Springtime and Dog Abuse

It's a shame dogs don't do things like carry in groceries, read to the kids, go over homework or fix supper.
Dogs eat, sleep, and bark occasionally to tell you that the meter reader is outside (gee, thanks).
So why is it that we keep them around?
I just recently paid someone else $60 to bathe and shave (remember I said she was bald?) my dog. Add to that the cost of food, tick treatment, heartworm pills, the yearly vaccinations, the $2/year county tax (!?) and it adds up fast. So, I've been analyzing Maisie's place in our household in an attempt to justify her continued residence and expense.
At first glance, the dog appears to be only a leech consumer and we should take her to the humane society immediately in order to save money and cleaning time and energy.
But I like her, so to put it into perspective, I created a list of ten good reasons to keep her around:

1. Maisie is cheaper than any one of the kids and I don't hear the constant refrain 'I need a new pair of shoes' coming from the dog.
2. She's great at fetch. (Try to get one of the kids to fetch something for you. Yeah, right.)
3. She makes a great walking companion.
4. She doesn't interrupt me when I talk. (For that alone she is safe from a massive inflation of the county dog tax.)
5. She listens. Not only listens, but OBEYS! Imagine! (Most of the time. Definitely more often than the children. This could be due to her lack of brains.)
6. She cleans spilled food off the floor.
7. Grunt, the teenager, yells at the dog as stress relief. Yeah, I know, poor dog, but think about what would happen if the dog wasn't there: poor me.
8. She's always happy to see me (sometimes too happy, but dog slobber is part of the package, I suppose).
9. She does not complain.
10. She doesn't question everything I do; she accepts me and all my idiosyncrasies without comments such as, "Mom, you're weird." (Note to kids: I'm alright with being weird; please leave me alone.)

My children have nicknames for the dog. I banned name calling amongst the children (like that worked), so they take it out on the dog. The dog doesn't seem to notice being called something that would send one of the children into a screaming hysterical fit and she loves the attention. Here are a few examples:

• Fattie
• The Fat
• Fat-iator (think Gladiator -thanks to the odd humor of S & T for that one)
• Maggot (this one gets a rise out of me; the dog is impervious)
• Slimeball
• Hairball
• Lard
• Lardy-cakes (ha!)
• Fattie-pants
• Fat Lard
• Stupid
• Idiot

Are you beginning to see the general theme here? Lack of intelligence, icky-ness, and obesity. What a great way to boost the dog's self-esteem, huh?

The name-calling has a definite lean toward the fatness theme, though Maisie is not fat (and I'm not just saying that to be nice because she really doesn't care), but she is big. Big is not big enough. Huge. Giant. Yes, really, she is. I'm used to her, so I don't really notice, but when my children bring friends over I always hear, "Holy cow! That's the biggest dog I've ever seen!" Once that's out of the way and they realize that Maisie just wants to kiss them and not eat them, things are usually okay. Most of the time. Some of the kids remain terrified.

The day I was to take her to get shaved, I warned everyone before they left for school so there would be no surprises or shocks. Well, that didn't work out so well because everyone was shocked. Of course there was the initial 'Wow, she looks weird' surprise, but the lasting shock was 'She's not fat!' With all that hair she was fluffier, but not fat. I knew she wasn't fat. I told the kids she wasn't fat. Still, it was shocking for them to realize that she wasn't fat. Probably because they had convinced themselves just by regularly calling her fat.

There's an obvious moral lesson here, but I'm running out of time, so I'll let you work that out for yourselves (are you reading this, kids?).

Anyway, the fat names haven't stopped and aren't likely to stop anytime soon. Old habits are hard to break (there's another one for ya, kids). However, 'Bald-y' and all variations have been added to the usual line-up. I'm just happy I don't have to clean up the spring shedding.

And the dog? Well, she seems perfectly happy, as usual. She hasn't noticed the new 'Bald' comments and she doen't seem to mind that she looks like one of those rubbery, stretchy, twisty toys with the big head and skinny little body and limbs. And as usual, she takes the fat comments as compliments of attention. What a lovely, oblivious, happy way to exist.

