Country v. Crosby

Here we go.  The showdown I figured was coming.  Team USA v. Team Canada (or, as I refer to them, Team-Crosby-and-Kunitz-plus-some-other-people).  With USA's win today over the Czech Republic and Canada's slim win over Latvia, they advance to face one another on Friday, and I'll have to decide where I stand:  with my country or my favorite player.

Maybe that seems like it should be easy.  And maybe it should be.  But, it's not as easy as you think.  I really respect the men who play for my home team, which is not Team USA, it's the Penguins. And those are international faces. Therefore, while I am very happy for Jussi Jokinen and Olli Maata, my heart broke a little today for Evgeni Malkin (but, truthfully, that was offset by some evil-spirited glee to contemplate that Alexander Ovechkin is currently unhappy).  Yet, I hold in the highest esteem of all:  Sidney Crosby (cue fanfare).  He's devastatingly handsome, there is that.  But, that's not really what it is for me (not that I don't notice it on a regular basis).   It's just such a privilege to watch him play the sport.  And I truly mean that.  I've said it out loud a few times during a game, "Wow, I feel privileged to have just seen that."

I've seen him control the puck down the ice, almost as if he and it are one, gliding with the skill of a dancer through a throng of defenders.  His puck management is artistry, as is Malkin's, but where Geno makes interesting passes (as in bad) sometimes in my opinion, Sidney is a master at it.  And, of course, can the man shoot the puck?  That can leave me speechless!  How many times have you seen Sid get his team the win in a clutch moment?  Surely sometimes he hasn't, but really - with everything riding on the line - can you tell me whom you'd rather have on the ice wearing your uniform right then?  And, think about it, he plays for my city's team.  I get to see him live several times a year.  I am so fortunate.

So, to return that favor, I want Sidney Crosby to do well in all things and be happy in all things.  He makes me happy, so he deserves it.  To my mind anyway.  Chris Kunitz, while maybe not quite as high on my hockey altar, also makes me happy, and I tend to think people underestimate him as a player - which makes me a little protectively mad.

And I like Canada.  There is so much beauty there.  And they gave us Rush after all.  Bless them.  Anyway, driven by player loyalty and no reason to wish the country as a whole ill, there was no question four years ago what team I was rooting for in that thrilling gold medal match-up.  I even learned the Canadian National Anthem.

This year, however, I'm torn.  For one thing, my nose got out of joint when James Neal got snubbed for the team.  I know all the reasons why, but whatever, I felt he was snubbed.  Then, I was livid when I heard the buzz circulating about whether or not Crosby was hurting the team, and whether Kuni actually even deserved to be on it, that he was only chosen to make Sidney comfortable.  For one thing, has anyone saying any of that watched any Olympic hockey?  All the teams have struggled to find some chemistry.  Passes weren't sharp in the preliminary round, turnovers were sometimes making me wince.  Players who usually play against one another have to learn to play together in a matter of days.

And, let's not forget, with all those challenges, Canada wasn't losing.  Maybe they weren't burying their opponents, but it seemed awfully petty for a fan base with no losses to be whining about not enough star power out of Sidney Crosby - the very man who gave them a gold medal last time.  You know what, fine, send Crosby and Kunitz back to us in Pittsburgh where we'll appreciate them.  Maybe you do not deserve them.

Now add to that the fact that two Pens will be playing on the American side, plus Coaches Bylsma and Granato and our general manager Ray Shero being all part of the team.  The Red, White and Blue is pretty populated with some Black and Gold this year.  Makes them hard to root against without feeling like a total traitor on all levels.

Yet, I do not want to see any of the Penguins players sad at the end of the day.  I don't want second guesses and whispers to follow them back to us - their truly loyal and adoring fans.  Yet, the game demands it:  there must be a winner.  Therefore, there must be a loser, and I must watch someone whom I respect deeply wrestle with the emotions of deep disappointment.  So what do I do?

Finally, after some deep soul searching, I have decided that I will remain true to my country and just hope they all come home to Pittsburgh healthy and work together to win all of us a Stanley Cup.

Go Team USA!

