Stop talking to kitty!

I was sitting in the hospital today, and it occured to me just how absurd it is when people talk to their pets.

Take, for instance, my brother Jake. I've noticed him on a couple of occasions, talking to the cat as though it was a person.

We, as humans, study our native language from prior to birth.

How often do you see someone reading a story to a pregnate cat's belly?

Our language is impressed upon us for years and years and years and we're able to communicate by the time we go to school, where our language skills are further refined.

Your pets do not recieve this training. While they may memorize certain commands, no cat, dog, rat, mice, horse or elephant whill ever be able to understand "Will you please go to the store and buy some milk?"

It's just ridiculous.

And for crying out loud, don't put clothes on your pet. They're kinda born with their own.

I mean, pets are cool. I like them (at least when they're trained to shit in the litter box, stay off the counters, and not eat my PS2), but I make no illusion to them ever understanding what I say. Nor do I try to understand whatever the hell they're saying.

O.k., a confessions, I'll occassionaly meow at cats or bark at dogs to see if I've found a secret way to make them do some ridiculous shit, but I swear, that's it.

So take fluffy's stupid sweater off, and stop telling the kitty you'll feed him if he stops meowing.

It makes no sense.

I welcome your commments on all the stupid personifications you've witnessed with pet-obsessed freaks who are less cool than me and my D&D friends.

Good news for Tom

It was a gallstone that was REALLY messing with my mother.

She passed it.

Now her pancreas is getting much better. With luck, they'll be able to operate on Monday and take her gall bladder out, and this will never happen again.

Thank God.

My mom's health will always be an issue for me, and my family. Hopefully, she'll be in the hospital long enough that she won't want to smoke any more when she gets out. That's what happened to my dad after his heart attack.

Mom doesn't excercise, and that's a concern. We also suspect she doesn't eat very well. And she's on a shitTON of prescriptions.

But it LOOKS like the immediate threat is over. She's having a procedure tommorow where they insert a tube with a camera into her mouth and look around in her stomache for any problems, just to be sure that nothing to do with the stomache will interfere with the impending surgery.

Thanks again to my friends, especially the ones who didn't hear directly from me and still took the time to call and check in on Mom and me. My siblings have all commended me for my watching over my mother and keeping them all updated on every piece of information we got (and thank YOU unlimited Mobile to Mobile minutes for $6.99). I know I wouldn't have been able to keep my spirits up, and in effect those of my siblings and my parents without the support from my friends.

Thanks everyone, I know I'll need your support sometime in the future, and it'd incredibly reassuring to know it will be there when I really, really need it.

Friday at the Hospital

Today, I woke up at 8:30 and ate breakfast.

Both are rare occurences.

I was at the dentist's office by 9:30. It had been FAAAAR long between visits, and I had four pretty wicked cavities. It took an hour and a half to fight them.

Got those bad boys filled, went home. Met my dad at the front door, and realized that it was odd that he was home from work already.

"Mom's in the hospital, we gotta go."

And we were off.

My mom's health has been bad for as long as I can remember. She's been a heavy smoker for something like 40 years.

We went to the hospital and had a pretty nerve-racking day. From 11 to 3 I spent the day either sitting by the bed holding my mother's hand or on the phone updating my siblings.

At 3:15, my mom was transferred down to Abbot Northwestern. More doctors will mean more tests, and hopefully some course of action.

It's wierd looking back on the day. I spent most of it holding my mothers hand and just kind of stuck in a trance.

I mean, I know my mother's mortality, and I've been trying to brace myself for the worst for years, but when you're right there, looking at your mother almost too weak to talk in a hospital bed......can you ever prepare yourself for such a moment?

Again, I cannot help but be touched by the support of my friends. I had some plas for tonight, and I had to call and bail on them, and I got several calls back from friends just calling to see if I was alright. Patrick, DooHow and the rest, thanks.

And, for now, I am alright.

But what am I going to do tonight? I don't know. I was really hoping to throw a movie in, play some W.o.W., and just take my mind off it. Then I discovered that in my haste to get back to the cities, I left both my phone charger and my computer cord at home.

And my brothers cat threw up on the floor, after the family had left for the weekend.

Today was not my day.

Hopefully, tommorow, we get some good news.

Warning/Advertisement for Summit Oktoberfest

This is a warning or advertisement (depending on how much you like to be drunk) for the Summit Brewing Company's Oktoberfest beer. This stuff is potent, so make sure you ration accordingly your number of beers to how drunk you would like to be. I would go as far as to say 1 Oktoberfest = 2 normal beers.

