Sage Advice

 ***My 24-Second Blizzard Video***

Here is a piece of advice for each of you who drives down my street and at some point gets stuck: stay home. Where are you going, to pick up some maple syrup for your Saturday morning pancakes?

It's snowing here, a lot, already at least a foot already with six more hours to come. It is snowing hard, one to two inches per hour, those in the know say.

When I lived in Tahoe, being that lake level is at 6,250 feet, it snowed a ton, about 125 inches per year. At the higher elevations, that number measures at 500 inches. For comparison, the Twin Cities comes in at about 45 inches per year. What we are having here today in the Twin Cities is what I recall as being a typical bona-fide snowstorm in Tahoe. We really didn't shrug if a snow was predicted to be less than a foot, to be honest. Snowplows in the form of road graders are abundant (they don't call snow emergencies there, they simply plow when it snows. Imagine that!), South Lake Tahoe itself is relatively flat, and studded tires and/or all-wheel/four-wheel drive took care of the rest. Aside from an epic storm that dumped six feet in 24 hours on us, I don't recall ever having my in-town travel adversely affected severely.

Now, for one winter, after I almost had a cap put in my ass at my in-town cabin and just had to move, I lived in Gardnerville, Nevada, which is over and down the mountain, a Sierra foothills community. It rests at about 4,700 feet above sea level, and to get from Tahoe to Gardnerville, you have to climb to Dagget Pass (elevation 7,334) and descend to Carson Valley. This is a nine percent grade on the way down, and all the way it is a winding two-lane highway that does not meet modern road specs.

So, don't drive it during a blizzard, right? Well, no. The thing of it is, a large number of people who work in Tahoe live in the Carson Valley, and with snow occurring so frequently, you essentially sign up for very treacherous commutes. For the six months I lived in the Valley (I always worked in Tahoe), I made numerous horrific commutes. I drove a 1984 Saab 900T back in that day, and it was equipped with studded tires (purchased at Les Schwab Tires in Carson City, where you get free beef!), and while grip generally wasn't a problem, clearance could be another story. During a typical blizzard, visibility was wicked bad. I remember one trip in particular that was far and away the most insane driving conditions I ever embarked upon. Triple the time as normal, I made it, and honestly I decided it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever done.

The beauty of landing in the Valley is that frequently, it isn't even snowing there while Tahoe is getting pounded. It's like a little party when you hit the Valley floor. On the flip side, some days you'd be basking in sunny 50 degree weather in the Valley, only to hit a big ol' snowstorm as you got higher on the grade heading to Tahoe.

Work beckoned, so we had to make some difficult trips. Living down there was not an acceptable excuse for not showing up to work. Too many people lived down there, and if they all called in on such days . . . well you can visualize the problem for a busy casino operation.

For that reason, I strongly empathize and sympathize with people who have to work today. Many places have closed, including the entire University of Minnesota campus in about a half-hour, so that undoubtedly gives many a reprieve from having to venture out. Hotel workers and the like though, well they're just screwed. The good thing about hotels is that they have lodging at their disposal, so perhaps that's an option for their hard workers. Tahoe casino/hotels would occasionally offer that option to their workers: Stay the night. I believe it was free, but if not it was dirt cheap. I never did that, stayed at the hotel overnight.

As I type this, the University of Minnesota men's basketball team is playing, in town. Surprisingly, there is a decent crowd there. I was entertaining the idea of heading to the U of M hockey game tonight, but mercifully it is postponed. If I could even get there, it would take four or five times the normal amount of travel time.

A quick shout-out to both cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, for calling snow emergencies this morning rather than waiting till the snow stops, as they usually do. Residential plowing starts at about nine o'clock tonight, and word on the street is that plows are already out working on arterial streets. This is one very valid use of our tax dollars, in my view.

Down on the farm, each time it rains, people get on the phone. How much rain did you get? It's a must-know for everyone in a rural area. I venture that today Minnesota phone circuits and towers are busy, and I imagine they will get even busier once the snow stops. How much snow did you get? The question at the moment though is, when will it stop?

Juicy

Today is Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. I typically enter the Monday workday feeling alright, but it soon becomes painfully obvious my mental capacity resembles that of a concussed man. Too much alcohol, pills, or smack you might ask? Negative, it's just the way I am.

A natural result of this brain-dead-um is that my production and efficiency is off a bit on Mondays, though it doesn't take much adrenaline to shoot me to the moon, though it takes more on Monday than any other day of the week. I'm a trooper, though, always saying to myself, "Just do your best, Chad."

So today I did my best. I drove to work, which always makes me sad--driving, not so much going to work--but I did so with good reason. Then I worked, because that's what I do on some level every time I get to work, after I eat a little breakfast from the ACES World Headquarters Commissary.

It was rainy and dark today, so it was dark in my office, lit only by a desk lamp rather than firing up the urine-stained lights overhead in my office. I got enough done, though I'm still at a draft point with something I'd rather be at a final draft point on.

I listened to some tunes today, some college radio music something on my (free) Sirius on the way to work, and a little 89.3 The Current while at work. I took off around 4:30, so I could give blood at a neighborhood blood drive. I needed to stop by the hardware and get some fake road salt stuff, because this rain today will freeze tomorrow. And the safety of the people is my utmost concern.

I gave blood, noticing that everyone continues to look familiar to me but I actually know none of them. It doesn't seem I've been around quite long enough for everyone to seem familiar, but who knows. I'll be more concerned when everyone smells the same.

Ever notice how over your life you will see people here and there who look the same as someone you saw, like, 20 years ago and 1,343 miles away? It's kind of like there are "styles" of people--not clothes style but face styles or something. It's weird.

There was a girl at the blood drive who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.

I gave blood, some sort of double plasma reverse scenario, where they suck twice as much blood out, steal the red blood cells, then squirt it all back into you plus some saline. It made my face tingle and my head sizzle, fo' shizzle. Then I ate a taco and some mini Oreos. There are advantages to giving blood in a Catholic church, and having a taco bar at the ready is one of those.

Then I went home, and on my way home I heard "There There" by Radiohead (here's an acoustic version) on the college station. That was sweet.

"Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there. There There."

Amen.

It's warm here, about 40 degrees. So I went home and decided to walk up to the coffee shop to grab some beans, so I did that. Then I came home, did my chores, heard "Down by the River" by The Decemberists for about the sixth time and really noticed the twanging REM-esque rhythmic guitar, which is awesome. Then I sat my tail down to read and watch a little basketball, for like nine minutes. Now I am blogging.

Next up, season two episode seven of The Wire. Then sleep. Maybe.

It's a good life. Tomorrow I will "not drive" (which means bike or transit, tomorrow transit) to work for the 95th time this calendar year. My goal is 100, so I'm almost there. At work I will meet early with Mike D, of the Beastie Boys, 'cause he's super smart and volunteered to help me out with a PowerPoint proposal I am working on. We'll do fine work, and he and I will both feel good about ourselves as we progress through our respective days.

