See this movie!

Temple Grandin, currently showing on HBO channels. Claire Danes is nothing short of fantastic, and Temple herself is a fascinating person.

I've watched it 3 times in 2 days and I'm not even close to tiring of it.

It's been confirmed.

My beloved just confirmed to me today (very tactfully, as is his way), that I am a much easier person to be around when I get my workout in every day.

It's been a rough couple of weeks... I've been sort of tied to the house while he goes to work and a guy with long legs, a comically short torso and hilarious eyebrows shows up and hangs out in the basement for several hours, muttering. He's not a long-legged troll, he's our HVAC guy, and he's been installing a new furnace and water heater.

Anyway, I don't have any qualms about leaving him alone in the house - we've been using the guy for 10+ years and trust him. However... what to do, what to do with the "security system", as he calls my beloved sweet puppy. My sweet little fuzzy puppy who turns into a whirl of teeth, fur and noise when there's a knock at the door. My lovey little angel, who, as long as she has her training collar and a leash on in the house, is the perfect hostess; remove those and you might as well yell, "Chopper, sic BALLS!" 

So, stuck at the house, I was.

I have a very small window of time tomorrow that I can go to the gym during non-obnoxiously-busy-time. If I can get motivated enough after working a 12 hour night shift, I'm going. If not... sigh... back at it 5am Monday.

It's not normal.

How much I love this dog.

What is it? Is it the expectation of nothing more than a couple of meals and a couple of trips outside a day? The sheer jubilation when I have more to offer?

Maybe it's the way she stands there looking at me with those eyes of molten chocolate, then - so as to further cause my heart to melt - rests her chin on my knee, or the chair, or the side of the bed... just staring up in ... what? Adulation? Pity? Hunger? Who knows? All I know is that when she does that, my heart feels like it might burst.

Maybe it's the fact that with her, there are no bills. No laundry. No discussions. No wedding guest-lists to discuss, no job stress. No arguments - none that can't be won with an all-natural peanut butter biscuit, anyway. There are only walks, and play, and kisses. And leans. I don't know why, but when she walks over to me and simply leans herself against my legs, I feel like I own the world. The complete lack of barriers, the trust it takes for an animal to want to come to you, and then lean its body completely against yours... I can't describe the calm that overtakes me when there is a dog leaning against my legs. No words are necessary. They should give dogs out in pharmacies instead of statins and antihypertensive medications.

It seems like with each dog I've been privileged to know, the bond becomes stronger. Exponentially so, if I may hyperbolize.

They all have a special place in my heart, as if each one gets their own chamber in which to reside forever. This one, however, seems to want to take up the whole damn thing, and I'm inclined to let her. Wherever I go, she follows. If I shut the door behind me, she'll wait outside for as long as she needs to. If I stop, she stops. If I sit, she sits, or she leans. Leans on me like I'm the only thing that can hold her up.

Little does she know how she holds me up.

The struggle.

This is the struggle.

I can work out for 2 1/2 hours (like I did today), and eat right all day, fighting cravings at home tooth and nail, with only my careful planning to rely upon...

Only to come to work, to this.

It's like saying to a crackhead, "I'm just going to put these rocks here on the counter... you don't have to smoke them. In fact, feel free to ignore them." It's like buying an alcoholic a shot and expecting them to pour it on the floor themselves and order themselves a Coke or water with a lemon wedge.

Had enough analogies?

Apparently that was brought in by some well-meaning family member of a patient we took care of.

Funny, I was extremely pissed off when I thought my co-workers (especially Dan, who knows first-hand of the fight I fight every day) bought this stuff. There was already junk lying around from the blizzard the other day, when Dan went out and cleared store shelves of seemingly every bit of chips and salsa

and bananas and oranges in the South Hills, for the crews who were working and didn't have any restaurants open from which to choose.

Cinnamon rolls, though... really? I've only been craving those fucking things for what.. 2 weeks now? I would like to thank my partner, who related to me that they were dry, and to my beloved, who reacted to my tirade as I walked into work ("Why don't you just paste that fucking crap directly onto my gut and ass?" - delivered with a scowl) by moving them to an undisclosed location - hopefully not our home.

So, faced with all of that, this is what I took with me on an extended standby we had to do.

So glad I come to work prepared. We had no idea how long we'd be standing by, as the state police methodically suited up, then took pictures, and finally disassembled and bagged up a meth lab.

Of all of that, I ate 1 string cheese and the banana and the orange.

I can't stress this enough: Those flaky, new-agey, whatever you want to call them - positive things I've been telling myself when I'm sweating it out at the gym - THEY did this for me.

I could not have done this on my own.

Why?

Why.

When we have days and days advance notice, do you, the public, insist upon getting into your vehicles and venturing out into a blizzard? I know you have food in your houses, because I saw you ALL at the grocery store Thursday night. Every damn one of you.

I will give you a pass on being out until evening rush hour Friday; the weather had not yet started when you left for work in the morning, and there have been countless times we've had significant snow forecast and have gotten an inch. Or none. Or rain.

However. Friday night. about a foot of snow on the ground already, and the road crews can't keep up, it's falling so fast.

