She must be our dog.

As it turns out, Lilly is pretty finicky with her food. We are buying her higher-quality food and treats because she seems to have a food allergy (my dad is gasping and shaking his head in disbelief right now, I know). Chicken and wheaty-things make her skin turn very red, and we’ve had good results giving her a lamb and rice-based food over the last couple of days. I went to our local pet place and picked up some salmon-based food because the lady said that getting fish into the dog’s diet will be good for her skin and her coat.

After her walk last night, AV came in and realized we’d run out of lamb food so we gave her the rest of the fish food. The wolfed it down. As a treat, we gave her some wet food that was basically a fish stew, and it smelled pretty good in the can. (No comments from the peanut gallery - we eat exotic foods, but dog-food fish stew is not one of them). She wolfed that down, too. We had sardine sandwiches for dinner last night, and had a couple of remnants in the can. Lilly ate those, too.

We both agreed that following this incident this dog - of all the dogs in the ether - is the dog for us. Now if I can just get her to clean up after herself and/or listen to rational arguments about when and where she should go to the bathroom we’ll be all set.

Adventures in Dog Ownership

Lilly remains a nice dog. Last night we introduced her to our good friends K & M, and she did not bark at them or wee or anything. She was excited, but then she calmed down. While we were eating, she did not beg - she simply laid under the table and rested while we caught up.

We have discovered Lilly’s bathroom, though, and until yesterday that was the basement of our house. We think that she gets really distracted outside (who can blame her, really - squirrels, birds, other dogs, etc.) and can’t focus so she waits until she can get indoors. We’re working on this - she can’t wander around the house so freely anymore, and the baby gate we’ve put up has provided an effective mental barrier so far. Our dog can jump pretty high, so we’re waiting until she figures out how to get over that gate. So much for not pooping in the house.

One other mental battle we’re waging is on her walks. We have been taking her twice a day to help her expend some energy and she’s taken that opportunity to pull us for blocks and blocks. On Wednesday night we walked too far - about five blocks north and three blocks east of our house. She wouldn’t stop pulling, and I just gave up. I didn’t want to get pulled home, but I had no choice and my pack leadership collapsed. Once we got home, I left to go get us some dinner and while I was driving by City Park I saw dogs on looser leashes and running with their owners and I just cried.

AV is point man for all things dog, and he figured out that in order to correct the pulling, we just shouldn’t entertain it. We stop on the walks every time she pulls, and we wait until she comes back to us or the line is slack to move along. As we left for our evening walk yesterday, we tried this tactic and our neighbors were initially looking at us like we were nuts. They asked us what we were doing, and we explained that we were trying not to have her pull too much. It looked pretty strange (especially if you couldn’t see the dog) - two people stopping literally every foot and talking out loud. Weird, but by the end of the walk we were counting the number of human steps we could take until she started pulling. We made it to 10. In dog and dog-owner terms, that’s an eternity.

Update: Yesterday AV and Lilly made it an amazing 38 steps without a pull. Not bad! The trick seems to be to wrap the leash around our waist, and hold the loop end to the non-loop end with our left hands. That seems to be the most comfortable for us and also for her. It doesn’t allow her to get too far out in front of us, but it does give her ample trotting room.

Last night she started playing this game where she’d hide her bully stick from herself. She put it in a corner, walked away for awhile, and then returned to the corner with a tremendous amount of energy to dig the bully stick out from where she hid it. That’s pretty good! And it’s hilarious to watch. We were in the den last night and she was holding the stick in her mouth while standing at the door like “You lazy humans and your tv! Let me out to entertain myself. I can’t take the Seinfeld!”

Please allow me to introduce myself.

Lilly C. Vartabedian

This is Lilly. According to at least one of my family members, we should have named her Chernobyl. We like Lilly, and she answers to it (so far … we’ve only had her for about three hours).

We’re waiting for the results of a DNA test to confirm her breed, but according to our friend Peggy at Colorado Basenji Rescue, Lilly is a Basenji and Boston Terrier mix.

We took her for a pretty long walk before we let her explore the house (which, according to Cesar Millan, will help them to expend anxious energy). On our walk we encountered two very howly bloodhounds and a rottweiler named Opie. Lilly was reasonably well-behaved. When she came into the house she was not panting or running all over the place. She even laid down on the kitchen floor to rest when the two of us were standing there.

Just so it’s clear, I am not this dog’s mommy and Lilly is not my baby. I’ll err on the side of obvious semantic choices here.

I have not ever seen AV in this state. He has wanted a dog for a VERY long time. I have never really wanted a dog, but I sure like Lilly. I hope she doesn’t chew up my couch.

