Dojo-Fall weather style

By the time you read this, Sunday morning will be well underway. You have read some of my dribble about the peace of this special morning. Now, we are on the edge of the weather breaking for the season, setting summer stupid temps back on the shelf until late March when we start the whole nightmare over again. 

The early morning, just before dawn, is an absolutely incredible time. You need to try it. Waking up early, grabbing a bagel and a cup of coffee and go outside and feel it. It only lasts for a few hours. By mid-morning, the heat is back and the sun making all the subtle colors disappear. But there is hope of relief just around the corner, like next week's corner. 

It is so exciting, some of us in da 'hood have been practicing our 'Celebrating the Fall Weather' where the men dress in comfortable clothes, usually a flat twin sheet, preferably one without flowers or little cowboys stenciled on them. The men of Devonshire Avenue, as you can see, are serious about celebrating the cooling weather. Some prefer to run up and down the street yelling such great things as 'Free the Marigold Seven? Free the Marigold Seven?' Others, like our large friend here, prefer ancient ways of standing and stretching in their own Tia-Chi kind of way. Others just like to stand in their celebratory garb and sip on their coffee, using the sheets long tail to dab at the corner of the mouth for that little bit of coffee that didn't follow procedures.

Here's the thing about this time of day, this time of year. There is peace here. There is a tranquility that rivals anything else around. It doesn't stay long. I think that's the thing about peace, its rare, that's why its so valued. We fill our lives with every minute of every day of, well, stuff. Now, the stuff we do has levels of intensity---we don't think twice about traveling across town to walk a mall searching for a pair of socks or in the case of my neighbor Jujusko at the top of this blog, a nice queen size muslin sheet. A short time ago, that trip to the mall would have taken all day on a horse. Of course, there were no malls back then so you'd ride your horse to a place in the desert and it really doesn't make my point, but what I'm trying to say is, we seem to fill every moment of the day with doing stuff, shopping, repairing, hooking a large mouth bass, you get my point. We just don't sit and watch the world wake up.

The other thing is there is 'stuff' that is just wicked fun!! Like, belly surfing off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in the winter, paint ball hunting grizzly bears during the mating season, drinking three twenty ounce beers and then operating a John Deere D820 bucket loader in the Queen's flower garden, dressing up in a middle-eastern 'man dress', going to the airport and  running passed TSA while yelling some random non-nonsensical jargon and trying to see how far you can get before they tackle you and shove you into a box. Maybe most of us aren't that much of the thrill seeking kind. 

So, for us, we just need to go into our closet where we keep our sheets, wrap up and tomorrow morning, greet the day properly. 

Love was a sacrifice word on 'that' day

Tomorrow is September 11th. There is a gathering of kids now who don't have the memory of that day. Soon, they'll be teenagers, then adults then, well, you get the idea. I think its different from December 7th, the other major day we all grew up remembering from our parents who lived it. Its different, I think, because after Pearl Harbor, there was something everyone could do. Everyone was involved in that fight because, well, each bomber had ten men in them and they needed a lot of bombers. This one, well, it just seems different. We watched it on the Internet. Now, its been over ten years. Has it been that long?

What isn't different is the hearts of our people. It still takes hearts to run into a blown up building when everyone is running out. But it seems easier during the event. Lots of emotion during an event like that. And over the years, emotions get use to the pain.  The list is endless of examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
 
There has been enough time that has gone by that a generation has grown up to replace those who have come home. Young men and women, who were children in 2001, now stand up and say, "Yeah, well, I'll go. Send me."

This isn't about right or wrong, do we go, do we not go. Decisions about that are made at a higher pay grade than mine. But here's what I do know, there is true Evil in this world-with a capital E. It exists, it breathes, it lives to only cause pain and suffering and its whole existence is to consume my family, and I also know, I can't stand against it alone.

I need you.

So, tomorrow, we remember a day when the world changed-again. And for many of us, our hearts, while they were being broken actually  grew. We love more intensely, we breath the morning air a little deeper, we spend time with our kids, talk to our dogs, laugh at stupid jokes we didn't use to laugh at, and we forgive a little easier. Love is a sacrifice word and we got an opportunity to witness, some in person, most by watching our television, pure love on that day who's anniversary is tomorrow. We take a deep breath and look to each other, nod, and simply say-"Okay, send me."

I want to start listening to my dogs

First, this isn't my dog. I have two, June and Betty. Each have their own personalities and distinct attitudes. Dogs seem to know stuff. They seem to know stuff we humans have no clue of. A friend at work brought her dog to work today. It was a puppy, a cross between a Jack Russell Terrier and an Australian Shepperd. Two dogs, when combined, form an extremely smart animal. Like a dog that could sign checks if they had opposable  thumbs. That kind of smart.

My dogs aren't quite at the doctorate level of a Jack Russell. Betty, a Sheppard/lab/border collie mix is pretty quick and smart with things. Her tastes leaves a little to be desired however. She has a habit of rolling in smelly things. Kind of like going through Macy's perfume section and sampling every perfume on the counter. Only hers are dead things, cat poo, mud, or monkey crap. Perfume for a dog. 

