Bird-day, and other little quirks

It’s amazing what you start to think about when you are lying in bed with three dogs because they all decided to pitch a royal fit at 3 am and if they wake the neighbors up with their barking there would be hell to pay.

I started thinking about this painting.

It is called Attachment by Sir Edwin Landseer and it is my favorite painting, ever.

When I saw it for the first time at the St. Louis Art Museum I got a little teary.  When I read the poem that was posted next to it, I was a wreck.

Helvellyn by Sir Walter Scott

I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Hellvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide;
All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striding-edge round the Red-tarn was bending,
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died.

Dark green was that spot ‘mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defended,
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.

How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?
When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?
And, oh! was it meet, that — no requiem read o’er him—
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretched before him
Unhonoured the Pilgrim from life should depart?

When a prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall;
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:
Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming;
In the proudly-arched chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.

But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,
When, wildered, he drops from some cliff huge in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.
And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Hellvellyn and Catchedicam.

Basically, dude goes hiking, dude falls, dude dies, dude’s dog stays by his side.  And I think I saw somewhere that this was based on an actual occurrence.

Anyways, I love that painting and I love that poem.  One year my mom got a 4×6 print of it and framed it, I cried when I opened it up.  She said it was the cheapest thing she’d ever gotten me and apparently the best!

So yea, that’s what I was thinking about as I laid there with my three faithful companions.

I tried to think of what their reactions would be if I were to fall and die while hiking (and let’s be honest here- this is a very likely scenario, I’m not known for my grace and spacial relationship abilities) and they were with me.

I thought first of Ginger, oh sweet Ginger.  The dog whom I saved from a certain death in the middle of the street on a cold February evening.  The dog who I hid from my landlord.  The dog who I fed canned vegetables to because the free dog food from a vet friend didn’t go that far and I was pooooor.

Ginger would surely stay with me.  She loves to sleep next to me.

Wait- if I’m honest, Ginger really just likes having a foot to lick at any moment it strikes her fancy to lick a foot. She has no particularly overwhelming love for me.  She’s fond of me, sure, but outside of that I think it’s just a cursory affair.

Hmmmm.  I still think she’d stay with me but once my skin started tasting “off”, as many decomposing bodies do, I think she’d go find greener pastures.

Ginger

On to Ninja.  She totally would stay with me.  Why wouldn’t she?  She was out in the savage world of Interstate 75 until a friend of our’s picked her up and brought her to us.  I’ve cared for her, fed her, played with her, fed her, retrieved batteries from her mouth before she kills herself, fed her.  Surely, surely! this puppy would stay with me.

Once again, if I’m honest with myself, there’s no way in hell she would stay with me.  Scratch that- she totally would stay with me, up until the time she was done eating me.  I would not be surprised if after I fell she’d sit there with a piece of glass waiting for the moment that it stopped fogging up with my breath and then she start gnawing off a toe.  One can only hope she’d at least whittle my ass down before they found me.

Ninja

Last but not least- Bronco.  First off he is most likely to be the one with me while hiking in the first place, but sadly he is also the one who is just as accident prone as myself so really the fall and subsequent death could have been caused by him in the first place.

Case in point-

This picture was taken shortly before he tried to climb under the fence and off the cliff.  There was a butterfly and apparently it needed to be investigated.  So yea.

But I know he’d stay with me.  As much as MrBunny is trying to convince me that he is slowly changing alliances- that dog is a momma’s boy.

Hell- I’ve cut his tail off twice now and he still has to be touching me at all times! If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.  Well it’s either love or insanity but I prefer to call it love.

He follows me to every room in the house and rarely leaves my side so I’m fairly certain that he’d stick by and keep me company as I died.

I love my dogs all equally but I think Bronco truly is the “friend of my heart”.

It should be noted that he has been using my ass as a pillow as I laid here writing this.

It takes a special relationship to prompt a statement such as that.

My family, and myself, had the privilege of being part of one that special and more.

