I got your number on the wall

As if last week wasn't already upsetting enough, on Thursday morning I started getting creepy text messages on my cell phone from some guy named Jamie. First he called and left some incoherent voicemail around 2AM. Then he sent a couple of texts.

I was being a nice, naive person and assumed maybe he got some girl's number in a bar and was drunk-dialing or had a couple of digits wrong. So I called the number and left a message on Jamie's voicemail indicating that he had the wrong number.

I'm not trying that again, although I doubt it would have made any difference. He already knew I was female from listening to my voicemail, which he probably knew he would get if he called at 2:36AM.

So then there were a couple more texts. And a couple more texts after that. The messages were general enough that I knew he didn't know me and was probably some kind of annoying individual spammer, but it was still unsettling to get increasingly lewd messages wanting to know if I was feeling sexy. Where could he have gotten my number to begin with? Now I was both freaked out and annoyed; not only was this creepy and weird, but it was costing me money.

DH is in charge of our cell plan so he called our service provider to see if we could put a block on incoming calls and texts from Jamie's number. We were told that they could block it, but we would need to pay extra for them to do that. Gee, thanks, guys. Also, if he really was obsessed with me from afar, he could conceivably start contacting my number from a different phone.

Option Number Two was to ignore the harassment and hope he'd get bored and move on to other victims, but he could theoretically continue texting ad infinitem, which we'd then need to pay for. Mmmm, not so good.

We ended up going with Option Number Three: I get a new cell phone number.

While I'm relieved that these unwanted contacts have now stopped, I'm also pretty annoyed at this cretin. For all I know, he is randomly calling cell phone numbers all over the country, determining which numbers belong to females by calling overnight and listening to their voicemail, and if so, bombarding them with lewd text messages and racking up their monthly bills. Due to Jamie's obnoxious behavior, I now need to tell dozens of people (including my kids' schools, my security alarm company, doctors, coworkers, service people, companies I do business with) that I have a new phone number, and it's not even in my original area code.

I don't know of any way to bust this sicko, but I wish I did. I could file a police report, but it's probably not worth the time - not to mention, where would one do this? He's not from this region. In an attempt to be my own case detective, I went to one of those websites where you can look up phone numbers and the number is assigned to someone in Collinsville, IL, just east of St. Louis, MO. I wasn't willing to pay for the more specific information these sites claim to have; Jamie has cost me enough already. What would I do with this information anyway? Fly out there and surprise him when he gets home? Enroll him in the Turd-of-the-Month Club? Sue him with what little is left of my 401k?

While this is not even a blip on the radar of true crime, I still feel harassed. And I worry that this kind of activity could quietly increase as an insidious and potentially unstoppable form of spam. Under current legal definitions, this is not advertising and thus not spam, but it's definitely unsolicited and unwanted contact from an unknown person, and causes the victim both money and hassle. I don't know of any law that would bar this, nor whom one would contact to report this type of intrusion.


UPDATE:
A friend of mine googled Jamie's phone number and turned up a Craiglist posting he made. So we now know his name and hometown. I'm mulling over filing a report with his local police department. Just wish I'd made better documentation of what he did before we switched over my phone number. Maybe my phone company can help....

George 12/25/1999 - 11/17/2008

And the beat goes on

My George is still very sick. He has now gotten to the point where he will eat only small quantities of chicken nuggets and bologna (yes, fed to him by hand). Over the last week we have vacillated between thinking he's perking up, and thinking this is it and we need to take him to the vet and put him down. DH and I went so far as to discuss when to do this, should things deteriorate further. But we wanted to hold off on a decision until he went in for a recheck today.

The latest conclusion is that his extreme lack of appetite may be attributable in part to the meds he was put on to help retain his protein. On top of the kidney disease and adrenal tumor, of course. So he is going off that for now in the hope that he will get some appetite back, start to eat his special kidney disease formula dog food, and regain his lost weight and vitality. The surgical courses of action that might be performed on a young dog are too risky and invasive for him, so we're just going to treat him with medication/special food and see how he does. If this is successful, we might get another year out of him. If he continues to refuse most food, we probably will have to put him down, and very soon.

Through all of this, he still has remained the same sweet, loving dog, just a very tired one who sleeps much of the time. He still follows us around the house, jumps up on beds and couches, shrieks when he wants to come in, and hangs out in the kitchen during mealtimes to see if he gets anything (even though he then refuses pretty much everything offered). Between activities, he retreats to his bed or any soft nest and snoozes, curled up in a ball. Gretzky often spoons behind him with his chin on George's side. I'm not sure what he thinks about all this; he's certainly not saying.

Me, I've been an emotional roller-coaster wreck. One day I can barely hold it together because he's lethargic and refusing food, which makes us think he's starving to death, wants to die, and we need to end this before he suffers. The next day he seems more lively, snuzzles his grubby face all over my clean pants, eats a decent meal (if you can call 6 or 8 chicken nuggets a meal) and even plays a little outside, and I'm wondering what the heck I was thinking yesterday?

