Feeling Down Under

You haven’t seen or heard much from us lately. I think there’s been a convergence of post-holiday doldrums, isolation, grey skies, and bad news about pets that have taken some of the wind from our sails. That reminds me, lack of sailing is another issue.

There’s a lot of stuff going on back home. My uncle Bob is fighting a losing battle with Alzheimer’s. While Bob is often in my thoughts, it’s concern about my aunt Nancy and the turmoil she faces on a day to day basis that hurts the most. Even if we were in NC I don’t know what we’d do, but being this far away adds to the sense of helplessness.

On the pet front, our dog Tracy was diagnosed with aggressive cancer and our cat Tiger, who had attacked everyone in our cul de sac before we left, has continued his bipolar rampages at the expense of Yanru, originally our house sitter but now considered a member of the extended family. As Karen noted below, we found Tracy on our honeymoon so I guess our marriage is 84 years old in dog years. Not being there when Tracy was sick and then needed to be put down has been a tough on everyone, especially Yanru.

Having a cat that you know isn’t suited to being a pet doesn’t bode well for future decisions we’ll be faced with. On the pet front, I’m partial to dogs. This is probably due to my somewhat utilitarian view of pets, where blind loyalty and barking at strangers takes you further than purring with random psychotic attacks. I consider myself flexible and it only took me a week or two to come around to the idea of paying for kitty prozac to help Tiger with his “problem”. For a guy that grew up in rural south Georgia, this takes some work. This utilitarian view has put me on the dark side of family discussions about what to do about our pet problems. I honestly don’t think I care for the animals less, but I don’t seem to have as much of an issue getting rid of them when things go bad.

Karen and I, like everyone else I guess, are most prone to arguments when there is some kind of underlying tension. We used to have lots of underlying tension but with the help of our counselor Judy arguments are pretty rare. Judy is apparently pretty famous. We’ve seen several people wearing her What Would Judy Do (WWJD) training bracelets. If you see someone wearing one of these bracelets it probably means they are having marital problems. When arguments do happen we get over them quickly which is another skill we had to learn. One thing we’ve learned from Judy is the importance of AFGOs. AFGOs are those little or sometimes big things that you dread but ultimately have to deal with. Rather than treat these as negatives, we now treat them as “Another F****** Growth Opportunity” or AFGO. We’ve had a string of AFGOs here lately and frankly we don’t need any more growth opportunities. The only argument that I recall that we’ve had in New Zealand started with the innocent comment from Karen that “I think we should have two cats and no dogs”. If only I had waited a few minutes and realized she was handing me an AFGO on a silver platter.

Next week we’re going sailing in Marlborough Sound, wish us fairer winds and fewer AFGOs. Cheers - Bob