Bonkers
Hellhounds, in their never-ending quest to create a hellgoddess as entirely bonkers as they are, have a New Trick. They are STILL causing daily havoc by refusing to eat their supper, final meal of the day, which happens, you know, after midnight . . . sometimes quite a lot after midnight . . . when I would be on my way to bed if I didn’t have non-eating hellhounds in the way.* ARRRRGH. However, since I found a homeopathic remedy that stops Darkness from having a stomach-ache if he misses a meal** I no longer stay up till past dawn hoping they’ll eventually frelling eat.***
They’ve been eating supper somewhat more often than they haven’t lately and . . . I’ll take what I can get. Night before last they wouldn’t eat and I had to go to bed so I could get up for service ring Sunday morning without bursting into tears. I usually pathetically leave the bowls in the crate with them—well it can’t hurt—and Saturday night I had done this, muttering animadversions on the genetic heritage of hellhounds, and then went upstairs, shutting down computer, turning lights off, opening windows and whatever. When I turned the radio off I† heard a funny noise.
Crunch crunch crunch. Crunch. Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.
I went downstairs and turned the light back on. Four hellhound eyes stared at me over two empty bowls. Now this is perhaps the most frustrating part of this particular piece of behaviour: once they’ve started eating they’re hungry! Huuuuuuuuuungry! Huuuuuuuuungry! I don’t want to intimidate them with huge bowls of dog food at the end of the day, so I give it to them by handful. I gave them each a fresh double handful . . . which they ate . . . but when I removed the bowls they came boiling out of the crate after me, or rather after the bowls, looking pointedly at the green jar I keep supper kibble in. ARRRRRGH.
Last night I didn’t have to be up early in the morning so I curled up with my book†† while hellhounds stared at their supper. I read about 100 pages††† . . . and hellhounds had still not touched their supper. FRELL, FRELL, FRELL, FRELL, I said, and other more hellhound-specific imprecations of a non-family-friendly-blog kind, turned the lights out and went upstairs to . . .
Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.
* * *
Singing lesson today. I wasn’t sure what kind of a voice I was going to be able to demonstrate; this migrant virus I’ve got‡ continues to lurk ominously like a hoodlum on a street corner and then rematerialise, swinging a bicycle chain, where least wanted. These bruising appearances have included all organs, orifices, muscles and spaces needed to produce singing noises. It continues to make me crazy‡‡ that the voice is so variable—it’s not just from day to day but from hour to frelling hour.‡‡‡ For someone who is already a trifle prone to feelings of insecurity it is a daily re-enactment of those grisly dreams where you’re about to address a summit of world leaders on the effect of sunspots on the global economy and you have written a speech on first looking into Chapman’s Homer§, or you’re about to sit for the exam that will get you into Oxford/Harvard and you know everything about ancient Sumerian abacus usage and the paper they’ve given you appears to concern the private life of Diophantus, or you’re about to have the interview for a plum job with the most important person in your ideal career field and you’re wearing your nightgown and haven’t washed your hair. Blerg. There is enough quicksand in my life already.
But somehow Nadia wasn’t surprised that I’ve decided, without ever having decided, that I’m going to keep going to Muddlehampton practise and learn all that music I’m not going to be singing in the winter concert. And I try not to think about the fact that I’m now loud enough that anyone making a cup of tea in Nadia’s mum’s kitchen is going to be able to hear me. Although this encapsulates the latest distressing fact preying on my inhibitions: I’m audible. As a first soprano with the Muddlehamptons you can hear me. I said to Nadia, I’m not ready to be audible. Too late, said Nadia, grinning that annoying grin of a successful teacher.
* * *
* If there were another cereal-free whole-food kibble I would be more than happy to try them on it. But choice is limited and they’re already getting what they’ll eat^ and I am extremely loath to cut the list of tolerateds any shorter than it already is. I am also extremely loath to have to cook for hellhounds three times a day rather than only twice.^^ Supper is supposed to be a snack, like me having an apple. But then I don’t have a stomach-ache in the morning if I don’t have an apple before I go to bed.
^ Nothing piscine need apply, for example, and beef makes them itch
^^ Although I think in fact fresh roast chicken is probably cheaper than this stuff, which is what they get for supper http://www.orijenpetfoods.co.uk/ and which up until a few months ago they appeared to like—relatively speaking. Lunch and dinner it’s the lamb & veg and turkey & veg cereal free http://www.wellbeloved.com/products/dog_food.aspx with chicken scraps and stock, which Peter makes with the carcasses, and anything else suitable us mere humans have lying around. They’re very fond of chicken liver.+ That makes three of us. No, mine! Mine! Being hellgoddess must have some privileges!
+ Well . . . fond. We are talking about hellhounds and food here.
** One of my many grudges against ConMed—conventional medicine—is its blind prejudice against what it calls anecdotal evidence. But then I don’t believe in objectivity: it’s all subjective, to a greater or lesser degree, and the fact that most labcoats believe that a well-run scientific experiment produces pure, unbiased and unassailable results only makes me less inclined to believe them because the essential fallibility of mortals is being ignored. My one-rat experiment with Darkness says that if I remember to give him his remedy on a night he’s not eating, he’ll be okay in the morning, and will eat his lunch. If I don’t remember, he’ll have borborygmi I can hear from the upstairs hall when I come downstairs in the morning—and won’t eat his lunch, at least not without a lot of palaver. Homeopathy. It works.
*** Don’t be silly. Of course feeding them earlier doesn’t help. I just assume I’ll be getting another couple of chapters read or another square knitted very last thing while waiting on hellhounds.
† Here’s another good Word grammar catch. It wants me to replace ‘I’ with ‘me’. Okay, so when I’ve moved the radio off me, who is hearing the funny noise that presumably I am making because there was a radio on me?
†† I’ve kind of gone off Montezuma since I got to the end of it the first time. That’s it? That’s all you get? You’ve penetrated into the deepest something of the something or other to achieve the archaeological ultimate and . . . that’s it?
This is not to say that if Montezuma 2 comes out for iPhone I won’t immediately download it.
††† I am a slow reader
‡ I keep thinking of that Gary Larson cartoon—‘You’ve got cows, Mr Blahblah’.
There are a few Larsons on the web but I can’t find that one. I’d at least direct you to the correct book but I haven’t a clue where it is.
‡‡ Speaking of bonkers
‡‡‡ Since I’ve found that I get more out of x amount of practise time if I split it in two, even if it’s only twenty minutes, this has become conspicuous. I’m also noticing, with a combination of bemusement and dismay, that I can no longer afford to miss. Used to be—just a month or two ago—missing a day didn’t, you know, show, as long as I learnt the tune I was trying to sing. Now if I want to make Better Noises I pretty well have to sing every day. When a you’ve-got-cows virus is trying to shut you down this is quadruply frustrating.
§ http://www.bartleby.com/101/634.html
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