Another Tomato Caper

Every day when I get home from work, I am always afraid to find out what might be waiting for me. For the first two months, Kira had an accident on the tile floor every other day (and believe me, it's not fun to clean up after a dog, especially one the size of Kira). We knew she didn't have parasites (the vet already confirmed that), so we thought maybe she had colitus or irritable bowel or something like that. We tried every type of canned dog food known to man, and every type of dry food, or combination thereof. When we got back from Scotland, Kira decided on her own that she wanted only dry food, and only once a day, in the evening. She would not eat in the morning. And we started doing something that a friend recommended: we put one tablespoon of unsweetened coconut on top of her food every night. It binds with the yukky stuff inside the gut and takes it out with the rest of the ... stuff. She LOVES that coconut! She wants me to put it in the palm of my hand so she can lick it up. When I open the fridge, she hurries over to stick her nose in and touch the bag of coconut. Sure enough, it looked like we had cleared up the problems with her innards. Then after the three wonderful uneventful weeks, she did that gross thing that Ziggy used to do...she found the "kitty treats" in the litter box. Ewe! Next day, boy did we have a clean-up job! But now we have gone for two weeks without incident. We put the kitty litter box in the basement, and Kira can't get through the kitty door to go down there. It frustrates her to no end that the cats can go through that little door and she can't. The cats, of course, realize this, and torment her with the cruelty that only cats can show.

Tonight I came home, and as I always do, peered into the kitchen with trepidation. Imagine how delighted I was to see that there was no Kira accident on the kitchen floor. Yippee! But wait! What on earth was that bowl doing upside down in a corner. And what was that lump under the bowl? No, no, nothing like that. Please! But, if you recall my Tomato Tale from May, you won't be surprised to hear that under the bowl was the tomato I had left on the counter the night before. A tomato on the floor! Was Wolfie up to his old tricks again? Or had Kira decided to look for treats on the counter and knocked the bowl over in the process? I picked everything up and put it in the sink to be washed, then left the room. No sooner had I stepped into the living room than I heard a noise in the kitchen. I ran back in to find Wolfie, on the counter, holding the tomato by the stem in his teeth. Up to his old tricks again.

So I ask you, what is more interesting, a coconut-eating dog or a tomato-eating cat?

Keeping in Touch with the Elusive Offspring

Sometimes, I really have to work hard to keep in touch with EO. When he's bored, and has nothing to do, or when all the other students have gone on holiday leaving him behind, he has been known to call home every night. But when all his friends are around him, and he's working, and sleeping until 2 in the afternoon, his poor mum becomes a bit of a potted plant (I didn't say I become potted...just a potted plant).

So, this past Saturday I called him at 9:00 a.m. my time and 2:00 p.m. his time. I got my cellphone and pressed the speed dial for Thom UK. The phone rang that special UK ring "burrrrt-burrrrt." "Hullo?" a male voice answers. In my sweetest, all-knowing mother's voice, I say: "Are you asleep, sleepy?" A hesitant response comes back "Uh, no," and then "Who are you trying to reach?" Oops! Not the elusive offspring I was looking for. "Oh! I must have the wrong number! Sorry." The male voice on the other side says it again "Who are you trying to call?" This time, my response is a little sheepish: "Thomas." "He's asleep" comes the answer. "Oh, who am I talking to?" "James." (It sounds more like "Jems" when he says it). One of my son's flatmates...from Ireland. And my synapses start to malfunction immediately. What the heck is James doing with Thomas' cellphone (or "mobile" if you are in the UK)? Luckily, James saves me from saying something stupid, like "What the heck are you doing with Thomas' cellphone?" by telling me I should call him on his mobile and wake him. Ah, I had called the flat's land-line.

I should have said "Sure! Nice to talk to you, James." But no. I start asking him stupid questions about how he's doing and what he's up to. He's a really nice guy and he put up with all my questions and I believe he even gave back as good as he got. Eventually, I said I should probably call the sleepy one and we hung up.

