Our 'puppy' Sakari, will be ten months old August 1st. Good guess is that he's about 80 pounds right now and folks at the dog park often ask whether he's a wolf hybrid. He's not. Mom was full Husky, dad looked to be some Shepard, Lab, something-or-other mix. Sakari looks to be like what is called a 'wooly' Husky because his fur is longer than the average Husky and very soft. I tell you all this because we blew 60 bucks on one of those doggy genetic tests in which you swab the inside of your dog's mouth, send off the sample in the mail and within two weeks you get a certificate verifying your dog's breed. They'll give you up to the four most dominent breeds making up your canine friend. Very exciting (Listen, sometimes you take your thrills where you can get 'em). So we wait in great anticipation and finally, today, we open the very official-looking envelope revealing the results. Okay. So the lab has no idea what our dog looks like or what we think him to be. Voila! Sakari is verified to be 75% Siberian Husky. Not a surprise. But the next most dominent breed in our still-growing monster puppy is....wait...LHASA APSO. Now for those of you who don't know what those dogs look like. Here:
Okay, this dog is cute, but full grown it is, like 15 pounds, tops. I dunno. Something's very wrong in Highland Park. I don't have a current pic of Sakari, but this is pretty close (Sakari is bigger and mostly black):
Is this possible?
Happy dog days. Sakari pic soon to come...
I'm supposed to be working as I'm on a deadline. I should be working out. I need to walk the dog. There's laundry to be taken out of the washing machine and dishes to be emptied from the dishwasher. I haven't brushed my teeth...yet. Jim just called to say that our 6 year old DOES NOT want to be at camp today (she only goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9-3). And it's only 9:11 am. I can't move. Seriously, I can't get up from my chair, so I came here, to my little Voxplaceblog in cyberland. Gonna do a little caffeine-fueled dance here and pretend that I'm getting something important done because I can't move to do anything else. Does that happen to you? Tell me, seriously. 'Cause I can't be the only one. I tend to think of these moments as my total body defying 'routine'. It's my inner grownup (because my cranky inner child very much has free rein of the household already) saying "fuck the routine for an hour." It's like someone has a voodoo doll of me and is forcing it to remain seated in some tiny ergonomic chair in another place. Help. My doll self is tied to a little ergo-doll chair up in a little dollhouse on the highest shelf in someone's twisted doll joke world. There. I feel better already.
I'm supposed to be annotating a movie about a serial killer. It is the most boring, dull, flat movie one could squeeze out of a story about a serial killer, because, I mean, stories about serial killers are anything but boring. But this movie is. I can't stand to listen to one more line of wooden dialogue, let alone annotate it.
Annotation? Here, go here to Salon.com and see what I mean, what I do for my "bread-and-butter" gig. http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2001/10/08/annotation/print.html
More after I get up off this chair.
Ciao.
So it's summer. Yeeha. And this one is busier than I've remembered a summer being in a very long time. I've got work, Jim has work...more yeeha. Kids are crazy active and I'm the designated camp counselor of late, which brings me to the following reflection that I tend to have every, oh, six months or so, that I am a dinosaur. You know, from the prehistoric ages, back when kids rode their bikes far far from home, alone, in the dark in the '70s. My folks would leave for work in the summer, when I was my son's age, ten (they worked in town then) and my mom would kiss me on the head, open the door, and say 'I'll see you at dinnertime...don't be late."
That was at 9am in the morning. I had a key on a string around my neck and knew where the hidden one was, although I don't think my folks actually locked the back door. And I'd tool around with Barbara or Nancy ('cause Nancy's mom didn't work and would make ham sandwiches for lunch) and, I don't know, do shit, and then I'd return home usually with a gash on my knee the shape of Texas. And my mother would say (about the gash) "Let's look at that."
I'd say, it's sore. And she'd get the Bactine and bandages and that would be it.
Which brings me to the present and the planning of every portion of these summer days. Because we live in the city of Los Angeles, on a hill...what am I gonna go? Tell my kids to get on their bikes and be back in a few hours, in time for lunch? Bye! Later! Yeah, sure. Like every other parent I know, I plan...playdates, camp, lessons, "free time," practice time. I get smug thinking that I'm not as neurotic as some, but more so than others. And the truth is that I do love hanging with my kids, but I can't shake those memories of long summer days of self-sufficiency and surprise. And on 100 plus degree days I can all too easily transform into the crankiest (read:meanest) mom superhero on the planet. I imagine giving my son five bucks and leaving him at the Venice bus station with a map of the city and seeing if he could make it home. I think he could, but, (sigh) I'm way too neurotic to try that. Maybe next year. Or maybe when it hits 110 in the shade.
So, then George Carlin dies (bear with me). It's sad, that news. But I can't help being reminded of one of the fucking funniest comedy routines I ever heard as a parent. It's Carlin's riff on childhood and survival of the fittest...and how there was a reason for no car seats and bike helmets and childproof medicine bottles etc. etc., because, and I'm paraphasing really poorly here, childhood should be a survival of the fittest, or at least the less idiotic. And I laugh as I think of his insanely funny renderings. Listen, I wouldn't go back to the seventies if you paid me, and I know not to wax nostalgic for too long on the way my folks didn't parent me, and I do everything I can to keep my kids safe, but I'll tell you, thinking of that Carlin routine on kids and surviving childhood makes me laugh in a way that makes me feel sane and grownup and glad of it. Sort of.
George Carlin RIP. He was to bullshit what Simon Weisenthal was to Nazis.
Keep cool.
