The Dance of Joy

12-22-2016 The Dance of Joy

I had a ring side seat, so to speak, to an amazing dance performance the other night.  In fact, no one else was invited:  just me.  I stood there in my back yard and watched my Momma Dog Madeline Grace teach her oldest son, the firstborn of the litter, how to enjoy snow. 

I named him Valor at his birth because he was the first born – and to be the first at anything requires bravery (valor).  He is a strong, stocky little pup and particularly is fond of my footwear at this point.  His little puppy teeth are sharp and his cocker spaniel jaws are powerful.  But his “attack” at my feet is all done in the spirit of love and play.  I believe the French call it “joie de vivre.”  He’s got so much of it, his picture is probably next to the definition of it in the French dictionary.

The challenge with having a winter litter of puppies is they are born in the warmth of a house but by the time you need them to be going out doors to use the bathroom, it is bitter cold in the Northeast.  My backyard has winds that blow off the pastures that make it so cold!  Even during the summer I cannot sustain the average backyard gazebo because of these Nuisance Winds. 

Last Saturday I took two puppies out – my sturdy boys – and put little homemade crochet capes on them (Martha Stewart, eat your heart out) to help them be insulated a bit.  Oreo Cookie took to the snow with the curiosity of a puppy learning to smell new things.  Valor, on the other hand, hunkered down and cried.  He looked like a little guinea pig.  I scooped him up and thought, “we’ll try again another time.” 

A day later, he did better.  I think.  I think it means you are doing better when I put him out and he circled and dropped a big-boy sized poo on the frozen ground.  Perhaps our outside time graduated to two and a half minutes.

But then a couple of days later the temperature moved upwards to 32 and the winds were not as bitter.  Valor was standing at the door when I let Madeline out, and he just followed her.  For this, I thank Heavens.  That is how it is supposed to work.  He walked over to a small cache of autumn leaves and proceeded to paw and crunch at them a little bit.  I lifted him up and around to the frozen lawn.  And then the dance began.

Madeline approached him nose to nose with a nudge.  Then she backed up a foot.  He moved forward at her.  She nosed him again and moved back more quickly.  I could hear tango music that wasn’t there.  He charged at her.  She nosed once more and swirled a bit to the side, he took the bait and pushed forward.  Then, in an act that completely defied gravity, she being six times his weight ran in a circle around him and somehow flipped up in the air OVER HIM and swirled back down with great joy.  Who does this?  WHO gets to see stuff like this?  You couldn’t command it as a performance and yet here I was watching the fantastic interchange of instinct – and, I believe, canine love – give the little dog his first lesson in outdoor activities.

Then, as if the music stopped, he realized he was eight feet away from the door and his feet told his little brain:  “oh, we are so cold, very cold.”  And he whimpered.  That is my cue to enter the dance.  I scooped him up into my fleece jacket and into my face and into my embrace … and we went inside.  The curtain came down.  The performance had finished.  We re-entered the room of his squealing siblings.  And I think I got something in my eye.

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12.22.2016cma.

Redefining Creepy

12-13-2016 Redefining Creepy

The hypocrisy of the media never ceases to fascinate me.  In early October (2016) the national news outlets began running a small cache of stories related to “creepy clowns.”  They were practically ready to call out the National Guard to defend us against these villains.  They were “sighted” here and “sighted there.”  I don’t think they robbed any banks.  They just appeared (costumed young adults, no doubt) on the sides of roads and disappeared as quickly as they came.  That, in a nutshell, defines the craze:  hasty disappearance.  Three college-aged kids in Buffalo, New York, went online and apologized for making people nervous. 

Three weeks later (Halloween time), the local newspaper ran a front page story on a woman in suburbia who decorated her lawn for Halloween.  It had the usual scary fare:  caskets, cobwebs, and Count Dracula…. Or whomever.  Oh, and by the way, she included some “creepy clowns.”  She was treated as if she was a down-home artist making her much-awaited debut.  No National Guard was invited; just a veiled encouragement for people to drive by and see her creative efforts.  See what I mean about “media hypocrisy”?  If it sells their newspaper or gets hits to their website, it’s all kosher.

They say that “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.”  Can we say, by extension, that so is hideousness?  Five years ago I wrote some veiled sarcasm under the moniker of “ATFC:  Ask the Fat Chick.”  I basically took headlines from NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, and any other source of fodder for my literary flaming arrows.  I want to share one of those with you today as it links in nicely with our Creepy clown phenomenon: 

Dear Devoted fans of online sarcasm, wit, and commentary on life:

Interesting article in NY times about auctioning of the famous (and arguably ugly and basic) painting called, “The Scream.”

In the midst of the article they compare it to the other most recognizable creepy/ugly painting that people seem inexplicably enchanted with: Mona Lisa.  I ask you, would you let this woman babysit your kids if she lived next door?  I think not.  Is it really a woman, or a man with bad bohemian hair posing for a picture that he figures may disturb his mother and all his relatives.  And the movie about it with Julia Roberts was wasteful as well.

Regarding The Scream’s auction, ATFC wants to recommend they redistribute this incredible amount of money to the Social Security Department OR the US Deficit fund instead of adorning their Rodeo Drive mansions with grotesque (and I use this term professionally) paintings by dead guys.  Really, aren’t Monet and RC Gorman the only ones who had a good handle on how lovely life should be:  abstract beauty of lilies and flowers OR well-fed women shaped like South Western gourds contemplating the simplicity of life.  Or even GE Mullen’s clever rendering of religious art in a way that is modern, yet not smacking of any cheapening by the process.

But maybe I’m not really an art critic.  If you disagree, then file my thoughts in the file “for entertainment purposes only”

Ask the Fat Chick

Excerpts from NY Times:

“It took 12 nail-biting minutes and five eager bidders for Edvard Munch’s famed 1895 pastel of “The Scream” to sell for $119.9 million, becoming the world’s most expensive work of art ever to sell at auction.

