Decorate your dog day

There's an old song: You Decorated My Life.

I could dedicate that to my TG, with whom, forty years ago tonight, I went to Chicago's Comiskey Park to see the Chicago White Sox play the Kansas City Royals. The Sox won four-zip.

It was our first date. We've now been married for thirty-nine years.

That's baseball.

At any rate, a few days ago I decorated my dog. And Andrew's dog too.

While Rambo was here last weekend, I got the idea to festoon both him and Rizzo with a string of tiny lights. 

You know; the kind that operate on a coin battery. They look cute entwined in flower arrangements and looped around dog necks and whatnot.

I don't know why I didn't put lights on both dogs at the same time and photograph them together; I have two strings.

A pair of string lights; a pair of dogs. And yet I didn't think to capture that.

At any rate I want you to see them all twinkly-sparkly.

So it will be Rizzo today; Rambo on Monday. I know it's hard to imagine Rambo in lights but you'll just have to wait.

What's funny about Rizzo is that in pictures he has a resigned air. His expression indicates that he's so over it, he may well expire of ennui.

He's not jaded, though. He's a happy, funny little dog who often becomes animated. It's just that when the camera comes out, he merely puts up with it.

I'd say he grins and bears it, but he can't grin. And I don't think he would, even if he could.

He sits still, though; I'll give him that. In this instance he allowed me to drape the lights around his neck and arrange him in front of the fireplace and then in the doorway to the sun room, where the light would be better.

The shots of Rizzo in the recliner he's commandeered for his own, are the truest depiction of what he's like day in and day out. He's a mutt who loves to laze about.

On a recent Saturday, Dagny arrived on the scene to find Rizzo in his crate. This happens so rarely anymore that she exclaimed and wondered if he could get out.

I told her that he could, but that he had spit up on his blankets that morning, so while the items were being washed, I thought it best that he park his carcass in the crate.

Dagny became instantly concerned. She began wringing her hands, casting a worried eye on Rizzo. I told her the little turkey was perfectly well, but that he sometimes spits up for no reason. She wasn't buying it.

To make things worse, she was set to accompany TG and Rizzo as they made a visit to the local Pet Med Mobile Clinic to stock up on Rizzo's flea and tick medication. Completely routine and unrelated to Chiweenie malaise, either real or imagined.

Dagny thought: Rizzo spit up on his blanket; he's hiding in his crate; Papaw and I are taking him to the vet.

Two and two got put together and for a four-year-old, they added up to a canine health catastrophe.

Meanwhile Rizzo, hale and hearty, had wandered out of his crate and was noshing on some kibble in between doggy-laps of his water.

Dagny bent over him, cooing, rubbing the soft fur of his chest. Don't worry, Rizzo, she comforted. It's okay. I'll be there. I'm comin' with you to the vet.

He looked at her, his chin dripping. I could almost hear him thinking: What are you on about, kid?

She was on about love. It's an emotion that my Rizzo inspires.

May you be inspired to love and by love not only today, but every day.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Friday :: Happy Weekend

Lip bomb

When it comes to certain things, I have found the answer.

Among them is lip balm.

I'm one of those people who simply cannot go without something coating my lips.

Twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five, as they say. Bare lips are not an option.

Why? Because me pirate lips be dry.

In public, I always wear lipstick. I wear it well; my lipstick doesn't fade. In the event it does begin to falter, I put it right back on.

Why? Because I look a fright without it. Lipstick was made for pale girls like me. 

When it comes to protecting my lips at home during down time, in the past I've used most of the things that are out there for the treatment of dry lips: Carmex. Blistex. Aquaphor Lip Repair. Vaseline Lip Therapy. Burt's Bees Beeswax. Smith's Rosebud Salve. CeraVé Healing Ointment. 

And that is not all: I've also tried Avon Moisture Therapy. Lancôme Absolue Precious Cells Nourishing Lip Balm. Mary Kay Extra Emollient Night Cream (splendid for dry lips). Just a dab.

