Soapbox

    I was taking some sort of chemistry class. Every day I was supposed to check in and read the days assignments, do homework or take a quiz. I had thought that now, being older and wiser, I would be able to figure chemistry out. But almost from the first assignment I started getting confused, and after a while stopped doing the work.
    Then one day the teacher came to see me, and I thought Here it comes. But instead of chastising  or failing me, we sat down and she backed me up, started asking me some beginning questions until she found the missing pieces of my basic understanding. 
She helped me fit them in, then went forward and I began to see how all the other things I had struggled with came from these few missing foundational blocks. I got excited and began to think that I could really do this…
…and then I woke up and lay blinking at the ceiling, convinced that the head pharmacist has decided that I will never really 'get' this job, and isn't really going to try to train me for my big typing test. She's just going to let me run the drive-thru and put away bags until I fail and get sent to work in the cheese shop.
   
   If this was something I could study for: if there was a book to read or flashcards to run or simulations to do- I could get this. I know I'm not actually stupid, but every single day, at some point in the work day I think ..but I may as well be, because I just don't get this.
    I'm supposed to just pick things up, puzzle things out and remember from something someone showed me one time 6 weeks ago. And obviously there are people who learn that way- the pharmacy is full of them! And there are things that I could learn that way- but they don't involve computers.
    If this were a musical ensemble jam session and someone stuck an instrument in my hands and said "Here- just watch and join in" I could actually do that. Not saying that I would magically have any skill on the instrument, but I would get what was going on and see the chord changes and repeats and bridges and it would all make sense. I wouldn't stand there in frustration saying "But why are we starting in D this time when before we did this part in C?" 

   But this is complex computer work, and it's all done in real-life. When the pharmacy is humming like a beehive on crack and people are showing up for their kids antibiotics or their anti-anxiety meds, you can't say "Sorry. I know we said they'd be ready in a half-hour, but we put the trainee on the typing station and the second script she got had a weird insurance problem and she slowed the whole line down".
   So I just don't get assigned to do typing. The few times when I have, there's no time for me to poke about trying this and that to see what works. When I get hung up, someone nudges me out of the way and just does it for me, and when the pharmacist sees me looking over their shoulder, trying to understand and remember what they're doing, chances are she'll say "Tracy- what are you doing just standing there? There's someone at the drive-thru".

   I think that will be the epitaph on this job in the pharmacy, But hey- she ran the Drive-thru like a pro.

     "This food is not nearly bad enough" Ted commented as we sat in the shade and ate our Bourbon chicken. "This is the State Fair: we can do much  better."
      By which, of course, he meant 'worse'.
      Well the state fair is nothing if not filled with opportunities for bad food. I'm told there are deep fried Doritos this year. Aren't Doritos already fried? Are these batter dipped and fried again? Wait- don't tell me. I don't want to know.

      Because the donut burger they came out with a few years ago is not quite disgusting enough, this year the Krispy Kreme (never trust a doughnut that can't spell) folks offer a "Sloppy Doughnut" too: manwich between 2 glazed doughnuts. 
      Also on my "WTF?" list: the dairy barn now offers "Sweet corn" as an ice cream flavor. Yes, this is a thing. I'm not sure it should be. No, I did not try it, being (in my old age) something of an ice cream snob. Perhaps it is quite yummy.
      But I don't think so.

      We don't do rides or games, but if you poke around, there's lots of stuff to see, even though it's usually always the same stuff. Tradition! I enjoyed looking at the native Ohio prairie flower exhibit and the whole tent about bee-keeping, where I bought some heirloom seeds which I was assured bees like.
    We waved at Smokey the Bear and reminisced about bygone years when the kids were so amazed that Smokey knew so much about them. As we walked on I heard someone behind us say "Wait- Dad, how did Smokey know my name?" and smiled.

    There were a couple of signs where fair urged visitors to take a selfie with the Butter cow and post it to Instagram. Like this is going to go viral, and soon people at other state fairs will be bummed because those wild and crazy folks in Ohio get a butter cow to take selfies with. Maybe it will: life is just that weird.

    We skipped the fair last year and while I'm sure it will always be one giant freak show that smells like a french fry left out in the sun too long, I wondered if there had been some changes. There were.
     The Sky glider seems to have been shortened by at least one giant pole. Since this is the ONLY ride we ever do, I felt a teensy bit cheated.
    The big-ass Bar-b-Que place with the entire dead pig with an apple in its mouth is gone. (As a kid I finally decided that the pig was plastic, because it looked the same every year, and how long could a dead pig- even a cooked one- sit out in the sun? That reduced the gross-out factor every time I walked by quite a bit.)
     At the horse show they did not have anyone playing that weird, "Take me out to the Ballgame" organ. Instead, they just played recorded music, including, while the guy in the John Deere zambonied the ring, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy". I don't know if this is a permanent change or if the old lady who plays organ was out sick today. At first I loved the change. Then I began to feel nostaligic for the organ. Tradition! Such is the perverse nature of the human heart.

