Our last female adult platy fish died last night, and now the male platy that always swam around with her is hiding almost motionless in the low plants. He always seemed a little dim even for a fish; I think maybe he doesn’t know how to swim around unless he’s following someone else.
Also, I am trying not to anthropomorphize this situation and make him a grieving widower, but it’s a little trickier than it would usually be because he ONLY followed her: that is, the other male would follow ANY female platy and didn’t seem to know the difference, but this one ONLY followed this particular female platy. Normally I would be thinking “Do I get a new female platy, or do I just continue the slow natural discontinuation of the fish project?”—but I’m not sure getting a new female platy would even help. Isn’t that…sadder than you’d expect?
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On a school memo to parents: “Volunteers: Please leave younger siblings at home. THANKS!!” Oh, okay, I will just leave a younger-than-a-kindergartner sibling at home, alone or with the other stay-at-home parent because it makes sense there would be two of us home during the day!
I think it’s reasonable to ask volunteers not to bring children. But that should have been made clear BEFORE signing up the volunteers: I saw the memo asking for volunteers and it didn’t mention siblings. Also, that is an obnoxious/unrealistic way to phrase the post-sign-up request. “Leave them at home”?
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A dog pooped on our lawn, and notice how carefully I have edited that from its original version, which was “Someone let their dog poop on our lawn.” Not only is the original version dissatisfying for its singular subject with plural pronoun, but it’s also aggressively accusatory and could be completely unfair. I was so upset about the nearly-unfaceable task of having to clean up that poop (despite being fine with diapers, cat box, other people’s kids’ diapers), I had to use my Coping Thoughts to come up with situations in which it was not as big of an outrage as I was imagining (I use the same technique in mannnnnny situations). I came up with several:
1. This was a dog that got out of its yard unexpectedly. The owners had no idea it pooped on our lawn, and would be mortified if they knew.
2. The owner was walking the dog and stood talking to another walker while standing in front of our house. So intense was the conversation, neither of them noticed the dog. Later, the owner wondered why the dog hadn’t Succeeded on this walk, and spent part of the evening fretting about it and hoping there wouldn’t be an Accident later on.
3. The person walking the dog was doing it as a favor for the owner, who was suddenly hospitalized with a very bad illness. The dog-walker doesn’t own a dog and was also completely distracted by worry about the dog’s owner, and so didn’t think to bring any clean-up equipment. When the dog went on our lawn, the dog-walker was mortified but had no way of dealing with it.
4. This dog is extremely reliable: for a decade, he has pooped one time per day, never more, never less. The owner therefore brings only one clean-up bag. This time the dog pooped twice. The owner was shocked, amazed, and mortified, and intends to bring an extra bag on the very next walk to clean up our yard—but I cleaned it up first, which will make the owner even more mortified.
We FREQUENTLY find dog poo in our yard. I HATE IT.
Nowheymama- It makes me want to post a Passive-Aggressive Note!
I am laughing hysterically at your coping thoughts and thinking that this might be a good option for me. I am FREQUENTLY outraged. I think this sort of self-talk could work for me. At at least distract me.
Our school says the same thing to volunteers, which I TOTALLY get, but it’s also slightly irritating because I can never volunteer.
I apologize on behalf of all dog owners! The fourth option happens to us very occasionally, or we realize too late that we forgot to get a new poop bag for the walk. We always, always try to come back and clean it up, but sometimes things happen (like last week, when our dog normally poops twice a day and pooped FOUR TIMES ack, and we had already used the emergency back up bag for what we thought was going to be the last “extra”).
That was a lot about poop. Sorry.
Even when the dog has already pooped its standard allotment of poop, responsible dog owners STILL bring at least one bag along.
I am a dog owner. The irresponsible ones hack me off tremendously, because I am sure people who aren’t dog lovers are judging all of us by the actions of the clueless ones.
Sorry about the platy.
And I would be so tempted to say, “CPS already has me on their watch list, so I can’t leave the younger sibling at home. I thought everyone at school knew about that. Whew!”
I have to tell you that as a dog walker who always brings a bag, I have been surprised by a second pooping. I now bring two bags. :-)
I have a related question. When I take my dog on a run with me, most of the time I do an out and back route, so if the pooping occurs on the “out” portion of the run, I pick up the poop, leave my bag on the edge of the sidewalk and then pick it up on the way back. I wonder if people see me leave the bag and think mean things about me, or if they realize what I am doing. What would you think if you saw that?