Honestly, I'm not stalking my son's flatmate! Mrs. Robinson I'm not! But I have to admit that when he speaks with that lilting Northern Ireland accent of his, it's ... well... seductive.

So, I then called and woke the sleepy one. Last week, he started his internship with one of his professors or lecturers or someone in his department. It appears to be more than a 40-hour a week job, this internship. Sadly, the department did not have the budget for paying him (although there were funds for graduate students), so the potted plant is now footing his rent and bringing lunch to work (thus saving bucks and calories). The EO sounds very satisfied with this summer internship...sort of makes it all worth while, you know, eating home-made sandwiches and soup and all.

Eventually, I'll get ahold of him again and find out just what he's working on. Maybe I'll call the flat's phone number again (as opposed to EO's mobile) and maybe James will answer again...

Just kidding!

How We Spent Our Summer Solstice

This year, Summer Solstice (June 21) landed on a Saturday...and we were in St Andrews for it. What better place to be at the height of summer? The sun sets around 11 p.m., but leaves a wonderful glow on the horizon, until it comes up again by 4 or 4:30 in the morning. A number of times during our visit, I awoke around 4:30 a.m. and looked out the window to see people walking down the street as if it were already 8:00 in the morning. I mean, where do you go at 4:30 in the morning? The pubs close by 1:00 a.m. and nothing opens until who knows when.

OK, so on the Summer Solstice, we went to the pub where the elusive offspring works as a "bar man." Over here, we call them "bartender." In old western movies, they used to call them "bar keep." I just call him "Thomas." My favorite husband calls him "Mr. President." Ok, bad joke (but that's what H would say when EO was a baby, and people would ask "what do you call him, Tom or Tommy or Thomas"). Back to the story. My son's friends are delightful, all 45 of them. Every time we'd see any of them in town, they would invite us to join them, or they would come join us. When the pub closed on this fine Summer Solstice night at 1:00 in the morning, and my son had to stay behind to help clean up, his friends urged us to come along with them to the sand under the castle ruins and EO could catch up with us later. There on the sand, they built a bonfire (two competing bonfires, actually) and sat around playing guitars and singing and drinking beer and whisky. I was very glad for the fire, because it was cold. But the cold didn't stop two girls from stripping down to their underwear and jumping into the 50-degree water -- what's that in celsius, 9 or 10 degrees? They didn't stay in the water very long, and luckily there was that warm fire waiting for them. Not to be outdone, a guy did the same thing...I was more than a little worried about him because he was quite drunk already and I was afraid he'd fall on the rocks. Fortunately, no one got hurt.

I sat on a cold hard rock with Alice and thought that this tradition of making a bonfire and welcoming the sun on the summer solstice must be hundreds of years old. And St Andrews students have done it, year after year, for decades, centuries. St Andrews University was founded around 1410...and St Andrews castle was built a couple hundred years before that! 800 years ago.

I managed to take a photo of what it looks like at the darkest point of the longest day of the year in St Andrews, Scotland. You have to stand really still for the camera to capture. Even so, this does not really capture it. The smell of the bonfire, the sound of the ocean, the singing, the cold air, the little bit of wind blowing across the sand. What an appropriate way to celebrate Summer Solstice in the land of the druids.



A little post-script: H and I left around 3 or 3:30 a.m., leaving EO to sing with his friends. Most everyone else left around 5:30 a.m., after the sun was well up. EO crashed at a friend's flat and we didn't see him until around 11 a.m. The impressive thing was that everyone brought plastic bags to carry out all the beer and whisky bottles and trash. And later on in the day, all that was left was ash from the bonfires mixed into the sand. This must be why no one ever complains about these little bonfire events.

