This Was No Wile E Coyote

I've written about my dog before, especially how she loves to smell flowers. You can read it here. She also, like every other dog likes to smell other dog's shit, so there's that. I must say, I do enjoy watching her go from flower to flower, much more than watching her go from shit pile to shit pile. But that's not why I'm writing today.

On our afternoon walk yesterday I took a slightly different route. There's a bakery about to open on this one street, so I thought we should walk past and see what was going on there. Well, it's a work in progress and I'm not holding my breath that it will really ever open.

But here's the reason for this post. Walking past the bakery, there is a property with a large open space in the back which is enclosed with a chain link fence. The property owner I believe, rents out some spots for overnight car parking. It seems he decided to add a little outdoor decor to the space by placing a cutout figure of a coyote next to the fence.

As we walked past, Hershey did a double take. Then she stopped and cautiously put her nose close to the fence. Now she was confused. No scent, no movement... I could see her looking at it like WTF? She made a few circles, but kept going back to it. She even got down on her front paws to play with it, but it didn't move. A man got out of a car next to us, looked at Hershey, looked at me, and we both started to laugh.

I'm going to wait until next week, then bring her back there again. I'm curious if she will ignore it or just be pissed off that it won't play with her. Today, I'll take her on a different route.

One that has some flowers.

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Miley, You've Got Some 'Splaining To Do

I am aware that I am not in the demographic to enjoy or even understand what the hell the VMAs are all about. Let's face it, I haven't been in the demographic for MTV in 25 years. But I try, really I do.

Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Last year I tolerated about 18 minutes, this year I managed 40 before Kanye convinced me that local news of murder and mayhem was less agitating than he was. I don't know what happened later with JT and the Boys, whether Katy roared that godawful song or who won the awards. I think after watching Miley (what the hell were you thinking) Cyrus, I was numb.

Artistic freedom you say? I say, sure, but use it wisely. Be sexy and raw, don't make people cringe in their seats. Look at the audience. They were either bored or unable to watch. Did you see Rihanna's face? You may have jumped the shark when the barometer of bad taste is disgusted.

So let's just try to figure it out. First the tongue. I am baffled trying to grasp what image she was trying to project. Sexy? Not even close. The furries aspect was more than a little disturbing and then there was the foam finger. When she ended up with it in her mouth, after seeing where it had been, I was thinking some penicillin might be a good idea.

The one good thing about the broadcast was I learned a new word. Twerking. As the tweets were coming across fast and furious last night, I kept seeing the word twerk. It seems they call it a dance move, to me it more closely resembles simulated sex. Anyway, Miley got in an assload of twerking, that's for sure.

It was horrifying to think of the parents sitting on the living room sofa with their kids watching this abomination. Watching porn on a first date in a roomful of strangers would be less uncomfortable than Miley and her fickle finger of self-fornication.

Sexually overt notwithstanding, the entire number was just bad. She looked terrible, her movements defied explanation and she turned off nearly everyone who watched her.

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. In this case, I'm not so sure.

Time to rethink your career choices Miley.

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Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

"My father's eyes

When I looked in my father's eyes"

The last time I looked into my father's eyes was a year and a day ago. It was one brief glimpse of bright blue as he looked at us for the last time. Did he see us? I like to believe he did. It was the most movement we had seen in those eyes for several days, and he scanned the four of us, as if taking one last look. His eyes seemed bluer than they had for some time, most likely because the color of his skin had become almost ghost like.

I was hoping to sleep till at least four this morning, No such luck. It was three-fifteen when my brain reminded me that I have one more story to write about him.

The call came at 5:10, August 13, 2012. The nursing facility which he had called home for the last several months of his life called me, not my mother, to say he was gone. For the past few days, his chest barely moved as he breathed. Sometime during that early morn, his breathing just stopped.

Dawn was just breaking as I drove my mother to say goodbye to the man she had loved since she was sixteen. Not being in a hospital meant the facility was very quiet when we arrived, I was thankful for that. Not much was different from the last time I had seen him a few hours before, except that everything was different.