I have TOTALLY been the owner in number four so I can reassure you that this actually does happen (fun additional fact: sometimes I GO BACK with an extra poop bag and clean it up when it happens. Once I forgot to do this, and it was a yard I passed daily, sans dog, and I KEPT forgetting until I saw it–and yes, I WAS mortified. That is exactly what I was.) And actually, if you don’t usually find this sort of thing in your yard, that’s probably what did happen.
(Passive aggressive admission: when a neighbor DIDN’T regularly use a bag, and his dog DID continually poo in our yard, and it built up and built up and built UP, was I a mature and responsible adult who went next door and asked him sternly but nicely to please clean up all the crap in our yard? Oh, no, I was not. I cleaned it all up and put it in a bag and put the bag on his PORCH. Niiiice.)
Wow, that’s alot of thought you put into that dog poop.
That fish story made me teary eyed. It reminded me of my beloved doves. Every day a pair of doves came to sit on our telephone pole wire. Every day. Same time. After dove season was over I noticed only one dove was coming now (my husband tells me they mate for life). I can only guess his mate was killed during season, and he couldn’t find a woman dove that lived up to her, so he came to that wire by himself, every day.
Look who puts too much thought into doves :)
Angela- Ooo, interesting! Let’s see, if I was looking out my window and saw that, I think my FIRST flash reaction would be some outrage, but then I would think, “…Wait. An irresponsible dog-walker wouldn’t BAG UP the poop and THEN leave it behind, so there must be another explanation.” And then I think I’d figure it out, because I’d imagine trying to walk/jog along CARRYING the bag, and also I’d realize I hadn’t been seeing little bags accumulating along the road.
I love your coping mechanisms that all assume people are generally good and non-offensive.
When a dog poops in my yard, I fantasize about putting it in a brown paper bag and then putting it in the dog owner’s mailbox with a note on pretty paper reading, “I think this belongs to you! Have a nice day!”
But I am pretty sure that would get me in trouble with the US postal service.
I always, always bring a poo bag and yet, somehow, despite my outrage at piles of poo along the bike path near our house (the city even has poo pots WITH FREE bags), I have been caught without more times than I would like to admit. I do go back and pick it up and thankfully I have not been beaten to the punch. I am impressed by the coping thoughts and I should use those when I’m screeching about the errant poo I see.
@Angela – I used to do the out and back for running too when we lived at our old place, that did not have a public garbage can on route. I assumed people would see that I took the time to bag it so obviously I would pick it back up. But that might be a big assumption on my part. The bag was always there though.
Melospiza- AHA HA HA HA HA!!! And was there any poop in your yard after that?
Whew! It is good to know that people would figure out what I am doing, at least eventually! :-)
I actually did see a sign one time in someone’s yard – it just said “clean up your poop” – and it was right at eye-level — for a small dog. (Seriously – it was written on a paper plate, stapled to a tongue depressor, stuck in the ground.)
Obviously it wasn’t directed at my dog – it was only at knee level for him, AND I always carry a bag, a spare bag AND a super-secret spare bag – I’ve also been surprised by a completely gratuitous extra poo.
I definitely need to use Coping Thoughts.
HAHAHA!!! I love your coping thoughts!! Hilarious!!! I almost always imagine the exact opposite…the situations in which people are just BAD and WRONG! I should probably start using your method!
There was all this dog poop in our neighbourhood. I was out walking my dog, and someone else was there with her dog – and she let it poop and just kept going. So I did what anyone would do. I passive agressively said “Oh! You must have FORGOTTEN your bag. Here’s one of mine.” Then I thought “You gross bitch”.
We have one of those dog poop baggie canisters attached to our leash, which means we can’t see when it’s about to run out, and every time there is only one bag left, Shorty will poop twice. EVERY TIME. I try to go back and clean it up, but sometimes it doesn’t happen until the next day.
Hopefully your deal is the same thing, but if it happens more and more, then I’d get pissed. I hate it when people don’t clean up after their dogs. I’ve even been known to use freaking kleenex to pick Poop #2 up (after running out of bags) until I got home and could dispose of it properly (Shorty pooped right next to someone’s mailbox while the owner was in their yard, so there was NO WAY I could leave it).
I once had a surprise poo to deal with on a walk (the dog’s poo, not mine) and I was SO PANICKED that someone saw it happen and was judging me for leaving it that I RAN HOME, threw the dog in the house, grabbed a bag, and ran all the way back, the whole time completely freaking out that I would be too late and/or wouldn’t get credit, etiquette-wise, for returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak.
I have such serious outrage issues when it comes to people doing/not doing things that I feel very strongly they should do/not do that I just couldn’t handle the potentially public humiliation and hypocrisy of breaking one of those rules myself.
