Author Archives: hambotato

Jun 01 2014
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Nothing

I missed you

Where have I been? Where haven’t I been? A few wild weeks have passed since my last blog post and I’m sure there has been some speculation circulating through the national news media about my whereabouts. I’d expect as much since I am the Ham, but my answer to the often asked and yet to be answered question is simple. I’ve been everywhere! Inside, outside, in the bathtub, in a kiddy pool, in the biggest pool in the world people keep calling Lake Michigan, on the deck, in the car, out of the car, on my bed, on my parents’ bed, and even in my neighbor’s house! Don’t envy me though. This life is exhausting and has taken quite the toll on my bum knee. It gets the aches at the end of the day, but I’m positively absolutely sure that the pain is worth it. Ah, life! The wrenches that it throws at you and the dodging you must accomplish to get from day to day is extraordinary. I wish it would throw a cooked turkey at me instead. I can always handle turkey.

How rude of me to ignore you for this long! You were probably doing amazing stuff too because you’re such a good person and good people do good things for other people who are good and not good. It’s the most endearing quality about you unless you consider your ability to hand me scraps of table food a quality. Anywho, I’ve missed the bunches out of you and I wish you could see me now, but instead look at Veda. Thems eyes are crazy!

She has the crazy eyes

She has the crazy eyes

You’ve got love her. I sure do. This blog post could have contained more content, but it’s summer and who cares about content when the sun is out and I’m out and you’re out and there’s grass to be eaten! Let’s eat some grass!!!!!

-Hamower

May 12 2014
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Family, Life Thoughts

Lost Balls…not those ones, those were taken from me!

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Sometimes I lose my ball under the couch. It gets lodged underneath just out of reach of my long nails. It makes me sad because I can see the ball and I can remember what it was like to have it, but it’s just too far away to reclaim. The taste of the soft rubber lingers in my mouth and I can almost feel the ball squeak between my teeth if I think about it hard enough. Thoughts and memories are funny in this way. If I could just forget the ball was under the couch then life could continue without much of a fuss about my loss. Instead, I try to find a nice sunny place to lay down and distract my thoughts with the fish tank or the fly behind blinds or sounds of possible dogs outside, but my thoughts always seem to meander back to my ball. For example, I start to think about the fly behind the blinds which reminds of my Dad’s pant’s fly (which is always down) and thinking about my Dad leads me to his best friend Uncle Paul and then BALL! It goes on like this for hours…maybe minutes…time is a difficult concept. Tragically, there is nothing in the world I can do to get the ball from under the couch…on my own. See, I have these friends with really long, furless arms on whom I can rely on in these tough situations. They can understand what I need and want without my having to tell them anything. These people are, of course, my lovely Mother and Father and they always come to the rescue. Always! Even if they don’t get the ball from under the couch just having them around makes things a little better. You better believe that ball is still in the back of my mind, but it doesn’t consume me as it did when my parents are gone. It does help that they feed me and pat me on my rump which makes the painful memory of the lost ball dissipate a teeny weeny bit. I love them very much and at the end of the day I wish I could make those word sounds so I could tell them one simple thing: GET MY BALL FROM UNDER THE COUCH, YOU BEAN EATING CABBAGE HEADS!

-Hamory (it kind of looks/sounds like memory. Throw me a bone here. Literally. Throw me a bone!)

 

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Apr 27 2014
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Favorite things

Everything I need to know I learned from AFV

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Honorable Tom Bergeron leading today’s life class

People say the best way to learn is to make mistakes. I say the best way to learn is watch other people make mistakes. America’s Funniest Home Videos supplies a seemingly endless treasure trove of groin hits, table falls, sports follies, and home improvement disasters. It also seems that the presence of a pool will inevitably make someone feel invulnerable and the presence of a trampoline bounces the person’s IQ down by half. Over the age of 70 and feeling confident? That’s dangerous. I respect your vigor at that age, but your fragile hips cause the Hambone here to worry. I’ve got bum knees. I understand the painful consequences of being overzealous with my activities. And what about my fellow furry, feathered, or scaled friends from the animal kingdom? Are they spared the humiliation of being a spectacle on AFV? Yes and no. We are often the cute and cuddly videos, but we can also be the victims of human manipulation. The manipulation can only last so long. The human inclination to pester and tempt the animals will lead to llama spit, elephant pushes, and frickin’ ostriches! Those birds are frightening. Never meddle with an ostrich. Kevin Hart knows what I’m talking about.

Despite all of the ill conceived ramps, pranks, and stunts, I still find myself following the lead of some of the AFV videos.