June on the other is, well, no vet really knows what she is. She's not necessarily the 'sharpest knife in the drawer' if you get my meaning. But still, she doesn't roll in stuff her adopted sister does. She's bigger than Betty and two years younger. She's got shoulders of a linebacker, a fishhook tail, short turn-down ears, and paws the size of coffee saucers. However, both animals are aware of things I have no clue of. For example:

They know when I'm sad or happy. If I say anything with the word 'ball' or 'walk' their ears perk up and they march to the front door.  I swear they know English.

 They can hear me coming home from a block away. They can hear the mailman coming from two blocks away, posing in the window-each with their own chew bone-waiting.

On Saturday morning, when most people are using this quality time of day to sleep in from their night of living the party life, studying for that test on Monday, or making the midnight bail hearing and hitting the street by 1 and home in bed by 1:30, Betty and June allow me to sleep in until 5:45, then jump up on the bed and waking me up. Knowing that those extra hours of enjoyment are just wasted time that is too European. I either get up and take them out for ball throwing or suffer 150 pounds of dogs breaking my knees.

Dogs are just forgiving. They love, if given the opportunity, unconditionally. If you yell at them, or punish them, somehow, they come back and still seek your acceptance. Not quite sure I could ever do that--unless I was setting the conditions.

I helped move some material for a friend the other day and his golden retriever came out and trotted up to me to greet me. As if to say, as only a dog would say to a stranger walking up to the front door, "HEYIKNOWYOUILIKEYOUWELCOMETOOURHOUSEPETMEPETMEPETMEDOESYOURBUTTSMELL?"

I want to learn from them. I think we can all learn from them, listen to their language, like when a stranger  is coming down the street, when play is required, when sleep it desired. They love to play and wait for me until I go to bed before they call it a night. They wait on me. Not sure I do that for a lot of people, waiting on them, I mean. I don't play enough. Life is a run from one event to the next and sometimes, I need t listen to my dogs, put my stuff down, and go throw balls for them to retrieve until they are so slobbery wet they are almost impossible to hold.

We can learn a lot from our pooches I think whether they are a Great Dane or a Tea-Cup Yorkie. We can learn how to love in spite of and not because of. Now, if I could learn to switch out my Mennen Skin Bracer with its 'skin tightener and chin chiller' effect with fresh minty scent and try out some of the neighborhood monkey crap.

Maybe Betty's on to something. Someone alert Drakkar.

Alcohol is Proof that God Loves Us!

Now, don't go getting all sideways about the title and just hear me out will you? Liquor when properly applied, can be the tittle in your tattle. And good things, truly good things, when properly applied, have to come from the Maker of really good things. If you remember, the Son of Man's first miracle was being the first bartender--making wine for a wedding he and mom were attending.

There are times when a little hit of the grape, a little nip of the bubbly, a tiny tug on the whiskey and all of a sudden life just got a little smoother.Apply the right liquor with the right food and soon, your toes begin the flick and the base of your skull gets warm. Like yesterday.

On a three day weekend, you could either be soaking your dogs in a pool, making your way down the South Rim trail of the Grand Canyon, or busting out all the crap you didn't get done this summer, last weekend, or since you were six growing up on Devonshire Avenue with heavy weights like Elliot, Dwayne and his brother Nelson, or the kid who use to ride his sisters bike with a zipper bell that he actually used. Trying to catch up on a list of things around the house that never end.

Running all day, it finally drew to a close with a trip for Mexican food and  a Pacifico ON TAP! Now, there is combination of two things, meeting from two completely parts of a commercial kitchen, one cold, one hot, perfectly timed to meet me and take me to heaven. Aaaahhhhh.

Mexican food is meant for beer, or tequila in the form of a margarita. You don't drink gin with Mexican food. That is just bad form. You drink gin when you're having bangers and mash and passing a note with the countries secrets in a small pub on the West End. Whiskeys go with steak, or, in the case of single malt scotch, most of your major breakfast foods-not that I would know. Bourbons love steak too along with the occasional cigar. Only single malts qualify to travel with American Whiskeys. For example, Jack Daniel whiskeys are based on Jack's grandparents who were single malt  scotch whiskey distillers in their home of Scotland. Blended scotchs are usually used by pretenders of the faith, bad investment bankers, and a guy in Topeka named 'Eddie' who has six fingers on one hand.

White wine eases you to gear down at the end of the week with the help of some bruschetta while hanging with friends in a bar on Bourbon Street. Red wine runs a good parallel as the white with a bread board to include sliced meats and strong cheeses while sitting under the cool shade of eucalyptus trees of a neighborhood restaurant or on your front porch of your cabin in the Arizona Rim Country. Mai-Tai's base of rums and spiced rums, fly on the beach while you sit in a low-slung beach chair in the lapping waters under your seat and eating things from that same sea, things you can't spell.

I think that's why I have to say a higher being is involved in the selection process. I'm sorry, but no human could mate these combos other than someone who has a perfect pallet. Who else could cause you to drink your beer without coming up for air when its first delivered to the table, your eyes rolling back in your head as your pains and stress leak out on to the floor soaking your socks and causing you to smile, seemingly without reason.

Of course, this discovery happened on a day that was full of hard work. I'm wondering if a nap would have done the same thing?