more normal than not

People say that a dog is man’s best friend.

I guess that may be true….I guess.

I’ve had some wonderful dog friends, although I’m not sure if I’d consider any of them my “best friends”.

Our “heart to hearts” were usually pretty non-verbal.

Maybe that’s the secret…all these words get in the way. Maybe a real heart to heart doesn’t need words?

The hard thing about a dog, for me sometimes, is that they’re gone so soon.

A long life for a dog might be 18 years for one of the little ones.

If you’re going to fall in love with one of the bigger ones, it usually is a lot less.

These dogs don’t stick around like we hopefully do. They don’t wear out their welcome…unless they’re a pain in the rear and chew up all your nice crap.

They live a concentrated life of affection and enthusiasm…bounding and wagging, eating and loving.

I like dogs a lot.

I was pondering how short their lives are the other day while I was cramming letters into mailboxes…and I started thinking about something that sounded like a nice possibility.

Now, it doesn’t have a theological leg to stand on.

Like a lot of things that I ponder, it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I think that dogs have souls…and maybe…maybe…maybe they go to Heaven.

Now, if you talk to anyone who knows how Heaven works and who does and who doesn’t have a soul…they’d think that the concept of a dog having a soul is kind of heretical.

Dominion and all, you understand?

Dogs can’t have a soul if we’re the stewards of this “earthly kingdom”. We’re better than dogs. Dogs can’t have souls…right?

I came to the conclusion that a dog’s life is short because they act like advance guards or “scouts” for the people who love and take care of them on Earth.

I imagined a scenario like this:

A new dog comes padding quietly into the “Place”…the place where God is…and after the Dog clears his throat to get God’s attention, he says, “God…can I talk to you for a second? I had something that I was wondering about…”

God says “Oh, you can talk to me for more than a second if you need to! I’m pretty busy with stuff all the time…but what’s time to God?! Take as much time as you need…”

The “new dog” sits down at God’s feet and starts to talk….

“It’s about that Guy…the one who was with me on Earth. Do you remember him? I loved him so much….that Guy…”

“Right…I know you did. He loved you, too, you know.” God said.

“Well,” said the dog “you know that the Guy was a pretty good guy, don’t you? I mean he was a really great guy. He loved me like crazy, that guy did. You knew all that already, though, didn’t you?”

“You love that Guy, too…don’t you? You love him, too, right God?”

“That Guy? I love him more than you’ll ever know…for a lot of reasons that never would enter your mind. I love that Guy…your Guy.”

“I thought so…I was just checking, though. I want him to be OK, you know?” said the Dog.

“He’ll be OK…he’ll be better than OK…and yes, I do love him…”

“Good…I thought so, but good.  I’ll let you get back to what you were doing…like you needed my permission, though…anyway, thanks for seeing me. Thanks for taking care of the Guy, too”

God said, “Don’t mention it. You come see me anytime….the door’s always unlocked. Thanks for coming….”

And as the dog padded out, his mind at ease again, God watched him go and thought, “I love these dogs…I’m glad they’re around. That was a good thing…inventing dogs. I’m glad I didn’t stop with cats…”

“If Dogs Run Free” Bob Dylan

I heard this song and thought, “What a wonderful accompaniment that would be for a story about being lost in Panthertown…what a frantically wonderful soundtrack to a frenzied trip back home….”

So…here’s the song….and here’s the story…

“Jungle Boogie” Kool and the Gang

I worked at a summer camp on Lake Sapphire in North Carolina for a couple of summers….taught “mountaineering”…sometimes taking kids on climbing trips but usually just taking out hikes.

The camp property butted up to an area called “Panthertown”.

It’s a pretty amazing place…big rock walls, good hiking…and…

Impenetrable Rhododendron.

The day that I got lost, the mountaineering staff was up in Panthertown doing some orienteering practice. My map skills are minimal. I’m not a “nature king”. I can walk around in the woods with the best of them…but I don’t always know where I am.

It’s not a great mystery to me that I was the one who got lost.

We were making our way through one of the “impenetrable rhododendron forests” when I got separated from the group.

Actually, I separated myself from the group.

“I’m going around it THIS WAY…” I said.

After struggling with the leaves and branches for a while, I poked my head as far up as the tangle allowed and yelled for my other professional guides.

“HEY…WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?”

I could hear a faint sound off in the distance.

I couldn’t hear anything that sounded like the group.

(I found out later that they ditched me…they heard me but didn’t know where I was so…they ditched me…left me out there in the woods. It was one of those “every man for himself” kind of hikes…”we’ve got to save ourselves” kind of situations…)

So there I was…lost in Panthertown…tangled up in the vegetation…unable to see anything but the wall of green.

