A Picture is Worth a Thousand Gray Hairs

Recently (yesterday) I hosted a semi-annual Funtastic Flag Day Party. Why a Flag Day party? Well, why not. A few years ago me and my friends (Or is it "My friends and I?" Ehhh... who cares.) were searching for a holiday to celebrate in June - OK, searching for an excuse to get together, drink, grill out, drink, play games and drink - and realized smack dab in the middle of the month was a perfect excuse to do just that. Flag Day. Plus it's not like there's competition. Nobody else will be hosting a Flag Day party. So I've claimed it as my own.

Good times, good times...

Or so I thought. Until I downloaded the photos from my camera. *ugh*

Let me preface the following whiny little tirade by saying in just a little over a month I'm turning... 40. There. I said it. And the fact is I may not be handling it all that well. To the point I'm not even having a 40th Birthday party... I'm having a 20/20 Birthday party.

(insert "river in Egypt" comment here)

"Age is just a number" is something people will often say. Usually people in their 20s. Or even more commonly those annoyingly "inspirational" octogenarians who insist on spending their 85th birthday skydiving or competing in a triathlon or going on a week-long cross-state bike ride. Yes, your age is just a number. An increasingly larger number.

But back to the *ugh*-inducing pictures. Now I've gotten used to the whole "Holy crap I'm tubby!" reaction to seeing pictures of myself. Mostly. What struck me about the latest batch of pictures was how OLD I look in all of them, due almost entirely to my mostly gray hair. Makes it look like the big 5-Oh is the birthday that's just around the corner, not the 4-Oh.

The gray hair isn't anything new either. It's not something that's happened recently. I started going pre-maturely gray way back in high school. (Thanks heredity! You're the best!) So I should be used to it. But I'm no longer pre-maturely gray... now I'm just maturely gray. And I get that it's not like I was just diagnosed with leukemia or something. But the gray hair thing coupled with the impending 40th are combining to freak me out right about now.

Although "freaking out" isn't really the right term. It's more that I feel this massive crushing weight sitting on my shoulders. The feeling you get when there's some upcoming event you wish you could avoid but know you can't. Like going to the dentist. The dentist in hell.

But perhaps the worst part about getting so worked up over my hair is it makes me feel like a GIRL. A big FAT girl. A big fat WHINY girl. A big fat whiny OLD girl. Heck, I'm even planning to go and get my hair colored. What's next, a mani/pedi? Maybe a bikin wax? Might as well go all out, huh?

I have to admit it's not really just about the gray hair, but what the gray hair represents. See, it's a symbol. A symbol for aging.

For mortality.

For death.

Typical middle-aged getting-older cliched crap isn't it? What's next - a shiny new phallic-shaped sports car? Which I'll of course need to cruise around picking up hotter-than-they-are-smart 22-year-olds.

Until then I'm going to spend the afternoon Photoshopping my hair a darker color.

Puppy Chronicles: Pee Watch/Morning Edition

Yes, I'm writing more about pee. As I stated last night, since getting a puppy this past weekend, my entire life now revolves around pee. So really it's all I have to talk about at this time.

The morning typically starts by taking Darwin out of his kennel and immediately out to the yard. (After I put on pants of course - the neighbors...) I've already learned not to let the pup's feet even touch the floor before we're outside, because first thing in the morning he isn't going to wait. Of course, what's the first thing most of us do in the morning, right? He thinks he's people!

Out to "the spot" (as in "the spot" in my yard you do NOT want to walk if you ever stop over) and he goes almost instantly. "Good boy!"-praise-treat. Trying to make that association in his little puppy brain that peeing outside = good/treat, peeing inside = bad/no treat. Do we then head back inside for breakfast? Oh no. I've already learned that Darwin is going to go again within a few minutes.

