Day 2347

It has been unseasonably cold this month. When I wake up on a damp, grey day like today, it's easy to imagine that I'm still living in Seattle. I'm not a fan of dreary, wet weather, but the cool mornings have definitely been beneficial for Dot. It's easier to take our limited walks in the morning when we don't have to worry about the heat. Dot seems to be getting back to normal, but each new normal plateau is a little slower and more debilitating than the one before. Maybe next week we'll try water therapy again. It would be easy to just give up at this point, but I think we've got to try.

I rescheduled the plumber to come out and fix the leaking faucets and made a mental note to take my car in for service tomorrow morning. Oddly, on this day last year I was also planning to take my car in for service in the morning and thinking that Dot was getting back to normal even though she was already in decline. I need to be careful about reading old blog posts. It can be unsettling to realize how completely monotonous and repetitious my life has become.

Since it was a slow day and I wasn't in a very good mood, I wrote a long letter to my financial adviser detailing why I was so unhappy with my portfolio's performance. It was pointless to write this letter, since my broker is who he is and isn't going to change just because I don't agree with his investment strategy. A normal person would just quietly find a new broker, but I'm not a normal person. I'm a writer. In almost every aspect of my life, I feel compelled to have the last word.

Dot was always an independent dog, but she is becoming increasingly needy. At certain times during the day she will whine or bark if I don't come and sit next to her until she goes to sleep. I guess this is inevitable. The dogs have always depended on us for food and shelter, but now Dot depends on Janet and I for everything. She can't even get up or walk without our help. I try to be as unobtrusive as possible when assisting her. I remember during my Dad's final days, the thing he hated losing the most was his independence. I'm probably not the world's best caregiver, but I think that everybody should be able to keep their dignity as they age. Some day I'm going to be in the same situation as Dot. It can 't be easy when you are pooping all over yourself and can't even get out of bed in the morning.

I'm starting to see fresh peaches in the stores again. This is always a good sign. When I first started making smoothies for breakfast, peaches were my favorite ingredient. I've been having smoothies for breakfast for over a year now and it's important to have a little variety without deviating too much from the basic concept. When I started writing the blog, I was making elaborate and very creative omelettes each morning. Then, when I was being treated for Hepatitis C, I switched to hot oatmeal for a year or so. After I was cured, I went back to bacon and eggs for a while and then realized I had grown tired of cooking. I started eating granola with fresh fruit, but never really liked to idea of cold cereal for breakfast. The smoothies started shortly after we got the Vitamix machine. Fruit smoothies with a real breakfast on Friday has worked for quite a while now.

I'm seeing so many bunnies in the park this Spring. The coyotes in the neighborhood must have moved on, because I've never seen this many rabbits before. Like the peaches I'm starting to see, this is another good sign. I'd much rather have bunnies for neighbors than coyotes.

Skippy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2327

I enjoyed breakfast this morning. I returned to the hipster cafe and for a moment it felt like I was back in Seattle. It was a dark rainy morning and the place was filled with young people in plaid shirts sitting silently nursing their coffee while some slide guitar blues played on the sound system. Forty years ago I used to eat breakfast in the original Starbucks at First and Pike before I went to work at a downtown ad agency and the ambience felt the same. Everything old is new again I guess.

Occasionally, I really miss Seattle.  This is where I made the transition from architecture to advertising. Young architects don't make much money and when I realized I could double my salary almost overnight by becoming an advertising copywriter, I never looked back. It was surprisingly easy to get a job. Nobody majored in advertising in college back then. I once had an art director partner who used to be a Navy fighter pilot. One of my supervisors used to be a wrestling coach. Everyone was an extremely good bullshitter. I didn't have much of a portfolio at the beginning. I just told them I was an architect and I was in. Good times. It was just like that Mad Men show on TV.

Seattle was where I discovered music. I started writing jingle lyrics at the ad agency and decided I wanted to become a songwriter. I met a lot of musicians and had a great time, but never became the next Bernie Taupin. I did gradually start acquiring gear like I saw at the studios where we recorded the jingles however. Some of the gear, like the vintage multi-track recorder that just came back from the repair shop, still exists. I spent quite a bit of time on Google this morning searching for a PDF copy of the instruction manual for this recorder. When it returned from the shop, I realized that I no longer remembered how to use the machine. I've been using Pro Tools for so long now that using an actual analog tape recorder seems a bit like alien technology. After quite a bit of searching, I found a copy of the manual and downloaded it. Wow. This was a complicated machine. I must have been a lot smarter in my twenties and thirties.

Since it seemed a bit ambitious to re-learn audio engineering before lunch, I moved on to something much simpler. I installed the new cartridges in the big production printer and began the cleaning routine to unclog the lines. The printer works again. The tape recorder works again. I'm not sure that I'm running on all cylinders though. I find it harder and harder to begin anything that is remotely arduous or ambitious. I hope I don't become like my Dad. He was an excellent wood carver and continued to buy carving tools almost until the day he died. Somewhere along the line he got Parkinson's Disease and could no longer use the tools. They just sat there and accumulated dust in their original boxes. I don't want my gear to wind up that way. It needs to be used.

