Getting thrown to the dogs a biscuit at a time

I like dogs and I like biscuits, but I don’t like dog biscuits. And I really don’t need to because our dogs, or rather puppies, like them enough for our whole family. How do I know? Because there’s nothing they like better than to somehow gain access to the little bags containing dog treats. That’s how I know.

It’s not just dog biscuits they like, but people biscuits, too. How do I know? I made the mistake of turning my attention to a pot on the stove and my back to the two little hyperactive balls of fur known as our puppies. With lightning quickness, one of them jumped up onto a stool and from there onto the kitchen table, in order to liberate onto the floor a couple of fresh biscuits from a heaping serving bowl.

Please note the care the guilty party took regarding technique. She didn’t just grab the biscuit in her mouth and risk being caught red-pawed with ill-gotten gains. No, she had the cunning to knock two biscuits straight to the floor on the far side of the table (furthest from my line of vision) where her half-sibling, four-legged accomplice was lying in wait for just such spoils: one biscuit for each dog. What a deal, with almost no one the wiser, except for the baker.

Welcome to my world, which is run largely by two mixed-breed puppies who are in the middle of everything that’s happening and heading south in these parts. Copper and Fennec both have a Shiba Inu father, but different breeds for mothers: a Maltese and a Blue Heeler, respectively. Not my first choice had I been dog shopping for myself, but respectable choices for my kids who were hell-bent on rescuing the pair once they learned what would otherwise be their fate.

In begging that we get the puppies, my offspring verbalized all the right white lies about how well they’d take care of them. Surprisingly, they have risen to the occasion and trained them, too, although I’ve paid for the checkups, shots and spaying (of the dogs, NOT the kids), food and kennels.

Living on a busy road, minus the electronic dog fence I had in Kinderhook and fenced-in backyard in Kalamazoo, we invested in shock collars. They’ve been extremely effective. Wish I’d had something similar when my kids were younger (that’s a joke, so don’t report me).

Behaviorally, I had no idea what to expect from a Shiba Inu. From what I’ve read they were bred to flush out small game (no wonder our puppies quickly discovered our cats’ best hiding places that we didn’t even know about); however, Shiba Inus have transitioned into decent family dogs. I know nothing about Maltese, but my dad had a Blue Heeler cow dog and I was impressed with her smarts, work ethic and ferocity, except when directed at me.

As I’m writing this, my daughter just came up and handed me a half-eaten gel heel insert that the dogs had removed from someone’s shoe. Why? Because it was there and because they can and because they were bored, despite having a whole tote full of toys.

It’s no different than when your own children were little and walked right past the toy box on their way to do something incredibly naughty, like put all the bathroom towels and washcloths in the bathtub, turn on the faucet and then just stand back and watch the water run. For kicks.

Curiosity allegedly killed the cat; however, I think dogs are equally if not more curious about what’s going on around them. When I play piano, Fennec is on the bench next to me to observe how I make each sound. When I’m sewing, Copper supervises every stitch (while trying to snitch spools of thread for teething). When I’m cooking, the puppies station themselves in the kitchen, hoping for a spill or food not from a bag with “Chow” on it.

When my breathing issues prevent sleep, the puppies hang out with me while everyone else snores the night away. That loyalty alone is what helps me make it through all the stolen socks, shredded pencils, chewed furniture and canine biscuit capers.

For whom does the historic fabric bell toile?

My goal for 2024, or rather ONE of my goals for 2024, is to write at least one column on a topic of more mainstream variety. Although I frequently start out with that idea in mind, in little to no time I find myself veering off into the quirky weeds that line the sides of mainstream territory. That’s just how I’m wired.

While a lot of people tell me the quirkiness I share about my personality and life is what resonates with them, that doesn’t make my life and perspective any less quirky. As much as I’d like to pretend quirkiness is not my lot in life, to do so would be a big fat lie.

Faking normal is the same, garden-variety kind of lie you make up at work when there’s a new hire standing there and all kinds of par-for-the-course chaos is cutting loose. To comfort him/her, you straight-facedly murmur, “It’s not usually like this” (or some equally insincere pile of hooey), and are shocked when your nose fails to grow several inches on the spot, which would be totally justified.

So I’ll be real here: quirky business is a way life for me. I continually run into stupid stuff and can’t go more than a few minutes without experiencing goofy thoughts about obscure topics which I feel compelled to share. Fortunately, it’s not 2024 yet, so what I’ll write about here involves a recent goofy thought on an obscure topic.

