A Day at the Dog Park

We are not an experts but these are a few things that Dexter, Wilbur and I have learned:

• Dog park people are easy to know.  I think that's probably because there are subjects for conversation swirling around you all the time.
• The little dogs are not the safest to play with.
• You must not stand there oblivious while they play or you can be plowed over as if you've been hit by a truck.
• The dog park has no class system.  Your dog doesn't care who anyone is or whether the people like each other.
• Immediate clean up on aisle . . . everywhere. . . all the time!
• Please squirrels - stay away.  It can really, really ruin a good time if you get brave.
• A ball, thrown over the fence, can be a fun "team building" exercise.
• Wearing 3 sets of sweatpants and 2 sweaters with a coat that looks like a sofa and your hair slopped up on your head is the height of fashion!  
• Talented dogs are applauded at the dog park.

How can something disappear that quickly?

I've been looking for my glasses . . . all morning.  Finally put my contacts in - still no sign of them.  How can I have them one moment and they are ether the next?  

I've lost my keys, my ipod, my phone and a candy bar that I KNOW I bought last time I was in the store.  


One of my favorite books for awhile, as a child, was The Borrowers.  It had charming, tiny people who lived about the house and "borrowed" things that seemingly disappeared.  A button, a key, a thimble?  They've taken it to close a purse, use for a table or bed.  I loved the idea of making sense from the senseless.


I have been looking for one set of keys for about a month.  I know they are here . . . somewhere . . . mocking me.  They will be in the last place I look.  Just love that expression.  What kind of person will keep looking after they've found something?


I believe that the keys and the glasses have joined forces and are gaslighting me.  They chortle, they are amused at my befuddled searching.  


They should be joined by the fog that lives in the kitchen.  Sometimes I enter and it steals the very thing I planned to do right from my brain.

If I had known that the last time I saw you WAS the last time . . .

This is what you looked like the last time I saw you.  All blonde, blue-eyed, sweet faces.   I remember, so clearly, the day I met you.  The smiles in your eyes lit my heart.  You loved teaching me cards.  How you sat on the bed and watched me put on makeup and sat on my lap.

So fun, the time I first took you to the store.  Meghan wanted a toy.  It was an elephant but was really for dogs.  It said Milkbone on the side.  Taylor teased . . . I bought it for you anyway.

I remember the hard things too.  I’ll never forget the night Brandon had to stay home with me.  What I told you that night is still true. 

There is nothing you can do . . . ever . . . that will make me love you less.  No matter how much we disagree, no matter who says what to anyone, I promised each of you that I would love you all of my life.  I will.   If I never see you again, makes not the slightest bit of difference, I will always be here . . . loving you.

Thousands of memories.  Birthday cakes of purple, pink and red.  Sunday morning early cocoa and bacon! 

Flying kites, ice cream at Moo's, festivals and all the laughter.  Cookouts with friends, movies and holidays.

There is really no Christmas
for me without you . . .

When the power is off . . .

That’s when I’m the woman I admire.  When it’s cold and conditions are not ideal.  A storm that knocks down the lines brings out the very best in me.  That time in survival mode – makes me feel resilient. 

Reading by oil lamp.  I smile as I get out and light candles in every room.   Doing without the modern conveniences.  Challenges my creative use of the resources I have.

Figuring things out - making them work.  Repurposing and finding uses for seemingly useless things.  There is satisfaction in that.

Fifth house from the end of the line . . . very low priority for repair.


The furnace is gas but the switch is electric.  The gas stove works but the ignitor doesn't.  The well doesn't work - so fill the tub with water in a storm.  That allows flushing.  Must have flushing.


Extra blankets on the bed . . . like our coal furnace growing up my nose is cold but toes are toasty.  Reminds me of camping.

That kind of adversity brings out the pioneer spirit in me.  I imagine those folks who carried their belongings across the west in covered wagons.  Ten miles was a great day on the Oregon Trail.