Perhaps this Coping Thoughts method would be a wise addition to my Crazy Thoughts.
I have the same feelings about dog crap that is currently left on my lawn/the sidewalk in front of my house. It doesn’t seem like a “oops” moment since it happens semi-regularly. Unfortunately I never see the culprit. If I ever witness the act I have resolved to follow the irresponsible dog owner home so I know where they live and can decide what, if any action to take. It is SO IRRITATING to have to clean up after someone else’s dog. If it only happened once or twice, I could dismiss it, but when it happens all the time? That’s different. I empathize! :)
(Also, I agree that it should be clear from the get-go that younger siblings are not allowed on a field trip if they are asking for volunteers. The people most likely to be able to come are the stay-at-home-parents but if they are SAHP then it is not wildly unthinkable that they might have other offspring to attend to!)
Oh I did chuckle when I read “Please leave younger siblings at home.” As if they are inanimate objects like toys or jackets or lunch boxes.
And I will do you all a big favor and not get started on the subject of dog poop on the lawn. But I will say I really admire your attitude!
I love your Coping Thoughts. They would calm me down. (I do a similar thing when I get infuriated by a Terrible Driver or a Rude Salesperson or whatever. Not only does it distract me from the rage, it’s also fun.)
I’m so sorry about the platy. That IS sad. Now I don’t know whether to hope that he hangs in there… or to hope that he passes on quickly so he doesn’t have to endure the loneliness too long.
Ha, ha, love your coping strategies!
I’m not tearing up about the fish thing. There was something in my eye already, damnit! I’ll just go finish cutting these onions.
Yeah, that volunteer thing annoys me. Every time I see it, I wanna say, “Why on earth do you think I’d volunteer my one kid-free afternoon to be around more kids? Please. I’ll be reading a book while I get my toes done.”
On the poop thing, I have to say (perhaps because I’m all sappy about the fish) that some dog poops on the sidewalk in front of our house all the time.
I was getting twitch-eye about it.
Then one day, I happened to see a very, very bent old man, skinny as a stuffed string, with a tiny dog on a leash walking up the way.
This dog pooped on the sidewalk in front of our house, and the man bent over sooooooo slowly, petted the tiny dog, and with great precision, picked up the poop (in a baggie) and then took about ten minutes righting himself again.
From then on, I was all, “fuuuuu…. leave it, dude. It’s more painful to watch you clean up after your tiny dog than it is to accidentally step in it’s tiny poops.”
Okay, I may be totally wrong here, but from what I know about fish, sometimes a male will pursue a female so hard that she literally dies from exhaustion. So my first thought was, “that poor female fish! That jerky male just would not take ‘no’ for an answer to the point of pursuing her TO HER DEATH. At least she’s resting now!”
That “no siblings” rule should totally be brought to your attention before you sign up, and yes, the wording is ghastly. Who the heck can just leave the younger siblings at home? That’s why we are home! With them! DUH!
Love the poop self-talk. Sticky situation. Pun only slightly intended.
I always pick up my dog’s poop but every so often he poops in semi darkness around the edge of the dog park and I just can’t find it. In that instance the next day I will try to find it and if I can’t then I’ll clean up someone else’s dog poop to set the ‘poop karma’ right.
There really is no excuse for not picking up the poop, if they were talking to someone then that person should have told them so (chances of neither of them facing the dog are slim if you include peripheral vision). Maybe if the dog had escaped on it’s own then I could understand it.
You are awesome! =)
I love your coping thoughts. I think it’s really tough sometimes to think the best of people, and I think it’s important to make the effort to try to when you can.
That sounded kind of smarmy. I didn’t mean for it to. I am trying to think the best of people, too.
I think that there are plenty of good reasons that the poop didn’t get picked up, and that being understanding of that is pretty awesome. Like, we all live in the world and have to help each other. If every person just did a little tiny bit more than they absolutely have to, the world would be a much better place.
Also, sometimes when I run with my dog I have to carry the bag of poop and I often put that bag into other people’s house trashcans if they are near enough to the sidewalk that it wouldn’t be weird or creepy – like if it’s trash pickup the next day and it’s a full can. I try not to put poop bags in an empty trash can because ew, but if it’s full or has something else in it and is near the curb, I’m likely to borrow it. Is that awful? I hope not.
I love your coping thoughts! I’m going to try that with things that are similarly frustrating to me, but don’t have to be. I love it.
I thought I was the only one who had coping thoughts like that. Although, I never thought to call them that. And I too have been caught with not enough poop bags. It happens. Also, my SIL takes our dog for walks and I try to remind her to take a bag but I can not promise any such thing happens when I’m not there.
