Cheryl Katz

In case the Zagats ever wonder if they’ve  “made it,”  it may be reassuring to know that people are even parodying their guide styles in reference to ancient Israelite burnt offerings. 

Nextbook | God’s Zagat: Dining with the Deity has its own rules

Ideal Bite | Crazy-concerned over the PB recall?

Hey locals!  You may remember Spread from when they used to sell their handmade, organic nut butters at the Hillcrest Farmers’ Market.  Now they’ve made the big time – a thriving Internet business (and busy brick-and-mortar comfort foods restaurant, to boot!) and a mention on Ideal Bite!

We’ve tried a variety of their products and they actually are pretty much to die for.  But yay San Diego!

Whether you live in San Diego or not, if you’re interested in a free eco-tip on a daily-or-so basis, you can sign up here.

I saw a man this morning on a tiny motor scooter with his happy brown pit bull sitting between his knees. What a happy dog he must be! It reminded me of all the places I used to take Alex, how I’d rarely leave her home if I didn’t have to. And it made me notice that I can have happy dog memories without completely falling apart over it.

Everyone, go squish your dog a little for Alex! Loving your dog makes the world just a tiny bit nicer.

I got through the first week on my own, and now that life has sort of started up again I feel like I’m somewhat approaching human status again.

The absence of Alex isn’t so new that it is physically painful any more, but it’s not so old that I’ve forgotten it.  Little reminders still bring up stinging feelings – the wounds are still raw, though I no longer need Band-Aids.  When I see the reflection of the curve of my car hood pulling in next to the house, for a split second I still think it’s her perky ears coming to the door to see what’s what.  When I hear random noises around the house, I still somehow think it’s Alex turning over in her crate, though I got rid of the crate a week and a half ago.

There is less dog hair clinging to my pants every day.

All this makes it sound like Alex is all I think about, and I really haven’t been spending so much time in the grief any more.  Ben came back after the week away, and I fell apart for a little while.  Once I’d come completely unglued, I found it much easier to put myself back together again, and the second week was far better than the first.

Which is not to say that life is all peaches, though I wish that it were.  This week, every day some small nagging mishap has been worming its way into my head, chiseling at my subconscious to try to get me figuring out what I did to cause it.

This is one of my most infuriating traits – when someone is displeased with me, I presume it is my fault.  So when the guy yelled at me in the line at Target (I simply cannot tell the story another time, so let it suffice to say that I got thoroughly dressed down for making an unsafe assumption about something completely minor), and when the road-rage guy rolled down his windows to flip me off with BOTH hands while screaming at me out the window at 50 MPH; deep inside me these said to me that I did something wrong and need to search myself to find the problem and address it.

Eating myself alive is not perhaps the healthiest attitude I have sustained, and yet truthfully I’ve sustained it as long as I can remember being aware of how the way I act can cause other people to act and react.

But particularly unsettling and weighty on my mind today is a thoroughly controversial conversation I had with one of my dearest friends this afternoon, where I made a flippant comment about a decision that Ben and I have made for ourselves, but it was slightly  misinterpreted to mean something way more offensive about way more people.  And the truth of what I think is appropriate lies somewhere in between – where had I phrased it better, or had I intended to bring the topic up to be discussed head-on, I might have been able to present it more rationally.

Not going into the topic at this time because…  frankly I don’t want a public shitstorm on top of the private shitstorm that’s raging in my head, or the private one I’m having on civil terms with my friend.

It all got me thinking about how strictly principled I can sometimes be.  How hard it probably makes being friends with me for a normal person, who doesn’t cross-analyze every decision they make to make the most positive impact on the world at large.  I really do this, and as of this afternoon I can say that it’s painful when I really think about it, and I seriously wonder, just as with the unfortunate yet minor incidents above, what is it in me that brings this out?  Why do I not only choose to subjugate my own satisfaction in an effort to make the world a better place (sometimes), but then use those choices to alienate my friends and make myself even more lonely and tortured?

Obviously, the past three weeks have not been the best of times for me, though I would hate to presume that these are the worst of times.  Many humans have seen and surmounted times far worse than this.

