This Is Where You Leave Me.

Thirty-six years ago at about this time, my mother was nearing the end of her pregnancy and commented to her best friend that she was going to buy her kid a puppy after she turned 2 or 3 years old. She was expecting a girl and had no plans for more kids and didn't want her kid to grow up alone. Then I came along and it was obvious my sister would not grow up alone, so mom forgot all about her puppy promise. By the time we hit 3, she'd acquired a third kid and had no plans for more stuff to deal with. Then, her BFF reminded her that her exact words pre-baby were, "Whatever comes outta there is getting a puppy". She made the comment in reference to her mom joking that she'd yet to give birth after her due date came and went and maybe she was carrying a non-human baby. Well...grandma wasn't wrong. And technically, mom still had a promise to keep. Fortunately, our household was quite large at the time so she decided a dog would have plenty of people to care for it besides her. We were 3 and our brother was 2 when our first pet, Lady, came into our lives. As we grew up, she became more mom's dog than ours and adored our grandmother, who claimed she couldn't stand her but secretly liked her. In fact, it was Lady who woke us up when grandma was in distress one night and had to be rushed to the hospital. Our companion wasn't even in the same room when she sensed something was wrong, she was three doors away. Sadly, that would be the last time Lady would see grandma because she passed away a week later in the hospital. For a month after her death, Lady sat near grandma's bedroom door and howled off and on. It was awful to listen to but helped everyone cope in a weird way. Like everyone was on the same page with how much we missed grandma.
Less than a decade later, a now greying Lady started to exhibit signs of not being well. We were all teenagers by then and so was she, we'd all grown up together. We gave it a few days to see if she would improve but she got worse and one day she started refusing to eat or drink. We went into panic mode and called the vet to see about getting her in on an emergency basis but they said those appointments cost mofo money, money that we didn't have. We pawned a bunch of stuff and came up with most of it and took her in. It turned out she had multiple tumors in her stomach and there was nothing they could do. That same afternoon, we decided we had to put her down. It was all so sudden, from waking up that morning with nothing being amiss to going to bed that night with her no longer around. I remember holding her in the backseat while we drove home and finding a box to put her in before we buried her in the yard. It was the worst feeling and, at the time, only the second significant loss of a loved one I'd ever experienced (ah, those were the days, huh?).

As I start this post, it's 3:00 on a Wednesday and I'm grappling the fact that I'll have to put another beloved family pet down on Friday. And the circumstances could not be more different than they were with Lady. After she passed away, we didn't even consider another pet because so much else was going on. But a few years later, the summer before my senior year of high school, my sister and I decided to get another dog. Mom was somewhat against it since she hoped we'd both be leaving for college the following fall and she knew neither of us would be able to take a dog with us. But she saw what it meant to us to have another one so she relented. Bud was around four months old and full of personality when we got him. Very high strung, very needy in terms of always wanting be around people and play. And he got attention from everybody in the household as life ebbed and flowed, becoming more my dog for that first year and then living with my sister, her eventual husband and their newborn for part of the next year. Once I got past my freshman year of college, he came out to live with me and Y for the rest of our college days. Part of what made my choice to move to NY a difficult one was that I knew I wouldn't be able to bring him with me. My job at the time was all hours and I was never home, so I moved him back in with my sister. Her son was a toddler during that time and deaf in one ear and he and Bud had some issues, so he ended up back with mom and, in a similar situation to the one decades early with grandma and Lady, she claimed to not love him as her own when she actually did. She and Bud have remained together ever since, though he's also spent time at my sister's with the kids quite often (custody arrangements for animals are all the rage nowadays).

Bud has been mostly healthy his entire life, which is somewhat remarkable since he's a small dog and they can sometimes have a lot of issues and shorter lifespans. It wasn't until the last few years that he's had arthritis problems that affected his mobility. Still, his spirit was strong and he was still able to get around okay and eat and drink. But the last year he's slowly started to decline. Miss N and I see him and spend time with him every time we go home and he's always happy to see us and play with her. We noticed the signs of dementia late last year, but were working through it with him and having moderate success, as much as you can considering the circumstances. But I could tell he was changing. He seemed to no longer recognize us at times and was often unsure of where he was and frightened of his surroundings. He began to decline more as the year turned over, but not rapidly. It was not until last month that he began having sleep issues and his mobility became severely limited. He whimpers whenever he has to move too much and mostly sleeps without any real quality of life left. He can't move himself, shows no interest in playing anymore. There used to be some shades of his playful personality but now there's none of that. Unfortunately, the end is here for Bud.

