Papa's Afternoon Bath

Angel is starting to look pretty shabby. He hasn't been to see the groomer in quite a while. On top of that, while he and Jackie enjoy their big backyard full of grass, bushes, trees, and places to explore, they have also encountered this Summer far more fleas than we ever had at our condo. Papa's lack of maintenance, and combined with those nasty little fleas have made for a dirty, messy, matted little furball we once knew as Angel.

Angel will see the groomer, of course, but I decided to start cleaning Papa up before he goes. The first thing I wanted to do was to give him his flea medicine. Once the fleas start biting the poor little guy, he begins scratching and biting at himself, and will even pull out his own hair. All that stops once the fleas are dead, so it was imperative that I get the medicine for him as soon as possible.

I bought some Advantage for dogs between 11 and 20 pounds on my way home from work, but when I got home I decided to give Papa a bath before I put the medicine on him. Advantage is applied to the skin of the animal, usually between the shoulder blades so that they can't lick it. It spreads out over their body, and kills the fleas and their eggs. It is really effective. I have used it on all of our pets for years and I can tell you it kills fleas dead! The only draw back is the expense. It can be very expensive, but if you buy it from 1800petmeds.com, you can get it at a reasonable price.

Papa hates baths. Or perhaps a bit more accurately, he hates the idea of a bath. Once he hears the water running in our bathtub he heads for the hills, and if I don't get him before he crawls under something large enough that I cannot get to him, then I might as well turn off the water and read War and Peace because it will be a looooong time before he comes back out again. But, if I can fool him, or distract him long enough to get a fair amount of water in the tub before he knows what's going on, then I have it made, and Angel will get his bath.

This is Papa taking his very first bath. We made it as pleasant as possible because we knew it would set the standard. The look on his face tells it all; he ain't diggin' it. But he was good about taking his bath until he got to be about a year old.

Once in the water Papa is fine. I guess he just hates getting in is all. As I gave him his bath I could see the little buggers crawling around on my poor boy's back. I knew that just a simple bath wouldn't rid him of the fleas, but I am always amazed by how tenacious they are. They were able to hold on even after I dumped an entire pitcher of water directly onto them. They also held on despite my rubbing soap into Papa's hair. I didn't waste too much time on the bath because I wanted to get the flea medicine on him so that he could find some relief, so I rinsed him off throughly and got a towel to dry him off with.

Drying off is Angel's favorite part of the bath. (Based on my experience with other dogs, I bet it is every dog's favorite part of a bath.) If I don't hold him down on the bathroom rug, and wrap him up in his towel, he takes off like a shot down the hallway, and will rub himself all over the living room carpet. I usually never give him the chance, though, because I wrap the towel around him while he is still in the tub, and then I lift him out, towel and all onto my lap. There I can get him fairly dry before he runs out of patience, and wriggles so much that he wears me out, and I am forced to put him down.

Then he zooms down the hallway like a bat out of hell, and rubs himself all over the living room carpet.

He and Jackie always get treats because daddy is a big ol' softy, and figures every time a doggy gets a bath they should also get a treat so as to make them, (or me,) feel better about the whole traumatizing event. Both dogs get a treat because you can never just give one dog a treat in front of another dog. It just isn't fair, and the treatless dog will follow you around putting a guilt trip on you that would make a Jewish mother blush until you give one up anyway. The way I figure it, you might as well give up the treat right up front, that way you won't have a little dog following you around as if you were a mother goose or something.

Angel fresh out of his bath. You can see by the look on his face that he is happier than all get out, because he just got outof the bath.

It makes absolutely no difference to him that I got a towel for him to dry off on. He likes for me to hold the towel up, and then drop it on him so that it completely covers him up. Then he can rub his face on the towel while I dry off his body with the rest of it. Then he likes to roll on the towel, but it gets away from him, so he just rolls on the carpet instead. This reminds me of how my mother used to wrap a towel around her hair when she would get out of the shower. Papa made a burrito out of himself!

Jackie helps her big brother dry off. When Angel gets a bath, Jackie is right there at the bath tub watching the whole thing. I don't know if she does it because she likes to watch him be tortured, (like a little human sister would do with her brother,) or if she is there for moral support. Probably the latter. In any case, if I close the bathroom door with her outside of the bathroom, then she will paw and scratch and whine at the door until I let her in. Papa, on the other hand, is such a big chicken about baths that he will hide while Jackie gets her's.