Testosterone

My favorite husband has discovered the joy of BBCAmerica...or more importantly, Top Gear. In case you have never seen Top Gear, it's sort of like Motor Week, on steroids (testosterone). H first saw this wonderful show while we were visiting the elusive offspring in St Andrews. The hosts of Top Gear are three guys, of varying ages, discussing various cars (usually super-cars like Lamborghinis or Ferarris or Porsches, with the occasional BMW and Mercedes thrown in) and they even get to test drive these cars on a race track. Of course, there's another guy, the faceless (helmeted) Stig, a former Formula One driver who takes over where the three hosts leave off. He really makes those cars sing! I wish I could be driving them! No, no, wait, this is about my favorite husband: he wishes HE could be driving them. The neat thing is that Top Gear brings in guest drivers...like Helen Mirin and Dr Who (David Tennant or Bertie Crouch) and his assistant (Billie Piper)...and for the record, Dr Who was soundly beaten by his assistant. They also do such neat things as pit a Range Rover against England's top tank, the Challenger II. That was fun...you can watch it on YouTube:

In another episode, they pitted a Lotus Exige against an Apache helicoptor. This is on YouTube, too.

Anyway, when we get home from work and finish making dinner, we sit down to eat and watch the telly, as they say in the UK. And our choice of entertainment, after the nightly news, is BBC. It used to be that H would skip from channel to channel...never really finding something he wanted to watch. Or he'd say, "What channel is that XYZ show on?" or "Where do I find the ZYX movie?" You get the idea...I'm usually the channeler. But not now. Now, he grabs the remote as soon as we sit down and puts it on Channel 114 (the only station he knows now), and then sets aside the remote until Top Gear is finished...he'll even leave it longer, hoping against hope that there is yet another episode following. He doesn't mind watching the reruns either, even when they come on two hours later!

This weekend, we discovered a funny Brittish sitcom called Spaced...There was a six-episode marathon on Sunday while H varnished the new pocket doors in the dining room and I did paperwork. I love the quirkiness of this Brittish "Chuck" meets "Friends" sitcom. My husband, however, kept asking me questions while he had his back to the television, varnishing the doors: "So, is this a science fiction?" "No, it's just a show about a couple who have to act like they are married to share a flat together." Obviously, the alcohol in the varnish was having some sort of effect on H because he then asked "Are they time travelers?" Still varnishing with his back to the television. "No, that was Dr. Who. These guys are just a bunch of strange people in a flat in England." Finally, he got up and watched it with me for a little while. There was a wonderful scene where three of the characters (all grown men...I think) suddenly start finger-shooting each other in slow motion, complete with slo-mo sounds...bullets, grenades, splats, drawn-out "no-o-o-o-s. " They are slowly falling backwards and sideways as they get hit by the imaginary bullets, and eventually they all end up on the floor, not moving; then suddenly they get up and head out the door together, off to the pub. For some reason, that scene made me laugh so hard I could hardly breathe and I almost lost a contact lense from the tears in my eyes. Heaven only knows why was it so funny to me! My favorite husband gives me a goofy look and says "Men are all just big kids, aren't they?"

Well, yes, they are. While I know that H would love to have one of those Top Gear fast cars, secretly, he'd probably like the Apache helicoptor or Challenger II tank even better! So, these days I leave the remote next to his chair...this is a man who is really in touch with his inner little boy.

Malfunctioning Synapses

We have a bunch of twenty-somethings working in my section at my agency (both technical and legal). I really like them all, but find myself talking to two of them more than the others. We sometimes just sit and talk about things: life, work, family...you know, stuff. I never really thought of the difference in our ages until recently.

For example, last year, I was talking to Maryanne about a friend of hers who was having a baby. She said the friend had gotten a sonogram. I said a sonogram was my son's first baby picture and she turned to me, incredulously: "They had sonograms back then?" Imagine my surprise at hearing that phrase "back then" so soon in my life! I laughed out loud and answered: "Why, yes, we did. We even had cars back then." We both laughed, but I think she was a bit embarassed. I, on the other hand, thought the whole thing was funny... until a couple of days later.

Barely had I recovered from the "back then" experience when my co-counsel on one of my cases told me about the training session he had attended the week before. He had been bored because they had stuck him at a table with a bunch of old guys. "Old guys?" I asked, "How old were they?" "You know, forties and fifties," he said. "Wow!" I said, "That old!" He got all goofy and tried to back pedal. I can't remember what he said, but I laughed because he was digging the hole deeper. I told him to just keep it up because someday he, too, would be on the receiving end.

