Whoever Said You Can't Buy Happiness Forgot Little Puppies

Let me introduce Trio. This is Miley's new puppy. Cute ha? We had been working together on a Great Gatsby project for her upcoming school year. We both thought Gatsby would have been a great name, but Mothers always win and Trio it is. Still a great name.

I saw Truman Capote in an interview once. He was asked to explain Zen. He pointed to his puppy sitting on the floor thumping his tail, and said "I think that about sums it up."

Just as Meadow guided her from childhood to now. I'm sure Trio will guide her from now to adulthood. Gilda Radner one said "I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the roll model for being alive. The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too." Puppies can make falling in love so easy.

It's like I used to say:

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.

For the Bitter Ones on a Saturday Night

We all know it.

A Pressing Issue

The New York trip is now only a matter of days away. The obsessive compulsiveness has fully set in. I think I've tried to find my passport 5 times now, let alone all the paperwork for the Yankee's, the cruise, Tavern on the Green, etc. It's the most unsettling state of flux.

After talking to the concierge on the phone yesterday, I suddenly realized they didn't have irons in the hotel rooms. I'm so used to business travel, I just always expect it now.

I was not one born into ironing. As Erma Bombeck once said, "My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk until I faint."

When I was in my early 20's, I wore the same thing all the time. Hanes "Beefy T" t-shirts, just plain white. The closet was lined with them, like stormtroopers waiting for their chance at the action. The other closet was full of identical Capilano Ponies baseball jackets. Once I got my buddy Frosty with the old shaving cream in the hand ploy. That's what you get for passing out on my couch. In revenge he filled the pockets of my baseball jacket with shaving cream. I noticed it before I put it on, and he broke out in laughter as if he had pulled off one of the greatest capers of all time. I horse whipped him with the jacket a few times, again covering him with shaving cream, before calmly walking into my room and casually grabbing a new jacket off the hanger Mr. Rogers like and walking out the door, telling Frosty to clean up the mess as I left.

By the time I was 24, I had still never ironed in my life. We were having a very important business dinner at work, Darryl, my boss at the time told me my faded blues would not do. I asked a few of the boys over from work for a couple of bevies before the dinner. As Peter got there, he could here my frustration as I operated an iron for the first time. It was one of my grandmothers old ones, and I am certain it is now housed at the Smithsonian. Peter asked me what the matter was. I informed him I could not get this one damn wrinkle out of my pants. He politely informed me it was a "pleat", and my ironing life changed forever.

I now iron all the time. I insist that my collars are sharp enough to open envelopes. I do rely on my dry cleaner a fair bit, but I do know now how to work my iron like a fighter jet.

My heart sunk when I learned there would not be an iron in the room. Of course at this point I always come up with some elaborate plan. I figured I could make my dry cleaner a prisoner of need. But then with my luck, as I closed the lid of my suitcase on him he would mutter something about the Geneva Convention and being a personal friend of Bono's. So I knew I was on my own. A travel iron....a travel iron is what I need.

So this morning I spent the better part of an hour at London Drugs staring at this aisle of irons. Irons and steamers...travel steamers. The worst thing that can happen to me is options. Iron, steamer, iron, steamer.

I left empty handed of course. Any advice would be appreciated.

Without a Song or Dance What are We?

The rains have started, and although it is warm, surely the tide of the season has turned and soon my golden skin will start to pale. The summer has gone by so incredibly fast, like the soft summer breeze it brings, it briefly embraces us before letting go so cruely soon.

There is a lot of change coming this fall, more than the colour of the leaves or the mercury in the thermometer. I have a lot of choices to make, and one of my environments, my "extended" living room is on a death watch. I tend to cocoon over the darker months and prepare to resurface in the spring. There are many good-byes to be made. The spring will be fresh and new as it is always intended to be.

Save for a few autumn drives to see natures rich palate, the road trips are done. I saw a place in a magazine last year that had the most wonderful colors I had ever seen. It's a small town called Silverton, and I fully intend to soak in it's splendors when I make my drive to Banff in October.

Look at me get off the subject. It's my friend Shera's birthday today. The big 25. Shera and I have always had a music connection, be it the sadness of Patsy Cline, or the joy of The Drifters. We've always intended the musical road trip, but the bonds of time and schedules have ensured it to be a non-event. Still I drive on. I have a penchant for dragging out my best of ABBA CD on the fall roadtrips. You just can't help but sing until your lungs hurt as you wind those country roads like a ribbon through dark soft hair. This song has always made me think of Shera, so it's dedicated to you on your 25th birthday.

