Trees

As we all know, the State of California is in a budget crisis.  Despite having the highest income and sales tax rates in the country, we spend so much that we can only sustain our budget during times of economic boom.  So, when we are in a recession, we go into a budget deficit.  It's like having a two-income household, always spending more than your two incomes can afford and then one of you gets laid off.  It ain't good.  But, Californians always find new ways to spend every new dollar when times are good and never save the surplus for rainy days.  So, today we find ourselves in financial trouble and, despite the Governator's pleadings for new taxes, the voters (the few that showed up to vote) said no and rejected all the new tax propositions.  I was one of those voters.  But, my record is consistent in every election:  I always vote NO on any new spending plan or taxation plan regardless of what it is for.  I love our vets and our children and our elderly and our firefighters and our police, but I am not willing to pay any more taxes than I am currently paying to this State.   If the State wants to fund new stuff, they have to budget for it or they have to skimp on something else, not keep raising more money.  

So, here is the real story:  I came home a couple days ago to find a tree cutting truck parked at my home.  The guys told me that they were sent by the City to cut my trees that were growing too close to the telephone and electric wires.  I was pleased that the City was going to cut my trees without my having to pay for it (I would have willingly paid for it or hired my own gardener to do it since it is a safety issue), but I found it odd that while the Governator is threatening to cut health and education spending, that tree trimming was still being done.  But there is more.  Next, I noticed another critical City service being performed in my neighborhood.  Apparently, the storm drains in the City are allowing trash to flow out to the ocean so a team of men were now installing these specially crafted metal screens in the openings of all the storm drains.  Again, I think this is a wonderful cause but have I mentioned the cuts in education and healthcare?!?  Hello!  Is this thing on?  I mean, shouldn't certain services be stopped completely before we cut essential services like police, fire-fighting, medicine and education?  What special interest group is up in Sacramento lobbying for the tree cutting company or for the storm drain screen installer company?  Maybe the cost of these services is small relative to the cuts required in the budget but still!  Cut the crap and stop asking us to pay more in taxes, you idiots.

Sniffing Tails

I own a mutt, a mixed breed, a half-breed. Well, before you conjure up images of a pound-puppy rescued moments before being put down by lethal injection, let me explain that my mutt cost a bloody fortune and is a member of the now oh-so-chic new breed called Labradoodle. Yes, I know what you're thinking; this is hardly a mutt. It is, in fact, the newest trend in dog breeding; mixing poodles with whatever else they'll be willing or be forced to mate with, adding "-oodle" to the end of the new name and selling it for more than you can get for a purebreed. You have schnoodles, goldendoodles, labradoodles (mine), etc.... The amusing thing is that had a purebred poodle ever lowered himself or herself in the past to mate with a labradore or a golden retreiver etc, the owners would be forced to find homes for a litter of unwanted mutts or they would end up at the animal shelter awaiting certain doom. But now, these mutts are desired and people will pay thousands of dollars for them and even mail-order them, sight-unseen and drive to the airport to pick them up from their flight from their birthstate of Kansas or Montana.  (No, we didn't mail order ours.  In fact, we literally stumbled upon Jake at a pet store as we were "window shopping."  He was there, looking soooooo cute that we made a rash decision and bought him.  I don't regret it for a moment but I am trying to justify how it happened that we paid way too much money for a pet dog when there are plenty of them available to be adopted at the animal shelter.  I know; shame on me.  Fine, get over it.)

The funny thing is that dogs don't have any clue that they are one kind or another. They are just dogs.  Their owners, on the other hand, know exactly how much they paid for their canine friend and exactly how many champions are in their dogs pedigree.  So, it was with amusement that I came across a certain dog on a recent hike in the beautiful Santa Monica mountains. I was hiking with my family and, of course, our labradoodle Jake, when we came upon another man and his dog. When we got close and I leaned over to pet his dog on the head, I said, "He looks like he has some lab in him." Well, he did look like he was at least part lab! And because Jake is part lab, I was proud to notice it in another fellow pooch. But, apparently, I offended the happy looking-like-a-lab dog's owner who suddenly pulled him from my hand, sneared at me and almost shouted, "He is a PUREBRED lab!" Yikes! I must tell you that I was a professional dog-trainer at one point in my life and to me that dog looked like he had lab in him, but not like he was a pure lab. But, I couldn't help but be shocked at the man's response and apparant horror at my lack of discernment. Thinking about it later, I realized that he must have paid a crap-load of money for that dog to be THAT offended.