Bidders could be heard speaking Chinese and English (and, some said, Norwegian), but the mystery winner bid over the phone, through Charles Moffett, Sotheby’s executive vice president and vice chairman of its worldwide Impressionist, modern and contemporary art department. Gasps could be heard as the bidding climbed higher and higher, until there was a pause at $99 million, prompting Tobias Meyer, the evening’s auctioneer, to smile and say, “I have all the time in the world.” When $100 million was bid, the audience began to applaud.

….

The image has been reproduced endlessly in popular culture in recent decades, becoming a universal symbol of angst and existential dread and nearly as famous as the Mona Lisa.”

(Like we need one more symbol of angst and existential dread in our world).

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Presence as the Present

 

People don’t necessarily think about doctors as philosophers.  Yet as I approached the unit desk the other day, a physician was waxing philosophical to the unit clerk-secretary about Love.  Yeah.  Really, he was.  Their starting point was the familiar holiday commentary we all make about “Christmas being too commercialized.”  Let’s face it:  we ALL say it.  Sometimes we say it right before or after we go out and buy the very presents we are protesting.  But we say it.

My mother remarked last year to me, “Well, you know it isn’t all about the presents.”  I reminded her of two things:  my birthday is Christmas Eve and I think that was God’s message to my parents that I SHOULD get presents too – and lots of them.  And also, the baby Jesus was visited by Three Wise Men bearing gifts for Him.  If they showed up empty-handed, I bet even they would have been booted out of the stable at Bethlehem.  But that’s just my take on the situation.  You know, if I was Him and all.

So, back to the doctor.  He was explaining that the most important gift we can give to someone is not something we buy or manufacture.  It is ourselves.  WE are the present.  WE are the gift.  Then he got tricky.  He asked me, the Somewhat Innocent Bystander, what the implication was for us AS the gift.  I stabbed in the dark:  “Um, that we take care of ourselves so that we can give the best gift?”  (Just to clarify:  I was not thinking of me going on a diet.  I was thinking of the Valentine’s Day card my friend and her husband sent to me one year.  On the cover was the picture of a guy holding flowers.  But he himself looked like he was a World Wrestling Federation reject.  How someone can look obnoxious  is a mystery that he achieved on that card.  It made you not want the flowers either.  As the old Arabic proverb says:  “be careful when the nose of the camel comes under the tent, pretty soon the whole camel is coming.”) 

I do think the doctor was right.  And I reserve the right to disagree with physicians in areas philosophical and theological because that is my field of expertise.  I told one of them once:  Look, I won’t take out anyone’s appendix if you agree to stop misquoting the Bible.  We chuckled.  Message delivered.

But isn’t it true that sometimes we forget the core of life is Love?  And we truly have a million and one opportunities to spread that love on a daily basis – and that doesn’t have to involve legal tender or expensive gifts.  It is the busy social worker who helps a patient just by spending extra time with her to calm her fears.  It is the friend in the lunch line that loans you a dollar when the cafeteria barons have overcharged yet again.  It is the person who picks up the pieces of your emotional system when someone has hurt you intentionally.  It is the chaplain that gives you a book to read just because he wants to be a good friend.  It is the friend who sits behind you and lets you bounce your insecurities off her to get some stable ground.  It is the sweet girl that empties your waste baskets with a smile and a cheerful hello.  All of these ways, people are showing love, giving love, giving themselves to you. 

Last night as I drove through the darkness towards the veterinarian’s office with little Bonnie, the black cocker spaniel puppy curled up in a small crate on the front seat, and as they say in baseball, “I kept up the chatter.”  She was nestled on a hot pack and traveling quite quietly.  I had the heat high in the car and my feet were starting to feel that clammy feeling in my winter boots.  But I was taking one for Team Spaniel, so I’m not complaining.  I just didn’t want her to get nervous, be nervous, or kick into the puppy crying mode.  “It’s okay, Bonnie.  We are just checking you out with the vet.  He is going to be very nice to you.  I am with you.”  No response, just two little wide eyes peeking in the dark back at me.  “Aw, honey.  Don’t worry.  Mommy is just paranoid as to why you have sniffles.  I’m here.”  Again, the quiet trust in the darkness.  (And she is perfectly healthy, per the veterinarian.)

Then it hit me.  This is what parents have done for children since the dawn of humanity.  Presence.  Soft assurance in the night.  Comfort.  “I am here with you.”  It seems to me that as long as we as humans feel we are not alone, we still retain some emotional starch in us through the most trying of times.  And the Catholic world in my head heard the familiar collecting-prayer in church:  “The Lord be with you,” says the priest to the congregation.  And they respond, “And also with you.”  These are the words of comfort in our dark night of the unknown which we call:  Life.  I’ve heard them at least 50 something times a year for the last few decades and last night in the darkness of my vehicle with my precious puppy, I finally got it:  Presence.  Divine presence.  Human presence.  Canine presence.  And that presence that each of us gives is the most tangible form of love we can offer.  “I am here with you.”

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Cma12.08.2016

My Thoughts on Fowl Play

“You have EIGHT birds?” is something I’ve heard more than once.  Well, it’s not like there are 80 of them.  Let’s be real.  And, no, they don’t fly free in the house or in the bird room.  My grandmother used to say to me, “I’m going to drive to Syracuse and open a window and let those birds out.  Maybe then you will find a husband.”  That was twenty five years ago.  Maybe she was right.  But I can tell you that I’ve never received a questionnaire from a potential date that included the question:  “Are you harboring exotic birds of any size in your apartment or home?  If so, exit questionnaire now.”

And for some reason I have tried to explain or justify to people why there are eight birds in my house.  As if I need to.  No one ever asks Holly Hobby figurine collectors why they do that.  No one asks model train enthusiasts why they spend hard earned money on things that are not even life-sized.  In fact, we call them “model” trains because the phrase “toy” trains seems to imply something we consider negative:  adults playing with wholesome things.

