Weaning off an addiction . . . or NOT!

When my beagle Smokey died of incredibly old age (19 years old - no kidding), I consoled myself with memories and photos of a life not only well-lived but seized with incredibly white teeth. Even in his last days, his teeth could have been the models for toothpaste ads.

Not only was my consolation looking at pictures and rifling through memories, but we also have another wonderful, beautiful canine baby - a girl named Gypsy.

She was adopted into the family when Smokey was already an old man in dog years. He was not amused. Gypsy wanted to play and play and play some more. Smokey wanted to sit and enjoy semi-retirement and watch reruns of Lassie on TV.

Gypsy came with a mentality that fast wasn't fast enough and that there was most certainly an extra gear to kick in when you even passed by a tennis ball in the yard. Smokey would get to a saturation point in dealing with the young upstart and reign fur, teeth and terror all over her until Gypsy was cowed into submission and would leave him alone to rest in the sun.

But when Smokey died, it was obvious that a loving canine friendship was there. After the funeral for Smokey up at my Aunt's farm, I came home and cried out my tears into Gypsy's fur.

She understood. She had her own tears.

Her beloved big brother had gone on to that vast ball field in the sky and left her behind. Gypsy moped for days and would go in and look at the corner where his little bed carpet had been and come and look at me with sad little eyes. From that moment, I vowed with every fiber of my being to never again have more than one dog at a time.

Then, I saw the pictures on the Pioneer Woman's website of her 'traitor' dog, Susie. She calls her a traitor because she has taken up residence with her father-in-law, who spoils her rotten.

As a side note, Rick calls Gypsy a 'traitor to the cause' because HE is the one who brought her home with the full expectation in mind that she was supposed to be 'his dog'. But all dogs love me for some unknown reason. Even BAD dogs love me. I haven't done anything particular to merit this unbridled affection. It is what it is, as Nick Saban says.

Ree's traitor Susie has a fetching smile, a gentle grace that belies the powerful energy-filled romp that is barely concealed beneath the surface and a look in her eyes that says 'let's play!'
Susie is a Jack Russell.

I am smitten.

Although I still love beagles as my dog of choice, I must say the addiction to canines is branching out some. Maybe this is what they mean by 'gateway' dogs, uh, drugs?

One breed leads to another, to another, to another, to another . . . you see my dilemma?

Though we have busy lives, I can almost justify adding another furbag to the household. I can hear me calling the dogs for mealtime, throwing the ball in the yard and alternating who gets to go on walks with Momma. I know jealousy can result in some instances, but this household don't play those kind of games. You learn to wait your turn or sit in your kennel alone.

Oh the joy of smelling the freshly washed fur! The gleaming teeth tucked carefully around a newly minted tennis ball! The paw prints in the garden path!

But I don't need another dog. The Assassin keeps me busy. She is all I need. She is all I can handle. She is enough.

I wonder what time the pound opens? Surely it can't hurt to just look . . .

The Power of the Penny

When I was just a child, our town was like most small towns across America. There were little penny gumball machines all over the place. For one penny, your taste buds could enjoy a refreshing gumball in some shade of red or green, yellow or blue or even a bright white gumball.

Now, the idea that a penny is worth something has faded like paint on a weathered barn.

But, the truth is that a penny has power.

Also during my youth, our church hosted a yearly penny drive to help the Primary Children's Hospital. We were encouraged to donate as many pennies as we were old or in later years, a penny for how many inches tall we were.

Imagine in this day and age of people actually throwing pennies on the ground if we could gather them all up and use those once important coins for an all new important project.

It's time to renew the penny drive for our charitable needs in this nation. We seldom think about the pennies in our desk drawer or those in the banks and water bottles in the corner of the bedroom.

What could be done if a community combined their pennies to help the hospital or the rescue squad or the food pantry?

How about if we used it to aid the Red Cross or the local homeless shelter or the Police or Sheriff's Department to buy equipment? Even the smallest child could thrust out their chest and proudly say "I helped them with my pennies!"

What good can we do with a penny?

Hospitals treat people who have NO way to pay through no fault of their own. Penny drives could help pick up at least some of the slack. And for those with deeper pockets - nickles, dimes and whole dollars would also be gratefully accepted.

Volunteer Fire Departments in rural areas try to help with what equipment they can buy over time. Could our pennies help them get something that could save a life? Maybe even save a family?

How about a penny drive to help the local school add to its library?

Or a penny drive to support the high school band?

What can YOU do with your penny?

Time and Tides

We go through our lives in specific times and the shifts that accompany those particular times. There is a time to be a toddler, but it never comes again.

We have a time to be a teen, both knowing everything and knowing nothing and terrified that someone will find our private truth out and expose us for the frauds and failures we believe we are.

We are college students seeking to find our academic path or young workers hoping to even see the ladder to a future upon which we can grasp even the lowest rung.

We are young marrieds trying to carve out a life of two turned into one. Some successes come and some not so successful moments. We learn by doing.

We are single and trying to navigate the coupled world that we can see but not be party to or participate in.

We are growing older and adding children to our lives and see them come of age and go out into the world to find their own way in the world. Or we sit at home with the child who will never grow old enough to be capable of making choices of any kind.

The moon exerts a pull on the oceans from a distance just as parental influence exerts a pull on a child for better or worse. Some of who we become has more to do with what we are avoiding becoming as it does with what we deliberately run toward in our pursuit of personal perfection in our own eyes.

When I look back over various times in my life through the pages of the journal I have kept since my youth, I feel all of the same emotions that were poured on the pages in ink and feeling.

But now, as I read them, I feel sometimes that I'd love to go back and erase the words and find something else in their place. It can't be done. Over time I have come to understand that the time and tides that go through us in our lives are just the markers of who we are and who we have become. We can't deny the understanding that we gain through mistakes we make, nor can we diminish the successes that keep us floating along on the tides when we might instead have been swamped by those same tides if our choices were different.

Something to think upon while looking upon the powerful moon as it draws the waters along from the shore to the sea in the time of tides for the earth.