Update: Lilly made it through her first night here without pooping about the house or in her bed. We are pleased. It helps that she and AV are good pals. He bought her a monkey that makes noises. That is how you ensure pack leadership - screaming monkeys.

I still need to work on my pack leadership skills, but I’m not being too hard on myself. I’ve been a dog owner less than 24 hours.

Odd! Lucky! Crying!

Today we ran several errands and tied up some loose ends. Job one involved turning in some library books to the central branch of the DPL. The book drop is on 13th street, one of the busiest thoroughfares through downtown. As I was getting out to return books, my wallet and keys fell out of my lap and onto the storm drain grate. Actually, my wallet fell through the storm drain gate. I managed to get my keys away from peril.

I called 3-1-1, which helps link Denverites to city services and the operator connected me to wastewater (but not without a chuckle). I explained my situation to the lady at wastewater and she said she’d call me right back. In the meantime, AV had an idea to go to the Cap Hill ace hardware to pick up one of those long arm-grabby things that is sold on late night television. He remembered that he had just purchased a rake and (thankfully) left it in the car. While I was waiting for the wastewater lady to call me back, AV was splayed out on 13th shouting at me to watch for cars while he put the rake in the empty storm drain (we’re in a drought here) to rescue my wallet. He managed to do so. My hero!

When I explained it to the lady at wastewater - who had helpfully (a) called back and (b) dispatched a truck to come to our aid - she was amazed.

I’d just like to avoid my readership thinking I’m an idiot by saying that at the time my wallet wouldn’t quite fit in my pockets because I had just eaten a large lunch and was - ahem - very full. My sister says “this is why you should carry a purse.” My 90-year old grandma thought it was hilarious. She offered to help over the phone, but I just told her to get a good laugh out of it. Sheesh.

Job two involved the first of what will be many visits to local dog shelters to find ourselves a canine companion. We went to Maxfund, a no-kill shelter here in town to see what they had to offer. We have been thinking of getting a dog on the large side (like a boxer), so in we go to the big dog area and I lost it. In fact, I burst into tears not because I felt sorry for the dogs, but because I was scared. There was a lot of very loud and crazy barking and dogs jumping and snarling at me and I FREAKED OUT. So much for being the pack leader.

I had a bad incident when I was very little with my Nana’s cocker spaniel, Shere Khan. On our first meeting that dog jumped up on me, chased me into a back room, and then weed on the floor in the hallway. I did not come out until he was and would stay well away from me. Also, we never had dogs when we were kids so I just don’t have any skills there. All of these seemed to conspire against my efforts today.

After being scared by the big dogs, we went to the smaller dog area and decided to take Rocky - a very young beagle mix (we think with maybe a pit bull or a mastiff … the face and coloring suggest this, and since I have been studying dogs a great deal, this is a sort of educated guess) - out for a walk. It’s a good thing that we didn’t look at a bigger dog, because I took the leash and Rocky took off with me stumbling behind for a couple of feet.

Anyway, all this is to say that my first foray with dogs was an informative one. We’ve been watching and reading Cesar Millan like crazy. I think his approach to dogs is reasonable and as a novice here it seems like a good position to adopt. However, today kind of demonstrated to us the gap between theory and practice. I expected that the training I had absorbed from reading and watching would help me overcome my fear, but it didn’t. This isn’t a comment about the training, but going to the shelter today exposed the chief issue I’ve always had with dogs. I’m not over being afraid of them, but the only way I won’t be afraid is to be around them. Hopefully this is a cycle I can break long enough to help find a dog for our family.

We will go to a different shelter tomorrow to keep at it. I am determined to be a responsible dog owner, but it has to be with a smaller dog - I don’t want to get dragged through City Park.

Vegetables

As a regular reader of Heather Armstrong’s Dooce, I’ve been following her foray into the 21-Day Cleanse touted by Oprah et als, designed to - in Oprah’s words - “give me a chance to think about it differently and see what my attachments are to certain kinds of foods.” The cleanse asks you to give up all animal products (meat, dairy, and eggs), gluten, refined sugars and booze for 21 days. It sounded like a good idea to me, but I can’t give up booze. The freshly-stocked bourbon cabinet would cry.

Now, this post - written a couple of days ago about eight days into Heather’s cleanse - shows the Cleanse’s ugly side. Yes, it may make you more mindful about eating (as she points out, she’s already seeing her food differently), but it will also make you sick.

