Reminds me of Dancer (who reminds me of 2nd chances)
Dancer is chihuahua. She's cute but only so far as you might think chihuahua cute. She's got wiry short white hair, no fat, very large ears and those big chihuahua eyes.
She was an abandoned dog, left to her own devices out on a country road. She was desperate and dying. She showed up at the farm of a friend of mine, surely looking for food.
On that farm, Bella is queen. And Queen Bella was the first to detect the intruder. My friend Chris first came to notice Dancer because Bella had attacked her and chased her into some small wire enclosure normally used to protect young plants from getting knocked over. It did not offer complete safety and Bella was terrorizing her when Chris came up.
Chris has something of the Outlaw Josey Wales in him. He's a Texas A&M grad and has spent his life creating food. He's worked for big AG in his professional world, crop consultant. He basically sells chemicals to farmers.
I sell big AG chemicals to the big industrial farmers around here. This is for the food you buy at Safeway and Ralphs. I also sell to organic farmers, natural fertilizers and pest control formulas and such. My 3rd big group of customers are pot farmers. They're the worst. Let me tell you, when some bug or fungus invades a pot grow, those people will spray ANYTHING on those plants to save them. ANYTHING. They're the worst.
He thinks there's a market for certified organic pot and I happen to agree with him.
ANYWAY..... (hehe)
I was talking about Wales. Josey Wales. Chris seems to collect strays. I won't go into it because some of the strays are people of course. But just like Josey Wales, he has a fondness for the, ahem, underdog. But he also possesses a farmer's, oh I'd call it, callousness. Farmers can be hard as nails and soft as downy feathers all at once, that's Chris.
He saved Dancer and adopted her. Two yeas later she still cowers when Bella growls. Bella is Queen of the farm and she never let's Dancer forget it. But I've seen their secret... Bella also plays with Dancer when no one is looking.
Dancer was abused, clearly, or simply mistreated in a way that scars dogs for life. And yet, like us all, like humans and dogs both, she NEEDS company and she NEEDS love and to be loved. A dog alone is no dog at all.
So the story ends happily as we might hope in the Enjoy Life thread. Dancer got her 2nd chance and she has a well cared for life. Now this ain't no city life, she's not pampered. But she's well fed and Chris looks after her even though he might spit some juice on her head from time to time. That's just the way it is.
Dancer took a shine to me, on some visit. We're like > X < that now, me and Dancer.
;D
DMT
ps. Last time I saw, Bella was a bit subdued. She was wearing a day-2 dead chicken tied to her collar. She killed a hen. She was wearing the hen. She would wear the hen till it fell off. Stern lessons, on the farm.
Around here you kill the chicken YOU WEAR THE CHICKEN
Credit: Dingus Milktoast
The other day my kid and I stopped in. Here comes Dancer running out to greet us, barking excitedly. She knows my van, she knows its me. She runs up, forgetting herself for a moment of excitement. And then suddenly she realizes she's close to an open car door? And zoom, like a bad memory she is GONE. But seconds later she's back once more, love'll do that to a dog. :)
Later, we were doing something near the garage and her comes Dancer again, with a big fresh dead mouse in her mouth, plump ass sticking out one side of her jaw, head out the other. She looked happy.
So the story ends happily as we might hope in the Enjoy Life thread. Dancer got her 2nd chance and she has a well cared for life. Now this ain't no city life, she's not pampered. But she's well fed and Chris looks after her even though he might spit some juice on her head from time to time. That's just the way it is.
Dancer took a shine to me, on some visit. We're like > X < that now, me and Dancer.
Awesome story, as always, Dingus. I like that Dancer and Bella do have their own special relationship.
Here's to creating this level of JOY in as many lives as we possibly can.
Ultimately, when it's all said and done, all we've got are our memories and checkin' out with even one that is this grand is better than not having felt it or . . . better yet. . . helping somebody else feel it!
In keeping with the spirit of trying to 'keep supertopo enjoyable and loose'--you missed that thread? Tough titty, it's just my whimsical notion so don't go gettin' all up in motion--it pleases me to show you some photos of "yet another" parade from what I heartily endorse as being the true heartland of the country.
All Valley kids learn the "breadbasket of the world" bit and the FFA is NOT the NRA-in-training that many libs assume, since the area's politics are what they are.
California's Great Central San Joaquin Valley has a fittingly grand name and is actually capable of swallowing Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and even ALL of Las Vegas, Reno, and Carson City combined, with left-over room for more cities like Tuscon and Pheonix. :)
But this Christmas parade was different.