This one is all me

This one is all me

Human manipulation

Human manipulation

AFV is a timeless show that has been hosted by a handful of people with the most memorable being the original host Bob Saget. He was much before my time, but I understand his influence on this genre has spurred imitations without ever recreating the heart of Saget’s version. Thank you, sir. You are my favorite person!

-Ham video

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Apr 13 2014
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Nothing

And Then There Were None

It started out great. We had a routine. I knew exactly what to expect and I loved it. And then winter ended. The things I could count on over the winter were the endless below freezing temps, Wayne Brady on Let’s Make a Deal, and my mom and dad always being home. Sure, my parents would leave the house here and there to pick me up some more food or to do who knows what else outside these walls, but they always came back home in a couple of hours. Spring finally showed up and now they leave all day. Sometimes my mom comes home for lunch, but it’s not a constant. It’s no where near as reliable as Wayne Brady. He is always there to make a deal. The weather is nicer and I should know because I spend most of the day staring out the window trying to see my parents or the odd squirrel.

They'll be home anytime now...anytime...

They’ll be home anytime now…anytime…

I put the camera on a timer to take that jewel of a photo. Do you know how hard it is to set the timer on a camera without opposable thumbs? Me neither! That picture was a total setup because I’m a dog and I have no idea how to use a camera, fool! As I was saying before, Veda and I have rediscovered certain joys since we’ve been left home alone so frequently now. The king of the couch game, the let’s share the couch game, the let’s lick the couch game, the lose the ball under the couch game, and Texas Hold ’em. Basically, there are a lot of hours in the day and many games with which to fill those hours. It helps to be creative and it also helps to have a couch. The fun we’re having doesn’t make up for my parents being gone, but I guess I’ve noticed other changes in my parents that have been beneficial. They finally took off those smelly sweat pants and hoodies they used to wear all day, everyday. The food they drop on the floor now is a little better quality (as is the beer they spill). They also seem to be a little happier and lighter even though I don’t know how they could see me less and be happier at the same time. That’s just ludicrous. This graph proves how the Happiness to Ham ratio works.

X-axis is in minutes and y-axis is happy units

X-axis is in minutes spent with Ham and y-axis is happy units

It’s a simple, but indisputable ratio. With this in mind, you should now understand my confusion about my parents’ emotions. They come home smiling without having seen me for hours. There has been some mention of them finding something called a “job”, but I know there’s something else going on. It has to be another dog. Mom always comes home smelling of other dogs and dad smells like hand sanitizer. From these observations I can conclude they are now leading another life with another dog who is very dirty and needs to be cleaned by my father with hand sanitizer. It’s the only thing that makes sense. We all know from the reports that Millennials can’t have jobs because being unemployed is an integral part of being a Millennial. I can’t complain too much though since I now get food from the purple bag. Purple bag!

-Ham alone

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Apr 02 2014
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Favorite things

The Simple Things

So, I was underneath a blanket the other day trying to figure out what was poking me through the thin layer of dog fresh fabric. It’s, basically, the best game ever. Thin beams of light would break through the woven holes in the blanket and I would catch the glimpse of a hand coming to push, poke, and grab me. The woosh of the hand passing my ears clued me in to dodge left and then bite right. I have excellent hearing. Excellent. For example: My mom’s car has four wheel disk brakes which sounds completely different from the neighbor’s rear wheel drum brakes which sounds completely different than that hipster fella on a skateboard. Trust me, I have excellent hearing. Anyways, I was under the blanket having a crappington good time when I got sleepy all of a sudden. What to do next? Yes, sleep. I don’t ask hard questions because my brain can only grasp simple concepts which require very limited postulating about future events. Don’t get me wrong, I gots me some good intuition to make up for the lack of advanced reasoning. Hence, I got sleepy so I intuited that I needed a nap. A nap, for me, requires one of a few things: 1. A sunshiney spot, 2. A wall on which to jam my head, or 3. A giant bed. On this day, I was provided with a giant bed to meet my nap qualifications and a nap ensued. My buddy Veda let me curl up right next to her and we really snoozed it up for a while. I think she enjoyed it more than I did.

Break time for my buddy and me

Break time for my buddy and me

You see that!? She loves it when I give her a little face massage and let her hog the entire edge of the bed. Generous? More like selfless to a fault. I barely slept a couple of hours stuck in that position, but that’s what best friends do for each other. Man, she loves me. I love her too though. You wouldn’t believe what happened after we woke up. We went outside!

Best day ever.