The other day a new friend walked into my home and almost immediately busted me verbally for having an inflatable nativity scene on my front lawn.  She called it gaudy and tacky.  Without missing a beat, I advised her that I find that scene wholesome and child-like and fun.  And then I followed with my political commentary that if everyone who gets cranked out of shape that the town, village, city, whatever doesn’t display a nativity scene would just put one in their own yard, then we wouldn’t need to have the discussion, would we?  Sheesh.

But back to the birds.  The topic is a fine example of people applying judgments based on their own preferences.  I like veal.  I like veal marsala a lot.  I like veal francaise just as well.  And if I could, I’d probably eat that once a week.  I have sat in on cafeteria lunch discussions about foods and had people react as if I was an utter barbarian for eating veal.  And I always ask them:  “what do you have against chickens?”  Think about that.  Why is it okay to eat fish, chicken, a golden arches hamburger or whatever and yet I get vilified for eating veal?  Stop anthropomorphizing animals.  It will just get you in trouble.   Again, get your eyes and hands OFF my plate, or I am not responsible for how your hand feels after I stab you with my fork.  You think I’m kidding.  Try me.

I must admit I do have a checkered past with fowl.  Most particularly, chickens and ducks shuddered at the thought of me in my childhood years.  Growing up I had access to animals that city kids would not have had:  my uncle had the family homestead of my grandparents on a few acres of land which was abutted by a murky, lagoon that we called, “The Pond.”  My mother used to call it “Murphy’s Pond,” but he already had his laws and I felt rightfully it was my pond but again that says more about me and my mentality than it does about her. 

On this pond in rural Western Massachusetts, I spent many a happy canoe ride with my uncle, siblings and cousins.  We net-captured turtles and bull frogs and snipped beautiful (albeit, stinky) water lilies for the kitchen table.  We rode the tire swing that was suspended for decades from a great oak tree.  We rode the family-shared mini bike all over hill and dale until the mothers were completely stressed out that we might be going too fast or riding too recklessly… the days before helmets and mandatory car seats.  It was idyllic.  Yet it was real.

It may not surprise those who know me personally to learn that, among the cousins, I was the one who was, shall we say, fixated upon the animals?  At lunch the other day someone, some professional adult, for some reason, asked how it was possible to catch a wild rabbit… like it was a rhetorical question answered by:  “you can’t.”  I couldn’t tip my hand, but I know how.  First, you chart the rabbit’s typical course:  if it sat in the tall grass slightly to the left of the barn and you startled it, it shot off like a rocket around the back side of the barn and zipped down into the hole at the barn’s foundation.  Well, at least that is how it works if there is no discreet blue colored bucket that had been positioned against the hole.  Have you ever seen a rabbit make a U-turn in a bucket from floor to ceiling and then ricochet outward, trying to think of its Plan B?  That’s all I can admit about that escapade.

A part of my childhood pre-occupation became a study of cause and effect in capturing wildlife.  I noted that ducks have some sort of mechanism that attracts them to pieces of stale bread.  They are truly indiscriminate when it comes to a free meal.  Also they can’t get the idea that as bread is tossed out to the pond, and the distance, say, from water to shore is incrementally decreased, eventually, they are eating at your sneaker:   which is when you reach down and grab them by their neck.  At that point, you have to move it into a football-hold-side-carry really fast before they squirt your sneakers.  This I know.  Then I ran break-neck speed with my prize honking the whole way.  I was yelling, “Uncle Johnnie, Uncle Johnnie, Uncle Johnnie I CAUGHT A DUCK!”  You’d think he would have appreciated my hunting prowess.  But, no.  In the days before ethnic sensitivity and political correctness, he yelled out, “CHRIS- THAT DUCK BELONGS TO THE PORTUGIE ACROSS THE POND!”  I hadn’t captured a wild duck?  How dumbfounding.  The duck was relieved when I returned it to the water’s edge – both she and I wiser for the escapade.  She hit that water at full throttle kind of like the cartoon characters that spin their feet in the air and make that scrambling noise.  I still get nostalgic around ducks.

And then there are chickens.  A little red hen taught me one of the most valuable principles that an adult can use in real life when dealing with disappointment.  Picture this:  A picnic table painted a strange pale greenish white.  A hen.  A pre-teenager with nothing better to do than test the aeronautical capacity of chickens.  Again, grabbing the chicken before she realized it, I jumped us up to the top of the picnic table and shot her into the air.  THUNK.  What the heck?  I tried it again and she was really, shall we say, perturbed at me?  THUNK.  Then the yelling came.  “CHRIS.  LEAVE THAT CHICKEN ALONE.”  Well, I wasn’t bothering it, per se, I was just trying to stretch its capabilities.  I mean, eagles boot their babies out of the nest at some point and they can fly, can’t they?  So, the principle is this:  there will be people in life that no matter how much we want them to “fly” in an area or ability, they just cannot do it.  Chickens are not, by the Creator’s design, able to fly.  Flutter, yes.  Fly, nope.  Their wings are too short to catch the air upon which flighted birds soar.  It is best that once we realize chickens cannot fly, that we not frustrate ourselves and the chickens by insisting we can launch them to higher things.  Just accept the limitation and appreciate what you have.  It makes for more peaceful co-existence. 

So, let’s get back to the initial question of why I have eight birds.  I think it is because I like how they sound in the morning when I am waking up.  It reminds me of what I like best about camping.  Consequently, it’s like camping in your own house with hot water shower, flush toilet, stocked refrigerator and the songs of happy birds.  There.  Are you satisfied?

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My Daily Dose of Poison

 

Every morning that I drive to work I vary the route that I travel.  Only one thing remains the same, and perhaps that is the thing that needs to change.  You see, I ingest a small dose of poison each day on the way to work.  I don’t take in enough to kill me, but these micro doses most of the times make me feel badly by the time I reach the front door of work.  I’m not asking for help.  I am asking for change.  I am not alone in my dosage.  It starts just out of curiosity, or the need to know a little more than what I feel I am bringing into the game on any particular morning.  Sometimes I linger too long and then the malaise fights me most of the day.  Other times, friends who also got the daily dose of poison, are cranked up when I get to the office and want to “process” their knowledge as if anything we have an opinion on really matters.

