His Cheatin' Heart

CHEATER PAWS!!!!!!!

The cad. All of a sudden Manny the puggle goes from morbidly obese to pleasingly plump and he thinks he's a stud, has three women literally eating out of his muddy paws.

There's the dog lady of course. She starves him to death and walks him until his knobby little knees burn, but his ears literally quiver at the sound of her name. Naturally; she thinks it's acceptable for a man to pee on the living room furniture. I would imagine it was never a bone of contention when her ex left the seat up.

Then there's the cleaning lady. (Yes, I may be trailer bound, but I still have one well-heeled foot firmly planted in terra suburbia, which means I have a "household staff," albeit a tiny and very sporadic one.) So when my staff -- of one -- showed up in my absence the other day, Manny either charmed the pants off her with his crooked grin, or more likely slipped her a little something extra, to leave the pantry door open for him. This woman who is paid royally to vacuum up his dog hair and scrub away his hellacious dog smells with disinfectant somehow allowed herself to compromise her job performance, swallow her professional pride, and risk having me walk into a house that looked as if it had been carpet bombed by a flying Nabisco dumpster.

And me? When I followed the tell tale (or should I say tell tail) trail from the kitchen to Manny's favorite couch and found him sitting innocently amid a circle of half eaten crackers and cookies (I don't know who did this, but we will catch him, his cocked head said to me), did I scold him? No. Did I refuse to feed him dinner? Of course not. Did I just shake my head and spend the next two days bedridden with some strange sort of vicarious food poisoning while he farted in my face? Of course I did. Why? Maybe it's some sort of reverse "sins of the mother" theory. Or maybe it's that he keeps me warm at night without making any demands. Let's just say he knows a back rub means just a back rub.

So what's the deal? A guy with bad breath who bathes maybe once a month, flunked out of obedience school, and frankly isn't much of a conversationalist either has three -- if I do say so myself -- pretty hot babes willing to put up with all his shit and here I am, well educated, getting manicures every once in a while, and working out and showering regularly and I'm near death in bed for two days and nobody even brings me a bowl of chicken soup! I'm throwin' in the towel. And the razor. And the expensive work out clothes. Why bother?

And as for my three-timing pooch, I'm not dumping him so fast. After all, turn about is fair play, and I've never heard him complain that I fart in bed. Not that I ever would.

Where's the Beef???

I must admit it feels awfully good to have a man in my bed again. A snoring, farting, musky (or maybe musty) beast who will lick my toes without even having to be asked.

A break is nice once in a while, but a combination of guilt and pure longing impelled me to fetch Manny a bit early from his free and quite unanticipated extended stay at the spa. Whenever I leave town, I pack up Manny's things (that would be his food) and have no trouble getting him into the car when I tell him we are going to visit Sue, his second favorite middle aged woman. (Hmm, I bet he tells her she's the favorite, but if a little white lie gets him a bit more attention I get it.) Sue runs a strict but loving dog sitting service out of her house. For Sue, it is all about the dogs who are for her, as a species and with few exceptions, far more appealing than humans. When you get to Sue's house, you do not ring the doorbell and risk disturbing canine slumber. You do not hold it against a first time lodger who pees and poops on the "furniture" in the greeting room; in polite dog society, it's what you expect. You call a mom in the middle of the night when her short, overweight pup has somehow gotten a freshly baked, boxed chocolate cake off the high counter in the kitchen and eaten the better half of it, not to complain or seek reimbursement but rather to weep uncontrollably because you think your negligence has endangered his health. And when you realize, much to your relief, that the dog will survive yet another chocolate binge, you grab a fork and dig in to the other half.

Manny has struggled with weight issues for most of his adult life, and, more than once, on walks in the dark of night, has been mistaken for a large, mutant potato on a leash with toothpicks sticking out of the bottom.  The sudden onset of blindness has done nothing to impede his uncanny ability to sniff out hidden treats, and his girth has done nothing to impede his athleticism or ingenuity in helping himself to  whatever forbidden fruit has been placed safely out of reach for your average pooch. Oddly, he will miss a morsel of steak offered up right under his nose, but distant and tightly packaged delicacies somehow turn him into a Houdini-esque treat grabbing homing pigeon. Impressive.