We've lived with the fact that Bud was probably on his way out for months now but did not have to make that final decision until the last few days. Now that a date has been set and I know that the next few days will be his last, I'm finding it difficult to cope. There was no making and living with the decision with Lady, no countdown to doom. It had to be done in the moment and we knew it so we did it. This time...it kills, man. I know it's the right thing and I know he's had a long and very good life, certainly longer than anyone anticipated. But that doesn't make it any less difficult. I've spent much of the last 24 hours with him and it's been tough. I want to change my mind and say he's fine and let's not go through with it, but I know that's not an option. His quality of life is not good and no matter how many moments of apparent lucidity he has, it's all just illusion. Dogs are conditioned not to show pain and while I have a feeling he knows what's coming, and that he's ready for it, he's still as scared as we are.

Part of me wondered if I wasn't being overly emotional about this whole thing. Since the decision was made, I've had moments where I think of something involving him and I tear up. I know putting our first dog down was harder on mom than it was on us since the dog had become more hers than ours. But this time the roles are reversed. And Y pointed out another reason as to why I may be so emotional over it. It's the end of an era, in many ways. We grew up with Lady but we came of age with Bud. When we got Lady, I was a toddler and when we lost her, I was a teenager. When we got Bud, I was almost an adult and now I'm a father who's on the doorstep of turning 36. He and I have been through some major losses together. He predates the Dark Ages. He predates my memory issues. He's seen all the good and the bad. He's the last real tie to who I used to be. It's not just the loss of a pet or a loved one, it's the end of an entire time period. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when he's gone.

I'm Burning On The Inside And The Truth Is That I Didn't Know How Good You Were Until You Were Gone

What is that saying? Be with someone who knows what they have when they have you? That seems to be difficult to follow through on. For most of my twenties, I was one of those who sheltered in place with one person while inadvertently keeping one eye open for something more thrilling. It wasn't intentional, it was more like I felt there had to be something...more out there. And maybe there's something to that behavior for certain people because eventually I found L and now I don't have eyes for anyone else. Count me among those that knows what they have when they have it. I wrote before that L's ex let her get away and still regrets it and now I fear something similar may be playing out with my cousin and his girlfriend of almost three years.
These two crazy kids were a slow burn. They met through a mutual friend and were kinda half in and half out of a relationship for months before finally making a commitment. He broke it off about a six months later in a get-your-ish-together-then-call-me type situation. That break hit her harder than she thought it would and when she got him back, she made damn sure to seal off all the exits. I remember her telling me at the time that no split had ever affected her in such a way and it forced her to grow up a bit. Things were great between them for most of the last year, especially towards the end of 2016. But a few weeks ago, Y discovered she's pregnant and it's caused a number of us to take stock of our own lives, including the cousin. For as long as I can remember, he's wanted to be a father and have the traditional family thing he didn't have growing up. His loser ex-girlfriend claimed to want those same things but then woke up one day and decided she didn't and that was the end of that. He's been very conscious of what happened there and how she played him and determined to avoid the same thing happening again. And he wasn't worried about it, at least not too much, until this whole Y thing hit. He and I had a long convo about relationships and life and I told him I saw another youngin in my future with L at some point, probably sooner rather than later given our ages. I've always said I won't procreate after 40 and that's looming on the horizon. The cousin is younger than me, he'll be 33 in a few months, but his girlfriend is younger by two years and has a different view on the whole family thing. She's always been up front about how she's on the fence about kids and I think neither of them saw it as an issue because it was so early in the relationship. But now it's becoming an issue because he's starting to feel like it's not going to pan out the way he wants it to and he's going to be left to start over again - again. So what did he do? Started a whole big thing that may result in their demise. *sigh*
The first split of these two did not last very long. She realized how much she loved him and how great he was. The cause of the first split definitely had a hint of her not knowing what she had when she had him. But this time I think the roles have been reversed. He's so preoccupied with not falling into the trap he did with his ex that he's about to sabotage something that's been an incredibly good influence on him. In other words, he's the one who doesn't realize what he has while he still has it. I'm not saying he should chuck away what he needs or his desire for a family. But I think they should talk things out, rather than this dramatic thing where he takes off and keeps them in a state of suspended animation. She's a mess because she knows she doesn't want to lose him and she knows that she very well could decide she wants kids. She never saw herself as wanting that prior to him but now there is some appeal to it. She also takes the view that they're still relatively young and have time to decide what the future holds for them. He's been waiting a long ass time to have a family, but it's all doomed to fail if he's too afraid to take a leap of faith.

