Thanksgiving Story

These are the thanks that Chris and I received this Thanksgiving holiday. Four loud, peeing, pooping, biting, beautiful little puppies, along with their mother.

They were on the side of I-80 on our way back from Thanksgiving in Salt Lake. The mom was barking at the trucks, including us because we drove the big @$$ truck to take advantage of the gas price- just like the environmentalists we claim to be. We pulled over and backed up to see if she was an apparition caused by too much hormone enhanced turkey. Two hours later we had collected four pups and the mom. Thank god for our gas guzzling truck because the front seat is big enough to carry all of the puppies, the mom and me. Contrary to our vehicle of choice, we keep our trashiness under wraps by allowing our animals first class amenities: the front seat, and that rest of our lunch.

The Galli estate is now a puppy estate and this parenting thing is giving me circles under my eyes.

Luckily, they all seem to be healthy, although the mother was pretty sketched out. Her milk was dried up and I assume that by the looks of the five of them, it had been dry for a while.

She left today with a new family and hasn't looked back. The couple who took her called me to say that they had to coax her into the house because it seems that she has never been inside of one. They made her 'safe zone' their bed- she's liven in style after one hard life. The babies are doing great, I'm going to keep them for a week or so to make sure that they're good and fat, and then they're out of here- just in time to break my heart.

My old friends

Do you know the feeling that you get when you've just finish reading a book and you realize that the characters are gone..that they are now closed within the pages- destined to the dusty shelve, and that your relationship with them, one that was so deep and colorful yesterday, today, is finished, over.. kaput.

Well, this is how I feel about the staff of NPR, National Public Radio. I love them, maybe too much. There's a slight obsession in the power of my emotions that might teeter my love to the side of unhealthy.

NPR acts as the morning alarm clock in our house. The first alarm is set for an hour before we have to get up, allowing for an entire hour of blissful listening. The second goes off an hour later, and by then- hopefully, morning addition is on it's second round and we are, or at least, I am ready to face the world.

Yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning , somewhere around 8:30- don't hate us because we have no children, Steve Inskeep was telling us that Barack has been deep in the process of choosing his cabinet.

This was Chris's response, remember, these are his first words of the day:

"Hmm, I'm thinking that he should go with a Knotty Pine, or maybe something a little more exotic.... like a nice Brazilian Cherry.."

Who do I love more, my old friends in the radio... or my wonderful husband? Can they tie? Maybe that's too weird.

No. You don't seem to be understanding this situation. I was just being polite.

This morning I taught my very fist yoga class- ever. (The experience deserves it's own post, I'll just say that Chris attended, and he 'rocked Dancer pose', among other things.) In preparation, I spent an hour in the bathtub going over 'the flow' out loud until I had every cue and voice inflection perfect. I had even come up with some funny tidbits to throw in at the precise moment when students inevitably question why it is that they came to class that morning, and conclude, hopefully to themselves, that they really, really hate chaturangas.

As I opened my front door to leave for class, I came face to face with a man; his hand extended towards my mailbox and in his fingers was an envelope with the word: Sara printed on the front in cursive.

I immediately recognize this man as the owner of the yellow lab that Dyggs, the day before at the dog park, had unsuccessfully tried to mount - a yellow lab that is 13 years old and has arthritis and probably shouldn't be at the dog park in the first place. A dog who now has a bone chip in his elbow, because Dyggs hasn't grasped the subtle technique of "Hey cowboy, can I buy you a doggy biscuit?" Instead, he prefers a running start and well, I'll leave the rest out.

When the humping incident occurred, the yellow lab had made a sound not unlike one that I could imagine resulting in say, pulling a dogs legs off one by one, similar to what my stepbrother used to administer to flies on family road trips and as the yellow lab is sprawled out on the ground, screaming, the owner starts talking about the dog being is 13 years old and having severe arthritis. And I'm thinking, inside of my head of course, that the dog park is probably not the optimal place for this dog to be hanging. Really, would you drop your frail grandmother onto a roller derby rink? Probably not.

As I'm preoccupied with my thoughts, the owner bends down and picks up the dog- because the dog cannot walk, and he carries it to his car. When he comes back for his other dog, a frisky black lab, I tell him that I hope his dog makes out o.k, but by this point he looks so distressed over the whole situation that I blurt out, "I live in that house (pointing to my house) and if the dog turns out not to be o.k. please come over and tell me so that I can help you pay the vet bill." Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

And now, as I'm standing in the threshold of my front door looking at this man, all my cues and funny tidbits for my class fall out of my brain and onto the porch floor, they roll under the railing, over the edge and land in the shriveled up Day Lilleys. All that is left is a bill for 216 dollars.

