paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- pets for life So many of my days slip by too quickly. So quickly that I do not have very many clear accomplishments in them. At work, Stella and the new consultant Jennifer want to gab about the esquire and the lack of order in our work world. Meanwhile the work piles up. And the great difficulty is that I also feel a need to express my unending puzzlement, frustration, irritation and disappointment in the office, its politics and its leader. We are all so far over our heads that we need some decisive leadership not pettiness. We need support for our work not bitchy comments and snappy remarks. As if this sort of atmosphere were not enough, �. I am tired of the derogatory remarks about gays, who have a special place of hatred in the esquire�s �heart� (if she has one) � more despised than fat people and felons working in fast food on the �wrong� side of town who are probably HIV positive. She once said to me �I just can�t eat there because I can only imagine anyone who work there � just out of prison with HIV and probably drug dependent and dirty.� And I said, �or someone who needs a job.� To which she responded, �only the dregs would work over here.� And this about an eating establishment on the block where we work. I have truly never met an uglier woman � not that she looks unattractive or dresses badly � but more that what is inside is hideous. Sometimes I think that if she would just wear shoes that are a bit more comfortable�. The big talk of today is that she and her husband put down their marital dog after 17 years. The dog is blind and deaf, has been spewing blood for weeks, cannot control her bladder or bowels and consequently has spent the past 9 months or more locked up in the basement in a room with a blanket which is only cleaned out and bleached once a week. I think this is cruelty and they should have had the dog put down a long time ago. But, she is the marital dog and they almost could not go through with it today. It was as though once the dog died, so would their marriage. Just because we can keep dogs alive with medication and can refuse to let them go out with dignity, does not mean that it is the most loving gesture to the dog. I remember having to face that when my most beloved pet cat was 18. She had cataracts and could no longer maneuver the stairs. After a month of her looking and acting unwell, and after the vet running tests, I knew it was time. And she was relieved because she had led a long and hopefully happy life. And I knew that I was not honoring what a great cat she had been to keep her technically alive. I could have cut her some slack today about this issue, but I didn�t. Because I think she has been behaving ridiculously over it for months and months. And she and her husband kept consulting each other on the phone, trying to find the strength to go through with it, when really they just wanted to keep their dog technically alive in diapers, spewing blood and everything else, unable to see and unable to hear the tones of their comfort. Because she behaves in such a selfish, ugly way, this drama over the marital dog, has come to embody her ugliness. Everyone went around talking about how long it has taken the esquires to reach this conclusion that their marital must be put down and every tale known about putting pets to sleep. The award and the cake go to Stella�s sister who wears what she believes to be the ashes of her dog in a little silver vial around her neck every day of her life for the last 4 years. Stella�s sister is always taking the cake! A short entry tonight because I prepared for a presentation in my Milton class on my paper � divine citizenship in Milton�s Paradise Lost . I hope it goes well and I do not seize up�. I hope that by giving a talk on this topic on voting day that I will inspire some of those non-voting college students to vote! 11:49 p.m. - 2002-11-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||