Well, he is sort of dried off. After his bath he and Jackie had dinner. Then, once he was almost completely dry, he got his flea meds. I have since hacked off some of the matted hair, and I will make an appointment with the groomer soon. He will look better, and he will be cooler.

So there it is, yet another exciting chapter in the lives of Jacqueline and Angel. Until next week, please stop by the Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings for more interesting dogs, and don't forget the Friday Ark at The Modulator which is just filled to the rafters with all sorts of animals.

Debit Card Blues

As you might have noticed, there wasn't a post last week of any sort. I didn't even bother with the weekly Adventures of Jackie and Angel post, and for the millions thousands hundreds few of you who have grown accustomed to reading about our two favorite pups every week, I apologize. It's just that, last week I was kind of busy, and what I was busy with left me in a foul mood for most of the week. With that large of a gray cloud over my head I found it difficult to employ my rather light and witty approach to writing that has earned me the adoration of millions thousands hundreds a few loyal readers.

What happened is, late Monday evening of last week, as I prepared to go to bed, I received a phone call on my cellphone that I ignored, and didn't answer. Usually when it is that late, (and we are talking not even 9 o'clock yet. I am an "early to bed, early to rise" sort of guy,) I just don't answer the phone. If you had to wait until bedtime to call, then you can wait until tomorrow morning to get an answer.

Anyway, I didn't take the call, but I looked at the phone number that my phone recorded in it's "received calls" folder, and I was puzzled by the phone number I saw there. Intrigued, I called my voice-mail. The caller said they represented some company-or-another, and that they wanted to verify some "activity" on my debit card. I have received such calls before, and usually it's because I have made an unusually large purchase, and the card company or bank that holds the card wants to make sure that I am indeed the guy making the purchase. I figured the reason they called was because earlier that day I had called Disneyland and ordered another one of the Olszewski miniature sculptures of Disneyland. (When it arrives I will take pictures and post them here. It's the Main Street, Disneyland Railroad Station, and it is AWESOME!)

So, I called the company so that I could tell them the good news. A woman answered, and explained again that there had been some "suspicious activity" on my debit card, and that they just wanted to verify that I had in fact made the purchase(s). I said OK fully expecting her to read off the purchase I had made from Disneyland, but what she said first took me by surprise. She said, "OK, first we have a purchase made at the Babies R Us store in the amount of $1123.27."

My little brain became instantly confused, and muddled.

I tried to think, faltered, tried again, faltered again, and than just like an old Mercury, finally I started firing on all cylinders.

"Wait, what did you say?" I said.

"I asked if you had made a purchase at Babies R US". Said the disembodied phone voice.

"Uh, no." I replied. "No, I didn't... HOW MUCH?!?"

"O-n-e t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d..."

"No." I interrupted."I understand what you said. Where there any others?"

"Yes" she said. "Did you make any purchases at Kohl's in Ontario?

"NO" I shouted unintentionally "I HATE that lousy store. How much did they spend there?

"Well," the lady hesitated,"apparently they spent $827.31 at the first store..."

"The FIRST store?!" I said,

"Yes", came the reply. "They spent $827.31 at the Kohl's in Ontario, and then another $123.24 at the Kohl's in Fontana."

"SHIT!" I exclaimed. "Is that all?" I inquired.

"Yes sir, It appears that is all."

As if that weren't enough, I thought. The woman on the phone went on to tell me that since they used my debit card the money most likely hadn't left my account yet. She said she would put an immediate hold on our debit cards since they couldn't tell whether the card information that had been compromised was mine or my wife's, and that she would also send a message to our bank informing them of what was going on. She told me I would need to call my bank in the morning to put a stop to the payments to the stores, and thereby keep the money in my account.

Still somewhat shocked by what had just happened, I said thank you, and hung up.

I explained the whole affair to my wife as soon as I got off the phone. We pondered how someone was able to snake our debit card information. We had only two cards, and we never let anyone else use them. There were no duplicates, and we properly destroyed the old ones when the new ones came in the mail. We soon came to the realization that it really didn't matter how it happened, the fact of the matter was it did happen, and now we would have to deal with it.

