Lonesome Puppy Blues

I have two dogs. One is a Chihuahua and the other a pound puppy. I love each of them just as much as the other, but differently. I think the big difference is Butters, the chihuahua loves me and Darnell, the pound puppy, adores me.

I saw an add in the paper for Darnell about three years ago. It said he was a Chihuahua-dachshund mix. We had a dog like that when I was a little girl and his name was Darnell. When I saw his picture, I just knew he was supposed to be mine, so I adopted him. I wanted to know his story , and at the shelter they told me he came in as a very sick puppy and his little friend, also sick, had died. They took very good care of him and eventually he was healthy enough to be adopted.

I wonder sometimes, about the person who threw this little dog away. Do they know what they are missing? He has been such a blessing to me. He is funny and sweet and wants to be with me all the time. He is not a lonesome puppy anymore and he is grateful.

This is the only PSA I will ever give, so just listen, OK.

There are a lot of dogs and cats on death row, and they never hurt anyone. If you can't adopt a pet at least think about supporting your local shelter.

There. Ive done my 70's hippie child, We Are the World duty.

One more thing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUDDY HOLLY!

Required Reading

I have loved to read since I was a little girl. I mostly like fiction, but I will read anything. Anything, with the exception of required reading! Teachers love to ruin a good book by saying there will be a quiz. Maybe I have some rebellion left over from my pirate days, ( pirate days is a phrase I love to use whenever I can, to describe my misspent youth. I stole it from a Mary Chapin Carpenter song.) As I was saying ...rebellion..yada yada...pirate days..Oh, I just can't read something if you tell me to. You know, like, Oh Sheila you have to read this book. My first thought is, no I don't, and then there is no way I can make myself read that book. I'm still not sure exactly what happen in Moby Dick, but I don't care. I read the Cliff notes and I passed the test, sort of. Maybe I missed out on some important information I will need on my next whaling trip, but I think I will manage.

The other things I don't read are those sticky sweet emails that say "you must forward this to 7 people if you love Jesus". I usually glance over it quickly, and if the art work looks like it could be copied in velvet, or someone spilled pink teddy bears and roses all over it, I know it will end with a threat of Jesus not knowing I love him. So I hit the delete button. I know Jesus and I think this makes him laugh.

And let's not forget the email curse. " Billy Joe died just 24 hours after not forwarding this email". I delete those in the name of Jesus.

Little Faithers Have Big Ears

I know that's not how the saying goes. It just sort of popped into my head this morning when Pastor Paul used the phrase" little faithers". I just thought, Little faithers have big ears and they believe everything they hear. They believe the gossip of the old men at the coffee shop. They believe the conspiracy theories they read on the Internet and they believe the dooms day prophesies from cable news. They just can't believe God is in control.
I like the History channel, and I watch it when ever I can. You can see instances all through time when people must have thought it was the end of the world. During a program on the black plague something occurred to me. There was pain and death all around. Entire families were lost. It was one of the darkest times in history, but the message of Christ survived.
I have taken some pretty hard blows in life. I've been cut to the core, left feeling dead inside, but I always woke up the next morning, even when I didn't think I wanted to. I'm not saying it cant happen again or it won't kill me next time. I'm just saying I'll be OK.
I know this sweet old man who shoes horses for a living, and does it with a joyful heart. We have both lost daughters since we met. He always says to me, "Be thankful. You live in the greatest country in the world and when you die you get to go to heaven."

Labor Day

I always enjoyed the television show, The Wonder year. It was a pretty accurate portrayal of my preadolescence. I never knew a twelve year old boy as sweet and sensitive as Fred Savage, but they got every thing else right. The music was great, the clothes were hideous and the nightly news was sad and violent. I was watching TV with my family the night they broke in to say Martin Luther King had been assassinated. And when Bobby Kennedy was killed, we watched his funeral train roll across our TV screen over and over. I had two big brothers in Vietnam, so most nights the war footage was just too hard to watch.

