These Are The Sort Of Windows Faces Look In At

It's late.

I just got back from my friends 5th annual Rib-Fest. They throw this party every year in August and invite their closest friends to go to their place in Burnaby for booze, bocce, music, bbq'd ribs, homemade corn fritters and coleslaw. She empties out their car-port, and hangs hundreds of lights, rents tables, chairs, plates, cutlery and such from a local catering company, He is relegated to cooking about 50 lbs of ribs for us freeloaders, and a good time is had by all. It was a beautiful day; hot, sunny, and basically the standard end of August weekend day that you long about (also knowing there will be slabs of ribs on the barbie in a couple of hours...).

By the time I got home, it was a very quiet night in the West End; no traffic noise, and my windows were open, and while I was walking through my kitchen and about to turn on the lights, I heard the "Ohmygods" & moans coming from the apartment next door. Yes, my neighbor was fucking his girlfriend again, and judging by the sounds emanating from their open bedroom window (which is about 2 feet from my open kitchen window) they were apparently setting at least a couple of world records in what could only be construed as some quite vigorous, imaginative, (and quite possibly illegal in several southern U.S. states) sex.

Part of me chuckled at this, and I was about to close the windows, and go to bed. But then another part of me soon took over, and I stood there exercising my (unexpected) inner voyeur. I noticed two floors beneath me, the hot, blond neighbor who had moved in a couple of months ago with her boyfriend. Her apartment lights were off, and she was leaning out her window smoking a cigarette, and was obviously listening to the same things I (and everyone else within a 400 yard radius) was. I watched as she almost wistfully exhaled the smoke onto the glowing tip of her cigarette. We both watched the smoke go out of her lungs, and into the air, to be mixed in with the sounds echoing off the adjacent buildings.

Directions For Idiots

"You can do a lot in a lifetime, If you don't burn out too fast"
(Rush, Marathon, Power Windows, Rel. 1985. Music by Lee & Lifeson, Lyrics by Peart)

It's been a crazy week, and one that is fraught with difficulties, problems and conversely some massive excitement (With me? there could be no other kind, really). I've made a rather big decision work-wise, and am working towards my future. If I can speak historically for a second? I'm so on the ball that everything I do is probably sprinkled with pixie-dust, and blessed with good fortunes going forward. Really. I mean that. A lot.

Here's a good example of why I'm sharp like marble / smart like stick:

As I might have previously mentioned, my dear friends Terry & Sab moved into this big-ass farmhouse about 1000 miles from where I live. Terry sent out an email a month ago inviting everyone to their housewarming party on August 16th (today). Last Saturday (the 9th) I had it in my head that it (the 9th) was the day. Last Saturday, I even re-opened her email (clearly inviting us on the 16th), to get their address and Google map it, but obviously & casually disregarded the rest of the message again - clearly stating Saturday, August 16th. I had it in my head to call Randy & Drew and carpool out with them, but I figured that I'd probably leave early and it was best to venture out on my own, so why bother them right? So last Saturday, I canceled some other plans that I had for that night (which might have even involved sex) & gassed up the car, then drove the entire hour plus out of town, to enter the wilds of extreme southeast Surrey BC. If I haven't belabored this point enough yet - You need to know that I had an entire hour of driving time while getting out of the city, to figure out what day it was, sadly, I didn't. It wasn't until I pulled into their driveway seeing only Sab's car there, when something odd and foreboding grew inside of me. I had this weird, sense of dread, of confusion while walking up to their front door, and as I was ringing the doorbell it hit me. Sab opened the door, looked at me, and at the exact same time it hit me like a lightning bolt:

Sab: "What are you doing here?"
Me: "Oh. For God's sakes! Your party is NEXT week isn't it? Not today".
Sab: "Yes. That's correct Sir. I was napping, WHAT are you doing here again?"
Me: "Great. Um, Well sorry about that. I brought some beer".
Sab: [pause]"Come on in".

It went downhill from there. But luckily my friends love me even for my foibles, and Terry showed up not long afterwords, and she was gracious enough to laugh at me, scorn & mock me, then cook me dinner, plug in a movie and even forgive me for accidentally kicking over a glass of red wine that I had placed on her floor.