I think he likes to come into my office to talk because he knows he will make me laugh. Although he's three years older than EO, he sort of reminds me of my son. This morning he was in my office telling me the reasons he liked working for the government as opposed to a law firm. "First," he said, "you can have a life away from the office." "And B," he added, "you get far more experience sooner than you would at a law firm." He was right, of course, but I laughed out loud and asked him if he had seen "Home Alone." First and B. He understood and laughed, which leads me to the title of this blog. Malfunctioning synapses. Obviously, judging by the fact that AK is a very bright young attorney, I knew he was merely suffering from malfunctioning synapses, something I, myself have experienced.

To put him at ease, I told him about my own synapse malfunction two nights ago, when my favorite husband and I were flipping through channels and he stopped on a bicycle race. You know the one. The scenery was fantastic. "Where is this?" I ask. "It's the Tour de France," my favorite husband answers. "The Tour de France is in Finland this year?" I ask. "No, it's in France." Looking at the clock in the corner of the screne, I wonder: "Why are they using a Finnish clock?" No sooner were the words spoken than I realized my mistake. The "Finnish" clock only had one "n" in it. You know, finish? As in finishing time? Duh!

Does this mean I'm getting old? Surely not! After all, anyone's synapses can malfunction at any time. Right?

The Analyst's Couch

Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said: "Embarassing my children: a full-time job." I like the sentiment expressed by that bumper sticker. But my motto is this: "I have to give my son something to talk about when he is on the analyst's couch."

When the elusive offspring was 16 or 17, he said to me: "Mom, I want to dye my hair blue." "Sure!" I said, "where can we get the dye?" We bought bought the dye and his girlfriend came over and we made an afternoon of it. When we were finished, his normally ginger hair was the most lovely midnight blue. I loved it! My favorite husband, of course, hated it. As I watched EO drive away with his girlfriend, it suddenly hit me that I'd blown it. If my son was making a rebellious statement, a bid for teenage freedom, I did exactly the wrong thing. I should have said: "No, don't do it. I forbid it," or something more parental than "Yes, let's!" That way, when he's an adult and needs to blame his parents for his woes, he could tell the analyst: "My mother wouldn't let me dye my hair blue." But no, I wasn't thinking quite correctly. Instead, I found myself taking photos of my blue-haired son and keeping them in my office to amuse and shock colleagues (the military types were especially distressed by the idea of a blue-haired son). Two weeks later, the hair was turning a sickly green, and we refreshed the dye. Then two weeks after that, when it started looking yukky again, I asked EO if he wanted to do it again. "Naw, this is too much work. I'm going to let it go back." For which I really was grateful. It took a while to get the blue out of the bathtub, and I still have a formerly cream-colored towel that is now splotchy blue (not my doing) and can't be left out when we have company.

So, on our first night in Scotland last month, my son says: "Well, I guess it's now or never," and he takes off his leather motorcycle jacket, at which point I immediately knew where this was going. "Please don't let it say Mom." He lifts his sleeve and reveals what is actually a very nicely done tattoo:

"SPQR" being the initials for ... if my Latin serves me and if I translate correctly ... the Senate of the People of Rome. He said he got it as a reminder of the effects of hubris. He said the great nation of Rome fell because of hubris, and the United States is often compared to Rome (even taking the eagle for its symbol, like Rome). I tried to be really disappointed in this new evidence of EO's independence, but I'm afraid my open fascination with the artwork betrayed me. Maybe it's because I was suddenly reminded of my own flirtation with the idea (when I was 20) of having a tiny rose tattooed on my ankle...that fantasy faded faster than a henna tattoo. I have no tattoos. As for the EO's tattoo, my husband reluctantly admitted the elegance of the tattoo and its meaning, but still hates it. Blue hair grows out. Tattoos don't. Howevr, I think if he is going to have a tattoo, this one is a rather nice one.

