Then I think of the 20% of the US population who have 85% of the money and I'm much more upset about that than the poor crossing guard who is maybe just distracted because she isn't sure how to pay for food AND daycare for her family that week after her husband just up and left her a month ago and she hasn't heard from him since and...well, suddenly I need to have a drink.
Which is, of course, part of the problem. Us bottom 80% drink to forget the fact that we are broke which gives us a hangover so we call in sick to work the next day and no one promotes someone who is unreliable and hungover all the time and so we drink more booze because we didn't get the promotion and...well, you see where this is going.
But I digress.
Ok, so. I flew to Spain on a Wednesday afternoon, post-strike, and landed the next morning to a city covered with red and white pro-strike stickers. European unions know how to be seen and heard. Nearly the entire country shut down during the strike. What started as a transportation union strike, evolved into either a strike or a "strike-in-solidarity" by most other unions. Based on the stickers, the strike at the very least provided temporary jobs for the people who were diligently scraping the gluey paper off windows, bus stops, garbage cans, signs, sidewalks, statues, trees, homeless sleeping on benches, birds... anything that had been outside for more than 10 minutes the day prior.
My Nadine withdrawal kicked in a few hours after landing as I no longer had hourly calls with mom to see how Nadie was doing. You know, how much she was pooping and eating and being cute. The things Nadine really excels at doing. During those first days, my mom had taught her about going to work. For my mom, this meant walking down stairs to her home office. For Nadine, this meant my mom picking her up and walking down to some other room where it wasn't nearly as easy to sneak away to pee or poo. Hi ho hi ho, off to work they went. Dopey Nadine would plop down nearby and snooze the day away.
Excitement came a few days later when a thunderstorm hit. At my house, Nadine didn't seem to be afraid of the vacuum as so many dogs are. She ignored it when it came through. We didn't know how she would react to other loud noises, but I hoped she would be as oblivious to them as she was the vacuum.
When the first crack of lightning hit, Nadine was in the office with my mom. She immediately jumped up and walked over to my mom. Nadine is not a cuddler. She wasn't then and still isn't. Unless there is a thunderstorm. She frantically paced by my mom until she was picked up and dropped in her lap. For over an hour Nadine sat while my mom awkwardly tried to type up reports. Until it was raining over Lansing, Nadine wasn't moving a muscle.
I have failed multiple times since then to have Nadine sit in my lap while I read or watch TV. No way, José. She jumps off the same way I do when someone tries to put me on a treadmill. No reason to stay there unless forced to (by gunpoint or thunderstorm). This little lap dog is not interested in fulfilling the destiny for which she was breed. I might have to start playing a thunderstorm CD...
I've had a complaint that there aren't enough pictures of Nadine lately. My mom didn't take any pics and I'm a stickler for a timeline so you get two of my favorite pictures from Spain instead. Top is a cemetery in Comillas; bottom is "Puppy" in front of the Bilbao Guggenheim. It's an angel and a puppy dog, which Nadine is both. Close enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment