The Boys

In the crate they peep out. The larger of the two barks loudly and wants to be held. The other slightly smaller one also wants to be held; only he waits in silence.

They both play hard and yes they fight like brothers do. It is nothing unusual, just regular, ‘you where too close to me’, type of fighting. At the end of the day they cuddle and sleep next to each other and all is forgiven.

The girls fight as well. Maddy, the bigger of the two always seems to go for the neck and it looks like she is beating up her sister. It’s all part of pecking order that dogs have. The girls really do love each other as do the boys.

One of the boys likes to sit on his butt and uses his paw to balance himself on the side of the crate. He just likes to sit up straight. Even when he was smaller he would get himself up on the side of the whelping box and sit up. Sort of like he was in an arm chair and he liked to be propped up like that, with his tongue sticking out a bit, he still does that.

The family that wants the boys wants to keep them together. They may end up in a big rig and travel, keeping the new owner company on his long halls. If that works out then they will have grand adventures and I couldn’t be happier for both of them.

In time the boys will go on their way and learn to be good with another family and ‘make their way in the world’, so to speak. I do care for all the pups we have had and I am so glad I got to meet them all. Its’ been great to get to know them and see all of their personalities. This time we are keeping Maddy, named after a friends and Crackers, who also goes by ‘Crackers Morven’. In the times we have bred our dog everyone else gets a puppy this time I get two!

As for the boys, they make a great pair. I couldn’t be happier for someone to take both of them and keep them together. I’ll miss them, but I’m happy for them to ride on into the sunset!

Green hour

The door is at the bottom of the staircase in a dark corner of the building. The street level has a courtyard and a few other restaurants and some shops. This is not like the others, and has been around longer than all of the others.

The carpet may be a bit better for ware, and the inside feels and looks like a cave. All part of the charm you see. The leather upholstered bar with red leather chairs great you. As well as a party of people, at least this time.

They were celebrating a birthday. There was a cake in the corner at one of the booths. There are also a few tables and chairs. No one is using them at the time. The bulk of the group is crowded around the bar. This group happens to be made up of the 50 plus singles crowd. As they sip their drinks the flirting begins. Only the alcohol is making their conversation skills go downhill.

“ I don’t have time to get naked, I just take off my clothes and put my night gown on right away.” A loud woman announced. I didn’t really understand that statement, I have a feeling she didn’t either.

“ Are you going to be able to get up by 8 a.m. tomorrow?” A blonde asked a older man in black tight pants and shinny button down shirt.

“ Yup, I am going straight home, it’s a long drive back to Long Beach.” He said. They seemed to all work together and had met here for drinks and this party. Usually the crowd here is much younger, so this was an exception. Gratefully this group left after a short time. One woman was laughing so loud and she had more of a cackle, it was a relief to see her leave.

The rest of the night the crowd was more usual, a group of young girls from the local college, and some young men trying to flirt with the new bar girl. The tall Brit girl that is getting sloppy on wine wearing a long white trench coat, yes she should have eaten first.

Why endure all this when I could be home and drinking in peace and quit? While that is true, it doesn’t beat this story. Plus this is my new favorite place. The end of the night finds us enjoying some abisinthe and have a laugh, quite a few in fact. Long after this evening is over I still have the taste of absinthe in my mind and can’t wait to have a nice evening and enjoy it and the atmosphere of this spot again.

Errands

The middle of the week and she has so many things to do. Her goal is to get everything done before 5 P.M. It’s not that she is older; it is just satisfying to get things done before the rush hour.

The hardware store, as soon as she enters there is a strong smell, bug spray mixed with plastic and popcorn. The small store always makes popcorn, with the other industrial smells the popcorn can’t compete with, and it never seems appetizing to her. This store always has unusual and fun things. She only has a few things to get; still it’s hard not to get distracted by the 8 dollar spatula found in the gourmet food display.

Does she want to drive her usual route or go down another street? It can get boring to always drive down the same streets. Today, it will only take her a few seconds more to go left and down another side street. It’s such a nice proper down town, why not enjoy the scenery?

She lowers the window and lets in some fresh air, the wind blows around her long hair. The cool fall wind feels great; a few trees have started to change color. Unlike back east, the last of these leafs will still be around till late December.

There is a quick trip to the store. She gets into the checkout line, the clerk recognizes her.
“It’s late in the week for you to be here. Didn’t you make all your dinners already?” She asks Devon.

