Is there a doctor in the house?

Drug commercials are such a bizarre facet of our marketing industry. The disclaimers are odd, disconcerting, and no-brainers.

"This (drug for arthritis) may cause pain, swelling, and lymphoma." Huh. Arthritis, cancer...arthritis, cancer...I'll take my chances with debilitating joint pain. Pain means you're still alive. Anything ending in -oma makes me nervous.

"Please tell your doctor if your immune system is not normal due to bone marrow or kidney transplant." If my doctor doesn't already know that my immune system is not normal due to bone marrow or kidney transplant, I think potential side effects of the drug in question are the least of my problems - I think I'd need a new doctor.

I saw a commercial this evening for a nasal spray. "Do not spray in eyes or mouth." While I appreciate the drug company trying to cover all the orifices that could be mistaken for the nostrils, they missed ears and rears. Of all the places to warn a person not to spray something, I would think the rear would warrant a mention.

And finally, Cialis. What is up with the bathtubs? In trying to portray a relaxing atmosphere, one conducive to sexual activity, the ad managers show a couple on a deck, watching a sunset, holding hands from within their respective bathtubs.

One would think that this would make copulating as physically difficult as twin beds for married TV couples. I have one word for their ad people: Jacuzzi. Problem solved.

As far as how to ensure the American public doesn't put nasal spray in their mouths, well, I can't help there. Maybe Darwin would have something to say about this.

My dog is a goat, and other discoveries

Spending time in the hospital plays havoc on one's ability to sleep soundly. It makes sense, really - a few weeks of someone tiptoeing into your room in the dead of night, putting unknown substances into a tube in your arm, with you to jerk awake when the cold hits your vein...Needless to say, I jump awake at the slightest noise.



About a year ago, I sent away for a box of Nascar-approved foam earplugs. You pinch them until they fit into the narrow of your ear, and they expand, creating a lovely, pillowy buffer between you and the outside world.



The trouble? Truman really, really likes these earplugs. Especially if they're recently used.



I came home from work one day, and made the discovery: Trumie had gotten onto my bed, leaned over onto my bookshelf, and helped himself to not one of the cellophane-wrapped packages of two earplugs, but six packages. Wrappers were strewn across my room.



"TrumieRoomieRoom! What are you doing! Where did you hide Mommie's earplugs?"



I looked under the bed. I looked under the dresser. I looked in every conceivable hiding place that a dog with 3 inch legs might use.



Realization dawned.



Then fear. Truman weighs eight pounds. He's a tiny little man. Twelve foam earplugs could go a long way toward stopping up the little guy.



My dog's stomach, it turns out, is really a goat's stomach. For the next two days, his poopie was surprisingly weightless, consisting of little more than brown-covered earplugs, completely intact earplugs mind you, attached end-to-end by his digestive matter.



This is not the grossest culinary treat he partakes of, I am sorry to say. He doesn't go so far as to engage in coprophagia (it means "eating one's own feces." "Coprophagia" sounds neater). He does enjoy the Kitty Roca, however.


I scoop. And I scoop, and I scoop. But my scooper is not as quick as my cats' poopers, and Truman is on the scent! I see him raise his nose, sniff, and sneak off toward the litter box. I race after him. "Truuuuumie!" I catch up to him, of course, but not before he's got a mouthful, and face it, who is going to wrestle that out of a dog's mouth?



My coworkers told me about some pills that you can feed your cat to make it's poo not taste so good.



There's just really nothing to say about that, is there?

The Contrarian Grammarian

I don't usually get too annoyed with flagarant disregard for grammar. The movie "Two Week's Notice", (which should be "Two Weeks' Notice,") is a shameless part of my dvd collection.

But I have encountered an example of grammar abuse that I just cannot let go. I'm sitting on the couch, watching TV and unwinding after a long day at work. A commercial comes on for a chain restaurant, The Outback Steakhouse. The voice-over is done in Austrailian, because Aussie=fun, apparently. Same as how as an English accent=educated. I'm sure there are just as many high school dropouts in England as there are in America. But I digress.

