Sidetracked Charley

Mardi and Magique striking a pose The differences in their ages never seemed that large. Magique was a very smart puppy and Mariah was alive then. She had trained Mardi with my help and the two of them trained Magique. I trained both to be photographer dogs. The obeyed off leash and never chased the subject of a photo. We went everywhere together until age began to take a toll on Mardi Gras. She was fifteen when she decided she would not jump in the pickup. Nor would she be assisted. I was ready with a whole host of solutions like ramps. In the end I had to take the Corolla if we wanted Mardi to go. Sad for a dog which had more Rubicon off road miles then some humans. Mardi Gras When she turned 15 and the joint outings became more difficult. She would get lost and disoriented. Magique virtually trained herself to find and retrieve her older buddy. I didn't realize how good Magique had gotten at that until on a neighborhood walk Mardi vanished and when I asked Magique t...

"Oh would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us."  Robert Burns. At a period in my life I underwent counseling for one problem and came up with a host of others my counselor thought I should work on. Actually it came down to really only one problem which all my other problems seemed to hang on. It was just a shock it was the one I was most in denial about. Perfectionism. My father was the perfectionist. Not me. My problem was I was not good enough. Never good enough. Not tall enough, not thin enough, not smart enough . . . the list could go on forever. In fact it did. I had to make a list. It is somewhere in one of my many journals I kept religiously before the days of blogs. I was pretty good at that. But perhaps not good enough because I never filled one up to the very last page. And I skipped whole blocks of time. Making the list of my not good enough's was just one exercise. Another was to do something I was horrid at and rate...

As a photographer I can be attracted to the light through a window bouncing off a glass on a silver plate and spend several frames recording it only to get home and discover the glass was dirty or there was a fly on the plate, etc. In digital photography there is always something you can do to remedy most flaws but life isn't like that. A Canadian friend posted a photograph of what she could purchase for the $21 Canadian per week for groceries. The photo was still in my mind when I went grocery shopping yesterday.  Forget that where my friend and I live in the rural parts of our countries that going to get the $21 of groceries probably takes that much is gas or petrol. The closest store to my abode charges such high prices I would not even be able to get half of what was in her photo. So it is over the mountain, 50 miles round trip, to shop. I used to go weekly but being able to buy dry and canned goods from Amazon Prime has cut that to about once a mouth for fresh goods wh...

I am an introvert. I generally hang back like the does in a herd of deer. I survey the territory and gather information. My father, the pilot, often did the same. But he was able to access all possible outcomes in split seconds. Then again it took him almost a year of research to buy the perfect home stereo systems (components). We were not the first in our neighborhood to have a color TV but we had the best. Eventually. I like to think, from time to time, of how much fun he would have in this technological age. I wish I could channel him. He was an introvert too. And one who could pretend to be an extrovert. I copied that. He was the one who told me social events were like acting. But more exhausting I think because there is no script and no applause at the end to refresh your energy. That exhaustion was one of the reasons I gave up art fairs. I tell myself it was the heavy lifting. The put up and take down. But putting up was always fun. Taking down a contest to see how quick...

I took some time off from this blog. I took some time off from several "obligations" in an effort to get a handle on my blood pressure. December 23rd was a surprise for me. I awoke knowing I did not feel well, but typical for me not in the way most people with a high BP feel bad. No headache. Just didn't feel right in my head. It was in the midst of a tourist event. Calling 911 revealed it would be a while before emergency services could get to me. So I said I would drive to the local clinic. I promised the dispatcher I would pull over and call again if I felt even a bit dizzy. Oddly I didn't. Fourteen years before almost to the day (Christmas eve) I had suffered a closed brain trauma and some of the residual effects include a bit of dizziness or unbalance from time to time. This did feel a bit like it felt 48 hours after my ski accident. No double vision but disoriented. Fuzzy brained. Scared me. The local clinic was on short staff. It was a couple days befor...

Walking the high bridge Time Magazine in the mid 1980's had a lead article on stress and consequences of it. Some research facility had assigned points to various events in life; so many points for losing a job, moving, getting a divorce, etc.  Those were the big ones.  At the time the list appeared I had been moved by the company I was working for, was going through filing for divorce from an alcoholic husband, visiting a dying parent in a hospital, while temporarily living with my mother facing the eminent death of her husband. The last was not on the list but should have been. Oh, and I was less than a year clean and sober and had a sponsor who said I should not be doing any of those things. If you tallied up just those life events on the list I should have checked myself into a mental institution. Or committed suicide. But I come from a long line of troupers. We keep on keeping on. And are the perfect model of decorum while doing it. There was a t-shirt I saw duri...

I am tired of being adult.  A combination of things has conspired to make me have to be on my best of behaviors entirely too long. I have had to act proper in public, be nice on the internet, bite my tongue too often, stay within my budget, make all appointments, keep the house presentable, and eat all the right things which means cook. I told my sister just last night I wish my community had just one drive through restaurant. Just one so I could drive through and order all the things I know I cannot eat while honking at people for being too slow in front of me and playing very loud music with the windows rolled down. I cannot afford the speeding ticket but I would love to race from one end of the town to the other (a whole mile) and flip the finger at any slowpokes who got in my way. While out on the distant plains with a long standing friend we both broke down in hysterical giggles. She had been adult for too long too. Fortunately there was nobody around unless a ...