Author Archives: kelly

Stop Labeling Me!

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When I was employed and therefore a little more flush with cash, I donated to quite a few charities. These weren’t big amounts individually, but collectively, it was decent. The groups ranged from animals to kids to veterans and lots in between. I was happy to do what I could and I look forward to being able to contribute again in the future.

What I don’t like are the address labels. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? It seems that every organization I have ever contributed to thinks that I write letters like some lovesick Victorian heroine. (Or maybe a really slutty one with lots of suitors.) In any case, no one, Victorian slut or not, could send out enough mail to possibly use all the address labels that I have in my possession.

I have ones with kittens and puppies. There are the patriotic ones featuring the flag or the Statue of Liberty. I have enough Norman Rockwell renderings to make him turn into Mark Rothko in protest. It’s maddening but what can I do?

It’s not like I’m going to start mailing more things. These charities didn’t give me free stamps, now did they? It’s time consuming blacking them all out with a marker. I can’t shred them. Have you ever had stickers gum up your shredder? Yeah. Not pretty. After all, I have enough of the fundraising letters to shred.

Speaking of those for a minute, I don’t appreciate the guilt that some of the charities resort to when they send you address labels, greeting cards, gift wrapping paper or other unsolicited items. You know, the first sentence starts out, “We hope that you received the beautiful ____________ that we sent to you recently.” Then, the letter proceeds to tell some story that makes you cry until you see the suggested donation amount for the unrequested items. This amount is always more than you’d pay for the items on your own.

Hey, I know that times are especially tough for charities at the moment. But, they need to realize that times are tough for many of us too. If I gave in the past but you notice that I haven’t given lately, it’s probably not because I’ve become Ebenezer Scrooge or an obstructionist politician. I CAN’T GIVE RIGHT NOW. Get it? Don’t try to guilt me, people. I survived 12 years of Catholic school with nuns who could make Gandhi feel like a glutton with an eating disorder. Okay?

You know, I just thought of a way to get rid of these annoying labels and make money. Modern art! Hell, if people paid Jackson Pollock to splatter paint, they can damn well pay me to fill up some canvases with puppies and kittens and flags. Oh my!

There’s the Rub

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I have a love/hate relationship with massage. On the one hand, I enjoy giving them and I’ve been told I’m very good at it. On the other hand, I’ve yet to receive one that left me feeling better, not worse.

 

 

My physical therapist is astounded by how tight and stiff my neck, shoulders and back are. And knead, push and pull as she might, I don’t seem to loosen up. So, I’m thinking that perhaps it’s time to give massage another shot.

The last experience I had with massage was over a decade ago and I don’t remember much except that during and after, I felt like a baseball bat hit me all over my body. From my experience as a massage giver, I know that’s not the way to get repeat business (or a another date, for that matter).

You may be wondering (or at least I hope you are), just how I learned to give massages. Well, I have to take you back to the not-so-golden days of high school. At St. Rose Academy, Christmas break really didn’t mean a complete break. The week before school was to resume, we were given a choice of activities from which to choose for our intellectual or cultural enrichment. These included:

Travel: Enjoy a week in Lake Tahoe or Mazatlan with a teacher as chaperone. I don’t know what exactly skiing in Tahoe was supposed to teach but the case could be made for brushing up on your Spanish in Mexico. I’m sure there were many girls who asked, “¿Donde esta Ramon? El es muy guapo.” This option was chosen by: Rich girls generally, and slutty, rich girls, specifically.

Volunteering: Work at a soup kitchen, help at the local recycling center or other such worthy endeavors. This option was chosen by: Really religious girls or girls looking to pad those college applications with heart string-pulling extra-curricular activities.

Classes: Show up at school and learn something that isn’t part of the standard curriculum during the year. I distinctly remember learning dance steps to The Manhattan Transfer’s Boy From New York City in one such class. To this day, I dislike that song. Another class offering was shiatsu massage. This option was chosen by: You guessed it. Me.

It was a couple years later while in college that I picked up that old massage book and starting practicing on my friends. I don’t recall how it came up in conversation but when my friends found out that I learned shiatsu massage, they begged me to give them all one. (Oh, how I wished some cute girl would have wanted a massage. But, alas, I was still trying to convince myself that I was straight. Unsuccessfully, I might add.)

