Tag Archives: photo Paffooney

May 3, 2015 · 3:07 pm

This and That

tedcruzOkay, I know I claim to be a conspiracy theorist when it comes to aliens and 9-11… I am… totally loony and tinfoil-hat-wearing… can’t let those men in black read my mind, right?   But those crazy ideas are based on facts that I have uncovered and investigations into the obvious and admitted manipulations of those facts that have come out over time… from credible whistle-blowers and witnesses.  What is going on in Texas right now is not that, and not my fault.  I don’t adhere to any Alex-Jones-2nd-Amendment-FEMA-death-camps sort of conspiracy theories.  President Obama is NOT planning an attack on Texas with these routine military exercises involving Green Berets and Navy Seals.  The crap thinking that motivated Governor Greg Abbott to activate the Texas National Guard to oversee the military exercises is stupid-headed paranoid Republican propaganda.  I am trying to make humor here out of scary Texas political poop, but this is too wacko to even joke about.

20150501_195234To totally change the topic and talk about something else, I may have inadvertently changed one of my collections that feed my hoarding disorder mental illness…  I was very poetically snapping pictures of the sunrise when I walked the dog every morning and calling that “collecting sunrises”.  But I started taking other dog-walking photos, like cloud shots and moon shots and sunset shots.   Uh-oh!   More time lost to collecting things pointlessly… or is that how art happens?  the artist finding certain observations to be spiritually and creatively fulfilling… and tries to share that fulfillment?  Or when you consider the Avengers Coke cans… is it clinically a concern?

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Okay, let’s switch again…   Friday night my daughter, the Princess, was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society.  This happened at her middle school, Dan F. Long, home of the Falcons.

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They had this wonderful candle-lighting ceremony filled with wonderful things.  I experienced several of what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls “spots of time” in which there is a transcendent moment that carries you far beyond the daily dose of mundane.  The first one was when the Falcon orchestra, complete with cellos and violins, was playing a waltz.  The principal was in the hallway with his young daughter to greet the parents and friends attending the ceremony.  The two of them, the extremely competent and hard-nosed black principal and his pretty little black daughter began to waltz together, not even thinking that some of us seated in the cafetorium might see them do it.  I couldn’t help but think, “while Baltimore burns…  if only we had more of this!”  And more wonderful things followed.  The NJHS faculty sponsor was a teacher I subbed for a decade ago.  She is a determined and bubbly little woman who impressed me once upon a time with her detailed planning and sharp methods.  This little woman could throw big bad trouble-making boys around the room (metaphorically of course) to get her point across and make lessons happen.  I saw her in action.  She was tough and ambitious in spite of being small and always smiling.  And the Princess was inducted with a candle ceremony (a potential disaster waiting to happen in a middle school setting) in which she was in the middle of three rows on the stairs… and no one set anyone else’s hair on fire.  And we’re talking seventh-grade nerd-boys standing with a lighted candle behind seventh-grade girls with long hair!

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And finally I wanted to share with you the progress I have made on cardboard castles.  I have made all of this so far with my own two arthritic claws using Ritz Cracker boxes, Honey Nut Cheerios boxes, tape, scissors, and glue.  I have only glued fingers together once and managed not to accidentally cut off any necessary part of my body (fingernails don’t actually count, do they?).  Why am I doing nutty stuff like this?  Well, I’m retired.  What am I supposed to do?  Sensible real-world stuff?  Get real.

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April 30, 2015 · 11:50 am

Being Iowegian

I was born in the 1950’s in Mason City, Iowa… the town that produced Meredith Wilson, the creator of the Broadway Musical, The Music Man.  Yes, River City in The Music Man is Mason City.  So I was born into a unique Midwestern farm-town heritage where swindlers came to town and saved the day with music and an eleventh-hour change of heart.  I was born into the land of Chmielewski Fun Time on the black-and-white TV, Lawrence Welk champagne accordion music, and the Beer-Barrel Polka, courtesy of loads and loads of German ancestry.  I am that unique crossbreed of Scandahoovian and sqare-headed Deutschmann  known by the only slightly racist term of Iowegian.

Corn Country!

943363_457313854350548_485543538_n388135_298275616878726_103835066322783_936339_2005428082_nLand of Long Winter and the ice-storm breezin’ down the plains.

And if you ask an Iowegian if he loves Iowa, he will answer, “You bet!”