One late July day, my best friend, Ivy and I were making plans for a sleep over at my house. We had been at the pool all day and my sister came to pick us up instead of my mom. When we got in the car I asked if every thing was OK and she said no, and we should cancel our plans. She didn't want to tell us why, but we persisted. She said Billy, one of the neighborhood boys, had been killed in Vietnam and Mom was taking it very hard. I was devastated. I had never known a young person to die, and Billy was like a brother, with the exception of always being nice to me.

I remembered stopping to talk to him on my way to school. He would be working on an old car or an old go cart, and I thought he was lucky he didn't have to go to school anymore. I didn't know he was just waiting to be shipped out.

The summer was nearly over before the army got him home for his funeral. It was Labor Day and school was about to start. I had a fight with my mom that day over some socks I didn't want to wear. I think she thought I just needed to cry, But I really didn't want to wear those socks.

At the funeral, my throat hurt so bad from trying not to cry, but I didn't think anyone would understand why this eleven year old was so sad. I missed Billy, and I missed my brothers. It was kind of an end to Innocent times, a realization of how cruel life could be.

It's Labor day again and I'm thinking of Billy. I'd like to say all that patriotic stuff people say, like "Thanks for your sacrifice". But I also would like to say thanks for being so nice to an eleven year old girl. You made her feel special.

Let Me Introduce You to My Redneck Friend

I think prairie dogs are amazing. They live in communities, have families and seem to be communicating and looking out for each other.

My husband thinks they are great target practice.

What has happened to us? We used to be such peace freaks. I have actual firearms registered in my name. I don't touch them and can't sleep in the same room with them, but I have every right to own them. Jon even loads his own shells. Are we becoming rednecks?

We still listen to the same music, but we don't have the same values as most of the musicians, and we no longer drive hundreds of miles to see the bands.

When my son, Eric was a baby, I would play a song, by Jackson Browne, for him and he would dance. It was called Redneck Friend, and when I hear it now I can still see him dancing his little diaper off. But the words meant something.

It said, "Daddy's in the den shootin' up the evening news, Mamma's with a friend, lately she's been so confused. Little one it's all up to you. It ain't like him to argue or pretend . Honey let me introduce you to my redneck friend".

Sometimes you need a redneck to bring order to your world.

Souvenirs

A couple of weeks ago we had a garage sale for the first time in about five years. We sold a lot of stuff but surprisingly we still have a garage full left. It was so hard deciding what to sell, what to keep and what to throw away. We were going through a box of old books and Jon pulled out this little white zippered Bible. I said " Oh that was my first Bible. My mom gave it to me for Christmas when I was about six. See she signed and dated it." Jon looked at it and said "So what do you think, about three dollars?" He is no where near as funny as he thinks.

It's hard for me to let things go. It's not so much the things but the memories tied to the things.I still have a bone shaped dog tag engraved with the name Sidney for a dog I owned about five minutes. The tag came in the mail a week after the dog was stolen from my yard. But I will never forget her.

Right now my daughter, Sarah's wedding dress is driving me crazy. She may not want it, but I can't part with it, even if it is in my way. I have Tonka trucks, G I Joes and Barbies. And I also have batons. Fire batons, hoop batons, knives and plain old twirling batons. I keep them in a closet where I don't have to look at them, but I feel better knowing they are still there. You see my little girl was a baton twirler. She twirled through middle school, high school and was the feature twirler at her university when she died. It was a huge part of both our lives. For many years family vacations were planned around twirling contest.

We moved to another house shortly after Lauren died. It was just too hard. Before we moved, I would wake up every morning, try to walk down the hall to the kitchen, but would always end up leaning on her bedroom door crying. Driving home from work, I would remember how happy it made me to see her little black car sitting in the driveway. I would pull into the drive and just sit, dreading that empty house.

So we sold the house and moved into town. But I couldn't part with her things so I set up her room just as if she was coming home. I know, crazy huh. I even hung her Tinkerbell poster on the wall.

There is a song by John Prine called Souvenirs. In one verse it says,

I hate graveyards and old pawn shops

For they always bring me tears.

I can't forgive the way they robbed me

Of my childhood souvenirs.

It's a good "feeling sorry for myself" song, as are most of John Prine's songs.

I know I said I would keep it light, sorry, I guess I lied.