It was more irritating than anything…not scary, just kind of inconvenient.

After pushing through the rhododendron without any good result for a while, I jumped into the stream and pushed through the leaves and branches there.

I guess that I must have felt that following the water down was a better bet than just thrashing around in the woods the way I’d been doing.

I could thrash around in the water. That might be a better choice.

After a while of “under and over” hiking….my glasses fogged and covered with bits of grass and other vegetation…I came to the bigger river that I knew was down there “somewhere”….and followed it until I came to a familiar trail…and then I ran back to camp before it got dark and they sent the professionals out to find the “poor lost hiker”.

I’m glad I made it back before I made the evening news.

That would have been embarrassing to make the national news.

When I got back to camp, my friends told me “yeah…we heard you yelling…but we decided we couldn’t wait”. They were having a hard time, too…so decided to go on back to camp if they could push through the vegetation.

WTF.

Anyway….I guess it all worked out for the best.

I’m here, aren’t I?!

Sometimes being lost doesn’t mean that you’ll never find your way…sometimes it just means that it’s going to take a little longer to get where you want to go.

photo from here

It’s three thirty-six AM…and guess where I am?

Paragliding!!!!

No, that’s not true…that is a bold-faced lie and a major improbability.

I wouldn’t do that in the dark.

Who knows what could happen?

Something could happen.

What is really going on is that I couldn’t sleep.

I could probably sleep…my eyes are tired….I don’t think that there’s anything physical going on that would keep me from sleeping.

I should sleep.

I can’t sleep.

My mind is running around inside my head.

It’s like something needs to bust out.

We are working our way towards buying another place …another chunk of “place”…down the road from us.

It’s a piece of land that has a lot going for it….trees, fields, streams…a pond…barn…old farm house that needs a total rehab….easy access…some good additional building sites.

It has a lot of potential.

But all I can think when I wake up at three in the morning and start my “staring at the ceiling routine” is….“WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!”

WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!!!WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!!!!!

What if I can’t fix the electrical weirdness? What if the plumbing is weirdly inaccessible and I can’t even get to what I don’t know how to fix? What if there’s something living down in the “crawl space” and when I slither down into it to try and fix the plumbing something slithers up onto me? What if there is a bunch of Indians buried under the house and they get mad when I play my boombox too loud…or don’t like the sound of hammering? What if it takes me forever to figure out how to spell “inaccessible”? What if I “don’t know”? What if I “do know”…but can’t? What if I can’t?!! What if there is lead paint that I inhale or eat? What if the people around me eat lead paint? How would I deal with all this lead paint that people are eating? What if I stop caring about what’s happening to me after I eat all this lead paint?!! How about asbestos? How about that? Or the black mold? Or some guy who lives in the barn that I didn’t notice before who’s hard to evict?

WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?!!

What if I get so tired that I can’t even function like a normal human man should?!!

That kind of thought process will keep you up at night, for sure.

That’s some crazy stuff to think about.

But, you know…something is going to happen. Something always does. I can’t avoid it…no matter how many videos I’ve rented…no matter how many ways I’ve tried to divert the ever-charging influx of life and it’s influence on my… life…something is always going to be happening.

Good…or maybe occasionally bad…something always happens.

Maybe a better question…an even more terrifying one to add to my portfolio of dread…is “WHAT IF NOTHING HAPPENS?!!!”

What if I get to the end and someone says, “Well? How did it go?” and all I can say is something like, “Well…I guess it all went OK….I can’t really remember anything happening, really…but I guess that it went OK. It was alright, I guess.”

I guess it’s better to be able to say that something happened.

I still can’t sleep…but I guess it’s better that something is happening.

I do need to check that barn more carefully next time I go out there, though.

Oh my goodness….the things we learn about if the television is on.

The television is on sometimes at my house.

You should see all the cartoons that Netflix says I might like.

I know that somebody is watching some cartoons in my house…and it’s not always me.

Netflix wouldn’t suggest all this children’s programming if it was just me watching the television.

I can’t see that happening.

Here’s a picture from one of the stories that came on the television.

(Netflix had nothing to do with this story.)

This guy’s a fat old white man who owns a professional basketball team.

I imagine that he’s pretty wealthy.

He got mad that his young Asian mistress was hanging out with some players who happened to be black.

He called her and told her not to hang out with the black dudes.

Now he’s in a whole lot of trouble.

And to top it all off, I think that his wife is mad at him, too.

HIS WIFE IS MAD AT HIM, TOO.

Imagine that.