Just Like Romeo & Juliet

I did not watch the second season of, "90 Day Fiancé" because all of the couples seemed boring as hell. But they sucked me back in this season with the promise of updates on the greatest reality TV couple in the history of ever, Danielle and Mohamed. For those not familiar with the show, it follows Americans who are engaged to foreigners as they decide whether to marry before the foreigner's fiancé visa expires. The visa is valid for 90 days and if the couple doesn't marry in that time, the foreigner has to return to their motherland (I know what you're thinking but L doesn't need me for a green card.). Danielle and Mohamed were one of the original couples on the show's first season and they went viral because the red flags were literally everywhere. Mohamed was a skinny 27-year-old from Tunisia when the relationship began, while Danielle was a larger women in her early 40's who never put a "G" on the end of a word in her life. A mother of four from Ohio, Danielle's grammar is atrocious; leavin', cheatin', runnin'...you get the picture. Despite having the thickest pair of glasses I have ever seen in my life, Danielle still somehow manages to miss how sketchy Mohamed's intentions are. She's visited him once in Tunisia, emptying out her savings much to the dismay of the three teenage daughters who live with her, before deciding to bring him over on a fiancé visa. When Mohamed is late meeting her at the airport, Danielle has a full on ugly cry meltdown in front of her brother and her daughters. She worries he changed his mind because she's not good enough for him. But soon Mohamed appears and they go to the small apartment she lives in, where things immediately go downhill. Mohamed is dismayed to find the living quarters so small and when pressed by a producer about his physical attraction to his new fiancé, all he can muster is that she is "acceptable" for him. Prior to his arrival, Mohamed apparently laid down the law about the sleeping arrangements, telling Danielle they could not have sex until they were married because his Muslim faith forbids it. Soon it turns out there's all kindsa things Mohamed can't do because he's Muslim; can't hold hands, can't kiss her, can't show affection in front of people, can't speak of his affection for her in front of the cameras. If Mohamed could invoke his faith to get out of doing the dishes, he would and Danielle would believe it too. Much of the next 90 days are spent arguing while Mohamed goes back and forth about whether he's going to marry her at all. Twice, the electricity in the apartment is shut off and eventually Danielle comes clean about how in debt she is, which prompts a visit to a lawyer who tells a shocked Mohamed that once they get married, he inherits her debts. He keeps Danielle in suspense about whether they'll marry right up until the actual wedding day, telling her he'll go through with the marriage but only if she keeps him in the loop on the finances. Danielle would literally do anything to hold onto him, so she agrees. The wedding is small and awkward as hell with Mohamed declining to kiss the bride because it's Ramadan and, once again, he can't do something he doesn't want to do because Muslim. That's where their story left off on the TV show, but it continued on the interwebs. Both Mohamed and Danielle's Facebook profiles were public and both of them reveled in the attention the show brought them. Until the attention turned negative, telling Danielle he was clearly scamming her for a green card and claiming Mohamed was cheating with numerous other women. Eventually, they clamped down the security settings on their profiles and stepped away from the attention.
This season, TLC decided to check in on the saga that is Danielle and Mohamed and I am here for it, ya'll. According to Danielle, Mohamed received his green card a little over a year into the marriage and promptly peaced out. She doesn't know where he is and she says he never contributed to the marriage or finances, yet all the bills were in his name so she can't manage the accounts now that he's gone. Her family has cut her off until she gets rid of Mohamed, her son has been arrested and given probation for allegedly threatening Mohamed and her oldest daughter has moved out of the apartment because of the unhealthy environment. Still, Danielle refuses to let him go. The one friend she apparently has left goes with her to try and find him and tells her she should cut her losses and divorce him already. Danielle goes back and forth about the idea in an almost manic fashion, agreeing it's the right move in one breath, then proclaiming her love for him in the next. Eventually, she opts for an annulment because a lawyer tells her it's highly likely he will be deported if it goes through. The only hitch is she can't find him to serve the papers. It turns out Mohamed is in Miami with a woman named Luisa who he met on Facebook, though he claims they're not sleeping together. Despite having been flown to various destinations across the US since he got married, every trip sans his Mrs., Mohamed claims he has never been unfaithful to Danielle. The women were supposedly just being friendly by flying him places and paying his way. Luisa, however, turns out to be more than mooch Mohamed bargained for. He says she convinced him to move to Miami by saying it was more diverse and thus provided him more opportunities to find work. She also allegedly told him she'd pay for them to share an apartment and hook him up with her friends who could get him jobs. After arriving in Miami, the pair stay in a hotel room (oops, it only has one bed! He stays on the floor.) for a week before shit gets real. You could tell Luisa was expecting something out of this arrangement, but Mohamed refused to put out and she got annoyed. She acknowledges that he's still married but wonders why he's remaining faithful to a woman he claims so ruined his life. Shortly thereafter, she decides to move to Los Angeles instead and leaves him behind. With no gal pal to pay his way and an INS interview on the horizon, Mohamed runs home to Ohio to try and convince Danielle to drop the annulment and divorce him instead. His reasoning as to why he should get to stay in the country is that he came here with good intentions and it's not his fault Danielle ended up being fucking crazy. He says he left the marriage because she "wouldn't let" him love her and only brought about needless drama. When a lawyer tells him that qualifies as abandonment and hurts his chances to stay, he's undeterred. He and Danielle prepare to meet and talk, a talk he flat out told her would be about the split and nothing else, as she tells the camera her "plan" to lure him back by filing for an annulment worked and now she's hopeful he will choose to stay and work on the marriage. Girl...*sigh*. During the meeting a fight ensues and she storms out when it becomes clear he don't want her and he never will. 

