Rufus...

Rufus had been counting down his days in a high-kill shelter somewhere in Georgia when we agreed to foster him. A teenager, he was open and friendly at the time. But we only had him for a few months before a young woman adopted him. Given the fact that he was not very outstanding in his size, appearance, or personality, a “real mutt”, we were pleased to see him find a “forever home”. The young girl was loving and motherly toward him, had a good job and her own place.

Good. One less dog to foster. We had already fostered and placed quite a few.

That was that, or so we thought.

Then Carla got a call from the girl about three months later. She wanted to return Rufus to us. We were happy to take him back, unwilling to risk him winding up in another shelter or worse.

But he had changed a bit. He no longer would look me in the eye or get too close. He cringed when I picked up a magazine or a long-handled cooking spoon. It was obvious he had been abused. We investigated as best we could. Apparently, the young girl took in a boyfriend shortly after she got Rufus. We believe the young couple worked long days, leaving Rufus too long in their apartment on weekdays, beyond what his bladder could endure. So, he probably peed on the floor, and was beaten when the young man came home at night.

Rufus was understandably skeptical of me. He kept his distance even though I’ve always been the primary dog feeder and walker in our house. I knew that he had been through a bad few months though, so I was overly gentle with my voice and movements when he was in the room, never pressing him to do anything much, other than to just relax.

We went through six years of him acting like he didn’t trust me. He would cautiously approach my hand when offered a treat, grab it like a nervous squirrel, and run back to his bed to eat it.

Sometimes, if I was not looking at him, he would approach me and stare at my face, as if I was a dog TV. But if I looked his way, he would scurry out of the room.

He never looked me in the eye.

Then one day last year, when our other dog, Chica, jumped up into my lap Rufus finally decided that maybe I’m not so scary after all. When Chica jumped back down, Rufus hefted his chest and front legs up onto my lap, with his head down by my knees.

He let me pet him. It was obvious that he liked it.

Now he asks for that same attention regularly, but he still won’t look me in the eye.

No hurry boy. Maybe next year...

Crawl, walk, run…you know?

Druggie!

When Carol asked a question about coffee, how much we drink every day and when, everyone gave their stats. I was being silly and said: "I grind fresh beans and snort lines all day, often with a rail of powered milk and one of powdered sugar."

She laughingly replied: "druggie!"

We both chuckled, and that was that.

But I kicked it around a bit later, thinking: We're all druggies, it's just a question of what drug."

Do you chase after the usual suspects? Sex, alcohol, chemical drugs? What about food? These fairly common objects of lust and consumption often carry negative connotations. But what of the drugs of success and power? A common yardstick is money. You know how well you're doing by the way that people vote for you with their dollars. Is that about the money itself or is it about the love and approval it represents? That doesn't sound like a bad thing, right?

Do you battle for power in a relationship or at work? Is that one of your drugs?

My personal drug of choice is to always have a great day, today and every day. That involves asking myself; "What is the best possible use of my time, right now? The answer may be to simply walk the dogs, interact with Carla and the girls, or it could be kicking back and watching old reruns of "Leave it to Beaver" while making crude beaver jokes about Ward and June.

But maybe the best use of my time is also about trying to do an excellent job at work, to touch people and make them laugh. It could be mornings at the gym, plugging away to keep my ageing carcass moving. I told my buddy there that I haven't changed much since I was a young man. I was stiff all the time then and am stiff all the time now. The only difference is that the stiffness has dissipated away from one specific part of my body to generously inhabit my knees, joints and spine.

I tell him that it is for realizations like that for which God invented alcohol.

Regardless of our justifications for drug use, we're all druggies. People who do seemingly unselfish acts of charity, are druggies. They want that feeling that often accompanies intentional compassion. Christians have done it forever. Practice giving as a way to earn your ticket to heaven. That's the drug you're seeking.

There is no such thing as an unconnected, charitable act. It's always about us and how things make us feel. That's the only way any living organism can behave. It's all about us. It's personal.

Humans, and all life forms only have two courses of action available to them. Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. Even the suicide victim is trying to avoid the pain of life and seeking what they perceive to be the pleasure of oblivion.

That's it. All of life explained.

Every time you shift in your chair, you are avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. Worry about all of it if you want to, but your options to take action are limited, pleasure or pain?

What's your pleasure?

My Birthday Cake...

3AM, January 24, 1978. My 30th birthday was on the 23rd. Carla and I had been married for 8 days.

Brother Kenny invited us out to celebrate both events with a lobster dinner at Abdallas in downtown Chauncy. Downtown meaning anything on the single block where there were still a few stores that hadn’t closed their doors and gone out of business.

Abdallas was a bar & steakhouse in that long dead coal town of depressed and depressing Appalachian holdouts. Strip steaks, live lobster, big salads & draft beer. Looming imposingly over the bar, a huge 1930’s painting of Abdalla herself, all breasts and hips, reclining voluptuously on a red velvet couch.

