topotales

• GUESTPOST BY HANSOSAN

  T&P are together on their way to Val di Mello.  Scapi, faithful companion on so many travels, could not complete this journey.  We will all miss this member of the family.  After a life filled with excitement and caring, lazy days grooming on the couch, surviving snake bites, ticks and wasps on the crags, rescuing abandoned cat food, and sharing infinite hugs and kisses with all kind bipeds, especially the sad ones, her time was up.  Charlie and Paolo are there to continue her life’s work - but with such a sudden void, now’s the time for some loving help from all her friends.

  

  Scapi & Topo

  T and her dog : one
  I don’t know what more to say
  Scapi died today

Pnut and I live in an 8th floor penthouse apartment.  Not as fancy as it sounds, I promise you. Basically a small living room connected to a small bedroom by a small halllway.  But we do have two large terraces, one at either end of the apartment (kitchen, bedroom) with glass doors running the length of each room to let in plenty of light (well, usually rain, but nevermind).  Generally, we leave both terrace doors a bit open and a great breeze rustles through the apartment.  The terraces connect to the roof next door on one side, which hasn’t caused us any sort of problems… until lately.   But while I was with my parents in Nashville a couple of weeks ago, I had a funny phonecall from Pnut.

Pnut: Topo, I’m SUPER sleepy today!

me: Babe, you’re ALWAYS sleepy unless we’re going climbing in the morning.

Pnut: No really, last night I was doing the dogs work all night!

me: …?

Pnut: You know the kit-ties [this is the-super cute and endearing- way Pnut pronounces kitties]  that hang out on the roof next door?  Well last night I woke up and heard yummy yummy crunch crunch sounds coming from the kitchen.

me: … ?  …?  Huh?

Pnut: The kit-ties were in the kitchen, eating the dog food!  And these bloody dogs!  Scapi said woof from her sleep and Charlie didn’t even move from his bed.  So I had to go chase the kit-ties away.  All I saw was two little little cat-asses disappearing through the terrace door.  And they did it a bunch of times!  Now because these bloody dogs are so lazy I have to sleep with the terrace door closed and it’s SO HOT!

me: (hysterical laughing)

At least, it was funny until I spent the last three nights woken up by “yummy yummy crunch crunch sounds” and chasing kit-ties out of the kitchen.  Sure enough, Scapi was streached out upside down at the foot of the bed and managed one sleepy “wou” (apparently, “woof” if just too taxing past midnight) and Charlie let out a sleepy moan from his place half-buried in my folded clean clothes.  Oh… and the dogs’ food bowl was half empty!

GUEST POST BY HANSOSAN

It just isn’t fair to let Scapi occupy all the limelight, so here is at least one exclusive Charlie shot too… 

Oh boy, I'm so nervous I could start smoking...

Friday night:

Hansosan, his daughter and I head down to Fontainebleau to catch up with P.  The hansosan has decided to come along despite an extremely painful bursitis of the elbow.  About a half hour past Paris I ask him to pull over so I can vomit copiously at a gas station.  I’d forgotten my meds.  Ten minutes back on the road, and his daughter faints in the car.  This is not something unexpected, as she has spent the last year battling unexplained fainting fits that look a lot like epilepsy but haven’t been properly diagnosed.  We finally roll into the campground around midnight, and the gates are locked.  I call P and he helps us chuck all our packs and bags to the tents.

Saturday:

It is now day two without my meds.  This was a bad idea.  A very bad idea.  It rains most of the day.  P, of course, manages to climb anyhow.  I spend the better part of the afternoon making moss-fairy boats.

The fairy’s name is Esmerelda, by the way, and if you can’t see her then you don’t believe.

I curl up with the dogs and pass out.  I should have brought my meds. 

When we get back to the campsite I notice a few ticks on Charlie.  I pull them out.  Then I notice a few ticks on Scapi.  I pull them out.  Then I realise that the lovely afternoon nap was had in a tickbed.  I rush to the tent and call P in to do what true love requires.  Luckily, no ticks in my ass.  Unfortunately, one has embedded itself close enough to my hoo-ha to make me scream and yank it out before P can reach the tweezers.  I burn the sonofabitch.

Saturday night:

I’m twitching and jerking all over the place.  My brain feels something like fireworks if they could make them into a yo-yo.  I hold myself together reasonably well and we have a lovely birthday dinner for the hansosan.  His daughter faints again on the way home.  This time, it’s a long episode.  We sit up with her for an hour or so, until she feels well enough to go to the tent.  We all go to bed.

I wake up in the tent and smell shit.  I mean- I smell SHIT.  Like somebody rubbed my nose in it.  Since I feel a bit like a crackhead in withdrawal, I sense that smelling shit could just be another side effect.  So I wake Paolo.  He is blind without his glasses but finally finds a pile of puke in the tent and cleans it up.  To Charlie’s credit, he actually tried to wake Paolo up several times before depositing the little pile of grass and bile neatly next to our heads.

About an hour later, I wake up in the tent and smell shit.  Paolo’s glasses come out again, but we don’t see anything.  Back to sleep. 

You can repeat that last paragraph two more times.

Sunday:

I wake up in the morning to find that Charlie has projectile-liquid-shit all over my sleeping bag.  And my backpack.  And my clothes.  And my side of the tent.  Everything on Paolo’s side of the tent is perfectly clean.  But I have been sleeping in diarrhea.  I run out of the tent and vomit copiously.  This is not the way to start day three without meds.  Lovely P cleans everything while I writhe and moan in the car.

So, to sum up the weekend: bursitis, vomiting, fainting, tick near hoo-ha, projectile diarrhea, and no meds.  Oh… and we may have climbed a wee bit as well, but I’ll have to let you know once I’m properly medicated again.

