Thursday, May 26, 2005

One Type of Ambiguity

No, not depressed. I've been trying to finish this very long book, Seven Types of Ambiguity, by Elliot Perlman, and now I'm trying to figure out whether I liked it or not. I really liked the beginning, which is why I hung on for the whole book - I wanted to know what happened. It was well-written, smart, it had a very complex story, but I dunno, in the end, I didn't feel the way I have after reading my favorite books. And yet, I read the whole thing, and in addition to it being 623 pages, the print was small. I wore glasses for this book. So take that for whatever it means to you. But now that I'm done, mostly what I feel is ambiguous.

Now I gotta go cuz Mojo's coming back!

15 comments:

Ken Foster said...

You are having an affair with that dog!

Did you put on a special outfit for him?

Elizabeth Crane said...

No, he's just my new "special" friend - hee hee - I didn't know he was coming today, his other special dog-sitting friend canceled at the last minute, but as it happens I do have on my "Maud" shirt, which has a little cartoon of a local pug I know named Maud, another dog I am quite fond of.

Anonymous said...

i like maud a whole lot, too. she's sassy.

if you want to feel less ambiguous about a book (and commit a lot less time) read sarah vowell's assassination vacation! riveting!

no worries if you decide against it. just the fact that we're hanging out will be like a freezer full of gelato. when i talked to the guy today he said "you guys'll have 27 acres of orchard to yourselves, you can run around naked." so, um, do with that what you will.

Anonymous said...

do you feel ambiguous or...ambivalent? hmmmm....

Elizabeth Crane said...

My feelings are too ambiguous to know if they're ambivalent.

Anonymous said...

i was in a band called ambiguous ambivalence once...i kinda loved it and kinda hated it but couldn't really tell.

no i wasn't.

Ken Foster said...

I still want to know what kind of dog Mojo is (aside from hottie). Or is that ambiguous too?

Elizabeth Crane said...

I'll try to find out when Megan comes tonight, but if you go to Christopher's site (linked on Monday's entry) you can see some pictures of him.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Betsy is in love with the puppy. Yes, it's time for Betsy to get a puppy. Betsy, let me hold your hand through this process! I can take you to a thousand shelters and find you the perfect doggy (although Furry Friends has a neat link on their site that says "if you want the perfect dog, click here" and it brings up a photo of a stuffed dog. Because not all dogs are perfect, apparently. Except for Mojo (save the snoring, which I am now accustomed to and could probably not sleep without. Like my mom sleeps with one of those little wind-machines on, to lull herself off. Oh yes, and Mojo's other imprefection, if we can even call it that, is seperation anxiety. When left alone, he yells. I have decided not to feel guilty about this--guilt is a human emotion, says Debbie my dog trainer--but since I've also decided to be a good neighbor, I'm concerned. Mojo is seven months old and he still yells when left alone. He has never been left alone for more than four hours. Is the anxiety coming BECAUSE of this? Ken? Advice?) who we found on petfinder.com. We LOVE petfinder.com, which hooks you up with all the adoptable doggies in your vicinity.

Mojo is part pit, part lab and part something else. When we adopted him, we were told he'd be seventy-eighty pounds. Recently the vet told us he won't get over forty. So the something else is something else LITTLE, I think. Also, a month ago he started turning black. Now he is turning white. Tomorrow he will fly. Currently he is wrapped in a ball under Christopher's shoulder, dreaming very loudly, I think about the day he had at Aunt Betsy's house.

Ken Foster said...

Hmmm. He looks very pit to me, although my pit/Dane is officially a "shepherd" so if you want to call him a lab I'll play along.

My experience with pits and pit mixes--I've rescued a ton of them--is that they are very prone to seperation anxiety. Because they LOVE their people so much. I think they'd be happy to carried around in a papoose their whole lives. I write about Brando's anxiety in the book Dog Culture (a little plug there!), and the many things that didn't work with him. There are a lot of little training things you can try, which include, painfully, ignoring the dog when you are home. For a long time he went to doggie daycare and I never left him alone for more than four hours. But he took several crates apart and injured himself, which really freaked me out. We had limited success with medications, and finally I got him a dog and that did the trick.

Sula, my more recent pit, developed separation anxiety quite unexpectedly after almost a year of no problems. She's no on Clomiclam, the only FDA approved drug for seperation anxiety in dogs. She also can never, never sleep in my bed, because it triggers the anxiety when I have to eventually leave her side. (But sometimes I let her come into the bed first thing in the morning, because I love having her rest her head on my pillow.)

Ken Foster said...

oops. I havent had coffee yet. Sula is NOW on Clomicalm, not NO on ClomiCLAM.

Elizabeth Crane said...

I'm gonna have to read that book already, Ken! What a drama!

It's true, whatever else Mojo is, it must be something small. But at least he looks normal and cute. I once saw a dog that was something like a mix of basset hound and sheperd and it was kind of heartbreaking - the head of a sheperd with that low squat body... not right.

Ken Foster said...

Most pit bulls are, actually, kind of small.

Anonymous said...

Mojo could be half pit, half Sasquatch ... wouldn't matter a bit. I knew three things when Christopher and I decided to get a puppy: 1. we'd adopt 2. had to be a pit or pit mix, 'cause they were the best dogs I'd seen. My dad is a big-game hunter, so there were always dogs growing up. Hounds. They lived in a big kennel and were far more interested in birds than little girls. It was my friend Lott's pit Tabou that made me sure I'd get a pit for my first dog 3. we had to wait until June when the semester was over and I had more time to devote to the needs of a puppy. This was in January. I was online at a shelter website (I've done some benefit readings for Furry Friends through Lott), saw my Mojo, fell insanely in love and went to meet him the next day. Done deal. So--pit whatever. Doesn't matter ... but it's interesting to hear everyone's two cents about what ELSE he is. Boxer, ridgeback, cocker SPANIEL, PUG ... I nod my head and say, Uh-huh, uh-huh, REALLY?

Ken Foster said...

Pit Bull Rescue Central is a great organization/resource: www.pbrc.net

I'm really worried that PETA and other crazy groups are going to push through their plan to make pit bulls and other breeds extinct, which they absurdly claim is the only way to protect them from abuse. All friends of Mojo, should be writing to the stupid people who want to get rid of his kind. (I even recently exchanged emails with the primier of New South Wales!).