Dear neighbors, for the love of dog

I wrote this two years ago, and figure enough time has passed that I can publish it without alienating more people than I've already alienated. Names have been changed to protect the guilty; much of this is taken verbatim, or at least in spirit, from my neighborhood listserv. I found the whole thing laugh-out-loud funny, but then, I also thought Madame Dufarge did admirable work in A Tale of Two Cities, so that tells you something about the kind of person I am.

The funniest part of this was the way it ended, with one neighbor finally begging that we stop sending emails about this, and another neighbor following up with "Really!"--because there's no better way to end an email chain than by repeating requests to end it. Also, there's no better way to deal with annoying email about annoying email than to ignore all of the suggestions your neighbors have emailed about how to deal with annoying email. Oh irony, how I love thee!

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Friday 11/10/2017, 4:14 PM

Dear Neighbors,

I am happy for all of the dogs and dog owners who have been joyously reunited, and I sympathize with people who are searching for missing pets, but can we please agree that dog owners are grown-ups and able to send their own messages to this email list? Thanks.

 --Liz

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Friday 11/10/2017, 9:13 PM

Dear Neighbors,

Well I guess we answered that question! I can see that I am in the minority, and I will continue to just hit the delete key (thank you, Allyson, for reminding us where to find it). But because I clearly can't leave well enough alone, I reviewed all of the email messages sent to the Cedar Heights list in the past week, and I thought you might enjoy the stats.

· Seeking items: 3 (bike, judge's robe, easel)

· Curb alerts: 4 (bubble wrap, boxes, desk, rusty cabinet)

· Events: 3 (open house, 2 “trendy/crafty” yard sales that Wendy forwarded from the Oak Bluff list)

· Is your internet out too?: 11

· Services: 1 (tutoring)

· PSAs: 4 (vote, mitten, safety alert, paperwhites)

· Lost/found/reunited dogs: 26 (4 sent by Cedar Heights neighbors, 22 that Wendy forwarded from the Oak Bluff, Pine Grove, Peachtree Village, North Park, Duck Bend, and—WTF?—Cedar Heights neighborhood lists)

· Wishing there weren't so many forwarded emails about dogs: 2

· Gratitude that there are so many forwarded emails about dogs: 7

· Wishing people would just give it a rest: 0 so far, but I'll add them into the count and send an update if anyone sends one out before midnight tonight.

Best,
--Liz

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Saturday 11/11/2017, 12:03 AM

Dear Neighbors,

Numbers fans will enjoy learning that the list enjoyed 23 additional messages in the "For the Love of Dog" thread before midnight! Also, another message category has entered this week’s stats:

· Yo Moderator!: 14 (5 moderator should..., 4 who/where is moderator?, 3 there is no moderator, 2 we do/do not need moderator)

Best,
--Liz

P.S. Condolences, Phil, on the recent death of Buster. Welcome to the Cedar Heights email group. 

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Saturday 11/11/2017, 3:57 PM

Dear Neighbors,

This has been a lively and helpful discussion. I trust we have provided at least one sociology grad student the data s/he needs to finish that dissertation.

To summarize, advice fell into the following categories:

· Just delete them;

· Leave;

· First world problems;

· Too bad no one has ever heard of a spam filter; and

· Why do you hate dogs?

And the winner is…“Too bad no one has ever heard of a spam filter”! Alexa, you win the prize (I’ll bet you didn’t know there was a prize!). Look for it in a little baggie soon! Doug should also get a prize, for learning to recognize satire, but alas, there is only one prize.

Thanks to all who sent private messages of solidarity but were reluctant to enter the fray publicly, for obvious reasons. One such sender has reduced deletions by switching to the daily digest. She misses the hottest curb-alert booty, but her carpal tunnel is improving.

Finally, like everyone (except Dora), I am glad Rick's bees are back, safe and sound, given the many challenges bees and Rick face these days. It would have been helpful had Rick included the relevant neighborhood in his subject header (i.e. "HOME SAFE: 10,564 honey bees, Cedar Heights"), but it was a step in the right direction. Our neighbors in Oak Bluff, Pine Grove, Peachtree Village, North Park, Duck Bend, and—why the hell not—Cedar Heights will surely rejoice when Wendy forwards the message to them/us.

Best,
--Liz

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Saturday 11/11/2017, 11:58 PM

Dear Neighbors,

Several of you have requested that we "let sleeping dogs lie, amen/ditto/etc." I feel your pain. Have you considered switching to the daily digest, setting up a spam filter, learning to use the delete key, or leaving?

Best,
--Liz

Pink platypus bike wreck therapy

So about that pink platypus...

Looking back over this blog, I see that I never posted about S's bike wreck last November. The first day of last fall's Durham County Pottery Tour, while I was busy selling pots, S decided to go for a nice long bike ride. About half an hour after he left, he phoned to say "I'm fine, but I got hit by a car and I need a ride home."

Potter P was also showing at my studio, so he held down the fort and I left with E to pick up S. The very apologetic driver who had hit him was there, and the EMTs were there, and S was there still in one piece. "I used the judo moves I learned [38 years ago]," he said, "and curled into a ball, so all the impact went into the [totalled] windshield and I just rolled over the car." The EMTs said "he's refused an ambulance ride to the ER, but you should take him there anyway." E and S spent the next several hours in the ER, while I went back to the pottery sale. S had a shoulder injury that would take a few months to heal. His bike was totaled.