Back then, a typical Saturday night for me and the dateless bunch I hung out with consisted of drinking wine, talking about ideas (philosophy, politics, etc.), and listening to music. Most often our music of choice was mellow and along the lines of Sade or Bryan Ferry. Ferry’s Boys and Girls album provided the primary musical background to those evenings. (Too bad it wasn’t the background to other kinds of evenings with people who weren’t my friends, if you catch my drift.)

I do miss those days. I was young and in college and my life was ahead of me, full of possibilities. I enjoyed deep conversations and even deeper laughs. Fast forward 26 years and the only place I seem to experience either chat or chuckles is via social media. While Twitter and Facebook can do many things, you can’t give or get a massage and discuss past lives while this plays in the background:

Too bad.

Even Barbie Has a Tattoo

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I don’t like tattoos. I find them unattractive and I’ve never seen the appeal. Now, if you or someone you love have tattoos, that’s your business. There are reasons why I will never get one and I’ll get to those shortly. A couple things happened the other day that brought the topic of tattoos front and center.

 

 

The first trigger was hearing about Barbie getting a tattoo. My first reaction was to roll my eyes. I remember when Ken got facial hair in the 70s. Um, yeah. Groovy.

I had every Barbie accessory. My Barbie lived in the townhouse with the working elevator. She had the dune buggy and camper. And she even used to date my best friend Tony’s Big Jim. (What do you mean Big Jim isn’t an accessory?!) Perhaps “date” is not the correct term for what Barbie and Big Jim were doing. What do you call taking Ken to the prom and as soon as he gives you a chaste peck on the cheek you’re calling Big Jim to come over and demonstrate how his prehensile hands work? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

So, the idea of Barbie getting tattoos doesn’t surprise me considering that they’re more common nowadays. I still remember when having a tattoo was stigmatized. People made judgments about someone based on having tattoos. Is this right? No, but we all make judgments about people based on many factors. Anyone who says he or she doesn’t, needs to book that flight to Rome for canonization for sainthood.

The second event that got me to thinking about tattoos was a woman I saw at physical therapy. She was older than me, perhaps in her late 50s. As I get older, it’s harder for me to guess someone’s age. In any case, she wasn’t some nubile young thing with a toned torso and beautiful biceps. She was an average, older woman except for one thing. Her arms and legs were covered with tattoos.

The sight of her made me think about why I’ll never get a tattoo:

Pain: Listen, lab technicians have enough problems finding a vein when I need blood drawn. I can’t imagine willingly subjecting myself to skin carving. I’m a lot of things, but a masochist isn’t one of them.

Tattoos Don’t Age Well: A tattoo of some hot, curvy babe on your muscular biceps may look great when you’re in your 20s. Look in the mirror when you hit 50 and your biceps haven’t been curled in years, buddy boy. Add to this, the effect of sun damage and wrinkles, and you get the picture. And it’s not pretty.

Tattoos Are Permanent: I’m in a constant state of flux of what I like and what I believe. It would be just my luck to get a yin-yang symbol tattooed on my ass only to become Amish some day. Great. Try explaining that to my husband Yoder. Then again, he’s named Yoder and he wears a goofy beard. And there’s that little fact that I’m a lesbian. But, you get my drift.

So, friends, if you decide to get a tattoo, remember to stay in shape, keep out of the sun and moisturize and don’t put anything on your body that you may be embarrassed about later. You’d be surprised how bitchy those Amish women can get around the sewing circle.

Babies Crawl and So Does My Skin

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Some of you may remember my rant about the Nutella commercial in which I take umbrage with the premise that giving Nutella to your kids for breakfast is acceptable. Well, boys and girls, once again a commercial has elicited a strong reaction from me and yes, it relates to my childhood. (I know that you’re shocked.)

This time the commercial is for Huggies and it features miscellaneous toddlers crawling all over the floor. I’m sure that most people find it cute, perhaps even amusing. It creeps me out. In case you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Why, you may be asking, does this commercial bother me so much? Well, to answer this question, I need to give you a little back story that may help. In my first post on this blog, I told you that my parents tried for nine years to have a baby and after multiple medical tests and novenas, ta dah! I was born.

Well, with all that effort, you can imagine how wanted I was and how protective my parents were. (I wasn’t allowed to cross the street by myself until I was 10. I’m not kidding.) One of the ways my parents protected me was by controlling my environment. Compared to the rounded corners, helmets, knee pads, elbow pads and the like that today’s kids deal with, my parents seem almost negligent. Then again, back in the 1960s and 1970s, kids got boo-boos and weren’t micro-managed. But that is a different post.