Tiny tins and tubes of lip lubrication littered the landscape. There was something for my lips at every place in my house that I might settle in -- whether to sit or stand -- to do anything for any length of time.

It's still true. If I'm cooking and my lips feel parched, I reach into a nearby drawer. My lip balm is there.

If I perch at my desk, all I have to do is reach over and it's there. If I relax in any one of my lounging places throughout the house, it's there on the tables beside all chairs. As I go to bed, the last thing I do is to grab the lip emollient from my bedside table.

It's in my cosmetic bag that goes everywhere with me in my purse. Right beside the lipstick. So for example if we've eaten out and we're going straight home afterwards and no one will see me, in lieu of reapplying lipstick I reach for the lip balm.

By the way, I do not have chapped lips. They've never had a chance to become chapped because they're always treated with something that softens and conditions them.

I know you're champing at the bit to know what kind of lip balm I now use exclusively, after trying all the others.

Chap Stick Candy Cane.

And only Chap Stick Candy Cane.

I discovered this Limited Edition variety of ubiquitous Chap Stick (which was probably the one tried-and-true, old-school lip balm I'd never taken seriously; I thought it was waxy, and the original flavor/scent leaves a lot to be desired) a few Christmases ago.

Walmart had strategically placed it where weary shoppers wait in one of three active (out of eighty-five) checkout lines.

They were so candy-stripey cute. Primed to spend even more money than I'd already shelled out during the Christmas season, I grabbed several to use as stocking stuffers. And so it was that I tried Chap Stick Candy Cane and was hooked.

It's the most refreshing, tantalizing, soothing feeling on your lips. Exquisitely cool. Pepperminty and tingly. Above all, it lasts and lasts.

See, that was my complaint with many of the products I'd used before: slick it on, turn around, smack your lips a time or two, and it was naught but a vague memory.

Chap Stick Candy Cane hangs out on the lippy till the cows come home.

I will brook no argument when it comes to lip balm brands, flavors, formulas, methods of delivery to the lip -- any of the myriad choices out there.

I don't have to. I have my Chap Stick Candy Cane and I have it all the time, all over the house and in my purse.

But -- you may be thinking -- how do I accomplish that when Candy Cane flavor is available only at Christmastime? 

Good question. And the answer is, I buy it in bulk on Amazon.

Because I cannot and will not be without it.

I keep my unopened, ready-to-grab sticks of Chap Stick Candy Cane inside a clear glass pumpkin that stays in the cabinet above our kitchen desk. The minute my supply runs low, I order more.

I'm locked in. At the risk of coming across as inflexible, I promise that I don't require help or input or suggestions or sales pitches on this subject.

So you can imagine the dismissive wave of my hand when, returning home from a golf fundraiser he'd participated in with several friends at The Citadel in Charleston last week, TG offered me a random stick of lip balm.

At the event, golfers had been given a goodie bag. It contained various items like magnetic ball markers, a Citadel koozie, a hat, et cetera.

And one of the freebies was the aforementioned lip balm.

I barely glanced at it, knowing that within ten feet of where I stood, there were at least a half dozen broken-in sticks of Chap Stick Candy Cane at my fingertips.

(Dagny often retrieves them for me. She'll see a Chap Stick Candy Cane on a table that's not beside the chair I'm sitting in. Not understanding that they're everywhere, she'll bring it to me -- Here, Mamaw! -- because she knows I depend on it.)

(I say Thank you, baby, but then I have to tell her to please go and put it back where she found it, lest I reach over onto that table the next time I sit in that particular chair, and find my Chap Stick Candy Cane missing.)

But then I got curious and took the proffered golf-game goody from TG and looked at it.

Panama Jack Vanilla Lip Balm, SPF 45. The Original.

Whaaaaaat? That sounded fantastically good. I adore vanilla. Reminds me of cake.