And if you ask a northern Iowegian the same thing, he will say “You betcha!”

Iowans talk funny, don’t you know…

There are still corner stores and farm supply stores, though they have gone to brand names now, like Casey’s, BP, and Tractor Supply Co.  You can still find HyVee and Safeway grocery stores.  There are still a precious few family farms that haven’t been swallowed whole by big corporations and agri-businesses.  If you go to the county fairs, you will still find kids showing the cattle or pigs that they raised for 4-H projects, and if you go into the barns after the auction, they are still producing tearful kids hugging and kissing that calf that won a red ribbon and now has to be sold… and they will never see poor Barney or Moo-berry again…

1399024_220039334824422_480122723_o 1450109_688917614523503_5237770938249269421_n 10418988_688917684523496_8272199480536313576_n 10350345_10152788940611349_2865049925004654610_n 10563018_688909541190977_6371844517698833981_n DSCN7127It is the land of the lonely gravel road… the back-street cattle pen… the Saturday night tornado (nearly every Saturday in Spring)…  The VFW and the Lion’s Club Fish Fry at Lake Cornelia….And it is a place where most everything reeks of the past and old ghosts and times long gone, soon to never be remembered because there’s no longer anybody around who is old enough to tell the stories that grandparents and aunts and uncles used to tell.  I not only miss it desperately, but I feel deeply saddened by the loss.  Would I like to go home again?

“You betcha!!!”

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April 25, 2015 · 2:21 pm

Retirement Sinks In…

There comes a time in every career when the career is over and it has to end.  I spent 310 years teaching in Middle School and High School and loved every minute of it.  (Okay, divide the years by ten and subtract about twelve thousand minutes from the love… but I did love it.)  And I was good at it.  (At least, in my own confused little mind… I have photographic proof that I did help students get some quality sleep time in, but… hey, English is supposed to be boring.)

wonderful teaching

A year ago I was forced to make the decision to leave the job I loved.  Failing health and failing finances made it increasingly hard to do the job.  I was never a sit-behind-the-desk teacher.  I had to do the dance… up this row, down that one… lean over the spit-wad shooter before he could adequately aim and pull the stray cafeteria straw out of his mouth… suggest the verb needs to have an “s” on it if the subject of the sentence the student just wrote for me is singular…  stand in front of the boy who can’t listen to my wonderful teaching because the girl across the room is wearing a dress and block his view… and he doesn’t even like that girl, but she’s wearing a dress… you can see her legs… and he’s a teenager… you know, the dance of teaching.  When you walk with a cane and have a back brace on every single work day, the dance becomes harder and harder as the year wears on.  I got to spend my days with Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou and Robert Frost… and even more important I got to spend my days with Pablo and Sofie and Ruben and Rita and Keith…  I had so many more favorite students than I ever had those black-banes-of-a-teacher’s-existence kids that other teachers were always talking about in the faculty lounge.  (I rarely hung out in the faculty lounge because they tended to talk bad about kids I really loved and enjoyed teaching… and besides, I had crap to actually do before the next class came in.  Lounging was rarely an option.)

I confess that I have spent a good deal of this school year depressed and feeling sorry for myself.  No kids to talk to on a daily basis except my own, and even with them, only after school.  My wife is still teaching… so I rarely see her.  (Am I married?  I need to double-check.)  I fill the lonely hours with writing and story-telling and recollections of days past… and I am beginning to come to terms with my loss.  In retirement I can do more of the things that I always wanted to do… but never had time for.  I can draw and paint and write and sing (pray hard I don’t start posting videos of me singing!) and play with my toys… I have even decided to write a novel about people playing with toys.  Would I ever teach again if suddenly I was healthy and could do it again…?  YOU BETTER BELIEVE I WOULD!

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April 23, 2015 · 11:33 am

Crazy Old People Driving

You can probably tell that the photo Paffooney is totally staged.  I am not a good enough actor to manage the lookcrazy old driver2 of absolute blood-curdling horror that would be on my face if I were actually driving in the Dallas Metroplex.  My gray Gandalf-hair would be standing on end more, and my eyes would be more popped with horror… especially if I had really seen Suicide Sadie in her death-dealing super-WASP-rocket.  Honestly, I’m risking my life to reveal it, but one of the greatest perils of life in the suburbs in Texas is running afoul of the Texas Killer Grannies.  Yes, there is a secret, Illuminati-like organization of blue-haired old menaces driving big, expensive black battle-boats that try to kill as many other Texas drivers as they can… as well as pedestrians, cop cars, squirrels, poor-people’s children, and ceramic lawn gnomes as they can focus their myopic old granny glasses on.