I have some furniture I would like to have re-upholstered. One of the items is a camel-back sofa, which I previously had re-covered while I was in the process of moving to my current home 20 years ago. It’s a classic piece that sits next to my baby grand, so I selected a classic toile pattern of rose and sage on ivory as the upholstery fabric. It’s by far my favorite fabric ever.

It must have been my son’s fave, too, as he would come home after working at a lumberyard and lie down on the sofa to nap with his dirty clothing and boots still on (WTH?!), despite my pleas to stop when I eventually caught him in the act. As a result of his savage behavior, the sofa surface is trashed and I’m pissed and on the prowl for fabric suitable to recover this piece of furniture I shouldn’t have to be reupholstering.

My assumption that it wouldn’t be hard to find a similar toile fabric was off-base. I haven’t located anything remotely close to the rose and sage colors I love. But let me backtrack a bit. Unless you are into fabrics, you probably have no idea what I mean by “toile”, which is short for Toile de Jouy. In French, that means “cloth from Jouy”, which is a little town near Versailles.

Traditional toile fabric features single-color pastoral scenes of nobility, peasants or nature on a light-colored background. My toile sofa fabric is unusually comprised of two colors and features scenes of peasants driving ox cart, tending garden and making wine. Call me reverse-classist, but I like that my toile characters appear more productive than the fun-loving French nobility ones that sport fancy clothing and hairstyles.

I decided to keep an open mind regarding what toile with which to reupholster my sofa. Although I approached toile selection as a traditionalist, some of the online fabric merchants did not. They’d clearly crossed the historic French border into some ultra-modern territory. My toile research uncovered golf heaven, vampire, cats in space and train robbery toile scenes. And that’s not all.

Exactly who conceptualized Bigfoot toile, aliens toile, Gothic graveyard toile, ninja toile and BLM toile, topped only by “tear down that wall toile”?! Also available to recover your couch is trash polka toile, NJ diner modern toile, post-Apocalyptic toile, dinosaur toile and my personal favorites: toilets through time toile and bad dog holiday party toile. Aarf!

The list of toile-spoofing toiles is endless! I started feeling swamped by the overwhelming number of them, so perhaps I’ll go with an Everglades toile print fabric for the couch, with coordinating reptile or amphibian toile curtains. For whom does the bell toile? It toiles for the postmodern in me!

Dodging birthdays and all the hoopla hooey

I have a special milestone birthday coming up on December 19^th. In four months I will officially turn 60 years old. It’s hard to fathom. Even though I’m not a math genius, I’m good enough at the basics to recognize this is the real deal.

That means I know with certainty that everything in this case adds up. Born in 1963 – yup. Turned 59 last birthday – yup. Have a sister two years older who is turning 62 in October – yup. The writing is on the wall in not-so-sweet birthday cake icing: I WILL BE 60!

“Start saying you’ll soon be 60 years ‘young’, not ‘old’”, advises a friend who conquered her 60-year milestone and several since them. Don’t you just hate people like that, who keep on the sunny side of life?! Makes me want to clobber and knock them on their not-so-sunny backsides and force them to listen to stories of people who never get to live happily ever after.

There are perpetually cheerful folks out there who can hardly wait for bad things to happen to someone else so they can launch into their cheerful routine. Gray skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face! I get happy-faced back to the reality of wondering how to celebrate a birthday I’d rather not have because I’ve never been much of what you’d call a “birthday person”.

Within the past month, I read an article at bustle.com by Jillian Giandurco, titled, “Birthday Person or Birthday Hater”, and subtitled, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” In this timely August 17, 2023 piece she suggests multiple factors form our views of our birthdays and how they should be celebrated:

“It’s not uncommon to have mixed feelings about getting older, but there’s no denying that the psychological landscape that separates birthday and non-birthday people is pretty vast.”

She’s not a kidding. In contrast to non-birthday person me, I’ve noticed there are people who don’t just celebrate a birth day, but seem to celebrate a complete birthday month. They fully expect to get a free day off work on their actual birthday and throw a fit (aka a “birthday tantrum”) if their boss says no. On the home front, they don’t think they should have to lift a finger on their “special day” or other days that end in “Y”.

Forced to be at work, they may convince one co-worker to bring in special breakfast pastries the week of the birthday; they may organize a birthday potluck luncheon to commemorate the occasion of their birth (where everyone except them brings a dish to pass); and they may also calculatingly plan “impromptu” after-work drinking get-togethers at local watering holes and announce at the start of each of the self-interested bashes, “Birthday girl can’t buy! That’s the rule.”

