*****Happy Birthday, Big Red!! You were the one who made us want to keep on going!! You are one of the most self-actualized people I have ever known. I love you.*****
My friend recently came back from a business trip in the midwest and she said that she had tried the most fabulous tea she ever had tasted while she was out there. Naturally, I had to order some for myself. Today’s favorite is Fraser Tea, their HotSpicy Cinnamon tea, in particular. It is delightfully flavorful tea that tastes slightly sweet despite having no added sugar or sweetener. When my order arrived, someone from the Fraser family wrote a lovely handwritten thank you note welcoming me to the Fraser Tea family. It was a delightful surprise!! You can order some Fraser Tea here, at their well-done website: https://frasertea.com/
It is also our spicy little brown dog’s birthday today (Trip is a Boykin spaniel). Trip turns four today and our eldest son said that means, that today, they are both turning 28! Have a fun and fabulous Friday, friends. See you tomorrow!!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
The mind craves information, which is interesting. The soul craves inspiration, which is crucial. ~ Alan Cohen
I don’t plan on tying in the quote above to my writing today. I just happened to read the Alan Cohen quote this morning and I thought that it was so spot on, I had to share it. I look at my blog as a museum or a treasure chest of thoughts and ideas that I can come back to any time that I want to, or need to, and I hope that you see it as the same thing ~ a repository of ideas.
In other news, a few minutes ago, I got into a war of wills with our Boykin spaniel, Trip. I felt his soft fur at my feet as I was writing, and I heard the rustling in the garbage can, but by the time that I put 2+2 together (I’m slow in the morning time), Trip had disappeared with paper in his mouth. Trip and our collie, Josie are paper hounds. They love to chew paper. And then inevitably they end up throwing up said paper, somewhere around the house, hours later, usually in more than one “crime scene”. So, I frantically started yelling to Trip, “Leave it. Drop it!”
And in his mind, I think that he was saying to me, “Ha! Dream it.”
And then things got even better for Trip because I got easily baited into a game of chase, running around the couch (which by the way, they say is an excellent thing to do if you are ever being chased by an assailant. It is much harder to catch anyone when they are running around something, such as a parked car, than just running away.) And I know this tip. And I understand why it would be true. And yet, I still got baited into hopelessly chasing Trip around the couch, yelling, while our other dogs bounced and barked at all of the exciting revelry.
Now, two of our adult children are already home for the holidays, and I didn’t want to wake them, and I still didn’t want to clean up dog vomit later, so I knew that I had come up with another plan. As it is said, “What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing, again and again, and expecting different results.”
So, I went to the savory dog treat jar and I cleverly called to my pack, “Anyone want a treat?” Ralphie, the ever-hungry, always on a diet, labrador was already there, sitting with his mouth watering, and Josie was close behind. Trip stood in the entrance of the kitchen, paper in mouth, obviously carefully considering the situation. Reluctantly, he dropped the paper in his mouth. Treats inevitably taste better than wood pulp. (although probably not much better, although I have never tried them.)
Now, some would say that you should never reward a dog for being a d^%&**& (you fill in the blanks, there are a lot of words that start with the letter “D” that could work here, if you use your imagination). Trip did not listen to my command, why should he be rewarded? I think that the real treat was that I craftily outsmarted the little fellow. (Yes, I wrote that line with a smug, self-impressed expression on my face.)
And yet, if I am honest with myself, Trippy might be getting the last laugh here. I have written an entire blog post about him. And he upgraded from paper to dog treat, all the while misbehaving and causing a ruckus. (Yes, as I write this line, I peer down at my little brown spaniel at my feet, and he has quite the smug, self-impressed expression on his own cute, little face. D^&%$&!)