Have a great day!!

Smoking Cigarettes and Watching Captain Kangaroo

So the missing blog appeared all on it's own 5 days later. Who knows. They were changing the dashboard and what not so maybe it got lost in the shuffle.

There is something about this song that always reminds me of my buddy Dan. It's probably the comments he makes on my blog in the middle of the night, and the various libations he keeps around his computer.

10 Christmas sleeps until New York. I have to zip to Kelowna, but I will try to do some writing when I can.

Cathy's Clown

I will try to finish Northern Exposure part 2 tomorrow. It's been a musical weekend. First, on Friday night I hooked up with an old high school friend of mine and we did the old school American Graffiti tour through town until we reached Spanish Banks. Sirius helped out once again with the Golden Oldies station as we and other people boogied down to Wilson Picketts "Land of a 1000 Dances" before the parks board politely asked us to leave. Then yesterday I went on an itunes purchasing spree to mix some CD's for Miley for her birthday.

I can't remember the last time I sat in my rooms for hours "spinning discs" as I spun in my office chair singing away. Followed up with a drive out to Race Rocks at sunrise this morning to "proof" the discs.

Great time!!

And the Gulls Cried.....

I was finally able to return to the beach yesterday, we needed the rain so I don't mind the delay. It was a deceptive day. The temperature readout in the car read 20C as I pulled into my spot. The muffled gasp I let out as I gazed my lobster skin in the mirror this morning would indicate it was a little hotter than that.

As I mentioned before I am attempting to tackle John Irving's War and Peace of a book "Until I Find You", but my absence from the beach means I have been plying it's pages like a Great Lakes freighter in a winter storm.

The Gulls are always central figures at Dundarave. I think there is something they like about the incoming breeze that allows them to do their wind dance in neutral flight. They can literally float kite like for minutes at a time. A lot of people harbour disregard to Gulls, as if they are some type of flying sea rat or something, whereas I have always had a connection.

Back when I was a pup, say grade 4, they used to have an annual book sale at school that Scholastic would set up. You would form a queue outside of the classroom, and they would have the desks arranged boardroom style and stacked with different books that you could purchase. Everything from the Encyclopedia Brown series, to the girls standard issue Judy Blume. (I can't tell you how much I harassed my sister with Judy Blume, she couldn't even go to the bathroom without me yelling "I must, I must, I must increase my bust".) It was almost a velvet rope situation. You couldn't jump ahead of the line to get to the books you wanted, you had to view all of the books. A few classes had already gone before us, so you could tell by the height of the stacks which books were moving and which weren't.

I was stuck in the line for sometime as the girls quarrelled over the Blume books. I was stuck in front of the biggest stack. Untouched by anyone I assumed. I picked up a copy and flipped its pages to pass the time. It was called "When the Whale Came to My Town" by Jim Young. It was a small book, maybe 30 pages or so, with old black and white photos almost with an oily appearance. I was into marine "stuff" at the time, so I gave it a closer look. He had read Farley Mowat's "A Whale For the Killing" and was inspired to write his own experience of a whale washing itself up on the beach of the small former whaling town in which he lived when he was a boy. It had a small foreword by Mowat. I had just finished reading his "Owls in the Family", so I figured if I was the only one to buy this, so be it. It also let me bypass the rest of the line to go make my purchase. (We were allowed to go straight to the playground once we were done, this has been a recurring theme throughout my life.)

I read the book twice before I got home. I had never read of the violence that humans could have toward animals before, I was quite shocked. But the thing that really grabbed me, the thing that has always stuck with me, what I got out of my 99 cent book that nobody wanted was this. Jim described repeatedly in the book that when the towns people went to kill the whale, which they did many times before changing their minds, the Gulls would all circle above and let out their cry "wait wait wait." Over and over again, the tough whaler would come down with his shotgun to "finish the job" and get lost in the intelligence in the Whales eyes. Just then the Gulls would cry "wait wait wait." He would turn and return home.

To this day, that is all I hear when the Gulls are around me. It's as if they call out to me, and I always turn my head as I leave the beach, or Lonsdale Quay or the like, because I think the Gulls are telling me I'm going to miss something.

So the next time you encounter the "Sea Rats", listen to them..."wait wait wait."

And yes, the whale died. Alone, in the middle of the night on the beach after lying there for four days.

It's Still Funny

A bunch of people have been hounding me to post the video. With a little direction from my 7 year old niece, I now know how to.