It's A Dogs Life

I’m right around 70 years old, give or take a year or two. It’s really hard to say actually. When my human tells others my age he always says, around 10 or so. That’s 10 in people years. I never quite understand what they mean by that. You know, why is there a difference between how old I say I am and how old my human says. I can’t let stuff like that bother me though, hell, I’m still trying to figure out why I’m eating out of a bowl on the floor and he gets to use all kinds of weird utensils.

I grew up in southern California and spent some time in the northern part of the state too. A few years ago my human and I got in the car and drove for what seemed like forever and ended up in Florida. I don’t quite get what happened but I think I was in a nice size family before he and I left. I don’t remember who was there but I seem to remember a few other folks that would feed me and rub my belly and stuff like that.

Living with this guy hasn’t been bad. I’m well taken care of and he understands all my little quirks. That’s important in a relationship like ours. He takes care of me and I don’t bark, bite, tear through the trash or mess up the house.

I tell you what’s weird, this snow stuff. I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen such a thing. I have spent the better part of the last six months getting the backyard the way I like it, you know, go to the bathroom in this part, lay around and do nothing in that part. Well that’s all blown to hell. I can’t see or smell anything back there. It’s tough on an old girl like me. I can’t just get up and go anywhere; I need some familiarity in my restroom habits.

He does take good care of me though. He’s always talking to me and petting me. I really love to lay behind the lounge chair when he’s in it watching television. Once in a while I forget how long my body is and when he puts the chair back it’ll hurt my stomach. I don’t always say something, it’s nice just to be there with him and I don’t want to cause any trouble.

When we first left California, we lived in Florida for the first year alone. I liked it, he would make sure he came home from work to get me outside and I enjoyed the apartment we were living in. we had nice neighbors and there was a little boy right next door who would play with me when he was gone too long. I used to see all kinds of different animals down there. I remember once, when we were out in the morning, we saw a really weird looking thing come out of the bushes. He called it an armadillo. He was as surprised as I was at seeing it. I wanted to go talk to it but he wouldn’t let me. Something about our safety. I know he wouldn’t do anything that would allow me to get hurt. I kinda like that. I’m sure he knows that if I had the ability I’d protect him in any way possible too.

We had his daughter live with us for a while but she just moved back to her Mother’s house in California a couple days ago. She was nice and I’ll miss her. I’m not real keen on why she left but he was pretty upset about whatever her reason was. They’ve been really close for as long as I can remember. They even kind of look alike.

Things aren’t always so wonderful around here. He usually leaves in the morning and comes home in the late afternoon leaving me alone for hours on end. He leaves the television on for me and that’s nice. For some reason he thinks I like the Weather Channel. I don’t know where he got that. Like I can do anything about it let alone that it in no way effects my life in any way. Well, at least he tries.

There is one thing in this life that totally baffles me and maybe you can help me understand it. In the room where he gets his food there’s this big white box with two doors. Sometimes when he opens it he brings me this treat that’s so cold and creamy, it’s just to die for. He calls it dog ice cream; I call it heaven on earth. I totally understand about the box keeping things cold and all. My question is, how can I get me some more of this wonderful treat that I only get, at most, once a day. Let me know if you can help.

Anyway, I guess I’m at the older end of the age range when it comes to dogs and I know that I have, at best, three to five more years and that’s if I don’t get sick. When I go I know I’ll miss him and he will miss me. I hope he gets another dog after I’m gone; he really likes having me around. It gives him someone to talk too. I’m kinda afraid that he would talk out loud even if I wasn’t here and I’d hate to see him look as nuts as that.

One More Day

Karen called me the other day to tell me that Mitch Albom was on Oprah, and knowing I liked reading his stuff, thought I would like to see the show. I switched the channel and caught him. He was on because his book “One More Day” was turned into a television movie and they had a show about the concept. Of course it got me thinking.

I think if I could have one more day with someone that is no longer living it would have to be my Grandfather. I’ve written of him before in the essay entitled, “The Carter Family”, and if you’ve read it you know how close the two of us were.