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Josie (collie, who turns 3 today): It’s our shared birthday today, dear Ralphie! May I be the first to wish the both of us, a very lovely and Happy Birthday! (prim, beautiful and alert with white-tipped tail swishing, like an overgrown, elegant fox)
Ralphie (yellow Labrador retriever, who turns 4 today): Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! (jumping around and licking everything in sight, hitting a few notes on the piano with his chin and leaving some dog slime on the keys, grabbing a now formless/headless toy and running around the house with it, tail going like a helicopter blade)
Trip(Boykin spaniel, who is a little over a year old): Treats!!! Does this mean treats?!? Does this mean lots of treats?!? Does this mean extra treats?!? Huh?? Huh?? Huh?? (springboards off of the couch and exuberantly and fearlessly jumps on top of Ralphie, despite $600+ dollars worth of training to stop this behavior, so as to not be mauled by Ralphie, a large dog who has 70 pounds on him, and a huge retriever mouth, full of sharp, white teeth. Ralphie, despite having a saint-like amount of patience, has shown that even a Labrador retriever’s renowned patience has its worldly, and understandable limits.)
Camera pans on Ralphie, the yellow Lab, dreaming of what his perfect birthday would look like: Ralphie, swimming in the pool from dusk to dawn, with his whole pack, humans and dogs, all swimming with him, and throwing his disgusting, wet, soggy toy into the pool endlessly for him to retrieve at the surface, and even from the bottom of the pool, and then clapping for him, enthusiastically, each time, as if we have never seen him do this 800,000 times before. Ralphie only comes out of the pool once, for a whole, hot, delicious steak, fresh off the grill, without even having to beg for it.
Camera then pans on Josie, the elegant collie, dreaming of what her perfect birthday would look like: A day when herding Ralphie, while he is swimming in the the pool would not be necessary, because Ralphie would not be in the pool. A day that the squirrels stay in their own nests, in the neighbor’s yard, far, far way, so that she does not have to worry about those icky, little squirrels dirtying up our trees and our lawn. A day when there will be no deliveries from Amazon Prime, so she can save her voice. A day when Trip would stand still long enough, so that she could tidy him up, licking him carefully, as if they were both Fancy Feast Persian cats. Josie, enjoying a long, long, long wonderful walk with no kids roller skating nor skateboarding on the sidewalks, to disturb her peace and comfort.
Trip, the boisterous Boykin spaniel: F*ck birthdays! I do whatever I want to do, every day!! Give me another treat!!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Josie, our collie, was teaching Trip, our spaniel puppy some yoga yesterday. It’s good for them to practice yoga, both mentally and physically. I should have joined in. (I’m giddy in excitement because our eldest son comes home today for a visit, but I’m not going to say anything because the superstitious part of me, just doesn’t want to jinx it.) Speaking of cute animals, did you see the news story about Hubert and Kalisa, the aging African lions at the Los Angeles zoo? (I cannot wait to see our son. We haven’t seen him, in person, since Christmas due to this damn virus. But again, I’ll just keep this upcoming visit, to myself.) Hubert and Kalisa were best friends and partners, and were rarely seen apart. They were euthanized together yesterday, because they each had quite a bit of ailments, at their ripe age of 21 years, which is apparently a very, very long life for a lion. (Of course, there is all sorts of drama with my son flying in, because besides the virus fears, we are watching the path of the hurricane, whose name I can’t pronounce (Why do we even have to get creative with names of storms, these days?!?) very closely. But I’m just going to keep my fears to myself and I am just going to stay positive.) I think that Hubert and Kalisa were like the regal, real life fur edition of The Notebook. (I can’t wait to announce on the blog that my son is safely in town, tomorrow. My readers are going to be so surprised and so very happy for me.)
Trip, our new Boykin spaniel puppy, has created his own “doggy door” on our screened-in porch. He found a weakness in the screen, at the bottom portion of the screen door, so that when he was really teeny, he would just weasel through a little, loose corner of the screen, hoisting himself and then crawling out to the back yard, as quick as he could muster. I didn’t dissuade this because frankly, I thought that it was cute, watching his wiggly little puppy butt crawl out the door, and also, I assumed that he had to get out to do his business, in a real big hurry. Now that Trip is a bigger puppy, and he has that “spring action” going on, which spaniels are noted for, his handmade doggy door has actually become more of a flap, and his agility skills are highly noted by me, as he leaps outside, through his own creation, as if he were a one-puppy football team, bursting through a banner, headed out to play for the state championship win, in order to “go potty.” And it should be noted that I am his one-person-loud-yet-not-so-agile-middle-aged-lady-cheerleading squad. (In truthfulness, potty training is not yet perfected with Trip, and yesterday there was a Roomba disaster, but that’s for another blog. The Roomba is a perfectly wonderful machine, in my mind, except that it’s one flaw is that it absolutely needs a sniff sensor. Our family is so chaotic with kids and animals, that we actually have two Roombas going, at any one time. Thank goodness for tile floors, Fabuloso, and Eckart Tolle’s podcasts on mindfulness.) Yesterday, was definitely a classic Monday, with this messy fiasco occurring, and my husband getting a flat tire on his brand new car, despite the fact that we barely ever drive anywhere these days. Mondays. At least it’s over for another week.