The commercial is rambling along, and then the tag-line, the focus of this new ad campaign: "Live Adventurous!" Live Adventurous? Live ADVENTUROUS?! Even my Microsoft Word program put a green squiggle underneath this. It's Live Adventurously. You can't Noun a Verb. Or whatever. You Adverb a Verb.

Whatever the correct explanation of this grammar abomination, the ad makers should have read enough writing in their life to know when something is "wrong." I never knew those spelling rules, "i before e" or whatever. But I had read enough, and encountered enough, to know that some things "look" right, and some don't.

I was picking up the house keys from a lady who was going on vacation. I was going to babysit her dog while she was away. "Does your dog walk good on a leash?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, "my dog walks well on a leash."

I was mortified. As well I should have been. Bad grammer makes a person look below-the-baseline of average intelligence. Worse, it makes a person look like they don't care how others view them. I would never go to "Outback Steakhouse" now - if they can't create an ad that doesn't grate on one's grammar sensibilities, they probably can't make correct change of my bill, either.

The Father of Embarrasment

I won't go so far as to say I have a PhD in Self-embarrassment (or parental-embarrassment for that matter...) but I am definitely a graduate student in the subject, having been mentored by my father.

I've been trying to sell my memoir for awhile. I sent a query letter to an agent who shall remain nameless. (A query letter is basically a "Hey, I'm awesome, wanna see my book?" letter. If the agent wants to see more, they ask for a small sample of your writing. If they like that, then they pay you for your work. It is not unlike prostitution.)

The working title of my book is "Making Pink Lemonade." I got a rejection letter back from the agent, which read, "Dear Patricia Stevenson: Thank you for submitting your book, "A World of Peace." Unfortunately, we cannot offer you representation at this time."

I was incensed. I quickly hit "reply" (never a good idea...) and cc'd my parents so that they could see the rude, awful, dehumanizing world of trying to sell yourself.

"Dear *** Agency: I am rescinding my query to you. I do not want a publisher who cannot get my name right, or the name of my book."

I got an email back about fifteen minutes later.

"Dear Pamela: Please do not be offended by our rejection. We are not rejecting you. We are just rejecting what you have written. Please send us your work in the future so that we may reject that, too. If you get published in the future, don't forget our valuable contribution to you as an author."

Oh. My. God. The rudeness! I'm huffing and puffing at my computer screen to the point where my coworkers crowd around to see what I'm so mad about.

"Wow. That is rude," they agree. Again, I hit the "reply" button. (I never learn.)

"Dear *** Agency: Please be assured that when I have sold my book, I will most certainly include you in my 'acknowledgements' page. However, I can't promise that I will have anything nice to say about your agency. Oh well - there's no such thing as bad press, right?"

The email didn't send. It only sent to my dad, who I had cc'd the last email to. I resent it, sure to have the agency's address in the "to" line. Technology is such a pain in the rear.

I got another email back a short while later. "Ms Delderfield: It would seem that we have both mistakenly addressed emails today. Please accept our apologies for not addressing the rejection email properly. We receive many queries each day and unfortunately, these things happen."

I didn't understand what that meant. I hadn't made any addressing errors.

My mom emailed me. "I've been reading the email exchange between you and your father, and I've been rolling on the floor, laughing!"

I wrote back. "What? I haven't been emailing with my dad..."

It hit me like a hand reached out from my computer screen and slapped me across the face. The email that replied only to my dad...

I quickly pulled up the rude response to my "rescinding query" email. Sure enough, the return address was my dad's, not the agent's. Mom later told me about getting to relay this "discovery" of mine to my father - "He was laughing so hard, his face was bright red. I thought you were going to give him a heart attack!"