     I definitely saw some new events at the Horse show. When we walked in, they were running Mule team agility. Only one hitch was actually mules, the others were draft horses. They had to navigate an obstacle course and I swear one team did weave poles! OK- weave cones. And it was really slow. But it was a thing!
    As we watched these teams performing what was once a useful skill, I remarked that, when society collapses, the folks who own draft horses who know how to pull and turn and back up with be sitting pretty while the rest of us dig up our front yards with our hands to plant potatoes.

     A competition was announced called "Unicorn hitches" which I was excited about. But, it turns out this is NOT teams of unicorns pulling wagons (which was a massive disappointment) and was just teams of 3 horses with a single horse out in front.
     And then we saw– a horse dressed like a unicorn. This was an exhibition of 'reining' which basically consisted of the horses twirling around in circles and then running around the ring and then stopping quickly. And the first horse had a golden horn strapped to its forehead. It looked a little bit embarrassed, frankly.
    The second horse in that exhibition had a ton of glitter all over it's rump. Like 'a 3 year old decorating a picture for mommy' ton. Ted wondered, since the first horse was a unicorn and this one was all sparkley, maybe he was supposed to be a vampire horse? But the song he ran around to was about being a star.
    We also saw break-dancing on horseback. It was a bunch of fearless kids doing something called "vaulting" – somersaulting and hanging sideways and jumping on and off the backs of some incredibly patient horses.
     The last competition of the afternoon had only one entrant and one horse. She trotted around the ring a few times and ~surprise!~ they gave her a blue ribbon. I totally called her the winner as soon as she came in. Do I know my horses or what?

    I don't remember the NRA being such a big presence at the fair before. They had a booth and a tent. Yay guns. There was also a booth selling 'humorous' signs to put on your house, a large number of which proclaimed the owners absolute right to shoot you dead and bury you in his back yard, which is totally hi-LARious because it's not like people in this country ever shoot innocent folks who come to the door asking for directions or anything.
    There was also a booth selling really disturbing… ok, I'll go ahead and call them "Religious" t-shirts, even though they were more sado-masochistic fettish-ist than Christian. One featured Christ's flayed and bloody back and said "Read Between the Lines". Another showed 3 men dying in the most god-awful way mankind ever dreamed up with the caption "Public Display of Affection".
    Right.
     Another vendor was selling personalized flags to hang by your front door. The example they had up showed a bottle and said,                            "It's 5 o'clock somewhere! The Johnsons"
Which tells people driving past, "No matter when you knock on our door… we're probably gonna answer it drunk." Awesome.

    After we had digested lunch we got a cup of french fries. Probably about once a year everyone should have a cup of State Fair fries: the long thin ones that hang out the top of a cup- greasy, salty and crisp and volcanically hot, then dipped in a ton of ketchup. This is necessary for medicinal purposes. Sure your arteries take a hit, but when you bite into the first one, the endorphin rush is incredible.
   After we had digested them, we got a funnel cake to share. I know- more fried food. But I was careful to select a booth that also sold deep fried twinkies, deep-fried Snickers bars and chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. I figured, with so many calories in them, there would be very few left over to be in our little funnel cake. (Though at the fair, "light on the powdered sugar please" turns out to be 3 giant shakes of the sugar sifter instead of 6).

    I always like to hit the craft exhibit: quilts and cakes, etc. I would say that quilting will also be useful after the societal apocalypse, but these amazing creations weren't Amish quilts- they were machine made, and not with a treadle machine. But the knitters and crocheters and heck yes the gals who still spin wool: they'll be a hot ticket!
    There was a case of things made from 'repurposed materials' and featured a wedding dress made from- and I am not making this up- used dryer sheets. Unlike the cute belt made from aluminum can pop-tops or the purse made from the top of a pair of jeans, a wedding dress made from dryer sheets is not actually a useful thing, even if it does have a slip made from grocery bags so it's not completely transparent. Obviously, "useful after the apocalypse' was not a requirement for the category.
    I guess this year's 'wacky' category was shit made from Brillo pads, because there was a display featuring everything from  a dolphin sculpture to shoes and a coat, all made out of Brillo pads. The coat used pads without soap but the dolphin was all pink and wooly, and if there was a sprinkler incident, it would probably start to foam.

   Well, people can make things with anything. I haven't figured out why- but then, with so much of the fair I haven't figured out why. Like those sloppy doughnuts.

  The latest assault in the annual escalation of hostities in the War about Christmas came (as usual) from FOX's panzer division. Megyn Kelly was offended by a blogger's light-hearted comment that she didn't see why Santa had to always be shown as a white man because lots of black kids felt kind of left out by this- so maybe Santa should just be a penguin or something loveable and raceless.

        "By the way, for all you kids watching at home" Kelly said,
         addressing the mythical children watching her 10 PM political
         show, "Santa is white… Santa is what he is. 
          …Jesus was a white man too. He was a historical figure,
          that’s a verifiable fact – as is Santa. How do you just
          revise it in the middle of the legacy of the story and just
          change Santa from white to black?"    