Oh, man, I am going to try Coping Thoughts with prominent politicians who disagree with me radically. Perhaps they all have brain tumors! How sad.
Emily, I’ve thought about doing that before – putting the poop bags in someone’s trash cans – but I’ve never worked up the nerve. I mean, the trash is right there by the curb, it’s going to get picked up the next morning, so where’s the harm in it really?
My dog once threw up on the sidewalk during a walk. I couldn’t even attempt to clean it up because I’d already used the bag and, well, there was just no picking it up anyway. I stood there completely perplexed and mortified.
I just walked away quickly and prayed for rain.
My brother is in his early 20s and roomed with a couple of friends in California. I guess a neighbor of theirs kept letting his dog poop in their yard. Eventually they put a big stake by the sidewalk that said “PICK UP YOUR DOG’S $#!+!” Problem solved.
Walking 2 dogs after dinner, husband with Alzheimer’s following. One needed to poop, I had NO bags. I hurried dogs toward home so he could poop at home or at least lots closer and I would go back and get it. However husband did not realize I had turned a corner and became slightly lost. Dogs put in the yard, I got the car and husband. Moral of the story always carry bags.
Both 1 & (a variation on) 4 have happened to me. Well, I can’t be sure either of our dogs pooped, but there was a time when someone kept opening our gates late at night on the weekend, then Sunday morning we’d be wondering what was taking the dogs so long and then realize our gates had been opened again (we finally got smart & put locks on the gates). But we definitely would’ve cleaned up after our dogs if we’d known if/where they’d gone.
And once while walking with 3 bags and one dog (who generally only goes once per walk) I ran into another dog walker who’d run out of bags. Thinking I actually had 2 spares, I happily shared my extra-extra bag only to have my beloved animal poop 3 damn times over the course of the walk (and yes, I was mortified, and if I’d lived in the area, I would’ve gone back to pick up). Hope that helps you feel better!
I think it’s a little unfair that you saved your Coping Thoughts for someone who let’s his or her dog crap on your lawn (at least I took care of the singular subject/plural pronoun thing) and didn’t save any for the school for their stupidly worded notice. I would assume younger siblings were not included, otherwise you’d have your hands full of younger siblings and how would you chase down the annoying boys who keep running ahead or the annoying girls who go so slowly that you keep losing them behind you?
Bibliomama- I see your point, but I’m more merciful to the individual (who can be expected to make their own batch of mistakes) than to the institution that has vast cumulative experience (because of organizing similar things many times a year for decades) and should know better by now.
This literally JUST happened to me AN HOUR AGO!! I was outside talking with my neighbor while her dog was sniffing around the tree in my front yard. And wouldn’t you know that after they’d gone I took a look and there was a poo that neither of us noticed her dog making. I guess we were too engrossed in our discussion of our backyards to notice. I’m sure my neighbor would be mortified if she knew!!
Long time reader, almost never commenter. Swistle, this post just encapsulates what I love about your blog. So honest, so funny. Sorry for the corniness, just wanted to tell you that, carry on :).
Those coping thought make me love you even more.
Or it could be that someone asked a new-to-the-country exchange student to take their dog for the weekend and they forgot to tell her how its done because they assume everyone who loves dogs knows these things, and then when the dog did its thing she realized she hadn’t seen any dog shit anywhere on the streets and she probably needed to do something but she didn’t know what so she freaked out and ran home with the dog, hiding in shame?
(Can you tell I was that exchange-student once? … )
Your coping thoughts are wonderful!I’m glad to have a name for them.
Any coping thoughts for the memo writer? I would be tempted to respond “I was planning to leave the younger ones locked in the car. Is that okay instead of leaving them at home?” Grrr.
Rah- I had way more trouble with memo-related Coping Thoughts. Institutions are harder than individuals. The best I could do was something like, “So, maybe the school let a volunteer do the memo. And then no one checked it to see if it met the school’s decades of experience with writing such things and so it just went out as-is. And then they let that same volunteer do the correction, again without checking it.” Pretty weak.
This poo discussion fascinates me. I had a poo sitch this week that was horrible and I’d appreciate any advice. My dog (a large dog) had some sort of a stomach issue and she had some runny poos on a walk with lots of people watching. But you can’t clean up that kind of poo with a bag. I felt so judged. I wanted to tell everyone “IT WAS RUNNY, OKAY?!?!?!?”
Ha, I love # 4. We had a 7-bag walk once, and I had only brought 3. I was mortified to have to go back home and get bags, and try to find the other 4.
coping thoughts!! LOL!!
I love you swistle!