Love Hurts

It was her collar that finally did me in.

I had taken it off several weeks ago, after poor old Poopie (publicly known as Snoopie) let out a cry of frustration, pain and fear because one of her claws got caught in it while she slept. Thankfully I was home when she woke up, and I rushed down to free her. And then I figured she probably didn't really need the collar anyway. Just a few weeks shy of 20 years old at the time, deaf, mostly blind, and not all that quick on her feet, she wasn't going for any walks anytime soon. She certainly wasn't going to be making a daring escape from our yard. So I took the collar off, set it on the counter, and didn't give it another thought.

Until we got home from the vet this morning.

For weeks now -- well, maybe months -- Amy and I have been finding it harder and harder to avoid making the big, final decision for Poopie. Sure, she was old, and blind and deaf. And, yeah, her days of being spry were well behind her. But she could get around. She seemed to like wandering the yard. She definitely still liked to eat. It just wasn't quite time. Not yet.

But she was fading. And winter's come on sudden and hard in Minnesota; for a dog who didn't like the cold, that meant no more sniffing around in the yard. In the last few days, I think she started to give us the sign we were waiting for. Sudden howling barks, for no apparent reason. Pain? Confusion? Fear? The trouble with pets is, no matter how much you love them, or think you know them, you really can't be sure what they're trying to tell you. For all I know, she was a crotchety old dog yelling the canine equivalent of "Hey, you idiots! I'm old and I want more food! It's not like a few extra pounds are gonna kill me."

But it sounded sad. Forlorn even. And it sounded like it was time. So yesterday we made the call. Well, Amy made the actual phone call. Turns out she's a little tougher than I am about this sort of thing. So first thing this morning, we carried our old friend out of the house for the last time, drove her to the vet, and Amy held her while she quietly slipped away from us.

It was peaceful.

It sucked.

I cried some, and thought I had it out of my system. We went home, a bit numb, and lacking anything else to do, went down and started cleaning the area where Poopie slept. It wasn't fun or joyous, but all was basically under control until Amy, while rummaging around the counter (if you've seen our house, you know that any interaction with the counters requires a certain amount of rummaging) happened upon the collar. I looked at the faded blue nylon, with the worn name tag I made Poopie when she moved into our house more than 6 years ago, and I lost it. Sobbed like a little girl. (Yeah, yeah, it's a sexist comparison, but vivid description isn't always p.c.)

I sobbed for the obvious reasons. I've known Poopie almost all my adult life, and nearly as long as I've known Amy. She was always the first to greet us when we drove up the Luedtke homestead on the plains of western Wisconsin, bounding with excitement and energy that I've nearly forgotten. She took up the city life at our Minneapolis home the summer after Amy's mom died. I loved her, and to quote a not particularly good song, sometimes love hurts.

But I sobbed, too, for a somewhat less obvious reason. Making the decision to end her life forced me to confront the difficult question of whether, for all I loved her, I was as good to her as I could have or should have been. It's not that I was cruel to her. I wasn't. But I aspire to be, and like to think I am (in my own introverted way) a caring, compassionate and loving person. In the 20 hours or so between when we made the decision and this morning's trip to the vet, I couldn't avoid questioning how well I had lived up to those aspirations with Poopie. And I wasn't entirely happy with the answers.

Yes, we gave her a home. We fed her, pet her, gave her a yard where she could wander or find a sunny spot to sleep. Still, as her age isolated her a little more from the household activity, I could have made a little more time for her. But there were our other dogs and cats -- who were energetic and spry -- to play with, work to get done, TV to watch, videogames to play. Cleaning up the messes she made was an almost daily (often 2 or 3 times daily) routine that wore at our patience, and so it was often easier to leave her be and wait for her to fall asleep (which, to be fair, is mostly what she wanted to do anyway).

I guess this sort of second-guessing is to be expected when we lose a loved one. The finality of death forces us to contemplate opportunities lost to us, and from there we don't have to travel very far to wallow in a pool of regret. I don't want to do that. Not for long, anyway. I loved that little, smelly, sweet, loud, hungry dog. I'll miss her, even if life will be a little easier not having to clean up after her every day.

So I hope, the next time I see her collar, I don't get lost in regret for the might-have-beens, but instead tear up because of the space her absence leaves in my chest (I know it's cliche, but it literally feels like there's a hole cut out right around my heart; I guess cliches have to start somewhere), and maybe learn from her death to make time for the pets -- and I suppose even the people -- who are still in my life.