What is this poison, you ask.  I will tell you:  the presentation of the local news on the radio.  Sometimes I wonder if these guys have a set template by which they plan the stories of the day to decimate us psychologically.  It would go something like this:  Day 1 report on shooting; Day 2 re-cap the shooting unless there has been another one to take its place; Day 3 try to flush out any “human interest” stories connected with the shooter or shoot-ee.  (If it was my family that was suffering I’d tell them where they could stash their news microphones and cameras.  Maybe the idea’s time has come:  Leave the grieving families in peace to try to find comfort among their friends and family members.)  As little as I know, even I am aware that we have had 26 homicides since January 1^st.  The fear of inciting “copy-cat crimes” seems to have dissipated in the interest of selling news at the expense of someone else’s grief.

I must confess that I became a news update junkee when the punk in the Poconos was leading the Law on a wild goose chase one summer.  Mostly I was concerned because I travel through that area annually and it was appalling that it took so long to catch him.  The weird thing is that for as many days as they ran that story – with all the details of how he ate, and how he hid, and how he wore adult diapers to not leave signs of life behind, etc. – once they finally CAUGHT him, it was as if someone pulled the electrical cord out of the wall and the stories disappeared.  They disappeared, I imagine, because once he got his orange jump suit things became very legal and very boring.  Boring doesn’t sell news.

I am wondering if telling these stories is more for the purpose of intimidating the culture of healthy people than it is for inviting a solution.  We are already nervous, trust me.  We wonder when it will end.  We fear in the smallest corner of our heart, that it might not.  Just when we feel we have heard enough of Whose Lives Matter Today – I’m sorry, I thought EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS – they throw a news lead out:  “Officer shot in patrol car… details on the ten’s.”  Then you find out that it was NOT down the street, it occurred half way across the country.  Listeners feel badly for the family, nonetheless, but this relentless bombarding with the same type-cast story, is draining the emotional core of the nation.

Out of one mouth, we hear that another devastating (fill in the type of catastrophe here: earthquake, tornado, tsunami, raging fire, etc.) has struck a far off nation.  Our good American people who do charitable work are behind the scenes organizing the relief efforts.  They don’t make it much to the front-and-center of the news.  Why not?  Why is the press denying us this feeling of, “Oh, thank God, someone is able to do something about this!”  Nope.  The media just dishes out yet another serving of America- bashing.  They flip the story to another country that is burning our flag.  AND YET

                Which country is it that sends more money than any other to aid people in need? 

                Which country is it that sends more people to assist in danger spots of the world? 

                Which country is it that people WANT to immigrate to, legally or otherwise? 

I’m just saying, is all I’m saying.  At the end of the day, the people in THIS country have been pretty faithful in helping the world at large for quite a few decades. 

I’d like to see a flush-out of all the sensational journalist types, and a replacing of them with people of integrity who can tell a story of joy or sorrow and help you find the humanity in it.  I’d like to see ALL news outlets be able to proclaim they are “fair and balanced.”  I don’t even think the one that uses that slogan is able to say that honestly.  I would so like to say “farewell” to the news that is overtly dramatic for the purpose of selling more news.  I want the weather to be a real prediction, not a veiled spell cast by someone who shakes the snow globe and declares that this could be the coldest, snowiest winter ever.  Right.  It could be.  But you could also be wrong. 

The media has a tremendous opportunity to be a tool for culturing the morale of a society.  The radio, television and print venues reach a broad variety of people – people who arguably could use a little good news.  How empowering it would be to listen to something in the morning that could set the course for a positive, creative, and healing day!  I don’t even feel the religious stations are able to offer that at this point – and I listen to them.  People know instinctively if you are a cheesy salesman for your particular brand of religion, or if you are the Real Deal.  And no one really enjoys hearing the list of who is on dock for going to hell – it is my suspicion that if you are on that train it’s because you want to be there or decided to do nothing to change your situation. 

What I think we need at this critical juncture of life – well, at least MY life, is some healing words and positive encouragement.  I would even be okay with a little Garrison Keillor story every now and then to keep things light.  But the irresponsible journalists need to be sent packing.  I will donate the suitcases and type their resumes for them if it will bring some peace and harmony to our airways and newspapers.  As a friend of mine used to say to irritating people:  “Don’t go away mad; just go away.”

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She Breathed Her First

A family member asked me why I raise puppies (periodically) - is it seeing "the miracle of birth" that motivates me?   The question was less philosophical and more out of concern because she then said, "because it makes you so tired..."

Tired doesn't scratch the surface of it the first time you go through it.  In a perfect world, things just work.  My dog Bethany does not subscribe to Perfect World magazine.  Her first litter she started birthing late at night, and then stopped for six hours - which is not ideal, right?  And I had to move her, and that one pup to the vet's office where they gave her a shot of "pop em out quicker" for dogs.  So in the space of three hours she had a litter of 7.  We lost the youngest two because they weighed in at 4 and 4.5 ounces respectively when they should have been 7 or 8 ounces.

Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot, I thought.  The second time she had a litter, she had something called "placenta previa" which caused the vet to say:  "I think you should bring her in for a cesarean section."  They do that?  Oh, yes.  Ka-ching.  to the cost of the sale price of two puppies.  But at least we saved the whole litter and the momma dog.

This third litter was the FIRST litter for my princess Madeline.  Madeline is from Bethany Pearl's litter.  She is a feisty, alpha personality like, well, kind of like ME.  LOL.  Her full name is Madeline Grace Pearl.  I have written about her before in an earlier blog.  I will tell you what I said to her as her due date approached:  can we PLEASE do this like the farm dogs do, namely AT HOME and WITHOUT COMPLICATION?