There was one area in particular in which my mother was obsessed. Dirt. I’ve written about growing up with an aversion to the beach because sand was dirty and dangerous. My mother had the same fear about floors. Not any particular floor, but all surfaces on which you walk: linoleum, wood, carpet and of course, pavement. These surfaces were teeming with all sorts of disgusting and unmentionable things. When I was a teenager, my mother and I were at some function and I saw the look she got on her face when some mother put her kid down on the floor to crawl. The look was a combination of shock and disgust.

Naturally, I asked her about this and here’s how the conversation went.

Kelly
What’s that look for?

Mom
That baby. Crawling all over the floor.

Kelly
That’s what babies do.

Mom
You didn’t. We didn’t let you.

Kelly
What do you mean you didn’t let me?

Mom
Floors, no matter how clean, are not
hygienic. That child over there had his
hands where shoes and dogs have been.
Now his fingers are in his mouth. God
knows what germs he’s picked up.

Kelly
O-kay. How did you stop me from crawling?

Mom
You went from standing in your playpen to
walking. Every night, your father or I would stand at
the opposite end of the playpen and get you to walk
to us. Then you started walking all over the place.

Kelly
(mumbling)
Except across the street alone.

Mom
What was that?

Kelly
Nothing. Nothing at all.

So, according to my mother, I went from this:


to this without missing a proverbial beat.

(There was no way this outfit was going to get dirty, no sirree!)

So fast forward to me today at age 46 and this commercial comes on. I don’t see happy, giggling kids scampering across the floor. I see little human Petri dishes of disease. I bet you’re not surprised that I decided not to have children, are you? My cats are enough work and it’s a good thing that they wash their own paws. But, I do have these on hand just in case…

The Lady Doth Not Protest

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I’m not a protesting type of gal. For those who feel strongly enough about an issue to protest, bully for them. It’s just not my style. As I’ve mentioned before, I have friends all over the political spectrum and this includes people who have gone to Tea Party rallies as well as Occupy Wall Street. (Am I schizophrenic or inclusive? I’m not sure.)

 

During my college days back in the mid-to-late 1980s, the two big issues were anti-nukes and anti-apartheid. I do remember going to an anti-nuke rally in Golden Gate Park only because Carlos Santana was playing. I’m not kidding. Even as a liberal college student, the notion of disarmament struck me as naïve wishful thinking but I loved live music. So, I’d trudge along following the smell of pot and patchouli, clap and chant, “No Nukes!” and wait to hear “Oye Como Va”.

You may be wondering (or at least I hope you are), why protesting isn’t my thing. There are a combination of factors at work and in no particular order, here they are:

 Aversion to Confrontation: I shrink from any situation where a confrontation is possible. This stems from seeing and hearing lots of arguing at home when I was a kid. Anger and raised voices made me nervous and they still do. My coping strategy back then was to be perfect and compliant in the hopes that life would be calm. This strategy, ineffective as it mostly was, can lead to…

 No Interest in Rebellion/Acting Out: I was one of those kids who adults adored. I was polite, smart, articulate and could be taken anywhere without fear that I would throw a tantrum or otherwise be an embarrassment. I remember staring at other kids in the midst of some bratty outburst or another and not understanding what was wrong with them. I was a little adult trapped in a kid’s body who felt no need to rebel. It’s not a surprise that I didn’t grow up to protest anything.

 Dislike of Crowds: Being short doesn’t help you in a big crowd of strangers, that’s for sure, and I’m only 5’3”. I’m also an only child. This means that I don’t know how to share and I’m accustomed to having my own space. There aren’t enough people I know personally that I’d agree to be in close quarters with for any extended period of time, let alone strangers.

 I’m a Cranky Camper: We were not a camping family. In fact, I never slept in a tent in the great outdoors until I was in my mid-20s. And I HATED it. Sure I loved playing Trivial Pursuit at night, the grandeur of Yosemite and the peacefulness of the Redwoods. It was the dirt and bugs, the never feeling clean, the sound of mountain lions in the distance or the sight of wart hogs near the bathroom that I didn’t like. Knowing all that, can you actually see me camping out on the streets of New York City or San Francisco?

 So friends, however you choose to exercise your First Amendment rights, have at it. I support you, I do, from the comfort of my living room, with cable, running water and a microwave, that is.

