Billionaires I Once Knew

I'm put in mind lately of a certain NYC mayor for whom I used to work.  Perhaps you'd like to know why.  So read on . . .

Peter Parker, as you may or may not know, has a great love of a little sad puppy mill rescue stud we've had in the family for three years now.  She named him after her idol, a certain Little Tramp from the silent film era.  If you're not familiar with the whole puppy mill situation, do look up some news items and what the ASPCA is trying to do in that area.  Suffice to say, our little guy spent his first five or six years of life in an open cage without normal socialization, love, hygiene, grooming, or any appropriate treatment.  When the farmer was done with his services, he was to be shot and left for trash, but was rescued by an intrepid volunteer.  A few months later, he was family.  We love him in spite of his quirks, including his inability to fully grasp house-breaking rules.  We especially adore his 100% attachment to Peter Parker.  Whither she goes, so goes The Little Tramp.

Soon after we moved down here to the family farm, the pup was in a little accident wherein he tried very hard to head-butt the tire of a moving car.  His twelve pounds didn't fare well against the car's 4000.  After a harrowing 30 hours in the doggie emergency room, it was determined that he would not die of a brain bleed, that no bones were broken, and that waiting to see what would happen next was the proper course of action so we took him home.  He's taking a few medications that make him a little sleepy--anti-nausea medication, a pain killer, and also a steroid to help his appetite and healing.  I can't tell you how amusing it is to think of our little poof-y Schipperke former stud on steroids, but there you go.  Look out A-Rod.

But I digress (anyone keeping a count on how often I say and/or do that in my blog?).  The main issues for our little guy ten days after the contest with the auto are that his he has no eardrum in one ear so his hearing is off and he has some form of vertigo.  To compensate he has his head tilted at a ninety degree angle almost all of the time, and especially if he's walking anywhere.  Even so, he's still a bit wobbly and sometimes flops over altogether.  As a result of his head tilt, he seems to have a perpetual attitude of intense curiosity combined with a few too many cocktails.

So what does all this have to do with the soon-to-be-former Mayor?  Back in the day, I worked at a desk relatively near his on the broadcast floor of his old offices on Park Avenue.  There were two cubicles separating us one from the other and our paths often crossed in front of one of the famed fish tanks--the one nearest his desk, by the open kitchen.  He would make small talk with me, especially whenever the tanks changed from one collection to another . . . he explained that the violence in the shark tank proved unsuitable for tender hearts, as much as he liked the carnage for inspiring his market guys; he confessed that the seahorses had to go when he felt he was personally decimating their fragile population by the demands of the one tank; and he schooled me about the little crab in the tank who was known as a "decorator crab" because his camouflage technique was to have a sticky shell that would attract tiny stones and shells to hide him from predators.  I thought the decorator crab looked like something you might find in a cheesy tourist shop in Florida, but I started to watch the guy.  One day I told Hizzoner that I had begun to watch the crab each time I arrived for work for what kind of day I would have.  If the crab was under a big rock, I would have some overwhelming task to manage; if he was frolicking around, it would be a good day.  The boss was highly amused.

One morning I got to the tank first thing in the day and I couldn't find him.  Oh god, I thought, he's dead and the fish guru has taken him away like so many seahorses.  I stood, dumbstruck, in front of the tank for a long time, searching for him.  And then I marched slowly to my desk and sat down, unable to work.  

About five minutes later I hear the big guy (who is actually a little guy) shouting across the broadcast floor, "He's okay! He's in the corner! Don't worry!" In four years working there, I only heard him shout like that when the Dow crossed 11,000 for the first time.

So back to the little dog.  As I watch him cope with all this, I feel his journey to be a metaphor for my recent life.  I feel as if, in some way, I've thrown my head against a moving vehicle 333 times my weight and lost.  Now I have to hold myself in an awkward position all day long to avoid the room spinning, and still I can't seem to keep myself from occasionally doing a 360 degree twist in a completely hopeless attempt to regain my sense of balance.  Get it?

Oh the liberal media

As some of you know, I've recently located myself, Peter Parker (the youngest), and our various animals to my in-laws' place in Middleburg, Virginia.  Sandman will follow when our house sells.  I've already made the local paper and I'm feeling pretty darned smug about it too.  After all, Weehawken New Jersey's local paper wrote several articles about me in my twenty years living there, but to think that in no time at all, I would be recognized here is quite impressive, no?  I haven't gotten a new drivers' license, registered to vote, or changed my address for most of my mail, but already my activities are being followed.  And without the Twitter presence of, say, the aptly named Anthony Weiner.  Who knew how famous I was?

