Second Life

When my mom and I first met Dom and Angel, we didn't have great expectations about their stewardship of my Giant Mal, Teddy, but we were in dire straits. My father had come up very briefly to help me by putting my dog in a kennel, as I began the most intensive medical care process of my life so far that included surgery, DVT, PT, and then more DVT's. I knew I couldn't have him back in my life full-time, and besides, Teddy had been designed for me and my large Scottish ex-boyfriend, and he wasn't around anymore to do the heavy lifting needed. 

I was unused to being single so I had clung to Ted even tighter, but deep in my heart, I knew Brooklyn wasn't the right place for a huge snow dog like him, even though I took excellent care of him in Park Slope. We took frequent walks to Prospect Park for off-leash runs every morning that ended one day after a group of pit bulls set upon him, then we went on to "doggie discipline" classes for his safety while out on walks, and then a move further down the hill that was closer to a smaller enclosed dog run off of the Slope's Fifth Avenue that I could monitor much better for crazy dogs and their whacked-out owners.

I had worked it out to the best of my ability, even hiring a few good dog walkers in the process, but he was far too large for a woman my size, and I knew that, too. My father had told me to adopt him out right after my move back to Brooklyn, but in the wake of the financial crisis my ex had left me in, I didn't have the heart to do it, and with no one around me (as usual) to help out, I found a way to use my exuberant energy that marks a woman in her prime during her 30s to great effect. The exercise did me good, and after my bad break, I quit smoking to take up regular exercise again, albeit in the form of mixed martial arts, but it was either that or fencing, so I went with fighting, because I'm a natural-born fighter, and I'd been fighting all my life in one way or another. It was a good fit for me at the time, and it helped to fill up the void that had been devoted to an exceptional animal's daily care.

Ted was amazing, but I hadn't had a good night's sleep or a day off in over four years that led up to my accident while walking him. I knew I needed the break. So, I wasn't as "bummed" at the prospect of someone else taking care of Ted as much as I felt like a bad parent that had let him down. He hadn't done anything wrong really, besides pull for a bagel in the street too roughly after I put him on a diet at my vet's urging, and it was 5:30 in the morning, at the continued harassing insistence of my fucked-up downstairs neighbor. It was a situation designed to hurt me, it was I'm saying to you, and I knew that, too. Nothing new. So, after me and my mom had talked with Angel and Dom on the phone after advertising him for sale and for a free adoption, they chose the latter cheaper option, but on paper, they looked great.

Angel and Dom had worked for a pet store, and Dom had had several Mals before, which made them the perfect candidates. I was suffering from a bad sickness and heartache, with intolerably sad pictures of Teddy taken by digital camera in his pen at a Brooklyn kennel that tore my insides to shreds, and I just couldn't take it anymore. My brother decided to take the momentum from my natural motherly guilt to pour on more abuse about my "selfish" behavior in the wake of the most serious injury I've ever had in my life, not of my own doing. It was too painful for anyone to bear. And so, they offered to drive out from Pennsylvania to meet us before we signed over his doggie papers to them and then they picked him up from Brooklyn.

It showed us that they were serious enough dog owners to go through all that, and we weren't doing it for the money, even though both of us could have used every penny we could get, then and now. When I met them at the door, they could see how injured I was, and my mom in her walker just re-confirmed the seriousness of our situation, because she is a very crippled lady. "Oh, wow...", Angel said as I struggled to open the door with my crutches while my mom feebly limped into the room on her walker, "you guys really need our help!" Yeah, we do. My mom and Dom struck up an immediate acquaintance brought about by their shared Bronx upbringings as Italian-Americans. They were lower class than us, as we could plainly see from their dated dress and hairstyles, but times were what they were. They were available, and they answered all of our questions perfectly, but not before making sure that Ted was free, because they'd seen the ads for him at a fair price.