I am a fairly light drinker. I would describe my drunken nights as seasonal (roughly 4 times a year) but I do like to have a beer or two at night a couple times a week, so I purchased a six pack of Summit Oktoberfest being a fan of their other brews. It is a really good tasting beer so I drank a couple while watching a baseball game and realized that I already was feeling the effects. I don't know why, maybe it was because it was new and tasted good, but I drank two more and it was over. Four beers and I was drunk in every sense of the word. It is also relevant to mention that I am a big guy and I had just eaten dinner, so there was something to this brew that wasn't right.

Tom, being a relatively good expert on being drunk, confirmed this for me last night saying that there is an extra punch packed into Summit Oktoberfest.

--Doohow

Coming attractions

Jobhunting sucks.

It's really getting me down.

I send resumes all over the place, and I never hear back...

It's nice to live in the cities again. I'm reunited with a bunch of my 4-H friends, and I can't express how great it is to be back around Luther, Parts, Jill and everyone else. Luther and Jill's house has almost become a second home to me.

Last Tuesday, I got drunktarded.

I was a spectacle.

I'd tell the story, but I can't. I don't remember much of it.

I'll be putting up a special guest post soon, authored by my man Parts, who was witness to all my exploits.

I'll also put up some La Crosse stories soon.

And the best Wedding date ever.

I would just like to say though, thank you to my host of very loyal friends, and especially the ones who have had to chase after my drunk ass when I run away. In particular, Rob, the horsemen and the rest.

You guys my dirties, like Trey Wingo.

Hurricane Amy (Final Cut)

I have a disposable camera in my car, and I'm kinda of a quandary on what to do with it.

It was a camera that Amy and I bought on one our first dates.

So what do I do with it?

I'm not going to develop the pictures. I don't know if Amy would want them, and I don't have an address to send it to her.

So I guess I'll leave it in my car indefinately.

Here's the whole story with Amy.

A friend from a show I was in tracked me down on MySpace. It made me wonder who else from Arts-In was on MySpace, and I started plugging in a bunch of names from my past. I cam across Amy, and saw she was also on the cape. I sent her a message, she sent one back with her phone number, we went out to dinner and we were almost instantly dating.

I was hoping to keep it casual, to not commit to anything until we were both back in Minnesota.

Dating Amy was fun. I really enjoyed just being around her. I knew she was coming back to Minnesota at the end of July, I just didn't know the exact day.

I couldn't send text messages from MA for whatever reason, but I could recieve them. And Amy would send a lot of them. I kept most of them on my phone until after I came back to Minnesota. The one that stuck/sticks with me said something to the effect of "You make me soooooooooo happy, and it's good to be happy again." She would call and/or text me everyday.

Honestly, I just loved the attention.

I put up a post one night when Amy stayed over at the campground and slept when I went to work. That night, she posed the question, "So, are we something?"

I jerked her around a little bit before I conceeded that yes, we were most definately something. I had committed, I was excited. I thought we had a future, and it looked golden.

I brought her home the next day. If I remember correctly, we went on one more date, we went to the fair with the King. She wasn't feeling well, and I wanted to go to a party with the King, so I agreed to take her home early.

That night, outside the car, I asked when I could see her again, and she said she didn't know if we were going to be able to get together again before she left. It sucked, but I took it well, went to the party, (Sally got naked in the front yard) and that was it.

The calls and texts stopped.

She never said goodbye.

I waited a couple of days and left her a voicemail just asking how she was and blah blah blah.

Days went by. I started to go nuts. Was I in a relationship? Wasn't I? What the hell was going on?

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I called her again after 2 weeks or so, got her voicemail, and left a message of the effect of "You didn't say goodbye. That was pretty brutal. I assume we're over. Goodbye, Amy."

She sent a MySpace message in reply a couple of days later, and said that she had all kinds of things going on, her grandparents were ill and blah blah blah. I wish I hadn't deleted it. It didn't really apologize, it didn't say we were over. I called again, and again got her voicemail, I asked her to give me a call.

She didn't.

Not long after she deleted me from her MySpace friends.

Writing this, I can feel my fury building again. I'm really pissed how it ended. I mean, christ, at least give me a degree of closure. Tell me it's over, say goodbye, whatever. Don't just fucking leave.

My last attempt was a MySpace message, "So, are we friends or not? If you don't reply, I'm not going to waste any more time thinking about it." She didn't reply.

So, that's pretty much it. I guess we're not friends anymore.

Thinking about it is kind of odd. It was a COLOSSAL waste of time and money. She didn't have a car, so I had to constantly drive 30-some minutes to see her. If we went out to eat I'd buy. I'm annoyed that I spent so much and she just chumped me at the end.

Oh well.

Anyways, that's the story of the girlfriend who ran away.