The saddest dog in the world

This here is a picture of Chickenbone on his first road trip. And as you can see, he's positively thrilled about it.

Seriously, am I the only one who can see those sorrowful little eyebrows? ACTUAL puppy-dog eyes, which bore into my soul every time I turned around to check on him? Pooch, you are KILLING ME.

OK, a little background: This year my husband and I are going to spend Christmas with my family in New Mexico. And while we like PetSmart and how they serve dishes of doggie ice cream to "hotel" guests, I hate how the animals are forced to pee and poop in their cage. I know it gets cleaned up right away, but I also know dogs don't enjoy going to the bathroom where they also sleep and eat. CALL THEM CRAZY. Plus, they don't even get to go outside! Not one time! So rather than make Chickens go through that for five days (five days during CHRISTMAS for heaven's sake) we figured we'd just toss him into the back seat and take him along.

To prepare him for four full days in the car, we took a warm-up lap in September, an hourlong drive to Fort Funston in San Francisco (that's when I took the picture above). And last weekend we tried a four-hour trip to Santa Barbara. The verdict? Chickens and road trips are not exactly getting along.

I mean, it's not like he doesn't love the car. Car rides are his favorite. Trouble is, he likes to spend them staring gleefully out the window, with his back paws digging into my legs, front paws digging into my boobs, and his panting wet doggy lips two inches from my face. So for these trips, we put him in his crate, which gets him off my lap and will keep him from blasting through the windshield like a baseball if we're in an accident.

But in the crate, he is a very unhappy little guy. And he doesn't even have the spirit to get mad about it, which breaks my heart. He just becomes this quivering, mewling mess. He whines and weeps - there were ACTUAL TEARS! - and refuses to lay down and go to sleep. Also, you know how normal dogs often sit with their butts on the ground and their front legs extended? The "sit" position? Well, Chickens never sits like this at home, I think because of his weirdly-shaped torso and short toothpick legs. But on this trip, he sat up almost the entire time. He simply could not relax.

I'm not sure what we'll do now, I guess keep practicing and trying to get him comfortable with being back there. If we haven't figured it out by December, I suppose I could drug him. Seemed to work OK on Saturday, when he wouldn't stop barking at our favorite State Street pub. After I fed him a couple of scotch-covered ice cubes, he crawled inside my sweatshirt and went right to sleep. He also had a good time at the bed and breakfast, where we stayed in a cottage that had a fenced-in private courtyard. There were lots of gorgeous plants, flowers and bushes, as well as an enormous gnarled peppercorn tree, just like the one in our back yard. Here's Chickens meditating in the sun after his petrifying car ride:

And here he snoozing in the cottage. You can't see from the photo, but right next to that bed are his little doggie steps, which we brought so he can get up and down as he pleases. That's also his favorite blue blanket, and the little half-chewed rawhide burrito he likes to nibble on at night. So, see, Chickens? WE'RE NOT TERRIBLE PARENTS! So please stop looking at me like that!

Let's catch up

There is so, so much going on lately. I mean, if you could read all the blog posts I've composed in my head the past couple of weeks, you'd wet your pants from laughing. They were HILARIOUS. Oh, and the photographs! OK, well, those actually do exist. Only they're inside my new BlackBerry, and evidently I'm not smart enough to figure out how to get them out of the BlackBerry and into my computer. And the "instruction manual" that came with it? Please. I got a more informative booklet with the four-button walkman-on-a-neckstrap I got when I was 10. For the first week I despised this thing. But I worked at it, tried to stay patient, and now I have settled into more of a mild disgust. Hoping that when I get it linked up to actual useful things, like Outlook e-mail and schedule at work, we'll live happily ever after.

But the pictures. So first off, I have some shots of Princess Leia hugging my husband. THE Princess Leia, who was at the San Jose Rep doing a one-woman show written by some broad named Carrie Fisher. She showed up at a pre-show reception and went around to all the tables saying hi to everyone. I thought she looked beautiful, though I was a little WTF? on her eye makeup. Royal blue eyeliner, bright and thick, sprinkled with glitter the size of diamonds. Later I realized that she isn't quite as freaky as all that, it was just stage makeup. I also realized this woman has created for herself a job where she sits around on stage in pajamas, telling stories and smoking cigarettes. So if she wanted diamonds in her eyes, she could probably make it happen.

