geez how long has it been–a while, no doubt.
right well so i ve been busy with this work thing, i’ve been through that, you don’t really care and i dont’ feel like getting into it again… so
last friday, around 5 pm i was literally thinking…hmm i can get in another hour and be ahead of the game for next week. the phone rings–the house line. it’s natty: "there’s a dog outside, get the leash, come outside, now".
sadly i knew what my next 48 hrs were going to be like, right then. so i get the leash, i go outside, and there is a black adn white dog about 5 doors down, trotting down the street. natty tells me to go get it. great. now i’ve never been bitten by a dog i didn’t know but i’m not really excited to be bitten by one. so i try to approach the dog slowly and all that crap, not making eye contact and shit. and it just keeps trotting along. somehow i got it to head the other direction (back toward our place) and natty got out of teh car (the capt was sleeping in the back) and we tried to get the leash on it. naturally the dog had a collar BUT NO FUCKING TAGS..i really really really hate that. so we couldnt get the dog. and it ran out in the road, was almost hit, adn then came back to the sidewalk and trotted away. i should have left it at that.
but i didn’t. so i saw it heading towards the really busy road. so i went after it, and finally got it on the leash. so i bring him back to our place, and our crazy drunk sit on the porch neighbor, ricky is yammering that a fat guy with glasses came over the hills an hour earlier saying "my dog got out and i can’t keep up wiht him" then apparently the fat dood just went home. now bear in might, ricky has mentioned to me that he was 1) a fireman, 2) a lifelong cop that was ‘transferred’ to the bronx in nyc and then ‘transferred’ to ’southern jersey’ where he appeared as an extra in 2 soprano episodes 3) that he was a lifelong janitor at a local private school. which is true? fuck if i know, i didn’t know that police departments ‘transfer’ people around like a corporations, but what do i know.
so now the plan becomes, for me to walk around looking for the dog’s owner, knocking on doors and such. so that was my next 2 hrs. people were getting home from work andshit, and taking their dogs out and no one had ever seen this one, i even asked a mailman. nohthing. naturally it was too late to take the dog to the SPCA which is around the corner. all in all it was turning in to quite the clusterfuck.
the dog for his part was a happy nice, albeit very old dog, prolly some sort of shepard beagle mix or something. there was somethign wrong with his stomach, as he was trying to shit alot and nothing was coming out. eww.
so i bring him back to our place, leave him in the front yard as we didn’t want him to give any cooties to henry, and then went inside to try and figure out what to do. the city animal shelter was still open, but they have a 3 day then kill policy. at this point we still thought the little guy was just lost, so we didn’t want to do that. so we called up jono to see if we could keep the dog in his basement until the morning and then we’d (meaning i) would take him to the spca. after some checking he said that’d be ok. so i took the dog over there.
sad thing the dog seemed to be getting attached to me. but nevertheless he stayed there for the night, was well behaved i guess. when i got home natty’s friend that does this rescue shit all the time called and talked about how the spca kills after 3 days too. and gave me a list of all these no kill shelters that are scattered throughout the state. wonderful.
So i sorta slept and then went to go get the dog. i wasted soem time until the spca opened and then went there to turn the dog over. kill shelter or not. so i get there and the first guy that helped me was just plain weird. i was the first person there so i dont’ think it was a long day–but man he was bitter: ‘you find that dog around here?" "yes, around the corner" "i never told you this, but you might as well jsut let it go, nobody around here comes looking for lost dogs, there are several dogs i see all the time that are big and healthy but you know they’re homeless".
err, um, ok-what the fuck do you say to that? so anyway, i asked if we turned him over if we coudl move him later to a no kill shelter. he said no. so i called natty. she wanted me to take him to a no kill shelter. so i go back inside to file a missing dog report. my helper now was Jordan.
now i’m not gonna say that jordan was flaming, but if it were 1986, and i needed a gay character for my john huges-esque coming of age teen comedy (not as a main character of course, as an amusing side character), there is a very good chance that jordan would get the part. he just had all the manerisms that fit a certain sterotype–not that there’s anything wrong with that.
