askyermom

A peculiar tension is clinging to me these days. Aside from the baseline doom worry, I have a menu of worries a bit closer to home. Somehow dipping in and out of worry about the real things isn’t enough. I have to worry about imaginary things too.

At night, I heard noises in my attic and woke convinced that the presence of wrestling weasels would explain the sounds perfectly. While it’s possible that my neighbors have weasels and let them roam in the walls, so many other things are more likely. For one thing, it’s easy to attribute noises overhead that come from below in this house. It’s happened before. Boo makes a lot of rumbling racket when she’s just having her midnight snack. Owls could be up to mischief on my roof, which would sound exactly like critters in the attic. Why jump to the conclusion it’s demons or weasels? Birds on the roof are so much more likely, especially this time of year when all the birds seem to be losing their little bird minds. Eggs.

When Tofu (the dog) was limping, my first thought was dire. When he suddenly becomes a three legged dog, we have a lot of adjusting to do. I can carry him on the stairs, but he has a strong dislike for being held. In fact, I was only able to catch him easily because he was impaired with the limp. Once I had scooped him up, I could see the problem. His toes were crossed and stuck because his claws are longer than they should be. This is my fault, too. My pets don’t have enough work to do, so they need manicures, which they fend off like attempts at slaughter. Freaks.

I made the command decision to just do it. I picked him up and plied him with snacks and lopped off a few claws before he lost his mind. Then, remembering my psychology classes (which do not have much bearing on dogs except that some experiments start with dogs), I recalled that intermittent reinforcement is a powerful tool. I planned to pick him up half a dozen times for nothing but love and praise, and then just occasionally pick him up for claw maintenance. It’s exactly the sort of half-assed method I always land on and I’m pretty sure the reinforcement is just confusing everyone. So far, we have trimmed 60% of his toes and he still clickety clacks on the wood floors. Fine.

My worst-case imagination is still fired up every day. If I pick up my phone and see too many notifications, I am certain somebody died. So far, nobody has texted me a death notice directly. Cool.

I have also begun to notice a dynamic that may be specific to women of a certain age. People visibly relax when I say that I am leaving. Am I stressing them out, too? Huh.

Anyway, I’m outta here!!

Love,
yermom

If you want to, you can buy my book, Don’t Eat Your Children!! Word is that it is on Hoopla, although I can’t tell because my library doesn’t use the Hoopla book section. Let me know if you can borrow it!! In those situations it should be FREE, because libraries are great!!