She revved up all day Saturday.  I sat like a nervous grandmother in the basement as she walked around panting.  By Sunday afternoon at two, my nerves were starting to fray.  She "asked" to go out to the back yard, yet again.  Then I realized (oh by the way, if you aren't good with "earthy" descriptions, stop here and go watch Wheel of Fortune for a while.  LOL.) She wanted to go outside because she felt pressure and knew that I didn't want her to do #2 (poo) in the house.  Only the pressure wasn't #2.  It was a puppy, I ushered her back inside and again out came his little white and black head and I reached to take him and just turned him slightly and bam!  I was holding him, wiggling and ready to go.  I named him Valor because it takes bravery to be the first one.  We cleaned him up and waited about an hour and a half before #2 puppy came ... and then a while later for #3.
Two black pups with white necks - almost identical - Moonlight Sonata and Bonnie Dream.

Frankly, I thought we were done at #3.  It was just taking longer than I thought.  But, as the great Vintner's say:  "We sell NO wine before Its Time."  And they are right.  So my friend Donna came over to visit to see if I was still in one piece.  We were standing in my kitchen and I was eating toaster waffles - famished and a little light-headed.  Madeline left her pups downstairs and came bounding up into the kitchen, circled in front of me and -splat - dropped puppy #4 on my floor.  I finished chewing the waffle and wryly remarked, "I don't think I will ever feel the same about toaster waffles."  Madeline and I worked together, each in our own way to clean up Monte Carlo - a beautiful black male puppy.

We went back downstairs and I called my mother as I cradled Monte in one hand and toweled him with the other.  Donna asked me, "Hey, did you put the white dog in the kennel with Madeline?"  No.  Did you?  He should be in the willow basket with the others.  I looked at Madeline in the kennel, kind of almost smirking at me, a white and black puppy at her side.  I lifted the towel on the willow basket and said, Valor's right here.   And the new white pup who has two solid black ears, Oreo, was with Madeline in the kennel.

After a few minutes, Donna asked if I was okay for her to go.  I was probably looking drained - it was about 8:30 or 9:00 pm.  I had been on "Dog Time" all weekend - even sleeping in the basement with Madeline - and was thinking it had all been just swell..... So Donna went home to her family.  At about 9:30 or so, Madeline had been settled in the black kennel starting to nurse the new pups when she just flew out and over the kennel board, turned into the next room and splat dropped the final puppy on the floor.  Only this time it was different.

She was in her amniotic sack - which functions a lot like a protective space capsule for the journey - and she was not moving.  I mean, not moving at all.  She was very, very cool to the touch.  Her paws were limp and her little chest did not move at all either.  Madeline and I looked at each other.  I made the call on our game plan:  Mad, you've got to help me and we've got to work fast, lick this puppy, lick her face.  I began rapidly toweling this limp body to be dry.  I slid my pinky in her mouth to clear any obstruction.  I blew at her face.  I spoke to her.  I talked to God.  I begged this lifeless puppy - who was full size and kind of long - "come back to  us, we love you; we want you to be with us...."

Anyone else would have just laid her aside and said, "Well, laws of nature.  Stuff happens."  It was the longest ten or fifteen minutes of my life.  Madeline and I worked together as if we had been born for this moment.  She kept licking the pup's face.  I kept drying and massaging and begging and praying.  Finally, I stopped and the pup coughed.  "come on, come on.  we're here.  you're going to love it."  and SHE BREATHED HER FIRST.

Isn't that such a great phrase, compared to "and she breathed her last" - my heart filled ... and so did my eyes.  VICTORIA.   All I can think about in my stray moments is how amazing it feels to be part of the process of bringing life.  Well, that, and which of my photos I want put on my holycard when I am made a canonized saint in a few decades.  St. Francis can stand at the bird bath.  I want to be at the whelping kennel.   This is my joy.

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p.s. to those of you dog breeders who said to do this in a kiddie pool I can tell you that we SAT in the kiddie pool (no water of course) all day Saturday and that just felt not right.  She needed to move around.  And I needed a reason to clean all the floors in my house I guess.  I'm on Dog Time - whatever they want.  I just am here to make it happen.

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ps#2.  above image is a stock photo; not one of my dogs.

481 Sentinels

Every now and then I dabble in poetry.  I enjoy it.  I started enjoying it more when the "rules" of poetry we were taught in grade school loosened up a bit and lines no longer had to rhyme.  I think some of my best poetry is like those fourth of July fireworks launchers:  you hear the boom-poof sound a few times in a row and then various colors explode.  That's how I like to write my paragraphs.  Really.  And, no, I do not drink when I write.  LOL.

This is one I wanted to post closer to Halloween, although it was actually written on 8/13/2009.
I hope you like it.

481 Sentinels

481 South
Morning Rush
Barreling along
Late, again.
I glance left.

The green tree
Strikingly bright
Emanating fullness
Summer perfection

They appear as black lanterns
Sitting on the bows
Strategically placed
Ominous sentinels.

The beauty of the tree's symmetry
Spoiled by the horror of recognizing them
For who they really are:
Sentinels of Death.
A tree full of turkey vultures.

I scream and continue driving.

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The Power of One

The Power of One

The middle-aged farmer smiled at me as he stepped forward to pay his check at America’s preferred diner.  He was bulky without being huge and his plaid flannel jacket had that warm Norman Rockwell feeling exuding from it.  He had dark wavy hair and a gentle smile.  He rested a large book on the counter as he proceeded with his transaction and again I wondered if I had missed destiny by 30 minutes.  I was waiting for a hostess to greet & seat me and was getting hungrier by the second.  In my purse was the magazine I was planning to read while I myself had dinner alone … the situation was common and ironic: the man had finished his dinner, I was heading toward mine.  Perhaps it would have been nice for the two of us to have dinner together – instead of reading like we were hopeless intellectuals?  But what could have bridged that gap? 

I remember sitting in a small pizza place in a village on the outskirts of the Adirondacks and an elderly gentleman looked at me and said, “a nice woman like you should not be eating alone” or something to that effect.  Because he was safely 30 years my senior, I replied:  “you are welcome to share my table if you like.”  In the long run, he was picking up a pizza to-go for his wife.  But we did have a nice chat nonetheless.  A transition to sharing dinner with a complete stranger closer to my age would be just that:  “stranger” – and potentially quite uncomfortable.  Yet I am not ready to move to the level of sitting at the bar of America’s favorite diner with all the good ole boys.  I do have some shreds of self-esteem left.  I think.

