My husband has purchased a set of very sturdy pet stairs for the dogs to use when they clamber up into bed. I feebly protested that dogs shouldn’t sleep in bed with humans, but I think I lost that battle many years ago. The S_________ family treats their pets like their biological superiors. (Just to clarify, the in-laws pets are not actually superior to them.) I never grew up with the idea that my pets were even my equals because they died so easily, and I did not. I did not have much luck with the smaller pets:

Othello, the Black Moor bug-eyed goldfish. Died after first water change. Autopsy was inconclusive in determining cause of death. (I asked “Why (sniff) whyyyy?” — I believe Dad might have jokingly volunteered his college dissection kit and I took him up on it.)
Unnamed goldfish. Died when I was at summer camp. Parents popped him in the freezer so I could thaw him out and slice him open when I got home. Goldfish guts spilled out. Accidental death. I accused parents of over-feeding him.
Othello II, second Black Moor goldfish. Died after first water change. Second Black Moor death, second autopsy, also inconclusive.
A Fish I wanted to name Othello III, but my mother advised I just name it ‘Dead Fish’: Died (no!) after the first water change. Again, the autopsy was futile. But, cold cases are often solved years later. Here’s some hard evidence: in North County where I grew up the water pipes are lined with lead so a massive amount of chlorine is added to balance the water.
Salmonella-carrying green water turtle (name forgotten): Bleached to death. I wasn’t trying to kill him, or to make him a lighter shade of green. There was a bowl in the sink upside down in a liquid that looked just like water. Looked like a water turtle might enjoy swimming in it. Mom, who was bleaching the bowl, was horrified to discover the turtle swimming (frantically) in the bleach and suggested it might be great to give the turtle its freedom, like liberating the slaves. Mom and Dad and I drove off and Dad set him down at the side of the road and claimed he waddled off happily in the grass. Or, as I heard later, just sat there like a dead bleached turtle.

Larger animals, on the other hand, were almost immortal. The box turtle and the bullfrog both defecated large quantities and climbed on the poo to escape (ingenious – top of my list of worst-case scenario escape plans). Tom the cat was shot by B.B’s, but Pansy, his sister, who escaped after we moved, returned five years later. Sweet Pea the nasty cat took a one-way trip to the Humane Society after Dad died and I did not miss her.

Obviously the smaller pets are the least durable. Birds in particular are far too fragile to be pets. My grandmother had a canary named Tweety (I did not name it) who died while flying freely around my amputee grandmother’s apartment. She looked around for Tweety, did not see him, looked on the carpet and saw a pair of wheelchair tracks leading right to (and over) Tweety’s lifeless corpse. (We tried not to laugh when she told us about it.) Mom gave her a box turtle as a replacement.

Sandy, my sister-law had a lovely Sun Conure parrot who loved breasts. It would unbutton your blouse with its beak to get to your bra straps and chew on the plastic. It would snuggle into Sandy’s ample bosom. And then one day, Sandy woke up from a nap and saw two claws and feathers sticking up out of her cleavage. Crushed by her boobs. Tragic.

I thought of this when Gary insisted the dogs have steps so they can climb up to a Bed of (Potential) Death. I didn’t want to say anything to upset the Great Chain of Being that exists in our house: rocks at the bottom, then the germs, then Gary, then the dogs, then me, then the angels and archangels. Besides, I think Gary feels that if he rolls over on Mac or Doug they will just use their superior strength to toss him over the side of the bed.

My nascent band, The Incestuous Pandas (and high props to Libby, who added the all-important “The”), is coming along very slowly. My band-mate Gary has not been cooperating. Friction in the band already.

First, he doesn’t like the name. “The Incestuous Pandas?” he asked scornfully, as if it were not the best band name ever.

“Sassafras Brass?” I calmly replied. (Sassafras Brass was his high school Tijuana Brass knockoff band. I am amazed they were not ritually pantsed.)

Also, he decided to practice his drums loudly while I was trying to learn power chords from a DVD. I needed to listen to the DVD and to listen to the noises my guitar was making, which were sadly not at all like power chords. This made me frustrated with my guitar-playing ability for the first time in the month I have been playing.

I sought help from Kevin, the guitar guy at work. I plopped down on his desk in frustration and sighed, “Kevin, aren’t power chords supposed to be easier to use than regular chords?”

“Power cords?” he asked, confused.

