Watching You Sleep

When I watch you breathe your lungs push your chest out almost as far as your belly and I realize you are trying to sleep. It is inevitable that you will awaken someday either in a trance or with another person at your feet… maybe a dog or something. It isn’t that I never trusted you in your own little world, it’s just that there were no doors or windows and that made it difficult to enter, you know?

It’s funny that you sleep for so long and when you are awake you are still asleep.

Late Summer Early Fall

On the fifth day of October
there were seventeen children
playing in a fire hydrant gusher
that had been opened up by FDNY

They were very wet
They were more wet
than the FDNYs who were very wet
with sweat

Don't you think it odd
that on the fifth of October
it was hot enough to open the hydrants?

Bad Business

Here's one for the books. A well-known convenient store in Iowa City (should I say the name? maybe I will, maybe I won't): Soft drink cups fell on the floor and the clerk picked them up & put them back in the rack. When addressed, the grimy guru of grub rejoined with a "there's nothing wrong with them. They were only on the floor." When re-addressed that this wasn't particularly clean the clerk replied, "If you don't like it you don't have to shop here."
Now, I'll give but one example of why I'll take this purveyor of personal patronage up on his offer and never drink from this store's fountain again. I have dogs. I rent to people who have dogs. I know what gathers on the bottom of shoes.

Oh, okay - another example. I stepped on a big hairy cockroach and then walked over to get myself a fountain pop.

I think we all get the picture.

P.S. Delimart 1st Ave. Iowa City.

The end.

Happy Birthday Casey

Casey Jones Fitzgerald Neiweem Slop Jar Anthony.

Upon this Labor Day weekend, Casey turns a big 5 years old. Lately, he's been a bit depressed - seemingly from the move, but the more I think about it I think he's going through a mid-life crisis. I know I am.

Casey can be annoying. So can I. Casey is needy. So am I. Casey hates scotch. Okay, here's where the similarity stops.

On December 6, 2002 I drove to Richland Center, WI after seeing this dog described at a beagle on Petfinders.com. His name was Benny. What a stupid name for a dog. It sounds like a mafia-dog name. When I met Benny he didn't leave me alone. He jumped on me, begged me for petting. He was like a cheap date.

I paid my hundred bucks and we got into the car. On the way home, he kept biting me - puppy biting, but man he had sharp teeth. I kept using the "Donna from training school" technique of tapping him on the nose and saying "no bite." This dog obviously didn't speak English. He still doesn't speak English.

We stopped at Arbys in Dubuque on the way home. That dog wolfed down his sandwich half in no time! He can still eat anyone under the table. He'll eat anything that is under the table. He eats socks and underwear. That's an expensive story for another day.

When I brought Casey home (he & I picked that name on the way home from Richland Center) I took him to meet Caleb. Caleb acted weird around him - almost like he disliked Casey. I never could understand that. Months later, Caleb told me that Casey looked like Alan Colmes on Fox News. I felt bad for the right side of Caleb (I felt bad for Casey)!

For the first four months that we had Casey the vet kept telling us that he was 4 months old. I'd take him in for a check up, the vet would say - "Oh, he's about 4 months old based on his teeth." Finally, sometime around May I said, "I've been coming in here since December and you keep telling me that this dog is 4 months old! What gives?" The vet said he still had his baby teeth, so he must have been extremely young when I got him.

This scared me a bit because Casey had already surpassed the size of a beagle and was well on his way to shetland pony at this point - and we were definitely in "small dog mode." Okay, I admit his paws were big. But I just figured he was going to be one of those dogs that just had pancake paws. Not unusual, huh?

Casey finally lost his baby teeth in oh, about a year. Not really. But even though he lost his baby teeth he was still a biter. And obstinate! He would not listen. He heard - he just wouldn't listen. Worse than getting a kid away from Nintendo. This called for puppy training classes.

Puppy training was tough. Casey improved greatly but he had a long way to go. We didn't attend Training II, but I continued to work with him. Long story short, he can do everything he learned in class, but won't.

So now, Casey is 5. He's an adult. He weighs 93 pounds. He's a bit more mellow - doesn't bite anymore. He still craves attention like a moth craves light. But he's our Bud and even though he drives us crazy we love him.