I opened my mouth with the intention of saying something along the line of, "You idiot! Your dog is 117 years old in human years, and you brought him to the rowdiest dog park in Fort Collins?"

Unexpectedly though, as I was gathering enough air in my lungs to catapult the entire sentence at him in one breath- I stopped, and I had two thoughts. The first was: Having a dog park enemy would not be a good thing. No, it would be really bad thing. It would cause anxiety and stress and in short, it would suck. The second was: Oh my God. This is exactly what parents must go through when their fellow playgroup parents are complete idiots. They force a smile, and quite possibly, they undergo the equivalent of 216 dollars worth of "You're not serious, are you? No, of coarse you're joking- funny stuff. Oh my God, wait. You are serious.. and I just made plans to spend every Wednesday afternoon with you for the next 3 months because both of our children have peanut allergies?"

See, what I should have said to the owner of the yellow lab was, "No. You don't seem to be understanding this situation. I was just being polite."

But instead, I wrote a check for 108 dollars and 0 cents.

Team Galli. World Reigning Ping Pong Champions from 1979-1985

Who said thirty-somethings can't still get down? He fell asleep spooning Dyggs while whispering in his ear about how much he loves him. It was perfect.

November

It's a blustery November day.

I never would have expected that I'd use a word like 'blustery' as a descriptor for anything within my own life. The fact that the address on my voter registration is located in a climate in which the word 'bluster' is the first and last word that comes to mind.. Well, I didn't see that coming. I thought that I had learned my lesson- turns out that I'm not such a fast learner.

So here I am, and it's blustery out there. I expect that Edgar Allan Poe would have written something along line lines of, "It's a blustery November day, the rain is falling in sheets and the rats are loose, climbing the stairs..." The difference is that there are no rats in my world, and it is not raining. Just blustery.

Life is Beautiful

This morning over coffee Chris was telling me that story line of the Italian movie 'Life is Beautiful'. Without giving the story away, I'll just say that it's a tale of love and compassion for life. Part of the story takes place in a concentration camp, and..well, you'll just have to watch the movie for yourself.

As Chris was re-living the story, and as he got to the part about the Germans and the Jews, I realized that Oh My God- this was happening in the 1940's, just 70 years ago, when my grandparents were old enough to remember. People were dying in mass quantities, not because of some rampant drug resistant infection, but at the hands of fellow humans! Here in America, it wasn't for another 23 years that the 24th amendment abolished the pole tax giving black people same same voting rights as the white people.

And today, in November of 2008, open on my dining room table is the Commemorative Issue of 'Time Magazine'. On the cover is the face of Barack Obama, our next American president. I can't relate my feelings to words. All that I can say is that I'm in awe.

Whether Democrat, Republican or Tea Party, Jew, Catholic or Mormon or Muslim, the fact is that as a human race, we are evolving for the better. Thank God! That is, thank which ever version of God that you hold in your heart.

Faith

All along, I've said that we have to have faith that the right thing will happen. I truly believe that everything that happens in life, happens for a reason. Whether good or bad, what we're presented with comes to us for a reason. Maybe to make us stronger, possibly to help us to become more flexible in our minds and actions. And oftentimes, I think that we're presented with certain situations in order to help us to perceive the world from a perspective that we would not have been capable of beforehand.

The past few years have been the later for me. I've been presented with more life altering situations that I can recall, both of the positive and the negative. I've found myself feeling completely helpless and crushed; I've thrown my hands up in the air deciding that I no longer have the energy or the will to care. And I've had moments that all I could do is stare blankly- searching for any emotion at all.

Don't get me wrong, there have been many moments of greatness that have shown themselves to me, and this is where the moral of this entry lays:

If not for the bad, we would not have the good. More appropriately, If not for the bad, we would not be as appreciative of the good. You cannot have love without hate, light without dark, war without peace.

I'm thankful for the many experiences that I've lived through -both the good and the bad.

Right now as I sit here on my couch writing this entry, my heart is so full that I think at any moment it may burst and I am so grateful for this feeling. Most of all though, I find enormous gratitude in the opportunity to have traveled upon a road that has permitted me the full appreciation of this feeling in my heart.

Thank You to my faith. For if there is nothing else left to life, there is always the faith that we are on a path which will lead to a better place.