“Yes I did and I just need to pick up some tortillas. I’m making up some burritos for lunches. I made some beans and now I will make them up and freeze them. I usually make about 24 at a time.” Devon answers.

“Wow, you’re more ambitious than I am.” The clerk says with a smile.

“I just like getting it done. I only have to do this like once a month. Then we can just grab them out of the freezer, nuke them at work and I don’t have to scramble every morning wondering what to pack for lunch.” Devon says. She pays for her purchase and drives off. Sure it’s a lot of work, but only for one night.

Urban farming

I don’t like to think of myself as part of a fad, but being practical, yes I am urban farming this year.

We have lavender in the front yard. Lavender is a deterrent for moths and is great aromatherapy. If you have some under your window and open it up at night, or anytime of the day, it can be calming. At night it may be able to help you sleep better. That is if you don’t have allergies that prevent you from enjoying them.

In the back yard we have some tomatoes and that has been nice. We have a big plant and not that much of a yield, but that is this year. Next year we will plan a little earlier.

The chickens have been great and a lot of our friends have been happy to get some fresh eggs. They really do taste much better and cook up faster. The chickens are fun and have their own personality. I never knew that they would. Champers is very much the mother hen and Jamamia is nice and both like to be picked up.

Home fry, the chicken is a big girl and she doesn’t always like to be picked up, but she does like to get water sprinkled on her when it’s hot. We are not always at full production, while we have 7 chickens we usually get 5 to 6 eggs at the most. Someone isn’t consistent in producing eggs.

We keep our dogs away from the chickens since that is their favorite meal just running around there. They only make clucking sounds, in the morning they are noisy the rest of the time not so much. A few of the chickens like to peck on the plastic pail that holds the water. Its’ like a drum for them and they just like making little drum sounds on it. I don’t mind.

It may turn out that I will end up with an egg route and drop off eggs to my friends once a week. I have been joking that I will need a truck with a chicken painted on the side to deliver the eggs.

The whole lesson of urban farming is one that my grandmother taught me. She passed away a few years. I know if she was still around she would be proud of me for being resourceful and tell me once again about the chicken she got from her aunt. My Great grand- father cooked that chicken on accident one day. My grandmother had to go back to her aunt and pick another chicken, she told her father all the way home that, this was her chicken and not to kill it. Right on grandma, thanks for these and other lessons.

Sunday Girl

Mary had never experienced anything like this before. She sat in the coffee shop and drank her coffee read the paper….then just pretending to read the paper she played the events over again in her head. She brushed her blond hair a side and looked down at the freshly painted toes.

The bachelor pads she had been to before had taught her a few things. One, there will never be any toilet paper, two no matter how much the men drank there would never be any beer. Lastly, no matter how much the men liked to eat and could consume there is never any chips or food of any kind handy. The only thing you find on a Sunday morning at a bachelor pad was empty beer bottles and full cigarette trays.

All that she could deal with, she wasn’t surprised. She took another sip of her coffee.

“You want a fill up?” The waitress asked as she came around. She had on her work poly uniform and nurses shoes.

“Please.” and she pushed her coffee cup towards the middle of the table so the waitress could pour easier. Her phone cell phone rang. She was happy to see it was her girlfriend Terra on the other end.

“Hey, so how did it go?” Terra asked.

“I have no idea.” Mary played with the sugar that had spilled next to her coffee cup.

“What do you mean? What happened?” Terra said.

“Okay, Trent asked me to come over after surfing and I thought that was great and all. I even brought some groceries, some toilet paper, and some wine.”

“You brought over some food? Why did you do that?”

“I was hungry and he just asked me to come over and hang nothing about getting something to eat and I just got out f the water from surfing. What like I’m not going to be starving? Who isn’t hungry after going out into the water?”

“Okay I follow you. What did you bring?” Terra asked.

“I brought stuff to make spaghetti and I cooked it up and even made some garlic toast. All the guys that live there were watching the game. I couldn’t talk to them since it was the play offs and I know no matter how interesting I am, I can’t compete with that. Plus they really hate in when women talk and interrupt the game. I made food and pretty much sat there and ate by myself.”

“That totally stinks. What did Trent do?” Terra said sympathetically.

“He ate the spaghetti I made. They all did. He didn’t sit next to me or anything or talk to me during commercials. I got so bored and thought. I could be at home listening to jazz and reading a book. So I left. Even the sight of all those guys in board shorts wasn’t attractive anymore.” Mary said with a sigh.