So on goes the enduring question: what is wrong with me?  Why am I not just normal, in a way that allows me to enjoy while still perceiving my life?  Why do I allow and/or force myself to suffer over the most minute details?  Is there a cure for this, or is it something I should adjust to, and the loneliness something I should just learn to live with?

Lest this post list too far into the emo section, I’ll quit and brood offline now.  But a question for my peeps out there: if you torture yourself, care to share how, why, and over what kinds of issues you do it?

I could find a song lyric for any occasion.

The first of any thing that I do since 4 PM on Friday brings me to the brink of tears. The first time I made coffee I had real trouble bringing myself to pour Friday morning’s dregs down the drain. Somehow cooking, driving, making coffee or even sitting in certain chairs for the first time really tore me up. It deeply saddens me that every minute thing I do takes me a tiny step farther away from remembering what her fat, furry belly felt like, or what she looked like when I left her – do I really remember that, or is it a picture that I looked at recently just stuck in short term memory?

This week I resumed doing a whole bunch of things that were exceptionally normal – mostly because of necessity with a side of didn’t have a choice. I made Sami’s lunch – first time since I shredded the bowl of stale challah to give to Alex after the Friday lunch prep. I made matzo balls, and finished her last box. I did laundry, ran the dishwasher, set the table, made a real dinner (now with guests!) Got mail from the mail man who usually asks where the dog is, since she would bark pretty ferociously at his shadowy face through the safety door. (He didn’t ask today.)

Somewhere among all this business, this busy-ness, I forgot for a little while to be present in my pain, and when I realized it I felt incredibly guilty. How can I leave her memory so soon? This is not a real concern. I can summon a memory of her from almost any object or place in our house and in our neighborhood; I could still walk around and tell you any place she had a dog fight, or where she lay down huffing when I started walking her out of shape butt to get her trimmed down.

Today during a bike ride with Laura I was blindsided.  We stopped in our bike shop to have the gearshift on Ben’s bike adjusted as it was slighty out of sorts.  There was a leash attached to a piece of furniture – someone brings their dog to work – and it reminded me of the day Ben and I stopped in to talk to the shop owner and brought a much friendlier, happier Alex in with us.  She had a great time, close quarters notwithstanding, and it brought me nearly to the brink of tears again just thinking about how much she’d changed since then.

I started getting Alex’s crate together, putting the things inside it that I was willing to let go of.  I cried almost the whole time.  Managed to get everything contained.  Couldn’t be in the kitchen nook for the rest of that day.

At this point I’ve done a lot of firsts.  Uncountable firsts since I left Alex six days ago.  I wanted this post to be so much more than it turns out to be, and it’s been a few days so I just have to let it go.  2009 so far has been a poignant reminder that life will not always be what I want it to be.  Lessons in how to let go, I guess.

I listed her crate on Freecycle in an effort to let go and help another dog who might need crate training and all of her accoutrements.  I decided against a shelter donation because I can’t handle the idea of an impersonal donation, nor am I emotionally equiped to pack it all up and move it myself.  I decided against giving it to a friend because I know I won’t be able to handle seeing it in a friend’s house, knowing it used to be hers.  I’m going to be sore in the heart for a long time.

I’ve been finding that when I walk into the kitchen and see Alex’s crate in the corner, practically untouched, I retreat into a momentary mental space where she is curled up sleeping, just like always.  The effort of smacking myself upside the head and reminding myself of what I went through Friday is frankly excruciating at times, and I think that falling into denial is worse than the pain of the gaping hole that will be left in our kitchen nook when her crate is gone.

I shared my whole sad story in my Freecycle posting, and within twelve hours got an absolutely astounding number of responses.  About half of them were from kind people wishing me peace and sharing their story.  It’s been very comforting not only to know that I’m not alone (intellectually, I know I’m not the only pet owner to have lost a dear friend, but it’s easy to retreat into the isolation of my own skull and believe whatever I want at times) but that people are so generous that they will respond to such a post expecting no favor in return – truly out of the kindness of their hearts.  This unsolicited kindness is part of what is sustaining me right now, and I’ve never felt so much faith in the general goodness of humanity before.

