Brooding Over Barks

Gosh it's slow at work. Is it slow for you too? Is it the heat? Or just the recession or depression or what? So freaking slow at work that I'm cruising foodgawker, occasionally tossing dog toys in-between reading interesting recipes that I'm never going to cook. Four ingredient brownies!? And I'm going to make this soup though not today because it's a gahjillion degrees in the shade here in the forest (gump).

I'm still "training" Bella and training, if you could call it that, is going okay. I say okay (because who's idea was this?) because she's really training me. I want her to stop barking after one bark so now instead of barking, she howls. Howling is pleasant -- especially at 5:30 am.

Just yesterday Bella took a huge bite out of the carpeting at work so I'll be hand-stitching that back together soon. I bought her a huge plastic (made in China with poisons) pot that a person might put underneath a planted pot if they didn't want water to run down onto their neighbor living in the apartment below, and filled this plastic pan-pot with water so Bella now has a built-in, corgi-sized. She started dunking (and mudding) in my sister's bird bath, and now Bella's the proud owner of her own "pool." Hopefully the plastic Chinese poisons don't leach out and cause paralysis which will cause her to stop breathing in the middle of a romp. Last night she went outside in the dark and took a refreshing dip. Then she came back into the house, and refreshingly dripped all over the carpeting and the comforter (at least I hope that was water).

Remembah that Dr. Crabby suggested (or he'd kill me) that I lose 20 lbs this month. I'm down 23 lbs. I'm hoping to add another 5 lbs to the loss column before seeing him on the 1st. I'm sure he'll still chastise me because I ate some fruit (shsssh!)

Tomorrow I visit oncology to learn the results of the CA125 test. If the numbers are still high, I'll start the scan process, and if the numbers are in the normal range, I'll be grateful, thankful and elated, and most importantly not dead anytime soon, yet still thinner and healthier and won't have to buy one of those double-wide coffins from Costco or Wal-screwtheiremployees. I haven't given the test results much thought though. I spend more time thinking about Ceasar Milan and how he just pokes his dogs in the butt while making a funny noise with his tongue to get them to stop barking. This is really kind of cool when you think about it. The not brooding over test results, and brooding over the practical. We can't do a thing about test results but listen to them when they are reported. We can't change test results with any amount of brooding. Yet we can brood over barking because we can change a bark (or not) depending on if you're a decent pack leader. This is what life is all about. Living & barking for each day, concentrating on changing a dog bark rather than worrying about test results. (but then ask me tomorrow how I feel. I may be singing a completely different tune.)

A few years ago when I owned other dogs and lived with living family members, my neighbor came marching up the road with a pitchfork. At the time, another neighbor who lives close by owned several Jack Russell terrorists who barked incessantly, day and night. Well, ole pitchfork Larry came a-callin and demanded to know if "those are your dogs!!?" while I was out for a walk back when I could walk (which btw, I can now - thank you very much). I guess he was going to stab the barking dogs with his pitchfork until he discovered that the barking dogs belonged to one of his mountain buddies. I dunno. Maybe he was going to stab the owner or me. Though that day I lucked out and dodged a prong. In jest, however, I've taken to calling him "PL" though whenever Bella starts her Hound of the Baskervilles impression, I cringe thinking that at any moment Bella could become shish kadog instead of a sweet, well-trained corgi that she's turning into.