I think I would want to see him before he had his stroke, he was obviously much more vibrant at that time. I’d like to wake up at his house and let him make coffee and toast like he used to and after putting the unsalted whipped butter on the toast, he’d take the salt shaker and salt it anyway. Of course the coffee, for me, would be one part coffee and about 15 parts milk. We’d then put two saccharine tablets in it and breakfast would be served.

We’d then get into, at that time, his yellow Impala and drive the few miles to “the building”. It was pretty much a city block he owned that had stores on the ground floor and apartments on the top. We’d go to the basement to, as he would say, “check the pipes” and he’d have something to feed all the alley cats that hung around. We’d then go upstairs to one of the apartments to visit Mrs. Evans, an older woman who rented from him, and we’d sit and talk for a while.

When we were done there he’d take me down to “Vince’s”. It was a barbershop down the block from the building. I’d get in the chair and get a “regular boys haircut” while Vince and Grampa would talk about nothing in particular. He’d always let me get a soda out of the machine Vince had and I always liked that.

Grampa and I would then head down to Carters Hamburgers to get, as he would say, “a hamburger sandwich and fried potatoes. I’d get mine plain with ketchup and his always had a big slice of white onion on his. We’d eat and talk about nothing and we were both in hog heaven.
After lunch we would usually go shopping, maybe new shoes or a winter coat and I’d just take all this for granted because it was all I’d know. You never realize what you had until it’s gone. Well, my youth and Grampa are both gone now but if I could have just one more day I’d do just as I stated above.

The only difference would be that I would be the age I am now. The scenario above was a typical day for he and I before I had started going to school. I would want Grampa to see who and what I’ve become and I think I would understand him a lot better too. I’d want to tell him how much he meant to me as a child and still means to me to this very day. Of course I would tell him I love him and miss him.
It’s quite a concept, this one more day thing. I think everyone can come up with an answer to the question of whom you’d want to see again. It’s kind of bittersweet isn’t it?

It's That Time Again

So here we are again. It’s Holiday season. I wrote last year about how I dislike this time of year for numerous reasons and I still feel that I would not miss it a bit if these special days were somehow cancelled or I was placed into a coma for the entire month of December.

I know that this time of year also means a whole lot to most people and I can appreciate that. I actually have a great deal of empathy for those whose holidays are somehow not what they would want. I think we all feel that way about the obvious cases, the poor, the hungry, the ill and those who may have lost someone close to them. My ex-wife lost her brother to cancer in early December a number of years ago and I can assure you that Christmas time is a much more bittersweet time for her and her family than they ever thought it would be all those years ago.

I think it’s real important that now, more than ever, we think of those who can’t be here during this time even though they would like to be. I’m speaking of the soldiers stationed around the world. Whether you agree with the war effort or not you have to feel for these people’s families.

Yes, I know, this is an all volunteer military. That fact, however, doesn’t take away from the idea that there are many children involved who may have a real hard time believing in Santa Claus when Mommy or Daddy can’t be home on Christmas morning because they’re overseas participating in the war effort. Yes, I know I’ve stated it before, but isn’t this whole thing really all about the kids?

My suggestion. If by chance you know anyone who has a family member in the military, check and see if there may be something you can do to help make this a special time for the children. If you don’t know of any military families, check the local fire station and see if they are collecting toys for kids. I mentioned in a previous post about a family my store adopted for the Holidays a few years ago. Check with your church or other local charities and see if you might be interested in that.

When I was younger my Mother belonged to a Jewish woman’s group that gathered toys for local Jewish families and at one time I was asked to deliver them. She gave me the addresses that each bag would go to and off I went. One of the addresses she gave me was obviously wrong as I found myself in an area of Detroit that, I was pretty sure, wasn’t part of the charity drive. As I went up to the house to see if by chance I was wrong I decided the only way was to knock on the door and ask.