The next day Mohamed calls Danielle and invites her over to their one Ohio friend's house to talk again. This friend, Bob, seems to take most of what Mohamed says as gospel and, as a former marriage counselor, he also tells Danielle to pull the annulment and just get a divorce. As Danielle breaks down in tears, Mohamed tells her that they can be friends after the divorce, but an annulment sends him back to Tunisia and negates any kind of friendship. She takes the bait and the next day the two of them go to City Hall to get rid of the annulment. A day later, they meet once more, "to say goodbye", as Mohamed puts it, and Danielle, while the emotional wreck she usually is, seems not as torn up about it as you would expect. We later find out the reason why - though she pulled the annulment, she did not file for a divorce. They're still married with no end in sight. It would be a diabolical plan if it weren't born out of pathetic-ness. She's determined to keep him in the fold no matter what it takes; filing the annulment was a way to bring him back, not filing for divorce is a way to ensure she still has her hooks in him. She claims they agreed to wait on filing for divorce, I assume because his immigration meeting is coming up soon, but now I'm not so sure it was a mutual agreement to wait. Mohamed sure was behaving like a soon-to-be divorced man once he got back to Miami, sitting on the beach with two female friends. He seemed as if a weight had been lifted. And then Danielle begins blowing up his phone with calls and texts. He doesn't respond to any of it so Danielle obtains his whereabouts from their joint bank statement and takes her debt-ridden, can't-keep-the-lights-on self to Miami so the two of them can...be friends, I guess? That's the excuse she gives but I don't think friendship with an ex-husband means you fly halfway across the country just to be friendly. Just when you think she can't be anymore delusional, she tells the camera she's packing as if it's a romantic getaway because it could turn out that way. Why does she think this? Because she's decided all by herself that she still wants to be married to him, as if it's only her decision. She believes going to Miami and confronting him about why he won't text her back is going to convince him to give the marriage another go and thus, they'll have a romantic few days together. Mohamed's reaction to her arrival? He goes to the police station to see about filing a restraining order. He agrees to talk to Danielle one last time even though there's nothing left to discuss, but makes it clear that she cannot contact him after that meeting or he will call the cops. Danielle goes into meltdown mode and is somehow shocked by the fact that him telling her they could be friends was just another ploy to get her to not annul the marriage. And boy, did he get more than he bargained for there, huh?