TG didn't want it; he likes Carmex. I removed the protective shrink wrap from the cap and opened the lip balm. I twisted some up. I put the back of my hand up to my mouth to rub off the Chap Stick Candy Cane I was wearing.

I applied the Panama Jack Vanilla Lip Balm SPF 45. I inhaled.

Wow, guys. Woweeee. Wowwwwwwwza. The pirate approves.

Wonderful. Delightful. Heartbreaking. Breathtaking. Soooooo vanilla! So soft! So silky. So very very smooth.

I immediately loved it. 

But not enough to supplant my beloved Chap Stick Candy Cane.

Here's the deal: I have no need of SPF 45 on my lips. I rarely spend any amount of time in the sun and when I do, my lips are always protected with sun block.

And upon doing a click or two of research, I found that Panama Jack Vanilla SPF 45 will set you back fourteen dollars for three sticks on Amazon.

That's almost five bucks a throw as compared to one dollar for the Chap Stick Candy Cane. (Actually it's a trifle more when bought in quantities on Amazon, coming to more like a buck fifty per stick. But still. It's available year-round, not only as a Limited Edition.)

So I won't be falling for that. But I will keep and enjoy the stick of Panama Jack Vanilla SPF 45 that my TG gave me.

And if you don't have a favorite of your own and you don't like the sound of Chap Stick Candy Cane, or if like me you're partial to vanilla, or if it would make sense for you to wear a 45 SPF lip balm when you're outdoors?

Try the Panama Jack. It's the bomb. When I've used up the one TG gave me and feel the need for another, I may be in the market, as it were.

Until then, my lips belong to Chap Stick Candy Cane.

Just because. Because because because because because ... because of the wonderful things it does.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Thursday

Counting the days

For as long as I can remember, I've displayed a Chick-fil-A Cowz wall calendar in my kitchen.

I wrote about it here.

My kids know that at Christmas, someone goes to CFA and gets Mom her new calendar.

I hang it from a strong magnetic hook on the front of my refrigerator. I refer to it often because appointments and birthdays and whatnot are all noted in the squares.

But this year, Chick-fil-A announced that they've produced their last cowz calendar. I was suspicious when the theme for 2018 was Steers of Yesteryear, a recycling of popular bovine month-markers gone by.

But now it's official. No more calendar, but the card you got with it which entitled you to a free menu item each month (I always gave the card to TG) will be continued in the form of a mundane rewards program.

Hearing the news, I considered my quandary: What am I going to use for a fridge calendar in 2019?

It couldn't be just anything; it needs to be right. No Thomas Kinkade, painter of light, for me. No offense.

The Cowz were ideal. Don't ask me why; I don't rightly know. I love hamburgers. The fact that the Eat Mor Chikin calendar was amusing and clever was a large part of the appeal.

So I embarked on a mission to the Amazon, to find a calendar to ceremoniously suspend on the refrigerator door in the first minutes of January 1, 2019 (I never turn the page to reveal a new month until it actually is that month. I may flip the page later in the first day of the month, but never early.)

The only non-negotiable was that it had to involve animals.

And I found it in the form of I Am Goat: Wisdom From Nature's Philosophers.

I couldn't believe my luck; I was barely getting warmed up when voilà! There it was. It's as if the philosophical goats were patiently waiting for me to click and purchase their calendar.

From Bovine to Bovidae, no muss, no fuss.

Goats have such gravitas. They fit my critter criteria to perfection. And the calendar is black and white, which suits the decor of my kitchen as well as being my personal preference.

The philosophical nuggets round out the clever and witty category quite nicely.

We have our winner. Unique and special; cerebral and functional. Goat genius.

I'll remove the plastic wrapping on New Year's Eve, retire the last cow calendar shortly after the ball drops and we've sung Auld Lang Syne, and proudly place my goats on the hook.

Meanwhile the kids, not having to worry about who's going to stop by Chick-fil-A and pick up Mom's calendar each year (it was usually Erica), may have to substitute buying me raven stationery like Raven Lunatic, my shopping list pad (also a gift from Erica, who bought it at Mast General Store).