The man who answered the door was about 30 years old, African American, and had a cross around his neck. He had three little ones with him who couldn’t have been older than five and, by the look on his face; they were really getting on his nerves. Being the overly intelligent guy that I am, I quickly deduced that this man was not on the list of poor Jewish families. I asked him if he had ever heard of B’nai Brith, the group my mother belonged to, and he said he’d never heard of them.

So there I was, standing on some stranger’s porch in the inner city of Detroit with a bag full of toys and some stranger staring at me like I was some kind of idiot. I looked down at one of the kids, a little girl, holding on to her father’s leg staring at me.

Obviously there was only one thing I could do. I looked at the man and asked if he could use some extra presents to put under the tree. He replied with something like “who wouldn’t”. I then explained what my actual mission was for the day and that I couldn’t see how this could, in any way, not be thought of as part of said mission. I handed him the bag, shook his hand and bid him a Merry Christmas.

I got back in my car, lit up a joint, sorry mom, and started the drive home. The whole way home all I could think of was how cool what I had just done was. I knew in my heart that I had just done something that would help those kids have a good Holiday and the idea that I gave the toys to the wrong family didn’t bother me a bit. I gave it to a family that could use it, and to me, it was the right family. Not to pat myself on the back or anything but, not bad for a 17-year-old stoner.

I’m no longer 17 and far from being considered a stoner but I went to one of the local toy stores last Tuesday and bought a couple toys. I took them to one of the local churches by the house and asked if they might find use for them. Even us grinch type folks can get a bit of the season into our cold hearts. Enjoy your Holidays everybody, be nice to each other.

Who'd Ever Believe It

I’ve been posting to this blog for about a year and a half. A few months ago I took down the original blog and started a new one. The reason I took the old one down was because I wanted to publish what I had written up to that point.

Well, I did it. I took everything I wrote in 2006 and uploaded it to a site called lulu.com and it’s now a book. It’s 268 pages and has a real cover with binding and everything. The cover and back photos are pictures that I took. I’m actually pretty proud of myself. I’ve never been one to complete much of anything and this, like most things in my life, is a project that I kept putting off and avoiding.

There are a couple different feelings that go along with doing
something like this. The first is pride. As stated above, I’ve never been good at finishing anything and it’s nice to see something like this come to fruition.

I also feel kind of strange about it. This book is all about me, things I’ve done, my feelings, my thoughts, hopes and yes, a ton of whining. I sent a copy to a friend and said it was like a little Christmas gift. Saying that, to me, sounds rather egotistical and that’s the last thing I want you guys to think.

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on my writing from so many people. Not just family, they’re supposed to support me, but from friends and other folks I don’t even know and without that feedback I would have never had the confidence to even consider putting it together like this.

I guess they call doing this “vanity publishing” and that’s exactly what this is. I got myself a copy and the feeling of opening the package, when it came, and seeing a picture that I took on the cover of a book that I wrote with my title and name on it was an incredibly powerful moment.

The beauty of doing it the way I did is that I can make revisions at any time. The first copy was formatted all wrong so I went in and reformatted it to my liking. I’m also finding spelling and grammar errors that I can correct with the touch of a key.

I have no illusions about striking it rich as a writer. Don’t get me wrong; if Oprah wanted to put this in her book club, I certainly wouldn’t stop her. There is, however, something really cool about the idea of having something on my bookshelf with my name on it. I’ve gotten a copy for each of my children. I hope it makes them proud and it’s something they want to pass onto their kids and all that but it won’t kill me if they don’t.

I’m not asking any of you to buy it. Most of you have read everything in it already. I will post the link to it though. I think it’s neat just to see it there. I do want to thank you all for giving me the fortitude to do this. I am so proud to know all of you and I always hope you feel the same.
I’m not sure if the link will work but if you’re interested you can copy the link into your browser.

http://www.lulu.com/content/1408214

Who Are These People?