Eating by myself I do often, in fact, every single day.  And sometimes I like it because I can catch up on my reading; yet sometimes I don’t.  Recently someone said to me, “well, I don’t cook too much because it’s just me …” and I thought to myself that hearing someone else express that out loud was almost painful.  It was as if because the person wasn’t cooking for someone else, they weren’t worth feeding well.  I hate those kind of sequences!   I want to shake the person and say, “By gosh, have some self-esteem!  YOU are worth a good meal!  YOU are worth the effort!  The Good Lord made YOU by yourself, not joined to the hip with someone else!”  And lucky it is that we are like that.  I can’t imagine not eating  the variety of things I enjoy because I was stuck preparing meals for a strictly vegetarian person, or a meat-and-potatoes-only sort of guy.  I want Mexican.  I want Chinese.  I want waffles for supper.  I want a drive-thru apple pie at 10PM.  I want ice cream, well, basically all the time.  I want fresh peaches today and not tomorrow.  I want a latte at Dunkin once a week.  (some day they will invite me to be on their Board of Directors – I just know it).  I want pizza with Canadian bacon and pineapple pieces.  I want chocolate in my refrigerator at all times just in case of emergency.  These are “likes” that make me most uniquely me and to expect me to “unlike” or “unfriend” those foods would be like de-bouncing Tigger. 

Years ago, the mother of one of my dear Arizona friends announced that after her divorce she had learned to go to the movies alone.  Up to that moment, I had never considered the prospect of attending a movie alone.  Aren’t movies meant to be shared experiences?  Then again, if you just lost your number one sharing partner – or if he hated the kinds of movies you like to watch – you are up the proverbial creek in a lead canoe with no movie.  I started thinking about it.  At this point I watch movies alone at home…. well, I’ve got two spaniels jumping on me and one elderly, needy cat draping herself on me as I try to hear the dialogue on the television.  That being said, it’s not really undistracted movie-watching.  Back 30 years ago the idea of going to a movie alone was kind of profane and almost scary.  Then I started to think about myself in a different way:  if I am a fun person and enjoy going to fun things, why should I stop doing those things just because my friends don’t like watching “Shaun the Sheep” or the latest Madea movie?!  In theory, this is healthy thinking.  In practice it is still a haul to get myself to see a movie by myself.

Learning to do things by yourself, arguably, builds confidence and certainly requires some tenacity.  It also gives you choices and options that you might not otherwise have.  Think of this:  when you walk through life experiences that are negative, if you wish you had a significant other to “go to bat” for you, just talk to your friends who are couples and get a reality check.  A lot of times the other person fails and does not stick up for you the way you would have wished.  Or worse, they create a scene in a way that slams your doors shut for you because you may have handled it differently given the chance to do it yourself.  Or even more worse, they take your opposer’s side.  Yikes.

Permit me to go back to the restaurant scenario for another example of that.  At the diner the other night one thing struck me:  the waiter who was young enough to be my son was falling all over me.  If I was not alone, maybe he would have reigned-it-in a little more.  But he made me feel very prioritized once seated (even though I waited over 5 minutes to be acknowledged and seated).  He brought me extra napkins without being asked, and personally walked the newly opened can of whipped cream directly to the table and frosted the hot chocolate as if it was the most important detail of his job.  It was kind of comical.  Yet it was also excellent.  And I believe in rewarding excellence – and I said to him as I ramped his tip up to about 97% of the dinner bill:  “I am not a person of means, but you made me feel special and that was great.”  You should have seen his smile. 

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John Denver lied.

John Denver lied.  That was my thought as I was heave-hoeing 15 forty pound bags of wood pellets into my basement in the drizzly pre-winter weather last night.  John Denver, in his ever-cheery voice,  sang out, “Life on the farm is kinda laid aback, aint nothing a country boy like me can’t hack:  it’s early to bed, early in the sack: Thank God I’m a country boy!”  I am not a boy – I am a middle aged woman and my life in the country is not any kind of “laid aback.”  I do not know the definition of “early to bed.”  In fact, as I microwaved my stouffer’s mac & cheese dinner at 8 pm and was talking to my sister on the phone and she petulantly announced:  “You shouldn’t be eating this late at night; it’s not good for you.”  To which I replied, “It’s better than going to bed hungry, which was the only other option.”

People who don’t live it, don’t get it.  I’m not complaining – I’m just explaining.  You work a forty-hour week elsewhere and come home to continuous catching up to keep the place functioning.  There’s one of me and a million tasks keep presenting themselves.  Life itself doesn’t seem to give you a break.  I had three dogs, each was requiring its own special attention for health reasons.  Then a couple of weeks ago, my big dog had a stroke which led to the Final Vet Visit, and the other two dogs were requiring some sort of special treatment at mealtime because they were protesting hard kibble.  You understand what a dog protest looks like by the floor around the dog dish being covered by individual pieces of dog kibble.  Every meal now involves ME making scrambled eggs, or French toast, or boiling chicken, or making rice…. Then the puppies will come in a week and it will be a whole new rhythm in the dog world and I will have to adjust to it.  This is because I am out-numbered by the dogs.  I should have seen this coming when I allowed Madeline to stay and live with us.  (But I love her and wouldn’t trade it for the world.)

The cat situation is quite a different story.  Cats are much less demanding.  My fourteen year old Snappi is on the retirement plan and just naps on the couch.  She really has worked out well for me pulling her off the city street so many years ago.  My younger cat, Gracie, has now eaten herself to the size of the cocker spaniels.  Somehow I think that whoever labeled her a sealpoint Siamese mix made a mistake.  She is not vocal or genteel like Siamese.  She is just a regular lovable housecat who is quite particular to have her head massaged every morning.  Gracie hops up on the bathroom counter to graze at her breakfast dish and I try to contort myself around her in order to not disturb HER as I brush my teeth and slap some make up on my face.  Finally I installed a mirror for myself in the hallway so that I don’t have to bend like Gumby around the cat.