I need more ravens in my life. This long rectangular pad of raven paper has been used constantly since I got it. I'm down to my last three pages. The magnetized back is long gone; the paper sits on my kitchen desk.

You may remember that my Cadillac CTS is nicknamed The Raven after its paint color: GM's Black Raven.

My vanity license plate (NVRMORE) reflects my lifelong love of poetry while paying homage to Edgar Allan Poe, and especially to his masterpiece The Raven.

I have a t-shirt with that whole poem on the front. True story.

TG reports that a few weeks ago, a driver behind him at a traffic light was visibly enthused about my license plate, having put the whole thing together (raven black car, Poe-inspired tag, fake raven peering out from the back window).

He could tell she'd caught on because she was pointing at the plate and the bird and animatedly talking to her passenger, who appeared significantly underwhelmed.

Not a Poe fan. More's the pity.

Even more recently, another driver engaged TG in a thumbs-up and a wave over the whole raven thing. 

It couldn't have been anything else; my car features no decals or stickers of any kind. You have to use analytical reasoning if you want to know what the whole thing adds up to.

Folks have approached me in parking lots, telling me that they "get it." It seems to make them happy. We always laugh and part as friends.

Counting the days occasionally and making the days count always. That's the secret.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Wednesday

Dagny goes to the dogs

And the dogs come to Dagny.

She's having a memorable summer when it comes to the various family canines.

What with Andrew and Brittany traveling quite a bit for his military commitments and short vacations, we've all pitched in to help out with their pets.

Maverick generally goes to Audrey and Dagny's house; he's routinely rambunctious and although it's insanely adorable, I don't want any part of that.

I get Rambo, the calmest dog in the universe.

How calm is he? You may ask.

He is the dog version of a three-toed sloth. He just hangs around. Being unbearably cute.

Rambo is so laid back, it's easy to forget he's even around. He never asks for anything except the occasional head rub, and opportunities to go outside, stretch, and lie prone on the deck in the sunshine.

Dagny dotes on him, as do all children who come into his orbit.

So in addition to Rizzo, who is a constant in Dagny's world, she's enjoyed some extra puppy love of late.

Ramby doesn't mind if kids loll all over him, even use him as a pillow. He allows them to stroke his head and hug his neck while he noshes on his kibble -- usually a major no-no.

Don't touch a dog when he's eating! I was always told as a kid. He's liable to bite!

Rambo isn't going to bite anyone. You could take the soggy half-chewed kibble right out of his mouth and he'd just stand there. His tail may even wag. He's all zen all the time.

Meanwhile, Maverick the Boxer puppy -- Andrew and Brittany's second dog -- rarely ceases cavorting and is usually chewing on something he's not supposed to.

Maverick: primary poster pooch for playful puppy pandemonium.

Mav doesn't make a habit of relaxing all day long. Quite the contrary; he makes it his business to relax as little as possible. It's like his mission in life.

The few times I've been around Maverick, he didn't stop twisting and yelping long enough for me to take a picture. However, Andrew sent me one the other day.

Look at Mav's face. Those eyes!

Speaking of eyes (and energy), last Friday, I made Dagny stand still when she had taken a break from petting Rambo, so that I could take her picture by herself. Her mother's feet photobombed.

Dag's grown so tall this summer. You should hear her talk. And talk and talk and talk.

I've no idea where she acquired the inclination for nonstop verbal interaction, or for that matter, her excessive fondness of dogs.

I'll thank you not to snicker.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday

Throwing down so I don't throw up

Some things crack me up. Seriously. You have to laugh or you'll cry.

One of those things is the way progressiliberals give a no-expiration-date pass to just about anyone who supports their narrative.

That's all it takes! Shill for the left, gain permanent full immunity.

(The "me too" movement is an anomaly in this regard but it fits because the targets are men. And I'm not defending anyone's actions; I'm just saying. Being a straight male is dangerous, much like being white.)