I know you all want to know what was said about me, so I'm going to tell you.  "A cow was reported [by me] causing a traffic hazard on Sam Fred [yes, that's really the name] Road.  Animal control was sent to look into the matter but did not find the cow."

And let me tell you how I found myself on Sam Fred Road with a cow.  Here's the hair-raising tale: I dropped Peter Parker off at school and thought I would take the "back way" to our dirt road, otherwise known as Route 629, which I have to say is a bit of an over-statement in any world in which I've lived in the past.  It's just an unpaved road, barely wide enough for some of the pick-up trucks and school buses that navigate its gravel/dirt/washboard texture.  So I thought to go the back way in order to retrieve the paper and the mail, which arrive inexplicably in two mailboxes, spaced liberally apart by about a third of a mile.  They are on the driver's side only when approached from the "back end" of the road so if I want to retrieve the contents and I'm alone, that's the way to go.

But on this gorgeous morning in paradise, a road crew was blocking off one lane of the "Turnpike" that approaches the back end of the road (again, something of an over-statement).  Now, one lane is more than half the road.  Although it is paved, it doesn't have a line down the middle as that would force both directions to the very perimeters of the paving.  On the other hand, most drivers seem blissfully unaware of the limitations they face and drive at a breakneck speed, unapproachable in other dangerous driving locales like, say, Manhattan, where it's hard to make it past 20 mph without hitting a light or a taxicab.  So I was pushed to my highest country levels of anxiety when the one lane was blocked off altogether by some tree-trimmers.  I stopped well ahead of the flag man.  I waved gratefully at all elements of the road crew as I inched past them, and completely missed the turn into the back end of "Route" 629.

I kept going on the "Turnpike."  For about ten minutes.  And then it occurred to me that there was no way that I was going to find my way home heading in that direction without circumnavigating the globe in a west-bound direction.  On the other hand, I was too embarrassed to admit my mistake to the road crew I had so flamboyantly waved to only moments before.  I had no choice but to carry on and hope to find, eventually, a familiar landmark.  After another few minutes and miles, I was sent a sign from navigational heaven.

Oh wait.  I know you urban smarty-pantses are thinking, "Why didn't she just use her cell phone GPS, the silly girl?" and I'll tell you: the road was too wind-y (not breezy, curvy) for me to glance away from my driving even for a second to set the darned thing, and also there were no places where it was wide enough to pull over, and when I finally found a driveway-like affair going into a field of grazing cows, my GPS just spent the next half hour "searching for satellite" uselessly.  So there, you technology wonks.

But I digress . . . The sign was "Sam Fred Road"--the first intersection I had come to.  And I know that Sam Fred Road comes out just before the actual town of Middleburg is reached by the "highway" that constitutes the front access to Route 629.  I know that because when I met Sandman and his family and they were exploring the Middleburg area for a possible move to their current location, we all thought "Sam Fred" was a really stupid funny name for a road and promptly dubbed one of the barn cats, "Sam Fred" in honor of the stupid name.

I turned left onto Sam Fred Road immediately.  And about five minutes later, I found myself following a cow.  Again, there was no center line and the road wasn't very wide, but it was paved.  The cow was strolling like a Labor Day tourist through Times Square exactly down the center of the road.  I couldn't get around it.  I just decided the best course of action was to follow it at the pace it had set--slow.  Almost immediately a huge pickup truck came up behind me and I thought to myself, "oh crap, this pickup is going to honk at me for joining the cow in a slow stroll down the middle of Sam Fred Road."  But it didn't.  It just joined my little cow conga line.  And I thought to myself, "I'm certainly not in Kansas anymore" which is an expression I use ironically these days because the Virginia countryside more sharply resembles Kansas than any place I've ever lived before and certainly a whole lot more than my native New York City by miles and miles.  Just then, another pickup truck came at us head on, around a bend, going somewhat too fast, saw the cow, slammed on its breaks, and made a super loud squealing sound with its tires, which scared the cow off to the side of the road, unharmed.  And we could all pass.  And then I found my way back home, got the Middleburg police department non-emergency number on my now-revived cell phone, and reported my cow.

I have to say that the questions asked by the gal who answered the phone were a little strange to me.  But I'm used to calling the police because of someone blocking my driveway or to report someone's party being too loud.  Not because a thousand pound hunk of beef is blocking traffic.  So when she asked, "Did it have a tag?" and I reported that it did (proudly knowing that the metal earring on its ear was an identifier that indicated its ownership), I was a little unsettled when she asked me what it said.  Like I would jump out of my citified car and run up to the cow and read its earring.  Right.  But anyway, she offered to send someone to check it out, even though I couldn't explain exactly where I was, besides that I was on Sam Fred Road somewhere between the Turnpike and the Highway and the paper dutifully reported that the cow was not found.  I'm such a country girl!