Garden Tours, Puppies and Exercise

Every so often I get on a kick where I think adopting another dog will solve all my problems which, at the moment, are: 1) Widow related loneliness, 2) Boredom, and 3) The guilt of leaving Levi home alone while I go out searching for a cure to resolve problems number one and two. I debate in my head the pros and cons of becoming a mother to two canines and sometimes I even express this desire to other dog lovers in the family. Today I got a call from a niece-in-law who knows someone who is trying to find a home for a seven month old puppy. Just like that my day-dreaming became a pee-or-get-off-the-pot decision. The age, size and price of the dog was good. However, Bichons are not one of my favorite’s breeds---too much brushing---and I’m not fond of white dogs---too many baths required to keep them that way---but he’s house broke and even rings a bell when he wants in and out. How cute is that? I tried to teach Levi that trick but he prefers to save his bodily functions for when I decide he should pee and poop. He’s such a schmuck. A sweet schmuck, but a schmuck just the same.

Faced with the-should-I-or-shouldn’t-I-adopt dilemma, off I went to Google, trying to find out more about Bichons and the availability of rescue dogs in the area that might be more to my liking. I found out that the breed is susceptible to having skin issues if not properly brushed on a regular basis. Oh, great! Don’t I have enough issues with itchy skin and hives on my own body without having to worry about a poor dog going through the same thing? I knew there was a reason I wasn’t fond of Bichons. Poodles and Schnauzers---they suit my needs best---are few and far between on the local rescue sites and if I was really serious, I’d have to register and put in “an order” of sorts, then wait. It occurred to me that if I did that, Levi would disappear from his dog pen with its white picket fence and his photo would show up in my in box with the caption: “A sweet dog ready to adopt and for a mire $200 he can be yours.” Somewhere along the line it also occurred to me that searching rescue dog sites was a lot like looking at online dating sites for seniors. High maintenance dogs, too old dogs, dogs with attitude and dogs with questionable histories and hidden issues. Needy dogs and dogs that would run away the first time they saw me naked.

The decision still not made, I got up at the crack of dawn to go on a garden tour sponsored by the senior hall. Something didn’t look right when I pulled up to the place…not many cars parked in the lot and there was no name tag table in the lobby. Something was wrong. Turns out I was waiting for a bus that left “the station” the day before. I’d written the event down on the wrong page of my day planner. The director said at least I handled the disappointment well, another woman who had come to the center a day early for the garden tour got very rude and argumentative over her mistake. The director gave me a slide show of the photos she took and it looks like I missed a great tour of garden art, water features and Master Gardener landscape designs, plants and flowers. Boohoo, I missed the bus. In my next life I want to be Weird Al Yankovic so I can write songs about my first world problems and make a lot of money.

As long as I was at the center I decided to stick around and take a Balance class. For a long time, now, I’ve been thinking I should take advantage of one or more of the seven exercise classes they offer every week.---Zumba, Stretch and Flex, Yoga and Pilates, Arthritis, Balance, and Line Dancing.  No sign-ups, no long-term commitments or high costs. You drop in when you can and pay $1 to $3 a session at the door. It surprised me how hard the Balance class was for me---I’m so out of shape! I left vowing I will show up when I have nothing else going on. So missing the garden tour turned out to be a good thing because who knows how it would have been before I would have dropped into a class. Sometimes impromptu and spur-of-the-moment decisions turn out the best. Deciding on a adopting a second dog into the family, however, is not one of those times. I turned the Bichon puppy down with a few second thoughts. Levi is still the only one keeping the house safe from rabbit and robin attacks and I am still feeling guilty that he doesn’t have a brother or a sister to help him with that awesome responsibility. ©

P.S. If you leave a comment will you let me know if you can see the Feedjit at the bottom of the right hand column? I can't see it or those on other people's blogs and I'm trying to figure out if the problem is with my computer or Feedjit. 

Service People and Bad Movies

 

It seems like all I’ve done lately is wait for service people. Twice this month I waited for the cable company, once to fix a digital box they installed wrong and two days later to install two more boxes….couldn’t do it all on one trip, oh no. That would take organization and proficiency in their scheduling department. Another day I waited all morning for a cement contractor to show up to power lift a couple of slabs in my driveway that were undermined by a misdirected downspout pouring rain water along the side of the driveway. Mission accomplished and the hollowed-out area under the slabs is now filled with cement. Then I waited for my house cleaner who, as it turns out, got booked for 2:30 instead of our standing appointment of 12:30. Someone screwed up and they didn’t tell me about the change. Then when she didn’t show up at 2:30 I got a call from the cleaning company wanting to reschedule to another day! It’s frustrating when the world of service makes me wait. Don’t they know I’m old and don’t have time to waste?

Then there are the contractors who show up on prearranged days but they don’t need to come in the house. The lawn care guy. The fertilizer guy. And the mole exterminator who uses an environmentally friendly method to kill the evil rodents that are hell-bent on turning my yard into a perfect movie set for a remake of Caddyshack. What is the environmentally friendly way to kill a living creature? I’m afraid to ask. I think he sits out there and tries to talk them into committing suicide. But I wouldn’t care if the guy took a shotgun to my yard and pumped the ground full of bullet holes if the moles would just go away. By the way I hated that movie---not my kind of humor---but Chevy Chase did have one memorable line: “Don't be obsessed with your desires Danny. The Zen philosopher, Basho, once wrote, 'A flute with no holes, is not a flute. A donut with no hole, is a Danish.' He was a funny guy.” There really was an influential Japanese poet who lived and studied Zen back in the 1600s named Matsuo Basho. However, I seriously doubt this guy who wondered around observing nature wrote about Danish and donuts but if that movie line inspired even a tiny fraction of Caddyshack fans to google ‘Basho’ that would give the film a redeeming quality. You never know when it will come in handy to know which poet of centuries past first perfected the art of haiku writing.