I also have pictures from the Gilroy Garlic Festival, which I attended for the first time despite the fact that I have lived in the Bay Area for six years. To all of you who told me this is a stupid hillbilly event that isn't worth the drive or the effort, well, I would like to introduce you to my new best friend, crab fries. CRAB FRIES, YOU GUYS. Crunchy, golden, beer-battered garlic fries, topped with creamy aioli and a heap of shredded dungeness crab. I began to slobber just typing that sentence.

OK, I must interrupt myself and say that just now I went to Yelp to see if other people liked these greasy little babies, and yikes! People hated this festival?! I really can't understand that. The biggest complaints seem to be the heat (because Gilroy in July is normally so pleasant, right?); the traffic (one einstein whines about "bad traffic planning by the organizers;" mm-hmm, because there's so much with Highway 101 you can get creative with!); and the food (CRABFRIES-CRABFRIES-CRABFRIES.) Someone even complained about a lack of beer! I just don't know what is wrong in people's heads sometimes. The beer was icy cold and plentiful. The food was outstanding. In addition to the crab fries, we really enjoyed the buttery shrimp scampi with garlic bread, and the garlic sausage sandwich. We also tried the garlic ice cream, and Yelpers, I'll give you that one. Eww.

I wasn't the only one who didn't care for garlic ice cream. Emily West, an up-and-coming country music artist and also my very good pal, didn't like them, either. Emily was at the festival primarily to the hell out of a song called "Rocks in Your Shoes," which is her first Top 40 hit and a song I'm crazy about. It was so awesome to hear it live. And I'm telling you, this woman is adorable (if you can manage to be adorable while also being a 6-foot-tall blonde bombshell.)

At the end of her set (after she tried garlic ice cream onstage and declared it to be "awful") she came out to sign autographs. Now, normally I stay far away from celebrities of any kind. I love to gawk at them, but I don't want to talk to them because I know I'd say something stupid. Like "You are cool" or "I love you." But for some reason I had a little burst of courage with Emily, maybe because she toughed it out for our small crowd, in dust and wind and cruel heat. I liked her sense of humor. At one point she casually dropped some remark about her tour bus, and then she chuckled and whispered into the microphone, "Yeah, I don't have a tour bus." She also used her cell phone to take pictures of the crowd and some some self-portraits of her and her guitarist, the only other person on stage. Then she asked us to please become her MySpace friend. Awww-WUH!

So I got in line and when it was my turn to meet her, I told her that I really appreciated her coming all the way out to Gilroy. Then I said her song kicks so much ass. She laughed at that, and as I walked away I looked down at what she wrote on my program. "To Amy: You kick ass. Emily West." Emily, you are cool.

Finally, since we seem to have a bit of a celebrity theme going on in this post, I may as well tell you that someone you all know (hint: IT'S CHICKENBONE JONES!) attended a photo shoot with his dad this week. San Jose Magazine is doing a feature for their October edition about local celebrities and their pets. The photographer said Chickens was the most "energetic" dog they saw that day, which was probably putting it kindly, since Sal said he was sprinting around and around the hotel suite and wouldn't sit still because he was too busy trying to kiss everyone. On the plus side, he did not pee on any people or furnishings. Really, that should be their headline.

Eating our fruits and veggies

I was unpacking groceries yesterday when I heard a knock on the door. It was a woman with a cart full of freshly picked strawberries. She wanted to sell me an entire flat, but I am cheap and wanted just one small carton. We split the difference, and I bought three containers for $6. It was such a bargain (and delivered right to my doorstep, even!) that I figured they might not be very good. Uh, wrong. They are to die for. They're plump and juicy, and they taste like they have been swirled in pure sugar.

Sometimes I get really worked up over fresh fruits and vegetables. Like, check this out: About an hour after the strawberry lady left, I washed dirt out of the spinach I bought at the store. Dirt, WHICH INCLUDED A LIVE BUG, right from the very ground in which the spinach was born! Things like fresh-from-the-earth spinach are why I will never, ever, ever move out of California.

Evidently I'm not the only one in the family who appreciates fine produce. When I wasn't looking, Chickenbone grabbed a strawberry out of the cartons, which were sitting on the coffee table. I made a short video of him trying to get the strawberry to play with him. It gets a little slow in minute two, after he meticulously bites off the tiny green leaves, one by one. But he does a trick at the end, so keep watching!


Chickenbone and the strawberry from Amy on Vimeo.

This and that

I'm totally overloaded with things to write about here, so you'll forgive a hodgepodge of updates, won't you?

