One Good Thing About This Blog

The lovely Bailey
The equally lovely Sugar Baby


Here’s my blog's year in review:

January – Before blog. Doesn’t count.
February – See January

March – Kelli has gastric bypass surgery. The Panic Blog begins. No one reads it. My grandmother goes into the hospital for the first time.

April – Jocelyn at This Surreal Life reviewed my blog because she found it after hitting the “Next Blog” button on Blogger. An e-friendship begins and my readership grows. Soon XTX, Jen, Hotpants, Jaws, John Cowart, Comadose, Lois Lane, KinkyPoe, the Shrinking Wop, and many other favorites come aboard the Panic train.

May – I tell a lot of stories. Apparently nothing really noteworthy happened. I must have joined Blog Explosion at this point because my traffic increases substantially.

June – I start telling stories from and about my lovely wife (with her approval because I respect her and…well… I'm frightened of her wrath). Tales of "The JerkyShooter" et al. continues to keep hits coming.

July – Almost every post has pictures in it. I start winning a couple Battles of the Blogs on Blog Explosion. Readership continues to increase. I stop writing nearly anything about politics and news and focus on telling stories about my past and present. People seem to like the stories. No one complains about the lack of my personal opinions about current affairs. I wrote "Daddy's Sacred Underwear" which I consider my best post of the year.

August – Sherry Dion does a web search on her name and finds "Daddy's Sacred Underwear." A lesson about using real names is learned. Grandma goes back into the hospital briefly. She starts to get her own fan mail. I invent the "Coq Ring." I do not make any money off of this invention.

September – Hurricane Katrina. A depressing time. I visit Homer, Alaska, and love it.

October – I write "Laws of Gravity and Motion" and my youngest brother has still not forgiven me for posting his picture on the internet. I don't understand but then again I do understand. You'll have to take my word for the fact that he's still very pretty. Permanent Fund Dividend checks arrive. Bailey goes into the hospital and the Permanent Fund Dividend checks depart.

November – I expose the Red Hat Society for the wanton hussies they are. I also expose Gigglewood as the home of the wooden phallus.

December – The blog finally starts taking the shape I want it to continue. Stories, stories, stories, including the number one story of the year, written by Kelli about going to a Christmas party and feeling comfortable in her skin for the first time in years. Tears are jerked. Bailey has a rough month with regard to her health. She spends the last week of the month in the animal hospital.

To everyone on my blogroll, special thanks for coming onto my spot on the 'net and hanging out for a while. I have learned much more from you than you have from me and hopefully the relationship can continue.

To everyone reading this now I wish you a happy and peaceful 2006.

Easy Come, Easy Go

The State Of Alaska has this great thing called the Permanent Fund. The fund is currently about $30 Billion which is invested in companies outside of the state so that we’ll have a couple of sheckels to rub together once the oil is gone. The earnings of the fund are used partly by state government, partly reinvested back into the fund, and partly distributed as a dividend to the citizens. Getting at the principle requires a vote of the people, not just an act of the state legislature. It’s pretty stinking brilliant really.

There is a personal connection to the fund: My grandfather was a member of the board of trustees of the fund (he may have chaired the board briefly).

Anyway, what you folks from the Outside probably know of the fund is that each year Alaskans (currently defined as someone who has lived in Alaska for at least one year) get that dividend check each October. No one wants to lose that “free money” so I’m fairly certain the Permanent Fund is safe from a big spending spree of the state for some time to come.

The amount varies but this year each Alaskan got a check for $845. That’s $1690 for Kelli and I. Usually this means I pay off some credit card bills and Kelli gets the dogs’ teeth cleaned and checked, etc. This leaves us a couple of bucks to get myself a new MP3 player or whatever, Kelli gets herself some Fiestaware or whatever, and it makes Christmas shopping more fun and less stressful.

Yet each year something comes up. Last year it was $3000 of vet bills for Sugar Baby.

This year we got to take Bailey to the vet on Halloween. She threw up her dinner. For most dogs one would just say “ewww,” clean it up and move on. For Bailey it’s a little different. She’s an insulin dependent diabetic and so we had loaded her up with insulin as she was eating. By throwing up her food that means she was fully loaded with insulin but with no food. Bad juju.