Today though was indeed the day of the party, I arrived back out that their house with my timing intact, the scheduling was tight as a button, and all was right in the world. it was a scorchin hot day, Our friends were there, Terry's Mom & Dad showed up (who I have sort of adopted all those years ago), and with Bon, STEVIE! (who must be named here), Randy, Drew, Stroke-Dog and assorted children, and we all sat on their deck and had a lovely time enjoying friends, family, and various canine stroke victims.

Eventually I left to make the hour drive home, and stopped at the gas station at the corner of Main & 2nd. The attendant was hovering over a map with a not-unattractive girl, and after a minute or two, she looked at me and said "How do I get to Whistler? Is it far?" I thought about it for a second, and replied that it is about 1.5 hours with no traffic, and do you have hotel reservations...? She said that she didn't and had driven up to Vancouver from Oregon to celebrate her sisters birthday, and basically, had no idea that Whistler was at least 1.5 hours north, and hotels were booked all over the lower mainland. Girlfriend and her sister are probably in for a long night. She even asked me if Whistler was a cool place, and were there like, bars there? Yikes.

Upon leaving her and pulling out of that gas station, I was stopped at the next red light. A mini-van was beside me, and two very heavily made up, trampy-type girls rolled down the window and asked me for directions to Granville & 12th . I just shrugged, put on my good Samaritan cap, and told them to pull over just ahead. It turns out they were hookers (driving a mini-van, oddly enough). The girl driving couldn't have been more than 22, and the passenger was Latino and spoke very little English. The Driver thrust a piece of paper into my hand with the John's address, and the to / from directions from the stripper bar, to the destination to somewhere around West 12th, was written with a big $250 EACH circled in black mascara pencil. I told them how to get there, the one who could speak English smiled and thanked me. The one who didn't really habla muttered something under her breath something about me possibly being a "Punta". Regardless, I smiled, waved back, and with my double good neighborly duty clearly being accomplished, climbed back into the Millennium Falcon V.3.0 and continued my journey home.

I'm really jazzed and frightened about this new thing I'm about to embark on. I'm going to be flying without a parachute, and jumping without a net. I don't know how it is going to turn out, but at the very least, I gave some hookers some good directions.

I could use some myself.

When I got home, I was listening to Rush: "You can make the most of the distance". It seemed appropriate.

The Stroke Dog

No, it's not a bad Billy Squier song - but it certainly has been mocked over the years. I prefer the Barry Manilow version though "Her name was Charlie - She was a stroke Dog..." Think Copacabana, then you'll get the joke. (Such as it were)

Charlie is Randy & Drew's dog. Randy adopted her about 10 years ago or so. Back then, he got it into his head that he wanted a dog, to accessorize along with Tuesday the Kidney cat (more on this in a second), so he went out and did something amazing... went to the SPCA and adopted not a cute puppy, but Charlie, who had been running wild for a couple of years and was fully grown with all of her bad habits in tow. No one really knows how old Charlie is. I remember Randy telling me that the vet checked her out, and judging by her teeth, she was 2-3 years old at that time. Charlie had been mistreated, and had been out running loose, doing her own thing before being snared by the animal police, so Randy promptly adopted her.

Speaking of Tuesday the Kidney Cat ... Just to preface; there are nice cats who love everyone, and want their ears scratched by strangers, and there was Tuesday. Tuesday fell into the aptly named Tuesday category. She loved Randy, but barely tolerated anyone else in the near vicinity. When we'd come over (which was frequently over the years), Tuesday would sit 2/3rds up the stairs, and glare at everyone with open hostility - ready to make a run for the the upstairs bedroom if someone got within a 10 foot radius. But Randy had had Tuesday for 14 years, and when time began to run its course, Tuesday's kidneys started to go on her, and he was on a business trip in another province, and upon hearing the news, canceled his meetings and flew home to be with his rather cranky Kidney cat. Rather than put her down, Randy refused to take no for an answer, and for the next couple of years, he & Drew would once a week insert a needle into Tuesday and do some in-house-kitty-dialysis with some fairly large expense attached. (Just so you know, Tuesday's legendary crankiness was offset by Randy, who would often call me with Tuesday in his arms, and say "Hey - do you want to hear my cat?" He'd then squeeze the cat with the telephone receiver close by so I could hear the bitchy, strangled "...MmmmRRRWWwerrooww", then he'd giggle and hang up). It was comedy gold, Baby's.

