"Cabin 2"

Almost 20 years ago, I petted Stella, Bro2's roommate's nasty little Jack Russell Terrier.  "This dog is pregnant", I said.  "No, no", Bro replied.  Never mind he had an unfixed dog in his apartment as his humanitarian effort to help the overcrowded dog pound and Stella wasn't spayed.  Bro laughed at the thought they could even get it together since Stella was tiny and the pound dog was enormous.

Really, when are people going to start believing me when I say stuff?  About a month later, Bro confirmed Stella's pregnancy and begged me to take a coming puppy.  I had an old Dalmatian and didn't want one, but gave Bro a chance.  I typed 2 single-spaced pages of requirements and said if a puppy was born that fit all of these needs I'd take it.

I was very specific.  I'd had years of b/w spotty dogs so I wanted a brown dog with a long tail, floppy ears, black nose, female, small like Stella, but with the pound dog's nice personality.  I knew the puppies would be Pisces and demanded one with an Aries ascendant so it would be able to stand up to my grouchy, old Dalmatian.  I wanted a good bark for security reasons.  On and on and on.  I wasn't trying to be reasonable.  I didn't really want a puppy, but I got one anyway.  She was too young to leave Stella too, just 4 weeks old, but Bro was in the Navy and got shipped to Bahrain so I had to take her.

Since she was so young, I paper trained her.  That's a helpful skill for a dog to have anyway since it gives an option if I'm away from the house too long.  I've never had any trouble training puppies, but this was the stupidest puppy ever.  Little turds were dropped just off the paper.  Little puddles on my wood floor.  I'll admit, I lost my patience and screamed about this after a few months.  No puppy should take that long to train.  Then, I caught my evil Dalmatian dropping puppy-sized poops on my floor, just missing the paper.  At least then my screaming was at the right culprit.  It's my everlasting shame that I yelled at my puppy for something she didn't do.  I apologized many times about that.  The Dal quit messing the house once she was busted.

My puppy was a devoted little dog.  Once, I went swimming in Lake Erie with a couple of friends.  We left all of our dogs on the deserted beach.  The other dogs ran around the beach like dogs do, but my tiny puppy swam out to me through the pre-storm choppy waves.  I was pretty far out and didn't see her at first.  I swam as fast as I could to rescue her.  She was exhausted and lay quietly in my arms as I used my old life saving skills to get her back to the beach.  I promised I'd never leave her on the beach again.

She managed my schedule and told me when to eat, when to work, when to watch TV.  She kept the groundhogs and rabbits under control until she got too old to chase them.  She daintily walked around my art piles on the floor.  She happily went on my de-littering walks in the neighborhood and did some pretty serious hiking with me through the years.  She was always sweet.

The first thing I do every day is fill her food and water bowls.  Today, they weren't there to fill.  I didn't know how to start my day.  I forgot to eat supper last night and almost forgot to brush my teeth.  I keep expecting to see her under my feet.  I'm lost and sad because my roommate of almost 20 years is gone.  I held her as she died and she wagged her long tail.  I sang her our song, "I love my dog, I love my dog, and my dog loves me!"

Some people don't understand how tight we get with our furry friends, or see why we'd want to care for another who will always be dependent like a child.  One person told me to quit having dogs since my heart breaks when they die.  People like that can't feel the love and companionship my puppy gave me through the years.  It's worth today's loss, though I'll miss her more than I can say.  I hope she's there to meet me when it's my turn to go to the other side.

She did have floppy ears except when there were varmints in
the yard or I was taking pictures of her.

The art above is an old doodle from when she was young and perky.  It doesn't have anything to do with a cabin other than taking her camping, but then IF is still falling behind on Friday words.

"Hat"

Our thoughts affect our health.  This is so obvious, I wonder why anyone still studies it as if it's an open question.  Becky died -> I moped about her and the early deaths of my other childhood friends -> I'm sick on the couch watching daytime tv and wondering who the hell watches this stuff if they aren't moping on the couch with winter germs.