Last week, I was just thinking out loud:  It is strange to live in the country on the farmlands for six years and no one has dropped off a box of kittens yet.  (For those not familiar with this, it is what lazy people do to avoid bringing “unwanted” kittens to shelters.  To be fair, if the shelters asked for a donation instead of demanding a drop-off fee, people might dump cats in the wilds a lot less.)  So imagine my surprise when I opened the door to find a beautiful long-hair cat that immediately began the hunger chant at me.  

A drizzling of rain was falling upon us.  She was just telling it like it is:  hungry, damp, cold.  I thought back to the previous evening when my neighbor told me, “I told my family NOT to feed the stray cat, let it go over to Chris’ house.”  Yeah.  He really said that.  And here is the very same cat asking for the hand out.  A stray thought went through my head:  It is too close to Christmas to make the mistake of saying “No room at the Inn,” and slamming the door.  I went inside and got a dish and filled it with fresh food and water.  I brought a cat carrier out to the deck and put a dry clean blanket inside.  I advised the cat that the barn next door would be warmer and I couldn’t bring her in to my house just yet.

Why couldn’t I bring her in?  Because all I was thinking about was that I have puppies coming in a little over a week and they will need all of me to take care of all of them.  The cat ate and disappeared.  Two days later she came back for another meal.  Two days later I saw her from a distance working her charms on the farmer next door.  He was heading for his pickup truck and she was reading him the riot act in cat language as he walked away.  I wonder if he is married and walks away when his wife nags him.  It was the same thing, really.

You would think that would solve the problem.  She could sleep in the barn and live off diseased mice and risk getting stepped on by horses or butted by goats.  Tomorrow I will go look for her and see what we can do.  I might as well put a “Bed & Breakfast for Pets” sign on my front lawn.

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The Mystery of Transformative Suffering

It’s not an official diagnosis, but I’ve got CDO.  It’s really OCD, except I put the letters in the correct order.  No, I don’t tap a pen on the desk continually until other people run out of the room screaming – I’m not that bad of OCD.  I guess I just like my ducks in a row.  I enjoy predictability as some sort of a pre-determinant to success in my various enterprises.  But that isn’t the way the universe is designed and it doesn’t build character in me either. 

There is an important place for trials and suffering in our lives.  It should shape our personhood so that we become more humble, more noble, more sensitive to the pain and struggles of others.  Yet despite this universal system in which even our failures can make us better people, we still fight against any kind of pain or struggle…. As if somehow it is tolerable for everyone else but should never happen to us.

Last Sunday morning I went through the crucible of angst in a way that is reserved only for people like me:  namely, dog-lovers.  My elderly big dog had a stroke quite early in the morning (4:30 am) and it put us on the obvious course of taking the Final Trip to the veterinarian.  Even though I knew this day would come, and I knew it was coming closer by the day as her various abilities waned (sight, hearing, getting up, navigating two simple stairs to the garage), I still hated the fact that I was standing IN that day AT that moment. 

I had one of my very closest friends at my side – not so much to grieve the loss with me, which she did – but also to chaperone ME in case I needed to be contained.  There are zones of our personality that we cannot predict or control, no matter how hard we try.  At some point that morning I had this absolutely naïve delusion that I was going to be composed at that final veterinarian visit.  The opposite happened; a grief came over me the likes of which I could not wish on my worst enemy.  I even asked my friend in the middle of it, “How many times can your heart break and you still LIVE?”  because I thought I was running out of internal stamina. 

I buried my face in the silver-chocolate colored fur of my dog’s back and stroked her very fabulous tail.  (My other two smaller dogs have docked tails; so you should appreciate a fabulous dog tail when you see one and it wagged for you for 13 years on a daily basis.)  And I found myself saying out loud:  “It isn’t fair.  It just isn’t fair.” 

What wasn’t fair?  That every one of us, both man and beast, has an expiration date?  Or the fact that I had to endure such enormous, separating pain – after 13 years of incredible fun and bonding, which I didn’t deserve either?  Why do we think God or the universe “owes” us a good time, all the time, forever? 

If one more person says, “That’s why I will never get another dog again …” I may get ugly.  But my friend DT said it best:  “If you didn’t feel that badly then that’s the person who shouldn’t get a dog again.”  Excellent point.  I confided that I will ALWAYS have a dog…. Until they put me in a nursing home … and if they don’t let me have a dog there, then I will probably threaten to burn the place down!  (well, just as an expression of passion for the subject, right?  I’m sure they will take my matches from me.) 

The kind of person my dog has made me is something I am aware of because of what we have lived through together.  I am persistent.  I am determined.  I kept her even when her character flaws were initially all on the surface because I knew that the abuse she had endured before she lived with me caused her to be that way.  I also had strong faith that I could bring her through to be her very best self.  I trained her with one of the top-notch dog trainers in the area because I wanted to do it the right way, the first time.  I have never been sorry for that investment.  She has laid her head on the laps of children that came to visit; she has helped teach and encourage a litter of my other dogs’ puppies as they were learning to explore and walk.  Her gentleness was an absolute inspiration to me.  I loved taking her camping because I felt totally secure with her guarding me.  Her beauty and happiness echo in my heart and all around me.

The day after she left us, I took my two spaniels to the beach to watch boats and smell seagull poop.  I expected that it would be a good change of scenery for us.  What I forgot as I packed them into the back seat of my vehicle was that my front seat would now be empty.  The sweet dog that used to head butt my elbow so that I would continuously pet her as I drove was not there.  The rawness of that moment flooded my eyes up in seconds.  And as we drove onward to the beach, I knew that somehow she would be with us – watching us as angels watch us – and that the loss and separation were somehow temporary.

I did not share my loss on Facebook – because that is too banal for this kind of suffering.  It would be disrespectful against an experience that was sacred and transformative.  And I don’t want people who barely know me just popping little crying emogees at my post.  I DO want to share this in a way that helps others process and heal their own grief – and to make sense out of the things that seem pointless.  Eventually, I will be able to speak about her with composure and that mysterious peace which comes to us when we have let our grief have its day.  But for now, I can tell pieces of the story when the opportunity presents itself….

