We were walking Buddy and Bruno out for their nightly walk. Bruno was on his lead, as he is still a pup and unpredictable, and Buddy was off his lead, because he walks better off his lead.
We came to a corner and coming down the road perpendicular to the road we were on was a man with his large, black Cavoodle. I’d grab Bud if I thought the other dog maybe unfriendly, but Cavoodles are usually good natured. Buddy ran over to say hello, as he does and the Cavoodle growled and then jumped on top Buddy very agresively.
"Buddy, come here Bud," I called. And Buddy came to me, not caring at all.
"Buddy?" the other owner said. "Not much of a Buddy."
"Huh?" I said.
We were turning to keep walking.
"Buddy's don't attack..."
I had already turned to walk away and I kept walking. What are you talking about? Buddy didn't attack your dog, your dog attacked Buddy, in front of all of us.
That's what Trump does. That is what conservative politicians do. Deny, deny, deny, even with eye witness’. This is the true trickle down effect.
If we thought Milo (the cat) was scared of Bruno, (the cat chasing puppy... going on 6 months old) we’d be wrong. Bruno was lying with his head in my lap on the couch this morning when Milo jumped up onto the arm of the couch, gazed down like a big African cat, then stepped down onto my thigh and literally sat on Bruno’s face.
The alarm at 6am wakes me up. I’m thinking about the other discarded chair in our street? Sure, it is in a bad state, but all I really need is the metal frame, the rest can be discarded. The back could be hacksawed off and a flat wooden top could be attached to the metal frame, making it a stool. In fact, once I pull all the padding off, there could be a wooden seat underneath it already.
I set off down our street to get the other chair early, it is still darkish. Our next door neighbour is out the front with some tradies. I didn’t really want to be seen in my Steptoe moment, however, what can you do? Smile and try not to look guilty, not that there is anything to be guilty about.
Bruno is being difficult to walk, you know, like a bulldog, seemingly in a go slow, tra la la kind of mode. I drag him halfway down our street, wondering why I bought him at all. Of course, he is my cover. I’m not going to collect junk in the street, I’m just walking the dog. Stupid really.
7.57am. Sam calls me, just as I want to kill Bruno. “What are you doing?” Sam asks.
“Getting that chair?”
“Really, that terrible old chair?”
After that, Bruno just seems to decide to walk, maybe it was Sam’s voice, and he is fine after that. Who knows why?
I meet the girl with the Basenji, I forget its name. Damn! You don’t want to run into people when you are picking up junk in the street like a hoarder.
As I get to the chair, there are people at the café and people in the front yard of the next door house to the one that put the chair out the front. Bugger it! Don’t crumble now, just pick it up as confident as you like and carry it away, which is what I did. Would the bulldog decide to be uncooperative at my moment of get away? No, he isn’t, he cooperates.
I run into the chick with the basenji again on my way back up our street, but I just kept walking. Look straight ahead like a Galleon, Joyce Grenfell. (I just googled that quote, it looks like it is as stately as a galleon) Whatever. Look straight ahead and proceed forth, is my interpretation.
9am. We have ginger soup with sesame balls and that white sea weed stuff.
11am. Coffee. Sam has investigated why the TV cable isn’t working. The TV reception has been terrible these last weeks.
I have pulled the padded seat off the chair, and I have cut off the back. It just needs to dry now, since it was out in the rain for the last few days. Then I’ll sand and lacquer the wooden base of the seat and I’ll get some new leg end rubbers.
And when Bruno is all grown up, I can put it back out in the street.
Modern technology will make life easier. It will spread knowledge to the people and the more informed the people are, the easier life will become.
Isn't that what they say?
So, where are we as we quickly approach the year 2020. What do we have? What has all of this knowledge and technology given us?
The flat earthers
The antivaxxers
The climate change deniers
The right wing racists
Anti immigrationists separatists... despite record numbers of refugees
Half the world living in poverty
The other half suffering an obesity epidemic
Litigious individuals, just for the money
Legislating to the base level, so as to cover our collective liability
Business now being built on lies
Politics now built on lies
The media now built on lies
Advertising now built on lies
Trigger warnings… so precious, even at higher learning institutions
A woman is most likely to be killed by the man who loves her
Men are most likely to die at their own hands
All while the planet is dying...