A Few Of My Scariest Things

The trick-or-treaters were too damned lazy to climb the stairs to my front door, but I'm still pretty sure it's Halloween today. So in the holiday spirit, I offer a few scary things to keep us all up at night:

1. Taking the "Plan" out of family planning. President Wtf has named his new acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. Her name is Susan Orr. She used to work for the Family Research Council, which, in keeping with a rule regarding all political organizations that put "Family" in their name, is self-righteously evil. Her new job puts her in charge of the federal government's family planning office, despite (or because of) the fact that she opposes contraception. Six years ago, when Bush proposed eliminating a requirement that federal health insurance cover contraceptives, she declared herself "quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease." Fortunately for her, mental health benefits were left intact.

2. Disease, sprains, gashes and broken bones. At least if you are among the millions of Americans without health insurance, particularly if you are counting on the President to craft a health care plan to help you out. Problem is, he thinks we already have a plan: "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." Yes he really, actually said that. On purpose. So much on purpose that it's posted on the White House website.

3. Sexual frustration in Jackson, Mississippi, where for the second time this year the police department has made a daring raid on an adult bookstore and arrested hardened (heh) criminals for selling sex toys. Police made two arrests, which, according to one resident, is two more than they made in all of 2006 for drug dealing. The evidence of the crime was confiscated for further anal ysis.

4. Lonely DVRs. In a few short hours, members of the Writers Guild will go on strike (meaning they will stop writing movies and -- it tears at my soul to even type this -- TV shows) unless the Axis of Producers (or whatever they're called) agree to ... well, I don't know what the writers want them to agree to, exactly. Here's what I do know: Writers. Can. Not. Go. On. Strike. The producers should give them whatever they want, just don't screw with my TV shows (especially in Jackson, Mississippi). I don't have a big-ass HD television and an HD digital video recorder for my health, people. Get Bill O'Reilly on this; here's an actual culture war for him to worry about. Lewis Black starts many of his shows with the observation that America doesn't have any culture. I love Lewis, but he's wrong on this point. TV is our culture. Let Europe have its fancy opera and pretentious art. I need to find out what Michael Schofield's gonna do when he learns Sara got her head cut off, and if Starbuck has come back as some sort of evil Cylon-human hybrid. Where will I get my news without The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert? I need my TV, damnit. Please don't make me go out and buy The Fall Guy on DVD.

The Trouble With Larry

I'm troubled by the case of Larry Craig. And not just because I've used the bathrooms at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

I'm troubled, in large part, by just how easy it was to make that joke. I'll come back to that, because there are a bunch of other aspects of this bizarre little case that trouble me.

Let's start with an easy one. The law. Or, more precisely, whether Senator Craig, violated it in his quest to get violated. At first blush (and there should be a lot of blushing in this story), the Singing Senator (really, he is -- I can't make this stuff up) stands accused of using a secret code to try to get laid. As the ACLU pointed out in the friend of the court brief it filed on Craig's behalf (oh, the irony), asking somebody if they want to have sex is speech. Speech is still protected under the United States Constitution. And that speech is made in bars across this great nation every day of the week. Though the code is usually a bit easier to translate.

For the answer to this issue, I think we have to look at a second or third blush. The senator did more than use a wide stance and some hand taps to let anyone who might know the secret code that he was ready and willing. He also stood accused of staring through the crack in the police officer's stall for a minute before settling in to make his proposition. That's an invasion of privacy that may justify the disorderly conduct charge. Still, I do get a certain sense of glee at the idea of the Minnesota Court of Appeals buying the ACLU argument and tossing out Craig's guilty plea on the grounds that he was exercising his First Amendment right to ask a guy in a men's room if he wanted to have sex.

Which brings me to the next troubling aspect of this case: Men go into public bathrooms to try to have sex with complete strangers. This is troubling for a couple of reasons. First, creepy. Second, and perhaps less obvious, it's just sort of sad and pathetic. Actually, it's a lot sad and pathetic. And not just for the men, but as a reflection on a culture that is so unsure of its own moral grounding that it has to demonize and diminish men who happen to be sexually attracted to other men, forcing them to deny an aspect of who they are to such an extent that they reveal it only in anonymous encounters with other men who are also hiding from the society, their families, and themselves.

And that brings things back to my original point. I'm troubled by my own reaction to this story, by the ease with which I mock Larry Craig at a time of what must be excruciating personal turmoil. It's not that I don't understand why this is a public matter. I do. Senator Craig has been quite outspoken against those who are out, crusading against the idea that gay people should have rights, and championing the defense of the institution of marriage against whatever it is religious conservatives think gays are gonna do to it. The hypocrisy is not lost on me. How could it be?