Thank goodness I accept I am not that birthday loving person, but more of a birthday hater who is always pleased when my birthday discreetly passes without a fuss made over me. That brings me back to my upcoming 60^th birthday, which, incidentally, falls on a Tuesday. Yippee, let’s live it up and party hardy at the start of a week, not to mention that in the post-COVID era, eating and drinking establishments still keep greatly reduced pandemic hours.

On a brighter note, there seems to be a weed establishment on every corner and you can now get take-out drinks to wash it down! Unfortunately, those two changes are not things I regard as for the better, so I would have trouble toasting either of them, even if someone else were buying.

My next big question is what wholesome activity to participate in and who to take with me to the blessed event. It obviously won’t be someone sickeningly cheerful, who will spend the occasion blowing sunshine up my skirt. No, I want someone older, more introverted and far less well off, whose life stinks even more than mine.  

That’s a tall order, but if I start searching now, I may find someone screwed up enough to make my day! I’ll skip work, treat myself to a massage and enjoy a low-key dinner and show with just the right, reinforcing, screwed-up person.

You think this is some kind of a restaurant?!

“Would either of you care for a beverage?” I ask my adult children as they wander into the kitchen around 6:30 PM, on an evening when we’re all home. Never mind I worked all day, whether they did or played. All hospitality expectations fall upon me.

The word “beverage” – they hate that – when I speak that three-syllable word formally, instead of asking more casually, “Do you want a drink?”, which to me sounds like I’m offering alcohol (or should I say “an alcoholic beverage”?).

“BEV-er-AGE” I can hear my son hyper-pronouncing behind my back, all the while making silly faces. He’s mocked me over that since he was a little kid. And like the alcoholic beverages I won’t be serving for dinner, he has only improved with age.

I pour them glasses of wild strawberry-flavored liquid something that actually tastes much better than alcohol anything. Crystal Light six-flavor packet containers were on sale for a buck the last time I was at Ollie’s. So although you can mock my diction, you can’t fault my shopping prowess.

“What’s for dinner?” is always the question looming over my kids’ nighttime agenda. Never do they inquire, “Is there something you would like me to make?” or “What could I help you fix for dinner, Mom?” I recognized early onparentally that I am but a means to prevent them from suffering a hunger-induced end.

Fortunately, I always seem to have a few tricks up my sleeve, be it a third of a huge pan of lasagna I froze for just such an occasion the last time I baked it, or grilled muenster and Swiss cheese sandwiches on Texas Toast, or its southwest substitute: quesadillas made with leftover pulled chicken or pork after we’ve tired of eating the meat on buns.

But tonight, it’s leftover chicken casserole with instant mashed potatoes to which I’ve added some Hidden Valley Ranch powder – just enough to give them a zestier than usual flavor. The only real decision my kids must make in the matter is to choose between frozen peas or sausage-seasoned Brussel sprout remains from a good, first-run meal we had over the weekend.

I learned from my mother, grandmothers and mother-in-law to always have in the back of my mind an idea of what leftovers I need to do a timely repurposing of (sounds more appetizing than “to get rid of”), how to jazz them up (through presentation, perhaps a special condiment or by giving them a new name) to make the proposition more attractive and therefore more edible. Sometimes it works great, other times not so well. 

The problem my kids have always had, although their grades told a different story, is that they’re not stupid. Instead of asking what’s for dinner, meaning what do I intend to serve them, they will ask me what all leftovers are available for consumption?

As the smart apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I will counter by listing refrigerated leftovers in reverse order of freshness, so the last items they hear (which they are most likely to recall), are the ones that need to be eaten first. That’s highly strategic.

But sometimes, they respond by ignoring all the leftover choices I have outlined, which this week included goulash, Swedish meatballs over rice and asiago spaghetti, and ask me to whip up on the spot something fresh – say, chicken fajitas.

Say what?! Obviously, my offspring haven’t bought enough groceries in their limited lifetimes to be able to comprehend the enormity of the huge household budget hosing I’ve been taking each week at the grocery store due to inflation. My grocery expenses are up 30%, even with the elimination of what I regard as luxury items.

Current economics render leftovers a necessity, not a quaint nicety. No wonder I shout out, “You think this is some kind of a restaurant?!” in exasperation when my kids try and corner me into fixing something new while ignoring what needs to be used.

So much for the state of things at Mom’s restaurant, where good-tasting, nutritious, home-cooked food is available at all hours. Please remember to tip the motherly waitress, cook and dishwasher – aka the holy home front home economics trinity!