Back to the analyst's couch. Now, you won't thank me for this next story. But I'm going to tell it anyway. During that same 16th or 17th year, my blue-haired son and I were driving down Glebe Road and he suddenly said: "Oh! I just thought of The Game!" "Huh? The game?" And he explained it to me. The simplicity of it is just stunning. The Game is to think of The Game, nothing more, nothing less. Or maybe more importantly NOT to think of The Game. But once you know about The Game, you will find yourself suddenly thinking of it (here is where I take a bow for sharing this lovely little mind fart of a game with you). What triggered the thought for my son that day was the act of driving down Glebe Road (maybe because he was on Glebe Road when someone taught him about The Game, just as I was on Glebe Road when he taught me about The Game). And thus, what triggers The Game for me is, of course, Glebe Road. Who knows what will now trigger the thought for you?

It is a never-ending quest to find things for EO to tell the analyst when he is an adult needing to blame his woes on his parents. Last week, the day before he went back to St Andrews Scotland (oh, yeah, I forgot to mention he came here for two weeks after we went there for two weeks...four lovely weeks with the ever elusive one), I made him spend the whole day with me so we could share some quality mother-son time. In our four weeks together, I was sure I had seen him for only 2 hours and 15 minutes...he thinks I exaggerate the paucity of time together, so I'll inflate it to 2 hours and 45 minutes. While we were having lunch together, I looked at him and said seriously. "I want to say something to you. I know you will hate me for it." Expecting some grand parental pronouncement, he earnestly responded: "No, I won't, Mom." I hesitated, smiled, and said "Glebe." "Oh, man! I don't believe it! You made me think of The Game!" Well, not quite in those words.

Something for him to tell the analyst.

Recovering from Vacation

The problem with going on a two-week vacation is that you really need another two-week vacation to recover from your two-week vacation...

We got back on June 25. That was a long time ago! But I have not had one moment to myself since we got back. It seems that every single one of my cases went bonkers while I was way. I know I'm a lawyer and I don't mean to say bad things about my profession, but I have to say that sometimes lawyers can be SO sleazy. In my absence, one slimeball tried to convince my supervisor (who was taking care of things while I was away) that we had agreed to something we would NEVER have agreed to. She was not fooled. And just today, other tried to do an end-run around us to get some outrageous agreement approved by the head of our section without my case team's input. Again, we were lucky that he knew what was going on and did not agree. I have never seen so much of this kind of behavior before. It's like everyone is taking a page out of the W Bush playbook and trying to ram their trash through before a new administration takes over. It is unbelievable what goes on in the last few months of an administration. I am proud to be a public interest lawyer, but it's not necessarily an easy job.

But enough about my case load. Kira is doing incredibly well! I can't believe she is the same dog! When we picked her up at the doggy hotel after our trip, she was very excited to see that we had not gotten rid of her. She has been extremely well-behaved. It's all so interesting. No longer is she eating the expensive venison canned dog food ($2.50 a pop!)...instead, she is eating very high-option dried dog food. It is really what she wants. Also, she no longer likes to eat anything in the morning. It just sits in the bowl until the evening. So, now she is eating three cups of dried food every night. She now weighs 65 pounds...we need to put another 15-20 pounds on her. And the best part is NO MORE ... well ... diarrhea. No more accidents on the kitchen floor. It's wonderful! Another thing is that she now brings her toys to us so we can play with her. She is really cute when she pounces on her ball, with her ears straight forward and her big paddle feet. She's not barking madly at people when they come in. She starts to bark, and stops when I tell her to stop...usually, anyway. We had a bunch of my colleagues over for hamburgers on Sunday, and Kira took it all in stride, like she was used to having so many people in the house. I've never had a dog attached to me like this. She's my shadow. I almost don't even need a leash for her now! Almost.

What a sweet beautiful dog. Well, I must leave. Before I started this post, I was reviewing and commenting on a 100-page settlement document that is woefully inadequate. Gotta get back to it. I have lots to write about, but it's going to take a while.