ABC News

State of Mind

With the flu finally deciding it's had enough of me, I tried to spend this weekend getting my little house ready for company next weekend.  My husband is coming to visit.  He's actually coming mainly to dog sit for us so my daughter and I can go to Chicago to see the Penguins in the Stadium Series, but he'll come a few days early so we can all spend a little time together.  He lives in Texas the rest of the time.  For now anyway.

It's a complicated situation with a complicated history, but one of the things I've noticed lately is how out of place he always seems when I talk to him.  He went back to help care for a family member.  It's supposed to be a temporary situation.  As in a couple-to-three-years temporary.  But originally when he pulled out, two days before my birthday, I felt like he was ready to be back "home" because he seemed a little too eager to leave.  Now, I'm not so sure he knows where home is.  I never sensed he felt it was Pittsburgh.  He always felt a little outside of the Pittsburgh crowd.  And he wore that "otherness" as proudly as I had when I lived in Texas.  His moniker in a football column I wrote for a while was "Cowboy Fan Hubby".  He knew that's what I called him, and he liked it.  He wore a Super Bowl XXX t-shirt to Steelers training camp.  No one said anything, but they sure did stare, and I noticed the reception we got was unusually cold.  And I was SO sure he was going to get us at least assaulted if not worse at the Steelers-Browns game the season before last (the one where James Harrison knocked Colt McCoy into another time zone) when he got a little too vocal about being unreservedly not a Steelers fan.

Despite that, he liked it here, but like one tends to like their favorite vacation spot.  It was new and unique (he had never lived outside of Texas).  He became, rather quickly, both a Pens fan and a Pirates fan.  But never, ever a Steelers fan.  If anything, his dislike of them worsened once he landed here.  I always thought it was because the rest of us are so immersed in the team that it tends to be smothering.  Early on, I met a young man who explained he was a Packers fan even though he was born and raised here just as a rebellion to having the Steelers jammed down his throat growing up.  I think my husband felt the same way.  But a city is far more than the sum of its sports teams, and there is a lot to love about Pittsburgh.  I tried to introduce him to all of it that I had discovered myself.  We discovered still more together.  And he would seem to like a lot of it, yet there was always something...  He used "they" and "you" a lot when talking about the city.  Like he was apart from us.  Particularly when discussing something he didn't like - usually either political or Steelers-related.

I understood it.  I had literally spent decades in the same mind-set after all.  And he was naturally torn.  For one thing, the rest of his family was back in Texas.  Now he's back with them, but he's left a big part of his family here.  So he's conflicted yet again - or, rather, still.  He can't win no matter what he does or where he goes.  That's hard.

I confess that I worried when he made the decision to go back that people would think we should have pulled up stakes and gone with him.  There were a lot of practical reasons why it wasn't a consideration, but the truth of the matter is that I never seriously considered moving for any reason.  This is my home now.

But that's the question I've pondered since summer when he left:  how does one define "home"?  Is it a place?  Or is the people who populate that place?  When I lived in Texas people always used to tell me it was the latter.  When it came down to it, I chose the former and let my poor husband go back by himself.  And I left him in some sort of "state" where he's not really belonging to either Texas or Pennsylvania.  He's living, for now, in the State of Flux.

Does this define home...

...or does this?

The Winter of Our Discontent

There is a party going on over at my house.  A pity party that is.  For one thing, I have the flu.  Or something.  I confess it's self-diagnosed.  But it's been hanging around making me miserable for days now.  I missed Rocco's funeral.  And, my dogs will be the first to tell you, I've also missed my obligations as a pet owner for days now.  They're fed and have water, but they're missing most of their walks, and I'm getting these sorrowful looks and whines from Cheyenne like I just beat her.  She does love her walk.  Maybe more than she loves me.  She lives for that twice a day event and has a built in clock that's uncanny.  Six in the morning and 6:30 at night - boom, she's ready!  But, with a head that's pounding, a back that's aching and a nose that's running, the LAST thing I'm going to do is walk around in single digit temperatures - I haven't even gone to get today's mail.  So, I'm sitting here watching the Westminster Dog Show (which I don't think Cheyenne really likes that I do either - I genuinely think she gets a little jealous when I coo over all these purebred beauties), thinking back to fall longingly.  In my other blog I wrote an article toward the end of August where I finished up with a picture of my little house in snow and captioned that I was dreaming of the time it looked like that again.  Good Lord!  Be very careful what you wish for!  Because this has been a long, brutal winter.  What was I thinking?!

