Hope Darby Writings

I am getting terribly excited about my upcoming trip to Las Vegas. The anal-retentive organizer in me is making lists, lists, lists. Packing lists, to-do-before-we-leave lists, luggage dos and don’ts lists, lists for the groomer/spa where we’re boarding Mikey, lists for Chan’s dad, who is tending the kitties, etc etc. I have them on white boards, on the Simpsons magnetic notepad stuck to the freezer door, in copious emails, and throughout my journals. And, considering that we aren’t leaving until the 27th, I’m sure I’ll have a couple more before it’s all said and done.

Can you imagine the number of lists I’ll make before our cruise in October? I mean, I have thirty thousand drawn up for a 4-day trip to Vegas. A week-long international cruise is going to take some MAJOR listing!

For someone so flowy, I sure can be tight-arsed with details. Hrmph.

On a slightly different topic, I feel kind of bad about the trip. We’ll have to drop Mikey off at the groomer/spa on Friday afternoon, since they aren’t open on Saturdays and we’ll have to leave around 3am on Sunday. He’ll have fun there, though. The woman who owns the place has gone ridiculously overboard in pampering the animals. You know how most boarding kennels just have cages to house the animals? This woman has renovated a house into her grooming salon, and one of the largest rooms (what would usually be the den or living room of a regular house) has been turned into a posh hotel for dogs. When you walk into the room, the “kennels” line both walls, and the fronts of them are black, wrought-iron fences and gates. The kennels themselves range from 8×8 to 12×12 (for various size doggies, of course), and are open-air, no roof enclosures, with padded floors and actual little beds. Not just a dog bed. An actual, miniature bed. Some are even four-poster beds. It’s like walking onto a little doggy-lined street in the French Quarter.

The next room of the same size is the kitty hotel. There are NINE cat condos/scratch posts in that room, starting with very short ones for kittens and going up to condos that reach the ceiling. Cat-grass plants everywhere. The kitty-kennels are huge, too . . . with big plush beds and no ceilings, so they can roam at will.

Then, there’s a large playroom, where all boarded dogs get one-on-one play time every day, for at least a full hour at a time. Balls and toys [i]everywhere[/i]. They don’t bring the kitties out there, because it’s adjacent to some of the grooming areas, and cats would freak out. So they play with the kitties in the kitty room.

So, suffice it to say, Mikey will have a good time. I just feel guilty about leaving him there. Stupid, I know. But still.

Good thing I don’t have real kids, eh? I’d never get to go anywhere! This is why we stick with furbabies. They’re “in the moment” creatures who enjoy where they are while they’re there, and slather you with drooling kisses the moment you show up to take them home. Love!

I took my schnauzer, Mikey, for his constitutional today. We live next to a huge walking park, with winding concrete paths, two ponds, wooded areas, and rolling stretches of green grass. Mikey adores it. Heck, I adore it. It never fails that we pass at least one other person who is being walked by their dog, and Mikey always has to stop and make a new friend. A few moments of mutual derrière-sniffing and playful down-dog postures, and we’re on our way.

Today, it occurred to me as I watched Mikey get to know his new best friend Jack, a wee beagle we met for the first time this morning, that the humans on the other end of the leash do just about everything to avoid eye contact with one another. Why? Are we embarrassed because our pups are snout-deep in each other’s business? Is there the uncomfortable worry that the other person might think us rather pervy for watching the dogs get to know each other in such a way?

I mean, if dogs can walk up and smell each other’s butts, then surely the humans can at least make conversation, yes?

Then again . . . maybe I’m the one who has it all wrong. Maybe the other people are feeling awkward because I haven’t sniffed their butts yet. If that’s the case, I think I’ll just have to go without new friends for the time being. At least until it gets cooler and folks are less sweaty. I mean, if you’re going to sniff a butt, better to sniff a non-sweaty one, right?

Right?