Listening to the rain beat on the roof while the candles flicker  . . . ahhhh!!

Banned Books Week

It's hard to believe that we are still having this discussion.  Banning books – in this day and age – seems crazy to me.

When I was in 8^th grade I was called the principal’s office.  This didn’t happen often and my heartbeat “like sixty” all the way down to the office.  They handed me a list of books.  Don’t remember them all but I had read almost all of the books on the list.  They were books that were to be banned from our school library.  There was to be a district-wide forum – that day – I had been chosen to attend because our school librarian could think of no one else that he was certain had probably already read the listed books.

I don’t remember, now, the names of all the books on the list but Judy Bloom and several other well-loved authors were prominent.   Many of the listed books had been very provocative for me.  Provoked me to think, opened my mind, dream of possibilities.

So, I went to the forum, indignant and full of zeal.  Can’t imagine why adults think that young people are stupid.  They can discern ideas – find appropriate thoughts and behavior and sort it out for themselves.  My guess is that adults are often afraid that children who read will develop the ability to think for themselves.  How could anyone think that is a bad thing?

Can I just say, out loud, again - today, how much I love librarians in this country?  They have been holding the line for freedom, in a very real way, for years.  Standing up to Homeland Security and the closed minded.

Libraries have always been a comfort to me.  One of my top 5 favorite smells is the smell of books.  Love the smell of the pages and the way they feel on my fingers.  I love the smell of the “stacks” in the library, too! I spent 4^th through 12^th grade volunteering once a week at my hometown library.  Such a sanctuary.  I’ve often said that you can judge a town by its library.  Two of my favorites are South Bend, IN and Fargo, ND – go figure!!

I’ve gotten out of the habit of the library.  Probably a habit I should find again.  I felt such peace there . . . a place I always fit in.  Among ideas and stories and the people who love and appreciate them.

Wildflowers and Life

I like my flowers the way I like my people . . . REAL.

There’s something about a rose – big and beautiful – but outside of a man’s arms at my door – I don’t love them.  They feel . . .artificial.  Just too much.  Too full, too colorful, too much beautiful scent.

Give me a field of alpine flowers any day.   They are reedy, a little stringy and hardy.  I love that about them.  You find them growing in almost no soil at all.  I am awed a little bit when I happen upon a single bloom in the crack of a giant rock face.  In general, they don’t seem to have the energy to have much smell.

Those high country blooms just seem so happy to be there – that small, determined burst of color.  Among the myriad of shades of green of the forest and meadows – there they are.  That determination – to just be.  Briefly but fully, they are exactly who they are.  It’s made me love them since I was a small girl.

My uncle made me a flower press when I was in grade school.  Up to that point our big family dictionary had limited my ability to press and preserve them.  I loved that flower press.  I could put the flower and leaves in it.  Wait about 4 weeks and have semi-permanent versions of the beauty I found in the mountains. 

My Dad bought a book about alpine flowers of Colorado for me.  It was so much fun to wander around, alone, as a youngster – gathering and learning about them.  Growing up that way was an amazing gift.

My friend says the bush outside my front door needs trimming.  I have trimmed it . . . some.  Somehow though, I will never get over the beauty of the chaos of nature.

Barefoot Beach Weekend

The Absence of Want

Don’t remember before

feeling this,

the absolute absence of want.

In need of nothing

not food, not amusement nor funds

I sit here – absorbing the flight of the hawk overhead.

Complete attention

with peace in the space where empty  usually sits.

Empty is heavy and dull,

sucks the energy from my body;

a chunk of obsidian that sits inside my chest.

The absence of want feels . . .

refreshing.

A spiritual drink.

Soft – the way the

blue water of Lake Michigan

looks at my feet.

This moment – you gave me

a gift hauled up – whole

from the sand, far below.

A gift worth no price

No charge

My heart is full –

no room for empty,

want of nothing.

tsr

9-4-11