How did we get so fucked up?
Does anyone else think as a race we are de-evolving?
It reminds me of that old joke, about the sound of Mozart music being played backwards. They hunted around until they found the music was coming from a grave and it was Mozart's grave. They dug it up to find Mozart decomposing.
That is the metaphor I often think about for the world we live in today.
"But Voolfy, it was all so farbulous vunce."
Bruno and I head down to the shops. Primarily this is a dog walk, you know, training the little beast, before he is an uncooperative big beast. But it is also a bit of window shop, and a hunt for some cheap, but stylish, stools, so I can bring my plants back inside, which have been taken out due to Bruno’s arrival. We have to get them out of reach of the little guy and his big chewing gob, so he doesn’t get sick again.
He’s is not the easiest dog to walk, well, he is a bulldog, and bulldogs are stubborn. Although he is a great improvement over Buddy, in as much as he will actually walk with just one of us, he still walks like a bulldog, you know, the way he wants to.
We head up Smith Street. I sniff around the shops, doing my usual rounds. We say hello to the nice Cash Converters lady. The guy in the opshop gives Bruno a treat and a pat. I buy a Billy Joel CD.
We walk down to Johnston Street and look in the antique furniture shops for stools, or tables, on which to put some plants. (I can’t live without plants until the 6th month old is a 2 year old) They are all pretty expensive $135, $199, just for stools, that are, essentially, temporary. I guess, I need to go to Ikea and not trendy Fitzroy furniture shops.
We walked to Bohemio Furniture and I buy a $40 stool, on sale from $100. Pretty good, I think. But, they only have one left at that price.
As we walk home, I see a couple of discarded chairs in our street. That’s what I need, I think, something I can just get rid of again once bugalugs grows up. I look down at him, he gazes sweetly up at me.
I meet my lesbian neighbour walking her dog further along our Street. She suggests Supply & Demand in Smith Street.
“They have all of those kinds of things cheap.”
I tell her about Buddy. It starts to rain so we say our goodbyes.
I upload the Billy Joel CD onto my laptop and then my phone.
2pm. I go to Supply & Demand to see if they have any cheap stools, they don’t. They have something really ugly for about $40, otherwise everything, even in their cheap corner, is $100 to $200.
My two days off go so quickly. Why can’t it be Thursday and Friday every day? Well, it could be, if I chose it to be, I think. Damn it! Am I being sensible staying at work, or fearful? Should I just give it up and worry about the consequences later? Oh, I don’t know. And, I guess, as long as I don’t know, I should stay at work.
I’m just not how sure Sam would cope if I gave up work?
We walk the dogs in the afternoon. The after work walk.
4.45pm. We’re at Officeworks me, Sam, Buddy and Bruno. Sam is buying an SD card, whatever that is. I mean, I know what it is. What Sam wants it for, I don’t know?
On the way home, I grab one of the two discarded chairs in our street that I saw this morning. A paint-stained white plastic number, I would see later is from Ikea, with silver legs. I can paint it, I think. Spray it. (You’ve got to learn something from watching Cherie Barber’s renovation segments on teev) The other chair is too awful, it was once padded but has been left out in the rain and is now in a bad state. Sam isn’t keen for me to take either of them.
“Isn’t it nice to have a clean, uncluttered house?” says Sam.
“No,” I say. “I’m not living without plants for 2 years while Bruno grows up.”
I want to bring plants back into the house and the only way to do that is by putting them on stools out of his reach.
We ate leftover cream zucchini pasta for dinner.
Eventually, I fall asleep on the couch and wake up at 10.30pm when it is time to go to bed.
I stop off in Thornbury at the pet shop with Buddy, after I have taken him to the eye specialist to get the all okay, to buy some things.
I get a new bed for Bruno now that he is big enough not to sleep in his play pen every night.
I set the new bed down in the lounge room and Bruno crawls in and is asleep in it almost immediately. Then Buddy climbs into the bed with Bruno. They sleep like that for most of the afternoon.
