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I walked the dogs without Tin in the Ergobaby because it was already too hot for woman and beast by the time I got out there. We came across the nuns leaving morning mass in their long black habits – mind you it was at least 90 if not more with 1000% humidity. Then we passed the Hari Krishna’s in their ankle length orange robes. There was something going on at the park, lot of music, cars and people so we skirted the bayou instead.

There were flotillas of ducks cruising the bayou and Heidi kept pulling on her leash and finally I let her and Loca off over by the Desaix bridge and they lept into the water and started swimming. I wanted to ditch my clothes and dive in with them.

It’s summer time here in New Orleans and this is the time of year where a thought comes into your head such as I should ___ and then quickly evaporates and you either put more ice in your glass or adjust yourself on the couch. Too hot to contemplate much but your navel.

Look at this little boy – precious is what they call him – we call him Tin:

Here are shots of him in his new wife beater – with his receding hairline and Buddha belly, it really suits him:

Notice the dry eyes:

He’s so damn cute:

I realized the best way to give him eye drops is just be frank with him – you got to have them and yes they are annoying:

This is the big reason that my Saturday was fabulous!

I had to go back to Verizon for yet another tutorial and still have lost all my contacts that I’m trying to get back one at a time. Harumph, this will take forever. Meanwhile, I brought Tin by this hair studio to a woman I met yesterday who was giving me tips on his hair – how to twirl it with a comb – he was sound asleep when we went in but she got a good look at his hair and said I could just finger twirl it for now and to use Miss Jessie’s Baby Buttercream on it.

I spent the better part of everyone’s nap time reading an article in Ebony magazine about adoption and trying to figure out my Blackberry Curve 2 – which is not syncing to my MAC as it is supposed to.

It rained pretty much all afternoon and by about 4PM I was falling on my face so I laid down and took a disco nap. My hairdresser said I have RFS – restless family syndrome – and he’s right, it seems like everything has one to three more layers to it around here these days.

Who thought of these ideas. We have to give Tin eye drops three times a day with this milky almost yogurt like substance. It is like trying to give a feral cat a pill. Ridiculous!

Most people on the outside don’t understand the beauty of Loca. Not that she isn’t a beautiful dog – for a black lab she is an elegant and lithe picture of beauty. And smart – there is no dog that I have ever had that comes close to being a smart as she is – maybe Sam but Sam was a curmudgeon. Loca is also a card carrying clown. She gets down and army crawls – she has goofy faces – and she never ceases to entertain us. She’s lightning quick, she has boundless energy, and she is the most affectionate animal I have ever known.

But Loca has yellow moments. Or at least that is the name that my mother in law has ascribed to them. Yellow moments is a Croatian term for just not being yourself. And Loca has these. She is a 99% perfect dog, except for these moments when she over carries her protection of me and the family to the utmost test – and becomes Ms. Aggressive.

Because these moments are unpredictable, it makes some people think that Loca is crazy. But she’s not. She’s actually saner than most people I know, except during these yellow moments.

I give up. I have waited patiently for you to sign up with Verizon so that I could get an iPhone, but again, you let me down. I’m not switching to AT&T because service is more important than device for me. So yesterday when my telephone failed, not just my telephone, but my mother’s that I used as a bridge when mine failed to when I would be buying my iPhone, I had to bite the bullet. I bought a Curve 2. Well actually I didn’t buy it at all – it was free! That is right, free. You can’t beat the one-two punch of great carrier and free device.

Why I have waited for the iPhone is now a complete mystery because I have a free Blackberry and I type so effortlessly on it without having to learn how to type on a touch screen, one finger at a time.

From now on, I’m not hanging on your every word, Steve.

T1 – on the mend

T2 – on the mend

What a week! Oh well, I guess it is back to worrying about the oil spill:

Tin came through his surgery like a champ. Mommy did too, maybe. I was with him till he had some happy juice in him (their terminology) and followed him to be rolled into the operating room, and then a friend came and got me when he was done. But standing in the room and waiting for an hour and a half for everything to begin made me want to throw up. I asked all the questions I could think of about the anesthesia and I read all the potential side effects, none of this calmed me.

By the time I had gotten to pre-op I had tears in my eyes and thought I wasn’t going to let him go but my friend (a nurse there) said it’ll be fine, the doctor is quick. Still I had looked out the window earlier, down at the yards in back of the hospital and thought of my mom. “Where are you when I need you mom?” I kept saying to myself. As a child I never was in a hospital without my father (a doctor) or my mother (a nurse) and I always felt protected by them. When we were walking over to surgery I murmured to mom to show me a sign that she was there.

Sitting in the waiting room I remembered mom had told me I would know she was with me because the sign would be a dog. Well I combed the area for any sign of a dog and saw none. Not even on the dumb cartoon that was on the television set. Not even in the gift shop window. No dog.

When I had him in my arms again and knew he was okay, I forgot all about the dog. Then we got home and fed him a bottle and a big bowl of oatmeal and I went to put him down for a few minutes to see if he could sleep.

For about an hour he couldn’t sleep. Over the video monitor T could hear him barking like a dog.

Thanks mom! She always hated to be away from the house.

The gender of pronouns is constantly confused in this house and it always puzzles me because Croatian doesn’t use gender so you’d think they’d recognize gender differences in a language that only uses it in the pronouns. My mother in law refers to Tin as she and her constantly, saying things like in her room, which confuses me, or talking about Tatjana by saying, he doesn’t listen, who? I think to myself.

But this morning at 5:40 am, just as dawn was breaking, I was carrying Tin out to the car and T’s mother was following me. As I put him in the car, she stroked his arm and said, “I love it.” And I knew exactly what and who she was talking about.

Tomorrow morning I have to scoop Tin out of his crib at 5:45 am and bring him to the hospital to have his tear duct surgery. When the nurse was describing the procedure to me today I grew peaked. Tin needs to be there an hour and a half before they even begin and then they are going to give him a little Versed (to make him drowsy) then laughing gas and then an IV drip – UGH. Just thinking of all that he has to go through just to get these tear ducts open is making me ill. Poor pumpkin. Just watching Tatjana go through her surgery was enough for me, now back to the hospital for my other loved one only this one you can’t reason with – (well Tatjana had never had surgery before either so she was scared going in) he will most likely be scared after he learns what they are doing to him.

Stomach in knots.