Then I'll roam about the darkened downtown of Minneapolis till the lights guide me home.

Best Friends

Bernie was the best friend I could ever ask for, and I look forward to acquiring a new canine best friend very soon.

Today though, I got to be the best friend. I stopped by one of our school programs, as I do occasionally but not as much as I would like. Eventually I sat down with Bryan and Jose, two fourth graders at Maxfield Elementary in St. Paul. Bryan asked me if I used to be a cop, and I laughed and said no. I asked him and Jose if they like cops, both said yes--which is good and not always the answer you get from our students. I asked Bryan if he ever thought about being a cop when he gets older, and he said yes. I encouraged him to do so, and told him I thought he'd make an excellent cop.

Bryan and Jose were both working on math, and I was impressed with the complexity of their assignment. The wonderful world of media does a good job of brainwashing us that kids from certain segments of society are dumb. This is false.

Bryan was pretty well into his work, and you could tell he is quite sharp and all he needed was a little repetition, repetition, repetition to be extremely adept. Jose had finished his worksheet, and eventually I asked if I could see it. A large portion of his answers were incorrect.

So I worked with them both, having them talk me through the problems until they led me to the answer. Jose is easily distracted, and I told him he seemed like the type of guy who just liked to fill in his worksheet so he could move on to something more fun. He said I was correct. Jose is certainly smart enough, he just needs to focus and slow down, so we talked about that. He settled in nicely soon after.

Within a half hour, we had finished both of their worksheets and talked about many things, including how important school work is. I didn't want to leave, but I needed to get to our other school. In fact, I kept saying, two more minutes, two more minutes. I wanted to stay and help, not only Bryan and Jose, but several others who were looking for some assistance.

The world needs more tutors, people like you. The positive influence a caring adult can have on a child and student is immeasurable. Too many kids are fully capable but have no support outside of their classroom teachers, who have 30 kids to work with at once. Each of us has the opportunity to make a significant difference in a young person's life and within your community, all in just a few minutes a week. Not near enough of us seize upon that opportunity.

As I said goodbye to Bryan and Jose, they both said, "Thank you for coming to help us today."

All three of us had new best friends on this day.

J to the J

A couple weeks ago I was walking in downtown Minneapolis with a friend, Josh, who shall remain nameless, when I told him to follow me. I headed down an alley tucked between a Radisson Hotel and a restaurant. Of course, Josh knows me well enough to question my every move, which he did then, but I just said, "Follow me. Pay attention to what you see."

We walked down the alley, it's about 50 yards long, then turned the corner, where there is a roughly 50x60-feet loading dock a 90-degree turn from the alley. It isn't really a loading dock, though it serves that purpose. It's really just a big covered slab of concrete. It's where my first-ever FedEx stop was. From there, I delivered to the 45 S 7th St office tower and to the Radisson. Hotels, by the way, suck to deliver to, because people think it's really important to ship as much heavy and big crap as possible to join them during their hotel stay. Love your courier, please don't be that person.

Anyway, I explained to Josh what we were doing in this alley, and for the record yes it smells like pee. "The thing of it is, Josh, is that this is where my first FedEx stop was," I said.

Now, a 50x60 area may seem like plenty of room to maneuver a FedEx truck, but really, when you're a rookie, the hotel is in the midst of renovation and there are literally hundreds of mattresses stacked everywhere--plus there are like five extra huge dumpsters sitting around--maneuvering that truck within sucked. Not to mention, there are always other trucks there, which caused problems I won't even get into, because I'm sure you have enough problems to ponder right now.

Anyway, you basically pull into the alley forward from 7th Street, drive down it to the dumpster, back up at the 90-degree turn, to the loading dock. There was so much stuff in the area, though, that it wasn't that easy. A one-point turn ended up being a three- or four-point turn. To complicate matters, this area is where the smokers congregate, and of course the fact someone is trying to maneuver a big truck in such a cluster-f*ck of an area gives them reason to celebrate--they get to concentrate on you rather than the fact they are standing in a pee-smelling, dirty loading dock to smoke.

Eyes are watching.

Fortunately, I had Joe. Joe is a hilarious man who trained me on-road for the first three days on my route, route 24 (at this time, route 24 out of the MIC station of FedEx covered 35 S 7th, 45 S 7th, 800 Lasalle, and Dayton's--though I think it was already Marshall Field's by that time, though we called it Dayton's, always Dayton's. Two things about Joe: He always has a pick sticking out of his 'fro, and he had the uncanny ability to disappear, vanish, when you need him most. The good thing about Joe is that for the first day or two, he did the driving, if not all of it at least the parts where we had to navigate stinky, tight alleys and loading docks. For at least three days, Joe was my best friend.

I don't remember what Josh's reaction to the visual I provided him was, probably because I wasn't paying attention, but all I could think when I looked around at my defeated challenge was, "Ha. What a piece of cake. I could navigate this now blindfolded."

I might take-out a smoker in the process, but hey, at least then the glaring eyes would be reduced by two.

The New Meaning of Time

So in August, 2002, I reported for FedEx Express (the original and your favorite FedEx entity) corporate training. It was two weeks long, I think, Monday through Friday, 7am till 4pm. You spent a week reading, listening, doing funny little exercises on the computer. In fact, I believe you had to test-out at the end of each day. The last few days of training were actually driving. I don't remember so much my first time driving that truck--it's the standard FedEx truck you see a zillion times a year on the road and in about every movie ever filmed in the United States--though I do remember our trainer, Bill I think his name is, teaching us how to do a pre-trip inspection on the vehicle. DOT rules require all commercial trucks undergo a "pre-trip" every day. My hunch is there are lots of trucks that hit the road each day without a pre-trip, but I speak from experience when I say that FedEx drivers do one every day. We were given four minutes each day to do so. A lot of our training time was spent on learning to use the ever-present tracker in the hands of FedEx couriers. In time, you go from an infant unsuccessfully trying to squeeze a square into the circle of that octagon-toy thingie to a fire-juggling magician with it. I say with full confidence that now, four years after I left FedEx, I could still adeptly perform a DEL, PKP, REX, and on and on with that tracker, each in a matter of seconds. It becomes an additional appendage.

At some point during the training, you go to your station to do a ride-along with a current courier. Each courier is assigned to a station, each station covers a specified geographic area. I was assigned to MIC, which I chose. MIC covered downtown Minneapolis and that's about it, and there were 75ish couriers at the station, delivery (morning/afternoon) and pickup (afternoon/evening) combined. I was a delivery courier, which is why half of the year I reported to work in the morning darkness. The ride-along happened early in the training, the premise being that if you were going to freak out and walk away, better to have you do it then than after FedEx had invested a week or two of training in you already. So you show up for the ride-along right in the middle of the sort. Now, the sort is when all of the packages come off the trucks, which come from the airport--in our case from FedEx's Memphis and Indianapolis hubs. Big "cans" of packages are emptied onto conveyor belts, and the appropriate courier picks off his/her packages, loads them onto the truck in the proper place, repeat, repeat, repeat. The sort takes about an hour, depending on volume. On a typical day, I would deliver 250 pieces of freight between 830 and 1030am, spread among 30 or so stops.

