Pride And Joy
The feeling you get after working yourself into a rocking chair on the porch with a glass of sweet tea at hand, when after all kinds of effort, you finally and at last notice your work starting to pay off, bear fruit, look like it might happen. That's what I'm talking about. Since I hardly ever do more than is required to get sweet tea up to my mouth, I hardly ever feel any pride and joy, but there are moments.
We're doing our required walk-about, Porque Choppe and I. She requires it, so I do it. I swear, sometimes I wonder what I was thinking. How could I have deluded myself into believing that I could own a dog but not take it for walks? I must have been out of my mind. Whatever...here's this refried chihuahua that loves to go for a walk, so we walk. Little tiny Porque charges forward dragging all of me along. Her tail goes a mile a minute. Her nose deeply inhales the whole environment, vast sniffs. I grunt and groan and waddle along in her van, wondering if today I could get away with just a little whirl around the block. We come to the first corner. I stop at the edge of the curb. And wonder of wonders...Porque Choppe sits. She sits, I tell you. Without me yelling, "Sit," sixteen times and finally pushing her little butt down. That's a moment of pride and joy. It hardly ever happens, which makes my enjoyment of the rare and beautiful occasions of its occurrence all the more glorious.
I battle with ants in the house for most of the year. Other people just have ants in hot weather. I have a permanent colony, well ...I have many permanent colonies. Ants have built superhighways with elaborate rest stops every few feet on the walls and floors of this ricketty old house. Nothing dents their commitment. I have been known to get on my hands and knees and wash out the undersink area with clorox, then to saturate the still moist area with Raid ant spray, then to set out ant traps, all of it a complete waste of time and effort because the ants don't even stop while I work. They are willing to take any number of deaths. Not a problem if I wipe away literally thousands of them. The ants keep on keeping on into the dawn. So imagine the visceral thrill of joy the other day when I noticed that the main event superhighway to the great ant underworld somewhere, when I noticed not one ant there, not one. I stood in front of the stove and stared at the wall behind, the wall going up to the potato chip and cracker closet. Not one ding dang ant. Now that's some pride and joy going on.
Birds join all of nature in doing me wrong as follows; every year when I buy gorgeous flowering planters to hang on my porch, birds pick a planter for their nest. Inevitably I have to stop watering their choice of residence in deference to baby birds' inability to swim. Then the plant dies, but I can't even take it down and throw it away for fear of disturbing the nest. So every summer my porch sports one hideous hanging pile of dead vegetation, making me look like one of those people who don't pay attention. This year as always I forgot about that bird thing the minute I spotted beautiful hanging baskets at the local hardware. I bought a new kind of flower, delicate pink petals covering the whole plant and raining down the sides. I hung up the plants. I watered them. In fact I put money into a complicated plumbing venture designed to make it easy to water my hanging baskets. I ran a long series of hoses from the water outlet behind the house and a bought a pole thingy with a trigger on the bottom so I don't have to get the ladder out when I want to water the plants. The first time I used this, I was shocked when a bird flew out of one plant. Uh-oh. Not that again. Yes, that. I ran for the broom and sat in a porch rocker under the plant. Every time a bird tried to get back to that plant, I yelled, I waved the broom around. Finally, I concluded that birds and ants have a lot in common. And I gave up. So there it is. One dead brown horrible plant hanging up there with the rest. Then yesterday I went out onto the porch to get the mail and accidentally succumbed to the beauty of the weather. I sat down in my favorite rocker, put my feet up on a stool, sorted through ads for pizza, car wash joints, carpet cleaning, security systems, yadda, yadda. Suddenly there was a burst of music. A little bird just that minute arrived home with groceries, mouth full of bugs. Tiny heads bounced up and down below grocery bird. Oh, the rapturous singing. Shucks. That was nice. A moment of pride and joy that I'm too kind to kill little birds in order to protect my investment in plants. The little birds all sang their thanks and I, looking at the awful brown planter basket, I was proud and joyful.
chihuahuas ants sweet+tea flowers birds
We're doing our required walk-about, Porque Choppe and I. She requires it, so I do it. I swear, sometimes I wonder what I was thinking. How could I have deluded myself into believing that I could own a dog but not take it for walks? I must have been out of my mind. Whatever...here's this refried chihuahua that loves to go for a walk, so we walk. Little tiny Porque charges forward dragging all of me along. Her tail goes a mile a minute. Her nose deeply inhales the whole environment, vast sniffs. I grunt and groan and waddle along in her van, wondering if today I could get away with just a little whirl around the block. We come to the first corner. I stop at the edge of the curb. And wonder of wonders...Porque Choppe sits. She sits, I tell you. Without me yelling, "Sit," sixteen times and finally pushing her little butt down. That's a moment of pride and joy. It hardly ever happens, which makes my enjoyment of the rare and beautiful occasions of its occurrence all the more glorious.
I battle with ants in the house for most of the year. Other people just have ants in hot weather. I have a permanent colony, well ...I have many permanent colonies. Ants have built superhighways with elaborate rest stops every few feet on the walls and floors of this ricketty old house. Nothing dents their commitment. I have been known to get on my hands and knees and wash out the undersink area with clorox, then to saturate the still moist area with Raid ant spray, then to set out ant traps, all of it a complete waste of time and effort because the ants don't even stop while I work. They are willing to take any number of deaths. Not a problem if I wipe away literally thousands of them. The ants keep on keeping on into the dawn. So imagine the visceral thrill of joy the other day when I noticed that the main event superhighway to the great ant underworld somewhere, when I noticed not one ant there, not one. I stood in front of the stove and stared at the wall behind, the wall going up to the potato chip and cracker closet. Not one ding dang ant. Now that's some pride and joy going on.
Birds join all of nature in doing me wrong as follows; every year when I buy gorgeous flowering planters to hang on my porch, birds pick a planter for their nest. Inevitably I have to stop watering their choice of residence in deference to baby birds' inability to swim. Then the plant dies, but I can't even take it down and throw it away for fear of disturbing the nest. So every summer my porch sports one hideous hanging pile of dead vegetation, making me look like one of those people who don't pay attention. This year as always I forgot about that bird thing the minute I spotted beautiful hanging baskets at the local hardware. I bought a new kind of flower, delicate pink petals covering the whole plant and raining down the sides. I hung up the plants. I watered them. In fact I put money into a complicated plumbing venture designed to make it easy to water my hanging baskets. I ran a long series of hoses from the water outlet behind the house and a bought a pole thingy with a trigger on the bottom so I don't have to get the ladder out when I want to water the plants. The first time I used this, I was shocked when a bird flew out of one plant. Uh-oh. Not that again. Yes, that. I ran for the broom and sat in a porch rocker under the plant. Every time a bird tried to get back to that plant, I yelled, I waved the broom around. Finally, I concluded that birds and ants have a lot in common. And I gave up. So there it is. One dead brown horrible plant hanging up there with the rest. Then yesterday I went out onto the porch to get the mail and accidentally succumbed to the beauty of the weather. I sat down in my favorite rocker, put my feet up on a stool, sorted through ads for pizza, car wash joints, carpet cleaning, security systems, yadda, yadda. Suddenly there was a burst of music. A little bird just that minute arrived home with groceries, mouth full of bugs. Tiny heads bounced up and down below grocery bird. Oh, the rapturous singing. Shucks. That was nice. A moment of pride and joy that I'm too kind to kill little birds in order to protect my investment in plants. The little birds all sang their thanks and I, looking at the awful brown planter basket, I was proud and joyful.
chihuahuas ants sweet+tea flowers birds
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