Training Jun-chan… Jun-chan training us?

My poor baby. Trust her to mis-interpret her training. I’ve discovered that in training a dog, you really have to have one specific response / behavior equate to one single behavior you want from her. It’s 1:1. If there’s any other possible interpretation, she’s bound to apply that secondary or tertiary interpretation instead or in addition to the intended behavior.

So, Jun-chan has a very nice playpen in which she has her pee-pad. I’ve trained her that when I say “first go pee pee and then I’ll let you out” (in Taiwanese) she’s supposed to go to her pee-pad and pee. The appropriate response that she expects from mommy is that when she’s done, she scampers back to her bed (all entries and exits from the play pen are from the bed) and mommy will let her out to play.

So now, whenever we put her back into the playpen she sniffs her way to her pee-pad, piddles a couple drops, trots back to her bed and looks at us - the message in her eyes clearing being, “I peed like you wanted me to, now lemme out.” What can I say? She’s the doggie-daughter of a lawyer. She follows the letter of the deal, though not really the spirit of it. Then again, if I called her on it (and believe me, I have), she whimpers, “but mommy, that’s all the pee I have in me.”

At any rate, back to my original point. It takes her a little while for her brain to go through the checklist of reasons why she could be stuck in the playpen and not outside herding mommy, grandma, or grandpa. Her behavior has become somewhat rote now.

1. Jun-chan’s put in the playpen
2. Jun-chan pouts and then goes to pee
3. Jun-chan goes back to her bed and whines to be let out
4. Mommy / the grandparents ignore her
5. Jun-chan’s confused, “Why won’t they let me out?”
6. Jun-chan starts to think… “Oh, is it Baby-alone-time again?”
7. Jun-chan pouts
8. Jun-chan takes another stab to get someone’s attention, so she cries louder and bark-howls to be let out
9. Mommy / the grandparents ignore her
10. Jun-chan pouts
11. Jun-chan thinks… “Oh, maybe it’s time to sleep?”
12. Jun-chan settles down in her kitty bed and lounges/naps until someone lets her out.

So, today was Jun-chan’s first experience at a “Puppy Social.” Klub K9 hosts free puppy socials on Sunday mornings which is pretty terrific of them, I think. My baby, I’m convinced, is a prima donna. She must be going through some puppy equivalent of the human kids’ “eeww… cooties” phase.

Puppies get acquainted by sniffing each others’ butts - it’s normal. The first few friendly pups who ran up to greet her ended up chasing her into a corner, where she cowered. A yorkie… cowering. Good grief.

As the social continued and pups romped together, Jun-chan stayed glued next to my feet. The only time she ventured away from me was when:

1. someone brought out the mop to clean up someone’s little pee accident,

2. to go to the neighboring person’s to either sniff or sit, or

3. to run away from approaching dogs.

Most of the pups were probably 8-25 lbs and extremely energetic, though there was this one little Italian Greyhound pup who was about 5 lbs and quieter. The first time the pup sniffed at Jun-chan she squawked at him, “Get away from me! You sniffed my butt! Violation!” The pup seemed really interested in Jun-chan. We, the parents were all laughing at them: puppy love at first sight.

After a while, Jun-chan seemed to warm up to him a little. And of course he responded by dancing a little ways away and play bowing and yipping to invite her out to play. Jun-chan took a few steps away from me to go play. Then it happened.

A tidal wave of puppies came thundering down surrounding her, sniffing at her, nudging her. Provoked, she let her inner prima donna-fishmonger wife’s personality to the fore. This little 2 lbs puppy started lunging at all the other dogs, squawking in high pitches, “Get away from me! Shoo! I don’t want your cooties!!” The other dogs swarmed around my legs and my little girl lunged around my feet, “Get away! Get away! Don’t touch me! Git! Git!”

The two trainers and the other owners had to get their pups away. But holy smokes, it was funny.

Identity Crisis?

Chances are good that my little doggie will have an identity crisis.? And she definitely will NOT know her own name.? Not with the number of names she’s being called…

1.? Jun (順) - my name for her.? Meaning “obedient” in Japanese

2.? Jun-chan (順ちゃん) - my pet name for her.? The suffix of “-chan” is loosely translated as “little” and is used in affection.

3.? Junko (順子) - a portmanteau of her first name and her last name - Jun Ko.? In Japanese it means “child of obedience.”