Upon first sight, the sort is chaos or artistic, or both. Either way, it is choreographically-mesmerizing collection of movement. You really have no idea, oh the fun.

You leave the station after the sort, at about 8am, your entire truck to be emptied by 10:30am--or your crap is free, of course. It seems like a perfectly impossible task at first. I did my ride along with a super-cute woman, on route 22, which covered three high rises in downtown Minneapolis--hence the "vertical market" term. This woman, Rose we'll call her, walks faster than you could ever imagine a five-feet-tall woman being capable of. She called it her "FedEx walk". Sometimes, she said, she'd be shopping with her kids or what have you, inadvertently slip into her "FedEx walk", and soon after discover her kids about 100 yards behind her, feverishly trying to catch up to mommy. On that day, Chad was feverishly trying to keep up with Rose.

The first thing you notice when you work for FedEx--they are very serious about this time thing. Our schedules were computer generated based on volume projections and various data that is recorded each day. So, one week's start times for Monday through Friday might look something like this: 6:44, 6:24, 6:20, 6:23, 6:20. Seriously. You are paid from that time, even if you punch in a couple minutes early. You have four minutes to do your a pre-trip (if I remember correctly, it was six minutes when I started the job but not long after reduced to four minutes--time is money, yeah?). At the end of the four minutes, somebody with a really loud voice yells, "Stretch n Flex," and we all report to an area and stretch, and flex. Almost all did so, and if not enthusiastically did so with good intentions. You need to, for you are about to lift more shit and bounce in and out of a truck more times in that one day than most people do in their entire lives, lucky for them. Stretch n Flex was five minutes, then you go to your truck--better get there fast, for the belt starts about 60 seconds later. The sort starts, and there is no other way to put it: The sort sucks. It is fast, strenuous, stressful, painful, your coffee gets cold before you can drink it, and the whole thing makes you wonder what the hell you are doing, this job! The speed of the conveyor belt is determined by industrial engineers based on belt length, average volume, and the upper limit of how much humans can be bled to pull crap--your crap, people--off the belt, put it in the truck, and get back to the belt. As a rule, you don't want to let something of yours pass you by. That stuff goes on the re-run cart, which goes back to the top of the belt, and yeah, people yell if there are too many re-runs.

The trickiest part of all this is not so much identifying, by address, your stuff while it moves by you on the belt (though that's really hard when you're new and haven't memorized all the addresses on your route), but getting it into your truck in the exact right place, some sort of order you and only you understand so you can grab it at its destination in an efficient manner. If you mess this up, you will forget about the misplaced package, it won't get where it needs to be on time, and you will have a "late". Lates are bad, very bad.

Done with training, it was time to report to duty. No doubt, I was nervous as hell. Clearly, in many, many ways it is not an easy job, particularly for newbies. I had to learn the procedures, drive a big truck in a brand-new city to me, learn how to meet what seemed like a crazy deadline, all starting at the ripe ol' hour of 6am-ish in the morning. I didn't know what to think. How would you like to be plunked into, say, Cleveland, given a big truck full of crap, and be told, "Deliver all this to the right place within two hours." Yeah, that's what I thought you'd think. . . .

This Is It

Today, it's July 7. Nine years ago today, Bernie and I arrived here in Minnesota, "forever." It struck me today in casual conversation that today, July 7, is my moving anniversary.

It's been a good nine years, very strange at times but good all in all. Let's see, I moved here to be an editor at a book publisher, which is what I did during my two years in Sacramento. Now my Minnesota book publisher experience only lasted a year, which was long enough for me, but I still have several friends in people I met at that job. So I retired from that gig and did some freelancing. Bowing to the man, I also took a part-time gig with FedEx to have medical benefits, a bit of steady income, and to get off my ass--I really loathe working at a desk.

Not long into the freelance/FedEx experiment, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. This is where things got really chaotic and interesting for me. For the better part of three years, I got my tail out of bed at 530am everyday for my courier route(s) in downtown Minneapolis, went to school, and interned at several places, including the sports information department at the U of M, which sounds way more interesting than it actually was. I also helped a cat start a sport management company, including creating all the content for this website. The jewel of that company is this cycling team. Not long after I finished school, I dropped my FedEx gig and traded my working-for-free spirit for a working-for-almost-free spirt, celebrating that by taking a full-time gig at ACES, the nonprofit where I work now. I worked as a program coordinator in "rough and tumble" north Minneapolis for three years, then took on marketing and development, now I'm the executive director. The chaos continues.

I'm not sure how half of that stuff ever happened. Behind each of those endeavors is a story, for sure. Like, you'd never guess how I became interested in nonprofits, and you'd probably never guess my thoughts on working for FedEx in the "vertical market" of downtown Minneapolis' business district. Let's talk about that. Next time.

And before next time, I hope to find a pic to post here from July 7, 2001. I've seen it recently, I just can't remember where. So I'll look. For today though, happy anniversary to me!

Bright Light

I put the cards away today, Bernie's sympathy cards. Today I saw a spot in the basement good for them, as opposed to their 18-month home in my main room, so tonight I transitioned them.

I'm big about moving on, from both good and bad. Progress, that's always what matters, progress. I have progressed a bunch since I lost my little buddy, it's a completely new life for me. I had a great life, have a great life, but it's now completely different. Determined to progress, I've resisted getting another dog and will continue to. It's the easy way out for me, to get another.

The cards don't make me sad. I'm always a bit sad about that, longing, though it's usually tucked away somewhere within. It's an emotional topic, the disappearance of something or someone from your life, and the disappearance of a life itself with it. What those cards represent illicits nothing that isn't there already.

Among the sympathy cards were others, happier cards. I looked at some, some generated emotion as I browsed them all and read some. New emotion where apparently a void had been. I wondered, where has this emotion been? I should have been warmer, but it just didn't hold.

So the sympathy cards are in the basement. Maybe the history they represent is a little farther, maybe even a little healthier distance away. My heart a little more open.

Up, Down, Up

I was on Twitter today. This is notable in that I hadn't been on since Friday, six full days ago. Are you on Twitter? I'm not necessarily going to say you should be, but it is a decent way to connect with people and things, like restaurants, you normally wouldn't "converse" with. It's a great way for businesses, nonprofits, etc. to keep up with their audience, though of course for that to work you have to have an audience--that would be you. I have a pet peeve about Twitter, in that a lot of people simply use it as an instant messaging device--tweet something, receive a tweet, move on. The beauty of Twitter lies in "retweets," where you can not only enjoy and learn from the people you follow, but you can spread (retweet) the word to your followers. This is where the networking part of social networking comes into play, in my view. So retweet, people.

I'm on Twitter every day. I'm smarter from reading newspapers than as a result of my twenty years of formal education, and if you follow the right things on Twitter, it can be like one big newspaper for ya. Everything that gets publicized about Twitter is the silly stuff. In my opinion, Facebook is far sillier than Twitter.