This business about the cleanse irks me tremendously, particularly since it is turning a very reasonable attitude toward eating into another Oprah-endorsed crash diet. While Heather indicated that she wasn’t engaging in the cleanse to lose weight, but to develop that mindful attitude, her latest post on the topic implies that deprivation of this cleansing sort does not help anything, and does nothing for your health.

For some reason, this has struck a nerve because I’ve begun what will probably be a life-long struggle with my weight. Once I turned 21, my formerly fast (and unhealthy) rocket metabolism - able to survive only on 44oz sodas, full pots of coffee, and little food - crunched to a halt. In the space of a year, I gained 20 pounds and was a healthful 135 pounds at my wedding. Once we got married, though, the stress of my crazy jobs at Regis (can you pick up the summer conference program? Sure? It begins next week, and did I mention you won’t be adequately compensated?), seminary, and living in the residence halls among the uncivilized led to a steady gain of between 40 and 50 pounds (depending). At my heaviest, I’ve weighed 180 pounds. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a 5′ 6″, 20-something frame.

I wasn’t a desperate dieter, but I struggled to put together a way of eating that curbed the desire for fast food and entire boxes of Swiss Cake Rolls (you have a stressful night at school and not be a smoker. Swiss Cake Rolls helped me cope).

As it turns out, the best “diet” advice I have received was not from Women’s Health (to which I subscribe), but it came from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I read this book in the fall of 2006. In the section on corn, Pollan talks about high fructose corn syrup, which is as near a manufactured and legal poison as anything. His description of HFCS and other artificial ingredients (and our unconscious addiction to these things … like our completely artificial sense of sweetness) was enough to make me manic about what was in our pantry. It’s not quite in everything (Target’s Market Pantry Multigrain Bread doesn’t have it, but many other “whole grain breads” do have it), but darn near and so we finished the food with the junk in it and started replacing it with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, grind-it-yourself peanut butter and olives. I’m still game for the refined carbohydrate - have you ever eaten my Mother-in-Law’s Rice Pilaf? Had the Corned Beef and Cabbage at our local Pub? - but for the most part we eat pretty naturally. All because I did some reading and gained a clear intellectual understanding of what was happening. Unless you buy the cleanse book, you rely on Oprah’s blog. She doesn’t explain to you the damage HFCS is doing to your internal organs and its generous contribution to that spare tire you’re carrying around.

Pollan’s book turned me into a rabid label-reader. We both committed to cutting the preservatives and artificial sugars out of our diet. I was able to join the gym at campus and managed to lose somehwere between 12 and 15 pounds over the course of seven months. The combination isn’t a quick-fix, something pretty antithetical to our culture of instant results and convenience.

(Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we are a household with two incomes and no kids. Pollan discusses the challenge facing our culture when preservative-packed foods are the ones that families can reasonably afford … there’s something of a class dimension to this discussion, for sure.)

In a later magazine article for the NYT Magazine, Pollan wrote a long treatise - what would eventually become his latest book, In Defense of Food - that included a couple of rules that should govern our food intake: (1) don’t eat anything your great, great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food; (2) don’t eat food that has been anti-oxidant or omega-3 enhanced - get that stuff from natural sources as much as possible; (3) don’t eat anything that has more than five ingredients (this one is hard, but it’s a good “standard candle”).

When things are reasonably stable, I’m able to abide by these rules. It’s those marathon Heidegger final exams that set things awry. It’s not about buying organic (although I do when it’s cost-effective) per se, but it is about eating a lot of vegetables, eating meat and fish in reasonable quantities, enjoying milk and eggs, and avoiding the Swiss Cake Rolls.

Eggs cracked over cooked pasta makes a delicious sauce. Just so you know.

Nerd Alert: television

We have been absolutely bonkers over this season of Battlestar Galactica, and we were able to catch Friday’s season finale away from our TiVO. Here is some excellent play-by-play of the episode. My jaw literally dropped at the end of the finale. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. AV immediately made the Planet of the Apes connection, but I was confused and stunned at once.

The writing on BSG gets better over time, and the last five or so episodes have been really top-notch. I’d argue that it’s up there with The Wire and Deadwood in terms of the pacing, the total coherence of the story, and the uncanny response to the viewer’s need for pieces and parts to be urgently revealed. It’s something. 

Uncluttered

AV and I are (theoretically) working on a post that will recollect our Canadian adventure, complete with sights, sounds, and annotations. Readers should remain wary that said post may never appear, but it’s a nice thought in any case. Here are some details of our last couple days that will or will not be interesting. 