4.? Junko (純子) - a homonym portmanteau of her first and last name.? The character for “Jun” mean “pure.”? So in this spelling, the name means “child of purity.”? This happens to be my father’s preferred name for her.? I’m not sure which spelling my mom prefers, but she’s taken to calling her “Junko” too.

5.? Angel - go figure.? My mom declared to me one day that she didn’t like calling her “obedient” and that she wanted to call her “angel.”? ‘course, that was BEFORE my mom got a whiff of Jun’s poop and her farts.

6.? Baby - we all call her “Baby.”

7.? Scooter - uhh… yeah.? My brother hasn’t met Jun yet.? But after seeing her pictures, he proclaims to me over the phone that he wants to call her “Scooter.”

My baby.? She’s such a total lover-girl-cuddle-dog - I just don’t know what she’s going to respond to…

Welcome Home, Jun!

Jun, my new baby, my precious, precious girl…  Want to see her?  She’s adorable!  Born October 15, 2010, she came home with me December 11, 2010.

She’s 100% puppy. On the move, on the go, all the time. Except when she’s zonked out.

She’s 100% terrier - she’s killed her bear numerous times already and has moved on to a shaking her duck to death while bear-bear is getting washed.

She’s 100% lapdog. Always looking for a warm lap to curl up in to rest.

She’s 100% companion dog. Happiest when she’s following her family around. Little tail wagging furiously.

I just wish she’d pee all at once, instead of peeing a nice big puddle, running off to play, and peeing a little splash two minutes later. Thankfully, she’s stopped running off to hide to poop, I think…

She’s a brilliant little girl. She sleeps through the night already! Except, her night starts at 8 PM and her morning begins at 3 AM. But hey, she’s slept 7 hours! I just need to convince her to start her bedtime at 10 PM and begin her morning at 5 AM. Ah well… it’ll happen, sooner or later - I hope.

All in all, she’s brought joy to me and my parents, and my brother’s looking forward to meeting her too. I’m so in love…

Social Skills Anyone?

OK, OK, OK.  So I’ve been remiss about blogging - nothing new there.  Earlier in March, I went to Taiwan with my dad… Have lots of photos there to organize and upload.  But I think that’ll have to wait.

Today, this entry will be a confession - a self-imposed intervention if you will.  The first step to solving a problem, I’ve heard, is to admit to a problem.  So, here’s my problem: I have no social skills.

OK, let me qualify that.  I have certain types of social skills but not others.  I bet most people have never really taken the time to deconstruct social skills, but really, given the way my brain has been trained - split, qualify, and split some more until a whole is divided and identifiable by its sub-units - I think this is a very natural way for me to pinpoint my issue.

So, the first division of social skills can be into the “Professional Social Skills” and the “Personal Social Skills.”  At least for the purposes of this entry, the professional social skills isn’t as interesting.  I have some hiccups from time to time, but generally, am OK there.

“Personal Social Skills” can be further divided into the different purposes or scenarios where personal social skills are required.  For example, one’s relationship with one’s family, one’s relationship with close friends, one’s relationship in meeting a first time acquaintance.

My problem falls in the “Dating Social Skills” category.  So sue me, I never got into reading chick magazines with all the reputable articles about dating - and please feel free to apply the most sarcastic inflection to the word “reputable.”  They bore me and I’m sorry, but can they REALLY be trusted?

I read a ton of romance  novels - they being my favorite genre along with science fiction / fantasy.  But really, there’s a reason why the genre is FICTION.  There aren’t enough super heroes out there in the world waiting to sweep the fair maiden off her feet.  Besides, have you ever read a romance novel?  Some of them are a total hoot - fluttering eyelashes over come-hither eyes, coy smiles surrounding huskily whispered words, rump twitching in a butt-skirt as the heroine struts away on four inch heels.  But come on… let’s be realistic.  I’m more likely to be rubbing my eyes because of allergies than fluttering my eyelashes (which incidentally, I just tried, and the result is that I physically can’t seem to blink my eyelids fast enough or long enough to achieve a full eyelash flutter).  Whereas other girls may have come-hither eyes, mine are more sleep-deprived than anything.  I’ve never figured out the coy smile thing - I’m either smiling or I’m not.  I’ve never tried the huskily whispered words thing, but I can’t imagine myself huskily whispering anything without guffawing out loud (thank heavens I live alone).  Butt-skirts I don’t own, and I swear the only people who would put a heroine in four inch heels are MALE writers of romance.

