Category Archives: small town USA

Trixie’s Difficult Day Out

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We held our annual Hogmanay party last night, from 6-8 pm, to celebrate the Scottish New Year (which happens at 7 pm Eastern Standard Time). In preparation for the party, we vacuumed, did the dishes, hid a few items of clutter upstairs in the guest room, and got our wee dog Trixie a grooming appointment.

Trixie came to us via friends who had three Pomeranians and said she was not living her best life in company of other dogs. A lot of her nervous traits disappeared or reduced once she became Queen Canine, and since she was happy to be ruled by the cats, especially our matriarch Molly, Trixie fit in right away. She cuddled on Jack’s lap, slept on my legs, and enjoyed her new digs and lifestyle very much. As per protocol, after about two months of her living the high life, we figured she needed the matted bits cut out from behind her ears, and could benefit from a wee bath.

We kinda wanted to show her off, too, our new cute fuzzy girl, so we made her grooming for the day of the Hogmanay party. Two hours after dropping her off, the phone rang.

“We can’t touch her. She’s terrified. Sweetest little thing, never tried to bite any of us, but she’s miserable and she’s wet herself and pooped everywhere and we’re not going to be able to groom her.”

I raced back, and our poor baby sat cowering in the corner of the kennel. I put my hands in, and she licked me, allowing me to pull her into a shoulder ride embrace.

“It’s okay, Mommy’s here,” I crooned as she shivered against my shoulder. The groomer, whose name was Courtney, could not have been nicer – or more knowledgeable about dogs. She suggested that Trixie would have PTSD and associate this dark and dreadful day with being groomed, so from here on out, we should do it at home. Courtney wrote down what equipment to get and what to do with it once it arrived, and then gave Trixie one gentle pat on the head. She also offered to spray her with perfume, as our wee girl not only hadn’t been groomed, but now smelled like poop.

We decided not to subject her to any more fearsome treatments, so instead of taking home a powder puff in a Christmas kerchief, I carried our smelly, matted baby girl to the car. Where she cheered up immediately.

That night, our guests arrived and cooed over Trixie, who after a few false starts allowed them to pet her, licking their hands. I saw one of the guests give a quick sniff as Trixie passed by, and couldn’t help laughing before telling the story of Trixie’s difficult day out.

The guests began baby talking her, offering tidbits of chicken and little dog snacks from the bag we keep on the table, telling her what a brave wee soul she was, how terrible it must have been, but she was safe now, did she want another doggie treat?

We now think Trixie planned the whole thing. She enjoyed the party very much. So did her admirers, and so did we.

Leaving Facebook

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This is my first week back from Mexico and I had intended to write about some adventures there. But I’ll be leaving FB Tuesday, Dec. 17 (tomorrow at this time of writing) and that’s drawn a little bit of interest so let me address that first.

Wednesday, we enter Mexico. :] Which was glorious

“Why are you leaving FB” is the unspoken question behind most of the messages reaching me. Slightly behind is “especially if you are staying on Instagram.” Just after that is “I understand, and I think about leaving too.” Rarely is there a drawn out discussion (which is a nice thing, don’t get me wrong).

So here are a few points to consider that factored into my decision. I’m not going to link to any of the online sources for these; if you google they will come up first page. I don’t need to tell you to ignore responses from FB/META, right? Those are either how-tos or persuasion. Look for data crunching firms. I recommend a report called “detailing the delete FB phenomenon.”

  1. Data crunchers have investigated who is leaving FB and why in some depth over the past few years. I am actually in the second-largest age category leaving. Leading the leave wave are millennials. Gen X runs a fairly distance second. Why they are dropping the big F falls into several categories.

Privacy is a big deal for all of us. If you want to give yourself points to ponder, watch a TED talk by Yuval Noah Harari about big data (and follow it with Cathy O’Neil and Zeynep Tufekci).

Probably the biggest factor I considered was “what will publishers say.” While I was in Mexico, I literally direct-sold a book to a popular press; meanwhile my agent is shopping around in the New Year a book about Hurricane Helene, co-authored by the amazing Roxy Todd (Radio IQ). Facebook threads and Appalachian American groups provided a lot of data about actions and reactions to the hurricane once the initial rush of do-gooders left. Would I be closing myself off from a source of marketing (something publishers tend to take pretty seriously) and a resource for attitude information?

Nah, said the agent I spent time with in Mexico. I was there with a group called Wayfaring Writers (you can google them too; they are a lot of fun to travel with) and the agent was there to answer just such questions as mine: will my agent and publishers drop me if I get off FB?

She gave a nuanced response: not if you leave FB. If you leave all of them, quite possibly. But you can protect your privacy more strongly on more nimble platforms. Explore your Instagram account. Same source, different vibe and easier to be self-caring.

So I need to learn other social media platforms, and that’s not exactly “I hate Zuck and all he stands for” so much as “I can only do three things at once.” It’s just that pragmatic.

And I don’t like how FB sucks me into watching reels of sad little animal rescues, or entices me to look at “behind the scenes” moments in the making of movies. Apparently, META knows these are my weak points. I didn’t know until I found myself doing them over and over, and the “behind the scenes” stories are so shallow and silly, I stopped doing that out of frustration at the click-without-treat-reward. And wondered just how deeper into Pavlovian territory we could go with me as a lab rat. What button will we push for a treat? This is not a question I am prepared to have asked about myself, a sentient being made in the image of a loving God.

Finally, I want my time back. My phone informs me I spend about 3 hours a day on it. Granted some of that is active working of something or other – a network, a plan, actual stuff that produces results. But a lot of it is that infamous doomscrolling. I told myself that doomscrolling was fun, that I WANTED to do it and it was self-care and relaxation.

Mmmhmm. Everybody has to answer that question for ourselves, and your answer belongs to you. When I dug past the first layer of “leave me alone, I’m enjoying this cat video,” I came up with my own response to “is this relaxation or conditioning?” I’m not saying anyone else would reach the same conclusion, or for the same reasons. Y’all decide for yourselves.

So, am I going to miss it? I think so. FB let me be friends (deep, meaningful friends) with a plethora of people across the country, particularly on two lists of similar life experience groups, one for canning, one for leading non-profits. The depth of the relationships I’ve made there might be ironically reinforced by how many of those people reached out to ensure we had each others’ contacts before I disappeared from their easy viewpoints.

Those are the salient points. Everybody makes their own decisions about how they spend their time. There are many other factors to consider, and that article above touches on several. But their biggest find that resonated with me? Of the people surveyed about leaving FB, not a single one reported being unhappy with their decision a year later. They reported increased personal happiness, mostly from strengthened personal relationships and mastery of casual hobbies.

I can find another source for cat videos, and the people who want to keep up with me are reaching out. It feels real, not reel.