You probably already know this, but I was an Air Force brat growing up.  My dad joined the Air Force when I was five and we arrived at our first base shortly before my sixth birthday.

Another thing you might know (or have gathered from my incredible personality traits) is my family is from the South.  My mom from Alabama and my dad from Texas- our entire extended family (as small as they are) lives in the South.  For the first six years of my life, I lived in the South.

So imagine the shock to not only myself but the rest of my family, when we rolled into Rapid City, South Dakota.

To say it was a culture shock (as well as a climate shock) would be an understatement.

But it wasn’t long until my parents found kindred spirits in a couple that lived down the street from us.

One thing about being far from home and being part of the military is you learn to create family wherever you are.  And this couple became our family.  They were my second parents.  We called them Aunt Eva and Uncle Ed.

We did everything together.  We ate dinner together, and when it came time for my uncle and dad to do their PT tests, we dieted together- well they dieted while we (mainly me) assembled messages of disgust with the bell peppers.

After four years or so, they moved to Omaha, but as luck would have it, we followed a few years later.  Bought a house not too far from them and a short time after- they had a baby.

Oh this baby.  I loved this baby.  This baby was the cutest and most adorable baby ever.  He was about as sweet as you could ever imagine a baby to be.  I loved him.  I can still see him sitting in his high chair giving me this shit eating grin right after he decided to spit carrots or sweet potatoes or some other orange colored food all over me.  You could not be mad at that face.

Mitri became the fifth kid and although my baby sister will always remain “the baby”, she shared that role with him quite well.  We would all sit around and laugh at his “jokes” that were just horrible; things like “why did the ketchup cross the road?  Because it was cold.” and he would just laugh and laugh.  Thought himself quite the comedian.

He would call us “the childrens”.  It was Aunt Martha, Uncle Jimmy and the childrens.  He was also a very matter of fact kid.  I can’t tell you the number of times he would say to one of us- “you hurt my feewings”.  Ahhh, I loved that kid.

My Aunt Eva was hysterical.  When she would play Mario Brothers she would move her entire body to control Mario.  She would even jump a little.  So funny.

The best part of Aunt Eva was getting her to laugh.  She would get tickled and it usually went downhill from there.  Case in point: One time when they had come to St. Louis to visit we (the childrens, Mitri, and Aunt Eva) went to get ice cream.  As we were driving home my brother made a face at a driver in a neighboring car.  We all laughed and laughed, and as we kept talking about it and laughing more, walking through the door of the house… she peed her pants.  I kid you not- there was actual pee.  And of course this just made us all laugh even more.  So funny.

She was also the disciplinarian of her house.  Oh my lord was she ever!  One day she walked in on my brother and sister jumping on the couch (or the bed, I don’t remember) and she beat their little booties like she owned them!  For a little woman she packed quite the wallop- they still talk about it (and laugh) today.

At her heart though she was one of the most caring and loving people ever.  After a particularly rough driving lesson with my dad (we butted heads due to our mutual lack of patience and quick tempers), she took me out and gave me lessons on driving stick shift- on a car that I eventually owned after they moved to Germany.  I would get in that car and it still smelled like her.  Every once in awhile I catch a whiff of someone wearing her perfume and I automatically think of those driving lessons in the bowling alley parking lot.

If Aunt Eva was the disciplinarian, then my Uncle Ed was the gentle giant.  It was funny because even though he’d been around for the majority of my life, he was still awkward around us girls, like he didn’t know what to say to us.  And he was very protective of us.  Just ask one of my first boyfriends!  He came by to pick me up and my dad must have been pulling alert or on TDY, I don’t remember, but Uncle Ed stepped up to the plate and I don’t know what he said to that poor boy but I vividly remember him saying that we needed to be home by such and such a time because he promised my Uncle Ed and there was no way he was going to be late!  I can’t imagine what would have happened had they had a daughter- all I can picture is an entire population of frightened young men out there.