Going Buggy

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I had a horrible dream the other night and that’s weird. It’s weird because I rarely remember my dreams and when I do, they’re usually about school or odd pairings of people. Feel free to refresh your memory here. I don’t have action dreams where I’m a superhero or a commando chick (although that would be cool and terribly cathartic). Nor do I have scary dreams and that’s good since I’m a wuss.

This was a dream about bugs. Really it was a nightmare. Yeah. Lucky me. I abhor bugs and insects and get quite irrational about them. One time when I was a kid, I decided to sleep on the deck of the cottage my parents had rented in Guerneville, up by the Russian River in Sonoma County. Before I could even get my sleeping bag down, I spotted the banana slugs slinking their way up through the wooden slats. I was back in the cottage before you could say “Ariolimax californicus”. (That’s what banana slugs call themselves on dating sites to fool other lonely creepy crawlers into not knowing that they’re disgusting slugs.)

Anyway, back to my nightmare. All I remember was that I came back home to find my bedroom wall covered with tiny black bugs. Some flew, some just crawled. For some stupid reason, I decided to not run screaming like a girl but to confront them. (Maybe I was trying to be a superhero after all.) What impressive weapon did I use? Tear gas? Water cannon? My Smith & Wesson 9mm? No. I whipped out the bug zapper. That’s right, boys and girls. I was going to electrocute the little buggers with this:

I’ll admit that it is kind of fun to zap an annoying bug and hear it go, snap, crackle, pop. And I do enjoy exclaiming, “Die, you little bastard, die!” when I nail one. Nevertheless, the bug zapper was highly ineffective upon thousands of bugs. In fact, it seemed that the electrocution of their little bug buddies just pissed the rest of them off. All of a sudden they began to turn on me and soon I was covered by buzzing, biting, belligerent bugs. It was horrible.

Thankfully, I woke up before I was the featured course at the all-you-can-eat Bug Buffet. After calming down and carefully looking behind me to make sure my bedroom wall was bug-free, I did what I always do when I want an answer to something. I looked for symbolism and this was the general consensus of what I found:

What’s Bugging You?: Bugs and insects can symbolize irritation. Is someone or something irritating me? With the emotional and physical roller coaster of a year that I’ve had, I’d say that irritated is an apt description of my general state of being most of the time. Yup. I’m a laugh riot, people.

Sometimes a Bug is Just a Bug: In other words, since I hate them so, that discomfort could have invaded my dream state. I do partially blame an episode of Ghosthunters I watched before going to sleep. The team had made a trip to Hawaii to investigate some old plantations and they came across a moth that was the size of a dinner plate. It’s called the “Black Witch Moth” and it’s one of the main reasons why I’ll never go to Hawaii or anywhere tropical.

See my point?

It’s bad enough that in our waking lives, disgusting creatures appear on the scene and creep us out. (Be they bugs or candidates for political office.) Is no space sacred? Why can’t our dream lives be full of fun, adventure, and romance? And if we can’t have that, could we get something more effective than a damn bug zapper? Is that too much to ask?

Right on Time

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I’m very punctual. I always have been. Well, aside from my birth. I was two weeks late and I think I’ve been making up for it ever since. According to my mother, her water broke while playing cards with friends. She initially thought that a joke literally made her pee her pants. Then she realized that none of her friends were that funny. So, she and Dad hurried to the hospital only to be sent home. It was false labor. She then returned around midnight and I was born just after 8 A.M. Supposedly, in terms of labor, that isn’t too bad. I remember when a cousin of mine told me that she was in labor over 30 hours before the doctor decided on a Cesarean. Thirty hours and then he thinks of a Cesarean?! Remember when doctors used to slap the baby to get it to breathe? Slap the damn doctor instead. 30 hours my as…

As I was saying, I started thinking about my proclivity for punctuality (and for alliteration, I guess), as I arrived 30 minutes early to meet my friend Angie for dinner Saturday night. Now, that’s punctual, right? Some would say anal, but those are the same people who are probably always late. The reason I was so early was that I overestimated the time it would take to drive from Daly City to Half Moon Bay. The distance is about 21 miles but I accounted for heavy fog (which there was), winding roads with only one lane in each direction, and my general inability to follow directions. My Garmin lady practically sighs in exasperation when she utters the word, “recalculating”.