I’m more inclined to watch action flicks / dramas, or any kind of winter sport, than chick flicks.  And action flicks and winter sports aren’t exactly educational in the dating department.  Mind you, it’s not that I have a wholesale dislike of chick flicks, quite the contrary, it’s just that I have to really be in the mood.  When I take a closer look at the issue, I think it stems from my pickiness about stories.  There has to be something that really engages me for me to actually want to spend the time with the TV show / movie.  For example, an intricate plotline like Fight Club (OK, the violence is a little off-putting), or multi-level storytelling like Invictus (how the movie starts with two distinctly opposing sides but at the World Cup, the film jumps from location to location and shows how as the game progresses, the two sides begin blending - brought together by the game on TV / radio such that by the end of the game, they are one nation in celebration, thus wrapping up the theme of the movie nicely), or engaging characters, like JAG, and NCIS / NCIS: Los Angeles, or superb dialogue like Shakespeare’s plays.  But chick flicks… for some reason they’re like a piece a gum to me: it’s fresh when you first start chewing on it, but the taste eventually peters out and you spit out the old piece and never look back.

All that being said.  I’ve hit a rut: work, work, get nagged by the parents about hurrying up and getting married (apparently they’re antsy for grandkids… gimme a break, I offered to adopt a dog to be their grand-dog, but they weren’t amused… pity….), work some more, study, work, get nagged.  And you know what?  I still haven’t found an implementable solution.  I wonder if there’s like some kind of class I could enroll in: “How to date: Cues and Methods” or maybe “Flummoxed Over How To Meet a Spouse?”

I’ve done the set-up thing… which, incidentally DOES NOT WORK, though people tell me that it’s because the people doing the set up are from my parents’ generation and have no clue about the actual set-up-ees.

But I think the best approach is go about this methodically.  Learn the does and don’ts of dating first.  THEN see what’s out there.  So, I don’t suppose such a class exists?  Or an authoritative book?  Something?

And finally, I want to THANK all my friends who upped and got married.  BOOOOO…. it’s thanks to you all that I’m getting pressured to hurry up.

*mutter* I want to start a single-and-happy-to-be-single club *mutter*  Of course then I’d have to brave the wrath of the “I want grandkids” group.

Humbug.

New MINI!

Aibo… My new MINI =) He’s so cute!

‘Tis the season…

I’m still twitching.  I can’t believe I actually did it.  He placed the contract before me - pointed out six places to indicate my commitment.  And I just couldn’t sign.  I sat there and stared at the line with pen in hand.  Maybe it’s a sign of being commitment-adverse.  Maybe I’m just not used to big steps in life.

Umm… no.  I didn’t get married (to the disappointment of the parental unit).

No.  I bought my first car.  It’s really cute.  It’s really aggressive..  It’s a Mini.   I love him already.  My precious “Aibo.”  Yep… I’ve named him already.  “Aibo.”  Hopefully, with a name meaning “sidekick,” Aibo will prove to be as devoted.

As much as I love Aibo already, I still can’t believe that I coughed up so much money and committed to cough-up more.

But he sure is pretty…  And he comes installed with cool geeky toys!  Like this technology where I don’t need to stick the key in the key-slot to start the car so long as the key is on my person near the car.  And heated seats.  And heated side mirrors.  And this radio that will display the title and artist of a song that’s playing on the airwaves or playing through the iPod.

I love Aibo.  May Aibo be safe and sound throughout our relationship.

Calm Veneer Over Falling-apart Panic

People consider me a calm person.  Buddha-like in my serenity.

HAH!

Some people consider me annoyingly detailed-oriented.  Nitpicky, in fact.

HAH!

This evening proves that one Esther Ko is neither calm nor detailed-oriented.  In fact, she has the unbelievable ability to simultaneously panic and focus on one single fact.

The story begins yesterday, when Esther’s meddling mother came to visit.  The same mother who likes to lock things up right… so right that it’s wrong.  Now, the door to Esther’s garage has a chain lock on it.  When she leaves from the garage, that chain lock cannot and must never be placed.  Why?  For the simple reason that logically speaking, one cannot place a chain lock from the other side of the door.  But worse yet, if the chain lock is affixed, when one returns, one cannot enter from that entry.

