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Posted by Paige on March 31st, 2005, 10:06 pm

I got a call today from a woman who claims to have crows in her attic. This isn’t the first time she’s called about them.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with that particular malady, it’s closely related to the more common “bats in your belfrey.”

I am not sure what the cure is. What I do is go to her place, follow her upstairs, shine a flashlight around and then say, “I guess they’re gone, now.”

I’ve tried mentioning that she may be mistaken about the crows. There is no sign of them. No feathers or droppings. The first time we went through the routine, she seemed somewhat convinced, but apparently they keep coming back . . .

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Posted by Paige on March 30th, 2005, 8:20 pm

A couple of weeks ago, I told Char that Gil hadn’t said 17 words to me since he moved to Seattle—well, that isn’t quite true.

We’d been in touch, from time to time. A few phone calls. Birthday cards. Then nothing for awhile, and then one Sunday afternoon when I was feeling particularly depressed, I googled him. He was listed on a regional artists’ portal. One of those collective websites that are supposed to help artists promote themselves. His email address wasn’t published—the site was designed so that in order to contact the artists you had to click on their names, and a little form would pop up with no email address showing. Like politicians use. I must have opened that little form 800 times over a three-week period. I’d type something in. Then groan and delete it. I was trying for “cool and casual.” Well, forget that. For one thing, I couldn’t plausibly claim to have just “noticed” him listed there. “Hey, Gil, I happened to be looking for a printmaker on the West Coast and whaddya know, if I didn’t come across your name. Long time, no see!”

Or: “Hi, Gil, mind if I stalk you? Love, Paige.”

Argh.

Finally, I just went for the straight hello. “Hi, Gil. It’s me, Paige. How are things?”

And he emailed me back in, like, a day and a half. Three words. “It’s raining here.”

My next email: “Here, too.”

Him, number four: “What are you up to these days?”

Me: “Got a job as Animal Control Officer in Brighton. And an apartment to myself, at long last!”

So far, so good. Right? But then I blew it. Instead of just hitting send, I had to add it — “How about you? Still doing art for your lady friend?”

I am so stupid, sometimes.

He never answered, of course.

I told myself it was a good thing. No point in my having any hope. And I was dating a really nice guy at the time, too. His stepfather owned a local chain of appliance stores, and I was definitely being sized up as wife material. On the verge of assuming my place in an appliance empire. The Washing Machine Queen, that was me. Almost. Had I played my warranty cards right, ha ha ha.

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Posted by Paige on March 28th, 2005, 10:42 pm

Okay. I just re-read this blog, what I’ve posted so far. And it sounds like I’m obsessed with this Gil guy. But I’m not really. But I did leave out one eensy weensy bit of info, which is that he’s kind of turned back up.

No explanation, of course!!!! No dropping to his knees, Paige Paige Paige how did I live without you.

And guess what, it’s got me totally stressed. Plus I’m stressed about being stressed. What I mean is, I am bummed that he might be able to tell that I’m still, you know . . . that I never really got over him. I mean, I got 99.99 percent over him. But in all honesty, that last little .01 percent, that’s the hardest bit. Like when you burn something onto the bottom of an aluminum frypan and you start scrubbing and at first stuff comes off easy. It practically falls off. But you work for awhile and you find you have to bear down harder and maybe get a cramp in your fingers, and then. That last bit. Man, it’s like it’s become part of the metal.

Fortunately, I have a plan. Call it Paige’s emotional camo, lol.

Char thinks I’m being ridiculous but I can’t let him think I’ve done nothing for the past six years but sit around wishing he hadn’t left.

Right????

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Posted by Paige on March 28th, 2005, 6:33 pm

Puppies!!! I’ve got puppies!!!!

Nine!!!

They’re wonderful!!! Of course!!! So, lol — wouldn’t it be sooooo easy to just wax poetic about Birth and Renewal and the Cycle of Life!!!! But methinks it’s all been done before? Ha ha ha. And anyway — I can’t help but think about what’s going to happen next!!! What with these puppies all needing homes??? And Lady, too, don’t forget about Lady!!! I’m going to have to see if my vet friend can spay her for me — that will be great, but even so, I can’t really keep a dog in my apartment.