The other half of the responses were just as kind, but were also current pet owners looking for items to make their pets more comfortable.  Again bolstering my general theory of the goodness of humanity, people, many without means to spare, have taken on animals just because they care, despite the tightness of budget of late.  I’m confident that no matter where Alex’s legacy ends up, some lucky dog will wind up well-trained and completely loved by its owner, and Alex will have been a part of that, however small and tangential a part.

If you don’t know about Freecycle, it is a great group that exists in many areas, usually run by mailing list, and tends to be attended by generally good human beings. I like it because it keeps perfectly good stuff in use and saves resources by encouraging people to continue using said perfectly good stuff. Check it out if you get rid of things from time to time, or if you ever are looking for a random used something. It’s always worth a shot.

Today already twice Christians have come to my door offering to share the Bible with me. Either today is a special day for me, testing my ability to talk about my beliefs, or this is just what I miss every day by not being at home.

I was sitting on my sofa reading Entering Jewish Prayer. How ironic is this? Two women were at my door and asked me if I ever read the Bible. I told them that yes, I do, and they asked me if sometimes I feel confused by it.

Hm. Not really. I’m more confused by life right now.

I told them I’m converting to Judaism, and they were not upset, or pushy, or anything less than respectful for my choices, though they did ask me about where I’d come from and why I chose as I have chosen. I told them that in my experience I’ve seen too many people do things for, because of or with the “help” of Jesus, that I wouldn’t imagine he would actually condone. I also think that this world is far from the perfect place a post-Messianic world would be, and I personally don’t buy into the re-writing of texts that came with the New Testament.

We discussed those things for a while, and to their credit my visitors were handy with scripture. I like people who will try to make concrete arguments supported by text. They didn’t pull anything from the prophets or psalms that I found convincing for their argument, and the one passage from Revelation made me chuckle on the inside because in my head, Revelation plays out like a graphic comic book; very hard to take seriously for me. I’m sorry to anyone this offends.

I think people of most religions are seeking the same thing – a better world, to seek comfort and know that something good will come of their lives. I can’t speak so well for the methods each person chooses to achieve those ends, but if any religious belief causes someone to become a better person I certainly won’t judge them harshly even if I disagree. I don’t think I have room in my heart to be unkind right now.

Truthfully I was glad for their visit because it took my mind off the fact that I was home alone. I couldn’t really focus on reading anyway. They seemed to accept my reasons and my beliefs, not that I needed them to, but it was better than if we’d had fisticuffs over it. I’m sure they wanted me to find Jesus, and I’m not so excited about that premise, but they were satisfied that I had thought it through and were OK agreeing to disagree. It had the tone of, this is what we believe and we just want the chance to share it with you. Even if I don’t agree, I thanked them for sharing respectfully. That was nice.

I guess there’s a first time for everything. A first time to open the door and talk to strangers (wearing hats, even!) and not worry that the dog would scare them away. A first time to actively engage with people attempting to proselytize me. A test even, to be friendly without wanting to lie about it just for the sake of convenience. A first time to disagree without being driven by the fear that I’ll be hated because of what I believe. Who’d ever have thought I’d take comfort in that?

A second visitor rang my bell a little later, I told him his friends had already been by. I told him we’re Jewish, but thanked him for their openness and respectfulness.

Strange times for me, these are.

I’ve realized that I don’t have to close the “baby” gates to keep Alex from chewing on toys that would be sharp or dangerous, if cracked, any more. And when I carry sleepy Sami in from the car, I can go all the way to her room, put her to bed, then go back and close the door – no one will run away. I can wear black pants and no one will rub their white fur all over them. Food will stay safe on the counter where I leave it, neither it nor its container consumed.

No one is going to come around and pick up any food bits we’ve dropped on the floor.

Most of this would seem like so much added convenience. I’d take it all back on if my heart could unbreak. But I think my heartbreak is less than her pains felt to her. So I guess I can get through this for her.

I can’t help but take this whole whirlwind experience and use it to examine myself. This is something Alex and I had in common. We never were able to relax and just be. (Though I still have time to improve on this, hopefully without the use of sedatives.)