To Texas Killer Grandmas, slaughtering the innocent on the roadways while your back seat is full of knitting baskets and tins of cat food is a Satanic ritual that gives them special and unnatural powers over life and death.

They all drive at least five-miles-an-hour faster than the speed at which they can actually control the vehicle.  For some of the most deadly grannies like Suicide Sadie and End-It-All Emma that is between 95 and 205 miles-per-hour, though the nearly-as-deadly Grandma McGillicuddy can be almost as guaranteed fatal at only about 35 miles an hour.  They cut in front of you without signalling, and traffic lights are interpreted far differently than normal in the presence of a Texas Killer Grandma.  Green means go.  Yellow means go faster.  And red means floor it and brace for impact.  Now, of course that is the granny interpretation of the light.  For me, green means proceed ultra-cautiously while scanning for hurtling BMW’s, Cadillacs, or Lincoln Town Cars with old ladies at the wheel and skulls painted in white on the driver’s door.  Yellow means pull over to the side of the road at a dead stop and make myself the smallest target possible.  And red means park on somebody’s lawn and wait for the intersection to become clear of all vehicles for several blocks all around.  Sidewalks are not safe either with a Texas Killer Grandma around.  You’re safer walking if you walk down the center of the road.  Of course, the more normal drivers will squish you like road-kill then, and the Texas Killer Grandma knows she was ultimately the cause of this suicidal death, so if they are close enough to see it in any sort of blurred clarity, they automatically count it as a kill.

You never see a Texas Killer Grandma charged with anything in the local media or even in court records.  They are not old ladies unconnected to persons of power.  Rich husbands, rich children, and sometimes even rich boyfriends see to it that they are never prosecuted.  They are immune to the wheels of justice.  Crazy Cat-Lady Clarice is immune to prosecution even though she doesn’t own even a nickel.  We think it is because she is so supremely skilled at vehicular homicide that even the police are afraid of her.  And how does she pay for gas in that 1965 Chevy Impala SS she drives with a blood-smeared hood and the driver’s side of the car painted completely white with skulls?

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April 21, 2015 · 5:53 pm

How To Avoid Dropping Dead Like a Dunderhead

Pony party

 

If it is inevitable that I will surely drop dead some day, and if it is likely that it will come sooner rather than later, then I hope to go out with a bit of style and leave something behind that speaks not only to my own children, but to anybody searching for truth and beauty, people of the future that I will never know who are living beyond the confines of my little life.  What makes me think that I can do it?  Well, I’m a writer… and Mark Twain did it… and I don’t have to be vain or loopy or maniacal or delusional to make the same thing happen.

On this day one-hundred-and-five years ago, April 21, 1910, Mark Twain left the world of the living.  He caught a ride on Halley’s Comet (It deposited him on Earth in 1835, appearing in the sky when he was born, and took him away when it appeared in the sky again in 1910…  He didn’t have to be some kind of suicidal Heaven’s Gate nut to manage that.)  But it wasn’t the comet that showed me the truth… it was his books.   I learned to take a wry view of a complex world that I could do nothing to change and tweak it with intelligence and understanding from the story of racism and justice he left behind in Pudd’nhead Wilson.  I learned the value of ingenuity and opportunity and how to use them properly from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I also learned a profound love and understanding for small town people like me and the people of my little hometown in both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.   Samuel Clemens, Mr. Mark Twain, left himself behind in stories to speak to the ages.  He spoke to me… directly to my heart, and he had been dead for 46 years before I was even born.  If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

 

media.npr.org

media.npr.org

Now, I am not a fool (wait a minute!  I know you have proof to the contrary if you read my blog posts, but I am not an UNINTENTIONAL fool), so I do not think that my words and wisdom are ever going to have any sort of effect on the entire world the way Mark Twain’s have.  I can accept reality.  This whole world is dying and may not long outlive me.  There are a large number of talented fools… er, I mean writers, out there who have put out a number of published good books, and have, like me, made diddly-zero-bupkiss in dollars on the deal.  I have no delusions.  My work is good enough to turn into a best-seller or maybe two, but I do not have the time or the backing to make it happen.  If anything other than obscurity embraces my books, I won’t live to see it.  Only eleven per cent of published authors make a livable wage from writing and I will never be one of them.  But I have ideas that resonate.  I can write in ways that touch the heart (as you may have seen if you have read my post “When Compassion Fails” that was a minor hit with the 1000 Voices Speak For Compassion group).