The next morning I called the bank and explained what happened. The bank representative, was a very nice and helpful young lady by the name of Lindsay. Lindsay also told me what we would have to do to recoup our money. I had already checked my balance by then and knew that the money had not yet been disbursed to the retailers. I shared this information with Lindsay, but she said it didn't really matter, that the bank was obligated to pay the retailers the money regardless of the fact that the account was fraudulently accessed. Once I thought about it, it made sense. Regardless of who used my account information, the fact is when they made that purchase using my debit card information the bank automatically approves the purchase at the point of sale. Essentially the bank had already approved the purchases at the three different stores involved, and that approval is also a promise to pay. When it is discovered that the purchases were made illegally, then it falls on me as the person responsible for the account, (and who has been, in effect, robbed,) to call the police and make a police report.

The bank required a copy of my police report, and also asked that I fill out another sworn statement that they had prepared. The bank representative that helped me this time was also a notary public, and that was a good thing because my statement needed to be notarized.

After I jumped through a few hoops, and after 24 hours had passed, all of our money, plus any fees we might have encountered, such as overdrafts etc., had been refunded to us.

It turned out well, as I knew it would all along, it's just stressful to discover that someone has taken part of your identity and used it for nefarious purposes. It's such an invasion into our private lives, my wife's and mine, and it made us feel vulnerable in a world where we once felt comfortable and secure. It bothered us both a great deal that someone had somehow gotten a hold of my debit card information! (It turned out to be my card number and pin number the thieves were using.) We pondered the idea that someone at a convenience store or gas station, standing behind me in line at the cash register perhaps quickly memorized the 16 digit card number, and then watched as I keyed in my pin number. It may sound incredible that someone would be able to memorize twenty digits like that, and later recall them in the proper order so that they could use them to buy a thousand dollars worth of diapers for their baby, but there is no doubt in my mind that there are people who have such talents, and who use them in such an illegal manner as what happened to me.

That is why I never got around to posting anything last week. I was too busy meeting with the police, and running to the bank in an effort to help them catch the crooks that stole my money, and at the same time get my money back into my account where it belongs. I guess looking back on it, the time I spent doing those things was minimal, and really didn't have a real impact on my time in terms of writing up a decent blog entry. But it was an emotionally charged event, and left me, as I mentioned before, in a mood that was anything but conducive to great good inspired blog-level writing.

Hopefully they will catch the scum that stole our money. They deserve whatever punishment is appropriate for such crimes, and it would make me feel better knowing their lives might be put on hold for the trouble and gloom that they caused me.

It was bad enough that we almost lost a significant amount of money, and that the situation put such a pall on our week in general, but what made the whole situation even that much more worse was the fact that I had just deposited a check for $2100.00 into our account that very morning. We had paid too much into our property tax impound account, and received the refund check in the mail the Saturday before. The check came as a surprise, and we were of course very happy to get it. Them some crook comes along and spoils everything.

In the end, we got our money back, and while that is good news I am also happy to report that the gloomy mood was only temporary. I have a new debit card, complete with new number and pin number, and hopefully Kohl's and Babies R Us have security cameras. I have my money back, and hopefully the crooks will have nice new portraits to show the judge.

To hear the perps are behind bars would really make my day.

An Evening with Angel and Jackie

Last night the two dogs and I spent the evening in our living room watching one of my favorite movies.

But, I am getting ahead of my story.

The evening started off with us just relaxing in the living room, under the warm glow of a globe that I recently purchased at a local thrift store.

The World

That's the globe by itself. Obviously.

And there's Jackie basking in the warm glow of The World.

The movie we watched was about Other Worlds. It's called Star Wars, in case you don't recognize the screen shot.

OK, so the dogs weren't all that excited about the movie, except for one part when Chewbacca growled That prompted Papa to growl in his sleep.

We had a really nice evening.

So there it is, yet another exciting chapter in the lives of Jacqueline and Angel. Until next week, please go see more dogs the Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings, and don't forget the Friday Ark at The Modulator for even more fine animals, and don't forget the Carnival of the Cats this Sunday.

