Of Wounded Dogs and International Disasters

So Jo is sleeping again.  

This is a good thing — she spent much of yesterday sitting because lying down hurt, and had to be coaxed to lie down because sitting and almost-sleeping sitting up just wasn’t working, but she finally did get down and went to sleep.

And at night.

And today.

These are trying times.  As I write this Jo is healing from a severe dog bite and surgery and if that weren't bad enough,  the world seems to be going to hell.  

More than a few of those plague/disease/disaster movies seem to be coming true and, as one friend said, our alleged leaders all seem to sound like the mayor in the movie “Jaws,” always trying to tell folks that no, don’t worry, no problem, go back swimming, a few folks always disappear around here, it’s no big deal.

I sit here at home and read too much news about that crap and feel my gut tighten up, my head buzz, my eyesight go tunnel.  I worry if I’ll ever be able to buy bread flour again, or is this it?  This one bag I have hidden away is it, and then we all starve?

Which is silly.  Not gonna starve.  

I did this to myself. I mean-I’ve been on this planet for 71 years now and never once, not one day, missed a meal for lack of opportunity.  This simply is not a nation where one cannot get food somewhere if one has any means at all (which is why it is so tragic that so many do not.) 

Such a change. 

A month ago I was lazing around the house thinking, several times, that wow, this is pretty good.  The world is humming along, everyone at least in the immediate family is healthy, I had absolutely no deadlines or even horrible stresses. I was the ultimate retired guy.

That was pretty selfish thinking, now that I ponder it.  

We have two family/friends battling cancer, and one of them is pretty close to losing the fight. Climate change is making the world go weird, politics has gone insane, who am I to sit and be smugly content?

This strikes me now, even as I write it, as something out of a Greek tragedy, the unseen foreboding, the signals not paid attention to. The dumb contentedness and then — BOOM.

I was not totally at sea.  There were the tiny little voices saying “Watch out!” that are oh so easy to ignore. 

But what was I going to do … tell our broker to get all the stocks in cash at once? Buy gold? 

Panic is never wise.

Order that month supply of MREs? Tempting but then you have to eat them. Ever eat an MRE?  It helps to be really hungry.

The larder here at home is already full of staples.  Stupid to jam more in. Even if you do, as the saying goes, if everything falls apart that won’t matter and if it doesn’t fall apart, well, we’ll muddle through somehow.

It started falling apart quite suddenly, actually. Through February the stock market was on its usual helium high, stores were full. I went to SLC on March 9, a Monday— to pay my taxes.  While there I stopped off at Trader Joe’s and admired all the well-stocked shelves. Bought some stuff. Eggs. Chocolate. Coffee.

Stopped at Smiths and admired the mostly stocked shelves there. Bought some stuff. 

Tuesday I was at the eye surgery doctor’s place all morning getting my eyes examined.  With them dilated, I didn’t go anywhere else that day.

Was hearing rumbles Tuesday night. Went back to Smith’s Wednesday morning, bought more stuff — some soup, canned chili.  We didn’t need any, I bought more anyway.  We now have lots of canned chili. 

Don’t ask me why.  It’s not as if we eat that much canned chili. It’s more that I have always had this urge to be well-prepped although, get real, I’d starve in a month on my prepping skills. Or get royally sick of canned chili.

But the place was normal.  Moms with kids were pondering lunch meats and frozen foods. Nobody was sweeping stuff off shelves. I could buy all the tuna and chunky soup I wanted. I went home, ate lunch, took a nap.

That same afternoon I saw folks putting up posts on Facebook of the “Have people gone nuts?” variety. These posts were describing long lines in grocery stores and people sweeping whole displays of Hostess cupcakes into their baskets. 

I didn’t go look, but poo-pooed them.  Really? 

Actually, yeah — go figure.  And that’s the way it’s been ever since—people going mad over stuff they have never bought in bulk before.  Vicarious desperation made me feel a small twinge of victory when I found a three-pack of pocket tissues the other day — 10 tissues each! — at the local dollar store. Buying something at another market just so I can say I did — a small jar of peanut butter, some packs of bread yeast.

I don’t understand it, honestly, except from a psychological standpoint, why folks are acting nuts. I know when that happens I, too, am strongly tempted to act nuts and grab stuff I don’t really need — like 3-packs of pocket tissues. The British, I hear, are panic buying tea.  

That’s how we finished the week and weekend. Watched news stories of the virus spreading, the markets crashing.

I took Jo for a walk Tuesday.  Nice sunny day. We went through the cemetery, did the full two mile walk.  Saw some lady with two dogs, including a puppy that was all over on its leash, didn’t pay them any mind.

Then from across the field there saw the larger dog, a pit, take off and wondered why the owner was letting it run loose, but I guess it had broken loose. I saw it curve around and come at us and instead of stopping and sniffing like most dogs do it snarled/grabbed at Jo — loud yipping, I waded in and kicked it hard in the chest, then yelled at it as it backed off.

Kept walking, checked Jo, saw nothing, kept walking, lady came walking towards her dog apologize/waving and I kept going, thinking that was the end of it. 

But later Jo was limping and I found blood. Vet found a slash and bruising. Surgery.  Home with a collar.

Rough rest of the day — she had those post-operative stares where all you can do is sit and look and hope to die quietly while your body figures out what just happened.  That night I did get her to lay down in her bed in the bedroom, but at 4 a.m. she was up and I needed to take her out. Carla needed to sleep so I just took Jo’s bed out to the living room, put on clothes and went out with her.

Which was where we were at 7:09 when the earthquake hit. Good noise and rocking and rumbling, but nothing crashed down. It was a 5.7 near Magna.. Caught Ben taking a shower.  Scared the bejesus out of everyone, and like we needed a new source of stress?

Many jokes of locusts being next.

Jo had a quiet painful day yesterday.  She would move when urged, or led with a treat, and it was afternoon before I got her to lay down and sleep for a while.

  

Tending to her has been a good distraction for me — a dose of reality amid all the chaos and doom and gloom and fear.  I can stare at the news all day and all night, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. The world is a giant ocean and I am just a minnow — I will go where the ocean goes, powerless to do more than wave my little fins. I can think I'm making a difference, but if the ocean swell takes me 100 miles one way, my paddling only gets me back a couple feet.

But a hurting dog is real, something I can deal with, a ground point. It is someone who needs me to be there, to act, to do.  She is a family member in need.

And today — March 19, my 71st birthday — she’s a lot brighter, pretty close to normal in outlook.  Still favoring that right front leg, which also got a nasty bruise, but she is being Jo again.  This all made me realize how much I’ve grown to depend on her and how little I think of that.  

So here we are.  The world is going to hell, idiots are panic buying toilet paper, but I made it to 71 in pretty good stead.

And my dog is doing ok. She's watching for the mailman again. 

Life’s no longer that care-free fantasy I enjoyed in that bygone era of last month, but I still have very little to complain about.