And very unhealthy. Which is why Sue the dog sitter decided to make Manny into her "pet" project for the ten days I was in Japan. For love and no additional charge, she wanted to put him on some special diet dog food ("I hope he'll eat it," she said; I looked at her as if she had gone mad, as if Manny would ever not eat anything!), increase the number of meals while decreasing the portion size of each (again, "do you think he will he be upset about the small portions," as if he could possibly know when no matter how much is in the bowl he will gulp it down in one swallow), and double up on his walks. Okay, that might not go over so big with a fat, lazy ass dog who just likes to eat and sleep, but that's where little diet dog treats would come in.

Somehow Sue is able to ignore Manny's pathetic head tilt and incessant whining for food, and, by the time I returned to retrieve him, he was down five pounds. She begged to keep him, free of charge, for a bit longer so they could finish off what they had started. She wanted two months but would take four weeks. I agreed to a week, with an option to extend. Manny seemed a bit confused that I had stopped by and not taken him with me (coming or going is always preferable to staying, wherever you happen to be), but again, that's what little diet dog treats are for.

Manny is back home, as disoriented as a bumper car after his extended spa vacation, and seven pounds down. Well, maybe back to only five, after our little midnight cheese and cracker snack. He looks as handsome and fit as I've ever seen him. I'm going to try very hard to stay with the program, maybe even  join him in a little healthy living.

But it's going to be awfully hard to say no to him, that most loyal and adorable beast who licks my toes without even having to be asked.

Squatters' Rights

Years ago I used to joke with some friends about winning the lottery and escaping to a remote tropical island. Wheels up, we would say.

Yes, wheels up, jetting off to a place free of the constraints of home, to a place distant and deserted save for a few mosquitoes and a smattering of flesh eating humans. Hmm. Kinda like deep dark suburbia in August, just without the white picket fences and indoor plumbing. Frankly, I can give up the fences any time. No matter how many coats of paint you pile on, no matter how high you build them, they can't really keep the bad guys out. They are as useless as your average moat, which, as my daughter pointed out during our visit to a medieval castle in Japan, could hardly have been much of a deterrent to enemy armies on horseback. After all, horses can swim. Which, I suppose, is why the castle contractors installed holes in the castle walls as Plan B, so that the doomed residents could toss rocks and boiling water on the intruders. Intruders clad in armor from head to toe. Whatever those folks paid for that place, my guess is they paid too much.

The indoor plumbing though, that's a tough thing to give up. The closest I've come lately to peeing in an outhouse was squatting over a porcelain version of a chamber pot in a Japanese public restroom. Other than being the only real exercise I had for ten days, there was nothing good about it. Unless you remove your pants and underwear, you run the risk of peeing on them instead of in the pot, unless your quads are strong enough to get you to a solid right angle. And Japanese style bathrooms go hand in hand with Japanese style customs, which include taking your own shoes off at the door and being left to don public slippers as you enter the public restroom, slippers that have not only been on thousands of feet but have also been in direct striking range of zillions of pee drops. I suppose it beats peeing on your own shoes, but there's something to be said about knowing it's your very own pee.

Let's do the math. Except for the infuriating absence of wifi and the occasional primitive bathroom, Japan is a civilized country, filled with modern conveniences. Though by no means deserted, it is remote, certainly distant enough to offer the kind of protection from malevolent intruders that no picket fence or moat ever could. But, like any remote tropical island, it has more than its share of mosquitoes (I have the welts to prove it) and I would guess it has its share of flesh eating humans who thrive on the misfortune of their neighbors. Anonymity might help in the short run, but stay there long enough and you're bound to make it to someones dessert menu.

As enticing as the remote island seems, and as tempted as I was to stay in Japan indefinitely and escape the realities of my own life, there is a big part of me that always needs to come home. And so, when the wheels of Flight 450 went up, I was strapped in and bracing myself for the inevitable wheels down in my own neck of the woods. Where not everybody has my best interests at heart, but some people do. The ones who are important.

At the end of the day, the familiar creature comforts of home are bound to trump the discomforts of any place far away. So, I suppose I'll just keep my wheels steady and firmly planted on a bathroom floor free of pee splatter, and if anyone tries to bother me as I give my aching quads a rest and sit on a civilized porcelain oval, I'll just turn the other cheek.

Disconnecting Flights

I stared straight ahead at the Polynesian beauty buckled in across from me in the flight attendant seat. Her older, plainer, and hence more credible colleague had stood over me and my daughter earlier, making sure we read the regulations regarding competency to be placed in charge of the emergency exit. This was serious business; I was determined to look lucid and capable. certain that my wrinkles and dark circles gave me a bit of an edge -- an air of maturity, calmness in crisis.