His wife is mad at him because he made some private comments in a phone call to his young Asian mistress about not wanting his young Asian mistress to hang out with the virile professional athletes who happened to be black.

I imagine that she might be mad at him for other reasons…reasons that were subtle and that I couldn’t read into the situation….maybe reasons like HIS YOUNG ASIAN MISTRESS THAT SHE FINALLY NOTICED ON THE JUMBOTRON SCREEN ABOVE THE COURT?!!!! FINALLY NOTICED IN ALL THE NEWSPAPER PICTURES?!!!

(Jenny is a little more on the ball than that…she’d say, “Who is that Asian girl who sits next to you at the games?” pretty quickly. She might even say, “Who is that Asian girl who sits next to you at the games?” She might even say, “WHO IS THAT ASIAN GIRL WHO SITS NEXT TO YOU AT THE GAMES?!!!!” She probably will say, “Why do you keep mentioning that Asian girl?” …and I’d have to tell her that the blog post was about that fat rich white racist professional sports team owner…not the Asian woman who was his mistress.)

What did he think was going to happen? And how many white dudes play in the NBA? Would he have been mad if she’d been hanging out with the white dudes? Would he have said, “Why you gotta publicize…or promote…that you’re hanging out with the white dudes?”

If he’d said, “Why are you promoting that you’re hanging out with the little Norwegian man? I don’t like it…stop that…” MY WIFE would be mad.

She might ask me if I knew anything about it.

How many little Norwegian men play professional basketball? Not many, I can assure you.

We can ski our butts off…but we’re usually not tall enough to play pro b-ball.

What a pain in the rear that would be to get called out for being not only a cheating old fat (RICH!!) white man…but also a RACIST cheating old fat (RICH!!) white man.

Haha…(like in the Simpsons)…haha.

It’s kind of funny in a sick way. What a sleaze bag. What a jealous old rich white man.

What a racist old rich white man….

What a jealous old RACIST.

I think that he’s a jealous old dude before he’s a racist old dude, though…the jealous part prompted the racist comments, maybe.

He’s a rich old sleazy lizard of a man…using his power to attract the women who are attracted to that sort of thing…and he got jealous when she had more fun hanging out with the studly athletes.

Whatever.

Who knows what makes the world go round?

It takes all kinds.

Even rich old racist lizard men.

Jenny always said that she wanted a two bathroom house….but I could never figure out how to swing it.

Our house was too small after I’d crammed a couple of decades worth of books into it…(and these kids?!! What is going on? Where are all these kids coming from?)… figuring out how to fit another “water closet” in somewhere was something that was a little bit out of my pay grade.

So you can imagine my pleasure to discover that the old farmhouse that sits on the land we’re considering buying came with two potties.

Finally.

Of course, one looks a little different (actually, most things connected to that old house are a little different…the bathtub’s in a separate building and has a wood heater connected to the tub that heats the water…I would probably need to move a bathtub into the house…)….and the potty that looks a little different is kind of a walk down to the barn.

I don’t know how you wash your hands after you use this one…or even how you flush. I didn’t see any kind of lever or anything to pull when you’re done and want to flush.

And why would you put a potty down by the barn? Maybe it’s for the people who work for you on the little farm? Maybe that’s their potty?

I’m really only kidding.

I know what this machine does.

Outhouses are pretty efficient…pretty simple.

A little house with a seat over a hole.

How much simpler could it get?

Unless it was a fancy composting toilet, you would not want one to be a featured member of your household. You really can’t put one of these in your house and enjoy the rest of your occupancy.

It’s something about the hole…and proper ventilation.

That’s probably why they put it down by the barn.

A long walk in midnight snow is a small price to pay to avoid having your house fill with mysterious odors.

If I built an “alternative house”…full of building code bending innovation, and Jenny kept asking, “Do you smell anything weird? I mean, it’s a bad smell for the inside of a house…a really funky smell. Do you smell it? I don’t know where it’s coming from…it smells like it’s coming from around the bathroom. Which one? I think it’s the upstairs bathroom…it smells worse than the one downstairs….”…I’d panic a little.

If Jenny made that observation, and I knew what I’d done with my lack of engineering expertise, it would be a hard thing to cover my tracks and just say, “What smell?! I don’t smell anything…”

I think that’s why they put it by the barn.

That little house is easier to move than a big house, too.

Outhouses are pretty efficient…and probably pretty “earth friendly”, too….if they’re constructed properly and sited away from water sources.

The one on this property is right by the barn.

But think about it…what a jump to go from a one bathroom home to a two bathroom home.

We’re moving on up…for sure.

This is an old TV that’s in the barn….I don’t think it works…and I do know that it’s not a third toilet.