Let alone ten – even tho they are sooooooooo adorable!!!!

So . . . . now the work starts . . .

Anybody want a puppy?

Speaking of Lady — Char and I talked about whether Lady’s owner will show back up. I hope she doesn’t, folks, as my being a dogcatcher doesn’t protect me from assault charges >:-(

Well. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In the meantime . . . I wonder . . . wouldn’t it be funny if Gil took one of the puppies. He never really said so, but I think he was pretty attached to the dog I had when we were together . . . and who knows? Maybe he’s . . . . . . oh dog, I was about to say the “maybe he’s changed” thing. Am I lame or what????

You know what my problem is? My priorities are all messed up. I have to do the right thing, which in my stupid life means paying attention to my job and my friends and my responsibilities, which in this case includes . . . ten dogs!!!! Yikes. So. Back to business, Paige . . . I need to make a photo of the puppies and keep it in my truck. Then, when they get a bit bigger, I’ll take them with me when I patrol. One at a time, of course . . .

I meet a lot of people when I’m out working. It’s a great way to find homes for strays.

Although, lol, usually I am only looking for homes for one! Not ten!!!!

Anybody want a puppy? Anybody?

*sound of crickets chirping*

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Posted by Paige on March 27th, 2005, 8:25 pm

I live in a pretty tame town, when it’s all said and done. So I don’t get many aggressive dog calls.

But they’re out there.

Some people think there are breeds that are more aggressive than others. It’s one of those nature vs. nurture arguments that get so muddy, because the causes of any behavior are so complex. Some jerk gets a pit bull or Rottweiler because he wants a scary dog, and then raises it to be scary. So what counts for more when you’re handing out blame? The dog’s temperament? The dog’s strength & musculature? Or the owner’s idiocy? The breed people are right when they say it’s not the dog’s fault, and municipalities that try to get rid of aggressive dogs by banning certain breeds are, to some extent, barking up the wrong tree. Ha ha ha. On the other hand, if I were in a jurisdiction where people were picking dogs for their street cred, I might be glad to have certain breeds banned. I don’t know.

Anyway. I’m lucky. People in my town, generally, adopt dogs because they love having a friendly dog around. Not because they want to make themselves look big on the street corner. Or protect their crack stash.

The aggressive dog calls I get are usually dogs who weren’t socialized properly. Dog isn’t exposed to people in a non-threatening way from a young age. Happens to also be a bit jumpy by nature or something, maybe easily scared, and one day something happens that pushes his buttons and he bites somebody.

One of the things about seeing a lot of dogs, like I do, is that you get so you can read them pretty well. I’ve yet to be bitten on the job. Knock on wood. (btw, does plastic wood grain veneer count for that? Char, this is your department, are you reading this?)

You get so you can tell if a dog is relaxed or aroused. Sometimes I think that’s the most important thing. Because an aroused dog is a dog who might react suddenly to something, maybe something you didn’t even think was important, and maybe not in a way you can expect. And phew, they are quick . . .

It’s funny. I picked up a stray pit bull a while ago. And I don’t think it was exactly raised right. In fact, I’m 99 percent sure he’s been used for fighting. But he was a confident, relaxed dog, and very handleable . . .

In fact, I wish now I had done something different with him. It’s silly, here I have all my rules. All that stuff about not getting attached. But somehow it feels like this dog, in particular, is on my conscience. I mean, he was such a nice dog. The ones that are taught to fight—a lot of time they aren’t very nice. But he was.

Not that I know what I would have done differently.

Darn it. I hope he’s okay.

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Posted by Paige on March 26th, 2005, 5:16 pm

Char asked me if I wasn’t worried Gil might read this.

Nah.

First off, how’s he going to find it? Google “Gil-n-Paige”? Oh, brother. And it’s not like we have any mutual friends we’re both in touch with.

And even if he did find it, I can guarantee he wouldn’t actually read it. The man’s not a reader. For him, a menu at a restaurant is, you know, an epic.