Bent wheels

Cracked carbon frame

Trashed seat

Cracked helmet

Miraculously intact S

This is all to explain that last month, when S phoned about 30 minutes after setting off for a Tuesday evening ride, and he said "I'm fine, but somehow I wrecked my bike and I need a ride home," E and I were pretty sure we'd be heading to the ER with him again, even though S said "nah, I don't need to go."

We knew this not only from November's accident, but also from a wreck S had had in Oregon in 1992. That time, I was waiting for him to pick me up after a rehearsal. He was chronically late, so I wasn't surprised when he didn't show up--until our next door neighbors arrived and said "S had an accident and we're taking you to the ER." They didn't say "S is OK, but he had an accident and we're taking you to the ER," which was a valuable lesson in how not to convey information after an accident. I was deeply relieved, when we arrived, to find him conscious instead of dead. Turns out he had crashed while speeding down a hill outside of town. He hitched a ride home and wanted to take a shower to clean himself up, but he didn't have any Band-Aids, so he went next door to borrow some, and they took one look at him and took him to the ER, where the doctor spent an hour plucking impacted gravel out of his bloody arms and knees and face before sending him into a shower ("you won't be able to move tomorrow, so you should shower now") and bandaging him up. They wouldn't send him home until I promised to wake him up at 4am and check his pupils.

So on that Tuesday evening this past July, it was off to the ER once again.

Here are some things we learned: (1) if you're dehydrated after a bike ride but the ER folks don't want you to eat or drink until the doctor says it's OK, then your blood will be hard to draw, and what they manage to get out of your veins will be gummy and will probably clot before they can run the blood tests, so they'll have to draw blood a second time. You will need to explain to the nurses that bicyclists need to drink and eat after riding. (2) Folks who are in the ER with blood dripping down their legs will stand out to the non-dripping patients, but not to the staff; you have to wait your turn just like everyone else, but at least you'll give the non-dripping folks something to watch and talk about. (3) If the triage nurse is also a biker jock, he might give you different--i.e. less informed--i.e. wrong--advice about treating abrasions than, say, your knowledgeable dermatologist would. Your dermatologist would tell you to cover wounds with petroleum jelly (no need for antibiotics unless the wound is infected) and a bandage; ER biker jock nurses might tell you to keep the wound uncovered so it dries out faster (and the scab cracks every time you bend your knee).

Helmets save lives. Note that S's instinct to smile for a photo was still intact.

Drip drip drip. S wanted us to save his shredded bloody bike gloves, but we threw them out.

On the plus side, S's cat-scan looked great. On the minus side, the reason his arms hurt so much was that he fractured the radial heads of both elbows. The ER doc referred S to an orthopedist and sent us home.

I called Ortho the next day to make an appointment. "Our next available appointment is August 12," said the cheerful Ortho scheduler. "That's not going to work for us," I said. The Ortho scheduler actually sounded surprised and asked why. "Because today is July 18, and he has two broken elbows, and he needs to know what to do" I said. Ortho scheduler said, "Well, you've been referred to Dr. X, and that's the soonest Dr. X is available." "Can we see someone else?" I asked. Really. I had to ask that. And Ortho scheduler had to check with the doctor first and then get back to us. Thus it was that S saw a physician's assistant the next day.

On the plus side, S's fractures were the best of all possible elbow fractures. No surgery, no casts, not even splints. He was to wear his slings in public to deter hugs and handshakes, until he no longer needed to deter them, and beyond that, elbow and arm movement were encouraged.

So you can see why, ten days later, when we arrived in the Truckee Safeway, and S came across the stuffed pink platypus at 50% off, he bought it and spent a few hours every day squeezing it to build his hand strength back up.

And that is the story of how a stuffed pink platypus ended up on a log watching the ocean on Point Reyes.

Point Reyes photo dump

We drove from Truckee's Sierra Nevada mountains down to Sonoma six days after the Gilroy mass shooting, the day of the El Paso mass shooting, and the day before the Dayton mass shooting. Back to U.S. reality.

We spent two nights in Sonoma with longtime Z-family friends, M & J, who took us hiking at Point Reyes with S's sister and her friend G from San Francisco.

Lupines

Yellow poppies

Pea flowers

These orange flowers are smaller than my pinkie fingernail.

The sky and water really looked like this--half foggy grey, half bright blue.

Another smaller-than-my-pinkie-nail flower.

More smaller-than-my-pinkie-nail flowers.

Pink pussy paws, aka purslane. Beautiful up close...

...but a little dusty looking from afar.

Gumplant.

Didn't notice at the time that they ordered themselves by height! J, G, P, S, E, & M.

S used this pink platypus to regain arm strength after he broke both elbows. Topic for another post.

Speedy dragonflies were everywhere. This is as focused a photo as I could get.

Quail

Bee butt on Russian thistle

Elk!

Frog Lake Overlook Trail

Our last morning in Truckee, we took the most spectacular hike of our entire trip: Frog Lake Overlook Trail. Not as strenuous as Castle Peak, now that we had a week of higher elevation hiking under our feet, and with an abundance of everything one might want on a hike: streams, fields of wildflowers, trees, sunshine, snow, rocks, weather-smoothed wood, butterflies, views.

 

At the top:

There's Frog Lake, down below:

Castle Peak wasn't far off:

S and I briefly left E on a rock at the Frog Lake Overview trail and hiked a bit toward Castle Peak, just cuz. Hundreds of Myrtle's Silverspot butterflies wafted over the ridge, heading south, but breezing past too quickly to capture in pixels.