He has been one of my most staunch supporters of my writing. He's been reading my blog, which means a lot to me. I asked him the other day what he thought so far.

"I liked the 'Roadkill' post," he said. "That was quite good. Very entertaining."

"What about the 'Workplace clothes' one? Did you read that?"

"Yes."

What a guy. Nothing brings me more comfort than the knowledge that my dad will always be right behind me in life, laughing his ass off. And very little brings me more pride than knowing I was the one who made him laugh.

Damage and Destruction, Dachshund-style

For weeks, I've been blaming the disappearance of my pens on my black kitty, Ellie Rose. When one would surface below the sofa or in the corner of the living room, it bore the scars of a trauma unspeakable. Nearly bisected, the poor Bic was rife with puncture wounds from sharp teeth.

"Ellie Roosevelt!" I admonished. "Those are Mommie's pens. You like your catfood, don't you? If you want Mommie to ever earn a filthy amount of money as a writer and buy you all the catfood you can eat, you better stop eating her livelihood!"

"Mrow." (Translation - "You should be petting my pretty behind.")

Then, Saturday morning, I hear a weird noise in the living room. Slowly I rise from my seat at the kitchen table where I am breakfasting...I peek around the kitchen counter...

"GOTCHA!"

Trumie's eyes widen in surprise and his mouth drops open. From it, a Bic falls out and plinks to the floor.

'That little culprit. Oh well. It's just a Bic.'

The next night, Trumie and I are laying in bed, engaging in our nightly ritual - I am trying to go to sleep, and he is trying to dig a hole through my mattress in which to bury his beloved plastic dinosaur, Dino. He squirms underneath the covers, and rearranges my blankets for me, just in case I wanted them all bunched at the foot of the bed. I get fed up, and steal Dino. I place him where he's been spending more and more nights - directly underneath my pillow. I closed my eyes, trying to sleep.

I feel Trumie sit up suddenly. I roll over, and lift up my bedspread to see what trouble he's getting himself into now. I see nothing but his head. No body. I flicked on my nightstand light for a better look.

Truman has chewed a hole in the middle of my Velux blanket. A hole large enough for his entire head, which he has poked through. He looked like he was at the barber's, waiting for a trim.

I laughed, then remembered that I am basically destitute. Replacing a $50 blanket is not a laughing matter.

'Oh well,' I thought, rolling back to my pillow. 'If it gets hot this summer, at least I'll have a hole through which to air my feet.'

Ethical quandry...

Say your workplace has a dress code. It's not a stringent dresscode; it mainly consists of the idea that you not look like a schlub that either 1) just rolled out of bed or 2) just rolled out of prison. During the week, I adhere to this dresscode minus a few details - I wear slacks, but they have elastic waists hidden underneath my sweaters. I wear shoes, but they are sometimes of the lace-up-to-go-running variety instead of nice leather or shiny ones. (Who am I kidding. My shoes are never of the "lace-up-to-go-running" variety. They are the "lace-up-so-you-don't-trip-while-strolling-at-a-leisurely-pace" variety.)

During the week, my dress is fine and no one mentions anything to me. But what is the dresscode if you have to work over a weekend? My job is of a nature that only a skeleton staff is in the office on weekends - 5 instead of 50 people. If no one sees you come to work looking like a schlub, did you actually come to work looking like a schlub?

I just got home from work, and I wore jeans, a dirty sweatshirt that I had slept in, and I'm not quite sure when the last time was that I washed my hair. Gross, I know. But off the top of my head, I can think of five things better to do with my time than waste water purely for other people's aesthetic satisfaction: sleep, scrapbook, write, read...okay, four things.

Whenever I get the bug in my drawers to start dating again and try to find "The One (Who Doesn't Exist)", my tolerance for schlubness decreases exponentially. Suddenly, I wear makeup again, I change clothes four times before leaving the house, I meet up with a guy, flirt and act unlike myself, and fall into bed, exhausted. Where is the reedeming quality in this experience? I have created nothing. I have truly experienced nothing. I was not genuinely happy.

