doglight
  • Home
  • About
    • Godlight
    • Writing
    • Graphic Design Projects
    • New Media
  • Contact

Monthly Archives: May 2013

pretending to be blind

Posted on May 28, 2013

Every night for several years now, as I walk to bed in the dark, I say to myself, “Self, you should blog about doing this.”  And then it comes daylight, and I forget.

Today I remembered, lucky lucky you.

It started when I found out about the first cataract, which came on abruptly and advanced aggressively until, within a year, I was nearly blind in that eye.  And by nearly blind, I mean when I took the eye test at the BMV, I couldn’t see anything at all through that eye.  Not a shape, not a shadow…nothing.

I would have to have surgery, and I was terrified.  What if I went blind?

Back in juinior high school, and I forget whether it was seventh or eighth grade, in the English reader (how I loved the reader every year) there was a story about a man in ago times, a meek clerk of some kind, who had his dominant hand crushed in some act of violence, and who taught himself to use his non-dominant hand for writing so he could work.  I don’t recally any more about the story than this, which was the most important aspect to me apparently.

It worried me mightily that I could lose my ability to write if something happened to my right hand, so I began at once to practice writing with my left.  I never became good at it, but I can make moderately legible scratch marks.  And of course, now, if I lost my right hand, I could probably just do most of my writing at one keyboard or another, typing slowly and one-handedly, and it would be legible, but at the time typing everything on a typewriter would have been a huge hassle.  So I practiced.

Which is why it was completely in character for me, faced with a loss of eyesight, to practice being blind.  And now, still, although the first cataract–caused, Drs L & P say, by an injury–is gone, and a second in the other eye–caused by age and sunlight–is both miniscule and not avancing, and is thus of no account, I still nightly practice being blind by turning off all the lights and walking to bed that way, navigating from corner to doorway to dresser, with dogs felt trotting along before (Kelly) and beside (Cobie).  They’ve gotten quite good at this over the years.  Even Kelly, who trips me about eight times a day, manages to stay out from under foot while we’re practicing being blind.

Anyhow, now I can stop thinking I should blog about it, because now I have.  There’s one thing off the to-do list…

Share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
Posted in Diary | Tags: diary, dogs |

saturday six, the scatter-brained identity crisis edition

Posted on May 25, 2013

When you don’t show up for the Friday Five, you owe one.

1.)  Financial problems make me tired.

2.)  I need something.  Some structure?  A deadline?  A routine?  Something to replace what isn’t there.  I thought what I needed was rest and recuperation, but I think there’s more.  I need something to do, something to care about, something to want.

I think that’s it.  I need something to want.

How can I know what I want if I don’t know what I am?

At least Hermie knew what he wanted to be.

3.)  I’m having an identity crisis.  I used to know what I am…was.  I was a housewife, a hillbilly geek, a(n underpublished) writer.  Now what am I?  I’m a graphic designer in free fall.  When you have a business degree can you still be a hillbilly?  Can you be a writer when you have no desire to write?  I guess I’m still a housewife.  Still a guardian of critters.  Everything else is in free fall with me. 

I know I’m out of sorts when I don’t feel like doing laundry.  I always feel like doing laundry.  If I won the lotto, I’d buy a laundromat and write and listen to the machines and do laundry all day.

4.)  I kept putting it off, because I felt like I should use up the old first, but I broke down and bought Kelly new shampoo.  The old shampoo smells like one of those cardboard pine trees people used to hang in their cars.  I’ve been trying to use it up since Hannah.  It takes a long time to use up shampoo when I only use it on the little dog.  Ain’t nobody got balls enough to give Cobie a real bath; I just brush him good, hose him off, and brush him again.  He never smells, except like sunshine or night or whatever season it is.  Anyway, the new shampoo smells like vanilla.  I worried Cobie might think she was a cookie–expecially since she has no scent glands anymore–but no.

5.)  Maybe I should start with a random list of things to do just to break the inertia, and work on making it a good list gradually by replacing things with higher priority activities as I go along….

6.)  I think I got farsighted around the same time we adopted Cobie because the dog gods knew I would spend half my time sitting a mile from the computer to make room for a moosedog where my feet are supposed to go.

Share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
Posted in Diary | Tags: list |

dog story: cobie, kelly, and the sunglasses

Posted on May 3, 2013

In my living room there are a phone-and-lamp stand, a coffee table, and two end tables.  One of the end tables sits just inside the mural window, and there is nothing on it.  It’s deliberately cleared and positioned so Oliver (the cat) can look out the window, but Kelly uses it too, and I’m ok with that.  Cobie can stand on the floor and look out, or sit on the sofa, but Kelly likes to see out too, and she is vertically challenged.

On the other end table is a second lamp and a pewter coaster.  It’s where I usually sit my drink when I’m watching tv or folding laundry.  And presently there are two chew-bones there.

Whenever one of us leaves and returns, Cobie greets us with one of the three bones the dogs share.  When we had two bones, there were often alarming-sounding battles over who owned all the bones (looking at you, greedy Kelly) and I used to have to store them on top of the refrigerator and only bring them down when I could supervise.  Then T-Moth found an identical bone lost in sofa during Cobie’s puppyhood, and then there were three.  Magically, the competition evaporated.  Kelly could hog up two bones and have more than Cobie, and Cobie doesn’t care if she has more, as long as he can have one.  Heck, half the time he doesn’t even want one; I think he just likes to have it because he can.