Just as I am gazing at the two of them thinking how cute they look together, Bruno suddenly wakes up and starts heaving.
"Ooba, ooba, oooba, ba, ba, ba..." I pick him up and unceremoniously dump him down on the concert outside. "Blur...aaaaaaaah! Blur... ah! Blur...ah!"
He’d eaten the Fiddle Leaf fig I’d bought back inside, Sam tells me when I tell him Bruno had been sick. It turns out Fiddle Leaf Figs are toxic and can make your puppy sick. Not deadly, thankfully, but can make them sick, as it did to Bruno.
We now have to get the Fiddle Leaf Fig off the floor and out of the chewing machines reach. After thinking a few options through, we get a large empty pot from the garden and sit it down upside down and put the Fiddle Leaf Fig on top of it. Problem solved. The little guy can't reach the leaves now.
I saw the boy who played with Bruno, who gave Bruno his yellow ball in the dog park. He was taking his young brother and sister somewhere, holding his younger sister and brother’s hands tight as they crossed the road. That’s good example of successful migrant kids, the oldest becomes the parent because the parents can't speak English, says Sam. I could see their lives completely as they crossed the road in front of me. It made me smile on the inside. That could have been me, he says.
Leaving work late, 4.45pm, there was a guy smoking a cigarette on the street, as I walked out. He was just relaxing into the deep inhales, enjoying each puff. As I passed him, and headed up Collins Street, what looked like his boyfriend came rushing down the Collins Street hill, seemingly very excited to see his boyfriend at the end of the day. As he got close to his guy, he jumped at his boyfriends back seemingly attempting a surprise hug, but it had been raining ☔️ all afternoon and his foot slipped on the wet pavement and they both went down with that sickening thick thud of flesh hitting something hard. Bang! Down on the ground like two sacks of proverbial potatoes.
That’s got to hurt, I thought.
That probably scared the shit out of his boyfriend, was my next thought.
They could have both been really hurt. I chuckled just a bit. Can you imagine, just standing there enjoying a cigarette on your own and out of nowhere... BAM!
Yeah, thanks honey.
7.25am. I'm 10 minutes from my CBD office. The 109 is packed with people. I’m sitting right up the front in the priority seats, so if some old cunt gets on I have to give my seat up, I must move when I can, so I don’t have to do that. If they can get on a tram, they can stand like the rest of us, surely? Of course, if they are struggling that is a different story. I guess. But seriously, how many people seriously struggle to get on the tram? Really, it is just a nonsense that makes us feel as though we have done something good. It’s an extension of the patriarchal society, you will give up your position from somebody superior, wrapped up in Judeo Christian ideas of good.
There seems to be a lot of sados going to work early. (Sad, in the sense, they would give their, probably uncaring employer, work hours for free) Who goes to work this early? The conscientious? The desperate not to lose their jobs. The pathetic who are inept and can’t get their work done in the time allotted. The ambitious, I guess. I have no idea. I only go to work this early so I can leave work early and be home before the madness happens in the afternoon. I get to work this early and I am home again at 5pm, it seems like a fair trade off to me. How many of my fellow tram travellers this morning can make such a claim?
I don't mind being cold. Well, of course, there are levels of cold one doesn't want to cross, but a bit cold, I think it is, if anything, good for you. Well, even if it's not good for you, it's not bad for you. I think it is good to feel. Tingle. Feel alive. Feel the different temperatures, I like feeling the different temperatures.
Do you think that is what's wrong with the world today, why it seems like it is full of unfeeling people, because we insulate ourselves from the cold and we control our environment so we never sweat, or feel different, or feel... We don’t feel anything now a days, we are kept on the temperature equivalent of beige, so we are unfeeling? Do you think?
Do we feel? Anything? Other than ourselves?
David called from the Betty Ford Clinic. He's not actually in the actual name Betty Ford clinic', but something similar. It's just our joke. He is doing better this week. It has been difficult, he says. It has been a journey.
"Well, of course it has," I say. "Are you doing okay?"