Uncle Ed and my dad were quite the little jokesters themselves.  They used to feed us all kinds of crap- like when they took my brother out in the canoe one time and he came back telling my mom all about the frogs.  They were everywhere!  And they kept making this noise!  Or it was just my Uncle Ed and dad farting.  Men, I swear.

We are starting to get to the age where grandparents and in some cases, parents are dying.  And you inevitably hear, “I don’t know what I will do when my parents die.”  Well I’ve gotten a taste of it, and it is not pleasant.

It’s been six years since my Aunt Eva, Uncle Ed, and Mitri died.  Honestly, a little bit of myself went with them.  Like any family member, they are a part of your memories.  I can’t parallel park without thinking of my Uncle Ed being pissed as hell that my aunt let me use his beloved Jeep to practice.  I can’t hear certain songs without hearing Mitri singing along at the top of his little lungs.  Hell, I can’t eat Little Ceasars pizza without thinking of the old commercial with the kid going “that’s a lot of pizza Uncle Ed!” and how we would say that over and over.  I can’t smell apple cider vinegar without thinking of the day my aunt tried to fog us out of the house while making some chicken dish- it was brutal.

But it’s a testament to what kind of people they were that even in their death- there was happiness.  When we went down to Texas for their funeral, as weird as it sounds, it was a happy time. Granted it was horrible, painful, gut wrenching, but at the same time- happy.

My uncle’s mom welcomed us into her home and allowed us to grieve with her.  We sat around and told stories and laughed and of course cried.  When we were done crying, we’d start right back up with the laughing.  We all shared in our love of this family.  A family that truly defined “good”.

They had their faults, but at their core- they were about as good a people that you could ever hope to know.

In their obituary, my uncle’s mom described our families’ relationship as the title to this post- “It was a love that was unparalleled and will last forever.”

It was and it will, and I’m proud to have been able to call them my family.

Where have I been indeed.

It has been quite an interesting couple of weeks.

First my best friend came to visit with her dog Eddie.  It was lovely.  There was garden/farm planning, Mario Kart playing, cowboy hat buying, beach going, and so much more!

Things were going quite well when on our way back from the beach (sidenote: picture  it- me, mrbunny, my best friend, her dog, and our three dogs plus all accouterments packed into my Jeep.  Then add the part where Ninja becomes a rabid wolverine when there is food introduced into a situation- she will literally throw herself at you to get a bite.  It was an insane!) my mom texted me that my sister was being admitted to the hospital.

Less than ten hours later, Kate (my bff) and I were on the road with Eddie and Ninja.  Ninja had to go because not only can MrBunny not make it home during the day to let her little puppy bladder relieve itself, but also because she decided to try and drink half the gulf while playing and got a nasty little case of “beach diarrhea”- pleasant.

Got to St. Louis and went immediately to see my sister.  Let’s just say, I’d like to not see one of my siblings like that again any time soon.

Then I went and met her new baby.  Very cute.

Spent the week going between visiting my sister in the hospital and watching her baby at her house.

After a week it was finally looking like she was going to go home soon so I hopped in my brother’s truck and we headed down to Kentucky Lake- as providence would have it, we had planned a trip up there with friends of ours.  My brother got to fish and Ninja and I were able to catch a ride back home to south GA.

Then this afternoon I picked up the big dogs and dropped off the puppy at the boarder/vet’s office.  Ninja is having her lady parts surgery tomorrow which means come Thursday I’ll have the great challenge of keeping a puppy from ripping out stitches when there are two other dogs that she really wants to play with.  Good times.

So yea, I’m home now.  Phone still doesn’t want to hold a charge but other than that- things are good.  I have another busy week or so ahead of me as I get ready to go on our actual vacation this year.  Laundry, laundry, and more laundry.  Yay!!!!!

Last but certainly not least- a picture that shows that sometimes you don’t need the big expensive fancy camera. You just need a fun app on your phone (hipstamatic) and an alert baby.

Just a place that I can post some photos- of random things of course!

…andotherlittlequirks, in pictures

Seeing as without having to write anything to post, I imagine it might be updated a bit more often than here.