I'll do anything for a little bet of extra leg room -- even contemplate what they mean when they tell us not to send folks down the inflatable slide -- which would probably come down when we opened the door -- if we peek out the little round window and see water. Or, I would imagine, if we peek out and see, up close, the puffy rolling countryside of clouds, but she was no doubt too decent to mention something so obvious. Ahh, but why dwell on death when I'd be stretching my legs out for the next eight hours. I kept nodding like an ass kissing school girl. There was no way this flight attendant was going to know, before it was too late, that the emergency workers in row 34 would likely soon be in an ambien induced stupor.

Frankly the conversation had been a bit surreal, but no more surreal than the feeling I had when we lifted off from the island of Honshu, a tiny land mass so far from home. My son is still down there I wanted to scream, but English was a distant second language on this flight, and I didn't want them panicking and releasing the latch on that door. Water or not, I'd be the first one down, and I sure wouldn't be hanging around to direct traffic.

My recent trip to Japan was encouraging in that I finally realized it is, indeed, on planet Earth, and not quite as alien as I had imagined. It is, however, about as far, geographically, as a place can be from where I am, at least in the northern hemisphere. Lifting off from that seemingly minute chunk of land in the sea made me gasp; I felt as if I had suddenly become unglued, irrevocably separated from my son who, only hours ago, had allowed himself to be wrapped up for a few moments in a desperate maternal hug. Breaking that connection was difficult; embarking on the journey across the damn date line and halfway around the world was excruciating. Had I paid better attention to the flight attendant's instructions, I might well have abused my brief training as emergency row guardian and heaved open the giant door, slid back down to once again plant my feet where my son has temporarily planted his.

I persevered -- maybe because I was still within the Japanese borders and people don't steal or recklessly endanger others there -- and remained fastened into my seat, reminding myself that connections don't necessarily require physical nearness, especially in this day and age. In theory. I busied myself with fantasies of my next trip halfway around the world, willed myself to fall into that long awaited ambien stupor (still waiting, by the way, but at least I would have been ready to perform my emergency row duties at a moment's notice). My weepiness subsided, and I settled in, comforted at least by the sight of my daughter's drooling face flopped against my shoulder. We may have been ready to kill each other before she fell asleep, but there was still the gluey bond of physical proximity keeping us close.

And there is always technology to fill in the gaps. A warm hug texted over thousands of miles, or even two blocks, a picture on the home screen that keeps a sweet memory alive indefinitely. Always, that is, until that little electronic rectangle that has literally become a part of you somehow disappears, along with its rows of photographs and long strings of phone numbers and emails. Five days without a cell phone; when I tell people this -- even people who remember, as I do, the days of busy signals and no voice mail (and walking five miles to school every day, up hill both ways) -- they groan with sympathy. It's difficult for any of us to imagine how I possibly managed that long, so disconnected.

The replacement phone has miraculously arrived, much to the relief, mostly, of my eighty-one year old mother, who has been as baffled as anyone by my ability to survive without it. I spent my insomniac hours last night refilling my SIM card with numbers and emails, preparing to be wrapped up, once again, in life's cyber embrace. Restoring my connections, theoretically.

And I daydream, still, of touching down again -- soon, I hope -- in Japan.

Phone Vex

I almost felt as if I was back in Japan.

Not when I left my brand new iPhone in a taxi in Honolulu during my brief but costly layover (and I'm talking about the cab fare, not the phone) and was told by every single person I encountered in my quest to get it back that I should give it up because nobody around there would turn it in. As I have already learned, folks in Japan don't steal. (And I guess I would have had to stay in Japan to reap the rewards of returning that friggin little extra stuffed toy that could have been mine, all mine.)


No, I felt as if I was back in Japan when I was on the phone with someone at the telephone insurance help line (after failing miserably at getting "quick" results on the claims web site) and she told me, without a hint of irony in her voice, that I needed my pass code to "get in" and unless I could tell her my pass code (which, obviously, I couldn't -- hence the phone call) she could not retrieve it for me. "I'm sorry ma'am, that's the RULE." Can you say "catch 22" in Japanese?

Giving credit where credit is due, I have to say the woman kind of sensed the senselessness of what she was saying and was frantically flipping through what must have been a code thick enough to make an IRS rule drafter proud looking for options. "I know," she said. "I can text the pass code to your cell phone." I was silent. She remembered fairly quickly that she was helping me process a claim for a lost cell phone, was probably even in a cubicle in a big room entitled "Lost Cell Phone Division." "Oh, I guess that wouldn't work." Overqualified, obviously.

