Horses are good company -- The Witcher

I would just like to mark the day. Abbie, my greyhound dog, passed away peacefully on Decemeber 10. She was nearly 13 years old and was with me for 10 years. She was a quiet, sensitive dog, who mostly liked to lay on her bed, but also enjoyed the dog park where we spent many a lovely hour and where she made friends.

( Read more... )

Very tired today but managed to get my prescriptions and return my library items. Made myself go to the dog park, but mostly sat on a bench. Abbie took a dip into the water to cool down.

Over the weekend I dog-sat for our greyhound friend Zoiks. He's very polite and easy to look after, but I could tell Abbie was a little stressed. She's glad to be Only Dog again.

I learned the term "devil's nap" which is when you go to sleep during the afternoon and wake up at night. My body loves this nap and I've learned to turn a lamp on so that I don't have confused, anxious dreams about the lights going off.

Still thinking a lot about BPM (movie) and Aristotle and Dante (book). My favorite book as a teen was "The wings of a falcon" which is sort of a slashy book that never names the queerness in it; I think the Ari and Dante books can replace that book for me as books to return to and carry around in my imagination. Touchstone stories, the kind of thing you can think about when you're stressed out.

Watched the first 2 episodes of "Rutherford Falls" and I'm finding it a little uncomfortable to watch. I'll keep going though, might hit better when I'm less tired. It's on Peacock which is NBC streaming (free).

I have a nerve block in a couple of days, thank goodness.

Things blooming: Lilacs, Tulips, strawberries, wood violets. The dandelions have mostly gone to seed. The landlord's kid finally mowed today; the lawn was getting a bit dire.

Yesterday I had fun pet-sitting a Greyhound friend named Puck. He's a large guy with a brindle coat. He's much more confident and outgoing than Abbie. So, while they have some similarities, their personalities are also very different. For instance, Abbie is anxious and needs to be coaxed into things like going into the kitchen (where the floor is slippery). She doesn't go into the garbage at all. Puck went into the bathroom garbage because I forgot to shut the door when I left for lunch. He really made himself right at home.

It was neat having another dog in the house for the day and I really enjoyed it. Abbie mostly just put up with it.

Florida voters decided to outlaw dog racing, so now there will be many Greyhounds looking for homes. They are wonderful pets, especially for apartments and houses with fenced yards. They rarely bark. I'm happy to answer any questions about my experience with Greyhounds!

Today I went with a friend to the Greyhound Gala in Waukesha, about an hour away. It was lovely to see so many greyhounds in one place. I bought Abbie a new collar.

Via twitter, I came across this wonderful resource:
Am I a Lesbian?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_rXtPxNf3YaFJ9BhnmolUSoBisDsc69Zv2X42LEoSMc/edit#

Gets at compulsory heterosexuality, having crushes on male celebrities, and other very useful concepts. I wish I could send it back in time to my younger self.

Yesterday I went with my new friends to see some Greyhound races in Dubuque, Iowa. We were curious what it'd be like as we are all greyhound owners (ours are retired racers).

Dubuque is an hour and a half away, a gorgeous drive through Wisconsin's "Driftless" area, where the glaciers didn't come through and plow down the hills like they did in other areas of the Midwest. So there are rollling hills and steep valleys, dotted with farms and forests.

The casino is right off the highway and easy to find. The greyhound race area is technically not part of the casino, so you can be under 21 to enter that area. Indeed, we saw kids and teenagers watching the races. It's nice that there is no fee to enter, and you don't have to bet. The only thing we spent money on was food. There was a crowded upper observation area, and we went down some stairs to the outside part. It was almost hot yesterday, 76 degrees F (24 C). The benches were shaded by the casino building and the track was in bright sunlight.

The dogs were beautiful and lively. We watched about 4 races, each 10-15 minutes apart. We didn't place any bets but picked out the ones we thought might win based on how they acted and looked. Teenagers (presumably summer workers) brought the dogs out and lined them up to be looked at before leading them to the starting blocks.

I took some pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sasha_feather/tags/dubuque/

We drove around town a little bit and had some ice cream before heading home.

My friends asked me, can you imagine your out here dog doing this?
I think Abbie would have hated it. She's so anxious and scared in environments that are loud and chaotic; her preferred environment is quiet and calm. She doesn't seem to have a competitive spirit.
My last dog, Sorcha, was a winner though, and I imagined she enjoyed it at least somewhat.

Racing is controversial and people often ask me what I think of it. I still don't know what I think of it! It was cool seeing the dogs run. I think that when gambling and money enter into it, they tend to corrupt. I don't think racing is inherently bad, but making it into a big business means the animals' welfare isn't put first.

Oct 10 2005
I had a lovely weekend at home. It involved a night-time chicken-catching expedition: picture Sasha crawling around on a haystack, wearing an odd assortment of warmish clothes, clutching a flashlight in one hand and prowling for sleepy chickens. We gave a few hens away to a kid who wanted some (for his birthday) to round out his flock. My weekend also involved fun digital photography, banana bread, fudge, chinese take-out, clothes-shopping with mom, and general recovery and escape. Ack, I want to move back home.

