Mortaine’s Blog

simple joyful things:
cat, willow, green, music. blink.
coming home, each night.

<rant>In an hour of “news” radio on KCBS, there will be a total of 12 minutes of weather/traffic, with the traffic report delayed by 30 minutes so it can be useless to most commuters, 5 minutes of financial reporting, 8 minutes of sports, 15 minutes of commercials (most of which are done by the All American of Santa Cruz voiceover guy, who irritates the fuck out of me), leaving 20 minutes for “news,” which they feel includes the stupid dog mauling case in San Francisco, the stupid dog road rage case in Santa Cruz, the stupid dog beating case, the pitbull carnage cases, any stupid story about dogs being abused or being abusive, and stories about dog parks and dog laws.

If you want to be on the news radio in the Silicon Valley, apparently all you have to do is own a dog– eventually they’ll make a story out of it. National coverage? What’s that? And it’s not like San Francisco/San Jose is all that hard to find interesting stories– they just have some idiot in the newsroom whose “beat” includes the Santa Clara SPCA spokesperson. Gah!</rant>

I love my dog, and I think he’s fascinating, but I don’t believe he’s newsworthy until he overthrows Fidel Castro or runs for public office or something. The “Man registers dog to vote” story was interesting, but they ignored the all-too-important election fraud controls issue and turned it into a human interest piece about whether or not a man would go to jail for registering his dog to vote.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

I trimmed Hammer nails today. They were long– he broke one off last Friday, and I think it got a little infected until I could soak it on Sunday (yes, diluted Betadine is good!) Anyway, I trimmed the nails, hit the quick on about three of them, including one that I really gouged good– ouch!

My standard first aid for bleeding nails is a quick application of corn starch until the bleeding stops. I should really get what the vet uses, but corn starch is $1.50 a box, and lasts for years and works almost as quickly.

So, I pack the nail with corn starch, then let him go. He lies down in my room and proceeds to lick the corn starch off his nails.

Which is fine on the two that were just nicked. But the one that was pretty bad was still bleeding a little.

So…. back to the kitchen to retrieve the little dish of bloody cornstarch (I usually just put some in a cup and dip his foot in it as needed). Yes, I am smart enough not to wash the plate until after it’s clear he’s not going to start bleeding again, thankyouverymuch.

I swear, this dog is trying to frame me. Whenever he cuts his tail, he splatters blood all over the walls so it looks like an axe murder has just occured. And when I clip his nails, I have to leave bloody plates of corn starch around like a prop from some nasty bloody-nose cocaine-cartel action thriller movie.

Oh, yeah. And he’s still more popular than me!

My Oberon journal arrived in the mail today.

It’s so pretty. And green. And smells like leather (because it is, silly!)

And it came with a little liner card to put behind pages for writing in straight lines. I’m currently affixing it to an index card and attaching it with a ribbon to the whole journal, so it won’t fall out and get permanently lost.

Squee!