We explained that we put out as many feelers as we could, including those to some of my mom's crazier friends and the insane dog rescue lady from upstate, before settling on them as a couple. Dom had Ted's picture gripped tightly in his hands, looking down at it while we talked. "You're 'in love' with him, already, aren't you?" I asked him. He just nodded his head slowly. Both he and Angel had multiple marriages, partners, and kids before, and now they were empty-nesting. Dom was trying to quit smoking, so they decided he could use the exercise that came with regular dog-walking because he was rather significantly overweight, with nothing to do in their rural home besides surf the web all day, and that's what led to our engagements on social media.

Honestly, I could care less about their day-to-day lives as people outside of my social class, but I got a chance to see them interact with Ted through their posted pics on an almost-daily basis, and for all you parents out their with an ache in your heart that never heals, you know the feeling well. It eased the tight band around me just a little bit more, each time I saw a new photo or comment that was favorable to him and his care. I could go on living and getting better with his life finally settled, like I'd promised all those years ago after his car accident. "I'll always take care of you, Ted. I promise. And if I'm not around to do it, I promise that I will make every effort possible to see that someone else does." And I meant it, as I nursed him through his car hit, and then the serious bacterial and viral infections he got after swimming in a public park lake in Denver that included e-coli and Ebola.

It was enough, enough hurt and pain for him to last a lifetime or more. Ted deserved a nice grandma who was openly lonely while empty-nesting, and Angel was that. She and Dom broke up (of course), and I was continually horrified to see Dom's FB posts about "sexing" his "SL daughter" online, but combined with Angel's redneck views of life and her daughter's online porno business, it seemed like both she and I had finally gotten what we really wanted: some peace and quiet at home with a nice, large, furry, and very high-maintenance werewolf. 

She and I got a real second chance at the good life that eludes so many mothers and their serious heartaches. Would that we all get that shot in life! How great would that be? To actually find the people, places, things, and animal friends that give you a second shot at the life you deserve. How wonderful it was for us, as hard-working single women, to finally get the chance we really deserved at having some peace of mind for those we care about so much, because that's what being a mother is all about: giving until it hurts, then give some more. You just keep giving love.

Blood for Oil (Fuel-Mad Americans)

http://bzfd.it/1GUWZmk

The one weapon worldwide that warring people always reliably count on against "evil" America is our supposed lust for oil and petroleum products. Speaking as someone who walks downhill daily as part of her commute, I can assure you that there is no such person, at least not how it's portrayed overseas as an excuse for violence and murder.

Americans use transportation regularly because one of our states, that land called "Texas", may be the size of your entire country and then some, which is difficult to envision if you've never been. When I lived and worked briefly in Germany, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a newly-elected Californian governor. The next day, my studio-mates in the atelier tried to use it against me, which was baffling, because I lived in New York City. I tried explaining it to them, but without an illustration like the one you see below, it's almost incomprehensible to a Euro.

The distance from Berkeley to New York City is 2,900 miles—driving time of 42.5-48 hours.

It felt like my time in Denver, when I tried (in vain) to explain to the designers and editors around me how many people we watched die, live on t.v. during the 9/11 attacks, because they also tried to dismiss it immediately. America is so vast, it is a state of mind that's much bigger than other countries on the globe, which makes it unknowable to anyone who hasn't seen it or tried to travel across it. Freedom, like being American, isn't a state or ethnic group; it's a choice.

When I explained to my German co-workers that I would have to fly on a plane (or two, or three, depending on fares and airline hubs) for SIX HOURS just to reach California from New York, I could see an "Aha" moment spreading through the group, which was solidified later on in  my trip when an editor and I blithely mentioned we were driving to Amsterdam for the weekend. They were shocked and scared beyond belief by such a journey as ours (and by beautiful women, too!), until we once again mentioned that we could drive for hours in New York and still remain in our home state. 

To us, driving a mere 2-3 hours to be in another country is so easy and ridiculous a hurdle to accomplish, we cannot imagine NOT doing that regularly. Same thing with the English language: if you had to fly for 10 hours just to get to another country, you'd probably use less languages, too, Euro. Trust me on that. Anyway, English has become the lingua franca for world business and trade, which makes sense to me, because New York City is the capital of the world. 

