My sister's cat can sleep anywhere

A cat followed my sister's Shih Tzu home from a walk about a year ago, so my sister adopted him.  Willy is part Maine Coon and can sleep anywhere.  Book shelves, tables, chair arms,

Mixing bowls,

He drinks from the fishbowl on the left.  And the fish doesn't mind. 

Or all but falling from a chair seat:

Mentors who changed my life - Rudy Emmel

I've met people who were so afraid of losing their jobs that they were stingy with their knowledge.

Then there are the people who freely share their knowledge with you hoping to make you a better, smarter person.

There are key people in my past that helped me become the person I am today. I'm not sure any of them know how big a difference they made in my life.

Rudy Emmel was a driver's education instructor back when schools taught driving. The class was divided into sections for the written driver's test, for simulator, and for actual driving. Mr. Emmel did not teach any of the sections for my class time.

I was acing simulator and the book work. I was not acing the driving.

The driving instructor I got was a gruff coach who shall remain nameless. He seemed irritated that my parents had never once taken me driving. Or that I was a girl.  Or both.

There were 3 of us girls in the driving section. I don't recall how either of them did. I only know that I was not learning as quickly and easily as he wanted.  It didn't help that he yelled at me whenever I made a mistake.

The final straw was when I was trying to do what he told me to.  Okay, maybe I was pissed off, but I was trying really hard to do what he asked. He stomped on his brake, stopping the car abruptly, and told me that I was done. He would not take me out driving again.

One of the girls in the back seat traded places with me and drove us back to the school.

I was going to flunk driver's ed. I would not be able to get my license at 16. I would have to wait until I was 18.

I was humiliated.

I was at a loss for what to do when I showed up for my next driving section. That's when Mr. Emmel took me aside and said he would teach me how to drive.

He took me out by myself and devoted the entire class time for the remainder of the semester to teaching me how to drive well enough to pass.

He was patient, and persistent, and explained things in a way that I understood. And he never raised his voice.

He even succeeded in teaching me to parallel park.

I don't know if he realized how important it was that he didn't treat me like I was stupid.

Driving was a step toward adulthood. Driving was freedom. Driving was the ability to get a job.

One of my many careers was driving a semi-truck.

I couldn't have done any of the things I've done without Rudy Emmel's compassion and patience.

Thank you.

THESE are the good old days - books

There seems to be a lot of nostalgia for the 50's and 60's, even the 70's.  Television shows, music all portray those days as if they were some golden age of civilization.  Like life was so much better back then, 

Well, I've been there.  Done that.

THESE are the good old days.

Books are a good example.  I love books.  I read a lot.  I can't eat unless I have something to read.  I have a book case full of books I haven't yet read.

And a Kindle full of books that I haven't yet read.  I am an equal opportunity reader.

In the "good old days", the books you had to choose from were constrained by what the local library and the bookstore decided to carry.  For the bookstore that generally meant the best sellers, whether classics or new releases.

Want a book you've heard about on TV or the radio?  You had to order it.  Or go to a bigger bookstore. Or cultivate book-loving friends that would share with you.

Want to know whether people liked the book or would recommend it?  Good luck.  There might be a review of a best seller in the newspaper.  If you liked the same things the reviewer liked, this could be helpful.

Sometimes a librarian could or would recommend a new author.  Or your friends, a neighbor, a bookstore employee, a teacher.  Naturally, their recommendations are colored by their own preferences.

The library was the hub for recreational reading and homework.  Need to write a paper on Mesopotamia?

• Head to the library.  
• Peruse the card catalog.
• Hope the books you need aren't checked out or in use.  
• Flip through each book chapter by chapter, page by page, and hope that you can actually find the section you need in the book.  
• Pray that there is a functional index.

Using an encyclopedia?  Don't forget to check the supplemental volumes in case there is additional information.

Then there was book publishing.  If you had a great idea for a book, you needed a publisher.  Which generally required having an agent.  Who was too busy with established clients to bother with your idea.

And the publisher would decide how many copies to print, how to market it, when to remainder it and when to take it off the market.

Did you want to self-publish?  That required a printing of a specific number of books and about $5000 just to get started.

Now you can find all kinds of books, in physical or virtual, on all sorts of topics, in all sorts of genres, many of them self-published.  And there is so much information (good and bad) on the internet that researching Mesopotamia is easy.

I still read a lot of physical books.  The cozy mysteries that I am so fond of are actually cheaper in print than via Kindle.

For book lovers, THESE are the good old days!

Doggy Day Care adventures

I haven't been anywhere overnight since 2003.  And that was to go back to Iowa for my father's funeral.