When I was a kid, my parents adopted a dog named Kutchie (the name is whole other story) who was clearly a mutt and was found scrounging for food at a trash bin. We loved that dog and I remember crying like a baby when I heard that she had died. I was in college and she had turned 15! But, being a true unwanted mutt, she never had a chip on her shoulder and neither did her owners. We knew she was a mutt and no-one could offend us by confusing her breed or by wrongly guessing at her unknown ancestry. But this apparant labradore (I still think someone screwed someone from outside the family) was way too stuck up.  I mean, his owner was way too stuck up.  Whatever.  You know what I mean! 

Chicken Soup for the Bowl

While making chicken soup for this year’s Passover meal, my wife and I debated whether to keep the actual chicken after the soup is made or to toss it away.  If you have ever made chicken soup you know that the whole point of the chicken is to provide that wonderful flavor for the soup and that as good as the chicken pieces look down there in the pot, by the time the soup is done they have transformed themselves into a tasteless item that no longer tastes like chicken.  In fact, they no longer taste like anything; they no longer taste.  Yet, some people like chicken pieces in their soup.  Therefore, my wife decided to add new chicken pieces into the soup towards the end of the cooking process in order to have chicken pieces that actually taste like, well, chicken.  Yet any decent soup has a determination and mission of its own and will suck the flavor out of the chicken regardless of when you try to sneak it in.  (which really begs the question of why soup takes so long to cook!)  Anyway, I am not intending to write about soup, nor about chicken.  It is just that in my mind, the soup conundrum suddenly became a metaphor for the way my wife and I parent and I think it may be this way for many couples.  In my mind, parenting is similar to making a really good soup; you put tremendous effort into the preparation and keep a watchful eye on the process and give it all the hours it requires and stir and spice etc, except that in the case of parenting, me and my wife are the chicken and I can’t help but wonder whether there will be anything left of us by the time the soup is off to college!

Parenting is an all consuming event.  You make your best efforts to bring home the proverbial bacon (yes, I am sticking with food!) and the rest of your time is spent making soup.  In other words, your home time is spent raising the kids, and taking them to school and to sports and to doctors and helping them with homework.  And, if you can afford it or if you can make the required sacrifices, mom quits her job to “be there” for the kids.  (I think that is the equivalent of throwing in the extra chicken pieces.)  You do it because you want to give even more for the children.  Have I mentioned private school or semesters abroad or orthodontia?!?  You get the point.

But, I think there is more to consider.  Parenting can suck the flavor out of the previously giddy, about-to-have-a-baby couple.  The decisions about parenting are, I have discovered, very different from previous decisions which revolved around spicy tuna vs. spicy yellowtail or Paris vs. Cancun or which of  Dunn Edwards’ 600 shades of white to paint the living room.  Parenting decisions can be very stressful and can take a toll on the couple in a manner from which they often do not recuperate.  Sure, they CAN recuperate but they don’t because they are constantly PARENTING!  Soccer, baseball, basketball, All-Stars, travel teams, orthodontist, Hebrew school, tutoring, school musical, school fundraiser, school book-fair, school this, school that…it never ends. 

If your kids are REALLY lucky, you or your spouse are not just dropping them off but, rather, are coaching the teams or volunteering in the school or a member of the PTA or, God help you, chairperson of anything at all!  Can you hear the screaming or am I the only one?  Seriously, why is it that while the average human heart is so hard to hear that the doctor has to use a stethoscope to hear it and has to put the cold stethoscope under your shirt to hear it and has to ask you to be quiet to hear it, that I can hear the pounding of my heart just fine with no instruments and only wonder if it is disturbing people around me?!?

Anyway, I love my kids.  I really do.  And I love my wife.  Seriously!   But, we need to find a way for us to hold a little back and for each other.  Otherwise, I will be chicken soup.  Not soup itself.  I mean I will be working in a restaurant serving soup because that might be the only job I get once they release me from the insane asylum to which I am otherwise most assuredly headed.    Maybe soup is too hot an item to entrust to a former asylumee.  Is that a word?  MS Word is indicating that it is not but I like it, so there.  

I have to share this with my wife.  Thank God for Blackberry’s.  Now, I can email it to her where-ever she is and she can actually multi-task (a trait God held back from the average man) and read it while doing the sixteen other things in which she is otherwise currently engaged.   Back to the stove.