but, and it’s been a while so bear with me, i think he was hitting on me. well flirting at least. he took his sweet time to check the missing dog reports, and made me fill out the form 2 times, then he kept calling me by my first name, when it totally wasn’t necessary. when i came time to take a polaroid of the dog, he came aroudn the counter and i tried to help out by steadying the dog. jordan loved that. he announce to kara, his coworker/co-volunteer that "jefke and i are going in to business, we’re going to take pictures of dogs, you can come to, to get our coffee or something". wtf? it was really really odd. jordan then wanted to take down my cell number. i guess it made sense, but it was jsut plain weird. i half expect a text message from him someday.
so back to the house and then calls to the anne arundle spca, who have a reputation of not killing as many animals. word to the wise: they don’t take strays. but if you make up a clever story about a friend that moved out west (thanks cormac) and gave you teh dog, but you just had a baby, and you can’t keep the dog. oh sure then, they’ll take the dog.
So back in the car, and down to annapolis. 40 miles and 65 mins later i arrive at the shelter. i bring in the dog, whom natasha named "mr paws" b/c she thought it would sell him better, to the receiving desk. the chick there takes a look at him and says "that dog is older than 7, we’ll have to take him as a euthanasia". mutherfucker. so all that runnign around and the little guy was gonna get put down anyway. so back on the phone with natty–what do i do? she tells me to beg for him to get a chance for adoption.
back in to the chick, yeah we can fill out both of the sets of paperwork but i’m telling you people don’t adopt 8+year old dogs with cataracs. great. so now it dawns on me. maybe someone actually took off the tags on this dog and set him out. to get out of having to deal with him and put him down. so i fill out the paper work and she took him away. it was goddamned depressing. but what the fuck was i supposed to do. the only real no kill shelter we could find wasn’t answering their phones. and they prollly wouldn’t have taken him. so our hands were tied. naturally for dramatic effect, we can’t call and find out his fate, that’s against policy. i’ll bet that he had more serious health problems and didn’t make it to the adoption block, prolly red flagged by the vet or something. sorry little guy, we tried.
needless to say this was all sorta stressful on the jefke. i mean i just don’t deal well shit outta left field like this. ugh.
anyway
on tuesday i visited the demotologist. some of you will remember my angry nipple problem from july. well the nipple simmered down (thank you) but my ankle has been similarly pissed off lately. right on the ball of my left ankle, which once ripped open, you notice bumps and gets rubbed like 1000 times a day. so it’s been pretty much an open (un infected) wound for liek a month. so i headed to the doctor. i had a different doctor this time, (same sidekick in a badmood). well before i get to that, i was waiting in my exam room. and the walls were very thin, so i could hear the conversation next door (fuck you HIPAA) the paitient was a local, i’m guessing middle aged man with a meryland accent. he’d had some "spots" taken off by another doctor. the spots were cancerous i guess. so this doctor did some other stuff that woudl be tested. he did start to suggest best practices for you know, not getting more cancer. every suggestion the guy came back with how/why that woudln’t stick:
So try and stay out of the sun..
oh no, i love to sail, or go down th’oUcean with my grandkidsWell you can’t do that anymore that’s why you’re hear today…
oh i used to life guard when i was a kid…oh and i play golf 3-5 times a week in teh summerWell sir you can’t keep doing that, no anymore
but i love de golf, really 3-5 times, getting pretty good too.well we’ll check this stuff out….and get back to you…
ah people.
so anyway when the doctor saw my ankle. well he was ‘concerned’ which is not what you want to hear. then he sorta gave me a speech like i didn’t want it to get better or something. he’s like HOW long has it been like that? i told him no matter what i tried, nothing got it to heal. use bandaids, not use bandaids, neosporin, no neosopirn. i dunno it was weird. at any rate he said the term "angry" several times. i guess it’s a full blown medical term perhaps. he spouted off all sorts of prescriptions and directions and the badmood sidekick wrote them all down on a little pad that she wore around her neck. it was freaky.
Getting to listen to mr. melinoma put me in a position where i had a meeting, but not enough time to drive home. but i had 15 mins to kill. so i sat in the car, parked of course. and set up the lappy and the cell phone. i felt like a travelign salesman-turns out that i was able to pull off the meeting too. crazy.
ok this is too long and i have work to do.