Don't get me wrong.  I've done a fair bit of traveling before that.  I've been to each of the 48 contiguous states, Mexico, and England.

But since I've settled in Arizona, I've done very little traveling.

Why?

Dogs.

Mostly I feared that being left alone in the house for too long would traumatize my dogs.  And, until recently, there was no chance I could afford both a vacation and a boarding facility.

People have offered to check on them.  But I thought a short visit would actually be more disruptive than being in an new place entirely.

And of the people I would trust with my dogs, not one would be able to exercise the big boy.  Bogie is 120 pounds of alert predator.  I would feel awful if someone got hurt trying to walk him.

Last week I checked out a pet resort that came highly recommended on Yelp.  (Doesn't that seem fitting?)

I took them in for a trial day of doggy day care.  When we got there and I walked them back to the kennels, Bogie got nose to nose with a spaniel in a cage, snarling and barking.  To be fair, the spaniel started it.

But I left there convinced I would be getting a call to come back and get them.  Or when I picked them up, they would tell me to never bring them back.

I felt like the worst dog mom ever.  The parent of an ill-mannered child.

No call came.  When I got there and paid the fee, the receptionist said the dogs had been fine.  When I went back to get them, the young woman asked me, "Who are you here for?"  "Bogie and Angel."

Her face lit up.  "He loves me!, she said.  He had been a good boy, she assured me.

The dogs stood calmly in the kennel, waiting for me.  Exhausted and happy, they fell asleep as soon as we got home.

This may really work out.

So where shall I go?

She's a clever girl

Angel and Bogie followed me upstairs when I got home. Angel was carrying Bogie's Kong ball. Which has never happened. I had assumed it wasn't permitted.

She carried the ball across the bedroom carpet and dropped, no pitched, the ball onto the bathroom tile. Then stood there looking back at me. 

Bogie heard the bounce and went flying past her to retrieve the ball as it bounced all over the bathroom. Then he set it down so he could follow me.

Angel picked it back up, walked over to the stairs and dropped it. And stared at the bedroom. Bogie heard the bouncing and tore down the stairs to get it.

If she continues to play fetch with him that will save me a lot of effort.

I can't keep trees in my back yard

I've lived in this house for 17 years.  In that time I have had  7 different trees in the back yard.  Five have died for various reasons.  One is on its last leg.

Currently I have a Chinaberry tree that is struggling to stay alive.  Every Spring a different limb is dead.  But it still sprouts leaves so I don't want to cut it down.

I also have a flourishing Palo Verde tree.  That one makes me nervous.  It seems to have no problems.

The flowering cherry was the first to die.  The symptoms were that of Texas Root Rot.  So the replacement tree was moved 15 feet further east.

That one, an Acacia, didn't do badly.  Until it was uprooted by a microburst.

Planted with it was a second Acacia.  Oddly, they seemed to be different types even though they were bought at the same time and at the same nursery.

That Acacia got struck by lightning and never really recovered, succumbing finally to some sort of beetle infestation.

The lightening-struck Acacia was replaced by a fast-growing Ash.  That was a badly pruned specimen and resulted in a second, free Ash planted near the first.  They lasted less than two years, seemed to be flourishing.  Then both died simultaneously within weeks of the Spring growing cycle.

So I decided to go metal.  I bought a six foot tall spinner to decorate my back yard.  It doesn't give off much shade, but at least it's pretty.

And it's cool to watch.

Maybe I need more metal art? 

Why put up with bad behavior?

I've started watching the new series, Backstrom, and it made me wonder why television writers think people will put up with bad behavior just to get results.

Sherlock Holmes is brilliant, but let's be honest, he's kind of a dick.  Yet John Watson, Lestrade, even John's wife, Mary, put up with Sherlock's ill-manners because he gets the job done.

I stopped watching The Big Bang Theory two seasons ago because I grew tired of Sheldon's antics.  And the way the gang pandered to them.  Ditto House.  His brilliant medical diagnoses did not excuse his anti-social behavior

Surely people would not be that tolerant in real life.

Then I thought of my youngest brother.  Steve is intelligent, charismatic, and has done in-depth studies on religious history and can converse on the topic for hours.  He is also so drug-addled that he is barely capable of taking care of himself.

So his friends take care of him.  And they are happy to do so.

He lost his license and can't drive.  And refuses to take the bus.  But there is always someone willing to take him wherever he needs or wants to go.

He was completely incapable of arranging a trip for Mom's funeral.  His caregivers and friends made all the arrangements, made them again when he missed his flight, and even packed his suitcase for him.

They are there to pick up the pieces after he's gone off the deep end - yet again.

Honestly, I don't understand it.

But I now realize that the television writers are reflecting real life, not creating fiction.