So, now I will go back to the point that I was trying to make about Trip’s homemade doggy door. It struck me that when we are young and exuberant, we don’t see limits. We burst through the screens that are supposed to stop us, with nary a thought about it. We head out to our chosen destinations with excitement, exhilaration and a belief in all of the fun and adventures, that await us, in the big, outside world. I know that as Trip grows older and wiser and bigger, and we finally get around to fixing the screen so that it is more impenetrable, he will start accepting his limits. Trip will become a little more cautious about what awaits him outside, due to conditioning and his life’s experiences. Still, I hope that he always keeps a little bit of that puppy-like innocence and overreaching curiosity that gave him the impulse to create his own door out, in the first place. And I hope that when this temporary screen of fear and doom and unrest gets lifted for us, in this world, we can all burst through the doors, into the big, beautiful, outside world, with dreams and excitement and anticipation, that have been with all of us, all along, since the days that we were just little, innocent pups, ourselves.
“I have a pouch below my belly, whereas I had a thin waist before. Now there’s this situation down there, low and grabbable. If it had a zipper, you could store stuff in it, as in a fanny pack.” ~@ANNELAMOTT
It’s called Pandemic Pouch and it’s all the rage! – Cindy Nye (Twitter)
The above listed is my favorite quote for today – a hot, messy Monday in July. And Cindy Nye’s response gives a classic name to a phenomenon/”fashion trend” that many of us are sharing these days. I’m just relieved to not be alone in carrying around a Pandemic Pouch, day and night, day in and day out. My Pandemic Pouch seems to have an expansion feature and I am getting really good at vacillating between decorating it with belts, and then trying to camouflage it, underneath colorful, flow-y, blouse-y bohemian tops. It seems that my Pandemic Pouch holds more than I ever knew possible.
I was reading this charming collection over the weekend, from southern writers, and of course, William Faulkner is always mentioned as one of the most unequaled authors of this genre. Here are two of my favorite quotes attributed to Faulkner:
Speaking of the south, my regular readers know that I temporarily lost my mind and control of my impulses, by insisting that we get a third dog. I somehow thought that raising a pandemic puppy, would help to ease the stress of this bewildering, sad, confusing and unusual situation. How paradoxical of me! Nonetheless, I am totally and completely, captivated, smitten and fully in love with our little guy, aptly named Trip. I came up with the name “Trip” because Trip is our third dog and he is a southern breed of dog. Trip is a Boykin spaniel, which by the breed being originated there, is actually “the official dog of South Carolina.” South Carolinians take their Boykin dogs so seriously that they literally have a day devoted to Boykin spaniels, every year. Boykin Spaniel Day is right around the corner on September 1st. “Trip” is a nickname often given to the third of anything in the south. Having gone to college in Virginia, I became friends with more than one “Trip”, in my tenure there. I also like to joke that we named the puppy “Trip”, because he is our summer adventure, instead of taking an actual trip, during this coronavirus madness. As it turns out, like most names and words, there is another additional meaning to his name that fits him aptly. Trip has become my Velcro dog. As I write this, he is warming my feet. Trip follows me everywhere, including the bathroom, the garage, my closet, under the covers – basically, he follows me wherever I am trying to disappear to, for some rare and fleeting moments to myself, while we are all mostly at home, trying to avoid catching the virus. I trip on Trip almost every single day and more than once. I hope that this tripping over Trip does not land me in the hospital. That would defeat the purpose of this puppy adventure completely. Again, I marvel at the paradox.