Still, I probably don't need to find such amusement in Senator Craig's public pain. To an extent, I can empathize with him. I am, in many ways, an intensely private person. Merely contemplating the possibility of publication of my personal life (boring as it may be) triggers a moment of chest-constricting panic. Well, maybe not exactly panic. But definitely serious apprehension (which, frankly, sounds much less dramatic than "panic"). So maybe I should laugh less at jokes about his "wide stance" and his "he-doth-protest-too-much declaration that "I am not gay" and remember that this human being suffering the ridicule of a nation is, after all, a human being. A flawed, sometimes mean-spirited, often hypocritical human being to be sure, but a human being nonetheless. And, honestly, that makes him not all that much different from the rest of us.

So maybe I should laugh less at the jokes about Senator Wide-Stance. But I probably won't; some of this stuff is pretty damned funny, after all. If he can be flawed, so can I.

Fuzzy Genius

No real entry from me today. I'll let Satch, Bucky, Rob and the Votemaster 5000 do all the clever exposition for me.

A Glass Two-Thirds Gross

There's been a bunch of hullabaloo about the one-third of men who don't regularly wash their hands after using the bathroom. It might be missing the point.

Shouldn't we be more worried about the two-thirds who keep whizzing on their hands?

Plenty of Blame To Go Around

Oh, where to start with the whole "General Betray Us" mess?

It's tempting -- and warranted -- to go after the Republicans in the Senate for sponsoring a resolution condemning MoveOn.org's New York Times ad. To lash them with withering commentary for wasting the time of the United States Senate with a debate over how one organization chose to debate the war in Iraq.

But, really, would that be fair? It seems a bit like yelling at a puppy for eating the hamburger you dropped on the floor. They couldn't be expected to control themselves. Their president's little war is an unmitigated disaster, with the only real question now being how to minimize the catastrophe caused by our national arrogance and ignorance. So of course the Republicans would leap at the chance to change the debate, and even to somehow blame the liberals for the mess.

For true frustration, I'm having a hard time choosing between Senate Democrats and MoveOn itself.

MoveOn pisses me off because of the idiotic decision to take out the ad in the first place. I mean, c'mon, did they really think they could beat the Republicans in the battle to reduce painful, complex political issues to petty, meaningless jingos? The Republicans practically invented that game. They certainly wrote all the rules. They also kept all the copies of the rulebook, and can revise it any time they want. So at least one of those smart-but-overly-earnest young radicals at MoveOn must have read the headline to that ad and thought, "Hmmm....I wonder if Republicans might, in an orgasm of gleeful cynicism, turn that around on us and suddenly make this whole war debate about us resorting to childish name-calling instead of being about the thousands of people dying in Iraq." Well, apparently they didn't. But they should have.

But the Democrats...The Democrats.

Sigh.

The democrats. I'm not convinced they even deserve capitalization anymore. I cut them some slack when they couldn't set deadlines for troop withdrawal, and couldn't set limits on funding for the war. The truth is they simply don't have the enough votes in Congress to oppose the President that directly. And, to be fair, there is room for debate over when, how, and perhaps even whether to draw down our troops (having created the catastrophe, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of now walking away and abandoning the Iraqi people to the thugs that will take over in the vacuum left by the U.S. military -- but that's a debate for another day).

All reserves of slack, however, were cut off when they not only let this ridiculous piece of legislation see the light of day, not only allowed it to take up precious time on the floor of the United States Senate, not only failed to cut off debate on it, but voted for and passed it.

Let me repeat that. Democrats, the party I count on to offer at least some protection to the civil liberties enshrined in our Constitution, voted, on the floor of the Senate of the United States of America, to condemn an act of free speech.

No. No. No.

Seriously, No. For the love of Bob the Refrigerator God, try, just for a little while, to have some principles and to stick by them.

That's it. No clever wrap-up. Just a desperate plea to the party I voted for: You won the election, so please start acting like it.

I'm Ba-ack

I know, I know. I've failed to keep up on this whole blogging thing. No entries in 2 months. But, in my defense, the president of the United States takes a whole month off every year.

Anyway, I promise my readers that I'm really gonna seriously think about writing more.

In the meantime, enjoy this tidbit from an anchorairhead on MSNBC last week. She made the observation with no apparent sense of irony while her network showed riveting coverage of O.J. Simpson's lawyer driving the murderer/Ocean's 11-wannabe to the Las Vegas airport:

"I sometimes wonder if there isn't some other news happening in the world that maybe we should be covering."

"Sometimes"?

"Maybe"?

We are so screwed.