Friday my Movie and Lunch Club saw Tammy with Melissa McCarthy and Susan Sarandon starring as granddaughter and grandmother on a crazy road trip that involves a robbery and Sarandon hooking up with guy that leaves Melissa sleeping on the sidewalk outside their motel room. McCarthy and her husband wrote the movie script and, of course, it fit her style of comedic acting but I couldn’t find one memorable line in the whole film and I always try to do that when I see a movie or read a book. The casting, too, made it hard for me to suspend my disbelief. Sixty-eight year old Sarandon being a grandmother to forty-four year old McCarthy while technically possible visually it didn’t work for me. There were other casting choices that also had me scratching my head. But lunch after was great. We always go to different restaurants around town and going places we wouldn’t go alone is a nice treat for a pack of widows like we are.

I feel so spoiled sometimes, living here in the United States where the worst issues I have at the moment are a cleaning woman who doesn’t jump and ask “how high?” when I speak and so-so movies. I’m a news junkie and lately that’s been making me feel obscenely lucky to be living in a safe place where commercial airplanes aren’t getting shot out of the sky and tunnels aren’t being dug underground to bring weapons and war to my doorstep. No, I get to sit here writing about a Haiku writer, service people and bad movies while I wonder why I won the born-in-America lotto. The accident of our birth country has everything to do with everything that happens after…the hardships or opportunities and the peace, war or famine around us. I went to a baby shower yesterday and was thinking about that and about the pleasure of being able to carry on family traditions. Does that get to happen in war torn countries? My niece has a rocking horse that I painted for her son 28 years ago that she is passing on to her first grandchild and I had a set of blocks that her father and I played with as children that I divided up and I gave some to my two nieces (both first time grandmothers). Bridging the generations is still a strong value in this country and one we are so blessed to be able to carry forward. ©

 

This is the set of blocks I saved for myself. For now. 

A Day to Laugh and Day-Dream

 

It’s only Tuesday and already I’ve found something to get excited about this week. And it’s about time. I’ve been off my stride since the long 4^th of July weekend which seemed to drag into a two week ordeal, making the first half of the month feel like a wash with only one or two exceptional days thrown it. Today I attended a potluck at the senior hall. We have two potlucks a year because we can’t get food for our monthly luncheons through the school system’s food service in the summer like we usually do the rest of the year. One hundred and ten of us each bringing a dish to pass. Can you visualize the food tables? It was something to see and I’m always surprised at how the number of desserts and salads always even out at potlucks. The meat, rolls and drinks were provided for a measly $1.00 each donation.

The entertainment after the potluck was a group of twelve elderly people including an Irish Catholic priest with a brogue I could have listened to all day long. Too bad he is married (in the mystical sense) to the church or I would have tried flirting with him afterwards just to hear him talk. The group did short skits based on the old time radio format---Joe Friday from Dragnet and Fibber McGee and Molly style---and when they weren’t acting they were talking in rhyme. I didn’t catch their group’s name but it was something like The Rhyme and Acting Club. Everything they did had us laughing but the only story I remember, now, was performed by a gal pretending to be a reporter interviewing a wealthy woman with three died husbands and a forth one still living. The first husband, the three-time widow said, was a banker. The second one was a ring leader at a circus, the third husband was a preacher and the forth one an undertaker. The punchline, if you haven’t figured it out by now, was that she had married the first guy for the money, the second man for the show, the third guy to get readying and the forth one to go. Hey, in a senior crowd it got a big laugh.

The most exciting tidbit I picked up, though, was about the parent program to their group. It seems a small local college here in town---we have thirteen---has a program of non-credit classes for people over 50 who want to keep learning and enriching our lives through cultural experiences. No tests or text books required and the courses are taught by their fully accredited professors. The best part is they’ve got art classes! I went to this college for a couple of semester’s decades ago and their Catholic campus hasn’t changed much since those days. The nuns and priests still dress in old order clothing and judging by the priest I saw today they still enjoy good, hardy laughter.

So what does this agnostic/Humanist think she will do come fall? Will I fit in and find classes I want to take? Yes and yes. I’m hoping to sign up for World Music Appreciation and Drawing if the schedule fits into my life. If not, they offer thirty classes in each of six sessions a year, I’m sure to find something I like. They have classes in Philosophy, Exploring Film, Brain Phenomena, Lewis and Clark, one called ‘The Best Advice I Ever Got’ that all look interesting. Plus the curriculum changes from one session to another.

If you’re a long time reader at my blog, I know what you’re thinking: I didn’t like the art classes I took earlier this summer because the instructor was heavy-handed with religion but those classes were one-on-one which made it hard to just blend into the background when you don’t agree with something but don’t want to offend anyone by speaking up. I also get along great with Catholics. My best friend growing up was Catholic. The entire paternal side of my family are Catholics. I can talk Catholic dogma with the best of them. I just won’t be able to wear my Red Hat Society clothing on campus but I don't wear it anywhere else but with the group anyway.

Speaking about the Red Hatters, tomorrow we have a tea. Thursday my cleaning girl comes, Friday is Movie and Lunch Club and Saturday I trek south to attend a baby shower for the daughter-in-law of one of my two favorite nieces. Finally, my family is growing and so is my ability to day-dream again. ©