Later in the week I told my mother that out of all the people on the planet, I am one who knows when I am going to die.  She said, “And how is that?”  I replied:  “Because one day St. Francis of Assisi is going to say to the Lord, ‘You have to pull her ticket Lord, because she keeps sending dogs up here and I’ve got my hands completely full!’”

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From a Martian's Perspective

From a Martian’s Perspective

Question:  Why did the snake cross the road?  Answer:  I don’t know if he actually made it across the road but I sure as hell am not going over there to ask him!  It seems when I noticed him, and other cars zoomed right by him, he was having a “traction issue” with the surface of the road that was probably, oh, about 95+ degrees HOT at the time.  I kind of felt sorry for him.  Psych.  Not really.

There are times when I think to myself:  if I was a Martian visiting from another planet, what would puzzle me the most about this land?  First and foremost, it would be the strange obsession with one joke in America:  “Why did the chicken cross the road?”  It is classic because:  a) chickens do, indeed cross the road; b) nobody knows why due to the communication impasse we have with poultry; and c) the listener really anticipates that you are going to finally tell them a really, really funny answer to the question – and yet no one ever does.  Why this joke has lived so long is really a testimony to residual HOPE in the  human heart:  we HOPE someone, eventually, tells us a great reason…. But so far the ball is still in their court (the chickens).

Animals should not cross the road unsupervised.  But I can say this for sure and for certain:  woodchucks shouldn’t be allowed to DRIVE unsupervised!  And I am not referencing animal woodchucks.  I am openly satirizing the brand of human being that drives a pick-up truck, has only a few teeth that are not even necessarily situated next to each other, and live mostly on the outskirts of true civilization … and with good reason.  Here are my two best wood chuck stories:

I was driving to my dentist appointment last week – at the designated speed limit, which, as intended, gave me ample time to stop for the fiasco.  On this long country road which runs next to the Erie Canal (yes, that Erie Canal with a mule named Sal) there had been construction the prior week which led me to have a wary eye as I was driving.  You know, in New York, they actually have a sign that just says:  “Bump.”  And usually it should have actually said:  “CRATER.”  So I was watching for the bump or a sign or something and then I saw a Tree Service truck on the side of the road.  Heckle and Jeckle were parked next to a telephone pole that is in two pieces, still standing vertically, but snapped with jagged edges.  It is hard to imagine what mishap caused this situation but I am guessing it would have won the Top Prize on “Funniest Home Videos.” 

In a farm-sized driveway on the opposite side of the road sits an empty school bus.  A man resembling Ichabod Crane getting up from his long nap was walking around the front lawn.  I am hoping the two stories are not connected in any way.  Then as I came to a gentle stop, I looked up to see the wire from the telephone pole hanging mighty low – think “brush the top of my windshield” low and you get the idea.  One of the guys, with his bare hand, lifted the wire up so that the west-bound car could drive under.  Then he dropped it.  So I remained sitting there in the eastbound lane, waiting.  And all of a sudden from behind me, two Woodchuck Cowboys blaze around me in their big arse vehicles and JAM their gas pedals to go somehow through or under that wire.  I cannot repeat the phrase I said when I saw this.  It was sheer horror at their lack of patience!  The first guy made it under.  The second guy blazed through and I watched the wire fling something else up over the top of the truck.  I do not know if it was one of those triangular ice melters we have on our telephone wires here or what it was.  It just flicked up and over the truck and he blazed on.  

These types of incidents give me chest pains.  I really cannot grasp what was so important that they would be so foolish – maybe they were headed to a happy hour or a cow auction somewhere?  It was just crazy.  Eventually one of the tree service guys grabbed a metal post (??? to lift a wire that has some sort of energy in it???) and lifted the wire up for me.  Otherwise I’d still be sitting there.  I am kind of wondering if they are still standing there.  You can’t make this stuff up.

The other story is a tale of Woodchuck Camping.  (No details have been omitted for the purpose of political correctness or accuracy in journalistic reporting.  Again, you can’t make this stuff up.)     I had taken one of my dogs camping on Lake Ontario for a weekend.  In the morning, the guy two campsites over from mine walked over to the Hispanic young adults at the in-between-us campsite and proceeded to make his awkward introduction.  He had on jeans, a sleeveless tee shirt, and was nursing a can of cold and hopsy already at 9am.  The young adults were sitting in a friendly circle just chatting when he walked over and asked where they were from and then made some reference that presumed they did not work for a living.  It was like throwing a rock through a plate glass window to say hello.  BUT, they were incredibly gracious and informed him they worked in Hartford and had the week off from work.  “That’s cool.  Mind if I sit down?” 

Again, the picture of hospitality, they welcomed him into their circle.  He was a world apart from them.  And, truth be told, from most people I know…. He was just really, really rough around the edges.  I mean, when you run out of Nascar stories, what else IS there to talk about?

Later in the day I was entertaining some friends for the afternoon and dinner on the campfire.  They got up to leave and go back to civilization.  I asked one of my guy friends, “Pizza Dave,” if he’d walk me to the restroom before he left.  We had a bit of a moment earlier in the afternoon when he patronizingly  tried to correct me that it was “not nice” for me to call that guy a woodchuck.  Whatever.  Dave didn’t have to listen to the bragging and the nonsense all morning long. 

We walked in the dark along the unpaved camp road, each site marked by a fire pit near the edge of the street.  On the way past that third site there came a horrible snorting noise that made Pizza Dave jump a few inches off the ground, still nervous in the Great Outdoors.  He turned to me and practically shouted:  “What was THAT?  A BEAR?!”  I didn’t flinch for a second:  “No.  A Woodchuck.”

The guy had moved his lawnchair next to his fire pit and fell asleep there.  I kind of doubt anyone told him that mosquitoes do not consider snoring a repellant.  I bet he was one big welt when he got up in the morning… unless, of course, woodchucks don’t use deodorant. 

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