It was no longer than normal, nor any shorter, it was certainly much COLDER than ones I have seen in the past.
There were NO reindeer other than Rudolph. That's perfectly normal.
There were a group of dogs dressed to the canines in holiday get-up. I counted eight owners of the twelve who did not bother to change a thing in their own dress for the occasion. You would think that they would take care to look better. They don't. This happens every year. It does nobody any good to bring it up. I blame Dancer, Dingus, and the Black Dogs Who Hate Christmas.
On the other hand, it's the first parade I've seen where women in red hats and colorful silks and baggy clothes and RED HATS--did I mention the hats?--mAGICAlly appeared. They had purple shadows, reminding me of some canyonic phenomenon of light.
the 'magic' of whimsy caused the crowd to join in with the purple majestic shadows. America was beautiful that Sunday in the cold.
Credit: mouse from merced
The women or ladies of the Red Hat Society are dedicated to Whimsy, my kinda peeps. I happen to think Ladies of Miss Longhi by McCollough is just as nice as pie, too. It was FUN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Society
I think this is why the parade was different for me this year. I had more fun and others, too, because of my antic head-banger style of shooting that gets people to f*#kin' SMILE FOR THE CAMERA. You know they just feel better having done so. It made a cold dang day that much more FUN.
Cold is NOT on the list of FUN STUFF, enjoyable stuff. Warming up after, that's what apres-ski was all about when I grew up. I knew a kid in eighth grade who saw that word the first time and pernounced it like it was a Polish name--Apreski. That knocked me over and my khaki hat fell off. I was a Boy Scout and so was this other kid. Red hats would be so much more FUN, you'd think they were afraid to sissify the boys.
Local BSA troop "marches" past the Golden Dreams sex shoppe, located ground floor Mid-Earth.
Credit: mouse from merced
The society of women is a pleasure which ought to be respected not just for for its usefulness to mankind, but for itself alone--read Herland, a utopian novel by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman--and for their collective whimsy, especially.
In what I could call their total abandon of the NORMS and the CLIFFS [1] of the world, and stressing their individuality, the Red Hat Society fosters this impulse in their members and the world at large. It workks this way, as I see it and this is my own interpretation of what I've been seeing--so please say something if I err and you know better:
Ideas go from lady head to lady head and they mutate a bit each time they are transferred and the result is different ideas of the same thing, so nothing gets repeated exactly.
It is the exact opposite of what they are taught pretty much from the cradle, seems. This is a dance school, representing the opposite, but still valid, viewpoint that a crop should all start out the same, I suppose.
Group of young girls learning to cook while dancing. The Dance Saute studio of dance. But there weren't no DancerMagicReindeerSpinStopSpinStopFly in the whole shebang. She's a big fan of eKat, BTW, as that is her online name.
Credit: mouse from merced
The Merced High Bears, all of whom looked great, and some of whom are not buying the uniformity (Red Hat fodder) because they refused to synch when spinning their letters. Or maybe they just need inspiration and more practice.
Credit: mouse from merced
Yep, I was blessed with a very pleasant but feisty family of in-laws, a real society of women, and that's what the Christmas parade taught me. I was blessed and now I'm just sayin' so.
Dingus, you never cease to amaze, dear boy. Cheers, "huff", and yer very cool.
We should get together and go shopping. Or climbing. Your call.
Credit: mouse from merced
Here is the part of the program where we dance and wear colorful clothes, not black, and venture into the feminine side, boys. But wait, we already do that climbing! (Face it, some of us are pussies when it comes to the crux.)
1. Cheers! TV sitcom from the eighties in which barflies and bar owner Paul Marzden have lots of laughs and FUN amid shenanigans even Dr. Frazier "Park Brat" Crane wouldn't believe.
Savemart, the engine that took me to every town in the San Joaquin!
They started with 1 store in the early 50s. The son of a grocer owns the whole shebang to this day. 200+ stores, and they surpassed Ernest and Julio as Modesto's biggest business, quite some time back.
DMT
ps. I kinda NEED that shopping car(t) right now, how did you know?
I won't say Women's Intuition, if that is what you might INTIMATE, old beezer. Where ya shoppin' today? Food Maxx--I hear that they got WAY BETTER DEALS on Christmas balls. Speaking of which, I never went to a "Winter Ball" or to the Bracebridge Din-Din (THAT would be Dickensian fun, but I'll bet reservations are tough to get).
