A bit of what's been going on here

It feels like forever since I published my last venomous post about strangers pooping in my house. Well, I finally hired a new walker and while they are a bit more fussy in the technology department than I care for, they seem far more organized and professional than the folks I've been working with over the last year. The only thing left is actually breaking up with the old dog walker. I'm trying to figure out how to give notice without engaging in a discussion about what I was not happy with. It seems unfair to unload on them at the end when I didn't really complain (a lot). Some of the core things I don't want to bring up because if you really have to tell someone it's not okay to poop in your house everyday, it's probably not worth bringing up.

In other news, I enjoyed the long weekend with a visit from my mother. Well, I enjoyed the last few hours after I decided a day and a half into her visit to stop being a complete freak show. However you love a person, you simply can not make them or love them into being better to themselves. You can not define their normal. I can not seriously consider quitting my job to invent a super nutritious 4 ounce supplement so I can stop freaking out about my mother's caloric intake. I hounded her for a day and a half horrified that she had not used the bathroom or had anything to drink or eat for 12 hours, was hungry, but would not eat. I don't know what normal is for someone who has three kidneys that don't work.

I felt like poop anytime she talked about what a good appetite she had before our failed transplant attempt. I know she wasn't trying to make me feel like walking in front of a car so she could take a crack at my other kidney, but I felt like that anyway. And I better understood my dad's panicky melancholy as it concerns my mother. It's hard to see her day after day and not be able to get to her, to really talk about how she feels about it all, to really energize her about taking care of herself. I understand why my dad thinks he should take her back to the place he ran away from because it's the place she considers home. I had yet another freak out as I absorbed the news of my cousin's pregnancy announcement and my mom's desire for grandchildren. I looked at her, full after two spoonful of beans and thought, 'I'm running out of time. I don't care if he's fishing food out of a garbage can, the next guy who makes a pass at me is in. Life is too short. Must. make. grandchildren.' Last weekend's reproductive spaz panic aside, I'm not hopeful any of the kids will be in the grandchildren making business soon. We're all some version of socially and emotionally strange and also have similar streaks in poor mate choices and timing so it may just be nature's way of working out the kinks-no reproduction for us.

Also, my mom said my dog is getting fat. She was too kind to note like dog, like daughter but she didn't correct me when I noted Baloo and I are both putting away for the winter. It's supposed to be an especially brutal winter and I like to be prepared. Whatever haters. So it was a good visit once I pulled my head out. That it happened late in her visit is a regrettable waste but at least we did have a nice ending. It was a dense weekend that I'm still processing.

Anyway...

While out in the crappy cold weather tonight, I ran into a guy I've never actually seen up close. He has two scottish terriers and always crosses the street when he sees me with my dog. I assumed he was just responding to the ninja reeking from my pores but it turns out his fearsome scotties don't care for other dogs, just like mine. He was sans dogs and we exchanged names. I immediately forgot his and he immediately declared he was horrible with names. I told him he was scottie guy and I was lab girl but then as we parted ways, he called me by my name and totally nailed it like he's been saying it his whole life. It really threw me off. I've had people confess after we're friends they were initially nervous to talk to me because they weren't quite sure how to say my name. And this guys nails it after hearing it once. And he didn't say it in a tentative not-sure-if-I-got-it way. Didn't repeat it when I told him the first time to be sure he heard me right. Just weird. I've been reading some posts by Lodo about some uncanny and spooky things that happened to him and this line in particular struck me: "only the most arrogant or pathetic of people would think or need to think they’re being watched".

Well if you aren't watching, you should be because I'm interesting. I'm motherf**king fascinating.

I'm just sayin'.