I said blogging was kind of like sitting in a bar. Blogging, and thinking some man is going to read what you’ve written & fall in love with you all over again—that’s about as stupid as going to a bar and choking down Schnapps because you figure any minute your ex might walk in, and boy, was he ever a Schnapps fan. Then he doesn’t show up and you spend the next 24 hours curled up on your bathroom floor, groaning. Ha!

No Schnapps for me!!!

Besides. I can always take my Gil posts down. I’ve been writing about him too much, anyway.

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Posted by Paige on March 24th, 2005, 6:48 pm

Gil. Part II.

As promised.

What happened was this. I went off to college. My plan was to do my undergraduate degree at Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, and then get into the veterinary medicine graduate program. I’d also decided to knock out some good grades right off. Cornell lets you apply to their DVM program during your sophomore year. But of course they’ll laugh in your face if you do that and aren’t pulling at least Bs. Well, maybe not in your face personally, but I bet they’d make paper airplanes out of your application and then take bets on how many tries to fly it into the recycle bin. ha ha ha

Well, I wasn’t going to sit by and see my application humiliated like that. So I spent two years in self-imposed solitary confinement. I mean academic years, of course. During the summer after my freshman year, I went back home and lived a more normal life . . . I had a summer job that I’d started in high school, cleaning kennels at a veterinary hospital. Then, for fun, I hung out with high school girlfriends.

Unfortunately, our itinerary no longer included parties at Mike’s. That was because in May of that year, his mom had found a little patch cleared in the woods behind their house with about 30 four-inch marijuana plants spreading their little green fingers toward the late spring sun. Mike’s mom may have thought kids drinking beer was fine. Drugs, on the other hand, were an entirely different matter. So she called in her back-up—one of her brothers, not Gil’s dad, though—and Mike was given a choice. He could join the service, or explain his little agricultural enterprise to the police. Mike chose the Army.

I admit, my reaction was terribly self-centered. Mike, first hard-lined at home, now sweating it out in boot camp. But what about me???? His stupid pot escapade had left me high and dry—no chance of seeing Gil that summer!!!! Maybe not ever!!!!

I’d already gained five pounds over the school year. I now proceeded to gain another five. I told my friend Janice it was the ice cream. To which she answered unhelpfully that I should quit eating ice cream. Janice, btw, was so thin you could read newsprint through her torso.

Part of me dreaded going back to Ithaca, once August rolled around. But it was also a relief. The free time I had over the summer was going to do me in, and I knew it. You know, too much time to brood.

During the bus ride back to the campus—my dad was getting into his troubles then, and didn’t drive me—I made my decision. That would be my last summer at home. Next year I’d find a job in Ithaca, and take courses over the summer. Maybe they’d even let me start my clinic internship.

So fast forward almost a year. By then, I was splitting a place with two other life sciences students. And two things happened. First, I met Char. A whole other story I’ll have to tell sometime. And second, sometime around the middle of August, I was flopped across my bed, reading a textbook on livestock pathogens, and the phone rang.

Someone asks for Paige. I say I’m Paige. And then he says he’s Gil, “Mike’s cousin.” I sit up, which knocks the textbook on the floor—hardcover book, hardwood floor. He asks me what was that, and I say nothing, and next thing you know, it’s sinking in, what’s happening. He’s telling me he’s moving to Ithaca. He’s transferred his credits—he’s enrolling in the arts program at Ithaca College.

And he’s looked me up because he’d heard I was at Cornell, and also did I have any leads on apartments.

And I answered yes, which was a lie—but not a big huge lie, because I did know all the spots around town where people hang up photocopied ads looking for roommates, and so when we met later for a beer I had loads of phone numbers for him to try.

But I noticed he didn’t pay much attention to the phone numbers. And that he was paying a lot of attention to me . . .

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Posted by Paige on March 22nd, 2005, 9:28 am

Okay, now THIS is amazing. A dog manages to swallow a stick that’s only 2 inches shorter than the length of his body?????

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-03-10-fetch_x.htm

Char says some dogs are reincarnated people who are “resting” between lives. Guess we know what this dog was when he was last a human, right Char???

lolol

http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-12/sword-swallower-after.html

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Posted by Paige on March 22nd, 2005, 9:28 am

Okay, now THIS is amazing. A dog manages to swallow a stick that’s only 2 inches shorter than the length of his body?????