Writing that is still no excuse for gluttony, just because you may like shiny new things. I love good design and classic American cars as much as the next person, but to pull ourselves out of this mess, we have to buckle down and conserve. This means you! I really liked the German system of limiting car usage and petrol to orderly days of the week divided by neighborhood, like so: on Mon-Weds., these streets conserve fuel and cannot drive, so my co-workers biked as part of their daily commute instead, to a train equipped with bike racks. 

"Petrol" is considered a very expensive luxury in Europe overall, which is the right idea to have, because the cost of using too much gas is a price we can't afford to pay anymore. Think about the melting of the polar ice caps, and you're already there. Same with your air conditioning running at full speed whenever you feel like it, because you're overweight and always overheated. Fuck that! Staten Island has already experienced crippling power outages and it's not even August (the hottest month here), yet.This world needs to go on a diet, and not a Texas-sized one either. We need to change the world.

Ash Wednesday

It's all uphill from here.

Last week, we celebrated Ash Wednesday on a beautifully sunny and bright winters' day. My life has been rather simple lately, and so, in the easiest, simplest way known to man, I actually walked (yes, I walk, for exercise and sometimes through economic necessity. I know, so weird!) my way to church for ashes, which was a journey in of itself, like so many of my daily walks are. See you soon, neighbor.

Blue glass garden ornament.

House with wrought iron ornament.

Hanging icicles, a bare shrub, and one large beige house.

Old wooden fence.

Yellow shed with ladder.

White houses on a snowy hill.

Old rusty garden fountain and spruces.

Me, Ash Wednesday* 2015.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday

Wildflowers, Wooden Fences, and a Few Weeds

Coming in for a closer look....

For today: this botanical duo from a summer's afternoon, as we officially say "goodbye" to another glorious season here on Earth. Fall begins September 22!

...reveals all sorts of intricate details.

Clouds and Landscapes

Walking, bright summer days, potentially rainy afternoons, 

thunder clouds, the sky above, and the land underneath.

The Blooming Onion

A wild onion, right out of the ground.

I've loved wandering around in the woods as long as I can remember. There are so many cool things to discover: ponds filled with tadpoles swimming furiously in every direction, bugs zipping by with their shiny, iridescent wings glinting in the sunlight; all manner of plants, trees, flowers, grasses and shrubs of too many varieties to count.

In recent years, I've returned to the landscape of my youth in the Hudson Valley to discover anew it's now "hip" culinary status (like the much more lauded and touristy Napa Valley, for which I am also glad of our relative obscurity), as an area with an incredible bounty of wild edibles, abundant in their profusion. Such is the case with the rich river valleys that serve as the traditional birthing grounds of our species, like the ancient river delta of the Nile and the holy Ganges in India.

My lovely specimen, now in bloom.

Here I find a native type of grape, there dandelion greens, once disparaged as the poor fodder of immigrants (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/06/nature-edibles.html), now elevated to trendy, gourmet status as a health food, along with the many other types of onions, garlic, and greens you can pull straight from the ground, once the stems reach the right height. I've eaten food immediately after it's pulled from the dirt, wiped clean on my shirt, and there's nothing fresher or better in taste to compare it to: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/06/food-farming.html.

I pulled one such specimen from the ground several weeks ago, and I liked it so much, I put it in some water at home. Lo to me now, it budded indoors, at the exact same time as the varieties I see outdoors during my daily walks, noting changes and details to the landscape with kind, loving attention. I don't know if I yet have the temerity to cook with such a common "weed", which is what we considered native plant species many years ago, because they've been set up to be a far cry from the perfectly modified, factory-cultivated, "pretty" produce that's sold at grocery stores at a considerable markup, but I'm working up to it. Enjoy the fruits of your labor this week, my friends.

A red wild onion variety, also in bloom, outdoors.