The surrogate kid

Being a dog owner is a lot like being a mother, so I hear anyway. We have had our dog for over 5 months now, and in the rare moments that I am feeling self-reflective, I realize that I am as neurotic as my own parents. Bucky is cute in this eternal-puppy sort of way (it also helps that he is 'short' for a lab and even our friend's one year old towers over him). But when he is presented with food, he pulls forward his ears and exercises his Darwinism with his 'food face.' Combined with a slight cock of the head, he is seriously the cutest dog EVAH. I noticed the other day (likely in the middle of a rare chicken meal at home) that when Bucky's food face is on that he has a furrowed forehead. A couple of "V" wrinkles above his eyebrows. Without thinking, I told him to stop or his forehead would be frozen that way. Seriously, who does that? This along with the fact that I will take Bucky to the vet for any minor reason leads me to believe I am a neurotic hypochondriac mother in the making. One with some self-awareness at least.

Thunder and Lightning

When we first got Bucky we admired him for his ability to withstand rainstorms with their loud thunder and bright lightning. I realize he was on his good behavior and in reality he is quite the chicken shit. Two nights this weekend we spent with him in our bed. He followed either Matt or I upstairs after we let him in when it started raining. He jumped up on our bed - no small undertaking given the fact he is frightened of descending anything, let alone that distance which spans all of eighteen inches. Matt lay him down between us, which was the only time his tail wagged with unabated glee at the comfort of his parents. Matt eventually carried him off the bed where he slept on our bathmat just off of Matt's sleepside.

In the mornings Matt would carry him down the stairs and I would take him for a walk.

Some could say that this is pathetic but I think he is just showing his quirkiness a bit more every day.

Silly Ass Dog

It is 10 PM and I am defeated. Today was a day full of negotiations with Bucky. Despite his easygoing nature, he can be finicky and strong willed, and he is very difficult to convince to do anything. Earlier this evening I was lifting weights and invited Bucky upstairs to join me in the air-conditioning. After some brief paranoia of flying weights I opened the door and let him go downstairs if he wanted to. Well...he didn't want to. A couple of weeks ago I let him sleep upstairs before Matt came to bed (again in the air-conditioning; poor boy pants an awful lot. When Matt came upstairs to retrieve him for his final nightly walk, somehow Bucky started down the stairs and fell, paw and face first (Matt said he was imitating Superman), into our 2nd floor landing. I was mostly asleep but heard a loud thud and the bellow of Matt's laughter. I think ever since that episode Bucky has been gunshy to descend stairs. I even tried to trick him with a treat that was slightly out of reach for him to come down. He dipped his toe as if he was testing the temperature of the pool, but otherwise no dice. Ten minutes later Matt carried him down, but there was a pool of drool on the top stair.

The second negotiation was trying to get him to eat his immunization pills (we went to the vet today). I tried to make a beef liver peanut butter sandwich which was too big for his mouth. He did manage to eat 2/3 of the pills. Then I asked Matt to put the rest of the pills down his throat (efficient but not the most pleasant thing to watch), but Bucky kept hucking the pills up! Matt, Imee, and I realized that the horse pills smelled like penicillin and Bucky was having none of it. We then put it in chicken stock (his Achilles heel as far as we know so far) and he drank the stock but avoided the pills. Finally, I pulverized the suckers with a hammer and then mixed it with more chicken stock but that smell never went away and he just wouldn't have any of it. So I gave up. The last third of the medicine is just not to be. I hope that he isn't struck down with... Measles? Rubella? Bloody hell, I don't even know what he is being immunized for.

