I Jumped A Stranger While an Insane Dog Watched

Because I'm just that kind of wonderful wrink

This is how my dog sees himself as he defends our backyard against wrinks who dare walk in the common area, and people on golf carts. And Quail, of whom he asks, If they're not guilty, then why are they running?

You know what they say about the definition of insanity: if you're even contemplating it, then you're insane. Ha-Ha, no, really, the one about doing the same thing over and over again and excepting different results. Well, that’s me every morning as I sit in the backyard with my coffee and my dog.

My plan was to train R. as a service dog for my panic/anxiety stuff but instead, he became a Swifter for my emotions, so I became his service person instead. R. believes that anyone who dares invade his Townhouse Empire is dicey and hellbent on destroying the cushy way of life he’s become accustomed to, which includes having D. aerate each of his meals (Kirkland Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Dog Food, a touch of the mortgage-your-house priced Honest Kitchen Chicken and Oat Clusters, chicken breast that takes a shitload of time to make and shred just so, and “mommy snacks” home-baked chicken treats) with a three-tined fork. Not four. Not a spoon. And that’s just the beginning of the multihour process to get him to eat even one piece of anything, which I will detail in a future post. And in case you were wondering, yes, D. and I are idiots and suckers.

So, thinking that this will be the time that nobody walks in the common area behind my backyard, I stroll outside with my coffee, sit at the Kroger/HD Designs Bistro Set my sister forced me to buy when she came to visit (I can’t believe you don’t have any fucking decent place to sit out here!) take some deep, calming breaths, marvel at the soft morning light on the mountains, listen to the birds, (except that asshole Albert’s Towhee who sounds like a dying smoke detector and caused me hours of wasted time on a ladder) and repeat the mantra: I am enough just as the way I am, because I have the magical ability to simultaneously believe in stuff and be cynical about it.

My lovely n’ cheap faux-tile bistro set. I’m not on it because I’m trying to grab the lunging beast I live with. (The one with fur.)

All of a sudden, I hear R.’s high-pitched scream-barking and the sound of gravel pinging as he follows a miscreant down his side of the fence line. And each time I do the same thing; jump up, run after him screaming Shut up! Get over here, come here, stop it, goddamn it shut the fuck up, make repeated futile attempts to grab his neck, and of course he's kicking up more dirt, gravel and plants. Oh Shit! the human Darth Vader is actually stopping to talk. Why is this person doing this? Can’t she see there’s a 4,645-square-foot apocalypse going on in my yard?

I smiled and said good morning, and she smiled and said good morning, and I bet if I took R.’s blood pressure at that moment it would be higher than mine after I looked at the new deductible for my 2026 Medicare Advantage plan. Apparently the enemy combatant needed to ask me a question, and I was finally able to grab R. and toss him in the house. Every time I tell myself I'll put him on a long lead so I’ll have control during flipouts and then sit down, but of course I never do because definition of insanity! R. feels the same way about collars as I do about bras, so the only time he wears one is when we take walks. Don’t worry—we’re both microchipped.

The invader was a new neighbor who asked if I could give her car a jump. I started to say that my battery was old and sorta weak, because I felt lazy, but that was a lame excuse for a giving wrink like me, who knows that reaching out in even very small ways matters. Like when I gave a friend one gluten-free chocolate chip cookie out of the four dozen I baked for her because I accidently ate the rest, she said, Oh, thanks. I’m sure she was overwhelmed by my generosity and the deliciousness of the cookie. And if she wasn’t, screw that bitch, because that was one more cookie than the old broad had before! Giving is a beautiful thing.

More about me and my giving nature: I told my neighbor to give me a few minutes to throw on some clothes and I'd drive over to her place. I was wearing my bathrobe because underwear and clothes are other things I don’t like to wear unless I’m pressed into service.

From a site called The Art of Manliness. The “About” section of the site features a picture of a manly guy with lots of head and facial hair next to his wife, who looks exceedingly nervous for some reason.

My delusions of mutual female empowerment You go, girl! type of stuff deflated when I got to her place and she was watching a YouTube video on her phone about how to jump a car. Which of course I already knew, because I woke D. up a few minutes before to ask him how. I confidently told her Positive to positive, negative to negative and she said, Okay, but let me watch this a few more times and I wondered if my impatience would win out over my benevolence. And as the tinny sound of the YouTube reverberated through her open garage, I realized I didn't know if it was my positive then her positive, and my negative then her negative, or the opposite.

So I told her to look that up, but do a Google search instead of scrolling through YouTubes, which would take forever, because every How To video is made by folksy, slow-talking egomaniacs, even if they’re of the AI variety. We finally found the info and got the positive aspect of this adventure out of the way. As for the negative, here’s where things went south. I put one black clamp on my negative battery terminal and was about to put the other on hers, but then she got as excited as a person from the Pacific Northwest can (a fact sharp me gleaned from her license plate) which is between mellow and sedated. Apparently, the YouTube she watched said to ground the car being jumped, but she wasn’t sure where, and I wasn’t sure if grounding meant only to metal and where it went, so she started to watch it again. But ADH-Me! couldn’t handle any more slow-talking folksy, so once again, I told her to just Google the damn thing.

In the Pacific Northwest the constant moisture must render voice to text unusable, so I had to do my 4-7-8 calm breathing while she slowly typed Where on a car do you ground a jumper cable and does it have to be on metal like it was a turn-of-the-century Blackberry.

Just then, D. came by, perhaps reawakened from his usual hibernate-until-10 a.m. slumber by R., rendered apoplectic by someone breathing somewhere in the state, ready to take over the entire delicate operation. Because after all, D.’s a guy, and what's more guy than jump starting a car? While I appreciated this huge gesture from a man who’s mostly misanthrope, We are strong, We are invincible, We are women who know how to read a smartphone screen, so we declined his help.

After reading some info from Auto Zone, my neighbor and I found a big metal screw/nut thing on her car where we attached the negative clamp. I then started my car, and within a minute, she successfully started hers.

A few places to ground a negative clamp while jumpstarting a vehicle. Learn this skill and you, too, can go around thinking you’re better than other people!

As D. and I drove home, guided by the shrieking of a pissed-off Poodle, I was fulfilled by the knowledge that I’m an amazing human being who, even in her sunset years and with braced wrists and hands, gets out of her (sometimes metaphorical) bathrobe and gives of herself. And thinking I’m great and better than all those selfish assholes who wouldn’t reach out and help a lesser being from a slow section of the country is what makes America great!

Unfortunately, it does not shut up my dog. I have to end here so I can try to shovel some mommy snacks down his gullet, which he’ll probably refuse, like most foods that cost less than a iPad. Until next time, fellow wrinks and wrinks-to-be!