There’s a story in the paper about a guy who got really drunk in a bar. He was kicked out of the place and refused to go. The owners called the police and when they arrived they surrounded the guy to try to get him to leave. The guy becomes frightened and grabs his cell phone to call 911 to complain that he is surrounded by the police. True story.

There’s another one about the guy in Germany who was going to try to kill himself. It seems he planned to do it by turning on the gas stove and sucking in enough gas to end it all. Well, midway through he changed his mind and decided he wanted to live. He turned the stove off and was so stressed out over the whole thing he lit a cigarette. The lighting of the cig caused an explosion that, you guessed it, killed him. True story.

What is it about people that make them do the strangest things and what is it that makes me so interested in it? I have always found that when reading the newspaper I look for the strange but true stories. I used to buy magazines that would only have articles like that. I'm not talking about spooky stuff, I've never gotten into that, it's always the stuff that shows how incredibly stupid people can be.

There was a book called "The Worlds Dumbest Criminals" out a number of years ago and it just fascinated me to read about how incredibly inept these people were. One of the saddest things about it is the idea that some of these idiots had guns. Not to get too serious in this but how is that even remotely possible?

I know that if in a mall or anywhere else a large amount of people are, I’m constantly looking for someone to walk into someone else or trip on their own feet. That may sound terrible but it makes me laugh. But those things are nothing like, for instance, the guy who went to rob a bank. He went to the table where the deposit slips were and wrote his hold up note on one. He then went to stand in line and wait his turn. While waiting he started thinking that someone may have seen him write the note so he probably should leave.

He then saw that there was a bank across the street and decided to rob that one. When he got up to the window the teller, wisely or not, told the man that he was using the wrong deposit slip. That the one he had was from across the street and he would have to go there. Well this guy bought it and walked back across the street to the original bank and got in line. Meanwhile, the teller who sent him there, called the police and the man was arrested.

Who are these people and how do they walk among us? I mean, they have parents, friends, spouses etc… I’ve done an incredible amount of stupid things in my life but nothing compares to these folks. These are people we see and meet everyday. I don’t think you’d even know it if you ran into one of these folks.

I wonder if after they do the little flip out thing, after they finally get home after it all, do they sit back and realize what morons they were for that moment in time. That is of course if they haven’t killed themselves.

The First Snow

Thanksgiving 2007 and I just woke up. I’d had a feeling we might get snow as the weather had said it was a possibility. I got out of bed and walked to the window and took a peek through the blinds and there it was. It’s only about an inch or so but it’s there.

I thought I’d be down about seeing it and I’d start grumping about everything but this is OK. I took Lucky out back and, of course, she was completely baffled. She had lost all the familiar smells she had laid down throughout the entire back yard and she seemed kind of lost. She walked around a bit and started to come back on the deck to get back inside but I made her go back
down so she just walked around in it a little.

I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures of her out there. They aren’t that good, she kept her nose in the snow looking for something she’d left there before. I then went to the front yard and walked across the street and took one of the house and a couple of the neighborhood with its first white blanket of the year. It looks pretty nice but that’s before the business of the day has done its damage.

The area I live in has a lot of open space with a great many Pine trees and it’s really nice to drive around and see it. It’s like the post cards that you see with winter scenes in them. The trees are all shapes and sizes and it’s left pretty much untouched.

Tonight the temperature is supposed to get into the high teens. While that’s not an experience I’m looking forward to I guess it goes with the territory. I’m certainly not used to the idea of getting all bundled up to go outside. My sister had me try on a really nice jacket that someone had left at the office at a Christmas party a couple years ago and it fit like a glove. It keeps me pretty warm but I still need a hat to cover my head. No hair really does make a difference.

He Got Me Too!

So I went and saw Bruce Springsteen last night down in Auburn Hills. I think I’ve written a few things about Bruce in the past but, sorry to say, here we go again. I wrote to a friend of mine just last week about how I’m not really a huge fan of his but if I had to name my top 100 songs, odds are, eight to ten of them are Springsteen’s.

