backyard performances, I thought they were getting a great deal.  Where else could you see a nine year old make a seamless transition from Grease’s “Summer Nights” to A Chorus Line’s “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three?” Oh yeah, Momma was proud.  I think she stayed home from church the next morning just to plan my Broadway debut. 

With MTV, VH1, and the internet, my musical repertoire expanded.  Mr. Dingo, Dingo Girl, and Not a Dingo are the grateful recipients of my musical endeavors.  The problem is that once I hit puberty, my vocal prowess went the way of Peter Brady (“When it’s time to cHAAngE…”) and never came back.  I can’t carry a tune in a Kate Spade hobo bag.  No, no, I’m not being modest.  I really can’t sing.  But I can’t sing loudly.  I mean, I can’t sing but I do it loudly.  In the seclusion of my own home, of course.  Or the car.  Or on deserted running trails.  Yeah, it’s that last one that causes a bit of embarrassment from time to time.

On days when I haven’t encountered another runner since leaving the trail around The Reservoir, I feel as if I’m the only one in the park.  Yesterday the cherry blossoms blew their heavenly scented petals in my path and the sun was shining brightly.  Life was a Disney movie — before the Elton John sellout and all that Circle of Life crap.  I’m talking Snow White.  Squirrels and pigeons gathered around my Saucony running shoes to guide my steps over the uneven bridle path, so it seemed perfectly natural to crank up the iPod and start singing.  Toward the end of my run I like to kick it to Melanie C’s “Suddenly Monday.” It gives me that extra boost I need not to sit down on the curb and start crying to keep going.  Singing along is fine.  But this song makes my tired legs want to dance as well.  Singing or talking to oneself while running is not unusual.  I see perfectly normal looking people singing to themselves as they run all the time.  Singing to oneself and breaking into a jig is not normal.  It’s just bizarre.  But yesterday I couldn’t help it.  And of course as Melanie C and I are singing and dancing to “together we flyyyyyyyyYYYYyyyy….” this couple comes from out of nowhere and passes me, giving me wide berth and trying to pretend like they’re not frightened by my wailing and flailing but they clearly are.  I’m tempted to turn all Aquaman on them and direct the squirrels and pigeons at my command to attack — but I restrain myself.  I do not want to go from Disney to Law & Order in one morning.

So that’s the end of my post.  Nothing witty or wise to get you started on this Monday morning.  Nothing but Melanie C and “Suddenly Monday.” Enjoy.  And I DARE you to listen to it without dancing.

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