Wise Guys

“You know, we always called each other goodfellas. Like you said to, uh, somebody, ‘You're gonna like this guy. He's all right. He's a good fella. He's one of us.’ You understand? We were goodfellas. Wiseguys.”

- Henry Hill

Goodfellas

            Kathleen, Janice and I met for a bon voyage dinner for Liz, who was scheduled to move to Atlanta in three days. Liz planned to duct tape her furniture against the walls of some kind of  “moving pod” and drive down there in her Jetta. Her two cats and one dog were going to fill the back seat.  As if that wasn’t enough, she planned to videotape the entire journey.

            Liz has one of those wise guy personalities, funny as heck, and she doesn’t miss a trick. So, during dinner, talked turned to my blog. I saw a twinkle in her eye, and knew she was going to stick it to me about some crazy thing I wrote.

            “So, you keep Vito on a leash while he’s in the lake,” declared Liz, in reference to my previous entry “Mush?” It’s a photo where Vito looks like he’s a sled dog, only he’s racing through the water tethered with a red leash to our dock.

            Kathleen and Janice looked at me for an answer. I realized Liz just said what they were thinking: “Hey, Annemarie, cut the cord.”

            “But I’m afraid,” I said. “It’s because of what happened with Misha, two dogs ago.”

            When we were newlyweds, Brian surprised me with Misha, a pretty black and brown German Shepherd mix. She was sweet and stubborn.

            One day we let her loose in the lake at our cottage. Immediately, she doggie paddled toward the center.

            “Misha,” I said calmly. “Come back here.” She steamed ahead away from shore. Her long body reminded me of a submarine that skimmed the ocean.

            “Misha, get back here,” my voice became tense. She ignored me and kept swimming to the middle of the lake.

            Three-year-old twins Beth and Nick began to scream in their high-pitched voices, “Misha, come back!” She swam faster. Her head started to look smaller. She was really going full throttle.

            “Misha!” Brian bellowed, “Get back here!”

            At this point, she began to turn, and we thought she had finally come to her senses and was ready to swim back to us. But she kept circling – completely back to her starting point, then forward again, toward the middle of the lake.

            Spewing a litany of swear words, Brian ran up to the cottage to get the keys to the pontoon boat.

            In the meantime, I watched her paddle farther away in complete disbelief at her disobedience. “Snot.” I said under my breath, but little people have big ears. Beth shook her head like a little old lady, and repeated, “Snot.” Nick shouted at the near-disappearing Misha, “Snot!”

            Boat key in hand, Brian ran to the lake and jumped on the pontoon boat, started the motor, and backed it up. I stood in the water, praying, because I saw her head begin to bob up and down.

            Brian turned the boat toward the center of the lake and zoomed toward Misha. He stopped nearly in the middle. He bent down, and I lost sight of him. Now I worried that he was struggling in his attempt to save Misha. I felt very upset, but I didn’t want to scare the kids, who themselves were getting on my last nerve because they continued to chant the word “snot” like it was their new mantra.

            After what felt like an eternity, I saw Brian haul this huge, brown blob into the boat. He had Misha. The twins and I cheered.

            “I got there just in time,” yelled Brian as he pulled up in the boat. “She never would have made it to shore.”

            First I wanted to kiss Misha, and then I wanted to throttle her, but before I could do either, she shook herself and got me sopping wet. Then, with her nose in the air, she turned toward the cottage and trotted up there, where she slept straight until the next day.

            “And that’s how Misha ruined it for the rest of our dogs,” I said. “After that, they all get the leash.”

            Liz, in particular, loved this story, and why wouldn’t she? She and Misha have a few things in common -- they share an adventurous spirit, and they’re both a couple of wise guys.

            There’s also a difference. Liz is going to make it to shore just fine, all on her own.

                       

           

                         

           

Mush?

Photo by Brian Pedersen

  

It’s been a hot July, and Siberian Husky Vito is dying for the cold to return, but where did he find a sled to pull and snow this time of year? He’s actually mushing through a lake in Northern Michigan. 

Weepanomics Camp

Carmela Soprano: “Now go upstairs and do your math.”

Anthony Junior: “Algebra? That's the most boring.”

Tony Soprano: “Well, your other choice is sufferin.' You wanna start now?”

- The Sopranos

            Vito bumped me so he could be the first in the car as Brian, Christina, and I set forth on a journey to Economics Camp. Yes, you read that correctly. Economics Camp. Economics Camp is located in a Godforsaken land two hours south and west of Oakland County.

            Christina had given up a week of summer vacation to spend at Econ Camp, where perhaps right now she sits enraptured in the “Scarcity and Choice” class or the “Foreign Currencies/Foreign Exchange” seminar.

            All I have to say is that the teacher-of-the-year award should go to Kathryn Gustafson of Farmington High School. Who else but Mrs. Gustafson could get 17-year-old social butterfly Christina to take a week away from her gaggle of friends to discover the wonders of “Cartels and Competition?”

            Anyway, for some reason beyond what I can comprehend – I think someone told there’d be cute guys -- Christina had been looking forward to this for a long time. And I was anxious too, but for a different reason. With her at camp, and Nick and Beth living in Ann Arbor, it was going to be the first time that for a whole week Brian and I would be the sole Lord and Lady of the manor.

