jerky

Once upon a time and a couple of grandchildren ago, my brother and his wife lived at the end of our pecan lined lane. This cute little beagle pup showed up and BG promptly named him "little bow wow" because he followed her around like Cody sniffed her girlfriends. We were dog poor up here on the hill so he decided to wander his beagle self on down the road. LBW followed me up and down the lane on my walks, checking out the hay fields and dairy barn with each lap. Pure puppy heaven, ya'll. After he got adopted he became a member of their family and has been with them ever since.

T told me about him lickin' on his babygirl's toes this morning before he was put to sleep. His story was a whole like that of Butterbean...deteriorated back and paralysis. Quality of puppy life = zero. When a dog can't run and play or go potty, it's time for something different. Same with any living thing, including humans. I latched onto the philosophy of hospice care many years ago and it remains a cornerstone of my belief system. It's pretty easy to figure out that this belief is at odds with for-profit healthcare which has paid my bills for the past few years. I'm not especially proud of that, but sometimes it is what it is.

My birthday ten years ago...at 46, was punctuated with a bang with the organized attack by Muslim extremists on multiple suicide missions using planes as weapons against our financial and political districts two days after my birthday. These crazy mofos had spent years in training for the chance to say fuck you to us as a nation. Our entire economy was dependent on their output from the oil wells in those desert and mountain regions where nobody could ever hope to grow anything other than a cactus or some poppies. On some level, I understood their pain, if not their methods. As my daddy says "It has always been thus and so."

^j^