The dog and I have our every-other-morning walk routine.  It generally involves a couple of spins around the leafy and grassy area out front until she deposits a steaming pile of poo in the grass.  When I say grassy area I mean a few square feet of curbside grass stretching along one of the busiest streets in Brussels.  Inevitably, it’s raining (yes, you can picture that whenever you picture anything I write here-again, Brussels!).

Fancy Paws is what I like to call the main event of the morning walk, when Scapi balances herself, paw in front of paw, along tiny European curbsides and the minuscule deltas between rain rivulets.  She can trot along on her half-pads like this for the whole walk just to keep her precious toes from getting mildly muddy.  If somebody could make it rain in a tent, she’d be a great circus act.  When it’s time to poo, Fancy Paws gets down to business.  Scapi balances all four paws on the curb closest to the street, sticks her nose out into oncoming traffic while dropping her load in the grass behind.  It’s just not as exciting to take a crap if twenty hubcaps don’t go by three inches from her nose while mom tugs on the leash and yelps nervously at every green light until the deed is done.  I like to call this EXTREME SHITTING.  It’s like those ironing people… only… you know, with dogs and shit.

Lately, though, there has been a third act added to the Cirque du Fancy Paws.  It has involved a little obsession with the bushes.  The dog who refuses to moisten her foothairs has been gleefully dragging me over to the bushes that border the grassy-area.  There, she runs full power under the bushes as far as her leash will take her, whipping the branches sideways and upwards as she runs and soaking me with the ensuing waterfall.  Why, dog, why?  She, too, comes out soaked from nose to tail and - what’s this!? - quite pleased with herself?

I kept wondering why this sudden change in my dog?  Why this sudden willingness to come into contact with water?  Sweet puppy!  Finally, she enjoys playing in the rain!  Finally, something dog-like about my dog!

So one day, when I could see that this was a habit that would stick… one day, after a gleeful romp under the bushes, I laughed - “Bwah ha, owners of dogs who chase sticks!  Bwah ha, owners of dogs who wrestle and tussle with other friendly dogs!  See how my dog too can be … dog-ish!  … Whatever, just see!”.

Then, I came inside and went to lovingly hug my Scapi.  And that’s when it dawned on me.  This obsession with bush… it was really an obsession with penis.  Actually, what dawned on me was the horrible smell of dog-piss.  My dog, you see, had been using the rain + bush to = wash all the boy-dog pee onto her hairy body.  That’s right, people.  My dog was PERFUMING herself with PISS from the bushes.  And then I remembered how after these bush-romps my dog had been enjoying jumping up onto my bed.

Now we call Act III of the Cirque “Le Tug-o-war”.  Scapi tugs me towards the bushes, and I yank her back towards the curb.

Ahhh, well.  At least one of us has learned to enjoy the rain.

My dog knows not to
ever pass up a good kiss.
She loves her human.

I really needed to get that off my chest.

If I could upload some music here, you’d get something veeeery nostalgic.

So…

TEN (REAL) REASONS QUITTING SMOKING IS FUCKING AWESOME

1. I have about double or more the energy I had before.  No shit.  I wake up in the morning and I wonder what I’ll do with all the energy.  This blog, for example, is a direct result of that energy.  Not to mention a very scary new found want to learn how to sew.  I’ve been weighing sewing machine options- Singer vs. Toyota.  Okay, maybe even too much energy.
2. I’ve already saved 5 Euros per day, minimum, for around €245 total.  That’s a new Ipod.  Or five tanks of gas (around 5,000 km).  Or a couple of round-trip tickets almost anywhere in Europe.
3. My dog doesn’t smell like smoke.  She still smells like dog, … but not like smoke.  I always felt guilty having a smokey dog.
   
4. Next time I climb a long route, that’s a few less grams to carry.  Next time I do anything, actually.
5. I won’t feel like as big of a jerk around the Indian half of the family.  I’ll still feel like the tattooed unmarried 30+ year old.  But at least I won’t have to get stuck on the terrace with all the uncles and embarrass the aunties with my total disregard for ladylike behavior.  Okay, actually I’m pretty sure that will all still happen.  But at least I won’t be SMOKING when it happens.  That should count for some points.
   
6. When I go to a restaurant, I can sit any fucking where I want!
7. Now when people are all “it’s because you’re a smoker, when you quit you’ll be able to taste so much more, smell so much more, blah blah!”, I can be all “no, I just naturally like shitty wine and buttloads of salt in my food, thank you very much, fuck off”.
8. No worry anymore about all the nasty ashtrays and butts and stinky crap laying around my house when I have people over.
9. No running out of the party to shiver and miss all the good stuff.
10. Uh… not worrying about a long slow lung cancer death.  Duh.
    

Off to save myself from toe cancer next!

ps.  I actually do recommend the Allen Carr book.  Just for the impetus!  I quit, and I’ve smoked my entire adult life.  It’s worth a shot.

I got this SMS yesterday evening from Paolo after he had just arrived home:

I am gonna kill your dog.  Spread her in pieces, cut her little filthy paws and make nice little medallions, pull her teeth out and make fishing baits…grrrr!

And despite the shitty day I was having the sun suddenly came out, little birdies began to chirp and the world wasn’t such a bad place after all.  Because I was at work.  Not at home, cleaning up the  garbage Scapi scattered over every square inch of the dining room.

I mean, can you appreciate the genius?  It’s like she’s a master painter, making sure each little horizontal area of her canvas has its decoration.  Even the chairs have been pulled out and left slightly akimbo to the table.

The best part is that the pictures above are from the LAST time Scapi did this on a major scale, in January, when Paolo also made it home before me.  Paolo didn’t take pictures this time because we don’t yet own a wide-angle lens.  I love my dog!

Painting in garbage wears me out!