“Yeah, power chords. I’m having trouble, and I thought they were supposed to be easy to use. They’re awful. My regular chords are even better than the power chords.”

“I guess, maybe…” he said with a strange look. “How are the regular cords different than the power cords?”

“Well, it’s like they expect me to have eight fingers to use them.”

“Ooooookkkaaaaaay…”

“And they sound sick.”

“OH. Power CHORDS.” He looked relieved. “I thought you meant power cords.”

Kevin was able to recommend that for power chords I go against all previous guitar advice and hold my thumb in the prohibited fret-strangling position. It is good to have a guru at work.

I truly hope to be able to post a song soon. However, right now it would sound something like this (feel free to hum along):

“Wake up Maggie, I” (look at hand, change chord) “think I got something to” (look up D in book, versus D7, which is an upside-down D, which is confusing, check hand, get confused, double-check book and then hand again) “say to you. It’s” (A’s are easy) “late September and I” (Gs, also easy) “really should be” (D, not to be confused with D7, and of course it is and requires double-checking again) “back at school.” I won’t even get into “Oh Maggie, I couldn’t have tried any more” which has an F#m which requires much page-turning and book-research.

Look for it soon. “The Incestuous Pandas: the Basement Tracks.”

Okay, Gary and I got each other joint Christmas presents. I got us an electric guitar to share. I was delighted when he got home, grabbed it, and promptly discovered his big fat hammy fingers are not suited for fitting between the frets. First I tuned our – well, my – guitar with a tremendous electric tuner that lights up when you are in tune. Then we had to go to Walmart. I’m sure those of you with guitars know why we had to go. Tuning ones guitar makes the strings break, especially if one is trying to reach a note that is actually five notes down, not up, the scale.

Then Gary had a work emergency, so I concentrated on Ding, the guitar. Ding is a used dark red Epiphone Special with a charming (and economical) ding on the front. It occurred to me later that “Chip” might have been a better name, but he’s more of a Ding than a Chip. I wound the new strings, got Ding in tune, plugged Ol’ Ding in, and printed the tabs for the easiest Barenaked Ladies song (“Maybe Katie”): D. E. A. Easy! I was thrown off for a few hours because I had printed out the piano chords and was searching for A major. But by the time Gary got back I could play all three chords.

Of course, I couldn’t play them in sequence. We cranked up the CD player and I went through it once playing all the As, then again rocking out on the Ds, then a big finale of just the Es. (“raaahhhhhahah! rahhhh!!!” – crowd noises.)

One the other hand, it seems Gary has decided to ignore my decline into early adolescence and prepare for my eventual slide into early childhood. He bought us bikes for Christmas. His and Hers Schwinns. I rode mine on the Target parking lot and found that indeed, you never do forget how to ride a bike. This is not good if your unforgettable bike is a one-speed with coaster brakes , and your new bike is a ten-speed with handle brakes. (What the hell? When did they change that?) Pedaling backwards is now very ineffective. I know I’ll be about to crash and my instincts will take over and I’ll start pedaling backwards.

Next: Binkies.

It’s building up to my favorite time of year. Holiday Tea time? you ask. Christmas? No, more even than those I love late December, because it’s Retrospective time of year, in which I review all the Year in Reviews. I think it should be a national holiday. (And it should be a national holiday in China, too, just on a different day.) It should be called Review Day, or Day of Retrospection.

And it shall be a marathon day of of every breaking news story and all of the year’s celebrity breakups. And we shall purge our lives of the previous year in one binge and then we shall begin on the next year. Like a Day of Atonement, without the Atoning. In the morning people will go through their homes and ship to Goodwill anything that hasn’t been touched in the previous year. We shall eat all the leftovers in the fridge and freezer. And the news channels shall have a special starting at noon called “In Case You Missed It – January!” Followed at 1 pm by “February – Month of Crisis!” and so on until midnight.

Sure, you say, that’s called New Year’s Eve, dumbass. I say no, New Year’s Eve is about Next Year, plans, resolutions, Day of Retrospection is about the previous year, and you’re the dumbass, dumbass. It could be on New Year’s Eve eve, because I really hate it when things happen after the magazines and specials come out. Oh, like the tsunami last year. As if it weren’t enough of a tragedy, it happened on the 25th, too late for the publication deadlines.

I love the passage of time. I love aging. Another year closer to death? No, another year further from childhood. Another year in which things have become better, in general.