I spent a lot of Alex’s life trying to figure out what drove her impulses. For the many people who never met her, the things I write may sound like abject bullshit, but I am confident that I knew her exceptionally well, and I can tell because I can relate to a lot of her reactions to the world. Alex was a very sweet, loving family dog. She also felt very threatened by certain motions, especially but not limited to when they came from certain physical types of people – tall, broad men, with facial hair, dark glasses, beards or hats. The threats could be posed to her in the form of something as simple as attempting to pat her head in greeting. I never was able to completely figure out what she thought would happen, but she was in a home and in a kennel for the year and a half before we had her, and I will say that her fears were most likely instilled by her previous home. I don’t know anything for sure.

I know that she never lunged randomly at people. It wasn’t the act of entry to our house that provoked her aggressive bark. It was specific overtures to her. She was fine with some people being around (too many and she was easily overwhelmed) especially if they paid her no heed at all. She didn’t feel threatened by people who didn’t attempt to approach her.

She wanted only two things in her life: to be near us, and to feel safe. We allowed her to be close to us as often and as much as possible, but we were never able to provide such a complete feeling of safety that she felt comfortable approached by even people we knew would never bring harm to her. Our stamp of approval was never quite enough for her, and that’s why we were extremely selective about who could meet Alex, and extremely careful about how we introduced them.

I think I was able to learn how to read Alex’s signals because they made sense to me. What this says about me, judge for yourself.

Alex and I spent a lot of time fighting with our perceived threats and fears and self doubts. Some of use used our teeth more than others. But even I am not harmless in my defenses against others – I have my ideas and prejudices about how people should be and the way things should be done. I know enough to know that my opinions aren’t the most important, nor do other people in most cases need to be apprised of what I really think, and typically I talk reason to myself and am able to demonstrate how said other person could be just as right as I am. But rest assured that I watch the way I and others are treated by you, and I do judge you. Yes, you, too.

As a person blessed/cursed with this nagging self-awareness, I go about my business analyzing what everything I do says about me, and evaluating the kind of identity I want to build for myself and for the world.

I know that Alex was not cursed with this burden. I think that she had a lot more joy in her life, not worrying about what the theft of the peanut butter or the destruction of a book that did not belong to her (or even necessarily to anyone in our household) said about her. She lived in each moment, enjoying all the satisfaction her exploits had to bring, and occasionally reaped the sorrow of an upset tummy, small injury, or 48 hours on speed after consuming and barfing up a pound of coffee grounds. Just for example.

In all my self-analysis, I can become the better person that I want to be, I can rise above the pettiness to which I as a human am prone. I can reason with my gut reactions and learn to be more patient, more tolerant, more just. In the process I also can talk myself out of my own feelings, my own rights to action and opinion, and at times I undermine my own personhood.

What I can learn from Alex is to try to live in moments, taste the flavors that are present, and give in from time to time to the beautiful joy of simple existence. I can also learn on the far end of the spectrum to pay attention to what I do, so that I don’t wind up a complete hedonist with no practical roots in community.

Since Alex died, just over two days ago and counting, I obviously have had death on the brain. Not just any death, mostly her death, but also the nature and consequences both specific and general.

When Alex died, when the medication stopped her heart and she released her final breath, what happened? All of her parts were still there, and though there was pain, everything was functional. We turned off some critical element of her, and it can never be turned back on. So what made her body go from being my dog, my beloved, devoted, adorable puppy, to being an inert though still picturesque pile of organic matter on the floor? She didn’t feel gone, even though I know she was.

I refuse to believe that what left her in that moment is any different than what will leave me when I die one day. She didn’t have self-awareness, but she was alive.

I wish I could take the offered comfort of the Gates of Heaven, where Alex would be waiting loyally for my arrival, checking back every so often to see if I’d come yet. (In a perfect concept of Heaven, the gates would look like our side door, and she’d peer out as we pull up in the car, having just been in the middle of her regular patrol of the house perimeter.)

It doesn’t comfort me much. Besides the fact that I want her *here*, and miss her *now*, I also know that until someone reports back from the afterlife, no one can ever know. Making up a story that suits myself feels incredibly unsatisfying, though I truly do appreciate the fancy of all of the theories people have offered me, and I don’t mean to be ungracious in the face of the comfort I *have* derived from people who care being around me in the past couple of days.

The best comfort I’ve achieved is that Alex is no longer afraid, no longer fighting to feel safe, no longer in pain. I wish I could have given her those things while she was here, but I did give her my best effort.