-Hamshanks

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Mar 27 2014
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Family

The Dames

Whoa, whoa, whoa (click and read). Everyone, allow me to introduce one of my close friends Mozie or Mipsy or Monty or whichever one she is. I may have forgotten to describe a few animals in my life not because I don’t love them, but because they’re so little that my eyes brushed right over their heads as I was gazing at the timeline of my life. These little ladies are Yorkshire Terriers who, as you can read from her comment, smother the heck out of me even if I tend to step on them, roll over them, and overlook them (literally, they’re tiny!). Perhaps it’s my deep brown eyes or deep brown fur or deep brown smell that attracts the love and lust of many a female. I try to keep up with all of them because I truly do love them equally. Right, men? You know what I’m talking about. Sometimes it seems like you get in trouble if your tail wags in the wrong direction, so I started wagging mine in circles to cover any possible direction. You have to please the ladies. Mozie, I did search for you when we first arrived to our new place. I looked everywhere I could think a little one such as yourself might fit. Here’s the proof.

Searching for Mozie

Searching for Mozie

Spoiler: Mozie was not in the bottom of the box. The rigorous search ended a few minutes later because that box was stuck on my head and I got lost in personal thoughts as I stared into the pitch black nothingness of an empty Coke Zero fridge pack. The head encompassing box lead me to ask the tough questions like: If I can’t see people, can they see me? or, Is that smell the box or me? It was a self reflection moment all spurred by my search for my loved, lost friends. In the end, I found myself in that box. I also found a raisin. Thank you, Mozie. Veda and I do miss you and the other ewoks.

-Sir Hams-a-lot

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Mar 19 2014
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Favorite things

Dog’s Best Friend

Who is your best friend? A dog? I didn’t think so. It’s probably a human because you are a human or so I assume. Who is my best friend? A human? Nope. It’s a dog because I’m a dog and we have common interests such as sleeping on floor, sleeping on the couch, sleeping, sniffing each other and chewing on stuff. My best friends are special though. I know my backstory is pretty tear wrenching and joyful, but wait until I tell you about my buddies Dyson and Veda. This story might be a long one.

Dyson was born somewhere in Atlanta in November 2008 and was adopted from the wonderful Atlanta Humane Society in February 2009 as a 3-month old pup.

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Dyson at 3 months old

He was adopted by my Father and his brother and quickly became the coolest dog in the world and loved by many. Of course, Mr. Hambone here wasn’t even born yet, but Dyson was my best friend as soon as I was introduced to the world a couple years later. Dyson taught me the power of The Look, the virtue of listening, and the importance of loving everything around you. We slept together, ate together, I bit his legs, and he sat on my head. Best friends stuff, you know?

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Little D and I when I was just a puppy myself

Sadly, Dyson and his Father moved to Atlanta in August 2011 and then all the way to the Pacific Northwest in October 2011. My Mom, Dad, and I missed Little D a lot, but life was getting very busy for all of us and getting another dog would be another responsibility that would be tough to handle…until something happened. We got a message from my Grandpa in Atlanta that a dog at the humane society who looked just like Dyson was up for adoption. We looked at her on the website and she sure enough looked similar to Dyson, but to be honest, Dyson’s personality was unique, not his appearance. There are tons of dogs in Atlanta that look just like him. Nonetheless, my Mom, Uncle Paul, and I drove to Atlanta to check out this imposter with the idea that we could adopt her if she is well behaved. The humane society smelled amazing! Dogs were everywhere saying “Hello!” “Hi!” “Hi! Hi! Hello!” and then we found the one for whom we were looking. We played for a few minutes and knew we couldn’t leave without her. Mom told the humane society people about how the new dog looked just like our old dog who also happened to be from this humane society, so they told her they would look into her file and do some sleuthing. The dog had been adopted and brought back to humane society on multiple occasions because she jumped fences and yada yada yada. She was first brought in to the humane society in 2008 with a litter of puppies…more info…and then…that litter of puppies included Dyson! This dog right here, 3 years later, staring at us was Dyson’s blood sister, his litter mate, his Gretel to her Hansel! You better believe she came home with us. It was just like old times. I bit her legs, she sat on my head, and life was whole again. We called her Veda like from My Girl and now I have two best friends. Dyson and Veda did reunite once and you wouldn’t believe it if I told you, so just watch what happened.

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Dyson and Veda, respectively, reunited!

-One lucky dog

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Mar 12 2014
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Life Thoughts

My Understanding of What I Understand

Ho hey! I’m not one to comment on current events because more important topics such as balls and myself take precedent, but it’s hard to avoid the ever presence of the frozen tundra which now surrounds me. It appears that my wonderful parents, my buddy Veda, and I have moved cities recently, but it is a little hard for me to tell the difference. We still live upstairs, we still have a deck, we still have a yard, there’s still a large body of water down the road, the only hills around here still are bridges, and we live next to a road which transports things at which I can bark. Maybe the trees look a little different, but by all means it is tough for me to identify anything substantial to support that we actually “moved”…except this one thing. Snow. Oh my, so so much snow.

