Life Thoughts | My Life as a Ham

Jul 07 2014

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer

Oooooohhhhhh boy! Tis the season to be Folly beach bound. That’s a little tip o’ the hat to my hometown. Hey, human! Tip my hat for me, would you? These stinking paws make theatrical gestures such as tipping of the hat or well timed jazz hands a highly difficult maneuver. Onward!

It sure has been a summer to sit back, look at the open sky and ask the big questions. Why, just the other day I was standing in a beautiful pool of water when I looked down and asked the question, “Who am I?”. I stared off into the infinite reflection in the water and the answer appeared so clearly in the murkiness. Literally, it was there the whole time and I think my tranquility of mind allowed me to finally intercept the answer: A brown dog! Unbelievable, right?

In my gazing pool shortly after I realized who I am

You want big answers to big questions, but you find the truth to be more simple than expected. It’s tough to admit that life isn’t always as complicated as we like others to think. Sometimes, a dog is a jerk because his dad is a jerk and his dad’s dad was a jerk and that’s all there is to it. Other times, a dog is amazing and brown like me or my pal Veda. End of story. Does this mean that Mr. Hambone doesn’t get a little riled up and try to go for the jugular on a fellow canine when he happens to be playing with my ball in a way I disapprove? I’ll go for a jugular. Don’t play with my balls the wrong way. Bing bang boom. My heart is still full of love, but it also has rules. We may be getting sidetracked here and I do believe it is time to digress back to the big questions! Most people are constantly concerned with what other people are thinking. Following my simple answers hypothesis I will demonstrate how to decipher another’s thoughts with minimal effort. A series of photos will follow and under each will be my 100% accurate revelation of the thoughts behind the eyes of each subject.

Food. Where is food?

I swear it smelled like food.

Fast food!

See? Simple simple. You may say that I have no idea what I’m talking about because I’m a dog and my plane of thinking is below that of the average human. I blame Pavlov for making all of us look like fools. I mean, a bell rings and his dog starts drooling? What was that hound thinking that was so dang appetizing every time the bell rang? Honestly. Think on a higher level, friend! It’s not always about food and things that sound like food or smell like food or remind you of food just because the words sound similar. What was that!? I gotta go! I think I heard the door handle to the food closet jiggle which means I should be eating in 2.4 seconds if I can calm down enough to sit down and throw my paw out to shake! Wait, it was just Veda. She rolled into the door as she was sleeping. What was I saying? Who cares? I’m too hungry to continue and now I have all this saliva worked up. I guess I’ll go lick the couch for a while.

-HamBierka (Bierka being the name of one of Pavlov’s dogs)

Tagged Pavlov

May 12 2014

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

2011-12-23 14.34.10

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!)

Tagged balls, Loss

Mar 12 2014

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.

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

Tagged Chicago, Dog shoes, Snow, Winter

Feb 21 2014

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Life Thoughts

A Dog’s Life?

Let me tell you about everything. Life as a dog is not unlike that of a human. Some of us are lucky enough to be surrounded by love and we get to sleep, eat and play like everyday is our birthday. Other dogs have jobs with farmers, firemen, philanthropy groups, armed forces, and far more. Some of us are excellent at alliteration. Other dogs have a tougher life on the streets where they have to fight for food and a dry place to sleep and they might not even live to see the next day. Go ahead, shed a tear, sing some Sarah McLachlan and hug yourself while you rock back and forth (My Mom can’t watch those ASPCA commercials either). It’s ok to feel bad for a little bit, but today is the best day ever and you should remember that. Did I forget to tell you what kind of life I lead? Well, it could have been any variation of these three. Honestly. I could be chasing down a tasty cockroach for a day’s meal and showing off my alpha male status, but my testicles were removed and I was adopted by an awesome person. I could have even been a work dog like that talking pig in the movie about sheep and that handsome elderly man who dances, but I have a bum knee and it’s tough to be on it all day. I guess that makes me your average family dog with an above average personality. Not too bad in the grand scheme of things, I suppose. And crap I love water!