Although we indicated a desire to see live music on Friday and Saturday, we did not see any. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but on Saturday when we arrived at the Trane Studio for the performance we were surprised by the $25 (each) cover. If we didn’t have the prospect of more music in front of us (which we do), we probably would have stayed. Also, we were underdressed. I was wearing a t-shirt that had lost a battle with a turkey meatball a couple of months ago. Yes, I wear grungy t-shirts to public places, although not around philosophers or students. Airplanes and Canadian jazz clubs routinely see greasy t-shirts. Hobo status confirmed. 

After the seminar concluded on Saturday afternoon, several of us wandered over to the Communist’s Daughter, a hallway of a bar on Dundas and Ossington. The place was absolutely jammed (as most hallways are) and featured some pretty good live music. It was a nice place to take leave of my new friends. Since Saturday it’s been a challenge to return to my regular work. I didn’t forget that I was teaching, but it’s been hard to gear back into dealing with the intro course and the manifold requirements and tasks related to managing the online class. I’m spending six of my hours today as Office Hours, trying to be available to students and get caught up with grading and writing. 

We arrived in NY with little difficulty on Sunday morning and have slept soundly every night since. In addition to lots of visiting with the NY folks, we’ve taken up dominoes (playing the Chicken Foot variation of Maltese Cross) in place of our usual Canasta marathons. The first night we were playing on a tablecloth with a whole bunch of fruits on it. The combination of fruit and dominoes gave me a massive headache. I had a Guinness on Sunday night, and it didn’t cost $7.75.

Dispatches (5)

Last night we went to the Rex again to see Metalwood. Apparently it was the first time in five years that the original members were together, so there was a healthy crowd of fans there. They were a great band, and were clearly enthused to be playing together. I thought they were pretty good, especially since they employed a judicious use of the Fender Rhodes. Two really great, tightly played sets kept us at the bar until 1:30am. Now, regular readers know that AV and I are at home in our pajamas at 5:00pm so this 1:30a business is an achievement. 

Metalwood was not the highlight of our night, though. Our host in Toronto introduced us to a guy named Bill, and by John’s account you can count on Bill to be at the best jazz show or film in Toronto every night of the week. He’s something of a celebrity in the Toronto jazz circle. When we were introduced as Denverites, he asked us immediately if Ron Miles was still there. 

Bill has seen live every one of our favorite musicians (Brotzmann, Benink, etc) in very close proximity, likes the same peeps we like (Susie Ibarra, William Parker) and he also loves the films of Werner Herzog. When he asked if there were any rep cinemas in Denver, we knew we had run into the right person. For the record, AV says that Starz is a kind of rep(ertory) cinema, and the group AV volunteers for has the spirit of a rep cinema.

Anyway, it’s hard to explain the conversation, but I will say that it was fascinating and we could have talked to Bill all night long. It was fortuitous that we ran into him, as he mentioned that Kahil El Zabar will be playing here on Saturday night, just down the street from where we’re staying. Tonight we’ll go to a more experimental club to get a sense of Toronto’s free/improvisational scene. Man - seven shows in fifteen days (we’ll see two next week in NYC). Not bad at all. 

Today is a break from formal philosophy. We’ve been working each day this week (and will again tomorrow) on philosophy for about four hours each day, broken into two sessions. The conversations are intense and very challenging - everyone here (except me) is a PhD or in a PhD program, so the level of discussion is roughly in the troposphere. I am learning a lot, though, and I have a lot of thinking to do as I work back through some of the ideas that have been teased out from the text. I joked initially that it was going to be like philosophy two-a-days. I wasn’t wrong.  

 

Dispatches (4)

Today - a revelation: Carribean Roti Palace (I had the goat roti … not joking). SO good. Also excellent conversation at lunch today.

In the midst of all this eating - including (and especially) great little fresh markets lining the streets with fragrant produce and ripe peaches - I am doing some listening and learning of philosophy. Mostly, though I am eating and look forward to finding the next thing to eat.

AV continues to wander productively. We’re tired, though, and our feet hurt and hamstrings are killing us from the walking. We’ve decided using the subway will be best from now on.

Soon - jazz at The Rex. We took last night off and it’s back to the trenches tonight. What terrible trenches these are, in Toronto.

Dispatches (3)

Last night: the Laura Hubert band. If every person singing jazz and blues could be as interesting and as good as Laura is, I might change my mind about the singing with jazz. She - and her band, holy smokes - were amazing. 

My internet is asking me if I want English or French, and I’m having difficulty quickly converting celsius to fahrenheit. It occurred to me the other night that I ought to be ashamed of myself when I ask my canadian colleagues to translate C to F, which they do with no problem. I cannot, however, and it seems like a double standard. Google maps is reporting distances in km - I need miles, computer, miles. I know not how far 5km is from anywhere.