Did I mention that her tail looks like a dust mop?

And her ears look like radar dishes?

She had so much hair, I had to shorten her collar. Really.

I couldn't resist adding another view picture. If you want more, I posted a bunch of them over on the Taylor County Blog site.

Mind Boggling Diet Shit

Have you noticed that all the current store circulars and advertisements are focusing on organization and fitness/weight loss?

I know that a lot of psychology goes into marketing/advertisement, but this is very blatant:
You made a New Year's Resolution to get off your ass, get fit, and lose weight?
Great! Buy our products -spend lots of money! The more you spend the easier it will be to fit into a size 2! You WILL be smarter and healthier and more beautiful in 2008 if you buy this! and this! and this! Just buy! buy! buy! No matter that you've made the same damn resolutions for the last 17 years - THIS IS THE YEAR! Believe it! Buy it! Be it!

Blech.

Okay, don't get me wrong. I'm all about self-analysis and improvement, but I don't think making an impulse buy of some ridiculous piece of workout equipment is going to get me to where I want to go. Besides, that new 'Magic Leg' machine will most likely function best as a coat hanger and dust collector. And you need another clothes rack, right?

Here's something else I have to make fun of (I can't help myself):

The Diet Fork. And yes, it uses dietfork.com (a nifty little domain name, huh?). And for the tab description it uses 'The Fitness Diet Fork.' I'm just learning about some of these online 'pings' and other such mysteries of internet marketing, but it seems to me that 'Fitness' got thrown in there with 'Diet,' so that it would have double the hit power with search engines (somebody correct me if I'm wrong, or if you understand how all this crap works maybe you can explain it better than I can?).
The website proclaims: "America's First Diet Fork" and "Make Dieting Fun" (which I originally misread as 'Make Fun of Dieting' to which I immediately thought, "I can do that!").
And here's a great quote:

"New York , NY (PRWEB) - June 10, 2007. - A new diet weapon is launched, the Diet Fork. By eliminating over-indulgence, and creating a "chewing fitness" dieters can now assist in metabolism by chewing more, less portions, and taking longer to eat."

Disregarding the grammatical problems, do we really need a 'diet weapon?' What are you gonna do, shoot the food? Or just stab it? Just think, this nifty little tool can eliminate over-indulgence (really?) and create "chewing fitness." What the hell is chewing fitness?

And apparently, one of the 'Key Factors' of this amazing new product is an

• "Uncomfortable grip compelling user to put fork down between bites, slowing the user's eating speed."

What the hell? Turn your eating experience into a torture session and maybe you can finally shrink your fat ass! But, really, I wonder what that means (there is no real picture of the product, just a stylized silhouette of a fork)? Is the handle covered in tiny little spikes? If you get too into shoveling food in your mouth will you end up with blood oozing out of a bunch of little holes?

And, finally:

The website's homepage has both of the required pictures for any real diet:

1. a girl in a bikini
2. large piles of food

What a bunch of assholes.

The end of the stomach bug, snow days, messy kitchen, pictures, exercise, the hazards of dieting, and other such ramblings

We made it through the stomach bug; I'll spare you more details.

The kiddies have not gotten back to school yet. We got quite a bit of snow and they called off school for our county -and most surrounding counties- yesterday and today. The kids are ecstatic! The only thing that would make them any happier is if I'd let them stay out all day. But, no, too cold for that. I call them in after half an hour and (they make it in about the 45 minute mark) have them spread out their gloves, hats, coats, boots, snow pants, and scarves to dry. I try to control the sprawl, but no such luck: the kitchen looks like a bombed closet (or like Grunt's room, but that's another post) when they're in and a wading pool by the time they go out again.
I went out after lunch, but they were all in lounge-mode and didn't join me. I dutifully -at PK's request- took pictures while tromping up the mountain and laughing at the dog. I think she may be even happier than the kids. By the time I came back in, all three of them were getting dressed again. I was just in time to help adjust gloves, tuck sleeves, zip coats, and wrap scarves.
Now it's quiet in here (at least for the next 25-30 minutes) and the camera battery is dead. You'll have to wait on the pictures until it's charged.

