The Travails of Karma

Yesterday my sweet little girl-dog, Ruby jumped on my back and knocked me flat onto my kitchen floor. I screamed. I wasn't sure why I screamed; it was spontaneous and instantaneous. When I later analyzed the scream (I've been taught by years of psychotherapy to analyze or die) I recognized many emotions which hit me in rapid succession: fear, anger, surprise, confusion and pain, pretty much in that order. And the really ironic part is that I was walking into the kitchen to get some ibuprofen for the knee I twisted a couple weeks ago. I'll explain my analysis, but first, I have to tell you a little about Ruby, my furniture and my so-called housekeeping.

Ruby is the medium-sized, female plott hound I acquired this past summer. She was listed on facebook as a dog destined for doggy heaven due to over-crowding in the pound about 50 miles from my home. It was a very hot day when I picked her up and this particular pound is hard to find, so I wasn't in the greatest mood by the time I got there. My mood didn't improve when she threw-up all over my car. But I got her home, only to discover almost immediately she knew nothing about doing her do-dahs outdoors. It didn't take long before our wonderful Billings, who's NEVER had an accident in the house, taught her the way these things are done.

Ruby is a dog of extremes; extremely loving, extremely excitable, and extremely horrified by even so much as a disapproving glance in her direction. I have no way of knowing from whence she wandered when the dog pound people found her lying in the middle of a dirt road, but I can easily imagine some idiot acquiring her because she was an adorable puppy and turning her out when it was decided she wasn't a perfect pet. These people should be allowed to own nothing more than stuffed animals, and even that much leniency is questionable. So I got her home and Ron and I soon discovered we'll never be able to yell at each other again because Ruby thinks all anger is directed at her. She runs and hides even if we're angry and not yelling. Being a hound, I guess her senses are heightened and she knows if you're mad even if you're saying nothing! Great, right? Then when you go find her she buries her little muzzle in your armpit and eventually looks up at you with those sad little hound dog eyes. She's soooo adorable and we put up with her chewing up everything she can get her teeth into, including some of our furnishings.

My furniture is . . . old. My furniture is . . . mostly second-hand. My furniture is . . . never going to fall into the antique category, and if my daughter inherits my belongings, almost everything will end up in a landfill. My dining room table and chairs were purchased from my friend Ellen when she was moving into yet another swell place and buying more swell furniture. I love my dining room table and chairs; I don't care how old they are. The table is like a big butcher block and all the trim on the chairs is painted white. However, thanks to planned obsolescence, and unbeknownst to me, the screws that hold the legs to the chairs have been periodically falling out. My husband has been collecting them like Easter eggs when he finds them, but not putting them back into the chairs. Instead he hoards them with all his other useless screws, nails, bits of metal, shreds of paper, kleenex, and dust bunnies. That's an exaggeration, but sometime I'll write a long story about Ron and you'll be amazed.

Which brings me to housekeeping. I grew up being a fair-to-middling housekeeper. I don't like filth, but I'll put up with a certain amount of dirt. I don't like excessive clutter, but I'll put up with a certain amount of chaos. And there have been times when I'd go nuts and have to have everything immaculate and tidy. Then I met Ron. Some women would be thrilled to have a husband like Ron; he's . . . quite amorous, doesn't care if I have a job, cooks his own food unless I cook (which is seldom), and couldn't care less what the house looks like. Here's the downside: I feel guilty because for years now I haven't been amorous, I need to work because he doesn't make enough money to suit me, when he cooks he usually creates a mess and walks away from it, and his mess combined with my inability to keep up with it makes life quite hellish at times. Thank gods for prozac.

So here's how it came to be that sweet Ruby leaped onto my back and shoved me to the floor: About a month ago Ron moved one of the dining room chairs to a bizarre location in the dining room and began decorating the chair with odds and ends of junk. He'd placed his bagged laptop on the seat of the chair and little by little had been tossing mail and class papers on top of that. To add to the decor I'd hung two of his shirts on the back of the chair knowing that some year I'd iron them. This chair was very near the table, but facing away from the table. The chair was also one of the chairs that had been shedding its screws. When I got up from the table to go into the kitchen to get ibuprofen Ruby got up from the living room couch and began to shadow me as usual. Ruby was right next to the chair when the legs decided they'd had enough and collapsed under the weight of the accessories. Ruby freaked and flew feet-first onto my back causing me to go face-down onto the kitchen floor. It took me a little while to figure out what had happened, but I'm sure it happened that way. I only wish I'd caught it on video so I could have put it on youtube.

Now, what is the karmic logic of all this, I ask you? Actually I asked God. I often ask God to explain to me the logic of what's happening, but he remains silent. My God likes me to figure stuff out; He doesn't hand me the answers, but he's a pretty fair grader so I try to cut him some slack. I concluded after picking myself up off the floor, calming Ruby, and convincing myself that getting drunk would not fix anything, that God possibly realigned my spine. I honestly wasn't in as much pain when I got up as I was before I fell. It was the weirdest damn thing. Don't get me wrong; I still need ibuprofen and hopefully I'm about to find out I need hypothyroid meds, but I felt different when I got up. Maybe it is A Wonderful Life, or maybe I just needed a good scream.