What I know for sure

I know that I have a cold.  My clients seem to like it though, probably because of the sultry voice and the tendency to listen more than I talk. 

I know that I have only 9 days left to: buy presents, wrap, bake cookies, finish decorating and find holiday spirit.  Looks like it is time to reset expectations, narrow my scope and start delegating to the elves.

I know that I feel amazingly abundant (in between wheezing and coughing).  Chris is back safely in the States, Don is gainfully employed and liking it, our four-month-old Lab is housebroken, and our finances are running opposite to the national economy.

I know that I am in for a long ride on the menopausal roller coaster.  But I have found a silver lining to the extended mental vacation and wacky metabolism:  I can’t remember anything long enough to worry about it and I can eat all the Christmas cookies I want and still be ten pounds underweight. 

I know that the next time I go to the gym I am likely to need a paramedic to get me out again. 

I know that, if I die tomorrow (not, mind you, that I have any goals set around that), people will attend my funeral.  This was not necessarily the case 10 years ago, so I guess I’m on the right track.  Now to fill a stadium…

 

Teaching old dogs…

To dispel an old myth, you can teach an old dog new tricks.  In preparation for the arrival of our seventh guide dog puppy, Jessie, last week, we taught our almost six-year-old Lab how to not destroy soft chew toys.  Given that he could previously destroy reinforced leg bones from large cows (dead cows, by the way), this impresses even us.  He now struts around happily content to squeak rather than shred, proud of his accomplishment and reluctant to subject his resurrected puppy toys to the new recruit. 

This got me to thinking.  I am well on my way to becoming an old dog, certainly older than Cassius in dog years.  What kind of new tricks do I deserve to learn?  Things I’ve previously thought I was incapable of handing without destroying them or myself.  Rollerblading perhaps or even rock climbing.  Making a killer Cream Brulee.  Building a BIG business.  Writing a best seller.

But something is missing from each of these new tricks.  Or maybe something is there that shouldn’t be.  Each feels like a trick I should learn, rather than one I want to learn.  In accomplishing each one (except perhaps the cream Brulee), I don’t think I would be strutting around the house making contented squeaky noises.  A little chest pounding maybe, but no contented squeaky noises.

So perhaps the new trick is to stop putting the shoulds on list at all!  Eleven-week-old Jessie is the master of new tricks and a great role model for me.  Every waking moment is a search for the next contented squeak and shoulds are avoided whenever possible.  It seems the secret for teaching old dogs new tricks is to act like a young dog!

Jessie the Guide Dog Puppy

 

Let freedom ring!

What a perfect place to be for the July 4th holiday: a military base!  I am spending most of the week with my son, Chris, at Fort Campbell.  I’m even living in the barracks, the lone female surrounded by hundreds of high-testosterone males with shoulders three miles wide.  Home of the Night Stalkers: Army Airborne special ops dudes who can kill you with one hand and rescue you from cetain death with the other.  

Moms are highly revered here.  Probably due the general lack of them and their domestic capabilities.  While Chris was at work today, I created a five-pound batch of his favorite snack: Mexican Meat Dip.  It was a fun challenge to take a pot, dull knife, and wooden spoon and create cuisine that had heads popping out of doors all afternoon.  I kept expecting a chow line to form outside the door any minute.  How would I turn away a hundred hungry Night Stalkers?  Fortunately the smell permeated the entire floor so no one could tell exactly which room it emminated from, so Chris’ Meat Dip is safe.

Most of the 101st Airborne that makes up this base is currently deployed in Iraq, making it almost a militay ghost town.  It is very sobering to realize that the young men here (apparently women are not Night Stalker material) represent only a small portion of the even-younger ones that are fighting, literally, for freedom of the oppressed.   Chris can’t tell stories of his time in Iraq this year (that’s the special part of Special Operations) but the memorials sprinkled around the base tell the story anyway.  These boys die supporting the freedom that allows me to sit here clacking away and sniffing Meat Dip. 

