In the mail today

Today was bill paying day at the BardiacShack. So I had to face down the mail.

The hardest thing was the end-of-the-year dog license reminder. I had my very old dog put to sleep in May, and to be honest, I don't think about him much lately. I think I'd mourned him for six months or more before I was ready to take him to the vet for that huge dose of barbituates, and he'd probably been ready for six weeks or so before I was. So when he was dead, I felt more relieved than mournful or saddened.

I opened the envelop last night when I planned to pay bills, mistakenly thinking it was the usual city service fee, and stared at it a while, feeling crappy and wondering if I was supposed to write in the change section that "I had my dog put to sleep" or something? Did I need a vet certificate, as with the rabies certification?

But as I looked this morning, I noticed a little check box for "if you no longer have this dog" so that's what I checked and signed my name. But then that didn't feel sufficient, somehow, so I wrote a note that my dog had died.

I think I feel worse today than the day he died.

On a completely different note, one of the local Northwoods companies included some anti-meth advertising along with their bill. It has five sets of before and after pictures, purporting to show the horrible effects of meth. I don't know from meth; caffeine and alcohol are my drugs of choice. But do they think anyone is actually going to be convinced by this insert? Remember, folks, we pay for these inserts. We pay for the paper, the printing, the machines that blow them into envelops (okay, that's a seriously cool kind of machine), and the extra weight they collectively make in our mail system.

I couldn't help noticing about the before and after pictures, though, that on two of the male sets, the pictures of "after" showed a SIGNIFICANT improvement in hair, quantity AND style. In the before pictures in these two sets, the men showed serious signs of male pattern baldness. And in the after pictures, they had a lot more hair, not exactly a full head of lush curls or anything, but more.

So I'm thinking...