Monthly Archives: January 2013

Cute, but Rotten, Part 1

Warning: the following post contains graphic details and may not be suitable for sensitive readers!

Our dogs Tallis and Chloe got sick the week we were going to leave for Princeton, NJ to be with my family for Christmas. I was on my way to work when Colin called to spread the glad tidings that the dogs had bloody diarrhea. If you’ve been reading along, you may recall that our dogs frequently manage to escape. Whenever I finally catch up to them, they are always greedily chowing down on poop as if they were dining on perfectly executed filet mignon. As you might imagine, this invariably has messy and unpleasant consequences. I could only assume that this was again the source of their gastric distress.

I believe this is what is known in common parlance as a “sh*t-eating grin.”
Cute, but rotten (the dog, not the boy)!

(click through photo for larger view
& complete caption)

I happened to be close to our vet’s office so I stopped in to make sure they could fit Tallis and Chloe into their schedule before immediately driving back home to pick them up to bring them to the vet. When I arrived at the office again with my two poop-eating dogs in tow, the receptionist presented me with two identical estimates to sign. The totals didn’t include the bordatella shots they would have to have because they would be boarded all day, or the Lyme Disease vaccine they both needed. The conservative estimate came to $800. All day at work I kept getting calls from the vet saying that they would have to get yet another x-ray. I was fairly sure when I left my office to pick up the dogs at the end of the day that the total would be closer to $1000. I’m betting there are few who’ve ever paid that kind of money for a filet mignon in the finest restaurant. (I apologize if I have forever ruined filet mignon for any carnivores out there)!

When I arrived, the vet tech brought the dogs out and one of them immediately peed on the floor. I picked them both up so as to forestall any further incidents of this nature and prepared to pay up and leave. The vet came out to the lobby and asked me to come back to have a look at the x-rays. It was the end of a long day. With a dog under each arm and the sure knowledge that I would be forking over a grand for their misdeeds, I wasn’t particularly in the mood to look and so I said wearily, “That’s o.k., I really don’t care.” He looked completely crestfallen, but he didn’t give up. “But I already have them up for you. Come on back, it will only take a minute,” he coaxed. I trudged to the back room where he had the x-rays on a screen. With real professional zeal, he pointed out all the salient bits and then gave me instructions for the special food and medicine the dogs would be on for the following week.

“Well, thanks,” I said glumly as I made my way back out to the lobby.

“Oh wait! Did you see the bag?!” the vet asked.

“Bag?”

“You HAVE to see the bag!” he said excitedly and disappeared into the back room again. He emerged a moment later  triumphantly holding a plastic baggie full of gravel aloft as if it were a trophy.

“This came out of Chloe!” he announced. “We rinsed them off for you so you could see what caused the problem!”

Yes, that’s right. My dogs not only eat poop, they eat rocks too. GENIUSES, these dogs.

The good news is that the total came to a mere $600! I practically danced an Irish Jig when I saw the bill. When I got home and Colin asked how much it had all cost, I crowed “Only $600!” He blanched visibly and looked at me as if I had grown another head. I should have primed him with the previous estimate!

Come back tomorrow to read the incredible story of how I discovered that the dogs really ARE in fact geniuses.

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New Year’s Soup

We spent the New Year in Arlington with my parents, my sister, and my cousin Tina.

On New Year’s Eve we had an epic Monopoly game. It may be the first time we’ve ever played an entire game all the way through.

Nicholas and Teddy played as one person
2012 Monopoly Champion!

One by one players were knocked out. In the final moments, it was down to my sister and daughter…After some ruthless wheeling and dealing that included making puppy eyes at my sister to induce her to trade her Park Place for some inferior property, and then bankrupting everyone with her hotel on Boardwalk, my daughter emerged as the world’s youngest real estate tycoon and the 2012 Monopoly Champion!

The next day we had traditional Korean New Year’s Soup, or  “Dduk Gook.”

Koreans believe that when you eat a bowl of New Year Soup, it marks another year of your life and you become one year older. The white rice cakes represent purity and possibly the moon (for the lunar new year).

It’s hard to find the ingredients for this soup unless you happen to live near a Korean grocery store, but here’s a recipe for my favorite food of all time:

Korean New Year’s Soup

1 package (about a pound) of dduk (chewy oval rice cakes)

8 cups broth (this can be beef, chicken, anchovy broth, etc.)

4 cloves garlic, minced

2-3 tbsps. soy sauce

2-3 scallions cut into 2 inch long pieces

1/3 lb. lean beef sliced into thin slivers, marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper and minced garlic and sautéed

4 eggs

Mandu (frozen dumplings)

Salt and pepper

Sesame oil

Toasted seaweed julienned

1. Soak rice cakes in cold water for 20 minutes

2. Heat broth, add garlic, soy sauce, scallions, salt & pepper. Simmer 10 minutes.

3. Add dumplings and rice cakes to broth and simmer until rice cakes are soft, about ten more minutes.

4. Lightly beat eggs, then stir slowly into simmering soup. (As you’ll see in the photo, my mom separated the yolks and whites of eggs and fried them separately to use as garnish).

5. Stir in 1-2 tsps. sesame oil.

6. Ladle into large bowls and garnish with beef and seaweed strips.

“Saehae bok mah nee bah duh sae yo!” (May your New Year be filled with many blessings).
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Happy New Year!

The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

IMG_1103Many say this is a poem about Hardy’s pessimism and turn from faith and it’s easy to see how it could be read this way.  But it’s also possible to see this as a poem of hope. Against a bleak landscape, an “aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,/In blast-beruffled plume,/Had chosen thus to fling his soul/Upon the growing gloom.” Even if there is “little cause for carolings,” the little bird’s “full-hearted evensong of joy illimited” rings out through the night with “Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew/And I was unaware.”

My resolution for this New Year is to be a little more like this “blast-beruffled bird” and to “fling [my] soul upon the growing gloom” with a song of Hope even when it seems like there is little cause.

May each and every one of us experience moments of “joy illimited” this year.

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