Mutts with Poodle Names

 

 

My Poodle Parlor welcomes the two newest non-poodles for boarding.  Boys, I know, crazy huh?  Such a swing for the normal Sassy stride.  Have no idea what to do with these guys, a couple of mutts.  Raynes, what a great poodle name, I think. Or a poet, maybe. Yet, he is a mutt. I'm not even allowed to dress him as my poodle.  Strict rules from his parents.  He loves high tea,serving from the poodle tea set though. He's such an adorable apricot non-poodle. 

 Whitman, another great poodle name is the other mutt allowed to board inside Sassy's Poodle Parlor. He's a big one, weighing in at 30#s and not yet a year old.  Boys! My Mutts! What will I ever do?

A Story

 

 

One of my favorite books is titled, A Million Miles in a Thousand Days, by Donald Miller.  It is a simple book with a profound meaning.

Books can be entertaining, suspenseful, funny, sad or reflective. Some are everything combined. I like the real page-turners myself.  But, who doesn’t?

I read a lot.  Some books I forget a day after finishing and others hang on forever.  I know this to be the latter of those two sceneries.

This pretty much sums up the message in his excellent book, the take away without having to read it, though you really should. 

Life is a story and how it is lived makes it either interesting or boring. 

So, I’ll live my life in hopes it will be a good story.  Pain, suffering, loss and grief are already in my story.  But, it humbled me and gave me the grace, character and empathy to help others who have and will walk my same path in their own story. I should reach for the stars, even if they are far, far away and seem unreachable.  I will be the protagonist who is fearless and willing to take chances in life, stepping away from my comfort zone and in to the unknown. I already have and I will again.  That's what makes a good story.  Who wants to read the mundane of someone uninteresting, unchallenged and unharmed?  Bring it on life…. 

Thank you, Donald Miller.  You inspire me to live in awe of the beauty everywhere and to notice everyone around me. In the end, I hope my life story is worth reading and remembered by those I’ve left behind. A page turner, that’s what I want.

 

 

 

Resorting to our back yard. Maybe stay-ca-tion really is the best vacation! It sure feels that way to me.....

Conversations: A Day in the Life of a Social Security Office

Holy Cow!  It's the only way to describe last Thursday when I made my first visit to a Social Security office.  I pushed open the glass doors smudged with multiple hand prints, finger prints, and I swear I saw a toe print.  Hubby Dale told me I should be collecting since I was now old enough.  I thought he was kidding, I really did, but he wasn't.  I am old enough. Barely.  Dang it!
I tried to handle this business over the phone, like with every other business in the world.  They wouldn't and couldn't. "Have to come in.....need to see your marriage license from last marriage."  Like I had  multiples marriages. Geez, people!  Can I just say I felt like an elites simply for having all my teeth.  It was a carnival, with more colorful characters than a Pat Conroy novel.  We waited our turn.  Dale listened for our name.  I listened to the people and their stories. I slipped my shining diamond off my finger and into my wallet.  It was seriously out of place. Me too.
Window #1 (a glass petition between applicant and SS employee)
Applicant : This is complicated, you hear me? Stop with the run-round."
SS: "What's the problem exactly?"
App: "Its complicated. Why you typing, stop typing, you  making it more complicated."
SS: "Well, I have to pull you up and see what's going on?"
App: "I'm telling you what happening. You people got my money and near five months. It be complicated."
SS: "Well, it seems we overpaid you by mistake and now we are just holding the money until it is recovered.  You have one more month."
App: "Who fault is that? It ain't my fault, it your fault, ain't it?" ( I think she's right, BTW) How am I suppose to eat? Stop that typing, you making it worse."
I felt so bad for the poor woman.  I wanted to argue her case-- Dale held me down. She needed her $$.  It was their mistake, they could take out a few $ a week from her money and get theirs money back, I say..
Window #2
Applicant: "I got nothing in child support, not one penny."
SS: "How many children should be supported, mam?"
Applicant: "Five in all, but each one has different daddy so you need to get after all of them."
Window #5 our turn: 
SS: "Mrs. Elrod, I see you married Mr. Elrod in 2000. Is that correct?"
Me: "Yes, it is."
SS: "That eliminates you then."
Me: "Eliminates me from what?"
SS: "Your collecting your late husband's social security. You would have to have married your second husband after you turned sixty."  Who knew?
Me: "You mean I could collect from 2 husbands if I hadn't married when I did? Maybe I could annul the second marriage, collect the first social security, and then get remarried?"
She didn't laugh.  The woman next door at Window #6 did.  She liked listening to others conversations too!

WRITING, PAINTING, POODLE PEOPLE, ME and now some MUTTS.

 

Well, here I am again after a L-O-N-G spell away.  Been so dang busy though and so have my peeps daughters.  They've been busy being rabbits and giving me baby boys. 
As you recall, I started this blog because my house was full of little people -- baby girls -- who I call my poodles.  They call me SASSY, hence, the name SASSY'S POODLE PARLOR.  I just don't think SASSY'S POODLE AND MUTT PARLOR does it for me.  Do YOU?
I have thought about it AND I think the boys can be poodles too.  After all, my daughters named them Raynes and Whitman.  Now, if they don't sound like poodles, who the heck does??

Been really busy, busy, busy writing my memoir.  What the heck does she have to say, you ask?  Plenty, I say.  Just way too much.  This memoir started in my head over a decade ago and it gives me no peace.  It wakes me up during the night, my characters talking to me making sure I don't forget them.  "Prissy, what you mean leaving this out? You best get it right, girl!"

Guess this could be the jacket flab, as they say.
As a conservative, southern housewife of twenty-five years  -- called Prissy --, if someone had told me I would one day be driving around town with a drunk, stoned black man named Willie sitting in my back seat, begging, - no ordering him into my house for the night, I would tell them they were nuts.  It happened though, after moving black caregivers into my house to help with my husband's end of life.  Simultaneously, I became an innocent character in a tragic, but often comical series of events: three separate robberies, attempted murder and other such goings-on.

Also, if someone had told me only fifteen months later, I'd be standing at the gate at London's Heath- row airport, my tragedy behind me and a love story beginning, or, I'd be wearing a clinging black dress, wobbling in my stiletto shoes, waiting for a fifty-year-old, workaholic and life-long bachelor I'd dated three decades earlier, I would've told them they were nuts. Yet, here I am.

This is a story about second chances with your first love.  Mine had blue eyes and I'm waiting for him to step off of the Concord.

Later on my painting.  It's a surprise!