My parents had a mixed marriage. Dad tended to be late and spontaneous and Mom was on time and deliberate. I ended up subscribing to Mom’s philosophy that stated, “Spontaneity is fine as long as I can plan for it.” I think I did this because I saw how much it upset her when we’d be rushing around to get somewhere because Dad took too long to get going or when he would announce on the spur of the moment, “Hey, let’s pack our bags and go to the river for the weekend!”

Along the way, I learned that punctual people have about four choices when dealing with the non-punctual: (a) Get angry, (b) Go it alone, (c) Lie, or (d) Surrender. I have utilized all four techniques throughout my life. Let’s take a look at each one, shall we?

Get Angry:  This really doesn’t accomplish anything. A truly non-punctual person has no clue why you’re upset. His or her favorite phrase is, “What’s the big deal?” Maybe in some cosmic, “big picture” way, tardiness is unimportant, but not when you have concert tickets or dinner reservations. However, yelling at your loved ones can sometimes lead to…

 

Going it Alone: The worst-case scenario is that you drive your friends and family away and into the arms of other shiftless slackers. The best-case scenario is not putting yourself in a situation where you are waiting on anyone but yourself. Obviously, this works if you’re single. And you probably are since you have no friends who could introduce you to anyone to date.

Lying: This technique works when you absolutely have to be on time for an event. My godmother has always been notoriously late for everything, so when I asked her to be my Confirmation sponsor back in 8th grade, I knew I had to have a plan. The plan consisted of lying about the actual time she had to be at the church. I told her to be there an hour earlier than she really had to, and she just made it on time. I must admit that this did lead to a bit of an existential dilemma about how much of a sin it was to lie to my godmother on my Confirmation. Is that venial or mortal?

Surrender: This is a tough one because it implies letting someone else win and I’m not good at that. As I’ve said before in this blog, I’m an only child and a Leo. Isn’t getting my way some kind of birthright? As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve tried to look at the notion of surrender in more of an inner-directed rather than an outer-directed way. By surrendering to how a situation or a person is, I’m not giving up my power to that person or situation. I’m giving myself power over my reactions. After all, I can only control my actions and my reactions. I can’t control other people or their actions (unless I employed voodoo, that is).

Hmm…voodoo…

I Need a Nap

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I need a nap and I’m unable to take one. There’s nothing external that is preventing me from catching a few proverbial winks. It’s all psychological. I know it. And it all started in Tiny Tots.

 

I loved school the minute I entered the classroom sporting my Buster Brown hairdo. Here I am with Mom around that time modeling our almost-identical outfits. Mom made the pants. (Is anyone else having a Brady Bunch fashion nightmare flashback? Um, yeah.

The only thing I didn’t like about school was the mandatory nap time. I wanted to play! I wanted to draw! (I didn’t like finger-painting because it was messy. Eww.) I didn’t come to school to sleep, but sleep was what I was supposed to do, right after the milk and stale Graham crackers. While some kids were peacefully sleeping and others were pinching or punching each other, I was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, counting the minutes until this nonsense was over.

This inability to nap has followed me into adulthood. The only time I can sleep during daylight is (a) if I’m really sick, or (b) if I’m really hung over. And since I haven’t had a hang over in well over a decade, that option is really out. I know there are supposedly all kinds of benefits to napping: increased productivity, better memory, reduction in stress and less overall crankiness around one and all. I have friends who are prolific nappers and I’m thrilled to bits for them. Truly, I am. I bet they are such smart, productive, calm, fun people to be around. I’d know for sure if I wasn’t so sleepy and cranky all the time and actually left my house to visit them.

I decided to look for inspiration from my favorite humorist, Robert Benchley. He wrote and starred in many comedy shorts in the 1930s and early 1940s and his How to Sleep won an Oscar in 1936. I knew I could count on ‘ol Bob. He wouldn’t let me down. Well, the results were decidedly mixed. He failed at the task of actually helping me fall asleep but he succeeded as he always does, at making me laugh.

I tried listening to ocean sounds, but that reminded me of sand and sand is dirty and dangerous. My mother, who thought that all San Francisco beaches were littered with hypodermic needles and other disgusting things, drummed this belief into my head. So, ocean sounds. Not that restful.

I experimented with eye masks and earplugs to no avail. Maybe it’s just me but rendering myself blind and deaf is not conducive to restful sleep. It sounds like a plot to a really bad slasher movie. Besides, the earplugs amplified the sound of my heart beating into my ears and that made me think of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. So not helping.