But I conveniently forget that most of the time.  It is uncomfortable to think about it too much, especially when one of those young men could be mine.  But here it is impossible to not think about it.  “Here today, gone tomorrow” takes on a whole new meaning.  It makes me want to throw open the door and hand out bowls of Meat Dip to one and all.  But the thought of one very large, very handsome, very disappointed Night Stalker keeps me here with you instead, guarding the Meat Dip.  It’s the thought that counts, I hope.  I don’t think I’ll be able to conveniently not think about it any more.

 

Incarcerated puppies prepare for their escape!

Yesterday, at an undisclosed location within the Carswell Federal Prison, four adolescent Labs met to discuss their impending escape.  After 12 months of incarceration in the minimum security Camp, the regimine of sit, stay, down and come was wearing on their nerves, like Chinese water torture.  Honor, Brooks, Challenger and Walker were ready for bigger and better things, ready to pack their biscuits and blow this joint.  Their plan: slip out in the dark of night, blending in with the shadows and sneaking past the guards; then hijack one of the nearby Navy planes and fly to their destination: Southeastern Guide Dogs in Palmetto Florida.

Their plan had several flaws.  First, their inmate raisers were dedicated and had lots of practice at intercepting any puppy high jinks.  Second, the guards had guns and weren’t afraid to use them; escaping prisoners, even guide dog puppies, look bad on a resume.  And finally, their guide dog puppy training had not included flying lessons.

But fortunately, their program director, Teresa Pool, had been alert for the signs of spring break fever, and plans were already in the works for these pups to head to college.  They all board an American flight in late July, biscuits packed in their carry on’s (to avoid the new checked baggage charge), ready to strut their stuff.  At close to 90 pounds each, they truly will be Big Men on Campus! 

So the crew is spending their last month honing their obedience skills and slimming down, get in top shape for their Carswell graduation and their guide dog boot camp.  It may seem like being incarcerated all over again, but in six months, they will ready for their next great adventure: going out into the world leading the blind. 

See where they started!  Guide dog puppies arrive at prison 
For more pictures, click on the Pups in Prison link on the right
Check out Southeastern Guide Dogs, their college destination!

Delightful Detox update – Day 5: Tell me again why I decided to do this?  Just for the record, I am not looking forward to Lemonade Day tomorrow.  You should should all stay away…stay far away.

 

Rhubarb Pie

I love rhubarb pie.  Strawberry rhubarb pie to be exact.  I learned that this is a northern preference shortly after my move to Texas when half the staff at the grocery didn’t know what a “rahuubarb” was.  Some transplant foodie came up with the idea of sending frozen strawberry rhubarb pies down south but it just ain’t the same.  So I come to Indiana each Spring to get my fix.  My sister, Lynn, makes it for me and guards it from the rest of the family so I can half at least half all to myself.  She loves me!  Lynn makes the best strawberry rhubarb pie, hands down.  I would enter one in the state fair for her but it would never even make it out to the car.

In our family, we show love with food.  We are better with pie and homemade noodles than words and shows of affection.  I used to resent this until I realized that I do the same thing.  Why else would anyone spend 10 hours cooking a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner just to have it eaten in about 20 minutes?  Once I shipped my son’t favorite Mexican dip to his Army base.  Once you added up the cost of the cooler, dry ice, and overnight shipping, that box of Mexican dip came to about $30 a pound.   A nice Outback gift card would have been both cheaper and easier but where’s the love in that?

I realize now that we all show love in different ways.  I want to be more conscious of how others hand out their version of rhubarb-pie-love and not have a judgmental expectation that everyone express it the way I do.  I don’t want to miss out on any love coming my way that I fail to recognize.  There is also something here about showing love the way others need to see it.  How do I keep my loving intention from getting lost in a food fest when they really just need a big hug?  Perhaps I should have another piece of pie and think about that some more.