“Was he just tired from Surfing and just into the game? Really that stinks though. Even a dog will give you a kiss. They don’t have the manners God gave a dog!”

“I guess so. It still stunk. There was one good thing.” Mary said.

“Really what was that?”

“All the beer cans and bottles. They didn’t want it so I took it all and filled up my car. I had enough money after wards to get myself a manicure and pedicure!” She smiled and looked down at her feet again.

Inspiration

There are a lot of people that inspire me, in my dancing and my writing. I get a lot of inspiration from other women, even though I don’t have that many women friends. It’s not that I don’t get along with them. It is just easier to be around men.

Dorothy Parker inspires me as a writer, she was so fun and smart with a wicked sense of humor. You can see that in her writing, her poems always had a bite to them. While her life, and other writers lives can be a mess, she is no less a fine writer.

I admire the courage of women that are the first to do something, like the first to set records in drag racing. As a little girl, bored to tears at TG&Y I was amazed to look up at the model cars and see one woman in front of her own race car. Thanks Shirley!

Other dancers and performers inspire me as well. Right now I am enjoying seeing Lady Ga Ga, at her VMA performance. It’s great to see someone expressing themselves in their art, be it dance, song or both. When I look at other performers I can’t help but be amazed how they put out all that emotion and energy. Sometimes I wonder if I am holding back too much.

The other day on the Sundance channel there was two great shows about fashion. It was wonderful to see Karl Lagerfield designing and laboring over a certain shoulder bad shape. It was fun to see Marc Jacobs playing with colors and making things work. The huge bag that was made of several bags, it was just amazing. While I may never own such a piece of couture it inspires me to dress up a bit more, pull out another outfit besides my main stay of denim skirts and put on my 50’s skirt and a nice top.

Some performers like to carry that idea and mystery of their persona to everyday. I can’t do that, not working at a scooter shop with oil and grease and sharp corners that can catch my skirts. I have chickens to take care of and I wear my big black rubber boots for that. No glam while pick up eggs and getting water for the chickens.

With the classes I take my teachers are an endless source of inspiration. Things that we are working on in class end up in my dances. As a way for me to really get it down, and to expand my routines, it can be boring if a dancer keeps doing the same thing over and over. I have seen really pretty girls that dance; if they throw in a few more moves it would make their dances so much more interesting.


A lot of performers try to be sexy. It gets boring, when there is also sultry, cute, flirty, and smart/sexy. There are so many other things they could do besides just being overtly sexy. If there is little thought behind the act, will anyone remember it?

Cheerleading

There they are; on the sidelines in short skirts and pom-poms in their hands. Jumping up and down and shouting cheers. Do the players really care? It’s the coaches that give the players direction and keep them in the zone. Before and after the game it would be nice to see them and they are pretty, but do they really keep the players going? They may really be there to keep the crowd going.

If the players were really watching the cheerleaders too much, they would be told to get their head ‘back in the game’. When our friends give us encouragement sometimes its’ called cheer-leading. It can be helpful, just like the crowd yelling and cheering.

How gives encouragement to the cheerleaders? Their coaches and what about all the coaches, where do they get encouragement? The people that coach are more of the type A personalities and they are pretty much go-getters in the first place. They don’t always need cheering.

I envy those kinds of people and look up to them. They just go and do and don’t whine and carry on and need cheer-leading. Sometimes they do and their friends and family do the cheer-leading. The ones doing the cheering are usually the type C personalities. They are the helpers and they usually see then need the others have in being cheered on. They are people that also need cheers, but don’t receive them.


It maybe that since they help others, the ones they help assume the cheerleaders have all the pep in the world and don’t need help. The irony, cheerleaders need to be told they are good and need encouragement, why else would they put themselves in front of a crowd of people that will give them applause? Yes, it’s because they need it.

The people that don’t need all that will never understand why others need applause. These ones get praise for all they great things they do and achieve. To get praise for jumping up and down, quite hard work by the way, or acting or singing, seems silly to them. If we didn’t have needy actors and singers, who would we watch perform? At the same time if we didn’t have bankers and engineers; who would have money to put on a show, no one really.

It does take all types to run the world and everyone has something to bring to the table. We can’t look down on artist who does anything just for the love of art, without that dedication we wouldn’t have great works of art. We can’t look down at the stable people that don’t create but do other worthwhile jobs. Neither one is crazy. We should appreciate both the player and the cheerleader; both may need to be built up at one time or another.