I grew up loving winter, but I had a child's love of snow.  Which comes from playing in it and then going inside to hot cocoa with marshmallows by the fire.  It didn't take into account shoveling the stuff, driving on it and trying to mollify active dogs while not allowing them to succumb to hypothermia.  That's what parents are for!  And it sure didn't involve paying the heating bill!  My Texas friends are having a little fun at my expense and reminding me I chose to live here.  And I did.  And I'm glad I did, despite all of it.  But, I'll confess I now understand why so many Pennsylvanians winter in Florida.

Since most of us who work don't have that luxury, here are a former southerner's tips for surviving a northern cold snap:

• Flannel sheets.  Get some.  I understand electric blankets are making a comeback, but I don't really want to worry about my covers shorting out and shocking me in the middle of the night.  And with good quality flannel sheets, I'm telling you, you don't need one.
• To live here, you'll need boots.  And I mean the functional kind. I moved here with these killer boots - several pairs.  I can put your eye out with the heel on one pair of black beauties I own.  They are shoved way in the back of my closet gathering dust.  I haven't worn them since the first year I lived here.  I have a nifty pair of riding boots now that have a minimal heel and good tread for when I want to look fashionable, but not slip on the muck that are downtown Pittsburgh sidewalks.  I am also on my second pair of rain boots and just replaced my snow boots.  The first pair of rain boots I got from a leading discount chain and wore out in literally weeks.   Now I would say to just go for the better quality.  When it comes to reliable cold weather footwear, you probably get what you pay for.
• They salt their streets here.  It works for the reason they do it: it melts snow.  It does other things too. It's corrosive for one.  It's not just the weather eating away at the Pittsburgh infrastructure here, it's all the stuff we use to combat it.  That means that salt-ridden snow that's coating your car?  Yeah, it's eating away at your car too.  But, when it's sub-zero for days on end, it's hard to do much about it.  If you look closely at the cars that have been on the road for several years here, you'll see it - the corrosion and rust.  Many Pittsburghers seem more or less resigned to that fact.  Not me.  I love my car.  So, when we had a warming trend a couple of weeks ago I sat in a very long line at the car wash to clean it off.  I'll do it again as soon as I can.  On the in between days, I'll vaguely fret over what all that salt is doing to my baby.  I opted for a special coating on my car when I bought it.  Time will tell if it helps.  But my best advice to anyone who is like me is don't let your car sit unwashed any longer than you have to.  It's murder on your dogs paws too, by the way.  Since booties was an epic fail, I'm looking at other options.
• Slow and steady wins the race.  As wonderful as people in this city tend to be, there is something that happens to people when they get behind the wheel of a car.  They morph like evil transformers and try to destroy all others in their path.  In bad weather, most of them tend to calm down.  They don't have a death wish anymore than you do after all.  But for some, the tendency to cut someone off from their exit or to swerve quickly in front of them is just too deeply ingrained, I guess, so be very careful and keep a big distance between the car in front of you.  There may not be atheists in fox holes, but I can tell you, there aren't many on Route 28 in a snow storm either!
• Interior pipes do freeze.  Hopefully your exterior faucets are long since shut off.  But I was caught by surprise during our first arctic blast when my upstairs shower stopped draining and the cold water wouldn't turn on.  The exposure to the cold and the wind on that exterior wall had frozen the water in the pipes.  Now I can tell you what to do to avoid that.  And what not to do.  Panic does not help, I can tell you from experience.  Epsom salts down the drain did.  
• There is beauty in all seasons.  Don't get so freaked out that you miss out on that fact.  If you're from a warmer climate, all this snow, ice, salt, freezing pipes and dogs who are making you insane with their cabin fever can make you both fearful to go out unless you have to and hate it when you do.   But, stop for a moment when the snow is falling and look around.  Let some fall softly on your face.  Look around on a winter morning and try not to see the ice-crusted streets or the dirty mounds of snow the plows have made.  See the soft virgin snow in your neighbor's backyard instead.  Go sledding.  Go skating.  Enjoy winter.  Unless you've got the flu, but even that shall pass.  I hope anyway.