Anyhow, when we return he greets us with a bone.  He full-butt wags, and winds around us, grinning around one of the chew-bones, teasing us with it.  Then, after a few moments, we’re supposed to take the bone and pretend to nom on it, then give it back, whereupon he abandons it somewhere until next time.

However, a lot of times when I come home my old lady bladder is at the bursting point and I can’t play Bone with Cobie.  Often he follows me into the bathroom and we play the game there while I relieve myself, but other times, presumably when his bladder has also had an–ahem–full day, he goes right outside, like as not taking the bone with him.  Then I go find it, because I don’t want to lose one and be back to the whole squabbling over two bones deal.

One day I brought one in and set it on the end table.  It sat there for weeks.  No dog touched it, although in that same time period Kelly stole the drinking straws out of several of my beverages.  And maybe this is pertinent; I think it is.  Kelly steals the straws, and then Cobie takes them from her.

Cobie is a dog who is strangely respectful of physical boundaries.  He’ll lie with you, but not touching you.  He’s been able to jump the babygates I use to restrain him since he was nine weeks old, but he only ever did it once.  If he leans against a gate and it falls over, he still won’t go through.  If he’s out and wants in, and the door is only slightly ajar, he waits (and moos) until someone opens the door all the way and invites him in.

My Sheldon dog.  Here he is waiting to be invited inside. 

Anyway…

He took another bone outside.  I fetched it and put it also on the table.  Then there was one.  And then that one got kicked under the sofa, as dog toys sometimes do.  And the next time T-Moth came home, Cobie mooed sadly and gazed at the two bones on the table, but he wouldn’t take one.  They were right there.  “Go ahead,” I said, because I happened to be sitting at the other end of the sofa.  “Get the bone.  It’s ok.”

But he wouldn’t do it.  So, because it was easier, I bent over and fished the third bone from under the sofa and handed him that one and he was happy all wigglebutt and helicopter tail.  The routine had not been interfered with.

The two bones are still there.  And if Kelly takes the one remaining bone, he does not seem to care.  Maybe…maybe he considers I am keeping the other two and as long as she doesn’t have them all…  I dunno.  Sometimes Cobie gives me things to “hold” for him.  That’s why I have a piece of corn husk in my pocket even as I type this.  Maybe I am “holding” two bones for him, and the table is some kind of doggy bank in his mind.

But if Kelly wanted one of those bones, she would take it.  Remember the straws?

So last night I came in the office before bed to check and see if any grades had been posted, and before two minutes had passed I heard THUNDER THUNDER THUNDERPAW, click clackety-click, and then CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH.  Even though it’s been a long time since either dog chewed anything illegal (of any importance) I know that noise and I jumped up whereupon silence descended.

I went into the living room where I discovered Cobie lying with my sunglasses between his paws.  He had a look on his face that kind of said, “Hi!”  Mind you, I left the glasses on the end table, my end table.  Behind the lamp.  Behind the bones that have been there for how long now unmolested.

My initial reaction was that the dogs had chewed my sunglasses.  Actually, one lens had popped out.  The other was partially out.  Only the earpieces took damage and that was light.  I put both lenses in right, took them in the kitchen and washed everything in the sink and they’re still usable, if a little mutilated around the earpieces, but my hair will hide that.

I was annoyed as all get out, but not actually angry.  They’re dogs, and I let my guard down.

But this morning I woke up in a fit of certainty.  Kelly stole the glasses, got in a couple-three chomps, and then Cobie took them.  Maybe he chomped them too, but not much because if he had they would be shrapnel now.  I think Kelly stole them because she does that and Cobie doesn’t, and I think Cobie took them because that’s what he does.  And I think  he was watching them.  When I went into the kitchen he followed, because when I command him to give me something and he gives it, he gets something.  He’s very reliable about giving things up, and I am very reliable about rewarding him for that, because some day I might desperately need him to give something up.

So, even though I caught him with illegal sunglasses, both dogs received carrots for surrending them.  No matter who did what while I was out of the room, they both behaved perfectly when I came back.  Maybe I’m messing up, but I don’t think so.  I read somewhere that dogs don’t understand that you can know things happened that you didn’t see, but they completely get that you know what you did see.

Anyhow, I thought I’d share.

BTW, only one grade posted so far, but it’s a good ‘un.

Share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
Posted in Critters and Varmints | Tags: cobie and kelly, school |

Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Godlight
  • Graphic Design Projects
  • New Media
  • Writing

Archives

  • October 2016
  • March 2016
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • May 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011

Categories

  • Critters and Varmints (18)
  • Diary (55)
  • Entertainment (7)
  • Maintenance (1)
  • Things (2)
    • Gadgets and Gizmos (1)
  • Uncategorized (18)
  • Writing (19)

WordPress

  • Log in
  • WordPress

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Goodreads (Currently Reading)

Goodreads (Read)

Categories

RSS

RSS Feed

CyberChimps WordPress Themes

© doglight
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.