Capsized Salem

I found myself thinking of Edloe a few days ago.

For those of you who may not know who Edloe is, (and how could you not,) she was possibly the most famous cat on the Internet, and she lived with a man by the name of Laurence Simon . She has been gone for almost two years now, but she was immortalized by way of a "capsize cam" that had been set up on Laurence's blog so all the world could witness a capsizing event. You can still find pictures of Edloe capsized, or capsizing, over in Laurence's picture gallery. One such event can be seen here.

But Edloe wasn't the only big cat that would capsize. Noooooo siree. Check out my own big girl, Salem...

Capsized Salem

Salem weighs in at 24 pounds. I don't know if it is her weight that causes her to tip over, or her shape, but she does it often.

stretching, capsized Salem.

In that picture above it almost looks like Salem is stretching for the stars.

Salem can almost always be found right there in that spot, and a lot of that time she is on her back like that. I don't know why she enjoys it so much, but obviously she does since it seems to be her favorite pass time.

Look for more cats every Friday at the Friday Ark over at The Modulator. And don't forget the Carnival of the Cats this Sunday.

Jackie and Angel Cause Big Trouble

Yesterday I came home and found a letter in my mail box addressed to "Resident". Since I am a resident of where I live, I opened it.

What I found inside was a handwritten letter scrawled across a piece of spiral notebook paper. It said, "Please do something about your dogs barking. It is disturbing to your neighbors and unfair to the animals. It has been going on for sometime now, and you should be more respectful of those around you."

The perps.

I picked up the envelope the letter came in so that I could find the return address and go speak to the person. But, they didn't put a return address on the envelope, all they put was, "USPS, Ventura CA 93003"

I figured it was the next door neighbors. Every morning before I head off to work, I put the dogs in the backyard. My wife has been telling me that after I leave, the man next door does something every morning in his backyard, and the dogs go nuts, barking at him through the fence that separates our two properties. That fence is the only wooden fence in our backyard. There is a block wall between us, and every other one of our neighbors, but because the dogs can see through that wooden fence, anything that moves drives them bonkers. To try and prevent that, we went out and bought a cheap little picket fence and put it about fifteen feet back from the big fence. So far, it has worked out quite well. Because the dogs cannot get to the large fence to see the man, they don't bark as much. From what my wife has been telling me, they hear the man, bark once or twice, run over to the small picket fence, and then just sort of lose interest and go on about the business of being little dogs.

I decided to go over and speak with my neighbor about the letter because he might have sent it before we put up the little fence. He was in his garage when I walked up his drive, and so I introduced myself, and told him about the letter. His wife and daughter were their with him in the garage, and when I showed him the letter, he turned and said something in Spanish to his wife, and she and their daughter went into the house. I wondered at first what was going on, and thought maybe it was going to get ugly, but before long, they returned, and in his wife's hand was a leter, just like the one I had in my hand. The man told me they got the same letter, but that they didn't even own a dog until very recently. His daughter told me that they just bought a puppy, and that he doesn't even bark.

I felt a little embarrassed, but I didn't want to apologize because there was nothing to apologize for, so I just told him that I guess I had the wrong neighbor, and that I would need to find out where the letter came from. The man smiled, we shook hands, and I was on my way.

I guess the letter came from one of our neighbors that live behind us. I guess I should go talk with them, but it's a little freaky to send an anonymous letter with no return address. It kind of gives me a bad feeling because it tells me the person is passive aggressive, and perhaps could go so far as to take matters into their own hands. They obviously do not know which house has the dogs, though, since they sent the letter to at least two different addresses, but still, I worry about what might come next.

Why people just can't be up front with one another, I will never know. If they have a problem with the dogs, why wait so long to say something, and when you finally do say something, why anonymously?

Weirdos.

So there ya have it. Yet another exciting chapter in the lives of Jacqueline and Angel. Until next week, please go see more law abiding dogs the Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings, and don't forget the Friday Ark at The Modulator for even more upstanding citizens animals.

Reel Memories and Time Machines

These days it's rather easy record your child on either video tape, or with a digital movie camera. They're not prohibitively expensive, and are quite easy to use.