I mentioned that we added a new fur member to the family a few weeks ago. Little Trip, the Boykin spaniel, has implanted himself into our hearts and into our pack. Still, adding a new member to the family pack is a process, and despite doing it many, many times over the years, adding kids and pets into the mix, every few years or so, I was a little out of practice and my dogs showed me that I needed to “get my alpha back.”
Most pet owners understand the theory, that as much as we try to turn our pets into people, by putting them in clothes and walking them around in strollers, reality is, animals are animals, dogs are dogs, and dogs feel most secure when their “pack” is lead by a strong, alpha pack leader, who keeps everyone in their place, with a kind, but firm countenance.
A good alpha isn’t a screamer and yeller. No, a good alpha leader is always in control of himself or herself and leads by example. A good, strong alpha can keep everyone in the pack, in line, with one firm stare. A good alpha is captain of a well run ship and always has that ship pointed in the right direction.
Josie, our collie, understood right away how to make it clear to Trip, the puppy, that she was an alpha over him. From the get go, she made the rules very clear, about what was going to fly and what wasn’t going to fly with her. Josie and Trip bonded almost immediately because Trip clearly understood where he stood (way below) with her. So, about a week into things, Josie and Trip were playing together, sleeping together and he would dutifully stand, for as long as Josie deemed necessary, for a good “lick down” when Josie felt that Trip needed a good cleaning – a tongue sponge bath, so to speak. Josie has become a good cross between Mary Poppins and Nurse Ratchet with Trip, and he respects her greatly. It is safe to say that they have a healthy bond.
Now, Ralph, our Labrador retriever and I, did not start out on the right foot with the puppy. We essentially let Trip walk all over us (as witnessed in the picture above). We did not set up our standards and our expectations, straight out from the beginning and we were allowing a tiny eight pound puppy, to be the alpha of us. Noticing that I was allowing a little puppy to call a lot of the shots, appeared to make Ralph, our Labrador retriever, feel somewhat insecure (some would say jealous, and that might have been part of it, but for a dog, with pack mentality, insecure is even a worse feeling than jealousy). If a twerp-y fur baby was ruling one of the main alphas of the pack, what did that mean for the welfare of our pack overall? Ralph’s patience was running very thin with the puppy, and one night, very uncharacteristic of Ralph, he let his evil dark twin make a rare showing, which quickly woke me up to the fact that if I wanted our pack to be a peaceful, happy family, I would have to get “my alpha” back into working order.
In the process of quickly re-establishing law and order in my household, it struck me how important it is for we women to remember that we must be the alphas of our own lives. A good alpha is calm, knows what she will accept and won’t accept, and has high standards for herself and for others, who want to be part of her life. Yesterday, I was watching a interesting Zoom call, which my husband’s company produced, discussing race relations. In the call, a very dynamic and impressive black woman, called white women out, challenging us to “use our power and our privilege” for good. Honestly, it felt good to be reminded that I am powerful. And that I can use the power that I have for good, in my family, in my community and in my country.
We can learn from every experience that we go through, if we open our eyes to the fact that we still have a lot to learn. My dogs have been my best teachers these last few weeks and I’m so grateful to them, once again. It feels good to feel my alpha rising in me again. She is strong and powerful and wise and kind, and she knows how to lead me through life, the best. We are all feeling more secure around here these days, most especially, me.
I’ve neglected to mention that we have added a new member to our immediate family. During these unusually tough times, we’ve enjoyed such comfort and distraction and amusement from our current fur babies, Ralph, our Labrador retriever, and Josie, our rough collie, that we decided we needed another fur friend, to make our family complete. Well, I should say, the kids and I, decided that getting a new puppy would be a wonderful, uplifting experience, while having to remain so “holed up.” My husband was a very reluctant member of the puppy band wagon. Nonetheless, knowing me and loving me for decades now, my husband knows that I love “a lot” of my favorite things. We have four kids, and we have always had a menagerie to go along with the quartet of kids. So with my husband’s grudging blessing, about two weeks ago, we brought “Trip” (as in “third dog”, or in the spirit of this year of the 2020 quarantine, “instead of a . . .”) into our home and into our hearts. Trip lives up to his name. This little Boykin spaniel is quite the Trip! And as what always happens, with all of our dogs, Trip is quite besotted with my husband, which is something that Trip and I totally share.
