feminist blogs

She matches the new sheets!

You want more Junebug pictures, Jill?

Enjoy:

Does anyone know how to get paint off a dog?

This is what she does when she wants me to pay attention to her.

As you can see, I ran out of steam on the sofa reupholstering project.

Took today off, had some kind of stomach bug. Whee! What fun discovering that while you’re on public transportation! I turned around and headed home.

Yes, I could have posted more, but instead I took dog pictures.

Here’s Junebug getting surprised by the camera:

That’s her voodoo doll from the now-sadly-departed Three Dog Bakery in New Orleans. Which isn’t exactly “hers,” since I bought it for my previous dog, the one who tried to tear my face off.

More cuteness with the doll; also, she seems to be getting over her fear of the flash. At least, it looks like fear is turning to skepticism.

I believe she’s sticking her tongue out at me.

Damn her. She is.

That bitch.

Now that I’ve charged up my camera AND located the cord I need to download photos, here are a couple of Junebug from our recent St. Patrick’s snowstorm.

Three years ago today, this little monster came into my life:

It was the day before Thanksgiving that year, and I found myself seized with the idea that I had to get a dog, right away. I’d put my previous dog down the year before, and then spent almost a year with the roommate from hell, who wasn’t real big on getting a job, paying the rent, ever leaving the apartment, all that good stuff. At one point, she owed me over $4000 — and the only reason I didn’t kick her out was that I was afraid that she’d disappear and never pay me. Which turned out to be what happened, only she’d gotten it down to about $2500 by then.

So I had my apartment back, and I had a lot of free time to fill because the roommate had trashed me to our mutual friends over the whole back-rent situation. My job was not going well; I was a temp, and for weeks, there hadn’t been much work at all for me to do. I figured the ax was going to fall any time. And I wanted a dog.

I found Junebug on Petfinder. She was at the city pound in Brooklyn, which is in either East New York or Brownsville. I think her name was Candy, which of course had to change. I was in the market for a smaller dog, though I really had something like a dachshund or Chihuahua in mind. But dachshunds and Chihuahuas don’t last very long at the pound, what with their being small. So I left work early the day before Thanksgiving (not like I had any work to do anyhow), took the subway out to the pound, and looked at the available dogs.

There she was, looking a little shocked in her cage, with a sign that warned that she had bitten someone. It was love. I took her out for a walk and bonded a bit, though she was a bit freaked and standoffish since she wasn’t used to me. I decided I had to have her.

Now, I was supposed to take the train to Virginia the next day, so when they told me that I could pick her up the following Tuesday after she was spayed, I was quite happy. Then they told me I’d have to take her that day and put down a spay/neuter deposit because she had an upper respiratory infection that precluded having surgery there. Um. Well. I wasn’t quite prepared for that. But I took her anyway, and stayed home for Thanksgiving since Amtrak wouldn’t let me take her on board and I couldn’t get a rental car anywhere.

And a week later, I lost my job, so we spent a lot of time bonding over the next two months. So much so, in fact, that my sweet little angel turned into Cujo when I got a job and had to hire a dogwalker. She didn’t want to let anyone else into the apartment, something that she still hasn’t quite gotten over. Now, she’s in love with Nadine.

But this is about two anniversaries. It wasn’t until a few months after I got Junebug that I realized just why I felt so driven to have a dog RIGHT THEN:

This is my mother’s eighth-grade photo. Today is the fourth anniversary of her death. She’d had a heart attack, though she didn’t realize that was what it was for days. By then, her heart was so badly damaged that she couldn’t survive. Once we made the decision to take her off life support, the end was mercifully swift, and she was surrounded by three of her children, her brother, and her sisters-in-law. Needless to say, Thanksgiving is a little rough for me.

Rest in peace, Mom.

I needed a yet larger hole in the sofa.

Damn lucky you’re cute, you are.

Oh, you bet she looks guilty.

Why? Well:

This is what greeted me when I got home tonight. Somebody got a little frustrated because she couldn’t get the pig ear out from behind the cushion where she’d wedged it for safekeeping.

Well, I was wanting a new couch anyhow. I was thinking of this one. You will note that it has no cushions.

City to formalize off-leash hours in City parks in response to a lawsuit seeking to put all dogs on leash at all times.

(And yes, I know she’s got a leash on in this picture. That was only because there were pugs around the day I took it. Pugs must be pounced on and shaken by their harnesses. )