Of course, any new information platform means more of just that, information. I don't really need more information. I need less information and more time to ponder the information I do receive. The flip side is, on Twitter you can more or less choose the type of information you receive. You buy a newspaper, and the information is prescribed, and if you know me you know that I don't need a recap of the previous night's "American Idol" in print staring at me. Nothing, though, will ever eclipse the anticipation I get from opening a fresh Times. A long time ago, I thought it was silly that people who didn't live in New York read The New York Times--just like you may think now that Twitter is silly.

So I shut it off after work Friday, I do use Twitter for work, with plans of course to reboot far before six days passed. Then I barfed--often and tons, six pounds worth of my physical being, as a matter of fact. Sunday night, Monday. Is there anything more cathartic, physically and emotionally, than involuntarily retching all that you got? Somehow I feel like more than "stuff" was purged from my being.

Finally, today I re-launched Tweet Deck. I must feel better, and certainly in more ways than one I've felt less overloaded the past six days. Let us now, though, let the information binge begin again.

Up

***Bernie always had an eye or two on me, for good reason.***

I grew up in St. Louis, which is on the Mississippi River of course. I live in St. Paul and work in Minneapolis, which are split by the Mississippi River. In fact, the river runs both just west and just east of my house, and I guess south, in an interesting twist, pun intended.

That means there are lots of bridges here, and as we all found out in August 2008, there apparently are too many bridges to keep them all up to snuff.

So yes, living in one city and working in the other, I cross lots of bridges, though oddly, to get to work by car, I don’t cross the river. By bike, I cross the river. By bus/train, I cross the river. Weird, huh? Look at a map, figure it out.

All that hooey aside, I cross lots of bridges over the Ol’ Miss, the Mighty Miss. I cross them by car, while on bike, and occasionally on foot.

Bridges here are tall, some of them very high off the water. The High Bridge in St. Paul is probably the highest, color you surprised. The Ford Bridge, Franklin Bridge, Lake St. Bridge are super high—freakishly high when you’re on bike or foot. The Washington Ave. Bridge, Third Ave. Bridge, Hennepin Ave. Bridge don’t seem as high, in my mind’s eye.

There are a fair amount of jumpers here. I don’t remember there being that many in St. Louis while I lived there, but maybe there were. One big difference between here and there is that come spring in these parts, once the river thaws, up pop dead bodies, seems like you read about at least a half dozen a year that magically appear in April. Sometimes suicides, sometimes not, sometimes no one knows.

I’m not going to jump off a bridge, any bridge. Talk about a regrettable moment, when you are flying through the air there is no turning back, so I guess you just grin and splat. There is something, though, very weird about walking these enormous bridges. All of these bridges I speak of are in the city, so at night when walking across, your head is on a swivel, looking over your shoulders often for the man or woman who is undoubtedly sneaking up on you, surely capable of hoisting you to the rail, and determined to fold you over into the cold, cold river.

It happens, people, it happens.

What's worse is the magnetism. There is a pull from the river when you walk a bridge. Walk a high bridge, do it. Feel it. It pulls you to the rail’s edge, so much so that I find myself moving in the opposite direction, further from the bridge edge and closer to the road, against the pull. A vertigo of the conscience, perhaps.

I always feel victorious when I reach the other side, relieved to escape the mean man or woman behind me, the mean man within, and the mean old man river.

Frozen

 ***Rabbits, plinkity plink***

While walking Bernie seven or eight years ago, I came across a man down the street a ways. We talked for a minute, he mentioned his dog. She had died ten years before, "I still miss that dog every day." Yesterday, I started a book and within the first three pages, the author fondly recollected about a dog, one whom he misses. The dog died 40 years prior, and despite having several fantastic canine companions since, he still misses that one dog.

There are bunches of people whom I grew up with that I have not seen since we graduated high school. Others I saw sporadically through our college years, and there are only a handful I've spent time with post-college, since I moved far, faraway. Not frequently but regularly I have dreams about my hometown and the characters within. The people in those dreams, they are all still of school age, teenagers forever in my mind. There are times, relatively frequently, when I dream of someone I have not seen since grade school. Depending on who you are, you just might be one of these people.

I still dream about Bernie, how often I'm not sure but more than once a week. As I have said, there will be no other dog to me like Bernie, no matter how many I have in my life. I do think in 40 years I will still miss her, and I will still dream of her . . . me and her circa the 1990s and early millennium. Memories, fond ones, all frozen in time.

Crime & Punishment

***Bernie enjoyed her time behind bars.***

I’ve always read about crime . . . started reading newspapers, specifically the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, when I was young, in elementary school. The Sports section was, and still is, first, followed by the Metro section, I think it was/is called, same as the Local section in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which is my local paper these days. Doesn’t matter which paper, which city, I always read the “local” section, it’s where all of the nitty gritty crime and punishment details appear, not to mention car accidents as well.

So I’ve been reading newspapers for quite some time, daily or more than one in a day often. That’s a lot of crime--evil, confusing shit that people do, and a lot of prison sentences to go along. I hope but am not sure that the things people do are things they ultimately regret, even if the regret sprouts from the wrong seed.

For the life of me I cannot wrap my mind around a person hearing from a judge, “I sentence you to life in prison without the possibility of parole.” I mean, when you’re young, like 19, that’s just a ridiculous amount of time to be locked up as a prisoner. When you’re older, say 40, well, it really isn’t much better: You know what you’ll be missing.

Lately, in regard to crime and punishment in the newspaper, I’ve noticed myself glancing over these articles more and more. “Man Arrested for This,” “Woman Sentenced for This” and on and on, blah blah. Honestly, not much surprises me anymore when it comes to such things. More of it saddens me, though.

White collar crime—the Bernie Maidoff, Tom Petters, Denny Hecker—that stuff really kind of flips me out, though. I don’t understand and I fall completely on the other side, believing that money beyond covering your basic needs and a few simple pleasures can be the most overrated and poisonous substance known to humans, aside from alcohol and tobacco, which of course are legal only because of money. Talk about smoke and mirrors, the love of money.

These dudes, the ones with the dirty white collars, see money as a shining light to run and run and run toward, the light getting farther and farther the faster and faster you run toward it. 

"He dropped the mallet then the judge laughed." (Ice T, "Drama")

Home

Not much on my mind today as I prepare for my secret mission. You'll hear from me this week with some flavorful original content. Till then, munch on this. And oh, if you like dog blogs, follow this one. Peace . . .

[Her:]
Alabama, Arkansas,
I do love my ma and pa,
Not the way that I do love you.

[Him:]
Holy, Moley, me, oh my,
You're the apple of my eye,
Girl I've never loved one like you.

[Her:]
Man oh man you're my best friend,
I scream it to the nothingness,
There ain't nothing that I need.

[Him:]
Well, hot and heavy, pumpkin pie,
Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ,
Ain't nothing please me more than you.