"Yes, but ask me last week and it was a different matter," he says.
He’s been difficult. It has been difficult.
He was going to leave early a week, or so, ago, but he has decided to stay and complete his 3 months, which is over at the end of June.
"Why would you leave early?"
"I just want to come home."
"It is only another month."
"I know," he says.
“Stay and do your time,” I say.
“Easy for you to say.”
He just had his birthday. "How was it?"
"50 and in rehab, now there is a sentence I never thought I'd say."
What is it, 35 grand for a three month stay. Drug counselling. Trauma counselling. AA meetings. Group therapy. New people every week. But, locked away, cut off from the world for the most part. He seems to get one day when he can communicate with the outside world in a very limited way.
Most people are there for meth addiction. David is there for prescription medicine abuse, with a little recreational crystal meth use thrown in for good measure. His doctor just gave him anything he wanted, any scripts. I always questioned it? David joked for the longest time that he took the Heath Ledger mix nightly to get to sleep. It just seemed to be this year, well, the last 12 months where it got out of control.
“Anyway, nearly over,” I say.
He always sounds happy when he calls. "Oh yeah, you should have heard me last week," is his reply when I tell him that.
“What would I have heard?”
“Oh, you know, blood curdling screaming, the full cliché.”
“Lovely.”
“It was a difficult week.”
Fortunately, when Sam bought Buddy down first thing in the morning his eye sight seemed to have returned. Good news.
8.30am. I called the eye doctor, they could see Buddy at 9.30am.
We left immediately, it was one of the outer eastern suburbs. We took Bruno he cuddled up to Buddy in the back of the car as if he was comforting Buddy. Buddy cuddled up to him too.
9.30am. The doggie eye vet was lovely, she reminded me of Jacinta Ardern. All the tests seemed to indicate Buddy was pretty healthy. He didn’t seem to have much wrong with him. No glaucoma, no detached retina. We already knew he didn’t have high blood pressure. We could have done tests for neurological problems, but, she found signs of infection in the back of his eyes, which is a good thing, in a sense, as infection can be treated.
She wasn’t a fan of the raw food diet. She said the thing they don’t really tell you is that if you are going to feed your dog raw food, it has to be human grade raw meat.
It seemed to be good news. A course of steroids and a course of antibiotics and it is thought Buddy will make a full recovery.
We can’t be sure what caused the infection, but it could be the raw meat we have been feeding him, which carries the risk of some kind of toxosis, especially kangaroo which we did give him from time to time as it is thought to be lower in fat. We may have done it to him.
As I left work, Sam called me to say there was some wrong with Buddy, that he seemed to be blind and we had to take him to the vet.
I rushed home as much as you can rush when you are walking.
Buddy was in a bad way when I got home. He was freaking out, his tongue was hanging from his mouth and he was dribbling a river of drool.
The vet said they were booked out but just to bring him and wait. It rained all the way to Fawkner. The windscreen continually fogged up. Buddy was freaking out all the way there in the back with Sam holding him. It seemed to take forever.
The lovely handsome Indian vet attended to Buddy. There is such a thing as sudden blindness in dogs, which most of the time is permanent. It is caused by a number of things, detached retina, glaucoma, high blood pressure, or something neurological, just to mention a couple. It looked like this had happened to Buddy.
The vet took blood and gave Buddy valium in a hope to relax him. And he gave Buddy steroids just in case it was an infection. He took Buddy’s blood pressure and his temperature. He sent away for test to be done.
Buddy seemed to have suffered a catastrophic health event and he may well have gone permanently blind. He may have suffered retina failure. It could be an infection too.
We had to take him to an eye specialist tomorrow.
Even when we got him home, Buddy couldn’t see. He was still highly stressed out by it all. He couldn’t settle. His behaviour was odd and distressing to see. I thought our voices would calm him down, but they didn’t seem to. He even seemed to have trouble lying down.
What were we going to do with a blind dog?
It's nice having a puppy asleep in your lap when it is cold in the morning. Snoring away, well, if you are lucky enough to have a bulldog. That little face, eyes closed, totally trusting. Man's best baby friend.