You may have heard that Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul," passed away last week.

Long Live the Queen 1942-2018 with a big picture of her in younger days, is plastered on LED billboards in the Columbia area.

Rest in peace, Aretha. I have nothing against you personally; I didn't know you.

And it isn't my intention to speak ill of the dead.

However, it's well documented that Ms. Franklin was a prominent rank-and-file liberal.

Since, not being a fan, I knew very little about Aretha's recording career, out of curiosity I took the time to read up on that.

In one article there was a glowing mention of an early hit -- a "heartbreaking ballad" entitled Ain't No Way.

It mentioned not only Aretha's signature treatment of both lyric and tune, but also the spectacular backup vocal provided by Cissy Houston, mother of the late Whitney Houston.

That sounded interesting, so I checked it out on YouTube.

It's a nice number if you are into that sort of thing. The songwriter was Aretha's little sister, Carolyn.

What struck me was the song's unambiguous central message:

I know that a woman's duty is to help and love a man

And that's the way it was planned.

She belted it out. With conviction. Without a laugh track.

And I wondered how it is that the Queen of Soul wasn't summarily skewered for singing such a thing.

Because it's the truth. And progressives aren't big on the truth.

One might go so far as to say that they are not permitted to speak the truth.

That being the case, where are the militant activist LGBTQXYZ community today as Aretha is enthusiastically, rhapsodically, reverentially, universally idolized, patronized, eulogized -- all but canonized?

Why aren't the feminists gathering, spewing crazed invective à la Ashley Judd, sporting their unspeakably vulgar pink knitted hats?

Why aren't they outraged, spitting tacks, marching on Washington, organized, loud and proud, to trash the sacred memory of a vocalist who had the audacity to invoke the man superior/woman submissive relationship as being the way it was planned?

Even if she did record the song fifty years ago.

Because these days, no matter how long ago certain people said, tweeted, wrote, or thought something that doesn't fall in lockstep with liberal ideology, they get called out on it. Publicly.

Can you imagine what would happen if Sarah Huckabee Sanders stepped up to the microphone of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the West Wing and spoke those words -- even if she were merely quoting the lyric?

It'd go viral. Twitter would explode, then melt down to a smoking ruin. Frenzied liberals worldwide would be foaming at the mouth in three, two, one.

A woman's duty? To help and love a man? Them's fighting words. If young girls hear that, they'll be irreparably harmed. Suffer a fifty-year cultural setback. Require therapy and medication.

Millennials and Gen Zs alike would scurry to their safe spaces, tragically triggered, to alternately suck their thumbs and hyperventilate.

Sarah Sanders wouldn't be allowed to buy a hamburger at McDonald's, much less get a table at Nobu.

Aretha also loved her furs. In recent years, when she performed live (even at Obama's White House), indoors, she sported everything from mink jackets to mink stoles to full-length mink coats.

For all I know, she had mink pajamas.

She loved to throw the furs around and drop them on the floor as she strutted the stage.

In the East Room the crowd swooned, riveted in rapturous adoration of the mink-clad black soul chanteuse. Barack wiped away a crocodile tear as Michelle grooved beside him.

Sycophants.

Because according to the left, it's bad to raise and kill hundreds of little animals just so you can wear their pelts. Unethical. Cruel. Evil.

Something only the vilified (if they're conservative) one percent can afford to do.

Crazed reps of PeTA are poised to douse you in chicken blood (or worse) if you appear in public garbed in such a politically incorrect manner.

Unless you're one of them. Politically, that is.

Turns out it's A-OK to wear fur and sing an outrageously traditional, utterly anachronistic, unabashedly non-feminist -- therfore TRUE -- lyric, as long as you're a card-carrying liberal.

Proving once gain: Liberalism is a mental disease.

With due respect to the memory of Aretha's talent and success, I call them all what they are: Tools.

Disingenuous, deceived and deceitful, duped and doomed, hypocritical tools.

Something to ponder as this glorious week begins.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Monday