harikari.com

What are you thankful for?

Me?

I am most thankful that my dog Lucy made it back home from her wild adventure yesterday.

Yesterday, Seattle was surprised by a midafternoon thunderstorm. Lucy hates thunder and lightning even more than than taking a bath. I only heard a couple of thunder claps and was comfortable knowing that Lucy was safe at home, probably sleeping on my bed.

Upon arriving home I discovered that she was not in the house.  At first I thought that I had forgotten to lock up the dog door that goes into the backyard (the door was on the floor) and that she was in the yard.   When I went to reinsert the door, I found that it was binding on the runners.  At that point I knew that Lucy must have been quite scared, as she somehow ripped the locking dog door out of the runners.  (I have since tried to pull it out of the runners, myself, and can not.)

After getting out of the house, she found herself in the backyard and broke through the fence (a first) to the front of the house. She must have been totally terrified…

Lucy was running down the middle of the street when a very nice woman, Pam, saw her and stopped. Pam had never seen Lucy before, but knew that Lucy was scared and needed her help. Lucy did not have her collar and tags (remember, she was locked in my house on the bed when I left), so Pam stopped by the vet and had her scanned for a chip. Bingo… She now knew Lucy’s name and my name. But she was only able to get that far, as I am not listed and my personal information related to the chip was out of date (my bad).

After running errands with Pam for a couple of hours (Lucy loves hanging out in cars), Lucy found her way to the pet walking/sitting services of Furhead Riviera. A massive thanks goes out to Amy at Furhead Riviera for keeping Lucy safe for a few hours until I could get her back home.

These two women, who did not know Lucy or me before yesterday really made my year.

Thanks for making this a great year!

After a long day Lucy loves a nice Pinot.

The big story of the day is about a minister’s wife killing her husband. It’s what was on the television this morning, on the radio during the drive to work, and the featured headline on all the news sites.

Here’s the A.P. story from Yahoo!:

The wife of a minister found dead in the church parsonage has confessed to shooting him and fleeing to Alabama, where she was found the following night with their three young daughters, authorities said Friday.

Mary Winkler told investigators she shot her husband on Wednesday, Selmer Police investigator Roger Rickman said.

…

“I can’t believe this would happen,” said Pam Killingsworth, a church member and assistant principal at Selmer Elementary.

“The kids are just precious, and she was precious,” Killingsworth said. “He was the one of the best ministers we’ve ever had – just super charisma.”

What is up with the media? Why are they so obsessed with this terribly sad story about murder? Don’t they know that President Bush and his followers don’t want us to hear about this kind of stuff? There must be some good things that happened today that the media can feature, even in Selmer.

Why can’t the media tell us about Ms. Livingwell who got up today, made coffee for her husband, fed her children, drove them to school, stopped at the coffee shop for a latte and a muffin, tipped her barista, and then went home to clean house and walk the family dog? Instead of interviewing Ms. Killingsworth about a grisly murder, the reporters should interview Ms. Livingwell to find out what her preferences are for window cleaner and doggie doo doo bags. They could ask her how often her husband calls home from his office. We all want to know these things.

We don’t want to know about what drives a seemingly nice substitute teacher in Tennessee to shoot her husband–a man of God. We don’t want to know what will become of her precious children do we? We’d be sick in the head to dwell on such things.

It’s just not nice.

P.S. This story is prime material for Nick Cave’s next album of murder ballads, should he ever decide to revisit that genre. And if he does, I’ll buy it.