I am currently writing an article regarding whether or not the diet industry should be held financially liable for people with eating disorders. As I write, I realize that this is just one more thing in a long line of “don’t blame me!” characteristics that define current society.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand eating disorders. Quite well, as a matter of fact, considering that I’ve battled them myself, to the point of being 5’5 and balanced precariously at 78-80lbs by age 15. I know the mentality, I know the desperation, I know the drive and need for the body type. But…no matter who or what influenced me, the decision was still mine. Common sense told me that not eating equals starvation which can equal death. I chose to start down the path that led me somewhere destructive.

Granted, once I had ventured so far into the disorder, I couldn’t find my way out alone. It took over my mind, and it was no longer a “choice.” It got out of control, out of hand, and drove me out of my mind. That was a consequence of my own actions.

Sure, I blame my then-boyfriend for convincing a then-14-year old girl that she was too “soft.” I suppose that’s a perk of being a controlling 18-year old guy; he got to influence me far more than he could have influenced someone older, someone who didn’t ache to please her first boyfriend. But can I blame him for my own actions? Not really. I can point the finger at him and proclaim him a catalyst, the instigator, but that’s all.

So why do people insist on trying to blame people they’ve never even met for their problems? A fellow eats McDonald’s every day for fifteen years, and now sues the company for making him morbidly obese. Someone smokes two packs of cigarettes every day for ten years, and now sues the company for giving him lung cancer. Kids play a shoot-em-up video game, and later take a gun to school and kill the bullies who have been torturing them for three years, so the parents sue the video game company for making their child go bad. What’s next? A barfly drinking a full bottle of tequila, then driving into town and getting into a near-fatal car crash, so they sue Jose Cuervo for forcing them to get drunk and drive?

Personal accountability is a dying art form, yet it permeates every single thing we do. Where does the line get drawn? If fitness and glamour magazines celebrated obese people, the world would cry with outrage, saying that the industry was trying to make their kids want to be fat. They show thin people, they’re accused of promoting eating disorders.

Here’s the thing:

It takes a certain type of mind to take the wrong path. If a balanced individual sees a physically fit and/or thin model in a magazine, she figures out how to achieve it for herself through healthy diet and exercise. If a balanced individual plays violent video games, they understand that the violence is pretend and is not to be reenacted in real life. If a balanced individual eats thirty Big Macs a month, they realize that they’re going to get fat. It is only when an unbalanced individual is introduced into these situations that things go wrong.

So maybe, just maybe, we ought to be seeking to help those unbalanced people understand how to make better choices and plans of action, rather than completely removing the “catalyst.” No one can grow if the “bad” things are simply removed. A child will never learn what “Hot!” means if they never experience any type of warmth. And an unbalanced person will never realize that they are unbalanced, if we pad their lives, wrap them in cotton wool, and never teach them anything different.

I’m so happy! I bought a new journal the other night. Typically, I would buy a Moleskine (you know, to be more Hemingway-esque and feel like a *real* writer), but I saw this one and simply had to have it. I think I may have found a new favorite style:

It’s hardcover, with a Tiffany-style embossing on the front. Even the spine is nifty—thread bound in three spots, so it opens to lie completely flat. Love!

I can’t stop giggling over the incredible Colombia rescue. I know you’ve all read about it; Colombian military spies who tricked the bad-guy rebels into thinking that they were transferring the hostages to a more-secure guerilla hideout . . . and once the rebels loaded the hostages into the helicopter, the military fellows turned, looked at the beaten down, tied-up, and time-weary hostages, and motioned toward the rebel men who had boarded the plane with them … where they lay bound, blind-folded, and disarmed.

Then one of the crewmen said to the hostages, and I quote, “We’re the national army. You’re free.’”

Not a shot fired. Not a fly in the ointment anywhere. Just a massive trick of “Hey look over your shoulder! Look! Fooled you!” like we’ve all played on each other at one point or another. And it worked.

Every time I think about it (and yes, I’m a news-nerd and think of these things often), I can’t help it. A grin and giggle erupts and I just have to read about it again.

Beautiful. Just, beautiful.