humping and pooping

yes, my dog humps and eats poop.

he likes to hump my arms. I know he's in the mood because he starts biting and growling. Then he gets a crazed look in his eyes and sticks his lower jaw and teeth out, keeping his mouth open. then he tries to hug my arms with both of his front legs and mount me. I am usually able to shake him off fairly easily.

besides that lovely development, i am also trying to figure out what to feed the guy. We have him on science diet, and he eats it, but I am being worried by all the info out there saying that dog food sucks and real food is better. but who knows for sure! they can't talk, so i don't know what he wants. so how often? how much? when is he just begging, and when is he really hungry? he seems to like a little yogurt on his kibbles, and i have read a few sources that say it's good for dogs. hm.

friends vs. roomies

Some people are just better as friends than as roommates. That's just the way it is. It doesn't mean that one person is bad or that anyone has even done anything wrong. Some people jsut aren't compatible!!
I've had my share of roomates in my life, and only once has the situation ended on a bad note (and I swear it wasn't my fault!!). Sometimes you just have to take care of yourself, no matter what. At some point, there is no way to make anyone understand you or like you, and if it comes to the point of leaving a living situation to protect your mental (or physical) health, you just have to do it. Too bad if someone's feelings get hurt.

After glendale, i said that i would never have a roomate again (living with 4 female musicians AND a samba band under bed was enough for me, although i dearly love all of them.). And yet, i find myself working through the same bs as i thought i never would see again. It seems like every time i say "never" in my life, something happens which makes me go back on that word and learn more about myself.

I just really hope this doesn't end in disaster.

swollen eyeballs and fat ears

chico, my poor boy! he really DOES take after his mommy!

The other day he got his rabies shot from a "vet" here, and a few hours later, around 8pm, his eyes swelled shut and his ears were as thick as pancakes!! Those growing ears, whihc are normally carried high and proud on his little head, were laying down down down along his face, as if they had never perked at the sound of the doorbell or a squeaky toy.

Well, i didn't have swollen eyes and fat ears after my rabies shot, but.. well.. i sure do have a lot of allergies, and i jsut knew exactly how he felt. It was awful.

We took him to another "vet" who, after he was finished watchin tv with his kids and sorting bills right, took chico in his huge hands, plopped him onto the front counter, and jammed a needle full of bendryl into his soft puppy bum. A yelp, and it was over. His swelling went down in about an hour and his ears returned to his niormal size. We also gave him a 1/2 doggy predisone twice.

Ah, parenthood.

How to ditch your opponents

At about 6 or 7km, some dude started pacing me and he wouldn't stop talking to me in his thick culiichi accent. I couldn't understand a lot of what he was saying, but nothing was too out of the ordinary: where am i from, why am i here, how old am i, what? you look so much younger than that, blah blah blah. at first it was no big deal, and sometimes having something else to think about besides the running helps a little. Then we passed some discount seafood huts on the side of the highway (not my normal choice for dining) and he started trying to ask me out to breakfast after the race! I easily got out of that one, though... "oh no! i cna't eat saefood in the morning! no thanks!" He was persistent, though, and i guess he figured that if i don't like discount highway saefood, i must like grilled and fried meat instead! At this point, i just sort of shrugged and changed the subject.

By about 13 or 14 km, he was really getting annoying. I could feel my evil side coming out. I took out my stashed power gel, raspberry flavor (the most heinous), and started slurping, leaving just enough goopy goodness for my new running buddy to try. Now knowing what it was, he gulped down the last bit without a water chaser, immediately gagging and coughing. What IS this stuff!!?? How do you eat this!!??

Well, moments later he was long gone, clutching his tummy and telling me to go ahead. I saw a honey bucket along the way, i wonder if he took advantage of that....

mission accomplished. I ran the rest of the 21km in peace.

yawn

I'm feeling sleepy and unenthusiastic.

It wasn't my idea, but somehow i got roped into running another 1/2 marathon here in culiacan... and i just don't really want to. but the start line is in an hour, so here i go. Actually, i have a fairly good excuse to not run today: my allergies have taken over my entire immune system and i feel like a walking snot ball.

anyway, i'm sure i'll feel "better" after i run, so i guess i should just suck it up. Sigh. I don't really want to do this, which is strange. It's the first time i have felt like this about a race or run since I began running with these guys last year. I really hope it's just my allergies talking and not a new trend.