    Where to start- where to start? Should we begin with the fact that historical St. Nicholas, on whom Santa is only partly based, was from what is now Turkey, and while he wasn't African, he most certainly was not what FOX News considers "white"? Or that 'the legacy' of Santa has already been changed a hundred times and exists in a dozen different forms in a dozen different cultures around the world, from Sinterklass, based on the Norse God Odin, to other pagan entities. (And then there's Jesus, who was about as white as a modern Palestinian- hate to break it to your priveledged white ass, Megyn)

   But here's what it all boils down to, for me: Santa is white. He's also black, Hispanic, Asian and Cherokee. He is rich and poor, healthy and handicapped, and speaks every language on the planet. Because Santa, dear Megyn, is a myth. But more than that- he is a myth of universal kindness towards all children, no matter their nation of origin or economic status.
    Not all children hear the story of Santa, (and of course for far too many, Santa's pack is empty) but the ones who do are told that Santa visits all children, whether they live in mansions or shantytowns, foster homes or under a bridge. He comes whether he has to wear snow shoes or beach sandals because on Christmas, Santa visits children to let them know that they are loved.
    Don't you see that it doesn't matter what color Santa's skin is, or his nationality? The myth of Santa is about acceptance and kindness to all, no matter what language they speak or color their skin is. If Santa loves everyone, than Santa can BE anyone.
   And Megyn, if you cannot even conceive of the possibility of an iconic myth of universal kindess and acceptance that wears brown skin… you do not understand the meaning of acceptance or of universal anything.
   And you have a very small heart.

Tuesday I took both dogs in to the vet.
     Rocket is about 14 now, and not exactly 'ageing gracefully'. His legs shake, he is deaf as a post and seems quite senile- can no longer seem to grasp the most basic commands. He tends to pace and will sometimes circle for more than 5 minutes on the carpet before he finally lowers his old bones to lie down. But he is still housebroken, enjoys (short) walks and occasionally gets feisty and likes to boss Tucker around. And no matter how gray he gets, he's still my 'Baby dog"
    The vet drew some blood to check kidney and liver function and called to say there were some slight abnormalities. Nothing too concerning except for the slight possibility of a certain type of tumor, which is particularly aggressive and fast-moving. She suggested I bring him in today so she could check his anal glands for signs of this tumor.

Right.
     So of course I wasn't looking forward to it. It's like when you child needs a painful procedure: if they're old enough to at least grasp the concept that there is a reason for this pain, while it is still difficult to watch, you feel less guilty than with a baby, who only knows that you handed them over to someone who hurt them! It's like that with a pet. With his increasing senility, Rocket is even more confused and easily upset and while it was going to be a pretty minor procedure, I knew it would probably freak him out. So I felt guilty putting his leash on and taking him over there and of course was unable to reassure him or to explain why I was going to let them do this thing.
     Just being in the car seemed to confuse and distress him. He wined and paced until he slid off the seat onto the floor where he had no room to pace and just whined. I was talking to him to try to calm him- but of course he can't hear me. So as I drove, I started thinking about our 'agreement'.
    After we had to have the Big Dog put down, I made Rocket promise that he was going to die peacefully in his sleep. Hopefully at an advanced age, but peacefully, with no confusion, no pain and no guilt and hard decisions on my part. It would be very sad, but easier on all of us that way.
     And of course this got me thinking about Boomer and the night we said goodbye to him. I still have absolutely not one second of doubt that we made the right call, and he was fortunate enough to apparently feel quite well right up until the catastrophic failure at the end… but it still hurts to remember. It hurts to remember how much he trusted us, how reassured he was by our presence when they brought him into the room where they gave him the final injections and how eagerly he tried to convince us to just take him home and away from this place.

     So by the time I got to the vet's office (about 6 blocks away) I was in tears just thinking about my big Dog… and my Baby Dog. He paced and fretted until they took him into the back room- then tried to pull away and run back to me. I went outside and sat by the front door for a few minutes- I didn;t want to hear him squeal. That's how much of a coward I am.
     The vet brought him back in short order and said that everything looks fine so probably the slight abnormallities in his blood work are just age-related and not really anything we need to treat other than with TLC. Rocket, for his part, looked a little shell-shocked and had his tail between his legs (well who wouldn't?!)
    "He'll never get in a car with me again after all this" I joked.
    "Mom- just don't tell Tucker what went on here!" she replied.
    "What happens at the vet, stays at the vet!" I replied, and she laughed.
      I took him back to the car and this time I put him in the front seat.
    "That's how big my love is, little guy" I said as I climbed in. I thought I could pet him on the way home and soothe him.
     Uh…. no. He whined and paced and seemed determined to climb over the center console to my lap. I thought Well it's only a couple of blocks on residential streets- why not? and helped him over… where he continued to whine and (ouch!) pace. Back over to the passenger side- then back over to my side, where he proceded to get his head stuck in the steering wheel as I was trying to go around a corner (at about 5 mph, fortunately).
    We made it home, I gave him multiple treats, let him boss Tucker around for a bit and he seems back to his old- old self. But I am still holding him to that agreement we have.
    Why do I keep getting pets? It's just too hard to do this. Even 4 1/2 years after the fact, it's still hard.