I don't think I have ever seen a woman with such blinders on. Yes, it's been apparent from the gate that Danielle is desperate to hold onto Mohamed because he's young and attractive, she held onto his arm for dear life in every interview they did, but come on now. She's still clinging to that damn arm in an effort to prevent him from getting away and it's bordering on Investigation Discovery territory now. This is how, "Wives With Knives" begins and, well, you can assume how it ends given the title of the show. While I don't believe she actually has the balls to murder the lad, she does strike me as the type who, if she did, would weep over the body as if she were just a mourner and not the perpetrator. This is almost sickening to watch now. The man does not even like her, nevermind love her the way a husband should. He's contributed nothing to her or her children's well being, yet she always brings up that he's "leaving three girls who love him" when she cries about the divorce. He hasn't even really contributed financially to the household, it sounds like. Why are you chasing this fucker? When holding onto someone threatens everything else in your life, including whatever sanity you have left (and there's veeeeery little margin for error there), it's time to walk away. I don't honestly know if Mohamed was just here for the green card, but his actions seem to point that way. She's admitted several times that she believes he never loved her and that's all he's here for, but she still refuses to let him go. Earlier in the season, she went out with another young foreigner, though this one is already legally in the U.S., and talked about Mohamed the entire time. On that date, she also admitted to the cameras that it gives her a thrill to be with younger, attractive men because she likes it when people look at them and wonder how someone like her landed them. The statement was sad. And I would feel sad for her if she wasn't so fucking pathetic. Move on with your damn life. If the goal here is to take years off Mohamed's life, she's not gonna succeed since he's a good 15 years younger than her and has so far outlasted all the shit she's thrown his way. While I don't like Mohamed or feel for his predicament at all, I do find some truth in what he says about Danielle not being all there and/or not being truly stable. I also believe she definitely misrepresented herself when it came to her financial situation. Lying about money is one thing, but when you end up being a fucking lunatic after presenting yourself as sane...that's a problem. Here's hoping the whole thing does finally end so they can both move on.

UPDATE: The love story is over, kids. It would appear Danielle and Mohamed have officially untied the knot and gotten a divorce, which means Mohamed can remain in the US (well, maybe...who knows what tf the Trump shit will do). What a long, strange ride.

But...I Voted For You!