I really hope my next post included stats from the race, instead of more whining and excuses.

chico has a hot date

the vet recognized chico as a griffon right away, and was very happy to tell us of another griffon living nearby, a female, and would we like to meet her and make some puppies? This was his first question for us. Well, although chico OBVIOUSLY has figured out how to do that (yes, our dog is quite advanced), apparently he can't actually procreate for another 8 months or so.

Chico will get his next shots on monday, by the way.

calidad mexicano...

Slava and I are about to take chico to his first vet appointment. he is due for shots. i hope this place has running water and electricity!

Slava found out about this place by asking some other orchestra members, and it sounds nicer than either of the two vet places on obregon (which may not have either of the two luxuries mentioned above.)

I was arrested

I was arrested in my dream last night, but i don't know what i was arrested for. I wasn't a kid, but i was sent to some kind of juvie place, but it was more like boarding school or a college dorm or something. I think my parents had to drop me off there, and i was a little nervousd scared and even embarrassed about being there, but "they" showed me what to do. I was supposed to choose a bunk and then put my "stuff" there, but it wasn't really my stuff. Instead, there was a shelf or a bookcase nearby with stuff, and we were supposed to take whatever we wanted, but it was mostly sanrio toys or something like that.

Then I think someone showed me where to eat or gave me a tour of the place, and i started meeting other "inmates," and among them were people i used to know from calarts! All the familiar faces seemed happy to see me and didn't think it was bad at all to be in "jail'." I started to feel better, until i realized that this incarceration would follow me for my whole life, and i started to get worried. Most of all, i worried about that fact that i'm supposed to marry slava this summer, and how could i if i was in jail!???

more puppy business

i guess chico doesn't quite get it yet.

today he managed to eat a whole poop. I mean, when i went to check on him, his poop was gone and he smelled like.. well.. poop.

So he got another bath, and he looked silly again. (see previous post).

He also decided to poop outside of his box for some reason. Is he trying to frustrate us? twice today he pooped near the box, but not in the box...i don't get it! Other than that, he is behaving well. Slava is trying to teach him how to fetch but he doesn't quite understand yet, but i think he will be running back and forth for his rat or his octopus any day now.

In other news, we reheased the harbison again, and i feel very OK about it. I tried to listen to a few parts, and just seeing how "into" it M and A are makes me more excited. If only a certain other personality would chill and just enjoy working on it. I can't stand the neagtivity! argh!

Speaking of negativity, there seems to be a cloud of it in my house these days... I hope IT goes away...

do i have to like harbison?

I think my years at calarts made me delusional.

Apparently, there are (many) musicians in this world who don't care for experimentation and i don't understand why. I'll admit that when i went to calarts, i was nervous because i knew the school was known for the avant-garde (ooo, how daring) and that my soon to be oboe teacher was a baroque nut (how boring). Big surprise, i graduated 4 years later, totally in love with everything baroque and having participated in (almost) every kind of performance art you can think of, including nudity.

I left with such a desire to create something new (playing baroque and other early music well counts as new, by the way) that I detested my master's degree experience and all those "mainstream" music geeks at USC and i ran away to mexico before I finished.

I never really had the opportunity last year to figure out if anyone here cared for the types of things i left calarts with: to do new and different things on stage, to challenge the audience, to make people scratch their heads sometimes. also to strive for something like period authenticity in baroque music performance, even though it may be impossible to attain. I yearn for the time when I can return to practicing my eichentopf oboe replica regularly. my dream career would basically include playing first oboe (modern or baroque... or both) in a mainly baroque orchestra (i like mozart too), and gigging in the performance-artsy-experimental-modern stuff as well.

ok what i meant to say is, I guess i always thought that everyone in this world is exactly like me, post-cal-arts. And i am finding out that they aren't! How can it be!!?? We have come to the time in this orchestra's season when we play chamber music. the schedule is f-ed up, though, and my quintet only gets to play part of one concert... don’t even get me started on how i feel about that. Anyway, i guess we are going to play 3 movements from the harbison quintet and although even I take a while to warm up to a piece sometimes, it really bothers me to hear people talk about how awful and weird all music is after about 1930. I just don't understand. Yes, i agree that most music has gone downhill in one way or another since Bach, but c'mon... there were riots at the premier of the right of spring, gosh darnnit! Why are so many people unwilling to even try new music? And because I find myself always being the defender, I can't even say what i really think... which is... i don't know if i like the harbison quintet. ok? so shoot me.

hmmm

I don't think this is a good start to my blogging career: 50% of my posts so far mention poop. There must be some sort of freudian analysis for my problem... some answer within the shpere of abnormal psychology.