Glad to see your turkey did not suffer a dog attack, too, a la A Christmas Story.
I'm not sorry to say that Safeway Von's (also run by the son of the grocer that started it, breaking the gen 2 rule) KICKS S&Ms (yuk yuk) ass on prices. It's just the way it is.. The r "straying from your core market" syndrome I guess
Mz. Morris has left the building...
I LOVE this lady so much. We've worked together at the non-profit for the past 4.5 years and she retired... today was her last day.
She's going to Enjoy Life, for sure!! An avid hiking and camper, she plans to finish up hiking all the trails she can find in AZ.
So you read a little bit of someone's work. A lot of bit, perhaps. You see some pictures and you gain a measure of that person. Is it real? Is it? Do you know that person, are your assumptions correct? I mean there is what that person chooses to tell you and the additional information that inevitably leaks out along with it.
Measures of position and character are taken. But to what are they compared? An image on the internet? An assumption of how things are? Sitting on this side of the mirror I have to laugh out loud frequently. I can say, unequivocally the answer is? Yes and no. Hah.
Yes you can gain some measure of a person, their humor, their willingness to type a good fight, perhaps even what they look like and what 'they do." But is that a real measure? Are the images you see 'real?'
Well is a map real? Does a map reveal the coming terrain? Does it reveal its character? Well, yes… and no. Anyone who's ever used a map to good effect or poor, in the back country or on the road, can understand this. A map can help set expectations yet a map is always a facsimile. Only a perfect map can reflect reality. For such a map to exist it must be a 100% exact replica and such a map is beyond the capabilities of man, at present anyway.
So where does this leave us? Why at sunset of course, close to the same place that I greeted GOOD Morning. Assumptions were made about that greeting too, some perhaps accurate, others wildly off the mark. Whatever, you don't know me even if you do. You can't measure me even though you must. You have to fill in the bulk of the missing information with the fabrications of your own mind. I'm not even going to bother correcting them because I wasn't choosing to reveal then to begin with.
The sun is setting here and I have a lot on my mind. A lot. But life goes on and so do I. Some take it as bragging; cool. Maybe it is. Some take it as insecurity, spot on I have a boatload of insecurities. Feel free to root through my underwear drawer all you want. I opened it and there's plenty of Kink Thongs in there for you to giggle over, ya pervs.
But some take it as it was intended, a greeting of a new day, whether that day contains crisis or the crown jewels. A fine GOOD morning it was too. I got to have some good joe and eat a simple food that give me joy and I pet a stray dog that had found a 2nd chance in life and those simple things at the dawn of a day, after a night of, never mind, it felt GOOD. And I wanted to share the FEELING. Is that so bad?
Ah f*#k it, just another day in Paradise. Was it a good day? Was it bad? Was it my day at all? Are the things you see real? Do they represent me? Or someone else? Is it any of your business really? Am I making it yours through the sharing of a well intentioned greeting?
There it goes. That's 10 minutes in the life of... Got my measure? Know who I am? Good for you!
I will tell you this - there are twists and turns in any road that the maps don't reveal. So you see an unexpected pothole or two the map failed to represent, gonna turn around? Do it, bye bye. But some will keep traveling this road just out of curiosity, neither knowing nor caring really, where its headed. They're just curious. GOOD for them I say! Welcome to the machine.
I'm just happy Dancer has found a home.
Dogs are so GOOD at sharing the simple joys of life, aren't they? Give them love and they flood it back to you, huh? Tell you what, giving this little dog comfort reflects straight back to my heart and makes me feel good. Is that a sin?
Hahaha those ears are a trip huh?
Even Queen Bella with the Lesson of the Dead Chicken tied round her neck, why Queen Bella just needs a little love and attention too. And you know what? She gets it. And her chicken diner punishment ended this afternoon as well. She looked happy about that too.
Never let a day go by cause you never know, it may be your last. Breathe deep, take a big drink of life every chance you get at the trough and try to laugh as much as you can. Its good for you.
Never let a day go by cause you never know, it may be your last. Breathe deep, take a big drink of life every chance you get at the trough and try to laugh as much as you can. Its good for you.
*thank you for this, Dingus. You're a good friend... and strong as hell.*
~LM
EDIT: Kath... I loved that clip...
Thank you so much for sharing this project...
It inspires.
Let us know!