There were more tornado warnings today, but the really bad weather stayed to the West of us as it traveled rapidly to the Northeast. We got enough rain to scare Dash, but not enough to wake up Dot. Since she is almost deaf now, she slept peacefully through the storm. I'm glad I figured out my air conditioning problem yesterday, because it would have been hard to get a technician to come to the houes today. I canceled the emergency service call and rescheduled a regular Spring system checkup for early next month.

It's hard to believe that April is almost over. Summer will be here before you know it. I need to learn to appreciate the rain because it isn't going to last. In just a few months from now, I'll be begging for rain.

Parker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 942

About this time every year I start to wonder what ever possessed me to move to Texas. Jeez, I used to live in Seattle. I even lived in Aspen, Colorado for a while. I still remember the first time I exited a red eye flight from Seattle to Dallas for a job interview and smelled the Texas air for the first time as I walked up the jetway. The atmosphere was moist and humid and the heat enveloped me like a cocoon. It was only 9 AM, but it was August and it was very hot. As I was waiting for my bag in the Braniff baggage claim, I had a strong feeling that this wasn't going to end well.

Oddly, I never moved again. Even though I still hate the heat, and the tornadoes, and the humidity, I've lived in Dallas longer than all the other cities I've called home put together. Dallas just happened to be where I got tired of moving.

Living here certainly isn't all bad. Dallas is a great place to earn a living. Through good times and bad, there has always been an abundance of jobs in this city. If you can't find a job in Dallas, you probably just don't want to work. Dallas was also where I discovered the joys of having a dog. I never would have considered a dog in Seattle. A dog might scratch the hardwood floors or damage a painting. Dallas was probably where I finally became a somewhat decent person and shed these silly values. Nevertheless, it's still too damn hot here.

I wish I could remember when my day to water was. Even though the lakes are full this year, the city has imposed severe restrictions on lawn watering this Summer. I don't have much of a green thumb, so I used to water my lawn whenever I saw my neighbors water theirs. Now the neighbors all have automatic sprinkler systems that are programmed to water during the middle of the night, so I never get the reminder I need. I hate to be the only one watering during the day, since I'll inevitably pick the wrong day and get hit with a big fine. My indecision about watering day is already causing my front lawn to turn yellow. This whole situation is ridiculous. I don't need another reason to hate Summer.

Do you ever find that social media is a beast that constantly needs to be fed? When I started this journey, I thought that I'd never run out of things to say. Now I'm beginning to wonder. The sheer volume of material you have to produce to keep posting something fresh and original every day is almost overwhelming. I might have to become more introspective in the days ahead. There just isn't much to report when it's so hot outside that all you want to do is take a nap.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 863

It's a shame that allergy season coincides with the nicest weather we have all year in Texas. The temperature is perfect, but I can't go outside for more than ten minutes before my eyes are burning and my nose is dripping like a faucet. I have to carry a pack of Kleenex wherever I go and my nose is starting to look like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. The seasonal grass seed allergies that bother me the most usually subside by late June, but by then Summer has arrived and it's too hot to spend much time outside anyway. I used to live in Seattle where it rained continually. I think I prefer the rain to this hodgepodge of dust storms, tornadoes, droughts, and wind blown pollen that we have here. Of course I didn't own a house with a flat roof that leaks all the time when I lived in Seattle. I probably wouldn't think so fondly of the place with memories of a leaky roof.

I got the second of three large shelves disassembled and moved over to the larger storage space today. I'm glad now that I kept both storage rooms rented for the entire month. I never could have moved everything in a single day. I've been down to the storage warehouse at least five times now and I've still only gotten about 2/3 of the stuff moved. This little project is turning out to be hard work. I should just throw away stuff I don't need as I go, but I don't have time to think about which things are keepers or not, so everything gets moved. I'll have plenty of time later to throw away all the old computers, scanners, and printers from the 1980's later.

Janet wants to plant the new grass this weekend. That means I'll need to till the soil tomorrow. I'm fairly sure the little tiller I keep in the greenhouse won't start using the two year old container of gas I keep for the lawnmower I no longer use. That gas wouldn't work anyway, since the tiller uses a gas and oil mixture like you use for a chain saw. I'll need to go to Home Depot and buy a little gas can and some of that two stroke oil you mix in with it. Finding all this stuff will take longer than actually tilling the soil. Hopefully, the tiller will start after I've found the proper fuel for it, or I've really wasted a lot of time.

I never have enough time anymore. I had to go to a planning meeting for one of the animal rescue groups I work with this evening and didn't have time to eat dinner until I got home. Hmm. Do I fix myself a nice dinner, or do I write this blog? I heated up a pizza that was in the freezer because the box said it would cook in 11 minutes.

Brady is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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