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3/6/1999 Why I Hate Dogs(ok, not all dogs--just the ones next door)Daniel slept at his grandmother's house last night, and this morning the little guys and I took Tab to work for the second day of the conference. After a few errands we returned home. Stephen was listless and whiny while we were out. At breakfast he had complained that his stomach hurt, but he's used that line before as an attention-getter so I hadn't paid attention. I checked him with the Thermoscan when we returned and found that he is running a slight fever. He seems congested, too. Great. I let him sip from my water cup in the car this morning. Kids are such germ magnets. I'm hoping whatever he has is something I've already had and built up a resistance to. This is swell timing, too, because our health plan, HIP of New Jersey, has just been declared DOA. No last minute resuscitation of the patient, no miracle cure to save poor, dying HIP. The final court battle has been fought and lost, and the company has been ordered to liquidate. The university is giving us the opportunity to switch to one of the other health plans they offer, but that means finding new doctors and getting the paperwork switched over. So Stephen alternated between being insufferably cranky and endearingly needy: he spent the rest of the morning either crying and fighting with Matthew or begging me to hold him. It is only when they are sick that I have the chance to hold them for more than a few minutes, these days. We had a late lunch, and then I read to them and took them upstairs for their nap around 2 p.m. I knew Stephen would fall asleep quickly, which meant I could count on a few hours of peace and quiet to get some work done; once one of them goes to sleep, there is no incentive for the other to stay awake. I was exhausted, myself, when I took them up, so I thought I'd take a quick nap in our room. Unfortunately, the Hounds of Hell, our next-door neighbor's pack of mutts, kept barking off and on throughout the next hour, making it impossible for me to drop off to sleep. The situation next door is becoming intolerable. We live in a very small semi-detached home in the city. Lorraine (who happens to be Tab's cousin, which makes the issue even messier) moved into the house with which we share a wall ten years ago, along with her pet dog, a friendly mixed breed. Lorraine is an extremely obese single woman in her late 40s, who was a fine neighbor and relative until five years ago when she started seeing a psychologist and promptly went insane. She's not the first or last person I know who has come out of therapy more messed up than she was when she started. At the encouragement of her shrink, who told her she deserved to get what she wanted, Lorraine started buying pure bred dogs. She'd always wanted a Chihauhua, she said, so she bought one. Then a Chinese pug. Then a cocker spaniel. Then another pug, and a miniature Eskimo, and a golden retriever, and a beagle. All this was bad enough, but then Lorraine got hooked up with animal rights fanatics. The organization she joined tries to prevent dog and cats from being euthanized, so they go to the pound and "adopt" the animals that are due to be destroyed. They keep the animals while they try to place them in permanent homes. So for the past four years, Lorraine has had as many as twelve to fourteen dogs at one time in her tiny little house, six to eight of which she is trying to place. A worthy endeavor, one might say, except if one has to share a wall with this zealot. The houses in this crowded city neighborhood have tiny little backyards. To simplify her cleanup, Lorraine had her yard paved over in cement so that she could hose it off after cleaning up the excrement. Unfortunately, the dog urine seeps into the cement, and a foul stench radiates back out. Even in the winter you can smell it when you walk through the alley past her yard, but in the summer it is truly nauseating. There were times last summer when I wanted to take the boys out into the back yard to play in the wading pool, but the odor (not to mention the flies) drove us back in. The strange thing is, even Lorraine doesn't seem to derive much enjoyment from this crusade she's on. We hear her at all hours of the day and night screaming and cursing at the dogs. She complains about having no money because she spends hundreds of dollars a month on dog food and no time because she goes to PetSmart every weekend to try to place the animals in homes. She used to have a very active social life with a wide circle of friends; now, none of them will come to her house any more because they, too, hate the smell and the noise. I don't know how we're going to sell this house. Who will want to live next door to all those dogs? Perhaps we can make it a selling point for Y2K. We can tell prospective buyers that if it really is The End of the World as We Know It and food supplies fail, they'll have a source of fresh meat right next door.
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