From the day he entered the hospital a few months earlier, we knew things would change, and change quickly. When you have no options, you hope for speed. While you desperately wish to go back, hold onto the good times, the lifetime of memories, the man he was... in reality all you wish is that he does not suffer.

In the end, he was luckier than most with pancreatic cancer. Discomfort yes, but agonizing pain never came to be. I could not be more thankful for that.

Just as my dad's journey is over, so are my posts about him. When I started writing about him, around his last birthday, he wasn't sick... just getting tired. It really wasn't a plan to write his story, those of you who know me are well aware I don't plan much, other than a concert schedule. But it helped to write. It's always been easier for me to write words rather than speak them.

So I'll say goodbye to him one more time. Looking at the clock, it's almost 5:10, and the house is at peace.

Just like my dad.

Miss you Pops.


For anyone who wants to read the rest of the story, The Journey Home, has the links to all of them.

The Lesser of Two Evils

Just back here for a minute or two. If you read Kat's Theory of Music you already know where I've been lately. If you haven't heard the news, click on this post Twisted MixTape: End of Decades and a Story to Tell for the update.

I've mentioned before that I really don't like to start the day with the first word out of my mouth being," FUCK." I especially don't like it to start a Monday. But then, we can't always get what we want.

Don't let that face fool you

3:25am I woke up with the familiar feeling of having a slightly full bladder. Do I want to get up or can I turn over and just fall back to sleep? Take a wild guess. After about twenty minutes of trying to ignore Mother Nature, I got up. This house we live in, which I thought would be a temporary move a long time ago, has only one bathroom. Downstairs. This is why if there's a possibility of falling back to sleep, I take it every time.

As I am on my way, I remember the Perseid meteor showers, realize I don't have my glasses on anyway, and with rain coming today it would probably be too overcast. Whatever. Two steps away from the bathroom, I feel something foreign and squishy under both of my heels. You know it's not gonna be a good day when you start the day hoping you've just stepped into dog vomit and not dog shit.

I walk the rest of the way on my toes, wash middle-of-the-night dog puke off my feet and start the clean-up process. Of course falling back to sleep was not in the cards, so if I'm not all sunshine and flowers today, now you know why.

Probably won't be happy tomorrow either.
Is it Friday yet?

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Road Trip: Bouncing Around Beantown

It's a very strange thing to go to a baseball game and not root, root, root for the home team. But there I was, Yankee fan sitting in the Grandstand at Fenway Park, watching the hated Boston Red Sox play the Arizona Diamondbacks.

I felt like Charlie, the General Manager of the Cleveland Indians in the movie Major League when he would be secretly clapping for his team. That was me every time the Red Sox hit into a double play or struck out. A tiny fist pump out of sight of Red Sox Nation... and I made it out of the stadium alive.

It was a long overdue weekend to visit my beautiful niece who moved up to Boston when her too-smart-for-his-own-good husband got the job of his dreams and they left the Great State of New Jersey. Since the two of them have always made each other's dreams come true, Boston it is for the foreseeable future.

Sprockets

So we drove up Saturday morning, got together and caught up on life. Went to the game and by a weird coincidence, one of my fellow writers at Sprocketink.com, also not from the area, was going to his first game at Fenway... the same night. Honestly, what are the odds? Put that in the books as an added treat for the weekend, as it was great fun to meet him, if only for a short amount of time. As our Sprocket Ink crew are scattered all over the world, this was a big deal in the Sprocket Ink Universe.

Next morning we left at 9 am for the 250 mile ride home.... it took ten hours. Not so much the traffic as the way we travel. You've heard of the road less traveled, well we tend to make our own roads. If something looks interesting to the left, we go left. It lets you see things that are not listed in the travel guides. It also requires many more hours to get to where you were going. But along the way there is beautiful scenery and odd things. Did you know we have our own mini Easter Island right in Narrangansett, Rhode Island?

It had been a while since we had been up north, and in that time windmills have been sprouting up along the coast. About damn time America. They look ever so much nicer on the coastline than nuclear power plants. Also, I really believe there is nothing in the world that will soothe your soul more than looking out into the ocean. Maybe music, but the ocean has her own voice.

Now my inner voice tells me it's time for work... and some music.

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