Category Archives: Wendy Welch

Trixie Weighs In – all 13 pounds of her

Posted on by
Reply

Right, people, listen up. Some of you may not know me. My name is Trixie and I’m in charge around here.

I am the emotional support dog attached to Wendy Welch. By which I mean, Wendy is my emotional support human. I have a few… neuroses, shall we say. Wendy helps me with my anxiety.

People ask, was I a rescue, because I am so anxious. Those people are clearly not well-informed on current events. If you’re not anxious, you’re not paying attention.

I work with Wendy at some food bank stuff. Once a week she goes to this place where people line up outside like an hour beforehand. And there’s a big guy with a big husky. The guy is really nice to me, but the husky has said some rude things I don’t appreciate. Mom puts my leash under a table leg and everybody talks nice to me. But it’s still a bit taxing on my nerves. So many people wanting to pet me, saying how cute I am. A dog likes to be taken seriously. Like the big husky barking her fool head off across the parking lot. (She has to wait over there because she doesn’t volunteer with the warehouse, see.) Nobody ever calls HER cute….

I can live with cute, though, when it comes to the other place with the food. Wendy works with a bunch of med students once a month. They cook meals for people in a rent-controlled housing facility. Everybody at the facility loves me. Naturally. When they call me cute, they slip me scraps of the chicken gumbo or whatever the med students are cooking. And when the students play ball with the kids, I get to play too. It’s fun to run around at the housing complex. It is a quarter mile to walk around the whole sidewalk circling the place, and I have run this MANY times with a group of kids. Once a bunch of people chased me because I slipped my harness. Good times.

So, it’s not all bad having an emotional support human. I’ll tell you more secrets later. For now, stay warm out there. I have a winter coat attached to me, but you people have to assemble yourselves to go out. That thing with your feet, weird. But do what you need to do. It’s all good.

Scrap the Pizzas!

Posted on by
3

Do you know, it almost feels weird to be writing about normalcy again, after the long occupation?

A pleasant sort of weird.

Today’s crisis involves 120 bagels, a vat of tomato soup, and a whole lot of plastic.

It has always struck me as ironic that the Save the Earth and Feed the People groups can’t find cheap ways of working together. I have a thousand two-ounce plastic cups which I will be filling with cheese today (well, a couple hundred of them) and then lidding with yet more plastic.

Now the good thing about all that plastic is any lidded container is a treasure to the homeless people lucky enough to get motel vouchers so they can stay in a 10×10 with heat and tv and–best of all–a microwave and fridge so we can give them some heat-and-serve food. They will reuse the little plastic cup until it falls apart – or someone shrinks it in the microwave. :] Things happen.

We (my friends Amelia, Michele, and I) were all set to do bagel pizzas on Sunday. We had all the fixings for veggies and cheese, and Amelia very kindly was bringing summer sausages to slice up and add for meat options.

Enter snowmageddon, and our fun fellowship of cheerful women slapping pizzas together has turned to Wendy shoving frozen bagels still in plastic wrap out the door with little cups of cheese for make-it-yourself faux grilled cheese sandwiches (call them bagels au gratin?) and a large styrofoam cup of tomato soup. Yes, stryofoam. If you don’t like us using it, buy us some stuff that’s biodegradable but still warms your hands if you’re not one of the lucky ones and you’re camping up behind…. never mind where. The police will go rip it up if they know, sadly. God bless everyone involved in those decisions and I don’t fault the officers for doing what they’re ordered to do. I fault the ones who ordered it. Thanks.

So here I am, alone in my kitchen, surrounded by plastic and feeling desperate to shove these meals out the door before the snow flies. And thanking God that the people whose names and stories I have come to know are safe inside motel rooms.

Some of them might get in trouble, because if they have two beds and only use one, they will share. They may “rent” out the other bed. They may have friends and relations. They may just know someone from the food bank. If they get caught, everyone gets in trouble.

Sigh. Gotta go stuff little plastic cups with cheese now. Have a great day and stay warm, wherever you are!