"Can you email it to me?" I'm not an expert, but I thought since I hadn't left either my desktop or my laptop in the taxi, that could be an option.

"Oh yes. That's a good idea."

"Great." I was feeling overly optimistic. "Will you be sending it to my comcast or my gmail account?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Huh?"

"I am not allowed to reveal your email address. That would be a breach of security."

"If I tell you an email address, will you be able to confirm -- just yes or no -- whether it kind of looks exactly like the one you have in your file?"

"No. I can't do that." After a brief pause, I'm pretty sure I heard her mutter I'm sorry. The poor woman. I wondered if she had been on the job long, if this was the first time she realized the rules were a little bit off the fucking wall.  I decided to be nice and play along, and I sat staring at both my computer screens waiting for the magical pass code to appear on at least one of them. We waited together, in companionable silence.

Just to make conversation while I waited for what appeared to be the e-pony express to deliver my code, I confirmed that this pass code was all I would need to get back on line and get my claim processed so my replacement phone could be sent out.

"Oh no. I am not sending you your pass code. By the way, is it comcast dot com or comcast dot net?"

Ah ha! Comcast. At least I could just watch one screen. "Well what are you sending me then?" Maybe it was jet lag, but I was getting really confused.

"I'm sending you a four digit number. When it arrives, if you read it to me and it's the correct number, then I'm pretty sure I can give you your pass code."

Well, the change to "dot net" sped up the cyber pony, and I know my numbers pretty well, so I got the answer right and she gave me my pass code (which, mysteriously, was exactly the same as the one I had been punching in, but that's neither here nor there). I was excited. Maybe the whole problem was just a typo on my part. "So all I need to do is enter that pass code and I'll be set?"

"No. First you need you password. The sad thing is I know the difference between my password and my pass code, but it didn't really matter, because while she was explaining this to me my pass code actually worked and got me through to what I thought would be the final "submit" button. There was something to submit, for sure, but it wasn't my claim or even my two hundred dollars. The screen was very apologetic to me, but it needed more information. Meanwhile, the nice lady on the phone was refusing to hang up; instead, she was trying to sell me some stuff, like roadside assistance for my phone.   I told her I would consider it at a later date if I ever actually got another phone, and we managed to end our conversation with our friendship still in tact.

As far as the additional information the screen needs from me goes, well I just decided at that point I didn't feel like talking to anybody anyway, so who needs a phone, and I abandoned the whole thing to go take a nap. But it's a new day, and I realize my phone is not only the keeper of all phone numbers and appointments and even email addresses but is also my camera, so I'm preparing to finish up the very official affidavit and fax it to the folks in the affidavit division in hopes my claim will be approved. I'm not sure if I have to send them my first born child or, worse still, tell them what I weigh (I didn't read it that closely) but I do know I have to get the thing notarized so if anyone reading this is a notary and lives in my time zone please let me know.

Being home is exhausting. But at least I can jaywalk.

Foreign Exchanges

On my final day in Japan, I stood waiting at an intersection for about three minutes until the light turned green. It was five thirty on a Sunday morning. There were no cars, hardly even any people. To call it an intersection is a bit of an overstatement, since there really isn’t a cross street. But I waited, all the same.


Whoever said “rules are made to be broken” was not raised in Japan, at least not the Japan I have come to know in my short stay here. Rules of the road, other laws, even rules of basic moral conduct. So, for example, after spending the equivalent of about ten dollars trying to get a tiny (and worn looking) stuffed anime figure from one of those coin stealing machines that lure you in with the big claw that looks like it will actually grasp one of the thousands of toys piled below it, my son finally succeeded in snagging one for his sister. When he reached in to get it, he discovered another unclaimed stuffed figure, and left it there. Naturally, I reached over to grab it, which is when he looked horrified and shoved my arm away. “That would be stealing,” he told me, “and they just don’t do that here.”


Well I certainly don’t steal. Do I? I thought about the occasional extra candy bar I had taken from a vending machine over the years, feeling as if I had hit the jackpot when I reached in and found out the thing had malfunctioned and sent down two. Has it ever occurred to me to take the extra treat and return it to the person in charge of the particular machine? Not on your life, after all the times those damn machines have malfunctioned in the other direction, eating my quarters while I get to eat nothing. Will it occur to me now, now that I have experienced the wonderful feeling that washed over me when I returned the dirty little toy to the employee in the arcade full of money stealing machines? Not a chance. Unless, of course, I end up with some dirty little toy instead of a candy bar as my unexpected prize.