So what does Esther’s meddling mother do?  She places the chain lock in place.  And Esther, being totally unobservant sees the chain lock but doesn’t consider that she should take the chain lock off.  Instead, this RETARDED Esther sets the house alarm and leaves by the front door.

Umm… yeah.  Enough with the third person POV, that was yesterday, now it’s today.  Today… I get home from work, park in the garage, close the automatic garage door, and unlock the door into the house, all following my normal routine.  EXCEPT I couldn’t open the damn door.  At first I thought the half bath’s door was blocking the garage door.  Then I felt the chain lock.  Meanwhile the stupid countdown beeper on the house alarm was beeping away.

Then I panicked.  Do you know what a pain it is for the alarm to trip off?!?  PAIN IN THE ARSE I tell you…  So I smacked the automatic garage door opener again to raise the door and ran for the opening.  As soon as there was a wide enough space, I ducked under and ran pell mell for the front door.

I get to the front door and my hand was shaking enough I couldn’t get the stupid key in the lock!  Meanwhile my head is just focused on “That damn alarm!  Have to deactivate it before the siren goes.”  I get the key in the lock and burst through the door.

Can we say, “when it’s knees vs. hardwood floor, hardwood floor wins hands down?”  OMG… I forgot that I was wearing socks, which 90% of the time, I’m not because I wore sandals to work.  Socks over slippery hardwood floor means CRASH.  And there I was, sprawled on the floor of the front entry.

With adrenaline coursing through my system, I scrambled up and slipped my way to the keypad to turn off the beeping wonder.  With it disarmed, I ended up standing there for a few more minutes (yes, minutes) trembling, knees smarting, and with my purse and lunch bag in a wretched mess in the yawning hole opening into the night that was my front door.  I couldn’t walk.  I just couldn’t walk.

Now, about an hour and a half later, my knees are stiff and I have these really nice bumps.  Lovely contusions.  I haven’t had one of these since I last smacked my ankle against the wood of my tatami bed, the ankle swelled up like a balloon and I though that I fractured it.

So there you have it.  The calm-one literally fell apart.  I’m just hoping that it’s not some evil portend of things to come.

Stupidity, thy name is Gluttony

There is a reason why I don’t eat super greasy foods.  It is a proven fact that greasy foods do not agree with my stomach.  I normally have no problems with acid regurgitation - and for folks not interested in graphic description this is the time to stop reading…

But OMG… I was so stupid today… I haven’t had those little deep fried chicken pieces one gets at Boba tea shops in years - and I mean years - because I every time I eat the dratted things, I burp oil for the next twelve hours… then flatulence sets in and people run in fear (heck, I would run in fear if I could get away from myself).   I can’t drink water during that time because it only seems to exacerbate the problem.  So I get to live with the searing sensation of acid at the back of my throat for the next few hours.  And for those of you who know what a camel I am, also know the degree of punishment that is for me.

This evening’s main event began with the acid swarming up my esophagus about three hours after I consumed some of that chicken.  It burned, it seared, it made me gag and run for the bathroom.  There are times when I wish I could be bulimic and this was one of those times.  To just expel the whole of it from my stomach in one fell swoop would would have been a coupe de grace - painful, but at least the pain would only last for those moments and the recovery time.

But nope.  There I was, bent over the toilet trying to expel the punishing chicken and all I got was acid stuck at the back of my throat.

AND… to add insult to injury, I didn’t have any TUMS in my house!  So I had to wait until I had enough control over my stomach that I could survive a run to the store without having to pull over on the street to gag some more - during which time, I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing more oily-tasting burps.

It’s now 11:00 pm, five hours after my flight of madness (considering how twitchy I’ve been lately, I’m not even going to argue that I was acting rationally), and six tablets of TUMS later (the first four chewed up in the car as I sat in the parking lot of CVS), and I’m still burping up oily burps.  It’s a mercy that they’re less frequent now, but uggghhh… it’s going to be a very long night.

I can’t even blame this on the usual suspects that control a girl’s irrational cravings for certain foods.  Nope… this was straight-up psychosis.  That’s it… it’s the Twinkie Defense!  I was so stressed out, I lost my mind, craved something I shouldn’t eat, lost my self control, ate it, and now am ruing my actions…

Why are girls often late?