OR i'm just obsessed with my puppy. I think that is the answer. I will try not to mention poop for the next few minutes.

Chico woke up this morning and didn't want to eat his breakfast, which confused me. He has never lost his appetite before, and I was a little worried. Did he pick up some horrible disease? Have we taken him for too many walks before he has had all of his shots? is he going to DIE!??

Since he seems to be happy, i figure he just isn't hungry, but there are two other possible solutions: either he was freaking out because i had to give a little of the ol' bitch slap to the man last night (no slapping was involved), or the fact that he was chewing on raw garlic, which he found on the floor somewhere, all night and morning, and it took away his desire to eat dogfood.

Bitch Slap? Wait, hold it.. what? Well, at 1am, after i was already trying to sleep, it seemed like the entire neighborhood arrived in the living room. S, S, P, and L were all here speaking russian at normal volume, all at the same time. There was laughing, violin plucking, singing of melody line's of brandenburg 4, playing with the morse code thingy... i thought my head was going to explode. Anyway, when they finally left after about a 1/2 hour of block party, i had to scold Slava for not kicking them out, or at least herding them into another room outside of my earshot. Then a few narco-hummers pulled up right outside the building, shooting banda directly into my nerve endings for a while. It was lovely. Needless to say, my half-sleepy-whiny-PMS-2am voice was a bit shocking for our little puppy (and for slava). I don't blame him for losing his appetite! Both aforementioned parties are feeling better, but i kind of want a nap.

eating poop

to my dismay, chico started eating his poop yesterday. I guess it woulnd't be such a big deal if he had a big yard to play in, thus cleaning off his feet and face in the wet grass all the time (as he did in edmonds). Now, though, all he has is the tile courtyard and his litterbox, which means i have to run after him and smell his face, and maybe even give him a bath, which makes him look silly. What fun! Actually, i think he is trying to be helpful; he always sees me pick up his leavings and throw them away as soon as he gifts them to us, and maybe he thinks we are training him to move them himself...i wouldn't put it past him. Anyway, today I tried distracting him by brining him back inside after he did his business, and rewarding him before the poop was removed. This accomplished two things: 1) chico seems to only need to sniff his poop now, albeit extensively, and 2) when you forget about his pee there for several hours, it clumps to the litter much better and i can pick it all up in one clean scoop. If you ever need kitty litter in mexico, i reommend "econo-litter" in the yellow bag from wal-mart. it costs about $1 for 3kg of clumping goodness.

rainy morning in mexico

Chico was so good this morning. I didn't want to get up when he awoke, so i let him play by himself for about an hour and he didn't destroy anything yipeee! Then Igor came over to play for a while, which was hilarious because he ran into the bedroom and jumped on top of sleeping slava, who suddenly woke up to igor's giant alien eyes staring straight into his soul.

Savva is Chico's new favorite toy... he just can't get enough of that guy! Luckily S seems to enjoy the attention more or less, even though he doesn't like Chico's docked tail.

The air is cool and clean from a light rain all morning. What a delight! Although the laundry is all over the living room now, i love this breath of fresh air.

And now spending some time arguing with Slava over interpretations of the outer movements of brandenburg 4... the swiss baroque soloists play quite fast, i like it even if it is a little frantic. very exciting. i love this music... i guess i will stick to my Goebel recording. it's a nice balance. yay bach!

to be a puppy mom

I feel like i have grown a new brain, or a new set of eyes. At least an extra ear which i leave in the other room, but it is still connected to me. I have a 7th sense: I can feel the movements of this dog's bladder and intestines from the next room (is that weird?).... I just KNOW when he needs to be taken out and given some encouragement to "go potty." I'm so proud of his little accomplishments, and can't help but brag to my friends about how chico learned to sit.

Is this a little of what it's like to have kids?

When do i get to find out??

second try

the last time i tried to have a blog, i lasted about 3 days. then i abandoned it and promptly forgot the password and username and everything else, and try as i might, i can't figure out a way to open it again. i know the html address, but that doesn't help me much because i can't log into it. oh well.

why do i want a blog?

i don't think i write particularly well... nor am i always funny or clever. i don't have a strong opinion about anything current (or if i do, i don't know enough to write about it.)

But i have always kept a journal and i just kind of like putting my thoughts somewhere.

I suppose that's enough reason, right? And i never asked myself permission to have a journal before, so why worry about it now?