The real life Abdalla was in one corner. Skeletal, animated, her nicotine stained fingertips and teeth the color of black tea. Holding court for the ghosts of gentlemen callers, she puffed and pontificated to the empty chairs around her like Alice’s caterpillar smoking his hookah, marinating in an acrid cloud of decay.

On the other side of a large wood framed arch was the main dining room. In the wall to the left, a beaded curtain lead into a private room with a long table that could seat 16. That was our spot. All the ganja cowboys held court there.

I loved everything about that place.

But we never made it.

Our meet time of 7pm came and went as Carla flitted from one thing to another, never really making any progress toward going out. 8pm, nada. By 9pm I was learning that my new wife was simply incapable of going anywhere even remotely on time.

By 10pm I was pissed, drunk, and sleep kidnapped.

I’ve since learned that Carla time is just that, so I don’t plan accordingly. You know the saying that “God laughs as people make plans”? Well it turns out that Carla does that too.

That night she woke me up at 3am, proud as hell of the birthday cake she had made for me. No small feat considering that our propane stove was circa 1920 and the fact that we had no running water in the cabin.

I remember the sides of that white gift were very cake-like while the middle was more like some kind of dessert soup.

It was 3am delicious.

These days, I’ve learned to give any plans we have a wide range of interpretation and latitude.

And I’m still quite partial to Carla’s cake.

Four-Footed Ghosts

Our backyard gate opens into the park surrounding North holiday lake. I took Rufus and Chica for a walk down to Dog Beach, a little alcove with a gradual slide into the drink. A park bench there acts as a lifeguard station for us to monitor the activities.

I couldn’t shake the very real ghosts of other dogs and other times when we walked the same path, and didn’t want to. I missed Kira and Sasha and Lily the blind cocker spaniel. She had spent her entire reproductive life locked in a cage, and was dumped unceremoniously at a shelter when she was no longer useful as breeding stock. When we would walk down into the park with a group of dogs, she was so damn happy to be out loose, in the high grass and fresh air, her little truncated stump of a tail, never stopped spinning. 

Kira never need a leash and was offended by the thought. She didn't identify with dogs, generally finding them to be crude and disgusting creatures.  A Lab/Rottie mix, she didn't have a mean bone in her body and only wanted one thing passionately: to be with me. I could walk with her down St George Street when it's packed with tourists, she would be at my heels, oblivious to other humans, dogs, noise or distractions of any kind. I never gave her "commands", she didn't need them. I spoke to her as I would any family member. "You should stay here and wait for me, I'm going inside this store to look at T-shirts." She would be right there when I came back out, even if a hurricane had come through while I was gone, she would be there. A tours bus filled with squirrels giving her the raspberries out the windows? She would stay put. 

Kira loved to wade around in the water at Dog Beach. Being overweight from too many great breakfasts I cooked for the two of us, the water gave her buoyancy and helped relieve the stiffness of the arthritis she had in later years.

It surprises me how much I miss that bossy little black terrier who loved to jump up into my lap and put his nose right on mine and grin at me in a way that made me worry for the safety of my nostrils. I wondered what a person would look like with no lips or nose,  conjuring images of the unmasking scene in The Phantom of the Opera. I know the dog was just saying hello, but he specialized in that intimidating shark grin of his. Quite a set of chompers on that one. I think he used whitening strips.

The brown Ridge-back foster, was a moose. Unflappable, calm and stoic. We found a good home for him.

Valley Girl was a Red Heeler, almost completely bald from a bad combination of mange and neglect. With lots of special shampoos over the course of six months, she grew back tufts of reddish brown fur. That breed is known for being smart smart, and she sure was. She could size everything up and know how to make it all work to her advantage. She wound up in a great forever home too.

I miss all of them so very much. Each one had tremendous depth of character and honesty. 

It would be great to send such a group to Capitol Hill and  show the morally corrupt  senators and congressmen just how it’s done.A few good dogs could lead by example for our elected officials. 

Unlike politicians, dogs care about their humans more than themselves. 

Everyone knows, dogs are simply a better class of people.

Batchelor Daze..

Twice a week, 127 pre-teen boys flooded through the double glass doors smelling of sweat, sugar syrup, and dirty laundry. As soon as school was over, they came to turn in their collections from the days prior. Uninvited, they would dump the contents of their pockets onto my desk. Piles of sticky change mixed with Bazooka gum wrappers, rubber bands, bottle tops, lint balls… One boy had a large, very dead, dung beetle that I particularly admired.

After the counting, sorting and applying of credit, pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters all got stacked into paper rolls that I’d walk down to the plaza at Lake Anne and deposit at our bank with Mrs. Worsham at the window. Her boy was one of my boys. Once the chaos of the kids had died down, I would update the “boards” to indicate who sold what and how many papers they should get on their next delivery. It was always a tricky balance between having enough to go around and avoiding waste.