Tardiness bugs me.  That’s why I typically try to allot enough time to achieve a goal.  Last Saturday’s attendance at a wedding was no different.  Considering that the location of the wedding was in some vineyard in Livermore - somewhere I’m totally unfamiliar with - I figured leaving around 4:30 pm for a 6:00 pm wedding was sufficient.  Little did I know that being a girl would foil my plans.

To put it in perspective,  I knew that I would need about an hour to get ready and leave.  So as I was  laying out the materials I would need around 3:30 pm, I realized that I didn’t have bobby pins.  Now, not having bobby pins isn’t necessarily that troublesome.  What was worse was that the skin on my face had been doing its revolting molting the past two days prior to the wedding.  Exfoliating the peeling skin only made the remaining skin bright, lobster red with irritation.  Either way, it seemed like I was doomed to have bad skin.

But being a girl, I thought, “Well, they have all that make-up stuff to cover bad skin, right?  I’ll just run to the store to pick something up to smooth away the the peeling.”  My problem, I’ve realized, is that I didn’t get enough education in school.  Stupidly, I didn’t bother taking the cosmetics lecture, or the fashion study or the social niceties tutorial, for that matter.

So there I was at CVS at 3:45 pm, trying to figure out what color “liquid make-up” I was supposed to get.  I figured I’d go with the Neutrogena brand because they’re the company that produces the Retin-A MIRCRO that I use (or at least, they have similar names - Retin-A being produced by OrthoNeutrogena).  It even came with a brush thing at the end of the bottle, so I wouldn’t have to buy a separate thing to use to apply the “liquid make-up.”

Not having one of those small mirror things that girls seem to carry in their over-large bags (my personal over-large bag being too small to carry my water bottle, laptop, wallet, sunglasses, phone, tissue, etc, in addition too something as breakable as a mirror), I couldn’t see what skin tone I was to match with the “liquid make-up.”  (And that’s another thing, what the heck is “liquid make-up?”)

Being an enterprising young yuppie, I asked another customer who had the misfortune of just happening to be around where I stood bemused before a huge wall of girl-stuff, “Hi.  Sorry, could you help me out?  I’m not sure what color to get.”  Let’s just say, niceness is not a dead attribute.  The lady was nice enough to help me figure out what color to get.

3:58 pm, I’m back home.  4:00 pm, I’m in the shower.  4:10 pm, I’m out of the shower and brushing my teeth.  4:15 pm, I’m parting my hair to twist up. 4:23 pm, I’m cutting bangs into my hair. 4:29 pm, I’m moussing and blow drying the bangs into place.  4:37 pm, I’m trying to figure out how to get the “liquid make-up” out of the bottle.  4:38 pm, I have “liquid make-up” all over my hands and on the counter.  Great.  guess I shouldn’t have twisted the  base of the bottle so quickly.  Oops.

4:40 pm, why is my flaky skin still peeling off into the liquid make-up that was previously applied and brushed, in part, on my face?  Um… that’s not going to work.  EXFOLIATE!  4:42 pm, I’m washing and scraping peeling skin off my face and my face is now bright red.  Ok… Ok, no problem… the liquid make-up should cover-up the redness.

4:45 pm, I realized that the liquid make-up thing is just not working.  I’ve no idea how and how much of it to apply on my face.  Wash the face again!  4:50 pm, rush into the outfit that I’m wearing to the wedding.  4:51 pm, I realize that something is scratching my back.  I reach back and realize that the store tags are still on the shirt!  4:53 pm, I’m dressed, but my face is still a mess.

4:53 pm, I’m back in the bathroom waging war on all the cosmetics bit.  I’d given up on the liquid make-up, lipstick was easy to apply… but the eyes thing…  It gets me every time.  I hate mascara.  Every time I try using it and then removing it later, I end up losing around four eyelashes per eye.

My solution, liquid eyeliner!  Now, my natural hair color is black, the same goes for my eyelashes.  It’s the color that cannot get any darker with mascara.  So, 4:55 pm, I curled my eyelashes, did the eyeliner thing on my eyes (after fighting with the liner to actually write liquid out of the barrel), and added some black ink from the eyeliner to my eyelashes.  There!  even more black, not that you can tell…

5:02 pm, I’m finally out the door.  I would have made it on time, too, had I not gotten lost in Livermore.  Jeeze Louise…

So you see, doing the girly-thing made me late to the wedding!