Changes are happening over at The 123. Progress. Good.

I've not been to the gym since last week, but all is well on the exercise front. I've been doing Turbulence Training and long walks with the dog. The Turbulence Training (I found it through Skwigg. You can get a 4week TT body weight routine over at her site, too.) is surprisingly tough, even the body-weight stuff. I've been doing some pretty heavy-duty lifting and it's STILL tough. Tough=sore=results=good :).
Okay, I was just over at there copying links and here's Skwigg's post for today on the insanity of dieting.
Argh. I have a lot to say about all the diet bullshit, but I'm still working out what I feel comfortable posting on here and what I don't. I suppose if this were a completely anonymous blog, I'd spill it all. But it's not. On the other side of the anonymity discussion, though, I find that the longer I keep this blog and the more feedback I get, the more I'm willing to put myself out there. Remind me I said that when I start getting snarky comments and hate mail.

Stay tuned. I have more to say.
And I'm getting braver.

Pictures to come, too....

Media Images vs. Self-Esteem

I won't get all soap-boxy (because if you read this post, I already had a little rant about media images), but one of my readers (Thanks, Courtney:)) sent me this video:

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has been working toward drawing attention to the problems that arise from being bombarded with images of beautiful people 24/7.

As the mother of a beautiful 10 year old girl, I am particularly concerned about it.

Here's a quote (from this article):

"Although 75 percent of 8- and 9-year-old girls in the study said they like their looks, only 56 percent of those ages 12 and 13 did. And of the 33 percent of girls ages 14-17 who said they're too fat, two-thirds were dieting. Ninety percent of eating disorders are diagnosed in girls."

Not only is this cause for alarm, but I would be willing to bet that these numbers are not as high as they should be. The problem is far worse than we realize. Eating disorders are a private hell that not everyone is going to share with a poll, anonymous or not.

Dove's website offers resources for Moms and other mentors, as well as straight talk for girls.

"I feel fat" is not a valid statement.

Fat is not a feeling.

Parenting Magazines?

I have an article that I'd like to sell to a parenting magazine, but I have obviously not found the right outlet.

Parenting magazines are mainly focused on new parents: diapers, midnight feedings, breast pump consumer advice and comparisons, and other such information related to babies.

I had in mind a magazine for parents of teens and tweens.

Is there any such thing?
Without naming names -there may be too many to matter anyway- I am not interested in publishing in a magazine that boasts a front cover picture of a giant chocolate cake and the headline that says something like, 'Walk it off!'
It doesn't matter if they claim to be a family magazine or not; the conflicting message may sell a lot of magazines, but the hipocrisy adds to the obesity issues in the general population and the confusion of self-image issues in girls and young women.
Unless, that is, they would allow me space in their magazine to point out their duplicity and insincerity and generally make fun of them.

While I'm on the subject of cover art: A few weeks ago, a reader directed me to this: Jezebel.com It's an eye-opening look at a real photo vs. the resulting cover photo. The difference between the two is incredible - in a bad way. They took a perfectly fine -read "Real" -picture of a famous 40-ish female country-singer and airbrushed out the wrinkles and the 'realness' of the woman and ended up with a perfect doll-like plastic likeness.
This plastic-likeness was on the cover of Redbook.
I was scandalized.
No wonder our expectation of ourselves as women is so screwed up. We are fed a steady diet of media image and expect ourselves to measure up. We know these images are touched-up, but no matter: we strive for it anyway.
But, really, even if we know these photos are photo-shopped, I don't really think we have any idea to what extreme. If Redbook, a women's mag, is this guilty, where does that put more 'stylish' magazines?
Holy crap.