First, the back yard is all better. Within two hours of my post on the broken tree limb, a very nice old gentleman who owns a tree service business arrived. He let out a long whistle when he came into the yard and said we have one of the biggest peppercorn trees he has ever seen. Then he walked up to one of the fallen branches and lifted it high. Leans over to me and makes a joke that seemed to give him immense joy, despite being told hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of times: "Do you know what this is?" he says, peering at me closely. "Um ... a peppercorn tree?" I ask. He grins and says cheerfully, "It's nature's way of pruning your tree!"

Oh! Ha! Hahaha! OK, now cut the crap and go get your chainsaw.

He really was terrific, though, and the very next morning he came out and tidied things up. He even chopped up a bunch of the wood and stacked it up for us to use in our fireplace.

Sal and I also went on vacation. Now that seems like a million years ago. And every time I went to write about it, something would happen, generally something at work, and generally something unpleasant. But I'm determined to tell you, though, about how our John Williams concert was nearly ruined by a disgusting, smelly cow of a woman who reeked like she hasn't showered in a month. Mere moments after Sal and I cracked open a bottle of cold chardonnay and unwrapped our hot dogs for a quick dinner before the show, this gal plops herself down in the seat in front of me and pulls out of her backpack a tub of hummus the size of her head. The moment Sal smelled her, his eyes darted in my direction, because he KNEW I was gonna freak.

You see, there are many objectionable things in this world, but at the very tippy-top of my list are people who stink. I'm not saying that a little extra B.O. at the end of a long day (such as my nasty 12-hour shift yesterday) means you were born in a barnyard. I'm saying that folks who do not hose off their big, smelly bodies at least once a week or so really do need their own section at the Hollywood Bowl. MY GOD, I cannot stand the smell of B.O. And, I mean, we were outside! There was a breeze! And it was still so bad that I had to turn my head all the way around and take quick teeny gulps of air before facing forward again.

As the minutes passed, my temper boiled at the fact that this stench was going to ruin a concert we had looked forward to for months. So after about 15 minutes I marched over to one of the ushers and told him the problem. The show was sold out, so he didn't know how to help me. But he sent me over to his boss, who seemed to take pity on the crazy lady sputtering about showers and homeless people and garlic-flavored hummus. And in five minutes he had us moved to great seats that were even a little closer to the stage.

Oh! But the stench does not end there, my friend! Because just days after this concert, I was eating lunch with Sal, my aunt and my cousin at a pizza restaurant in Cambria when a disgusting unshowered individual sat right behind me. And when the stench wafted into my nose, I almost hurled. Again, I had to move. So you see, America, please just take a bath. I do not know what sort of nasal dysfunction keeps you from passing out when you smell your very own self, but perhaps you could try using your eyes: If you actually see folks RUN AWAY WHEN YOU GET NEAR THEM, it could be time to hop in the tub.

OK, let me post a couple of vacation photos, and then I gotta jet. These are from the Santa Barbara zoo:

This is Janine, a crooked-necked giraffe. Don't be afraid! She was born that way and the zookeeper says she is a happy giraffe, and that her neck doesn't hurt her at all.

When Sal walked up to this bald eagle, he solemnly sang the first verse of "America the Beautiful" in its entirety.

I was watching the toucans when I heard Sal hissing at me to come look at something. He's waving his finger and pointing wildly at two turtles who are MADLY going at it. I mean, you can actually hear the top turtle grunting repeatedly as he bumps and grinds with his girl below. Look close, you can even see his open mouth! And so before I know it, this little girl runs up to the tank and begins laughing hysterically. "MOMMY!" she whirls around, laughing. "Lookieeeee! They're playing leapfrog!"

OMG OMG OMG

I know I'll probably sound like a breathless little ninny when I tell you about this, but dude. I partied with Demi and Ashton.

Demi. And Ashton. They were at a fund-raiser my husband and I attended Saturday night at the home of a venture capitalist in Palo Alto. Like, in his living room. Where I was. Standing right next to them. Next to Demi and Ashton.

OK, I didn't really get to talk to them, because they rushed out pretty quickly after the presentation. But that's fine, because I am not good with meeting celebrities. I hid from Shirley MacLaine a few weeks ago. I hid from Paul Newman, who was also at Saturday's fund-raiser. Don't get me wrong, I love celebrities. I love to look at celebrities, talk about celebrities, read about celebrities, ponder celebrities ... I just chicken out when it comes time to actually meet one. And the reason is, I know myself. I know I will stammer and get all sweaty and the only thing that will come out is something foolish, like "Um .... wow ... I mean ... it's YOU!" So usually I save myself the embarrassment and gawk quietly from a corner.