Climate Change

As we prepare as a city to lay Rocco to rest, I'm not at all sure I'm done with that heavy hearted topic, but how could I ignore what we all woke up to this morning!  I looked out my window and realized I couldn't really see my driveway or sidewalks under a heavy coating of snow, but I was leery that it was true snow.  I figured there was a layer of ice under there somewhere.  So, I pulled on my winter woolies, hooked the dogs up to their leashes and headed out as we always do into the pre-dawn morning.  Holy crap!  Layer of ice, my eye!  That wasn't snow.  It was something way more evil (not that snow is evil - I like snow).  It was this white ice-snow stuff that I have never seen the like of.  Never.  Seriously, I've spent some time thinking about it.  I had an hour and a half while I was trying to chisel out my two sweet neighbor ladies' walkways from under a foot of this stuff to think it over.  Growing up in Montana, we had these chinooks that would blow down from Canada and start to thaw out the layers of snow, then freeze back over and leave us with these horrible, deep ruts of ice.  That was bad.  But this came straight out of the sky like that.

Anyway, I tried to walk the dogs - they absolutely live for their walks - but my older girl was slipping all over the place and clearly not happy with this unusual development, while the young one was having the time of her life, leaping forward so she could crack through the ice, which seemed to be the very definition of fun for her, but only served to drag Cheyenne off her already shaky feet.  For my part, I could barely pay attention to them, trying just to keep my own footing on a total sheet of ice.  The three of us gingerly made our way about 3/4's the length of the street before I just called it and tried to turn around.  I couldn't make it across the road.  Seriously couldn't.  So we gingerly just walked back the same way we came, and Cheyenne promptly showed me what she thought of the whole thing by taking care of her morning business on the downstairs bathroom floor (at least she made it to the bathroom) while I went off to try and help dig out my neighbors.

This was just one more crazy winter morning in what has been the oddest winter I can remember.  The thermometer has been like a yo-yo. Up and down, and then back up again and then repeat.  We've had snow, then thaws and rain, then snow again and this infernal ice crap.  Every swing has caused both my daughter and I to have a sinus headache at least one day after the arc takes place (and, pray tell me somebody, what is living to trouble my sinuses in -9 degrees!)  Is it because of climate change?  Of course I have to believe it is.  Even my dad, who died in 1992, believed in global warming all the way back when.  But, you know, I'm like everybody else when faced with freezing pipes, iced in driveways and cabin-fevered dogs; I'm not thinking so much about that on days like these.  I'm just trying to get through them in one piece.  And that can be a bit of a challenge in the Steel City.

One of the things you learn right away is that not all townships are created equal.  I live in a township that is obviously better funded than others, so I saw the plows come up and down my street three times while I was laboring to chip away at heavy ice so my two neighbors had a fighting chance of making it to their mailboxes at some point today.  But that's not uniform.  If I have to travel to a neighboring township, which may only be a mile or so away from me depending upon which way I'm going, that could potentially be a whole different story.  And that's not even discussing the city proper, which is not a shining example of street maintenance under any circumstance.

Now, consider that I live in the North HILLS.  Hills being the operative word here.  If I'm downtown, which I was one Saturday night during the deep arctic blast we had in January, no matter how I try to come back home, at some point I'm going to have to work my way up hill.  I drive a Subaru, so I can handle most situations.  It's the other cars on the road that I have to worry over.  But even my darling, wonderful, amazing Subaru slid around a little on the way home that night because, again, not all townships are created equal.  She stayed tucked safely away in her garage today, and I forbade my daughter from trying to come home from her boyfriend's in Greenfield.  I'm learning the best course of action is just not to interact with a bad winter day from behind a wheel here.

And that's the other thing I've had to accept.  If Montanans cried "snow day" every time the weather is bad, they'd be shut down half the time, so they just don't.  Whatever Mother Nature throws at you, you go about your day like it's any other.  Pittsburghers delay school openings, shut down services and generally fold in on themselves on a regular basis.  Honestly, I used to scoff at that.  Now I get it.   Winter is a real thing here, but they are not set up to deal with it in the serious, take-no-prisoners manner in which Montanans do.  Way better to be safe than sorry.

Bottom line is this:  spring, I will be ever so happy to see you!

Admittedly from last year, but she's so cute...I had to use it.