[Both:]
Ahh Home. Let me come home
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Ahh Home. Let me go ho-oh-ome.
Home is wherever I'm with you.

La, la, la, la, take me home.
Mother, I'm coming home.

[Him:]
I'll follow you into the park,
Through the jungle through the dark,
Girl I never loved one like you.

[Her:]
Moats and boats and waterfalls,
Alley-ways and pay phone calls,
I've been everywhere with you.

[Him:]
We laugh until we think we’ll die,
Barefoot on a summer night
Nothin’ new is sweeter than with you

[Her:]
And in the streets you run afree,
Like it's only you and me,
Geeze, you're something to see.

[Both:]
Ahh Home. Let me go home.
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Ahh Home. Let me go ho-oh-ome.
Home is wherever I'm with you.

La, la, la, la, take me home.
Daddy, I'm coming home.

(Talking)
Him: Jade
Her: Alexander
Him: Do you remember that day you fell outta my window?
Her: I sure do, you came jumping out after me.
Him: Well, you fell on the concrete, nearly broke your ass, you were bleeding all over the place and I rushed you out to the hospital, you remember that?
Her: Yes I do.
Him: Well there's something I never told you about that night.
Her: What didn't you tell me?
Him: While you were sitting in the backseat smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deeply in love with you, and I never told you til just now.

[Both:]
Ahh Home. Let me go home.
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Ahh Home. Let me go ho-oh-ome.
Home is where I'm alone with you.

[Him:]
Home. Let me come home.
Home is wherever I'm with you.

[Her:]
Ahh home. Yes I am ho-oh-ome.
Home is when I'm alone with you.

[Her:]
Alabama, Arkansas,
I do love my ma and pa...
Moats and boats and waterfalls,
Alley-ways and pay phone calls...

[Both:]
Ahh Home. Let me go home.
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Ahh Home. Let me go ho-oh-ome.
Home is where I'm alone with you... 

Twins Fan

The thing about writing, for me, is that my best stuff never makes it on "paper." It's stream-of-thought randomness when I'm riding my bike. Or when I've had just enough coffee, my brain moving at the perfect clip--genius. I wrote the best speech the other day, for me to give in a couple months--problem is, I was half sleeping when I "wrote" it. No one will ever hear it.

Once I sit down in front of a computer, my words simply don't melt together with the same brilliance, as you are well aware.

Really though, it isn't a problem.

For the first time in my life, I am a Twins fan. That isn't a problem, either. I am a born and bred and shameless (except for that whole McGwire thing) St. Louis Cardinals fan--and pre-InBev Anheuser-Busch groupie, too--and that will always trump the little team that could, the Twinkies. Al-ways. Rhymes with Al-bert.

Actually, you have to throw all of those cute little criticisms like Twinkies out. Now.

The Twins have a REAL stadium, Target (what else?) Field, maybe even the bestest of the modern era stadiums, I shall see next weekend--against the Cardinals, mind you. They have Mauer. They have Morneau. They have Span. They don't have the Metrodome. They will soon have many more real fans--you know, people who will brave some elements and pay attention to the game.

Question: Why is Joe Nathan on the 40-man roster? Please tell me it isn't for some sappy sentimental B.S. Regardless, get well soon Joe.

Seriously, folks, this is a good team, and it has been for a few years. It is a real baseball team and organization. This will be my ninth baseball season in Minnesota. Now until recently--like, last year--I referred to Twins fans as the biggest suckers in baseball. This was an educated baseball observation from a guy who is from a true baseball town. You see, the Twins had one of the richest baseball owners yet the organization typically spent just enough to make the team just good enough--but not quite good enough. Blame it on the big bad Yankees? Ha.

"We're small market." Uh, you're bigger market than St. Louis. Smaller win totals, yes, smaller market, no.

Suckers.

Enter 2010, enter Target Field, enter Joe Mauer here for the long haul, enter $100 million payroll--who doesn't like a big fat payroll, eh?--enter a team even Chad can root for, though I'll never ask Bert to circle me or crave Dan Gladden's commentary.

I know, we lost to them in 1987. Blah blah. I'm still way more pissed at Don Denkinger than I ever was about the Twins. Funny story . . . I went to the Final Four at the Metrodome a few years ago, sat in the top row. On one of the pipes overhead was scrawled, "Cox Sucks." If you don't know to what that refers, you're too young to be reading this. Go to bed.

Anyway, here I am now a baseball fan in a hockey town--not a baseball town--but of course I am a hockey player, so it all works out. Maybe someday this will be a baseball town.

And I'm a Twins fan, though yes, there is still only one proper use for a Homer Hanky, and it ain't wavin' it at the ballpark.

So it is, with just two words left to say--and say 'em wth me: Pu-Jols.

Clocks

*** "I'm a clock-a rock-a, rockin' wit-da-rest." ***

It's been in our family for about 40 years. As children, we'd tear down our steps, banking left for the final four, and jump to ground level--stopping just in front of the clock, it ringing and rattling, like a growl. I'm not sure what the consequences would have been had a landing been "within" the clock, but I'm sure nobody would've been whistlin' dixie over shattered glass, a cut child, and a wounded grandfather clock.

It's a nice clock, maybe German and maybe 100 years old. That's what Brett the Clock Repairman said.

I was surprised the other night waking up to noise, a sick-clock noise, and a poor-for-sleeping smell. It was a sick-clock smell, I soon learned. I collected myself in the half-light of dawn, not quite scrambling to get out of bed but eager, wondering why my clock sounded sick and my house smelled.

Smoke, I saw it as soon as I landed at the bottom of the stairwell and turned left, one foot in the kitchen. Smoke from the clock, the sick clock. It's a big clock, a seven-feet-tall rectangle the size of a case of longneck beer bottles if you hugged it. I like the clock, but I can't say I've ever hugged it.

Where there's smoke you must stick your head in to find out why there is smoke. So I did that, the dong and chime wheezing all the while, probably from the smoke.

Why is my grandfather clock on fire?

It won't extinguish even though I'm sure it doesn't like water dumped all over it. I'll take it outside, to the backyard, hurl it out the door to rest there, sick from smoking and finally unable to injure others.

Now is my chance to hug the clock, hold time in my hands.

I can't though, not easily. It's big, not so much heavy but cumbersome. Wrestle it, to the floor. See why it's on fire. Fix the fire.

It's a heater, like a furnace. It has burners in it, the clock has natural gas burners, just like the massive furnace in my childhood basement with the blue flames I used to stare at, and hold slivers of wood to the flame.

My grandfather clock is a furnace of sorts, burners and everything.

Water doesn't help, it just keeps burning. Get it off the floor, drag it--drag it like a roll of carpet, heavy like a big tube of sand, but it will move. It has to move. A burning clock belongs outdoors.

I made the kitchen, made it to the kitchen. Two men, Somali men, my roommates I guess, pop from around the corner, looking at me, plain looks on their faces as to say, "Nothing unusual going on here." I nod to the back door.

They look at me, plain looks on their faces.

"Open the door!"