So, some quick observations: Demi looked much younger than I would have expected, and not in that pointy, botoxy way. She kept putting her hair back into a ponytail and then taking it out again, which I think means we should be best friends, since I do that while I'm watching TV. Ashton was tall and he had fancy Hollywood hair. He looked bored out of his skull the whole time. Around his wrist, he wore a teeny red piece of Kabbalah floss. I looked it up, and that's one fancy piece of string:

The Red String protects us from the influences of the Evil Eye. Evil eye is a very powerful negative force. It refers to the unfriendly stare and unkind glances we sometimes get from people around us. Envious eyes and looks of ill will affect us, stopping us from realizing our full potential in every area of our life.

Quick, get your protection here!

And I totally saw it coming.

I never felt more like a Californian than I did this weekend, which began with my husband and I touring roughly $9.8 million dollars worth of real estate, after we felt an earthquake, while hanging out with a movie star.

I have lived in the Golden State for nearly eight years now (three in Bakersfield, and coming up on five in San Jose) and have never noticed even one rumble. So it was to my great delight that on Thursday night I experienced a real, live earthquake! It was weird, and cool. I was sitting in the Center for Performing Arts in downtown San Jose listening to a talk by the fabulous Shirley MacLaine. It was very "Inside the Actor's Studio." Just her on a stage, talking about her life, her past lives, her darling dog, her travels ... it was riveting. If you are a Shirley MacLaine fan, I can assure you that she is every bit as beautiful and bad-assed as you'd imagine. After her talk, I was at a reception where she marched in and complained that the room was hot. "Someone turn the air on!" she thundered. But everyone just sort of stood around staring at her, mouths gaping (she really and truly has that effect, more than any other celeb I have ever seen in real life). Then she asked if someone could open the doors that lead outside. One of the ushers said nope, we can't have random folks off the street storming the place, you know? And I had to agree. I mean, YOU'RE SHIRLEY MACLAINE, MAN. Well, with a roll of her eyes she marched right down to those doors and flung them wide open. Then she barked at the startled ushers to grab chairs to prop them open. And then she made fun of the theater's ugly carpet. It was tremendous.

But back to the action: So I'm sitting in the balcony of this old and majestic theater, and peering down at that tiny stage was making me a little dizzy. I mean, we were way, WAY up there. I whispered to Sal that I didn't particularly care to be so high, thinking he would be sympathetic, as he's not much for heights himself. He said he was actually OK with our seats, since there were at least five rows between us and the ledge. Then his comedian wife elbows him in the ribs and says, "Yeah! But all it'll take is one little earthquake to catapult us over the edge! Ha! Ha ha! HA!"

AND THEN THERE WAS AN EARTHQUAKE.

Could that be any weirder? Could I possibly be more impressive? It was about an hour into the show when I felt my seat rumble back and forth. Kind of like when you're on a plane taking off. Right away I turned around, for some reason expecting to see a very, very large person clomping down the aisle. And the funny thing is, at that precise moment, there WAS this fat guy with a cane two rows back, tottering toward the exit. But he didn't seem big enough to shake the entire place, and then it was over so quickly that I kind of forgot about it.

But when I got home, I checked my e-mail, and sure enough the U.S. Geological Survey automated service I signed up for a few years ago had sent me an alert! It looked like this:

== PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==

Region: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIF.
Geographic coordinates: 37.901N, 122.098W
Magnitude: 4.4 Ml
Depth: 16 km
Universal Time (UTC): 2 Mar 2007 04:40:00
Time near the Epicenter: 1 Mar 2007 20:40:00
Local time in your area: 2 Mar 2007 04:40:00

Location with respect to nearby cities:
2 km (1 miles) NE (48 degrees) of Lafayette, CA
5 km (3 miles) WSW (257 degrees) of Walnut Creek, CA
6 km (4 miles) SSW (202 degrees) of Pleasant Hill, CA
10 km (6 miles) SW (224 degrees) of Concord, CA
31 km (20 miles) ENE (63 degrees) of San Francisco City Hall, CA

Over in mere seconds, but it was enough to thrill this California girl to pieces. Oh, and as for the real estate ... well, that came in the form of about 14 homes we saw on our first tour with an agent. Some of the houses were lovely, and some of them were downright horrid. We learned it helps a lot if you give the houses nicknames, like The Brady Bunch House, The Expensive House, and The Serial Killer House. (Turns out, we can probably afford to buy that last one.)