Sigh.

I am about to become the kind of person who does this to their animal. And I am sorry. If you see us walking down the street, please don't point your finger, or snicker, or say to the person walking next to you, "Oh my god, can you believe that?! Some people are so ridiculous."

Because that's what I say. And if I do this, I won't be able to say it anymore. And I will want you to refrain out of sympathy.

It's not that I care about what other people think. I care about what I think. And these violate my sense of what is right and wrong. Buying them -- and then admitting that I bought them, through the act of using them -- will mean I'm no longer privy to the jokes I once made about People Like That.

Admittedly, this is a far cry from a diamond-encrusted water bowl, or a facial at the doggie day spa. But it's a little more than I feel comfortable with, in the let's-personify-our-pets department. It means I'm contributing even more towards the $40 billion a year that Americans spend on their pets (seriously, people, we could feed a small nation with that).

This almost crossed the line for me --


-- but not quite. It's not like my dog wears his Christmas outfit (which is more of a plaid collar ringed with jingle bells) in public, or anything. Or for more than one day out of the year.

These are different. These are about as public as it gets.

But dude, the dog's feet are frozen. We can't walk the two blocks to the video store without him crying in the middle of the sidewalk. So I figure this is better than that.

Addendum. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. If you, dear friend, put boots on your dog in the winter, whether you live in Alaska or Alabama, I still love you. And no, I've never pointed at you and laughed. Honest. Oh, that time? No, I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at, um, that mime, you know, the mime who lives across the street and happened to be practicing his Britney Spears impersonation in his front yard. Seriously!

never mind that

i'm deleting the poll question. it's a waste of time. (if you're burning to know what the poll was about, ya'll can read the comments below, at the end of this very long post -- sorry for the length, btw. it's really hard to write about a moral dilemma in 50 words or less. )

so, here's what happened the other day. j and i, and two of our friends, were leaving our house saturday night to head to the bar around the corner. our friend TK was the first to walk down our front steps, and when she did, she met a woman on the sidewalk. the woman was crying.

i came down to see what the problem was. the woman told us she was trying to get home and asked if we had 50 cents. she was crying and looking afraid. it was well after dark, on a residential street, and she was wandering the streets crying.

"are you okay?" i asked.

"yeah," she said, "i'm just a little shaken up after what happened."

she was young, maybe in her early-to-mid 20s, tall and somewhat overweight, and spoke in a breathy, high-pitched, baby-doll voice.

"what happened?" TK said.

"well," she said, "i was in a car with this man, and he had sex with me, and then he pushed me out."

i asked if we should call the police. i asked if we could call a friend. she said no, that all she wanted was money to get home.

"how much does it cost to get home?" i asked. if she was asking for only 50 cents, she must mean the bus, i thought.

she paused for a second.

"thirteen dollars and 74 cents," she said.

and that's when i knew we were being scammed. because it seems to me, it just feels to me, what with me being a woman and all, and having known quite a few, that if a woman had just been sexually assaulted, she wouldn't necessarily come right out and offer this information (what with it being sensitive, alarming, and still stigmatized), but she probably would be a little more direct in her needs.

she probably would have said something like, "something really bad just happened. i need to get home. it costs 14 bucks. can you help me?"

but she didn't. she asked for 50 cents.

i am a sucker, and i also don't find it inherently wrong to be asked for money on the street, so i gave her two dollars. i also was fighting the voice in my head that said this woman was lying.

i don't want to think any woman with a story of being raped is lying. i want to help her. i want to bring her in and wrap her in a blanket and give her some tea, then i want to track the bastard down and hurt him.

TK asked the woman for her name. after a very, very long pause, the woman said, "Misty?". she said it with a question mark at the end. then TK introduced herself, and our other friend did the same.

by now we were all walking in the direction of the bar, with the woman walking along with us, and j and i were walking a little ahead. i didn't want her to know my name and my address and the fact that i was sucker. the address and the sucker parts were bad enough. and i still wasn't sure she wasn't lying.

so we parted ways with her at the corner and wished her good luck, and then we went inside and sat down, and the first thing TK said was, "that was a total scam."

"really? are you sure??" i said.

they all looked at me for the sweet, naive thing that i am.