Door open, they walk, out the door. The door closes.

That's not helpful.

I put the big clock down, fire and smoke too. I have to open the door. I hear fire trucks. Not for me, it's just a furnace clock on fire, nobody knows but me--and my roommates.

We made it. Outside . . . clock, smoke, fire, and I, outside.

The fire trucks are here, they stopped, for me.

They can deal with the clock, right here in the grass. The clock is in the grass, right here.

Neighbors, all eyes up. Smoke, fire.

The roof is on fire?

Confusion, the confusion, it never stops. A fire impossible to put out.

Celebrated

***Caesars Tahoe; Stateline, Nevada. Only the name has changed.***

From April 1993 through August 1999, I worked at Caesars Tahoe. Needless to say, the entire experience was magical.

Seriously though, folks, there are three things people typically ask me about said occupation:

1. What is the secret to gambling? Answer: Don't play.
2. What is the weirdest thing that happened to you there? Answer: Tough call. Watching a guy take a leak in a slot machine coin try, in full view of everyone? An armed robbery in our casino? Seeing Patrick Swayze's penis? 
3. Did you ever meet anyone famous? Answer: Yes.

Now let's get something straight from the get-go: Celebrities are fine, but I've never really understood why we celebrate them. Give me some of your cash, bigshot, then we'll celebrate. Oh okay, some entertainers should be celebrated--Wayne Gretzky and Ronald McDonald, to name two, but generally I just don't care. I prefer to leave it at, I appreciate you entertaining me, Mr./Ms. Superfreak, but really, no, I don't want your autograph or to touch you.

That said, as a group over six years, the collection of these people that I met is fairly interesting. In fact, someday I will sit down and list them all, just because. The better list though is the group of non-celebrated characters I met along the way, believe you me. Those are the folks who will someday be characters in my short stories, whether they like it or not. Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Mario Lemieux, Dan Marino, Jack Wagner (I still have no idea who this plastic man is), Carmen Electra, Marty Schottenheimer, John Smoltz, Oscar de la Hoya, Charlie Sheen, Chris Isaac, Bobby Brown, blah blah blah are generally not half as attention grabbing as casino regulars George, Ralph, Carol, Frankie, Hal, et.al. are, though a couple in that celebrity list are pretty cool cats.

For the most part, though, it's the the nice, interesting average Joes met along the way that you remember.

My parents moved to Minnesota several years before I, so naturally I would visit from time to time. During one of those visits to Minnesota, my mother and I had lunch at the Union Depot in St. Paul, at a place called LeAnn Chin's--delicious Chinese food it was.

A year, maybe two, later, a nice woman seated in the VIP slot area at Caesars made a simple request, and being the customer service-centric man I am, I was happy to accommodate. In the process, I took her Emperor's Club (player-tracking) card, took a look at it and her account, and, well, it was a woman named LeAnn Chin. Her account listed her as from Minneapolis.

I always enjoy it when someone tells me they enjoyed something I was associated with, so I really wanted to compliment her on the delicious lemon chicken I had at her restaurant. Or was it her restaurant? I'm sure there is more than one woman named LeAnn Chin in the world, but in Minneapolis? So I returned to her, told her my story of eating at LeAnn Chin's in St. Paul, and asked if indeed she is THAT LeAnn Chin. She was, and we had a brief conversation about her, her restaurants, and when my fortune from her cookie would come to be. Very nice, soft-spoken woman.

For the record, she gambled at a very reasonable level for a woman of her means--and of course we the casino knew all about her means.

Anyway, LeAnn Chin died Wednesday, here's a nice recap of her life. While people outside of Minnesota likely have no idea who she is, everyone in Minnesota, and especially the Twin Cities, knows LeAnn Chin.

So, celebrity or average Joe? The latter to me, and those are the ones I remember.

Joe Mauer

***Oh I love this photo, I get so excited when it pops up as my desktop photo. (And sorry, City of Minneapolis, Bernie did not have a city license to play in your lovely Minnehaha Dog Park. Ha ha.)***

I've always been good about going to the dentist, you know, the every six-month thing. This is good because it is good and because I still have the tendency to put things in my mouth that technically you aren't supposed to put in your mouth. I had a dentist in Tahoe whose office was right on the lake, I mean primo--is that how you spell that?--land, you're sitting in the chair on the second or third floor, the lake in front of you. All water, it was like you were suspended over the lake. And I remembered sitting in that chair one time thinking, This is kind of cool, a world away from home, sitting in this bizarro setting for a dentist's office--right over the lake, like I am some sort of VIP dental patient.

Then there was Sacramento. I moved there on a whim, almost, knew nothing or no one, and at some point I had to find a dentist. So I did, somehow, no office over a lake at this dentist. It took the like five minutes to do the whole teeth cleaning thing. I was used to a half hour, maybe an hour. You sit, they look, they clean, they polish, and in between you spit a lot. Not Sacramento dentist, though. He looked, I think he flossed, then he said, "You're good to go." That was the only time I went to the dentist in Sacramento. I was there two years, so I guess I missed out on a couple cleanings.

Here in St. Paul, my dentist is four blocks from my house, so I walk there. I wish I lived somewhere I could walk about everywhere. I went to New York City last week, would be great to walk and ride a bike there all the time. Anyway, my hygienist here is from St. Petersburg, Russia. Her name is Nona. About five years ago, I was walking to my appointment, and my cell phone rang. It was this Eastern European accent talking. She said, "Is this Chad?" I said, "Yes." Terminator feminina said, "You are late." Apparently, my appointment was at one and I thought it was at 1:15. I'd never met Nona at that time, and I was scared. I thought she was going to chisel my mouth like Vladimir Tretiak would chisel my ankles if I was standing in his goal crease. Anyway, Nona is a gem, is still my hygienist. We have a great time every six months.

On to Joe Mauer. From time to time, you meet someone here who knows/knew Joe from childhood--he's from St. Paul, you know--and they have a good story about Joe. So a friend today told me a story from this past fall. Joe was hosting a mutual friend of his and my friend's roommate's bachelor party at his cabin up north this fall. So Mr. MVP all-everything baseball player was somehow put in charge of making all the arrangements for this bachelor weekend. So my friend's roomie gets this message on his cell phone, "Hey (whatever the guy's name is), this is Joe Mauer. I'm trying to make plans for the bachelor weekend and need to ask you a couple things."

So yeah, that's Joe Mauer, the guy who shows up with the Silver Bat and hits the tar out of the ball day in and day out, taking care of the nuts and bolts of a bachelor party weekend for a boyhood Minnesota buddy. That should answer the question of, Will he stay in Minnesota?

Uh, yeah.

"Back on the Shred Miss(ion)"

CR Johnson is an amazing skier with an great story. He died today in a skiing accident at Squaw Valley, in his hometown of Tahoe. I learned of his accident from Tahoe native and US women's skier Julia Macuso via Twitter.

This is an amazing vid of his story and skillz.

Bones

This is a favorite of mine. I used to love to take Bernie to Petco, where she would frequently snag a bone--or two--off the shelf. Enjoy.