80 inches of snow? Bring it.

80 inches of snow? Bring it.

It’s white, flaky, and pristine as it piles and piles up everywhere. Prime frolicking material, you know? And bonus bonanza: The stuff freezes into solid blocks perfect for chewing or throwing or batting around the skating rink that was our yard. It all seems like a great addition to what was my world of palm fronded trees, salty water, and warm weather, but there’s a more fiendish side to this snow stuff. It freezes the pickles out of my paws! The squishing of snow under my paws sounds like styrofoam being rubbed together and it feels great when it slushes between my toes until I can’t feel the slushing anymore. The feeling fades into a numb, stabbing pain, so I lift my paws up and put on this sad face in hopes someone will pick me up like the delicate little tortilla that I am. It worked at first! Now I have to rough it and walk up the stairs under my own will power. You should have seen the shoes I tried on as a fix for the freezing. They helped my paws, but hurt my ego. Not being able to feel the ground drives me nuts and it makes me do embarrassing things with my legs. I can’t explain that part. Honestly, throw on the coat my mom made me, take me for a walk, feed me, and give me a pat on the head and I’m happy anywhere. This new place has not only grown on me, I’d say the difference between here and old home is only a matter of degrees. Zing!

-Ham out

 

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Mar 05 2014
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Favorite things

Have I mentioned round objects?

You can’t believe how happy I am to see you! How long has it been? Forever? Something like 3 or 4 days? Oh, it’s only been 15 minutes. Whenever I don’t see you time just stops. I mean, Veda and I romp around the house with reckless abandon for the first 5 minutes, but it’s pure drudgery after that. I sniff the rug and then lick the pillow and then stare out the window and then stare at Veda and then bark at a noise and then you come home. Why can’t you at least leave me with a parting gift of a round object? It doesn’t even have to be particularly bouncy or spherical or even a special color. I’ll be happy as long as it fits in my mouth and I can throw it in the air like a tipsy father throwing his child. You have so many options from which to choose. There’s that fuzzy ball that smells like delicious mildew, that heavy one that you say is red, the one Veda ate a hole in so I can stick my face into it, or even that little piece that used to be a ball would work. Balloons!? What!? Who said balloons? I love birthdays because people bring balloons, food, hands with which to pet me, and beers to spill. I guess most men would agree those are all reasons they love parties too, but we’re getting away from my point. Balloons are magical little things that float gracefully through the air like a blimp until they explode in the air like the Hindenburg. All good things must come to an e…eh…what’s the word?…explosion! Yes. All good things must come to an explosion. Thusly, this post must come to an explosion as well. Boom.

-The Hambone

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Feb 25 2014
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Ham Health

Happy and Handicapped

You may remember that I mentioned I had a stout battle with parvo as a young one. The illness wrecked my insides for a while, but I fully recovered after some gentle coaxing of the IV needle. It seemed like all was good and dandy after coming home from the hospital, but my little stomach wasn’t quite as ironclad as some would hope. A change in diet, a certain kind of treat, or maybe those dust bunnies that I eat on occasion all seem to give me the vomits. The digestive part of life has improved as I’ve grown older even though I may enjoy a dust bunny here or there. The problem that does persist, and may be of no consequence of my parvo, is my joint problem. I was quite the rambunctious young lad with little concern for my well-being as I ran full speed into tables, leaped impossible distances and swam for a solid 8-10 hours in a day. I’m not sure I can pinpoint the exact time when my first knee went, but the residual pain in my back right knee kept me floor ridden for the whole next day after exercise. The vet says I tore my ACL equivalent called the CCL (cranial cruciate ligament). Life could continue without surgery and my other CCL was likely to tear as well. Devastating, right? I’m an athlete in my prime and SNAP! Sad days ahead unless you’re me and luckily, I’m me. Who needs one knee when you run on four legs!? I’ll run as long as I can on three legs and then two legs and then one leg and then I’ll roll around like a barrel when all my legs go out! It was a good idea until some grade A jerk at a dog park yanked me by my back two legs because he was unaware that dogs bark and growl when they are at a dog park. I forgive him, but he’s still an anus. He pulled my legs and SNAP! went the other rear CCL. Now thems some dark days. Things got so bad for me that I had to be carried  around for a few days because the pain of getting up was hell. Eventually the pain and swelling subsided and semi-regular life resumed. Running around had tough consequences and I dealt with them as any man would…lying down and crying for a while. The pool was my only haven; A place where I could glide with the speed and agility of someone who is an excellent swimmer and very hairy. My time in the pool would end and I had to return to the world ruled by the harsh mistress that is gravity. A solution lay ahead, but that’s for a whole new blog post. Until then, my favorite person!

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