The warmest hat ever, a gift from Angel
and made from llama wool

I watched "The View" the morning after the Democratic presidential debate and the first thing one of the women said was that Hillary Clinton's jacket was "very fabulous!".  OMG is it any wonder US women are still fighting for equality?  Love Hillary or hate her, but please don't do it based on her wardrobe.

Winter hat lovingly knitted by Josie
with a matching scarf

Before I got sick, I had lunch with a friend.  I was telling her about another conversation I'd had recently and my friend told me to quit talking about it since my face was cherry red and she didn't want me dropping dead from a heart attack.  I told myself to calm down, think puppies and summer days, but I guess I didn't talk myself down enough since I got sick.  Cause = effect.  Obviously I didn't think enough about puppies.

Last week I pestered a another friend about singing.  He has an excellent voice but doesn't sing anymore.  I dusted his guitar last time I saw him, and I think it's just collected more dust since.  I got him to sing a little.  He didn't do it with his full ability or gusto, but he did sing.  I smiled.  After I hung up the phone I did some singing myself.  This is what people can do for each other.  It doesn't have to be remarkable -- or maybe it is remarkable that he could make me smile and sing when I felt so down.

As long as I stay in the place of being grateful for having had good people in my life, how selfish is it for me that I didn't get enough time with them?  I got as much as I needed.  I got enough time with them to take some of them for granted, and that might be more than some people ever get.  I count myself lucky and know that the current blizzard will pass and the flowers will bloom again.

Blue heron, blue jay, sea gull feathers

Hats?  Back in the olden days when I was a child, women wore hats.  I loved them.  Feathers bobbing in the slight breath of church prayers were a pleasant thing.  I keep my hats on an antler hat rack.  I found the antler in the woods.  West Virginians can't see why I think that's funny.  What else would you do with an antler?  They admire how many points my antler has, but lose interest when I admit I didn't kill and eat the deer.

See, no matter how much we might be sick and brood, there's always something else in our brains that we can pull us up.  Our luck, joy, love, success, and every other good thing is the result of choosing which we'd like most to think about.

The magazine art director gave me more illustrations to do.  I'm choosing to get off the couch, play with paint, and meet the deadline.  Life is good.  Okay, it will be significantly more good once I feel better, but I'm choosing to feel better too.  We are what we think.

This art is from a tin I did for 1800Flowers.  BTW, I've been watching TED Talks on youtube.  This one seems created for this week's prompt.

"Voyage"

I used to get in a lot of trouble for losing shoes when I was little.  Mom insisted that I put them on, and I ditched them as soon as she was out of sight.  Sometimes I remembered where I put them.  Sometimes I didn't.  They usually showed up again eventually.  Or not. 

It's a lot like people.  Sometimes I forget someone has died.  I reach for the phone, sometimes even dialing, and then I realize that person isn't going to pick up the phone on the other end.  Sometimes I think my missing people are in the same layer of reality as my missing shoes, existing in an afterlife with bad phone reception.

I think they're still out there though.  The people for sure, and maybe the shoes too.  When people die they go on a long voyage and forget to send postcards.  Sometimes I see them in my dreams.  People go on their journey, but they're still here too.  I don't know the laws of physics in the afterlife; I just know what I know, or feel what I feel.

Sometimes I think a bit of an anonymous poem... "People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime"... or sometimes I think "We're born alone, we die alone".  Depends on my general frame of mind.

It comes down to the fact that we have to make our own lives.  Nobody else can do it for us.  Sometimes we have people who help us on our personal journeys.  Sometimes we get to have those people in our lives for a little bit or a lot, but it still comes down to our life, our problems.

We want to feel we're important, that our lives mean something.  We want to feel that we're important to someone else, and maybe to a bigger reality, but it still comes down to the fact that nobody else can live our lives for us or tell us what is best for living our own destinies.  The people who matter to us are gifts that make the journey worthwhile.

I can still remember the red canvas shoes I had that were splashed with river mud.  They were missing for a week or two, and then all of a sudden, there they were on that flat slab of gray shale under the tall grasses.  I often feel like my missing people are going to show up like that too.  I just don't know which rock I left them on.