I finished with college, had my English/Psychology degree in hand, and was well qualified to be in charge of newspaper circulation, or pretty much any other job that required no specific skills whatsoever. But it was all good with me. I was loving life, sharing a four story town-home on the lake that was only five minutes away with three other bachelors.

We were all in our late twenties, and lived to party.

The guys had girlfriends who had their own places. No live-in girls allowed. Most of the girls had dogs and could cook, so after work was over, we convened at our place for a daily celebration of …a daily celebration. Music, food, beer, dogs, doobies…what, me worry? On sunny days the party was down at the lake with multiple rafts and inner tubes strapped together into a flotilla of fun. The boom box and cooler had their own central raft, the joints a waterproof container.

The party lasted four years.

Then Carla got a job with the paper doing classified adds. She was only 20, and cute as hell. Bright, articulate, unguarded, innocent. A Catholic girl. My ex-girlfriend and I had broken up. We each had a fling with people we didn’t care about, got back together for a week and accused each other of bringing crabs into the relationship, and yes Mrs. Doubtfire, I don’t mean Dungeness.

None of it mattered anymore. Carla was everything I wasn’t and I was hopelessly mesmerized. There was never a choice. I had to have her, be with her, spend long hours talking, and then letter writing when I went off to grad school.

She lived a stream-of-consciousness life, always in the moment. I was a planner, knowing what I would do, when and how. She had no embarrassment button. I cared to much about what others thought. Carla was up for anything, just jumping in the car without asking where we were going. Let’s just go.

She was frustrating and charming, and never, ever boring.

That was 42 years, two daughters, and seven houses ago. This morning she finally came to bed around 4am after being up all night as is her norm. We got close, talked a bit, me waking, her fading. Polar opposites. 

I as crazy about her now as much as I was back then. Probably more.

I love my life, always have, but I sure wouldn’t mind a little of that party time flashback in a townhouse by a lake so many years ago...with Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Brown singing just for us.

Retablos...

I brought these retablos here today for Show-N-Tell. They belonged to my Grandparents, George and Ruth Maverick.

Grandma and Grandpa grew up together in San Antonio, TX, with close ties to Mexico and its beautiful culture. I remember seeing these in their house when I was a kid. They had them forever. Now they collect dust on my own bookcase. I’ve had them forever too.

Aside from any religious, cultural or artistic significance, they comfort me. When I look at them, I see George and Ruth, and feel just a tiny bit like they never left.

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A retablo in Mewxican folk art is a devotional painting,  using iconography derived from traditional Catholic church art. Small retablos are devotional or votive paintings, often on rectangular sheets of tin that illustrate holy images such as Christ, the Virgin Mother, or one of the hundreds of saints.

 

Comfort Zone...

My daughters stand on the same soapbox, side by side, pontificating about the benefits of leaving my comfort zone. “Dad, you can’t make any progress unless you do.” They warn me.

I’m thinking: “What progress?”.  It took me a long time to get here and it feels pretty damn good now that I have. At this point I’m not looking for a new job or house or, god forbid, a new wife. I can’t handle the one I’ve got.

The only spiritual enlightenment I look forward to will be when I cross the rainbow bridge, to follow all my dogs. Twenty years from now, thank you.

My Idea of wild and crazy is to go somewhere other than Ned’s Southside for dinner.

Like most people my age, if you stuck me in the freezer and cut me in half, you would find lots of rings. Concentric circles that tell of rapid growth and some briefly dormant times. The point is, I’ve worked a bunch of different jobs, bottom to top. Seven houses, six different career paths.

Having tried the bed that was too hard and the one that was too soft, I’ve found the one that is just right.

Now you’re telling me to get up and look elsewhere? For a different bed? Are you nuts?

OK, I’m not dead though and I did switch it up. I got out of my comfort zone.

Having always been a gym guy, my most recent morning routine has been at the local Planet Fitness. It’s only 9 minutes from home, big, spacious, friendly. I often see friends there, some of whom I used to see at other gyms before Planet Fitness opened 8 years ago.I have a history. But last week, in San Diego with Ruth, we went every morning to her big, new gym. I loved the latest & greatest equipment and decided to look around here for the same stuff.

The bottom line? After eight years, I quit Planet Fitness and joined Anytime fitness down the street. Smaller, cleaner, newer, less crowded, and equipped with the exact machines I was looking for.

Sweet!

You see girls, I CAN leave my comfort zone, especially when I find an even more comfortable zone, that is.

This morning I finished my workout, loving the treadmills and elliptical machines with attached TV screens that I control myself. No more FOX NEWS blaring at me from overhead and people nodding their heads in agreement at how badly The Donald is being treated.

At 6:30 there was a class going on in its own area, but I was the only person out on the floor. That made me very happy.

Oh, and Ruth and Hannah? In my comfort zone departure, I did make real progress: I left the parking lot of Anytime Fitness at 7:31 and pulled into my driveway at 7:32!

You were right, cutting my commute down from nine minutes to one is real progress. My comfort zone just got more comfortable.

But we’re still going to Ned’s for dinner tonight.