Only after leak #2 (and maybe a #2 too, depending) it's back inside we go. Fill up the water bowl, measure out his food and then... watch. Constant vigilance. Some may think "Hey, we've just come back inside after the pup peed twice, so I should be safe for awhile. I can let my guard down ever so slightly and have some coffee. Maybe some waffles" Not so! On more than one occasion Darwin has let lose on the floor less than 5 minutes after coming back inside. That's why I've learned to wait when outside. (Which brings up the question: who's training who here? And where's MY treat?)

The important thing is to establish a routine. Or so the book says. Take the puppy outside at regular intervals to avoid inside accidents. It suggests every two hours. It is wrong. By the time two hours has passed, Darwin would have peed on the floor several times. Can't blame him really - after I've had several cups of coffee there's no way I'm waiting two hours.

So I cut it down to every hour/hour-and-fifteen-minutes after he's had some water. Again, establish a routine. After all, Supernanny is always going on about that when dealing with unruly children terrorizing suburban homes. Not that I'd ever watch Supernanny. Or think Jo is kind of hot. I haven't. And I don't.

The going out every hour or so thing worked relatively well for a couple days. (While constantly watching him in between those trips of course.) So this morning I thought "Let's stretch it to an hour and a half today." Seemed reasonable. Like the first step towards pee freedom.

For those of you wondering how that went, well... Darwin will wait for an hour and 28 minutes after coming inside before he decides to go again.

So close!

Puppy Chronicles: 11:25PM June 3

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Four days ago, I did something I’ve always wanted to do. I got myself a dog. His name is Darwin, and he’s a 10 week-old Australian Shepherd. And he’s way cuter than your dog. Or even your baby.

Although I’ve always wanted a dog, until I bought my house last summer I was an apartment dweller, and generally I don’t think it’s fair to get a dog in an apartment. Unless you get one of those small types, and I don't even consider those to be "dogs." If it isn't a good deal bigger than a large cat, what you've got there isn’t a dog but instead is essentially a glorified guinea pig. Most likely a yippy annoying guinea pig.

So I did my research. Prepared by reading a puppy training book or two, checking info on the web, dog-sitting a friend’s pooch while he was out of the country on business. I wanted to be ready, or as ready as I could be, so me plus dog wouldn’t equal disaster.

But there’s one thing all the books and websites leave out about getting a puppy: when you get your new pup home, suddenly, from that point on and for the foreseeable future, your entire life, almost every waking moment, revolves around… pee.

Yes, all the info you read gives you the guidelines for housebreaking a new pup. They stress the importance of doing it properly, how to go about doing it, an expected timeframe for progress etc etc etc. What they don’t stress is how much pee is going to completely consume your life. It’s almost all I’ve thought about for the past 4 days.

Any time Darwin is out of sight, even for a moment, I think “Is he peeing on the floor?” When he runs across the room and stops I think “Oh crap he’s about to pee.” Even when I try to sneak away for a moment to pee myself, the whole time I’m thinking “I bet he’s out there peeing on the floor right now.”

The constant vigilance is exhausting. Having to watch him every moment, ready to run him outside if he is about to take a leak. But there's the problem - the books and online info says to look for certain behaviors indicating your pup is about to let loose on the floor - pacing, sniffing the ground, etc. Darwin doesn't waste time with that. He stops whatever else he is doing and, unceremoniously, just goes. So I've got to clap, get him to stop, get him outside to his spot, let him finish, "good boy" pet and treat him. Then back inside we go... to constantly watch him.

Even Batman gets to kick back and relax once and awhile if the Bat Signal isn't lighting the night sky over Gotham.

I'm just glad that I have hard wood floors because I have to admit there have been a few occasions when he started to go the floor and I just let him. Why? Because sometimes after a long day of constant pee-vigilance it's easier to clean up after him than to pick him up and take him outside and let him finish then come back inside. I also did that once because it was raining heavily out to avoid any possible wet dog smell. OK... to avoid getting wet myself.

It’s almost as if… wait a second. Where’s Darwin? Oh crap, I bet he’s peeing under the dining room table… I’ve got to go.