There is absolutely NO excuse for those of you who felt the need to get in your cars and occupy roadways that were already becoming impassable. You got stuck. You blocked roads. You slowed down emergency vehicles, who had to dodge your vehicles stranded all cattywompus. As if that wasn't bad enough, once you beach your car, you decide it's a good idea to get out, in the middle of a road, and stand out there waving people by, or - even better - try and push your car uphill on a slippery road. So you couldn't control your car on this snowy, slippery road... but you're going to go stand in the road and trust that everyone else can. I don't give a shit about your four wheel drive or all wheel drive or how big your goddamned Hummer is. Stay home.

You are on notice now. There is snow coming tomorrow. Stay home, or face my wrath.

Catch us next week for: "You're 50 and out of shape and wouldn't do 15 minutes of cardio if I signed my paycheck over to you. Why the hell are you shoveling snow??!"

Who IS this person?

I had a late night last night, as, like the rest of the mid-atlantic, northeast, and east coast, I had to go grocery shopping. Seems I always let the fridge get completely empty the day before a snowstorm is forecast. So, while my fellow 'Burghers were loading their carts with milk, bread, and the all-important TP, I was shopping for the basics - while hungry. I escaped unscathed, with only the necessities (ice cream being a necessity), but once I got home, unpacked and put away everything, it was late. By the time I steered my walking-into-walls self to bed, it was almost midnight.

The alarm went off at 4:15, as it does every weekday when I'm on daylights. I hit snooze 3 times today, twice more than the norm. The third time the alarm went off, I reasoned with myself: You were up late. You've gotten 14 hours sleep in the past 3 days. That's not enough. Your work clothes are out in the living room on your gym bag, not out in the car like they usually are. You could sleep for a whole 2 hours more, shower, and go to work. Today is going to be a rough day. Rest up.

I reset my alarm for 6:30. I sighed with relief and lay my head back down.

A minute later, I hugged Dan, swung my feet over to the cold floor, and trudged toward the bathroom to change into my gym clothes.

Why? I had it all rationalized, guilt-free. Sleep is not something I do without willingly or cheerfully. All I can attribute it to is habit... And the thought of a commute which is 100% more annoying from home than the quick jump off the highway from the gym.

Whatever it was, it was enough.

Where's Billy Mays when I need him?

I've got a very important and life-saving invention and I need a good pitchman. And it needs to be a pitchMAN for this one.

See, I've noticed that men seem to be totally clueless about their words and actions and... that... breathing too loud thing they do -  around women, during what I will delicately refer to as Rage Week.

My invention, an Estrogen-Sensing-Pod (or ESP for short), senses the subtle changes in a woman's hormonal status and sets off an alarm that then reaches out and slaps a guy across the forehead because - let's face it - that's what it takes sometimes to get them to pay attention.  There are those oh-so-subtle signals that they're about to die a horrible death by my hand/they should back the fuck OFF/ that men tend to miss, and they would benefit from this early-alerting system.

Example 1:
Old man in a yellow pickup. Driving 25mph in a 40mph zone. It's 5am. Nobody on the road but us. I give him his space, despite my desire to get a running start and ram the back of his stupid little yellow truck as hard as I can. He keeps looking in his rearview at me, causing him to swerve all over the road. This makes him drive even more slowly and erratically than he was before. It's hard to give someone their space when they can't seem to pick a speed and stick with it. Finally we get to a stop light and he takes his life into his hands opens the door of his truck, steps out, and yells, "TURN OFF YOUR BRIGHTS!!"
My brights weren't on. But he got a good look at them when I then flipped them on and lit him up in all his cranky, crochety glory. You want brights, fucker? There's your brights. He got back into his stupid yellow truck without a word.

Example 2:
Half an hour later, at the gym. I put my music on to drown out the Brokeback Grunts and do my bench work. I do a few sets of good-mornings, then check the area where the iso-lateral back machine is. Empty. I head to it, adjust the weight, and do a set. Immediately a thick-necked meathead with better highlights than mine appears at my side: "Can I get on here? I was in the middle of something."

What I wanted to say: "What you were 'in the middle of',  Mr. girly-man, was leaning on the machine across the gym from here, bsing with the other girly-man over there, until you saw me on 'your' machine. At which time, you decided that you'd be the gym big-shot and claim it to be yours. Why don't you just lift your leg and take a piss on it? Or, how about do what I'd do: go find another machine for the minute and a half it's going to take me to finish 2 more sets. Because I don't have time to do a set, walk around looking tough, spot someone on their bench presses, get a drink, spit, scratch my balls, and shoot the shit with someone between sets like you do. I get in, I get 3 sets done, I'm out. But, by all means, you're wayyy more important than me, I can tell by your backward baseball cap, the uniform of self-important gym tools the world over. Oh, and, do you mind telling me where you get your highlights done?"

What I did say: I said nothing, but the "Really??" look I gave this tool would have set his ESP sensor into hyper-drive, had he seen my informercial and purchased one. He was so crunched for time that when I hustled out the door at 7:30 on my way to work, he was leaning on another machine, talking so some other girly-man. Yes, I can see where I disrupted your entire workout, you tool.

Thank goodness MY guy seems to have already bought and installed the ESP sensor. If not for his understanding, support, and sweetness, these guys might have met a different fate this morning. He's a credit to his gender.