Two days in the animal hospital and $985 later, she’s back and good as new. Sure we will have to keep an eye on her for a couple of days to make sure she doesn’t throw up. Oh and we need to make sure the poop is of proper poop-like consistency: not too runny but not so firm that she’s straining.

It’s a delicate balance.

I’m not complaining. Luckily the state paid for the vet bill (by way of the dividend) and both the babies are happy and back home.

While my friends are enjoying their new iPods and Fiestaware, we are reaping the benefits of two healthy dogs.

Until next year about this time.

Our Babies

Sugar Baby and Bailey On A Chair

Kelli and I don’t have children. While we would like to have children someday there are many factors which might make it difficult to do so (not to mention that it would be dangerous for her to get pregnant so soon after her surgery).

Before Kelli came into my life I had ambivalent feelings about pets. A pet fish seemed like too much of a commitment. While I would never be cruel to animals, I didn’t understand that I would become so attached to a pair of dogs.

Now I have two dogs who I talk to and sing to and do some amazing amount of running around for.

It’s amazing to me how, after a long day of work when I am sometimes not very fond of humans, two 20 pound bundles of fur and energy can be so excited to see me that I can’t help but smile. Oh yeah, then clean up the poop.

It’s nice to have Bailey or Sugar snuggle up to me on the couch while I watch a movie during my day off when Kelli is at work. They don’t seem to mind if I’m watching the Kevin Bacon movie “The Woodsman” or the John Waters movie “A Dirty Shame,” they’re just happy to wedge themselves next to my side and get a couple of scratches or pets here and there.

Bailey Snuggled On Her Pig

Bailey is a gray nine year old Miniature Schnauzer female. She was bought in a pet store in Anchorage. This was the last dog my wife will buy at a pet store. Pure breeds have more problems due to their over-breeding and pet store dogs usually come from “puppy mills” who over-breed like crazy. So Bailey is our high maintenance girl.

She’s a diabetic so we have to give her insulin injections twice a day and take her to the vet every two or three months for a glucose curve. She has chronic dry-eye in her right eye which has progressed to the point where she hasn’t made tears in that eye for years. We have to give her eye-drops and eye-ointment and clean out the goo in her eye with saline solution several times a day. She had cataract surgery in her good eye and for a while we had a complicated maintenance routine with that eye too.

Oh yeah, and the diaper? She sometimes loses bladder control in her sleep. Since she usually sleeps in our bed, we use Pull-Ups on her.

Yet, for all the maintenance, I wouldn’t trade her for any dog. She’s sort of a spaz and not all that coordinated but she’s so incredibly loveable. She’s the cuddler of the two.

Sugar Baby is our other mini-Schnauzer. She’s eight years old and pure white. She could have been a show dog (although being white used to make it impossible to show her because white schnauzers were considered “flawed.”) She was bought from a respectable breeder in Minnesota and has almost no health problems, save the time last year when she had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE) which could have killed her (and did a number on our bank account).

Sugar Baby

Sugar likes attention on her own terms. She’ll go off and sleep in the closet at night if it suits her. Or she’ll climb up and burrow under your arm until you pet her. Then she’ll put out a paw and slap at your hand as if to say “you’re not done yet!” Yet she’s just as likely to come up and snuggle against me if I’m feeling sick.

They are precious and I’d never have guessed that I’d fall in love with two dogs. They are indeed our kids. We take them to doctor appointments and they wake us up at all hours of the night and they get into things they are not supposed to. We have to bathe them and diaper one of them and make sure they get the best food (prescription food, of course).

It’s been amazing that having pets has made it impossible to get to far into my own head when I’m home alone. I used to live for great stretches of time “in my head.” Not in a freaky autistic way but it’s easy to get self absorbed when it’s just yourself in a room. Now I always have a dog or two in the room with me when I’m home and Kelli’s at work, which is a good thing. I don’t get too wrapped up in whatever I’m doing, which is good when what I’m doing is mind-numbing or tedious (housework, paying bills, etc.)

I can’t get too down and out when there are two fluffy bundles of joy here to give me some attention and distraction.

Scott Adams mentioned at the end of one of his “Dilbert Principle” books that people should get a pet because it will improve their quality of life. At the time I heard this on audio I dismissed it immediately. Now I think he was onto something.

Oops, I guess I gotta go let the dogs out now!