So, I am satisfied to confess my girly addiction to Barbie Dolls and My Little Pony… talk about cartoons and cartoonists on WordPress… make people giggle a bit… or even guffaw, and put together books that my family will read, and only be mildly embarrassed by, and maybe one day will reach and touch the heart of some boy or girl who really needs to read what I wrote at a time in their lives when it can actually help… the way so many other philosophers, wits, and word-wizards have helped me.  (How’s that for some prime purple-paisley prose?)

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April 17, 2015 · 12:44 pm

Writer’s Block

20150417_083955I have always maintained that I do not experience writer’s block.  I mean, the words always flow.  Sure, it may be garbage and word-sludge, but I can always get something down.  Yet, the past three days have been a struggle.

You see, I have been working on a sci-fi comedy novel called Stardusters and Space Lizards.  On Monday one of the main characters, a green-skinned alien girl named Brekka was swallowed by a man-eating plant.  In another scene the explorers Farbick and Starbright, both green-skinned Tellerons like Brekka, were surrounded by hungry lizard children from the planet Galtorr Prime.  And those lizard children were armed with weapons of war.  Mortal danger all around for characters I have grown fond of… and this story is supposed to be humor… not grisly-death-sort-of horror sci-fi.  So, my simple and somewhat stupid brain had to come up with two different salvation solutions at once.  I think I may have broken something in the area of the creative mental spigot.

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It is essential for me to accomplish writing in a timely fashion.  I waited through the duration of my entire teaching career to become a published author.  Thirty one years’ worth of stories collected, stories plotted out, and stories percolated in my brain with nothing but a future hope of getting written down to endure upon.  I started writing books when I lost my teaching job with the Wicked Witch of Creek Valley.  I began trying to get published, and I took up regular composition on a daily basis for the last seven years of my teaching career as an ESL teacher in a large Garland High School.  But my teaching time was limited by my six incurable diseases.  (Don’t ask me what they are, since my writing time is precious and I have already wasted too much thinking time on disease and disaster elsewhere in this goofy blog… You can look it up.)  Spring of 2014 saw me retiring as a public school teacher.  I have a pension… enough to keep myself and my children alive, but the couple dozen novel-length stories in my head still have to be told, if not for money, then to keep my goofy old head from swelling up with them and exploding.  So I seriously got down to the business of writing.  Catch a Falling Star, a novel about the alien Tellerons invading my home town in Iowa was published in 2012.  I entered a writing contest that same year with the manuscript of Snow Babies, which made it to the final round before finishing out of the prizes.  I found a publisher willing to publish it without making me pay for the publication and signed a contract for the novel.  I entered Magical Miss Morgan in the same Young Adult novel contest this month.  I also have Superchicken and The Bicycle-Wheel Genius finished as manuscripts and I am looking to get them published as well.  I am making progress.  But here’s the big butt… er, I mean the big but… I don’t know how much longer God will give me to work on these silly symphonies of wonderful words in wacky packages.  I need to finish and market as much as I can in as short a time as I can.

20150305_173534That is what makes writer’s block so unthinkable.  I do not have the time to be out of ideas.

But I am not out of ideas.   Brekka was spit out because her species of alien left a bad taste in the mouth of the man-eating plant.  And Farbick figured out how to make synthetic meat with a material synthesizer, feeding all the lizard children until they were too full to eat his girlfriend Starbright.  I just had to take the time to figure out the solutions.  And one can’t actually say I have writer’s block because I wrote longer than usual posts in this blog on each of those empty-headed days I was searching through mental filing cabinets.  So, I guess I don’t have writer’s block.  Well… never mind.

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For those of you wondering what’s with all the goofy flower-photos… here’s a picture of Brekka and Menolly dancing… so you don’t ask that.

My Art

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April 11, 2015 · 12:38 pm

Apple Blossom Time

When you get to be old and burdened with deteriorating health like I am, you appreciate the renewal of spring with a new intensity.  This year has been like that.  Cold weather and dehydrating cold were worse this winter than I can remember… especially since I feel it in the marrow of my bones now more than ever before.  But the inevitable rebirth did eventually come.  The apple tree my wife planted in the hope that Texas heat would not destroy it is putting out more blossoms than ever before.