A few of them are the usual suspects, “Born To Run”, “Rosalita” “Blinded By The Light” and “Fire”. Manfred Man and The Pointer Sisters made the last two famous but, to me, Bruce’s original versions have so much more passion. Anyway, four more of his songs in my top 100 all come from the album, “Tunnel Of Love”. Three of which pretty much talk about the impending end of his marriage at the time.

Anyway, once again, way off track. Stay focused. The concert. The tickets said the show started at 7:30 and we got there about ten minutes early. The show didn’t start till 8:15. Sort of a drag but I can live with it. He opened with his latest single as most bands do and then went right into “Night” from the “Born To Run” album. He pretty much did that all night. One or two new ones then something you recognized.

One thing you really see at a Springsteen concert is the complete and utter devotion of his fans. If you are a real Springsteen fan, your loyalty is unconditional. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to Bruce’s music but there were a number of songs that I had never heard. Most, I’m sure, from the new album. The thing that got me though was the rest of the crowd. I was something like a mile and change away from the stage so I used my binoculars throughout the show. I spent a great deal of time looking at people in the crowd. I saw a number of folks literally doing dance routines to these new songs while singing along. Pretty impressive, at least to me.

“Badlands, you gotta live it every day.
Let the broken hearts stand as the price you've gotta pay. We’ll keep pushin' till it's understood.
And these badlands start treating us good.”

It’s really something to see a crowd react so strongly to certain songs. I’ve seen Springsteen twice and both times the song “Badlands” was a sight to behold. The crowd knows the whole song and it obviously means a whole lot to them as they are up and shouting the words throughout. I know this happens at most concerts but the fervor with which these fans do it is really quite different than any crowd reaction I’ve ever seen.

Every time I go to a concert I like to see how people react to songs. A couple that hears something that is “their song” or some 10 or 11 year old with his parents just going nuts with each song and you wonder how he even knows this music. It’s a complete range of emotions that lets one understand even more how powerful this art form is. There was a little kid being held up by his dad and just rocking on beat to each song. I kept watching him throughout the show and pointed him out to the friend I was with. It was really cute. After the band came out for the encore and did the first song of the final set, Bruce saw that the kid was holding a sign. The kid was being held up right in the front of the stage. Anyway, Bruce came up to the kid, bent down, and talked to him for a second or two and took the sign and held it up for all to see. On it was a request for the song “Ramrod”, it just said, “Ramrod please”. Bruce turned to the band and said, “Let’s do it” and told us all he hadn’t done the song in five years. Now, it’s easy to say that it was a setup and he had planned to play it but when I got home I went on line and found the set list, you can do that with concerts. Turns out that he dropped a planned song and put this in just for the kid. Imagine how that kid felt. Bruce kept coming down to the spot where the kid was and let the kid touch and slap the strings of the guitar throughout the song. A true rock n roll moment that that little boy will never forget. He connected with that kid in such a way that nobody there will ever forget, I even read about it in the morning paper.

“It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough.
Man meets woman and they fall in love.
But this house is haunted and the ride gets rough,
And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love”

I also had one of those connecting moments with Bruce that night and I was as far back as one could be. I wrote earlier about the songs on the album “Tunnel Of Love” that are in my top songs list. Well there are two in particular that, every time I hear them, just shake my entire being. Well, he started playing title song from that album. As soon as it started I felt my eyes well up, as you all know I’m just a chick inside, and as I stood there I kept trying to wipe the tear that kept forming in my eye while not letting anyone see. Thank goodness it was dark. I was more moved in this moment than at any concert or movie I’ve ever encountered.

There is only one other song he could have played that could have possibly meant more and that’s “One Step Up” off the same album. I don’t think I could have kept my balance if he’d started that one. I mean it. My kids can attest to how many times in the car throughout their lives they’ve had to bear with me while I skip the rest of the cd to hear this song.

“When I look at myself
I don’t see.
The man I want to be.
Somewhere along the line
I slipped off track.
Moving one step up
And two steps back.”

No, I don’t think I could have handled that at all.