"i can't believe you gave her money," j said.

"anyone walking around at 10:30 at night asking for 50 cents probably needs it," i said back.

we left the bar two or three hours later.

and there, across the street, was the same woman, standing under an awning, chatting away on a cell phone.

i think it's perfectly fine to ask strangers for money. there are programs for homeless people, but they are stretched thin and don't always work, and there are so many cracks for people to fall through. so i don't mind. i live a very comfortable life. giving two bucks to the lady who lives outside the coffee shop is the very, very, very least thing i can do, if it means she gets to eat that day. i have never known what it means to survive solely on the mercy of strangers.

but, to lie about why you're asking for the money -- and to lie about something that no woman should lie about, because it calls all the legitimate claims into question -- just seems unnecessary. once, a guy j knows was walking down the street when a homeless man approached him. the man said to j's friend, "hey, buddy, i'll be honest. i really want a beer. can you spare a couple of bucks?" and j's friend handed over the money. everyone should be able to enjoy a good beer every now and then, he figured.

a couple of nights after our encounter with the woman, j and i were running to the store down the street. it was early evening, and the sun was beginning to wane. and we saw the woman again.

i really, really wanted to talk to her. i was waiting outside the store for j to come out, because i had the dog with me. i saw her coming from down the block. she looked up and seemed to pause, and i thought for a second that she recognized me. but she wasn't looking at me, she was looking at something on her hand. and i thought, oh great, the money i gave her went to a manicure.

she looked away and began walking towards me, and as she passed me, she looked up and we locked eyes.

"it was a lightening bug!" she said in a joyous, though slightly muffled voice.

"what?" i said.

"i said it was a lightening bug!" she said. no manicure, just a lightening bug that had landed on her hand.

she smiled like a child and kept walking down the street.

farming is hard

i could never be a farmer.

i learned this last week, when i spent a few days in beautiful north dakota, with my lovely friend BJ and her very wonderful husband, NK.

farming is hard. you don't get to sleep a lot or watch law and order marathons (much to my alarm) or futz around online for hours at a stretch, because there are animals to feed and water to tote and fields to clear and crops to harvest and barns to sweep and books to balance and food to make from scratch ("oh, it's 10 p.m.? sure, i think i'll just bake some bread and knit a scarf before turning in.")

this is not in the cards for me, because i am lazy.

on one hand, it makes me feel guilty and a little bad about myself, because i think, "well, hey! i should be willing to make bread at 10 p.m. and know how to saddle a horse and be able to work a solid 15-hour day!"

and on the other hand, following BJ and NK around on their land (which isn't even a real farm, but a pasture and several horses and a gigantic garden and a few acres of land), i felt very, deeply alarmed for the future of our country. because most of us have no idea what it takes to produce any of the things we eat, use, watch, touch, or otherwise consume in the daily course of living.

and this is a problem.

because it means we're all lazy.

so, at least i'm in some kind of company, if not entirely good, educated company.

they say there are more buffalo in north dakota than people. cows have the right of way there. ("if you hit one," BJ warned me during my drive up, "it's automatically your fault. so be careful.") the biggest cities would be small towns in a lot of states. and it's also eyeball-freezing cold for half of the year, and the people are rather reserved and suspicious of outsiders.

i drove around with BJ for a work function, and everywhere we turned, she seemed to meet another person who knew her parents, who lived on the other side of the state. "the state of north dakota is like a really spread-out town," she told me. and it's true. it's not seven degrees of separation -- it's two.

so now, back in my urban flat, surrounded by cars and concrete, i'm wondering how i can maybe try to replicate a teensy bit of north dakota in my landscape here. because knowing every third person in the state is kind of cool. it means you'll always be able to borrow a cup of flour.

but more importantly, i would like to be a little more connected to the process of growing things. with the news trickling in of poisonous toothpaste and irradiated spinach and puss in cow's milk, i think being a tad more connected to the people who actually process the stuff i choose to put in my mouth could only be a good thing.

so last weekend, j and i and our upstairs neighbor LS started a flower garden in our backyard. it's a small step, but i have brown thumbs. we will master the daisies, then move on to something more wholesome and life-giving, like maybe the tomato.

and then maybe i'll think about that 10 p.m. loaf of bread.