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The first flowers to put out their winter-weary heads this year were relatively stupid daffodils.  They came out in February only a day before an ice storm came along to slay them for their daffy dunderheadedness.   I didn’t take their demise very well.  I suffered a lot this winter and was looking for the sun with desperation.

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But then, in March, dandelions poked out their bright, dandy heads and decided to stay.

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And, though we have had plenty of wet weather and rain, the flowers apparently all had a big meeting and decided the time had come to make their yearly assault and wrench the world out of the hands of Jack Frost and his icy minions.

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Wisteria began climbing the back corner of the house.  They like to spread their purple majesty out over the area by the cracked and derelict swimming pool.  It is moist and shaded out there, somewhat protected from our cruel Texas sun.

My wife’s bed of roses, both red and yellow marched out into the open air and began to dance gently in the wind like grand ladies decked out in their Easter best , showing off their color and their sass for all the world to see.

I am coming back now too… less seriously depressed.  I completed a doll collection last week.  The educational problems my children were facing are now seemingly straightening out.  It is a time of rebirth… happiness… and flowers.  My smile has returned.

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April 10, 2015 · 12:24 pm

Completing a Collection

I was foolish enough to share with you all in my post “The Quest for Pinkie Pie” that my insane Hoarder’s Disorder has led me into a world full of Bronies

This is a really terrible first fan art of My Little Pony. I gave Pinkie Pie insane cereal killer eyes, and Rainbow Dash is too fat to fly.

This is a really terrible first fan art of My Little Pony. I gave Pinkie Pie insane cereal killer eyes, and Rainbow Dash is too fat to fly.

(seriously maladjusted men who watch My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic and love it, making fan art and buying dolls).  I have been on a quest to put together a complete set of MLP’s and an accompanying set of Equestria Girls (ponies put through a magic portal that turns them into teenage mutant horse-girls).

I have been making steady progress since my mother sent me $50 in a gift card for Christmas and I blew it all on ponies.  I would like to report that I have finally brought this terrible mental illness thing to a proper conclusion.  (And, no, I did not explain the problem to a psychiatrist or anything.)  I completed the collection.  Now I no longer have to buy any more of the terrible things.

I was able to find Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy both together on the bargain shelf at Walmart.  Both were less than fifteen dollars.  Together they didn’t bust my monthly maximum.  So I put together the entire set of twelve and the compulsion has begun to dissipate.

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Now the only thing left to do is play with them.

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April 9, 2015 · 11:36 am

Compassion and Stray Dogs

I think compassion, if it is describing something real, is not so much a quality people have as it is a behavior that they sometimes exhibit and desperately need to turn into a habit.  I have learned this best, I believe, in my relationship with the family dog.  Dogs do have a natural empathy and loving strength of character that you learn about when a dog owns you and decides she is willing to keep you around for giggles and kibble.

Here is Jade the dog relaxing on her couch which she is sometimes willing to share.

Here is Jade the dog relaxing on her couch which she is sometimes willing to share.

This dog came to us in the late evening one spring night.  We were coming home from religious services, and we had to stop the van because there was a puppy directly in the road ahead.  She just showed up in the headlights, all big head and big belly, not really capable of taking care of herself, or even keeping herself from getting run over by the very next car that came along.  She couldn’t have been more than a month old, still a little unsteady when she walked.  She had a collar and a name tag, along with shot tags.  We figured someone had accidentally let her get out of the house to wander and probably wanted her back.  Well, we were wrong.  The animal shelter was willing to take her, but that meant the risk that, if no one claimed her, she would be euthanized with all the other strays.  She was too cute and instantly-attached-to-us to run the risk of that happening.  The name and vet tags gave us no leads.  We didn’t have the names of either owners or the vet who gave her the shots.  She had become ours by default.  I now suspect that she got out of her cage at the nearby Petco and the employees who lost her immediately wrote her off as deceased.  No employee ever came looking, and, of course, when asked no one knew anything about it.

Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry's computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

Of course, kids love dogs and always believe they should have one, so no amount of warning about the consequences would dissuade them.  So, in the first few months we had her, she totally decorated the carpets in the house with dark brown and yellow-brown stains.  The kids wondered, “How did that get there?” and when I showed them how to clean up and house-train the dog (supposed to be their duty… ended up mine), they all three said, “Eeuuww!”