            I dreamed about what that would be like. We could do whatever we wanted without worrying about being role models. We could blast Billy Joel over the speakers, eat junk for dinner, and watch “Hung” on HBO -- you know, the dangerous stuff.

            The ride to camp was cheery, and Vito had a perpetual smile on his face. Christina thought it was because he was happy to see all the farm animals we passed, but I think he was relieved because it wasn’t he that had to go to Econ Camp.

            The college that housed Econ Camp was a stately place, very proper and serious. We left Vito in the car, got Christina set up in her dorm room, and then there was nothing left but to say goodbye.

            She walked us out the car, where I whispered in her ear that she could still break out while she had the chance. We gave each other kisses and hugs, and it was a nice moment.

            Brian and I drove off, and we weren’t on the road for one block when something primal, deep, and sad overtook me. I began to blubber like Lindsay Lohan running low on diet pills. Christina hadn’t been out of my sight for one minute, and I missed her like I’d been without her for four hundred years.

            So much water squirted out of my eyes that Brian had to pull over and wipe off the windshield, from the inside.

            “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I used an old napkin to blow my nose. “Probably the thought of Econ Camp is boring me to tears.”

            Brian patted me on the leg, “I think you’re crying because you realize your baby is almost all grown up.”

            “Yes,” I blurted out, “I think you’re right,” and a new set of tears exploded.

            From behind my shoulder I felt a wet tongue on my cheek. Vito! I had totally forgotten about him during my crying jag, he had been so quite in the back. He licked my chin, nose, forehead, and even my eyeglasses. He was so enthusiastic, his gesture so earnest, that now I laughed. My sad mood had passed on.

            I don’t know if it was because of Vito, or because with each passing mile we got farther away from the study of Economics, but once again I felt fine.

           

           

Glandular Problems

“Look how they massacred my boy.”

- Don Corleone

The Godfather

            The receptionist at the veterinarian office said to call around one o’clock for an update on Vito. By then, he would be neutered and in recovery.

            At 11 a.m., my cell phone rang. Caller ID flashed the vet’s office. Why were they calling? I was supposed to call them in two hours for an update. My mind jumped right to the worst scenario: Vito had died on the operating table.

            I answered sotto voce, because I was already in mourning.

It was the veterinarian himself! I gasped back my tears. The Big Gun was going to deliver the bad news. I saved him the effort.

            “Vito’s dead.”  I declared and grabbed my chest to hold together my broken heart.

            “What?” he asked. “Oh, no. He did fine. But we did find something on him.”

            My mind went straight to tumors -- I was certain Vito was loaded with them.

            “How many malignancies?” I asked bravely. “Give it to me straight, Doc.”

            I took his silence to mean that it was worse than even I could imagine.

            “We didn’t find tumors, Mrs. Pedersen,” he finally spoke.” Nothing like that. We found fleas.”
            “Fleas!” I shouted. Tumors I could understand, but fleas? “We give him baths. I never saw any fleas.”

            “His fur is so thick,” said the vet, “You wouldn’t have been able to see them.” He said he had given Vito a flea treatment, and that I would have to buy medicine and squirt it in his fur every month to keep him bug-free.

            “There was something else …” he said. What more could there be than fleas? “We expressed his anal glands,” he continued.

            “You what?” My ears heard what he said, but my mind would not grasp the amount of dirty, disgusting things wrong with Vito’s body.

            “He had fecal material in there,” said the vet. “In a couple of hours he’ll be good to go. Around four o’clock, you can come and get him.”

            “I don’t want him anymore,” I said, but the vet had already hung up.

            When I got there, Vito wasn’t quite ready to leave. In the meantime, the technician went over all the at-home post-surgical instructions. Then she presented the bill, which was $401.

            When I grasped the counter to keep from fainting, she saw it was necessary for her to explain the bloated bill. The flea bath and the anal sac service alone was more than $150. Oh, and she had forgotten to add something. She wanted me to buy a plastic cone that was to go around Vito’s neck as a barrier to prevent him from licking his wound. I must have looked like I wanted to bite her because she offered another solution.

            “Or you could put a pair of boxer shorts on him,” she said.

            “What do I do with his tail?”

             “Pull it through the fly.”

            It was a weird idea, but it was free, so I told her I’d try it.

            As I waited for them to bring me Vito, I sat next to a lumber jack-sort of gentleman.

            “You want to save some money next time?” he asked.

            What good luck! I had actually positioned myself next to a person who had unlocked the secret on how to pay less in the animal-hospital money pit.

             “Learn how to squeeze the anal glands yourself,” he said. “That’s what I do.” He then acted out the way he performed the procedure. “Insert your finger into your dog’s  ... The glands are located at 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock … When you feel the blockage …”

            Before he finished, the receptionist called my name. Vito was ready to go home. I excused myself and almost got away before the unthinkable happened. The anal gland-squeezer grabbed my hand and gave it a hearty shake.

            “Good luck,” he said.

            I stared at my hand as if the man hadn’t washed his own since he last expressed his dog’s anus. Immediately, I began to itch and I swear I saw a flea on me.

            Vito came out from the back, and he looked great: no fleas, clean glands, and ready to begin anew.

             As for me, I left freaked-out, buggy, and broke. And the day was far from over. I still had to get Vito into a pair of boxer shorts.