I Have No Problems

No picture tonight, because I said so.

I have no problems. Sure, I need to replace my faucet, my roof, fix the dangling mirror on my car, that type of stuff. But I have no real problems.

I've watched "COPS" from the beginning. When I was a teenager, my mom would say, "Why do you watch that?" Something about a dude in a tank top, in cuffs, screaming his head off while blood runs down his face turned her off. I said, "Because it reminds me of what I do NOT want to become." So far so good.

I watch "Intervention," where individuals addicted to this, that, and everything else are profiled and, surprise!, at the end of the show are intervened with, to be whisked away to treatment should they consent. Most do, a few don't. Now, the whole addiction they are experiencing is a problem, yes, but what I've come to notice after watching that show faithfully every Monday for a year is that I don't have any problems. I'm not speaking of the addiction issue, I dodged all that yes. The real issue with these individuals is the underlying stuff that's going on in their lives. I mean, they have real problems, big stuff . . . things from their childhood, ridiculously stunted adolescence issues. Real problems. So I realize, I don't have any problems.

Now, that's not why I watch the show. I've always liked to vicariously live on the dark side, that's why I watch it. What the show shows, which I guess any good show does--it shows--is that these addictions are, well, not necessarily complex but multi-faceted. You have to treat the underlying issue before you can crack the addiction. Now, addiction is a disease, I buy that, but when someone drinks, for example, and it's all rooted back to some crazy traumatic event 17 years ago, is it a physiological disease? I guess maybe it's a mental disease. Anyway, the show definitely rids of the idea that addicts are just big ol' partiers. Layne Staley, former Alice in Chains lead singer, died of long-term heroin abuse/addiction, and he once said, and I paraphrase, "People just think I like to party. That's not it at all. I don't even feel anything." (He hated those people). Yet he still continued to use, till death. And lots of people traced the hell-bent demise of his addiction to the death of his girlfriend--heroin related. He had a real problem.

Anyway, I have no real problems, knock on wood. Life's good.

Tonic

 

Five o'clock, that's what time I woke up. Laid in bed till six, showered, spilled my morning Emergen-C cocktail all over my arm--post shower--and floor, at work before seven, sat, called into board meeting, was named executive director, finished board meeting, took care of business the rest of the day, hit a school site at four, toured and touted our program to funder--lobbying for 50Gs--drove over to Beth's, picked up Oliver the dog--Beth is packing food for Haitians--at Chipotle heard Radiohead "Faust Arp"

. . . Wakey wakey rise and shine
It's on again off again on again
Watch me fall like dominoes
In pretty patterns
Fingers in the blackbird pie
I'm tingling tingling tingling
It's what you feel not what you ought to
What you ought to,
Reasonable and sensible
Dead from the neck up
I guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed
We thought you had it in you
But no, no, no
For no real reason

Squeeze the tubes and empty bottles
I'll take a bow, take a bow, take a bow
It's what you feel not what you ought to
What you ought to,
The elephant that's in the room
Is tumbling, tumbling, tumbling
And duplicate and triplicate and
Plastic bags and
Duplicate and triplicate
Dead from the neck up
I guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed
We thought you had it in you
But no, no, no
Exactly where do you get off?
Is enough
Is enough
I love you but enough is enough,
Enough of that stuff
There's no real reason
You've got a handful of feathers
You're gonna melt into butter . . .

drove home to more Radiohead, home at 630, savored tacos and chips and guac, watched The Office,

Walk dog. iPod. All Radiohead. Long walk.

Tonic.

Memories

**Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre walks across the field after the NFC Championship NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010. AP Photo.**

I started to sit down a couple nights ago to rip on reminiscing, then a funny thing happened. I joined the, "You Know You Grew Up in Webster Groves When . . ." Facebook group, and I started recollecting. I didn't "indulge in reminiscence," as one dictionary defines reminiscing. I did, however, recall some funny incidents from my youth, recollections prompted by others' comments within said Facebook group. Like, melting crayons in the back of the classroom at Douglass Elementary School with Jim Biggs and Mark Pankoff, among others. There was a 1,000-degree radiator back there, and we spent the better time of the year putting it to good use. That was a "team" classroom, wherein you had two grades--and about 60 students--in one classroom, with two or three teachers. Somehow, we all learned our ABCs and 123s. This particular class was third grade for me, the other half fourth grade. I recollect.

There's a time and a place for sitting back and yearning for the days of yesteryear. I've just never really found that time or place. I learned a long time ago that if you fret over your getting older, you'd better watch out, 'cause ten years down the road, you're going to realize you weren't that old back then and you spent time in sorrow over nothing. Rarely has there been a day in my life when I didn't think better days and times were forthcoming, and just about every day I've lived has been pretty good.

Time goes by so fast that my life seems like a pretty compact series of events, all good, including today. I'm older but not old. I'm older than Brett Favre, beat him by seven months, though I'm sure this week he feels a heck of a lot older. I don't think he continues to play to regain past glory. I think he plays to find new glory, looking ahead rather than behind. I play hockey not because it is some form of arrested development but because I get better every time, and I love doing cool new stuff on the ice. One time, not too long ago, someone said to me, in regard to my still playing hockey regularly, that "you have to grow up sometime." That was one of the dumbest comments I've ever heard, so I moved on--forward.

There are periods of my life past that I would love to re-visit for fun, but there are not past times I yearn for. I like Facebook for communicating about today and what's coming, but not so much for what happened yesterday. Sometimes it feels as though you're in the midst of a clan of have-losts. I've always felt more like a will-gain.

Memories are good, you wouldn't want to be without them. I have good memories, and I think of them--and even dream of them--often. Maybe why I dream of them is because I don't verbalize them too frequently, unless it's a funny story or the like. Sometimes I tell them in a manner to intentionally sound old. I loathe the day I tell them and unintentionally sound old.

I guess memories are kind of like a good snowfall, a nice novelty from time to time but amazingly annoying in repeated doses.

I like old people, and I like hearing them tell stories of the past. I like history, and I think "simpler times" are appealing to everyone. I just don't like not-so-old people who sound old. Maybe that's cause I have an 85-year-old grandmother who can beat us all at Wii bowling, and a 91-year-old grandmother who makes me laugh every time I talk to her. I think it's safe to say they're both old, but I don't think of them as old. I think by that age you've figured out you'll be older tomorrow, so no reason to act like you're old today.

One of my favorite things about Bernie was she never acted old. Ready to play, every day.

Me, well, I'm pretty certain tomorrow will be an ever better day than today.

Kibbles n Bits

***This is an x-ray of Todd Fedoruk's face. Todd plays in the NHL. Note the titanium plates throughout and the posts where three of his front teeth should be. Scroll to the bottom if you'd like to see how Todd's face ended up like that.***

Sticking with the sports theme, we all knew Mark McGwire was more juiced than Newton, but we all owe him a big round of thanks for clearing up that all those big, fat, juicy home runs he hit were entirely the result of natural talent, not steroids. Let's ask someone else about that, say, Charles Yesalis, professor emeritus at Penn State and one of the country's foremost experts on steroids (AP). "If you have that God-given skill of hitting 100-mph fastaballs, and curveballs, and then you make that person bigger . . . take Bambi and Godzilla with the same skill level, who's going to hit the ball better?"