I've also jumped into my foxhole-prayer mode. Big time. It's sort of ironic that the one time I took the dogs to the annual Blessing of the Pets at church, George became desperately ill within weeks. Not that I don't recommend having one's pets blessed, nor am I accusing my church or the blessing process of causing his problems, of course - I just think the timing is almost humorous. Each dog was given a St. Francis medal for his collar. I couldn't figure out how to attach them (granted I can't even figure out how to attach their rabies tags!). I've been carrying the medals around with me since George got sick, almost as talismans.

So anyway. Prayers. I say them in the car, at my desk, in the shower. The other day, I lay on the bedroom floor next to a sleeping George, put my arms around his emaciated little body, and prayed. I expressed thanks for his life and all the love and joy and silliness he's brought us. I prayed that he would be healed and given more time here. And that if he couldn't be healed, that we would receive clear signs on what to do and when to do it, and that his death would be peaceful and without pain. And that we would accept his loss and be grateful for the short time we'd had him in our lives. And that once he left us, he would be taken to rejoin his lost brother Duncan at the Rainbow Bridge until it was time for us to come calling and take them with us to Heaven.

Since then I've been watching for signs either of healing, or of further decline. And obviously I'm not getting clear signals either way. But our vet still seems to think he can pull through this, so I'm still praying, and waiting for signs.

Anyway, if you're still there reading, thanks for your patience as I exhaustively document his progress or lack thereof. And please send good thoughts encouraging him to eat!

Waiting on the world to change

Today is amazing. It's not often that one can consciously be part of a historic moment in time. As a historian, that is beyond mind-blowing.

I went to vote at our township building first thing this morning, stood in line for a merciful 35 minutes, ran into all kinds of neighbors and acquaintances. Even though we're in an unincorporated area, it felt like a cozy small town. Everyone greeted those they knew warmly, and an undercurrent of excitement made all the standing around worthwhile.

Even though the people in line with me were voting for different candidates, it really felt like we were all together, hanging on this precipice in time, using our voices, hoping and praying for a change that will turn this free-falling country around. Hoping that whichever candidate's oval we blackened would help our future. Instead of feeling like we're fighting over control of our battleground state, it felt like we were all striving toward a common purpose, and that each action by each one of us was tremendously important.

We Democrats are hoping the third time is the charm. I remember that tumultuous election in 2000; DH and I had been married a year, and we'd just moved into our first house in DC. We sat up for hours as the pundits tried to figure out the whole Florida thing and couldn't. We went to bed thinking there would be answers in the morning, and when we got up nobody knew the answers. And then the waiting went on for weeks, and the bad partisan feelings surfaced and exploded as the election spiraled into a debacle.

In 2004, we'd just moved here, with Melrose approaching her first birthday. We stood in line for over an hour each to cast our ballots, grousing about the inconvenience, but realizing fully how critical it was. (We actually got off pretty easy on the waiting, unlike the record-breakers of Gambier, Ohio). Again we sat up late watching the returns, again it was too close to call that night, but the end came much more quickly. And again, at least to us, it sucked.

Today really felt promising and empowering, and that things were already changing for the better. As I stood in line and a young woman ahead of me approached the registration table, one of the poll workers called out "New voter!" The entire room cheered. I felt light and optimistic and on the brink as I left the township building and headed to work. Having finally done my civic duty after all this waiting was a relief. I don't think anyone got much done today, myself included. Around midafternoon my colleague in another office e-mailed me that she was itching to go home. I too felt like climbing the walls, ready for the day to end and the polls to close so we could settle in and watch the results.

So now, as we've done the last two times, DH and I are planted on the sofa in front of the TV for our third presidential election night. We've driven past other polling places where people are spooled around the building in patient, umbrella-wielding lines, and marveled at the determination driving people out of the woodwork to vote. We're glad we did what we needed to do this morning, and that it's all out of our hands now. We're watching and waiting for the answers, and praying they will come sooner and be more definitive. They're already calling Pennsylvania for Obama, and that makes me so proud, and so encouraged.

And all day I've had John Mayer stuck in my head:

One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting, waiting on the world to change

Dog update

George has now seen a dog radiologist and a dog neurologist. They believe he has two issues going on.

The trouble walking and controlling his legs is attributed to some kind of a stroke. No brain tumors, no apparent injuries, but clearly there's some disconnect between his brain and his lower spine. There is nothing that can be done other than getting used to it.

With the weight loss and lack of appetite, he has been diagnosed with kidney disease. His kidneys are basically dumping much of the protein he eats, and making him feel crummy. This condition is incurable but they are giving him medication to treat it and help him retain his protein and get some weight back.

So. The problem now is getting him to EAT. He is now refusing to touch pretty much any dog food and only wants people food. Fed to him by hand. So much for the days when we'd plop a bowl of kibble (or anything else) in front of him and he'd inhale it. They said older dogs sometimes get finicky, but this is almost comical. We're feeding him hamburgers by hand, and trying to trick him into thinking we eat canned dog food so then he'll want some. I feel like a nut, but whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.