None of this was stuff I meant to write.  It just came out, and I figure why not?  Let it occupy electrons on the web.  Let me spend some time thinking about the people I've loved and lost, and feel gratitude in their memories.

This art is a re-post.  I've got a migraine today and can't see well enough to paint today.  You can see the original story of canoeing with Dad HERE.  What better way to think myself out of a headache than remembering dip... drip... of a paddle on a predawn summer morning?

Geof Whitaker

I'm no good at grief. I find my best coping skills in cases like this is to pretend nothing has changed. I did that when my dad died. I went to bed one night with a super healthy 45-year-old father and woke in the dark to the news I didn't have a father any more. I just pretended Dad was at work. The thought that he was never coming home again was simply more than I could understand or bear when I was 15.

I feel myself wanting to fall on old patterns. My friend Geof has died. I saw it coming. I knew he was suffering. I wanted more time. Now all the people who loved him have to pick their ways through the shattered glass his death brings into our lives. Relationships need to be rearranged to patch the void left behind, but band-aids can't fill the hole some people leave in our lives. I want to pretend I can pick up the phone and ask Geof for his excellent advice about how to deal with his death.

Our first real conversation was a fight about abortion. We both got overheated on the topic, even though our perspectives weren't so different we couldn't have found a middle ground if either of us were trying to find one. We weren't trying. The next time I saw him, he met me at the door with "I'm so sorry!" and I responded with a fast "Me too!" More than anything else, maybe that moment cemented our friendship?

His wife Korki encouraged our friendship because she saw Geof didn't have enough creative playmates since he'd been forced to retire early from commercial photography after being savagely beaten by a lunatic with a baseball bat. Geof wasn't just a photographer, he was amongst the absolute best. He taught me things about color and lighting that will influence my work for the rest of my life. He critiqued my work without pity, but also with encouragement and praise. He was always right. When I critiqued his work, he took it in stride and I felt pleased to return his favors.

Geof quite possibly knew everything there is to know about everything. He could discuss quantum physics to politics to dandelion fluff in a seamless, amusing, educational stream of consciousness. He had opinions about all of it too, and his opinions were based on kindness and understanding. He understood me. In a world that has told me so often that I am "too much" of everything that I am, Geof understood and encouraged me to be all of those things.

Geof understood why I wanted to sit on the free side of a table, while he wanted to sit with his back planted against a wall. Korki obliged us both with good humor and sensitivity. I have tried to keep this blog a happy place with happy memories, but Geof knew about my demons, and he imparted a path towards peace with memories I couldn't see before. In the same way I didn't judge him for being beaten with a baseball bat, he took in my lifetime of traumas and praised me for surviving.

Geof came into my life at a time when I lost another dear friend, another close friend and her kids moved away, my heart was broken, and my health fell apart. It was a terrible year, and Geof helped me pick up the pieces. He let me ramble on and gave me sage advice how to deal with things. Sometimes the advice was simple, and sometimes so insightful, I couldn't understand how those ideas hadn't occurred to me before. His lengthy, daily emails were so important, I saved them in case I needed to take refresher courses in living.

He shared his own life too, which wasn't always pleasant or easy. He made sacrifices for his children that his kids will never know or appreciate. He was a complex, brilliant, sensitive man, and it was my blessing to have known him. When my friend Betty died, my sister said "Some people are irreplaceable". Geof is irreplaceable too.

The photo of cherries is Geof's work. In case you think that's an easy thing to do, try it sometime. I did. I failed. Add in the fact that he had a tremor from getting hit with that bat, and that he went blind in one eye, I think you can see Geof's knowledge and talents were remarkable. He knew when to get that shot, how to set the exposure and focus, and probably a thousand other things I'll never learn. Mostly I look at this photo with the knowledge that he gave it to me because I like cherries and because he was cheering me up one day. All I can think is that it was my honor to have known him while I cry a puddle of tears on my keyboard.

In Geof's own words...

There is a kind of mysterious way things work... By some manner of magic there are people who have entered your life who see the world the way you "know" it should be... I began living like I mattered, and suddenly I did.