Some will say that people should keep themselves "up" for themselves, that it shows personal, I don't know, pride? Care for oneself? Or does it really show care for oneself when you do what makes you happy, what makes you feel true to yourself, regardless of social expectations?

I may be rationalizing my schlubness. I'm sure I am, as a matter of fact. But at least I can sleep at night, knowing that my laziness in personal upkeep is helping the environment.

So you think you should pick up roadkill...

I was driving to school yesterday, when the car in front of me swerved widely to avoid something in the road. I swerved too, seeing the cat lying in the road as I drove past. A sadness washed over me, as it does when I accidently open the sports section too far toward the back and see the columns of obituaries. But this sadness didn’t go away. A mile later, the feeling that something was wrong intensified. What if there was a chance? What if it was still alive? I turned my car around. I was going to go pick up roadkill.

There are several things to think about when putting an animal carcass into your backseat.
Are you able to drive past the death, out of sight and out of mind? I realized that I was going to obsess and feel badly all day. I had the power to give that cat the respect in death that it deserved.

This cat-versus-car encounter occurred at about the same time that kids were starting to trickle from their houses to wait for the school bus. The time of day mattered in my decision, as I couldn’t live with myself if little Joey came out of his house and saw Fluffy was now a fluffy pancake. If the cat had died in the middle of the night, it likely would not have been so recognizable as Fluffy come morning. Most important, if I was an idiot that allowed my cat outdoors to play in the street, I would want someone to show my cat compassion.

I pulled my car to the side of the road and clicked on my flashers. I walked into traffic, bundling the cat in the old towels I make my leaky grandmother sit on whenever she rides in my car. I crossed the street, and set the cat in the backseat. I got into the front seat, closed the door, and had what is known as a second thought.

The smell hit my nostrils and reminded me of the people I used to babysit for who threw their childrens’ diapers away in the kitchen trash can. I had to roll down my windows. If you live in a cold climate, this is another factor to consider – will you die of hypothermia before you get the roadkill to its final destination? What if I need to get my car reupholstered? What if the cat was diseased? What if I just gave myself feline leukemia? What if…oh God…I stole a glance into the backseat. What if the roadkill is not quite killed? If the roadkill you put into your car is large, this could quickly become a problem.

I took the cat to the pet emergency clinic several blocks from campus. I walked in the front door, and said to the receptionist, “Where does one take a dead cat?” She looked at me accusingly.
“I didn’t kill it! It was dead when I found it.”

I realized I was starting to sound like Jeffery Dahmer, so I shut my trap.

“You would take it to the humane society.”

Panic flew into my eyes as I was faced with the prospect of a 20-minute ride with Flatty.

They took pity on me, and took the cat off my hands. Even with this final possible wrinkle, would I have still made the same decision? I was going to be intensely bothered that I could have done something, but didn’t. I had the opportunity to show a creature humanity. What would that say about me if I just swerved around it and didn’t make it my responsibility? Even though the cat stank to high heaven, even though I could have given myself some bizarre disease, and even though I might have found myself stuck in traffic with a sick, half-dead cat making mincemeat of my car…my life’s regrets are all about things that I didn’t do. I have yet to regret action, and I do not regret the ten minutes that Flatty was in my life.

Succumbing to temptation

Hello! Welcome to "There goes the neighborhood..."...

(A character in the movie I'm watching at the moment just asked another character, "Do you want to have sex?" And it distracted me. Shiny things and affronts to my prudish sensibilites tend to do that.)

"There goes the neighborhood..." is a repository of my writings on all that is funny, quirky, and makes me laugh as I go about life. What a boring introduction this is turning out to be. I think I will stop now with the boring and bring on the entertaining.

My first post is the script of a speech I gave this past week in my Masters class at a Jesuit university. It went over reeeaaal well.