So, I sit here yawning and watching the bags under my eyes turn into matching luggage while my cat Bella sleeps. It’s in moments like these where being a human with human problems is highly overrated. In my next life, I want to come back as a pampered cat. Maybe I’ll finally get some rest.

Splitting Hairs?

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I think I’m a “hairpocrite”. I have coined this term by combining the words “hair” and “hypocrite”. I think it has a resonant ring to it, don’t you? Maybe I should trademark it or something. Hmm…

You may be asking yourself what I mean by “hairpocrite”. Well, my inquisitive readers, I will tell you. My “hairpocrisy” started the day I noticed gray hairs spouting from my scalp. This was perhaps 10 years ago, while I was in my mid-30s. They weren’t too noticeable at first, just a little shimmer when light would hit them just right.

I was already getting highlights in my hair occasionally and one day my stylist, Annabelle, said, “You know, the gray is starting to come in, do you want to cover it or let it go?” Without a blink of hesitation I said, “Make it go away.” This was the exact opposite thing I told my mother about 25 years earlier when she started to go gray.

My mother has beautiful, thick, curly Sicilian hair. If she doesn’t blow dry it, the kinky curls take over. When I was about 10, Mom asked me if she should color her hair to hide the gray. I adamantly said, “Absolutely not, Mom! It’s unnatural to color your hair. Look at some of those old ladies at church with jet black hair, pretending that they’re young. They look like freaks!”

So, Mom let the gray come in and it is lovely. She has the classic “salt and pepper” thing going on with her hair. Luckily, it didn’t come in all in one spot, like the middle of her scalp, rendering her a human Pepe Le Pew.

I didn’t even consider keeping the gray when it happened to me and I think I know why. One of the parts of my appearance that I’ve always appreciated has been my hair. Yes, I’ve wished for it to be less big. (Remember my recent relaxing experiment? A total fail, by the way.) All in all, though, I have great hair. When the gray started making its presence known, I felt like I was losing one of the things I really liked about myself and I couldn’t let that happen.

I “should” be able to look into the mirror and be evolved enough to love myself as I am, gray hair and all. That’s what all the self-help talking heads tell us, right? Maybe one day I will, but today isn’t that day. Call me vain, immature or yes, even a “hairpocrite”. But as Rhett Butler said to Scarlett O’Hara:

Whole Lotta Soul

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This is me around age 3 with my dog Soul. Soul was a Belgian/German Shepherd mix and technically, he was my cousin Jimmy Joe’s dog. Due to a lot of factors, Soul primarily stayed with my grandmother in her flat just down the block from ours. This picture was taken in her backyard on a very hot summer day in the Mission District. For those of you unfamiliar with San Francisco’s many micro-climates, the best weather in the city is found in the Mission.

I actually have some memories of taking this picture. My mother and Jimmy Joe were there and I remember one of them telling Soul to put his ears up. (He had them hanging down. I blame the heat.)

Soul was very loving and tender with me and despite his size, I could walk him with proper leash technique even as young as I was. He never pulled me. Not once. He was the same way with my Dad, but Dad was the alpha male, so that’s not surprising. My mother, on the other hand, didn’t have the same luck walking him. As soon as the leash was in my mother’s hands, off Soul went, dragging her down the street. Sometimes I thought I could detect a smile on his face.

However, he was extremely protective of us, and one afternoon, we discovered just how true this was. My mother, grandmother and I returned to Nan’s flat to discover Soul sleeping as usual on one of the twin beds. (As a side note, he never enjoyed it when my Aunt Florence came to visit because he lost his bed to her.)

My grandmother went into the bathroom and all of a sudden Mom and I heard her scream. Mom told me to wait and when she reached the bathroom, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Apparently, there was blood everywhere: on the window, on the lace curtains and on the walls. Everything that had been sitting on top of the sink and toilet tank was scattered all over the floor.

Before leaving the flat that day, Nan had left the window open a bit to let some air in. The only thing Mom and Nan could figure was that someone tried to break in and got as far as getting an arm through the window. That’s when Soul took matters into his own paws (and teeth).

We never found out who the would-be burglar was. But if you had your arm practically chewed off, would you come anywhere near the sweet little old lady with the big dog? Needless to say, I’m sure Soul got an extra special dinner that night and that I got to take him for a nice leisurely walk with my parents. Just a typical day in the neighborhood.