Oct 11 2006
Some of my favorite science fiction and fantasy stories deal with connections between humans and animals, notably David Brin's Uplift series, Tamora Pierce's Wild Magic, and the books I am reading right now, Robin Hobb's Assassin trilogy.

Oct 12 2007
I am writing a lot today-- it is going well. I'm having fun with my story, and I think I might be able to actually finish it at some point, maybe even this weekend.

Today's word count so far is: 1,933
Total word count for story: 5,036 (10 pages in Word) [this is before I gave up writing fiction]
Things I'm learning:

--Some days it just goes better than others, but there is no way to predict which days these will be, which is like a lot of other stuff in life.
--It's easy for me to write about horses. The visual and sensory details are all right there in my mind, they are inherently interesting to me, and it puts me in a good mood.
--I lack practice in writing. This is what I need to work on: just building up some experience and confidence. This is also very similar to a lot of other stuff in life.

Oct 10 2008, writing a long entry about my abusive job:
Still. I'm coughing now, the mouth sores came back, and I'm punchy with exhaustion. I want out. Now.

Oct 10 2009
Maybe last week? I finally changed my OK Cupid profile to say "bisexual". [I now prefer "queer"]

About 2 or 3 months ago I changed my facebook profile to say "Looking for: Friendship" only and eliminated the "interested in" portion. (This also has the nice side effect of reducing dating ads in the sidebar.)

Oct 10 2010
--I really do have a lot on my plate. I am responsible for 3 studies and helping out with a 4th. I also write and edit papers (which I enjoy). The hardest, most exhausting part is talking to people I don't know, which I have to do a lot of lately, and that will get easier with practice. I am learning new software, learning to read medical charts, asking questions constantly.
--I am very sensitive to criticism
--I was very burned by my last job
--It's still a new job. I do really enjoy it! But I'm currently putting most of my energy into the job and need to rest and do self-care a lot. I'm pretty good about leaving on time and not going in on my day off. I don't make enough money for that.

Oct 12 2011, writing about a performance
Mostly what I got out of this show came during the panel and Q and A at the end: the panelists talked about how people of color don't have the luxury of leaving behind their families or their faith when they come out, because those institutions are so necessary when navigating a white supremacist society. Communities of faith, nor queer communities, aren't going away, and interstitial, compromise spaces are needed.

Oct 9 2012
I was super anxious at work today. Sometimes I get this fear/feeling that I am bad at my job, and I am going to get reprimanded or fired or something, and it makes me not want to go to work at all--self-destructive tendencies, etc.

I guess it's a good thing I have therapy this week.

Oct 8 2013
I am happy to be working again. So far work is not very social, and I stare at a computer too much. I will have to look around for people to talk to and places to walk. I don't know why sitting at a desk is so hard on my body.

Oct 9 2014
I met a very lovely Greyhound today that I will hopefully get to adopt. She is an almost-3-year-old girl, black, a bit timid. She has a playful side that I think will come out once she settles in. were_duck came along to meet her.

Oct 11 2015

Today is unseasonably warm. I'm farm sitting. It's quiet and peaceful, perhaps a bit lonely but at least there are plenty of animals around, and also the internet.

Flat Out Bolli (her racing name) hails from Mobile, Alabama originally. She is a small black Greyhound with some white on her. She has a cowlick on her neck that makes it seem like she has a mohawk. She will be 3 in December. She is super chill and is already napping on the rug on the living room floor. She is interested in toys.

I plan on changing her name; I don't really like "Bolli" as a nickname. Taking name suggestions in comments!

Photo Album at Flickr

In the GPA newsletter, there's a link to the site greyhound-data.com, where I found this data on my dog:

She ran in 84 races between 2005-2007
She won 19 of them
8 offspring are listed, and they all appear to be from the same litter, born May 2008. I don't know if she had other puppies or not. She came my way in early 2012, so what she was doing in between there is a mystery to me.

Sorcha (SE's Double Take) was born 21 Dec 2003.

One day at the park, we lucked out and encountered a bunch of other Greyhounds all at once. Here is a picture of Sorcha right in the middle of of three others; she is the white one, grinning to split her face. One of the fawn colored ones is called Gracie; I don't know the other fawn or the brindle. Not pictured are a black one named Hal, and a Whippet named Bucky.

You are probably all going to rebel against me for this but I'm going with the opposite of the poll results and have been mostly pronouncing my dog's name like "Sorsha". I have reasons: When I say it Sor-cha like the word "porch", no one understands what the fuck I'm saying. They invariably say "What?" and then half the time they think I'm saying "Dorcha." One kid thought I was saying "Norcha". (IDEK). She has a soft and lady-like personality, which the soft sound of Sor-sha seems to go with. I know that animals don't really have gender, but if she did have gender she'd be femme. It took a while of hanging out with her to settle the name in. The spelling won't change.

However, I don't really care what my dog gets called, and neither does she. You all can go on saying her name however you like, both in your own heads and when you meet her. I am not fickle in most things, but I'm fickle in this. She also gets called Princess Buttercup (after the Princess Bride), Buddy (my standard name for all animals), and Dear.

I had the day off today so we went to the park twice. We met a little black Greyhound named Zoe.