Back to Randy. In the summer of 2002, Randy had a pretty dreadful year. There was the cat/kidney thing, and while this was going on, Randy's Dad (who he was very close to, and who was a really, really wonderful man) was suffering in the final stages of a pretty bad case of terminal cancer and kidney failure. On top of this? Charlie the dog had a stroke. I kid you not. The dog had a fucking stroke. Now, my memory about actual time frame is hazy around this particular time as I was dealing with my own Dad's terminal diagnosis, but Randy had been dating Drew for about a year or so before all this happened, and Drew was a tower of strength throughout this whole terrible affair. Shortly after Randy's Dad passed in the late summer, I was in the process of moving MY dad in with me as he was stricken with cancer as well. Randy & Drew came out and helped me move all of Dad's stuff from the basement suite he was living, and into the new two bedroom place I had rented. The three of us moved all of his possessions from one place to another, small talking, and trying to avoid the topic of of Norm (Randy's Dad) and Charlie (the Stroke Dog) and Tuesday (The Kidney Cat), and Davey (My Dad). It was pretty painful, and very surreal, Randy and Drew moving my own terminally ill father in with me, weeks after Randy had lost his own Dad.

So back to Chuckles the Stroke-Dog. It was really sad. But, if Randy would do expensive home kitty-dialysis, some pesky little thing like a massive canine brain hemorrhage wouldn't deter him either. So Randy put Charlie through intensive hydrotherapy, physiotherapy, acupuncture, the gathering of strange & magical herbs, and had a laying on of hands healing ceremony, and eventually Chuckles came around and began the long road back to recovery. The funny thing is that I don't think that dogs are entirely self-aware. Charlie was trying to walk and was constantly staggering around like a drunk enjoying the bender of the century. She always loved playing and such, but seeing as how she couldn't get up or anything, she'd just sit on her blanky looking at everyone, doing the doggy smile / goofy shit eating canine grin (no pun intended) with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, while trying to figure out why we weren't throwing her favorite ball for her to fetch.

Forward to all these years later, I babysat Chuckles for a few days while Randy, Drew and Jackie-Boy were out of town. We hung out, bonded, and threw our thing down. All the damage from the stroke has largely been mitigated. She only wears a rubber doggie-booty on her right front paw as she can't straighten it out while walking. (Click on the above picture to see the booty). So she kind of drags her right knuckles on the pavement, and the booty is there to protect the top of her foot against the eventual road-rash. She is a chick magnet for sure, and I was getting stopped by everyone on the street inquiring as to why the booty and the limp. She's a good girl and an unintentional attention-whore.

She's also mellowed in her later years. In her younger days, she was always nippy around children and smaller dogs, but that's largely stopped now. She was also vastly territorial, but now she more than tolerates Young Jack, and really doesn't care much if other dogs are coming down the sidewalk other than a perfunctory sniff of their ass, then she sort of shrugs and says "Whatever - I'm behind peeing on all this new territory, so I've got to keep rambling". I had her in my office for a couple of days, and there are 5 of us there, and she very quickly got used to all of us, and any of us could come and go through the front door, and Charlie couldn't even be bothered to wake up and see why the front door was opening and closing. But, when the mailman or the courier guy walked in? She would go bananas; barking, and generally making a big deal about things. I thought that was pretty cool how she knew this was where I worked and she very quickly got the sense of how things worked. It was only when a stranger (other than the other 4 strangers who were working there) walked in, she got all territorial protecting the rest of us, as she considered my office her turf.

Back when Randy & Drew were dating and things were taking a turn for the serious, I remember Randy telling me that was that in the immediate aftermath of the stroke, Drew would pick up this 40 pound dog, and carry her outside late at night in the pouring rain, don a rubber glove and manually stimulate the dogs rectum to force a poop, as Charlie couldn't do it on her own at that time. Randy said that he knew right then that Drew was the one for him.

All these years later, they are married, happy, have a kid, and are plugging right along with Chuckles The-Wonder-Stroke-Dog.