RIP Rocco

http://www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com/Hero-Dog-Pittsburgh-Police-K-9-Rocco-Dies/

I woke up Friday morning both sad and mad.  I sat down to try and read the article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about the topic that was causing my distress.  I didn't make it past the first line, "Office Lerza sobbed."  I joined him.  And that was that for reading further.  Why were we both crying, along with many in the city?  Because his partner, a K-9 Officer, Rocco, had died the night before after being stabbed on Tuesday by a mentally disturbed young man they were trying to apprehend.

This is a personal one for me.  It spans across a few topics I feel strongly about:  animal welfare, the state of mental health care in Pennsylvania, and protecting those who work to protect us.  The night before, when I read that Rocco had taken a turn for the worse, I was trying to figure out how my dogs could help, most likely to donate blood.  A woman who was trying to help get me information on where to go and how to do that also told me that the assailant could only be charged with a misdemeanor, whether Rocco survived or not.  Turns out he was charged with a felony, but a third degree felony, and the fact that he actually did end up murdering the animal doesn't up the charge.  I was initially enraged at the thought that the charge would be no worse than stealing candy from the local Get-Go.  Now I'm just incensed, but it still isn't right or sufficient.  To put it in perspective, consider that, if convicted, the assailant would face 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison on the third degree felony charge he faces.  If he was arrested, nice and calmly with no knife slashing involved, on straight burglary charges, he could be charged with a first degree felony and face up to 20 years.

Now why should you care about that?  Particularly if you, as I saw one person comment, believe this is JUST a DOG and can't see what all the fuss is about. Well, consider that a trained dog costs about $15,000, based on various sources I looked at.  It's harder to get a bead on what the ongoing maintenance expenses are, but the Pittsburgh Police Department reimburses the handlers for the dogs' care, and they are allowed by budget to have up to 24 dogs.  According to their website, if you subtract Rocco now from the list, they have 17 dogs on the force currently, split into a few different specialties.  If you're a dog owner, you can do some rough math.  Also, if you're a dog owner and have ever had to pay for trauma care, you can definitely do that math.  Personally, I've used the clinic where Rocco was being cared for just once.  The night one of my oldest dogs died.  She was there less than an hour because there was just nothing that could be done for her and the bill was $400.  So, as taxpayers, every Pittsburgher has a stake in what happened to Rocco.

Additionally, if you lose a trained K-9, it's not like you can just go down to the local shelter and pick up another one.  Most of them come from Europe, as did Rocco, and share certain personality traits that make them ideal for police work.  I've reached out to the Ben Roethlisberger Foundation for some more information on how dogs are chosen, trained and their uses, but if you're wondering about the value of having a dog on patrol with an officer, call me and I'll tell you the story of how I once saw an Sheriff's deputy in Texas single handedly apprehend and subdue three suspects who had broken into property I was responsible for by just showing them his dog when they tried to run and explaining that he'd send the dog after them if they didn't stop.  They did.

But, more than that,  I believe that we have a higher duty to the animals we chose to domesticate and then place in our service.  No one asked Rocco if he wanted to be a police officer.  He was drafted into the position and put his life on the line every shift.  He may have done it willingly out of love and respect for his handler, but that does not diminish my argument, it just enhances it.

A natural question is whether the department does enough to protect the dogs, and I think it is a fair question.  I've been reading about what is available for dogs, such as protective vests, and why or why not their handlers use them.  But one thing that you read is that a vest still leaves a dog exposed on parts of his body.  At close range, Rocco would likely still have been exposed to the injury he sustained from everything I can piece together.  So, no, this one is all on Mr. Rush and maybe those of us who failed to recognize his condition and help him before it came to this, not the Pittsburgh PD and Officer Lerzo, in my opinion.

But, I'm not alone in my frustration at what the law can currently allow to protect these noble animals who work hard to protect us, and there is already legislation being proposed, "Rocco's Law", which will raise the level of offense to a second degree felony.  Every indication is that it has strong bi-partisan support, but I would encourage all of us not to forget about this tragedy as days go by and encourage our elected representatives to support the legislation.

Now the next step is how to prevent more people like John Rush from falling so far down a rabbit hole that he has to commit a violent crime before any of us pay attention to him.  That's a harder task.

For now, all I can say is: rest in peace, dear Rocco. Thank you for your service.