Then there are the unwritten rules, rules of conduct not to be found in any moral or legal code, rules that often defy logic. Like not crossing when there’s a red light. Even at five thirty in the morning when there are no cars and it’s not even a real intersection. Or like not even attempting to order off menu. The item is the item, and the picture shows exactly what it will look like, and whatever ingredients are in the picture are going to be on your plate, like it or not. Needless to say, dining in Japan with my daughter the vegetarian has been a bit of a challenge. Or like not making a face in Starbucks when the barrista realizes she gave you a vente intead of a grande and, instead of just turning the other cheek, takes the vente, spills it out, and pours a second, smaller cup of coffee. Because that is what you ordered. And modified orders are not allowed, whether you are the orderer or the order taker.

The rules can be infuriatingly arbitrary. In Himeji, when you ride an escalator at the train station, you stand on the right, making room for walkers and runners on the left. In Tokyo, you stand on the left, making room for the movers on the right. And then there’s the rule about being polite, which is probably why folks are so good about following the rules in the first place. If you are in Himeji and you are in a hurry to make your train and someone is blocking you because she is standing on the left, you say nothing. You stop dead behind her, but you don’t make a sound – no sighing, no exasperated breaths, not even so much as an “excuse me.” Certainly yelling “move your fat ass, fucker!” would be out of the question Not just because of the politeness thing, but because nobody even approaches being fat here; I have never seen so many tiny people in my life! Oh, and if you are one of my children, and mom is the one standing on the wrong side (of course I am; it's where all the elbow room is) the politeness rule does not apply.

So on our last evening in Japan – the evening before the morning on which I waited impatiently for the light at the non-intersection to turn green – my kids and I were quite shocked when we stepped into that same non-intersection and the two folks standing behind us yelled “NO! NO! NO!” Not just one “no;” three. Three loud ones. Almost knocked us over, which would not have happened otherwise since there were no cars in sight. I glanced back at them, possibly with a dirty look. I figured if they were going to break the politeness rule first, all bets were off. I took a closer look.

“Korean,” I whispered to my kids. “They’re Korean.” Okay, I may have been basing this on my own uneducated and baseless notion of how Koreans differ in appearance from the Japanese, but they had scared the living shit out of me. My son, who usually gets his knickers in a knot over racial stereotypes and other kinds of overgeneralizations, paused and listened for a moment.

“You’re right, they’re Korean.” I thought about asking him how he could possibly tell, since all Asian chatter sounds like the same brand of gibberish to me, but I thought better of it. Anyway, at least now it all made sense.

Damn foreigners.

A Half Month of Sundays

Tomorrow, our last day in Japan, will be Sunday. So will the next day, when our flight to Hawaii takes us over that damn date line. I suppose -- now that I have had some time to do the math -- the whole thing makes a lot of sense. Quite ingenious, actually.

I am going to try to spend most of my two consecutive Sundays in true Sabbath style as days of ambien induced rest. I have kept my hands out of the illicit prescription cookie jar for the entire ten days here, sacrificing sleep in a bed so I won`t build up any immunities and have to stay awake for one moment on an airplane. That is until the nice flight attendant with the flower in her hair on Hawaiian Airlines gently shakes my shoulder so she can hand me my mai tai. And my macadamia nut short bread. Some Americans are not ugly at all!

The small town appeal of Himeji is a bit less appealing after two days in a Tokyo hotel with free Internet in the lobby and more than an inch of space in which to move around the bed. And plenty of Starbucks that open well before eight in the morning. I have to admit that as I sit here in the cramped Internet booth that reeks of smoke -- and that wasn`t even available at four thirty when I first ventured down because there was no Internet connection (wretched, just wretched) -- I am feeling a bit nostalgic for the insanity of Tokyo. And a bit wistful that when I leave this nasty little hotel tomorrow it means I will be leaving Japan -- and my son -- for who knows how long.

But there`s good news. I finally had sushi. Not the kind that`s safely wrapped up in seaweed and camouflaged by avocado and cucumber and wasabi, but the real kind. Maybe it`s sashimi. You know, the humongous slab of fish flopped down on a tiny and relatively useless (for the squeamish among us) bed of rice. Good shit, for raw fish.

Nothing much to tell today -- certainly nothing worth paying extra yen for in this wretched booth -- so off I go to press my nose against the window of Starbucks and wait for them to open. Back Sunday (hey, I have two chances, so odds are good).