I picked up a class description list from the community center today, after signing a kid up for a Lego class. Interesting. There’s an ‘Adult’ class called Private Music. Maybe everyone else knows exactly what that means, but I do not. I’m thinking Barry White. I wonder if they get any calls asking for clarification on that one. But whatever.

According to the schedule, you can take your dog to a tea party at the end of February. If your dog is into tea or parties by then. Mine, probably not.

Glacial Lakes Chugas Duke, chocolate-y lab,  is not quite 100% yet. He went to the vet TWICE last week, and is developing quite a taste for steroids, opioids, and the shmushed cheese balls we hide the pills inside. The problem is a simple one. His tail hurts. I mean ‘ow, yelp if he brushes against the wall’ kind of hurts.

My mom took him to the vet first. He was diagnosed (if you can even call it that) with ‘nonspecific discomfort in the tail.’ Um. Okay. He gave us pills he later described as like Aleve for dogs. But it pretty much didn’t help. So after a few days, I took Duke back since he was still miserable and very wary of walls and people and anything that might sneak up on his tail and touch it.

I should mention that I really, really love our vet.  I don’t like very many people. In person. People IN PERSON, not so much. Online people, y’all are different and I’m fine with y’all. But our vet is an IN PERSON sort of person, obviously, and yet I still like him because he’s VERY good and that’s all that matters whenever I have occasion to be there. But he’s very weird.

I hadn’t seen him in awhile, since my mom had brought Duke in before, and I try to avoid being The Grownup Who Has to Take Cats to the Vet. (that grownup’s name is Mike, and I try not to be him, because I’m not very good at it. I’d have to learn to like shooting things, be willing to man up around any vomit-y mess that needs to be cleaned up, talk to people, and also kill spiders. I don’t do any of that. He’s very helpful.)

The vet asks me why I’m there, and then immediately interrupts me and says, “You’re that writer.”

“Mmm.”  Not a real coherent or terribly successful one, but yeah sorta. He always does this. He asked me once ages ago what I do, and for some reason I said that and really why bother I should just say I’m a mom because it seems so much more true, but ever since then he always mentions it.

He leaves it at that, so I go on about Duke and the Yelping In the Night And We Can’t Stand It Tail Pain of  2010. We talk. Duke shivers with pain and nerves. The vet goes into the hall and discusses something with an assistant, and quotes a Steve McQueen line.  He returns.

“Does she know who Steve McQueen is?” I barely know who he is, and the assistant looked to be about 20.

He shrugged and laughed. He is the sort who often says things that no one else would understand, but it seems important for him to do it anyway. And his assistants usually wait it out, smile, and then go about their business.

We discuss the Tail Pain of 2010 more, and he stops me, midsentence. “Wait.” He holds up a hand. “You’re being so demure and polite and that really doesn’t work for me.”

SEE? I told you he was weird. Also? I might need to rethink that cardigan.

I smiled and waited.

He turned away and pulled a black case from his pocket.  He opened it, took out a pair of hearing aids and put them in. “There. Now. As you were saying.”

But right then a pit bull without a collar or a leash ran in and sniffed Duke, who handled it well considering the Tail Pain of 2010, and when the pit bull twinkled in front of Duke, Duke retaliated with twice as much twinkle. An assistant wearing scrubs ran in after the dog, then pulled him out into the hall and directed him away. As she did this, in an awkward bending over, running with arms outstretched motion, her scrub pants seemed to fall and half of her very tanned butt was exposed. I kinda thought this was funny. Duke did not. He thought it was not demure and not polite, and winning the twinkle war with a pit bull isn’t THAT big a win when you’re three times his size.  I was busy wondering the important stuff like how and why is that girl’s butt SO tanned in January?

Anyway. It’s a muscle spasm thing that should stop soon. The new drugs are working. We squish the pills into balls made of shredded cheese. Which is fine except that any time anyone even TOUCHES a bag of shredded cheese for any non-dog-related reason at all, Duke has to come running and stare you down like, “Yo? My MEDS. I think you were going to give me some MEDS, lady. Hurry up, the withdrawals are kicking in.” And then he shakes just to be dramatic.

He did this yesterday when I got out the cheese for making mac and cheese — not his special cheesy drug balls — and he was following me around the kitchen getting more and more impatient. He and I had a brief talk about the value of being demure and polite and having a tan butt.

We agreed he’s got one out of the three, and that’ll just have to do.

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