Back when I was a child, however, the best you could do was an 8mm film movie camera, and if you were lucky and could afford a few extra bucks you could even buy a camera that would record sound as well as video! It was the perfect means of building a time machine for future use.

My grandfather had an 8mm camera setup, and I remember him dragging that thing out as if it were some big budget film production. If he shot indoors he needed to set up a bank of four flood lights that rivaled the sun, and were about as hot as well. But granddad was a good sport, and he took several hours of film of his grown children, and of his grandchildren. My mother now has those little films locked away in her closet along with the projector and screen my granddad used to show the films he took. I remember sitting on the couch in my grandparent's darkened living room watching those films, and being lulled by the clack-clack-clack of the projector.

My own parents didn't have any such luxuries. To be honest, I am not sure why because my father was once a semi-professional photographer who had some of the best camera equipment of the era. He also had a pretty nice stereo system; a Heathkit receiver that still works to this day, and a Sony reel to reel tape player/recorder.

It was the Sony tape recorder that he used one evening in 1966 or 67 to record his children. I remember that night to some degree. My dad was trying to be sly and catch us candidly talking without letting on that we were being recorded. I am sure he was going for that "natural" effect, and to some degree it worked. My brother, for example, wasn't in the room when dad started the tape, so he was pretty much unaware of what was going on. (Sort of a glimpse of how he would live the rest of his life.)

My sister, all of maybe two or three years old, may have realized she was being recorded, but was more interested in how the machine worked than whether or not it was working on her. At one point it is obvious she knows she is being recorded because she is sort of hamming it up as she recites her ABC's, and 123's. (Yes, at two or three my sister could run through the alphabet, and count to twenty. Brat.)

I knew we were being recorded. You can tell by how I act and what I say. It's really strange hearing my six or seven year-old, high-pitched voice from the past. It is even more odd that it no longer sounds off to my ear. You know how your recorded voice sounds different to you and no one else? Apparently it's because when you speak, you hear not only what everyone else hears, but you hear your voice as it vibrates through your skull. Well, my voice from forty years ago no longer sounds all that odd to me. Of course I haven't used that prepubescent soprano voice since sometime around 1973 or so, so I guess it makes sense.

What was also surprising is how you can get an idea of what our personalities were like as kids. My wife actually expressed this just as I was to say it myself. In particular was the personality of my brother, who was eight or nine at the time. He comes into the room, and talks with my father about the planets. It was the subject he studied in school that day, and he was trying to get a handle on it. He came off as rather serious minded and studious. My brother would struggle through school all of his life probably with an undiagnosed case of ADD, or something. You can tell by what my brother says on the tape that he is a pretty smart kid, and is very interested in what he and my father were discussing. He even sounded very mature for his age. Yet, Bill got pretty lousy grades all through school, and had his name etched on more than one "Board of Education". (Ahh the good old days, when you could actually paddle school kids!)

I acted kind of dorky, which is how I am today. I even asked my sister a silly question about which place she preferred; Disneyland, the fair, or "this house". She didn't ever answer me, most likely because it was such a dorky question.

My sister, as I mentioned before, rambled off her ABC's, and her 123's, and she did so with hardly any mistakes. Most of the mistakes she did make were because she was acting silly for the benefit of my parents. She was also interested in how my dad's tape recorder worked. He somehow created a real time, echoing effect that just enchanted my sister and me. He did it three or four times, and we kept asking him how it was done. He wisely wouldn't tell us because he knew we would try to do it ourselves. My sister asked him over and over how it was done, and if we could do it again. In fact for the remainder of the tape, which lasted probably fifteen minutes or so, my sister got reprimanded no less than four times by my dad for messing with the microphones of his tape recorder.

One last thing about this tape from our past, it was so clear. You could hear me playing with my hot wheels, and the television show my mother was watching in the background.

I plan on transferring the audio of this tape to my computer so that we can share and keep this aural treasure for ever. My father recorded us using several different tracks, maximizing the small amount of tape that he had. I have only listened to one track so far, and only then because I just couldn't wait to rediscover our past. Next time I will only play the tapes while I simultaneously record the audio on to my computer. The tape is fragile, and I want to be sure to get as much information off of them as I can because I never know when I might want to get in one of my time machines, and relive my youth.