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-03-10-fetch_x.htm

Char says some dogs are reincarnated people who are “resting” between lives. Guess we know what this dog was when he was last a human, right Char???

lolol

http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-12/sword-swallower-after.html

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Posted by Paige on March 21st, 2005, 11:37 pm

I’m . . . I should blog about something else. I know it. But I can’t . . . and anyway, I said I might blog about him sometime, right?

So here it is.

Gil.

No. Let’s not start with Gil.

Let’s start with his cousin.

His first cousin. This guy Mike I used to know. Back in my high school days. They didn’t look anything alike, though. Mike was this skinny smart ass kid from my hometown who’d become a kind of mascot to the really popular kids. Partly because he was a smart ass but mostly because he had no dad living at home and his mom let him and his friends drink beer at their house. She was one of those “I’d rather have him doing it here where I know what he’s up to” people, who apparently overlooks the fact that all the other kids who are there drinking beer also have parents, and those parents have no idea what their offspring are up to. Which is, of course, getting bombed.

Not that I saw anything wrong with it at the time :-)

Actually, I wasn’t a heavy duty partier, myself. And I wasn’t part of the in-crowd either, as far as I could tell, but I did end up at Mike’s on numerous occasions, and that’s where I first saw Gil. He lived in another little central N.Y. town pretty much identical to mine but being 15 miles away, and me barely able to consider anything beyond my circle of high school girlfriends and their crushes and our homework and various Towering Issues like “god I can’t WAIT until I can DRIVE,” he may as well have been from Rangoon or Murmansk or something.

Meaning that, to someone who’s grown up in a small town, people from the Next Small Town Over are downright exotic. Well, exotic or completely disgusting. Depending on whether they’re sexy and good-looking, or skanky and playing dirty tricks to win sporting events.

OK. So that was Mike. Now Gil . . .

Gil wasn’t sexy and good-looking, btw, the first time I saw him. We were both 15. I had breasts by then, or a reasonable facsimile, and hips, and was wearing sparkly lipgloss and trying to snag looks out of Seventeen magazine. He looked about 10, with scruffy jeans and a stupid short frizzy haircut, and he kept his head turned up at a funny angle because he was smaller than the jocky guys hanging around Mike, who as I said gave a pass to Mike but not Gil—they either ignored Gil or had their fun at his expense. Spitting in his beer, probably pissing in his beer, stuff like that, that teenage boys get off on.

So. Fastforward to encounter #2 two years later, and the guy has . . . sprouted. Okay. I mean, he has . . . he has acquired this simply gorgeous body. All big and loose and lanky, topping out over six feet—jocky guys are leaving him alone now, lol— and these amazing shoulders, and a way of standing that he’s somehow grown into, too, one hip cocked, his jeans almost slipping off his hips so you can see the edge of his briefs elastic peaking out at the waist—oh, I should mention this was a summer kegger so when my girlfriends and I tumble out of Janice’s parents’ car and walk up, the guys, who had started hours ago, are shirtless. Relaxed and shirtless and flushed from the heat and the beer. And Gil’s hair, I should also mention, is now grown out. It’s not frizzy any more, it’s now long and caught back in a ponytail—he’s pure gorgeous nouveau hippy. So I’m thinking—who was that male model guy, the romance cover model? Fabio! So think Fabio, only take off about 15 years of course, and add a big dose of natural sweetness and a pile of IQ points (sorry Fabio—oh, I wonder, what happens if Fabio sees this? Does Fabio google himself? I wonder??? :-O Maybe I should type it F*bio???)

Anyway. That was Gil.

But that’s not all. Next he drops a comment to me about art. I mean, about Art. And not in a dorky way. In a way that is so completely totally off-the-cuff and natural that it just about knocked me over. Can I even re-create it? Or will it just seem silly? It will definitely just seem silly! But I can tell you that he was trying to draw a cup of beer. As usual at these parties, when the kids unloaded the keg they’d rolled it to where they planned to tap it, so for the first couple of hours the pours are four-fifths foam, meaning it takes forever to get a glass of beer. Open the tap. Let a little beer run down the inside edge of your tipped plastic cup. Blow as much of the resulting 4 inches of foam as you can off the top of the ½ inch of beer. Repeat eight times, then drink.