Of course, all this is Bud Selig's fault, probably the Player's Union too, for if baseball players would have been required to pee in a cup much sooner, none of this would've happened.

Speaking of urine, I was at the nice little coffee shop a couple blocks from my house yesterday, took a trip to the restroom, and some fine gentleman had pee'd all over the toilet seat--like, where a person sits down. I didn't have to sit but of course thought this sucked, especially since shop owner Steve had been savvy enough to install a little urinal in the restroom, so guys wouldn't pee on the toilet seat! So, not only did the perp pee with the seat down and all over it, he did so in a single-person bathroom that had a urinal two feet away. Are we in Wisconsin???

Speaking of Wisconsin, the Packers are idle this weekend. And the next. And the next . . .

Night night. Oh, don't forget to watch Todd Fedoruk fight.

Update: The Fedoruk fight is so gnarly, you can only watch it on YouTube 🤷,

The Lighter Side . . .

Yesterday & Today

A year ago last night was the last I slept with Bernie. That, of course, means today is the anniversary of me letting her romp on off to Puppy Heaven.

Really though, today for me is no different than the other 364. I think of her everyday, miss her most of the time. I put her doggie beds away a few months ago. Her leash still hangs where it always hangs, hasn't moved since I hung it one year ago. I put away my Christmas cards today, they were sitting on a bookshelf, as are the sympathy cards given to me a year ago. I thought about putting them away with the Christmas cards, but they're just so damned nice I left them. Most came from unexpected people, primarily neighbor folk who noticed her absence in my yard and inquired with other neighbors, I suppose. Good gossip, we'll call it.

I did take Bernie's clips of fur out today, around noon which was about the time she went to sleep a year ago. Oliver the dog was here with me, he liked the fur. I couldn't keep him away from it, truthfully, so it must still smell like a dog. It's still soft.

It snowed today. Probably one of the emptiest feelings I've ever had is when I came home from the vet last year, leash in hand with no dog on the end, and saw Bernie's paw prints from when I'd taken her to the vet less than an hour before. In a way you want to clean them away, but in a bigger way you want them there forever. She would've liked today here, cold and snowy, snow blowing everywhere. She would've laid outside and watch me clean the snow, her getting up occasionally to sniff around. Then we would've gone inside, her black outer coat covered with snow. I'd say, "Bernie's my little white dog," and I'd fetch one of her towels. We'd make a game out of drying her off. Then she'd shake, all fluffy again.

It doesn't seem like a year, couple months maybe. Time goes by fast, and since her loss is a peretual one, it will probably never seem like a year, or two, or five. She had a huge impact on my life, I did things I never would have done had I not had her. One thing I am sure of, certain, is that I'll never have another dog that was so much a part of me.

That is why Bernie is Bernie, and why I'll always have Bernie.

Home

To follow-up on the previous post, I'm certainly glad that Marley remains with his family. It begs an interesting question, what do you do with your dog when he or she passes on? Oh, their spirit carries on, but there is the tidy matter of the furry creature itself. Some bury, others cremate, and I suppose others just leave their beloved with the vet.

I don't know what we did with Frosty. Probably the latter, as this was about 25 years ago, and I think common practice was to do just that, say goodbye and leave it at that. Poochie, on the other hand, was my dog at the time she passed, so I had to decide what to do. Bernie, I, and Poochie lived in Tahoe at that time, and I had always thought about burying her in the mountains, where us three had spent several super years at play. However, the other side of that was that I knew someday I would be leaving Tahoe, and Poochie if I buried her there. The second negative, in my view, was the weather. Mountain storms can be wicked--big bad winds, wild snowfall, and general unpleasantness. I wouldn't want to be laying in the midst of one of those storms, and I'm sure Poochie wouldn't either. Plus, there are bears and coyotes out there! So I didn't bury her in the mountains.

I decided to have her cremated . . .

. . . in a "clean" kiln, meaning no other ashes were present. Then the remains are returned to you, your dog's and your dog's remains only, for you to do with as you please. Poochie was returned to me in a cedar box, with a nice memorial certificate. I thought of spreading her ashes in the mountains but decided against that, for the same reasons I didn't want to bury her in the mountains, mostly though because I didn't someday want to leave her in Tahoe all alone.

Bernie. Well, there was never any question that I'd do the same with Bernie, have her ashes returend to me. It's bad enough, of course, for your companion to exit to puppy heaven, but to me even worse if I didn't have the ever-lasting dog by my side.

So, Poochie and Bernie are both home, actually a few feet from me right now. They are in their original boxes, with clips of each dog's fur resting on top. I don't really do much with them, other than an occasional glance, sigh, and subsequent greeting to them. From time to time I'll touch the fur. Mostly, though, they're just there, exactly where I want them and they want to be.

Home.

Bringing Marley Home

Today I re-direct you to an update on Marley, the star creature of "Marley & Me."
Click the link below.

Bringing Marley Home | Parade.com

Nothing Runs Like a . . . Black Dog

***Dad bought this tractor in August 2005. Clearly, this was a really big deal to us Caruthers folk.***

I have family in southwest Missouri, farm country. As a kid, I'd spend a week or two each summer down there, 90 percent of that time on either my grandparents' John Deere lawnmower, similar to the one above, or on one of my grandfather, Uncle Tom, or Uncle Carl's REAL tractors, farming the fertile soil--black gold, we call it--of rural Missouri. I'd sit on one of the fenders and supervise, and was damned good at it.

I also enjoyed every second of it.

These days, I don't get on a big farm tractor very often. When I get the opportunity, though, I take it. For the first couple years after I moved to Minnesota, Bernie would accompany me on my visits to the farm. She had mixed feelings about that: Loved being outside and getting filthy and chasing critters and all that, but frequently voiced displeasure about having to sleep outside--more to the point, sleeping outside while I was inside. Had I pitched a tent in the front yard for myself, she would've gladly slept outside.

So back to the tractor. Bernie was ten years old now, so while still hearty, safe to say her spring chicken years were behind her. Well, Uncle Tom wanted to go move some hay or something exciting like that, and I just had to go. So I jumped on the fender of the tractor, and away Tom and I went. Along came Bernie, as there was no way she would let me escape the watch of her eyes. She started trotting on the gravel road behind the tractor, which I suppose was going 15 or 20 mph. We were going about two miles, and I seriously wondered whether the dog had the stamina to follow all the way. Honestly, I thought she might drop dead.

She didn't, though I think she might have walked the last bit and caught up with us again upon our return--I don't remember. I do know, though, that she carried on behind us in a nifty trot for far longer than you'd expect of a dog her size and age.

A big, strong heart Bernie had indeed.