These aren't actually our parakeets. Ours are all deceased.

These aren’t actually our parakeets. Ours are all deceased.

The next winter, the dog killed all our parakeets.  It’s not what you think.  She didn’t eat them or anything.  But wintering in the garage because of Mom’s reaction to new carpet patterns was something the dog really didn’t like.  So she scratched her way to freedom through the garage door.  And she chose a bitter cold January day to do it.  So, the birds froze to death.  The dog, in her fur coat and newly free of the garage prison, was insanely happy.

So you have to learn to make sacrifices to be owned by a dog.  But there are benefits, too.  I am a grumpy old man now with numerous health problems.  But the dog gets me out three or four times a day to exercise me.  She pulls me along by her chain all around the park and exercises my lower back by making me constantly bend over and pick up poop.  I have become an expert at working through the pain to swoop up poop in an old donut bag or Walmart sack.  Did I ever tell you what an amazing pooper that dog is?  Five times every day!  Six if I take her out five times!  She seems to be capable of producing triple her own weight in poop every day.  I would’ve wondered how she managed so much more output than she had input, until I started noticing what things were missing from the pantry and what wrappers were stuck behind the couch.

And a dog loves you no matter what.  I am the first person to feed her when we brought her into our house. so she obviously believes I am her mother.  I get grumpy and cuff her on the ears for biting my fingers when I try to pet her, and she still wants to be petted (and be able to bite me) even more.  I swear at her when we are walking, and she just grins at me.  She believes dammitdog! is her second name.  And if she doesn’t get to sleep in somebody’s bed at night she whines.  That doggy bed we got for her is apparently only to be used for dragging over the top of the latest poop or pee stain.  So, being owned by a dog teaches you compassion by making you practice it every single day.

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Last image borrowed from the Facebook page; The Peanuts Movie

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April 1, 2015 · 11:36 am

A Collection of Sunrises

I made the horrible mistake yesterday of revealing the true nature of my hideous mental condition that leads to never-ending collecting of a long list of collections that probably will become a black hole of collecting from its own gravitas and stretch on into infinity.  (Yeah. I know… you can see right through my phony over-blown exaggerations that consist mainly of stringing lots of science-y sounding adjectives together.  Don’t get all smug about it.)

I did not, however, reveal the newest collection.  So today I open my stupid writer mouth and another sacred secret pops out.  Since retiring from teaching last June, I have been collecting sunrises.

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I know it is a silly, sentimental,, goofy-sort-of self-pitying thing, and I also know that is probably not “normal” from an abnormal psychology viewpoint, but don’t call the loon-catchers just yet.  Wait till I reveal my delusional quasi-religious reasons for doing it.

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I am retired now from a profession I truly loved.  I have a full pension now because Texans Republicans are not completely on their toes about taking benefits away from people who don’t earn them by trading stocks and bonds, running a corporation for maximum profits, or inheriting billions because Daddy did one or both of the previous things for you.  They let my pension slip by unaltered on a grandfather clause because I’ve been teaching since a time when education was actually a respected, value-producing industry that rewarded  those who did the actual work  (This really only occurred in the middle 1990’s when the world was briefly too sane to be Republican.)  I can’t do the job any more for crippling health reasons.  I am lucky to have a good pension, but not lucky enough to be able to use it for very long.  Hence, the interest in sunrises.  Every single one is a miracle.

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You may have already noticed that most of my sunrises in this collection are taken in the same park.  It is where the dog walks me every morning in order to keep my heart pumping.  She wants to keep me alive so the food dish keeps getting refilled, and so someone will still be able to bag and dispose of her daily poops.  (I swear, that dog is a champion pooper.   Three times her own weight in poops every single day.)  I also can’t sleep as much as I used to.  Five hours a night is about the maximum that arthritis pain, COPD, and diabetes allows me.  School trained me to get up early because my last job was a thirty-mile commute one way and classes started at 7:30 a.m.  I really began noticing on my morning drive how beautiful city sunrises can be thanks to the colors produced by exotic pollutants.

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So, I keep adding to this collection of sunrises because each one is a reminder that a loving God is still being generous with me, and I still get at least one more day.  See?  I warned you there was crackpot religious sentiment in this post.  Now you can call the loony-catchers.  But hopefully, they won’t catch me until after sunrise.

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