So . . . that’s what Gil was doing. Drawing a cup of foam. And I was waiting for him to finish so I could get some beer too, and we were doing the “nice day” thing, when he suddenly he says, “you know, I’ve been thinking how it’s one thing to paint Cubist people or buildings or something, but the whole Cubism thing falls apart if you try to paint a flower or a tree. Seeing that organic shapes are inherently whole and how can an artist with any integrity break them up?”

I know. Cubism???? In 1992???? But remember, we’re 17. We thought The Doors were cool, too—stop laughing!!!! We were 17!!!! So it doesn’t matter that Jim Morrison was dead and totally OVER, many times over, by then, when you’re 17 and you’ve just heard Break On Through for the first time, c’mon, of course you’ll think you’ve just glimpsed the holy foyer. Break on through indeed. I just might. Only let me do it, please, pressed up naked against this boy’s fine young strapping bod.

And I knew—I knew—I’d caught his eye as well. It’s funny, the way you can feel that vibe, even when you’re 17 and a total virgin and self-conscious as hell, and you hate yourself and your life most of the time and face it, you can barely sort out your choice of hair conditioner (Herbal Essence? It’s natural! Pantene? Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Store brand? Cheap. And . . . and . . . seems to be made of the same stuff)

. . . let alone separate an incoming sex charge from the tangle of anxiety and elation and confusion and awe that make up the sloppy stew of adolescence.

But somehow I knew. It helped that, a month or so later, he kissed me. By then I was attending Mike’s parties like a regular groupie—despite the fact that they were awful affairs, btw, coarse and way too beery and jangling with too-loud music played until too late at night—but I was showing up religiously hoping to get another glimpse of this person. This personage, this prince who had emerged from the scrubby backwoods of Cortland country as improbably as a Venus sweeping up, on her shell, from a garbage dump, except that I’d seen it with my own eyes, so I knew it had really happened.

What a lot of time teenage girls waste on boys! But I counted it well worth it, because after he finally did show up, and after I’d maneuvered myself into his orbit, and drunk (admiringly but discreetly, if I do say so myself) from his maddeningly spare but infinitely amusing comments for the better part of four hours one humid August evening, I was rewarded with a soft, slow kiss and the words (which I recorded faithfully in my journal exactly 34 minutes later) “mmmm, you’re nice,” murmured into the hair on top of my head.

This, while standing next to Janice’s parents’ car, which Janice needed to have back by 11:00 or face, no doubt, certain torture and death, and since I was technically on an overnight at her house I had no choice but to leave, too.

So. We drove off.

Me cranking my head around to watch Gil slouch sexily back toward the bonfire.

And then what happened. Simple. I was too shy or boneheaded (or is that level-headed? lol) to try to get a message or something to him through his cousin. And he didn’t show up at any more of Mike’s parties that summer. So next thing you know I was packing my things to leave for Ithaca, for Cornell, the terror of finally leaving home merged perversely with the heartsickness of knowing it would be months before I’d see Gil again, if ever and who knew what might go down in the interim. To a boy like that, running around loose. Oh, so available.

Argh.

So, now, I suppose what you want to know is, why now, Paige? Why ya writin’ about this guy tonight?

I’ll tell you why. Because he’s back.

Showed up yesterday.

The important thing is, he didn’t find me a mess. I mean, he found me the way I wanted to be found. Great job, working with animals just like I wanted. Boyfriend. Or at least, he’s seen that I’m dating someone. So he knows I’m not just moping around my apartment six years after he split up with me.

Not that this was exactly . . . easy. It wasn’t. But this isn’t a perfect world. It’s not like I could burst into tears and tell him I’ve never gotten over him, right? That he’s the only person ever who has managed to make me feel . . . like he used to make me feel. Which was . . . what. Like I was at the center of something amazing . . .

Thank dog he doesn’t know it. Thank dog he doesn’t know how much damn time I waste thinking about him . . .

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