I'm confused by the number of Trump supporters who seem surprised by every policy he tries to push through. Several supporters voiced their displeasure last month when he began to push for the Affordable Care Act to be repealed. The past month has been full of supporters appearing to be surprised by his repeated attempts to ban Muslims from entering the country. And now there's some uproar about his following through on deporting illegals. And it's all left my scratching my head. What did ya'll think was going to happen if you elected him? Trump supporters would appear to be the most naive, uninformed voters in the history of voting. This man could not have been any clearer about what he wanted to do if elected to office, and he is now following through on the things he said. It's like Hitler running for office and openly saying he would eradicate everyone who wasn't white and yet a ton of minorities walk right up and cast their vote for him anyway, only to be shocked when he comes for them. The Trump campaign was that loud and clear about their goals and if you still voted for him and now find yourself affected by his policies, I have zero sympathy for you.
Before the newest healthcare reform bill was put forth, all we heard was that Obamacare was awful and would be repealed and the replacement would be "great". Let's face it, even Trump didn't know what the fuck he was going to do at the time. But he did know that things that don't affect him could go out the window; women's healthcare, affordable care for the people who need it most, preventative care for all. Just the thought of that sent a bunch of his supporters to social media to complain about how their kids need this medicine or care and now won't be able to get it, or how they themselves are receiving treatment for a chronic condition that they won't be able to afford the medicine for without insurance. Many of these posts included some form of, "But I voted for you", as if they thought their vote was going to get them some punch card that said they were immune from his terrible decisions. Trump always said getting rid of healthcare was a top priority. If your family depends on that care, especially in a life or death situation, why would you vote for someone who wanted to strip you of your insurance? Either you thought he was lying about it or you're an idiot. The alternative to this was tweaking the current healthcare act to fix some of what doesn't work, a fine tuning of it. Is Obamacare perfect? Of course not. But it was geared more towards allowing all Americans to have preventative care, rather than charging them an arm and a leg when the sky does fall. It is the difference between getting something checked out when you first notice it, as opposed to having to put off a visit to the doctor and find out the problem has become much more serious. How is having no healthcare at all better than that? What is so terrible about Obamacare that Trump's then-non-existent plan to replace it was better? Most countries have similar healthcare laws and as a result they're much healthier and more well off than America. For doctors in other countries, the incentive lies in keeping your patients healthy, not cashing in when they're sick. But who needs that in America, right? The most laughable part of this particular issue is that Trump didn't even have a healthcare plan laid out prior to his election, all he said was that he'd repeal the current law. That allowed him to decide to do whatever the fuck he wanted once in office and now here we are. So if healthcare was a big deal to you and you voted for him anyway, tough luck.
The Trump camp's repeated attempts to get a Muslim ban passed was also something he made no secret of wanting to do if elected. Maybe people didn't believe it would result in such a widespread ban, but I don't think that was surprising. This is a person who made no effort to his his racism and took every opportunity to insult one minority or another. Muslims are terrorists, Mexicans are rapists, African Americans all live in terrible crime-ridden areas. Anyone who thinks Stop and Frisk is a good idea is someone you know has no chance of being stopped and frisked. Because who is it that looks "suspicious" in those circumstances? Muslims, Mexicans and African Americans. Someone who looks like Trump would not be stopped, which is ironic since he's shady as hell. Of course he was going to try and stop as many people as he could from coming into the country. Because if it's one thing a country of immigrants doesn't need, it's more immigrants. People who have a Muslim relative that voted for Trump are just...special. You knew he was gunning for those people and you gave him the power to do so.
Let's not forget that other campaign promise regarding keeping people out of the country - the promise to deport illegal Mexicans back to the motherland. I read an article today about a woman who is married to a man who illegally crossed the border in 1998. They have four kids and the man owns a business that provides for the family. In 2000, he accidentally crossed into Canada during a trip to Niagara Falls and was detained by ICE, who told him he had to voluntarily leave the country. He didn't and is scheduled to be deported tomorrow. His wife took to the media to tell their story and gave some laughable comment about how she thought Trump was only deporting "dangerous illegals", a group she does not believe includes her husband. ...Really? Again, this is someone who told you point blank he would ideally like to deport all illegals. He eventually said he would focus on deporting the ones with criminal records first, but never said law-abiding illegals would not face deportation. Furthermore, he clamped down on sanctuary cities not long after he was sworn in, which should've given people an indication of where he was headed. How one voted for him when they have an illegal family member is beyond me.
Seeing all of these people lose their shit as Trump's policies start to affect them made me realize this is how he won the election. Not with fear and not because people didn't want a woman in office, but because he appealed to the uneducated masses. People like to lay into those who blindly believe everything the media tells them, but people who voted for an openly racist, misogynistic narcissist with eyes wide open are just as bad, if not worse. No one source; not one politician, not one media network, not one social network should be the sole source of information for anyone, especially during something as important as an election. Educated people who did their research saw shades of Hitler and dictatorship in Trump but somehow those who eventually voted for him missed every damn red flag. And this is all just in the first three months of his presidency. In three months, he's made a mockery of the office and the country and preached nothing but hate. He's blatantly lied to the public multiple times. If you voted for him, you voted for this. You had to have known this was coming because he laid it all out for you beforehand. He lied during the campaign and will continue to do so for the next four years (provided he's not impeached before then) because no one is calling him on his shit. And we're walking a dangerous line now. The longer his actions go on unchecked, the more likely it is democracy as we know it comes crashing down. And whether you voted for him or not, you're not immune to effects.