On Dating

Growing up, I was only attracted to white guys. Growing up in decidedly not-diverse Stone Mountain and watching too many Matt Dillon movies (or do I mean drooling over Matt Dillon in BOP magazine? I forgot, I wasn’t REALLY watching movies when I was younger) I felt like the programming was complete. I was going to find my own white guy.
Fast forward to moving to Hong Kong in 2003. Never before had I been around so many Asian people. By and large I still felt the same. But I realized over time that Asian guys raised in westernized countries were ok. Cool. Irreverent even. Something intangible about funky glasses and a deadpan funny t-shirt.
Although I ended up with a white guy I am happy to know that I am not so closed minded as I once was (oh self-realization! Emotional evolution!)
But there is sort of an intangible icky feeling of looking at Asian men in a sexualized way. Even when I fly back to the States for a short trip, for some reason a chip on my shoulder emerges for being Asian. I am really self-conscious about it. Especially in Atlanta. And I cringe at the idea of being self-conscious. So I think if I was still living in Atlanta I would seek out a white guy (trophy boyfriend if you will). Because I would not want to be doubly self-conscious with another Asian. Isn’t that weird? I don’t think I would feel that way at all in Asia. I think I carry too much baggage still in the ATL.

Diet rant and Adrien Brody

Being on a diet sucks.
Right now it is 4:31 and I have been so hungry that I want to eat my left arm off.
Over the last couple of months I have succumbed to these cravings – as I am recently off of the wedding wagon and no longer have a need to fit into any specific piece of clothing (although thankfully the wedding dress was empire waisted and likely forgiving – but needless to say I was so strict last year with my eating I think my innards are conspiring a mutiny). But my face is a tad plumper than I would like, and my skinny pants are growing a flat tire at the top – so it is time to take action (or inaction).

5:08 update – my hunger has passed! I have always contended that hunger is a bell curve – and it is. I was officially hungry at 4:19 and it is now almost an hour later and I am not. Yippee!

On a totally unrelated note, I just saw Cadillac Records last night and Beyonce is really beautiful as a ‘50’s/’60’s doo-wop singer and I think she looks way better as Etta James (e.g. a proper weight) versus the Diana Ross-like character from Dreamgirls. Etta makes me want to wear fake eyelashes everyday (if, you know, I even had the energy to blow my hair dry properly everyday). Also, I absolutely adore Adrien Brody. I love that he is not a classically good looking guy but just has bravado and confidence and can kiss Halle Berry on Oscar night. Guys like Adrien will be appealing forever, long after their looks fade…

He Barks!

I am happy to report that Bucky has found an arch nemesis in our otherwise Pleasantville neighborhood. It is Large White Siberian Husky! I was walking Bucky through our park yesterday and he saw LWSH from a distance of 20 feet. He stood in repose and then ran towards LWSH and barked! 3 times from what I remember. I held onto him (barely as I didn't see this coming) and appropriately berated him for his boorish behavior. I thought that he had no vocal cords as I haven't heard anything from him before. I had never seen Bucky so agitated and I dare say, I was pleased.

New Dog

So we have a new dog. He is new to us but not new to the world. He came to us as Dumpy, but we thought his self-esteem might suffer being a reference for trash, so we held an online informal survey via Facebook (we have such a love-hate relationship with that site) and we ended up with Bucky. Bucky is the name of University of Wisconsin's affable's mascot and maybe our vocally loyal Wisconsin friends wholly outnumber our mascot-apathetic Georgia Tech ones. No matter - all the non-Americans we know think we are weird to name him this.

Bucky is a chocolate lab. He is 4ish (or thirtysomething in dog years). His hair is more coarse than typical labs. He is kinda shrimpy for a lab (he is half the size of Matt's other dog Garrett). Speaking of Garrett, I tried very hard on my own accord to find a dog markedly different than Garrett so that Matt wasn't reminded so much of his beloved first dog. Alas, I falied miserably as Bucky is the spit and image of Garrett, except littler (I like to call him "Asianized").

We picked him up from a private dog shelter on March 1, and Bucky is absolutely a dream dog so far. He doesn't bark! We wondered for a while whether he had vocal cords (we hear that some owners have them removed - oh the horror!) but sometimes he groans in his slept, much to our happiness! He doesn't jump up on the furniture, he has never gone in the house, he doesn't bite - he is (if a dog could be described as such) idyllic!

The quirky things about Bucky is that he is distracted when he eats (not like other foodie dogs), doesn't seem to like to drink water (like doggie like father perhaps?), and he doesn't retrieve. At all. Our attempts to throw any object for him to retrieve have been met with icy stares of disdain. Perhaps he had a tragic retrieving episode in the past...

I am such a cruddy blogger but I thought I would try again with Bucky as my muse. We will see how it goes.