Charlotte the Wonder Dog, making tea, and the dog park...
My friend Oren is wont to say "When making tea make tea" attributing it to Lao Tsu, but my first flirt with Google yielded no hits for the quote, so now I am inclined to think he just made it up. I like the sentiment behind Oren's proverb, but it brings to mind a day when all the kids were young and I was home schooling. I was stirring a big pot of soup, and thought to myself 'You stand here and stir while I go use the restroom,' only to realize there was only one of me. The tea is very good and I am trying to break from multi-tasking to fully enjoy it: "When drinking tea, drink tea."
Saturday, we took the dogs to the dog park. You cannot say the words 'dog park' in our house. The phrase is Charlotte's undoing. Her ears point, she spins, and then turns her head toward you with this intense eye contact that brings to mind heat seeking missiles. We tested her and you also cannot say anything that rhymes with dog park. Pog dark? Log stark? We had to stop trying out the variations and permutations because it was just too cruel getting her so wound up. (I was afraid she might turn herself inside-out.)
John cleared out the back of the van, moving all my bottle making paraphernalia up to the seats. The last row of seats is out of the car, leaving the rest of the back for the dogs to occupy. As soon as he opened the hatch Zuzu clamored to one of the two passenger seats, getting herself wedged between them with bags full of bottles lodged under her belly. She was virtually immobilized. After we dug her out, we moved all the stuff back to the hatch area and she and Charlotte each settled into a seat. Charlotte whined and yipped the entire way to the park. Chloe sat at my feet and kept trying to venture over to the driver's side floor, and Zuzu sat with impeccable manners, calmly enjoying the view. Once we arrived, Charlotte showed off her Frisbee skills. Zuzu can't catch the Frisbee, but she loves to help Charlotte bring it back. Charlotte finds this so annoying she sometimes refuses to play. Meanwhile, Chloe chased after the two of them, barking and snarling, large and in charge and willing to take on any dog in the park, including a pitbull named "Killer."
Charlotte the Wonder Dog (note Zuzu's lack of attention span)
Today I worked with the Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade at Altamonte Christian School. As I was cleaning up the paint and glitter I worried they might decide to expel my daughter. Tomorrow their 3-5 grade students will pitch in, and on Wednesday the high school (including my Natalie if she hasn't been kicked out) will assemble the ornaments. I'm holding my breath for Friday when I work with 80 fifth grade students at Lake Orienta Elementary. There should be a Ripley's for that, right?
Crankiness, gorgeous weather, and my zombie screenplay...
Zuzu breakfast, part II "Chloe goes first."
I've been super cranky the last few days. It it must be all the gorgeous weather coupled with my lack of a good 'excitement control valve'. Having imagined being a special needs teacher since I was in the third grade,so working with the kids at Edgewater was a dream come true. After two dreamy overly excited days, I crashed, and was slogging around like a zombie looking for a victim.
Speaking of zombies, I have the best storyline for a zombie movie: A 'greedy corporation' comes up with an agricultural formula for food that has no calories. People are wild for it, (no zombies yet, just people greedy for the skinny.) The more people eat, the thinner they become. After a honeymoon period of universal elegance, there being 'no such thing as too thin,' the corporation's plants cross pollinate with the nation's food supply and leave it with no nutritional value. Eventually, people start needing to fuel their bodies and you know the rest.
Which brings me back to yesterday's dark mood. I tried to shake it by working in my glass studio. I tried sitting in the sun, meditating, even reading a book on love. (I am enjoying Love Wins by Rob Bell.) I decided to make myself get out of the house and run errands. As I sat at a stop light grumbling that I don't want to be living in the city, too much traffic, blah blah blah, cuss cuss cuss my light turned green. I slowly entered the intersection and wiz BANG! a woman ran a red light, smashed into my front bumper, then swerved onto the median. I sat at the intersection so long, stunned and frozen and not knowing what to do, that the man behind me came to make sure I was OK. I was fine, just jittery. I pulled the car back into the parking lot and awaited the traffic police. Meanwhile, the woman who hit me left the scene in her left white 91 chevy with a dented right front bumper. (Maybe she fled because my eyes turned lime green, I was drooling, and she thought I was going to eat her. Tell it to the judge, sweetheart.) Thank you Guy in the Bright Red Pick-up, for bringing me her license plate number. And to think I was cursing big trucks as I was squeezing out of my car in a tight parking space earlier in the day.
ColdPlay is on the Today's show making me want to buy some low-tops and hop, skip, and spin around a stage. I love the sense of play they emanate. It reminds me of my 10-year-old Danielle, dressed in her terrycloth bathrobe, dancing in the rain. I will close on a very bright note: a couple more pictures I received from my friends at Edgewater.
